TREMOR, EARTH

By

Janel A. Carpenter

Submitted to the

Faculty ofthe College of Arts and Sciences

of American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Fine Arts

In

Creative Writing 12cL,Af~

David eplmger ~' :

Date 2009

American University

Washington, D.C. 20016

....AMERICAN _...... - .. -- ~ . UNlVERSiTY LIBRARY UMI Number: 1472761

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

UMI 1472761 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Pro uesf ------·

ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml48106-1346 ©COPYRIGHT

by

Janel A. Carpenter

2009

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TREMOR, EARTH

BY

Janel A. Carpenter

ABSTRACT

Tremor, Earth is a collection of fifteen original stories about fear that immobilizes. The first person narrator of these stories is attempting to find a haven within the harsh, ever-shifting landscapes (illustrated by the frequent setting of earthquake-prone southern California) and her failure to locate stable ground. In addition to the danger physical landscapes present, the narrator's body also presents ground as unstable and dangerous as desert lakebeds or winding suburban roads. These stories depict the reasons to tremor: standing helpless while facing a force that can move the earth itself.

11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest gratitude goes to David Keplinger for his enthusiastic support and to

Richard McCann for his generous attention to my work. I also want to thank all of my colleagues in the MFA program. Writing is not a solitary venture, and only through collaboration could I have finished this work.

111 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii

Chapter

1. HAVEN ...... 1

2. DISTANCE ...... 18

3. AT HEART ...... 20

4. AFTERSHOCK ...... 23

5. PURLOINED HONEYSUCKLE ...... 35

6. FOR MY SAKE ...... 37

7. HELP ME. I'M IN HELL ...... 47

8. CLEARING IN AN EXPANSE ...... 64

9. KITCHEN ...... 71

10. STRETCH MAKRS ...... 75

11. SUNKEN ...... 76

12. FRIED ...... 91

13. DON'T MOVE ...... 93

14. SPEAK ...... 95

15. FIXED ...... 110

lV HAVEN

The wall, glossy with thick coats of beige paint, kept the coyotes and rattlesnakes and jackrabbits and red racers from our backyard. The desert is not a dead place. As a child, I poked the hollowed out shell of a prehistoric-looking millipede with a tumbleweed twigs, and a dozen ants, the size of pinto beans, scurried in all directions, over the bristly patches of brown grass.

I spent hours in the shadow, moving from one corner to another with the progression of the sun. Early morning, I lay in the sandy spots and pick at the dying grass, pulling up the hardened, gnarled roots. I swirled the sand with a toy rake around a lumbering beetle. As the morning wore on, I moved closer and closer to the wall, standing up straighter, until the sun threatened to burn my feet, even standing on tip-toes.

I gave up, going inside for lunch when shadows no longer loomed large overhead.

In the summer of 1989, I was five. My family lived on Edwards Air Force Base, the safe place between LA and Death Valley National Park, away from the crime and the dangerous heat of the lowest, hottest, driest place in North America. Our house sat at the corner of the residential row, next to the main road that led to the hangers and the rows of windowless concrete buildings that housed the finest in defense technology. Test planes and old favorites flew over the vast stretches of flat land, dry lake beds, the untenable badlands covered with scrub brush and prickly Joshua trees.

1 2

One rare afternoon, Dad came home, appearing like an unexpected cool breeze.

Dressed in his Air Force blues, he walked over to me as I played in the sand under a new section of shaded backyard. Even though he lived at home, I didn't see him every day.

His night school, his master's thesis, his work, and his frequent business trips kept him away for weeks at a time.

"Hey booger," he said, standing over me and squinting at my new mini-mountain range.

I got up from my sandy spot, ready to jump into his arms, but he patted the dust from my denim shorts.

"Okay. Now." I threw my arms around my dad.

I stared up at the afternoon sky and listened for the roaring engines, like a deep guttural throat clearing. The dry air sucked into their turbofan jet engines, supporting their variable wing geometry, or so Dad said.

The faraway whine grew louder. Until the speck of the plane was squarely overhead for an instant. Dad held my hands over my ears. A moment later, I heard the sonic boom, the glass-shaking, ground-rattling explosion that's really nothing at all.

"What's that noise?" I asked. He took his hands off my ears and smoothed back my long bangs.

"That boom is the plane breaking the sound barrier. It's a shockwave." Ripples of air hitting each other. Dad kept a picture of a plane breaking the sound barrier, pictures of the shuttle, and a color painting of Saturn's rings on his wall of diplomas.

Dad slung me over his shoulder and took me inside. "Where' s your brother?" He asked, setting me on the couch. "'Is he in his room?" 3

I shrugged and watched as he looked down the hallway. Austin's door was wide

open, and being twelve and secretive meant he never left the door open when he inside.

Dad didn't use swear words, but he used their more modest cousins with equal,

harsh emphasis. "Dangit. You were here by yourself?" He asked, his clenched fist

resting against the wall.

I nodded.

"I told him to look after you," he yelled. Dad picked up the phone on the end­

table and jabbed at every number. "She was here by herself," he said after a pause. He

vented to Mom, who was still at work, about how aggravated he was. I felt like I had

been bad and started crying as quietly as I could. I curled up against the thick cushioned

arm of the couch.

When Dad got off the phone, he sat down on the other side of me and switched on

the TV. He turned the sound off and flipped channels, the same way Austin did, and the

television emitted a high pitched whine, like ringing in my ears. I wiped my face without

his notice.

"When Mom gets home, she'll take care of you. I need to find your brother."

Dad switched off the TV, tossing the clunky remote on the cushion between us, and

walked across the family room. He stood in front of the hallway, arms crossed as he

looked towards Austin's room. He glared at the empty room, and I never stopped thinking his anger was my fault.

An hour later, Mom came home and took me to get an ice cream at the only fast

food place on base while Dad went to find Austin. I had a strawberry sundae and ate fast enough to give me brain-freeze. Mom was still wearing her work clothes, a turquoise 4

skirt suit with a matching satin scarf. Thick make-up covered the freckles on the bridge

of her narrow nose.

"Don't stay alone next time. Go over to Monica's house." Mom wiped ice cream

from my fingers with a paper napkin. Bits of paper clung to my sticky hands.

"Alicia's on our street." Alicia had an aboveground swimming pool and the

Barbies Mom wouldn't let me have.

"I'd rather you go to Monica's," Mom said, finishing up the last of her soda. We

sat on the hard plastic swivel chairs, done with our snack but unmoving. The afternoon wore on, and the national anthem played on the loudspeakers outside. Everyone in the busy, restaurant stopped what they were doing and stood. The timers in the kitchen kept beeping, but no one tended them. Instead, people looked down at the floor. Mom didn't look at me but spent the minutes gazing at nothing, the same way she looked reading from the Bible. Even the cars on the road stopped, resuming only when the final drum­ roll and cymbal signaled the finale.

Mom pulled her sunglasses from their usual place on top of her head. Her heavy bangs fell around her narrow forehead, falling around her full cheeks. "I think we can go home now."

That night after dinner, I stayed in my room and tried not to hear the occasional raised voice and slammed door. My room had one, tiny window, with bent aluminum blinds that clinked together like coins when they parted. I even got to have an aquarium just like my brother's. I had my own television, an old black and white with a big metal dial. I had a dresser taller than I was, and my closet was filled with shoes and bathing 5

suits strewn across the floor and mittens and snow boots packed away on a shelf I could

not reach.

I dumped my Legos on the floor, making pyramids and boxy houses. When the

yelling got louder, I took my comforter and walked around like a ghost in my room, the

thick blanket muffling the noise.

A little while after the last door slam, Mom knocked on my door. "Are you ready

for a bath, sugar?" I heard the door open. Mom patted the comforter, thinking she was

touching me. Her hand sunk into the empty space.

The next day, Mom drove me two blocks to Monica's house before she went to

work in the morning. My mom talked to Monica's and arranged for me to stay while she

went to work. We both went to swim lessons at the base gym together anyway. Mom

dropped me off at the comer, and I walked the rest ofthe way.

Monica was waiting out front. She had a neat bowl-cut and a wide, freckled face.

Her yard had the greenest grass I'd ever seen. We played red-light green-light, and I

purposely fell down to press my face against its coolness, close to the rapidly evaporating

dew.

After midmorning, we went inside, where Monica's mom made "ants on a log,"

drizzled with honey. We ate in the kitchen and had to wash our hands before we touched the rest of the heavily-curtained house. Everything looked protected, untouched. A formal dining room, dense soft carpet, and a clock that chimed every half hour. Monica

and I shuffled across the living room in socks, trailing blue sparks in the dry air. We played under sheet forts with Lite Brite and flash lights and her older brother's chemistry 6

set. We killed bugs on her bathroom floor with a combination of bubbling chemicals

(most likely vinegar and baking soda) and brute force. Tearing the beetle's spindly legs

off one by one. Cutting its body in half. It trembled in the pasty, hissing puddle. We

laughed and looked for another.

After swimming lessons, Monica and I stepped out into the afternoon sun, and I

saw cement block building after building. The library looked the same as the offices and

the same as the gym, only smaller. You'd get lost before you found trouble here. Our

lengthening shadows danced across the dust-covered parking lot, and the sand in the

breeze stuck to our damp legs.

I looked up at the sky and knew the planes were going to fly over. I felt the air

change, the breathless stillness of the expanse began to quake, and I stood unmoving, waiting for the flash.

The day Austin got in trouble, he and his friends rode dirt bikes up to the edge of

the residential zone. They rode in the ditch, kicking up dust and riding over scrub. He spent all day riding his bike, and the next day, he wouldn't get out of bed. Mom told him not to ride at all because of his Osgood-Sclatter's disease, the condition that makes adolescent boys' limbs comically long and skinny. Austin's bones grew faster than his muscles which made him more vulnerable to strains and joint problems, and Mom made him sit on the couch in the family room with his feet propped up on the coffee table, a bag full of ice on each ofhis reddened, knobby knees. 7

I stood in the hallway near the living room and listened to him and his friends talking about their ride. At the end of the long street that bisected the residential area, there was a range of hills, a place they called Red Devil Ant Hill. One of the boys fell into the hill, and ants descended on him, covering him from head to foot. They bit every inch of him, and he seized, fits and spasms knocking the ants off one by one. But they still clung to him, pinchers firmly locked on to his flesh, soaking his skin with venom.

The boys, my brother included, watched as he writhed around, until the clear-headed one among them ran to the nearest house to get help.

They told and retold the story, and the ants got bigger every time. The size of their pinky. The size of their palm. As big as the scorpions.

"I hear he's in the hospital."

"I bet he's dead."

"He's not dead you dope."

"We'll go again tomorrow."

"No way. We're going somewhere else."

"Chicken."

Mom was home, doing homework at the kitchen table. I was riding my bike (with training wheels) in circles around our backyard, when I heard Austin screech to a halt in our driveway. He walked his bike over to the shed and let it fall to the ground. Austin and I didn't look alike. His short, dark hair was tinged orange with Sun-in and pool chemicals, while mine was naturally strawberry blonde. I had freckles. He was lightly 8

tanned. His eyes were striking blue and the first thing people noticed about him. Mine

were gray and forgettable. But we both squinted in the sun.

I tried to pretend I didn't see him, but I slowed my pedaling. Maybe he 'II see that

I'm really bored with this. He was crouched next to the house, pumping air into his tires.

He braced himself on the stucco wall, straightening his knees slowly.

After a minute of riding closer to his side of the yard, I biked out into the sun and then back around the wall where the afternoon shade cast a triangular shadow. I tried not to look at Austin, since he barely acknowledged my existence, but I kept glancing back at him over my shoulder. He leaned on the sliding glass door, staring up at the con trails against a blinding blue sky.

"Come here," he called across the yard.

I stood out of my seat to stop myself.

"I'm taking those stupid things off," he said, pointing at the wheels. He disappeared into the shed and came back with Dad's dented, red toolbox. I walked my bike over to the concrete slab of a patio, where Austin sat on a lawn chair and picked through a selection of ratchet heads. I didn't say a word. When I would tell Mom about something that happened at school or at swim lessons, Austin would sigh loudly, roll his eyes, and leave the room. So I never talked to him at dinner or in the car or at church.

Austin held the spokes of my bike with one hand, each finger laced into one section, and ratcheted away with the other. He didn't even breathe heavily. He squeezed his fist, the small veins of his arm bulging, and the bolt fell to the cement with a faint clink. 9

"You want to learn how to ride this thing the right way?" He put the tools away, slamming the box shut.

I nodded.

"Well don't look excited or anything."

"Okay." He was smiling, snaggle-toothed and broad.

"Get on. I've got you." Austin held my shoulders steady, his hands large around my back. "Go on. Pedal."

The grit on my bleached white tires scraped across the concrete as I took my first, wobbly cycle. He steered me toward the gate, and the warm sun spread along my back over my brother's guiding hands. He jumped in front of me to open the gate, steadying my bike by gripping the front of the handlebars. We rode out of our brown, backyard and into the neighborhood streets, where some houses had greener lots.

The driveway dipped into the steep street, but Austin held firm. "You're not going to fall." He said and led me to a sidewalk beside our house.

I kept going, like he said, and his hands began to ease up. He started walking beside me, catching me when it seemed I was tipping over or wobbling.

"Come on now. Let's pretend you're in a race." He loped ahead in a few easy steps. "Think you can beat me to the end of the street?" He pointed to a distant stop sign.

I smiled. "Readysetgo!" And I raced ahead. I heard the breeze rush by, those vibrations around a moving object Dad had tried to explain. I could beat Austin, with his swollen knees, but he still ran his hardest. 10

"You beat me!" He yelled, jogging behind me. "Let's go to the next one.

Readysetgo!" And he ran off, as fast as he could. When I caught up to him, he started

naming off the other people we were racing. "There's Bugs Bunny, passing you. Gotta

keep up. But you passed Bert and Ernie!" He pointed at the imaginary contestants as we

ran neck and neck. "And you're coming up on Rosanne Barr. She's in first place. You

can totally pass her."

I laughed, leaning into each pedal.

"You passed her. We won!" Austin said as we passed the street sign. He held

my bike upright as we both stopped to catch our breath. As soon as I opened my mouth

to gasp in air, every bit of moisture started evaporating. The desert was always hungry

for water, and sweat, spit, anything wet, dried up like it never existed.

As the shadows got longer, creatures started to stir. The sleeping jackrabbits

shook the dust from their coats and left their burrows. Millipedes emerged from under

rocks and dead scrub brush, gliding over the pebbles and dirt effortlessly. We weren't

supposed to be outside. Despite the walls and the illusion of civilization, we weren't safe

after dark. I could step into the path of Mojave Green on the street, the same dusty color

as the dusk and the faded concrete. One day before evening church services, I saw our

neighbor from the dead end street in his Sunday suit with a shotgun. He stood in the

middle of our street, set the gun down, and crouched over a limp snake. He uncoiled it,

picking it up like a sock full of pennies, and kissed it on the forehead.

A coyote could be crouched in the juniper bushes in the neighbor's front yard, ready to rip Austin's throat out. The darkness bled into the fading brilliance of the sand, 11

the white-hot glow of everything during the day. And because we were so far from the

city, the darkness was complete and the sky heavy with stars.

Dad was out of town, and Mom had already left for night school. We got home

safely, this time. Austin made me dinner, cereal and crackers, and slammed the door to

his bedroom.

When Mom had to go out of town for work, she didn't know where to leave us.

Dad was gone too, and all of her friends were on vacation. Mom finally decided to leave

us with Austin's friend's parents, who had an older brother and a young~r sister. Their

dad was a doctor who poured hot water on our scraped knees, and their mother was a thin

woman with a shiny black ponytail who made dinners of grilled cheese sandwiches and

tomato juice.

The little sister and I had swim lessons together, but we weren't friends like our

parents thought. I dropped my toothbrush in the trash on accident and didn't ask for a

new one, but instead rubbed gritty, spearmint toothbrush on my teeth with my finger. I

slept in a plain red sleeping bag on her floor, while she propped herself up with pink frilly pillows on her brass frame daybed. She liked to complain about how strict her parents were and how much she didn't like her brothers. How she wanted a puppy. How nothing was ever fair.

When she finally went to sleep, I stared under her bed at the boxes of dolls and barely-touched toys. At her overstuffed shelves, her room full of smiling Disney faces. I wanted to go back to my room. 12

Austin had a key to our house, and even though Mom and Dad weren't home, he kept coming back. He told his friends to meet him at his house, and they could do whatever they wanted and wouldn't have to worry about Mom coming home for a lunch break or Dad asleep in the back bedroom after an all-nighter.

I wasn't allowed, but I still sneaked in the front door when I heard them fighting in the backyard. While Austin's friends watched TV in the living room, yelling at the screen, I stayed in my room, drawing and building with Legos instead of playing with the little sister like she demanded. The boys ran up and down the halls, trying to skateboard on the thick carpet, and ate loudly, crinkling bags of chips and popping open cereal boxes.

When I thought they were gone, I opened my door and heard that the TV was still on but muted. One of Austin's friends, a dark-haired boy, tan and gangly, was stretched out on the couch, with a hand down his pants. As I headed to the kitchen, he said hello, told me to wait a second. "Do you want to do something that'll make you feel good?"

I didn't know what he meant. I barely knew what it meant to feel bad. A cut on my knee. Being tired after a long day at the pool or missing my parents.

He rested his free arm on his knee, and he beckoned me, like every other older person in my life did, index finger flicking towards him. No one taught me to say no to older people.

I stood in front of the doorway. I could have run out into the afternoon sun. I could have run two doors down, three blocks down the street, to the ditch full of ants, anywhere but my own house. I could have found another wall to cast a shadow on me. 13

But I didn't move, and I had the distinct impression that planes were about to fly over. The room was still and then shuddered nearly imperceptibly as wave after wave of air displaced each other.

He got up from the couch and stood in front of me, and I stared down at his shoes, black combat boots. He reached down and grabbed me, and his large thumbs dug into my shoulders. My doughy, baby-fat skin squished in his grip like putty. His hands squeezed the wind out of me; the rough pads ofhis fingers and his palms enclosed my ribs.

"Come here."

His hand wrapped around my arm, and he led me to Austin's room at the back of the hallway. I sat down on my brother's bed, and traced the pattern on the comforter. He locked the door, and I stared at the muted light coming through the curtain.

When Austin found me, I was sitting on the tub in his bathroom. He came back to our house looking for me after I missed dinner. I watched beads of water dry on my arm and gooseflesh form when he walked in and air flooded into the bathroom. Austin picked up a towel from the floor and draped it over my shoulders. I wasn't in pain exactly, only the vaguely sunburned-feeling all over my body.

"You're going to be alright," Austin said. "I know how to take care of you." He reached for the toilet paper on the counter and dabbed the tears and sweat from my face with a wad of the thin tissue.

He must have seen the blood pooling on the ledge of the tub, made the connection

I could not. Austin knew what was good for me and how we should act. He left the 14

room, returning with my clothes, and dressed me as neatly as he knew how. I couldn't stop crying, and he didn't ask me to.

"You're going to bed early tonight. You don't have to say anything. I'll explain it for you."

Austin carried me, with swollen knees and legs wobbling, back to our neighbor's house. I slept for hours and hours that night, one of my last unbroken nights of sleep.

When the shuttle lands, it flies over so fast, the air compressed for the first sonic boom spills over into a second. A double blast explodes overhead, and white smoke trails behind the ship that's long gone.

The next day, Austin told me to forget what happened. Forget the boy. Forget the bathroom, and as much as I could, I erased it all from my mind. I blotted out the boy's face, scrubbed what happened when he shut the door.

Two weeks later, a little before I was supposed to go back to school, I started to get sick. Fevers of 102 or 103. I was so dehydrated, blinking hurt. I lost my appetite and my thirst. I remember being exhausted but unable to sleep. So I stared at the bunk bed above me, unblinking, sweat drying on my lips. I must have looked dead.

Mom knew I was sick, feverish and weak, but she didn't know I could barely urinate. She didn't know the ache in my abdomen was so severe that I couldn't sit up without stabbing pain. Austin didn't tell her what had happened in her absence, and I was working hard to do what he had asked of me. She sat on the edge of my bed with icy 15

hands and cool towels. She smeared petroleum jelly on my chapped face, the thickness

blunting her touch.

After a couple days, when it became clear that I didn't have the flu or the "I don't

want to go to church" bug, Mom lifted me out of bed at five in the morning and carried me to the car. The air was cool or maybe that was just me. Mom laid me down in the

back seat without buckling my seatbelt and slammed the door sliding door, running

around to the driver's side.

"How old are you?" A nurse kept snapping her fingers in front of my face. I couldn't keep my eyes open.

"Come on honey. How old are you?"

Each breath warmed up the cool plastic mask on my face. I lifted up five fingers.

"Five? Very good." I closed my eyes again, but the nurse kept snapping. "Wake up honey. I need you to squeeze my hand." I was so dehydrated, the doctor was having trouble finding a vein.

"Squeeze," the nurse urged. The cool ache of the tightening latex tourniquet stretched through my arm. The dull pain of straining to hold on to this stranger's hand caused the dark comers to start collapsing my sight. I barely felt the needle slide into my wrist. As soon as the nurse stopped cooing and making noise in my face, I fell gratefully into that starry black that overtook my vision.

I spent the last week of summer in the hospital. I had a massive urinary tract infection, which had spread untreated and left my kidneys nearly non-functional. I stayed 16

a few days hooked up to an IV, watching my pulse jar the needle under the thin skin of

my wrist. In and out of a medicinal stupor, I flicked on the TV, mad that the only

programs on were of adults talking. The doctor talked to my parents about what could

have caused such an infection. Poor hygiene, allergies, or wearing dirty swimsuits might

have been the problem. He turned to me and told me that I should have told someone I

was feeling so sick, and that for the next couple of weeks, I should stay out of the sun,

because the medicine would make the light hurt.

For a couple hours each day, my whole family sat in my room, even Dad. He

tossed his rectangular, blue hat on my head, and I took in the smell of the leather lining

and his hair. He set a teddy bear in a bomber jacket at my bedside and picked at its

sheep's wool collar as he talked. Austin sat slumped in a chair next to the window, arms

crossed and lanky legs askew, while Mom stood at the foot of my bed, rearranging the

empty plastic containers. The hours stretched out like the vast, dry lakebeds outside the

base, silent and tenuous.

Then the nurse came in, shooing my family out to change my IV, and their

shoulders dropped. They all smiled, hugged and kissed me. They knew how to handle

goodbye.

When winter came that year, the winds howled like always. The sun shone hot, but the breeze grew bitter and chill. One clear winter day at school, I felt the wind sting sharper. Flurries blew briskly, swirling around me as I jumped rope. The snow fell faster, and the wind calmed. Dozens ofkids shrieked, some with joy and others in horror. 17

No one had on hats or gloves. Most of us were wearing windbreakers with no lining, and the sky opened up, releasing all of its pent up snow.

The teachers wrangled us back inside but didn't even bother teaching that day.

We stood with our faces pressed to the window, watching the snow pile up on the dry brush, on the Joshua trees. School let out early, and the bus was raucous with noise as the wheels churned through slush. I jumped off the steps of the bus, my shoes imprinting a small inch of snow.

The gray-bottomed clouds moved fast overhead as I ran inside. I dragged the piano bench from the living room into my bedroom, standing on tiptoes as I reached for the box at the top of my closet labeled "Snow Stuff." My gloves were too small by now, and Austin's were still too big. I put them on anyway. I found a hat with a fuzzy ball at the end. A scarf that was too big. A pair of snow boots Austin had when he was ten.

Dressed for the weather, I marched toward the backdoor.

When I stepped outside, the snow was gone, melted and sucked into the dry earth. DISTANCE

In my memory, my mother sits at the far end of the pool in a blue and white bathing suit, watching me swim. She started taking me to the pool when I was eight months old and made sure I remained under the supervision of a watchful adult. Her caution was based on my tendency to run towards the water, to overcome the buoyancy of the brightly colored intertubes and :floaties, and to lose myself in the weightlessness.

She told me that she learned very early to never turn her back on me near the ocean. The instant she did, I ran headlong into the tide, getting to swimming depth as soon as I could.

I don't remember running, but I still know the draw, the allure of the exhaling sea, and the invitation of chase the receding water presents.

Mom took me to the base pool at least once a week. Swimming came naturally, and I dove and splashed until I gasped for air. Before I knew I needed to stop, Mom had swam over to me and pulled my through the water, away from the other splashing kids who knew their limits. We glided through the water, and she sat me firmly on the steps of the shallow end with the rest of the mothers. I begged her to let me go back, even as every breath burned in my throat, but she never relented. She laced her arm through mine, forcing me to sit still, not to squirm. She turned to me, coaching my inhale and exhale. "Breathe in. Slowly."

She called this interruption of my play a breathing break, a chance to stop and catch my breath. Mom saw a tendency in me that has persisted throughout my life: a

18 19

profound disconnection with my body, a lack of knowledge about how to stop despite the discomfort, and an inability to see myself struggling, thirsty for air. And mothers know you better than you know yourself. Mom formed the curve of my scull, the sharp edge of my elbow, every piece of my body inside hers, and because she held me so close for so long, Mom knew my deepest flaws and my most elegant perfections.

Lacan posits that identity emerges only when a baby realizes she is not her mother. Until a baby looks in the mirror and sees her face and not her mother's, she doesn't know her mother is separate from herself. And in that moment, the mirror realization and crisis, an enormous gulf opens up between the mother and the baby. The headiness of independence and asserting an individual identity meets with a great dearth of closeness.

Growing up is a freedom that is a great loss. The more you realize the steady hand that pulls you from the water is not yours, the more you chafe at guidance, at being set apart and told to sit still. Even if breathing is the best thing for you. The only way to survtve.

Eventually, Mom let me go when she no longer heard my breathing rattle in my chest. My arm drop back into the cool water, and I pushed off from the steps. I couldn't get under water fast enough, to play. To keep swimming. To exhaust myself until a firm hand pulled me back to safety again. AT HEART

South Carolina produces some of the biggest, sweetest peaches in the world. I'm not sure why, but maybe it's because the soil has exactly the right balance of cations and nitrogen and paw prints. Because the length of the day is perfect to brighten the blush of red into peach. Because a shaman used a peach-wood wand to hex every other peach tree in the world. Because rain doesn't merely fall in South Carolina. Droplets linger in the air for days until they fmd every orchard in the foothills and the Piedmont and the sand hills and the coasts and soak every tree root and bark and leaf and branch until it's full to bursting, and the blossoms erupt into fruit.

South Carolina peaches have more hair than other peaches. But that's because the rain makes them healthier. They have thicker, softer hair and light yellow flesh. Mealy peaches have thin skin, brittle fuzz, and jaundiced flesh. I've never had one like that in

South Carolina. Farmers gently stroke the skin, running their fingers over the fuzz to dislodge any dirt, careful not to bruise, and set each one in a wire basket lined with newspaper. They throw the runty ones in a pile to rot and take out the pits and burn them in a bonfire.

Grandpa cut peaches on the porch with a Swiss army knife. He sat in his wooden, straight-back chair, no cushion, with a basket full of peaches, four cereal bowls, and a mason jar. Picking each one up with the lightest of grips, he cradled the. peach with a

20 21

paper towel to catch the streams of juice dripping down each cut. He sliced them into four sections, guiding his knife with his stubby thumb. He plopped each section into a cereal bowl beside him and ripped the pit from the last section. It made a noise like sticking Velcro, and Grandpa threw the pit back into the peach basket.

Grandpa never sat still, and he spent mosquito-dense sunsets snapping the ends off green beans or hulling strawberries for preserves. His hands were a steady force, and he kept them moving. Every once in a while, a gnat or fly landed on his work, and he'd say nothing as he tossed the piece of okra or walnut he was working on over the side of the porch.

"Here," Grandpa said, handing me the first bowl. As soon as I took it, he picked up another peach and started over again. Guiding the knife over natural split in the peach. Between the blush of dark pink and down the tip and back to the stem where a leaf still clings to the skin. His tan arms, scarred and tough, rested on his knees as he cut each section.

I sat on the edge of the porch next to my cousin Jenifer. She had her hands in her lap, sitting straight-backed. She got in trouble today for running through the house and making noise while Grandma napped. After her spanking, she was on her best behavior.

She had already brushed her fine, brown hair without being told and sat like a young lady ought to sit, shoulders back and ankles crossed. Still, she was last in line today.

My peach, warm from sitting in the sun all day, fell apart in my tpouth. I held the section by the skin and chewed on the red blush where the pit clung. The juice ran down my hands, down my wrists, and I rushed to take another bite and lick the rivulets before 22

they run down my arm. Each bite bled more juice into my hands, and I worked faster to get every drop, every last piece of flesh.

Jenifer got her bowl as I finished my third piece. She started in the middle, same as me, but she spat out the red-tinged flesh at the core.

"Why don't you eat that part?" I asked, as she daintily spat out another red part into her bowl.

"Don't you know?" she started scraping the center with her thumbnail.

"What?" I said with my mouth full of the last of my peach.

"The pit's poisonous. That's why it's all red here."

I watched her bite into her first slice in earnest, rolling it over her tongue and chewing with abandon. She sucked the juice from her next bite and smiled at me.

"It's not poison," I said slowly.

She shrugged, taking another bite. "It's just like appleseeds. They're poison too."

I looked down at my bowl. Nothing left but the skins, picked clean of any remaining scraps. They stuck limply to the bottom when I turned the bowl upsidedown.

My stomach suddenly felt heavy, full and cold. The blood red flesh had been contaminated this whole time, and no one told me.

In my fingertips, my toes, a sick fullness emerged. I burned, flush and dizzy at the suggestion that I'd been poisoned. I watched the peaches in the basket, with their sunset complexion and soft blond hair. Motionless, benign, but with a dangerous heart. AFTERSHOCK

Once a month, my kindergarten class put down our construction paper cutouts and got under our desks for safety drills. My teacher, a woman who had us bring our teddy bears for tea parties and spoke in soft, whispery tones, ordered us to "Stop. We're having an earthquake drill." When some of the girls screamed shrilly, the teacher firmly told them to be quiet. "Don't panic. Get under your desks."

After a few minutes pretending that debris was toppling onto our desks and imagining the rumbling had stopped, the teacher had us sit in a semi-circle. "When an earthquake comes, at home or here, get to a doorway or hide under the table. Don't try to walk." The ground beneath you will reject you. You will not be able to move. You will be powerless. The ceiling will fall on you. And no one will come to your aid until the earth stops shuddering.

I learned that the earthquake is never over when you think it's over. After the first rumblings, the initial jolt of instability and the upheaval, the calm afterwards only heralds the real problem. Gas leaks. Cracked foundations. Roads turned into small chasms.

"If there's not an adult around, you shouldn't come out from under the table or the doorway," my teacher said. Because of the aftershocks. The moment you take your first tentative steps out of your shelter, when you think the stillness surrounding you is real, the ground trembles again. Groans that echo in even the empty, wide-open spaces of the desert. 23 24

But on a spring day, full of drawing suns and rainbows, the notion that the rug with a train and detachable Velcro parts could ever give way is easily forgotten. The moment of worry is for more somber days, when the weather seems to be warning you.

But I left school wondering when the quake would come and how I wouldn't be able to run.

My brother Austin watched TV on summer days and Saturday mornings. He lounged across the couch, his spindly limbs draped over the cushioned arms. When Mom went to class and Dad went to work, Austin spent hours unmoving save for his thumb, flicking through the channels. He wore his bright yellow basketball shorts and tube socks, sometimes at-shirt with the name of a city.

Austin hated everything I wanted to watch and loved everything that drove me out of the room. Except for one show that came on mid-morning: "That's Incredible." A poor-man's version of"Ripley's Believe It or Not." I didn't understand most of the show, but I laughed at the animals tricks, the jugglers, and the men contorting their faces.

Austin liked the ghost stories and retold them to me so that they took place in our house.

He grinned when he told me about the ghost in the closet or the one he saw floating up and down the hallway.

He lifted his head from the arm of the couch and spotted me on the piano bench, watching the story of a woman haunted by the ghost of her husband. The man came to her, his wispy touch brushed over her lips, and the woman slept less and less. The cheesy organ music made her creepy story campy, but I could feel the heavy lightness of hands long-gone one my body. The chill and heat of the touch there and not there. 25

"I wonder how many ghosts are in this house right now," Austin mused aloud. "I

bet there are thousands."

"What?" I twisted the hem of my t-shirt.

"Yeah. I mean, think of how many people there are and how many people have

already died. More like millions." Austin muted the TV. "So there's always one close

by."

"No they're not," I said, although unconvinced of my own denial.

Austin shrugged. "You don't have to believe me."

"I don't," I said. My face flushed and flooded with the prickling asleep feeling,

like I had sat on my foot for too long.

"Boo!" Austin sat up suddenly, hands waving overhead.

I screamed. The echo rang in the piano, as if my voice struck every cord with the

felt-padded hammer. Tears and sweat formed simultaneously, instantaneously, and I

shook in the wake of my shriek, more startled by how loud and long my voice ghosted in the piano and through the whole house.

"Jesus!" Austin said after a minute. "What the hell was that for?"

I ran out of the room and hid under my blankets, breathing the stuffy air in my fortress over and over. The light coming through the sheets and summer comforter was muted, grayish but still unbearably hot. Sweat drenched the backs of my knees as I curled them to my chest. The taste of the air dried my throat, until I couldn't take in any more, choking, coughing, and coming up for fresher air. After a few moments of gasping deep breaths, I got out of bed. The thought of ghosts was now far from my mind. 26

I paced the length of my room, going for the door handle and then walking to the closet. I went back and forth across my room a few times before deciding that I wanted lunch. Cereal with a piece of peanut butter toast. And I had to get Austin to reach the box and the milk.

Austin had not moved but had changed the channel. He flicked through a few more by the time I stood in front of the TV.

"Move," he demanded, his gaze lazy but glaring. His smushed cheek against the pillow slurred his speech.

"Mom said you had to make me lunch."

"Do it yourself," he groaned and threw a pillow to the end of the couch.

"You have to."

He propped himself up on his elbow. "If I do, you have to leave me alone the rest of the day."

"Fine." I crossed my arms and stood on my tiptoes.

"I mean it. After this, I can't hear you anymore."

He lumbered into the kitchen and reached into the pantry for the bread and peanut butter.

"And cereal."

"You can't have both."

I huffed.

"Fine," he said, getting the box. He poured the cereal into a little bowl and gave me the butter knife to spread onto a piece of stale bread.

"I want toast." 27

"Put it in the toast-making machine," Austin said. He grabbed me under my arms and lifted me to see over the top of the counter. I dropped the bread into the toaster.

"Press the toast-making button." He sat me on the counter, and I watched the insides turn red. Heat rippled up to my eyes, ruffling my bangs. The toast popped up, making me jump. "Pop," Austin echoed in a sing-songy voice.

I smeared on a huge blob of peanut butter, melting into little droplets oozing down my hand. When I looked up, Austin had poured milk into my cereal. He left me sitting on the counter without a way to get down.

A couple hours later, as the shadows in my room lengthened and the sunlight induced the stupefying mid-afternoon haze, I played quietly in my room. I wanted to prove I could hold up my end of the bargain: to leave Austin alone for the rest of the day.

Because maybe if I was good enough, we'd be friends again.

I spread out my seashell collection over a beach towel and separated the little ones from the big ones, the spiral shells from the shell fragments. I only had one sand-dollar and separated it from the rest. I ran my fingers over the pearly surfaces of a rose colored half shell, polished by years of sand and waves. My thumb fit perfectly into the indentation, where the little animal used to be. Some of my shells looked like wings, and

I held them like butterflies.

In the middle of putting my shells back in their bucket, I heard a deep rumble. A plane or the shuttle flying overhead, I thought, but the sound came from everywhere.

From below, from the house. Vibrations buzzed in my ear until I could hear nothing but the roar, deeper than the hum of Dad's Mustang. 28

When the ground pulsed beneath me, I realized this was an earthquake, and I couldn't remember what to do. I walked as quickly as I could to the doorway, but my legs were unstable beneath me. My feet tingled, as if I'd been sitting on them for hours, and my short walk to the door was in slow motion, stepping and almost falling over and then stepping on the ground again. I stood in the doorway that connected the hallway to the living room, clutching at the doorframe. I shouted at Austin, who was still lying on the couch.

"We have to take cover!" I yelled, but he didn't move. The television had turned to snow. A few moments later, the power went off completely, and the low whine of the television disappeared.

I stayed in the doorway, holding onto the frame. The wood vibrated from the inside out, like the house was about to lift off. As if the entire house had been hollowed out and something echoed from deep inside. Austin hit the buttons on the remote and finally dropped it on the ground.

"Austin!" I yelled, and he covered his ears with a couch cushion, curling up to take a nap. "Hey!"

"Shut up," Austin yelled back.

And suddenly, the rumbling stopped, and the house was quiet. No air conditioner.

No music. Only the sounds of two people breathing, not moving. I held onto the doorframe for another moment, tapping the wood and drywall to see if they were solid. I stepped into the living room, setting one foot over the threshold and away from my safe place. Austin pushed the buttons, but the power remained off. 29

"You were supposed to get under the table," I said. I hesitated to move too far away from the door, but I crept closer to the couch.

"You were supposed to leave me alone for the rest of the day," Austin said. He got up and stalked across the room and headed to his room. I followed him back to the hallway but stopped at the doorway.

"But that was an earthquake. We have to do what teachers say we have to do!"

Austin looked back down the hallway at me. "You're not hurt, are you?" He asked. He leaned against the door, intentionally letting his long bangs fall into his eyes. I had watched him practice this in the mirror before school.

"No," I said. The teacher didn't tell us no one would get hurt.

"Then who cares?" He asked, slamming the door behind him.

Mom came home late that night and promised to make macaroni and cheese as she set her purse and sunglasses on the counter.

"There was an earthquake today!" I yelled.

"Honey, not so loud. I can hear you."

"It was an earthquake, and I stood in the door and Austin laid on the couch."

"That wasn't an earthquake," Mom said. "There was an earthquake in LA." She untied her silk scarf and took off her turquoise earrings, pocketing both. All of Mom's dresses had shoulder pads and pockets for her bright lipstick and for lanyard ID cards.

"But it was!"

Mom shook her head and walked over to the pantry, her shoes clicking against the tile. She set a box of macaroni on the counter, and I shook it. The sound reminded me of 30

little pebbles tumbling down the side of a cliff, like my foothold loosing sand down the side of the Vasquez Rocks. Mom picked up the box and moved it to the other side of the counter.

"Did you hear the rumble?" I asked.

She filled a pot with tap water, and the whooshing drowned out my question.

"Hand me a paper towel, honey."

I reached across the counter, stretching my whole torso on the counter, to get what she asked for. The edge of the counter scraped my belly as I slid down with a single sheet.

Mom wiped the bottom of the pot and then the counter. She set the water to boil and picked out four plates from the cabinet.

"Did you hear it?" I asked.

The plates clattered with silverware, and Mom threw a stack of napkins on top of the pile. "What?"

"The rumbling."

"That wasn't an earthquake," Mom said, handing me the napkins. She picked up the plates and walked over to the table.

I followed close behind. "Did you have to get under your desk?"

"No," she said. "We just took a break until it was over."

"You're supposed to get under something," I said, setting the last napkin down next to Mom's place.

"It was worse another place," Mom said. 31

"But stuff could've fell on you," I said, and Mom closed her eyes, drawing in a

long breath.

"Everything is okay. Things weren't that bad, and no one got hurt." Mom

brushed back my bangs and kissed me on my forehead.

I tried to wipe her lipstick off but smeared it across my face and hands. I rubbed

my hands together, but the bright pink streaks stuck to my hands, like Vaseline and

Elmer's glue. I sat at the table and waited for dinner.

Dad came home as Mom and I were washing dishes. He took offhis blue

polyester cap and threw it next to Mom's purse. The metal pips made a loud bang on the

counter, a heavy clash in the quiet kitchen. I jumped and ran over to Dad, my hands

soaked, and he knelt down, instead of lifting me up into his arms.

As he held me, I heard his muffied words as vibrations in my body. His chin

bumped up and down on my shoulder, and I couldn't understand the words. He spoke to

Mom for a minute and extracted himself from me, retrieving a covered plate from the

fridge. I watched him lean against the counter and eat his macaroni and ham and green

beans cold, taking care not to spill anything on his Air Force Blues.

We stood in the kitchen, watching each other. Mom watching Dad's progress to

gauge when she could run the dishwasher. Me watching Dad, waiting to ask him about the earthquake. Dad watching his plate, glancing up every couple bites to see us staring.

I had been to Dad's workplace before. The long, windowless hallways. The cold,

funny-smelling rooms that housed shelves of computers, all blinking and covered in tumbles of wire. The conference room with the big screen TV. The gray carpeted walls. 32

"Is your work okay?" I asked.

"What?" Dad said, swallowing another mouthful.

Mom clicked her tongue. "The aftershock."

"Oh," Dad wiped his mouth. "We didn't feel it."

"You didn't?"

"Of course not. It's the blockhouse. We barely lost power." Dad shook his head, taking one last bite ofham.

My eyes started to prickle, and a small pool of tears formed in comers. No one did what they were supposed to. Dad scraped his plate over the garbage can and put it in the sink. He kissed Mom on the cheek as she rinsed off his dish, and without another word, he left. They did whatever they wanted to, without paying attention to what other grown-ups said.

As soon as his car door slammed and engine revved, the tears crept down my cheeks. None of them cared about what had happened. Today wasn't different to them.

Today only mattered to me, only frightened me. I slid back against the pantry door, letting myself sink onto the cool kitchen tile. Curling around myself, I sobbed, long, harsh wails muffled by my own body. I cried and lost all sense of everything around me.

Nothing remained except the hot flush on my face and the choke and release of sob after sob.

Mom's hands were damp when she lifted me from my spot on the floor. She carried me from the kitchen to my bed, still sobbing and in no mind to tell her why. Her weight sunk into the mattress as she sat, and even though we didn't touch, I could feel her next to me, her steady breath, her calm hands. After sitting on my bedside for a few 33

minutes, my crying calmed. She left for a moment, leaving a cool spot where her body once was, and returned with a cool towel, which she placed over my puffy eyes.

"What's wrong, honey?" Mom asked, her voice sweet but weary.

The last few sobs choked my words, making me suck in air involuntarily. "You could have got hurt." I said in broken words.

"No one's hurt, sugar. Everything's fine." She brushed my bangs away from my face, but little strands stuck to droplets of water.

"No it's not!" I couldn't make her understand. Not by my insistence. Nor by volume.

Mom kissed my forehead, taking away the damp towel. The water warmed against my skin, turning lukewarm as rivulets soaked into my scalp. "You're okay," she whispered. Her hair, her breath tickled. "Everyone's okay. You can forget about today."

"I won't!" I said and cried until I slept.

The next day I woke up to the sound of Mom's car in the driveway. The light had already started to come in hard and strong through the one window in my bedroom, and I was glad Mom hadn't woken me up to have breakfast with her. I turned over in bed to face the wall and rolled into the damp cloth Mom had set on my forehead last night. The cloth was clammy and uncomfortable.

After lying in bed for a while longer, stretching my legs underneath the covers, I sat up and put my feet on the ground. The floor beneath my bare feet was solid even thought I didn't trust its firmness. I brushed the carpet with my toes and then dug in, burrowing into the thick plush carpet. 34

As I walked into the kitchen for breakfast, I lingered in the doorframe without realizing it. I stood holding the wooden panels, nails denting the soft white pain, without remembering I'd one it or knowing why. Maybe I'd been wrong to listen to my teacher, least to listen to her so completely. No one else seemed to care, and nothing really bad would actually happen to me. Not me. Bad things happen to everyone else but me. If something really horrible were to happen, Mom and Dad would fix it, rather than ignore the ripples in the ground. I believed that my family would see a disaster when it confronted them, and I told them, something had happened. Something scary and uncontrollable.

I stood alone in the empty house. The silence after a shock eerie and unknowable. PURLOINED HONEYSUCKLE

They're sweet little flowers. White, smooth; the faintest glancing swipe of a

fingernail bruises them. You know how delicate they are. The petals tear as

smoothly as Easter tights snagged on a folding chair. They're gauzy white like cotton

nightgowns in summer.

One day in March, the fences and trees and thickets of underbrush explode

with them. Where the bare, brown branches were, green and white vines choke

saplings and cling to rusted chicken wire. All at once, bees hum and hover, dusting

themselves in pollen, and hummingbirds flit from flower to flower, aiming their

needle beaks for the one drop of nectar at the bottom of the spread petals.

Amidst the coital embraces, you shoo bees and birds and take your own

blossom from the vine. The stem snaps off like a page from a coloring book. Unlike the delicate kisses ofthe bees, showering the long curving tendrils of its stamen with golden pollen, you possess this flower, hold it in your hands so nothing else can have it. You turn it upside-down and, with your thumbnail, pierce the green tip, where the flower connected to the vine. If you push too hard, you break the stem and can't get what you're after.

Snap. A clean break. The fuzzy green tip of the longest tendril glides through the bell petal, scraping every sugary trace from the inside. Your breath ruffles the cluster of curving stems. You bring it to your tongue, and the stem is smoother than a

35 36

polished pearl. The fuzzy exterior of the blossom like the wispy peach fuzz underneath pigtails. The one drop, scoured from within, lands on your lips, and you lick away the faint sugary taste. Teasing, ethereal, insubstantial.

There's a whole fenceful, though. No need to cling to one. They're really weeds anyway, parasites, clinging to stronger trees, gorging on sunlight. They're showy, boastful things, loud and brazen. And you're bigger than the birds and the bees. You trod through the grass, kicking up dirt in your wake. You smush the gutted flower in your palm, tossing it aside to compost in the grass and to have the last traces of its sweetness eaten by ants.

The one drop, scoured from within, lands on your lips, and you lick away the faint sugary taste. Teasing, ethereal, insubstantial.

There's a whole fenceful, though. No need to cling to one. They're really weeds anyway, parasites, clinging to stronger trees, gorging on sunlight. They're showy, boastful things, loud and brazen. And you're bigger than the birds and the bees. You trod through the grass, kicking up dirt in your wake. You smush the gutted flower in your palm, tossing it aside to compost in the grass and to have the last traces of its sweetness eaten by ants. FORMYSAKE

Shakespeare's Lavinia used her tongueless mouth and handless stumps to guide

the staff across the sand and spell out the name of her rapists to her father. I had it easy.

My family moved, again, when I was six, and I knew I had to tell them. We spent a week

planning our drive through the parched heat of Southern California desert, past dried

lakebeds. Brown on brown landscapes. Flatness as far as you could see. Briars

everywhere you walked.

This sandy plot is plain. Guide ifthou canst this after me. I here have writ my

name without the help ofany hand at all. 1

At six-going-on-seven, I could remember three other moves. Three other times

we drove for days, and rain always fell on the day we left. As we packed the last of our

belongings into the van, fat drops splashed on the hot pavement and wet the thin layer of

dust. The air swelled up in my lungs as I stuffed my backpack in the backseat.

Mom drove the van, and Dad drove the mustang, a blue hatchback third-

generation. Leaving California and its scorched desert, we went to Burger King, one of the few restaurants on the Air Force Base. My kiddy cup sweated, wetting my hands, my

pink denim shorts, my knees, and I sipped soda that was almost pure syrup. Dad opened

the window, and wind and a few sparse rain drops gusted into the car. I had to close my

1 All italicized sections are from Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. Act IV, Scene I, line 1609-10. 37 38

eyes, so the sand didn't blow in my face as Dad showed his ID to get off base and onto

the Mojave-Barstow Highway, headed east at Four Corners. Dad had the answers

readywhen the MP asked us where we were headed on this Sunday afternoon. Increased

security. Bombs were flying over Iraq, over another desert far away.

The road was flat, but every once in a while, we drove down a dip in the road, and

the sun seemed higher in the sky, farther away. We drove farther and farther below sea

level, into the crust of the earth itself. Dad shook his cup, rattling the last thin pieces of

ice, and turned on the radio. When we had moved before, Mom made mixed tapes to fill

the hours, but Dad said I was old enough to listen to grown-up music. The speakers

puttered out the steady bass line of Billy Joel's songs about secrets we share but never

tell. We hummed. I didn't know the words, and Billy sang too fast.

Dad handed me a stick of Juicy Fruit gum as we hummed the chorus, which took

him to his upper register. The flat sweetness numbed my taste and forced more spit to

swallow the sand instead of breathe it in. The grittiness subsided, sugar dissolved, and I

chewed on the rubbery, flavorless glob. Though my throat was no longer dry, my mouth

was consumed by the task of chomping and chomping the wad of gum.

As we passed, little dust devils swirled around little patches of scrubby grass. The

miniature twisters roved among the landscape, against a gray, stormy sky. 0 earth, I will

befriend thee more with rain that shall distill from these two ruins than youthful April

shall with all his showers. Every few years, a monsoon rushes in, flooding the deserts,

and shallow lakes formed on the cracked dry earth. Dirt, like cracked skin, become tan mush for a while, and fish lay eggs in the middle of the desert. In summer's drought I'll drop upon thee still. In winter with warm tears I'll melt the snow and keep eternal 39

springtime on they face. Then, the water recedes, as if sucked through a straw under the earth. The drain happens like time-lapse photography. Something sinister glutting and luxiurating while little speckled fish, white and black with bulbous eyes, lay face-up gasping. Dry winds pelting them with sand. I swallowed my gum with the last watered down sips of soda. Not gone an hour, and we were already bored.

On this move, we had two cars, more stuff, and the distance between Mom, who drove slower, more carefully, and Dad, in his little Mustang, presented a problem of coordination. But Dad was determined to drive how he drove, and he loved gadgets. He and Mom both had walkie-talkies, the big clunky kind with a long rubbery antenna.

Mom's fit in her cup-holder, and he gave the bulky thing to me and as I held it, he tuned the dial to the right channel, never taking his hand off the steering wheel.

Dad looked into his rear-view mirror, and I turned around to see what he saw.

The waves of heat radiated from road into the dusty air. Long, sloping hills reached into the blue-gray sky. By now, the clouds had burned off, but rain still felt heavy in the air.

Mom's van wasn't behind us anymore. "Give her a beep," he said.

I pushed down on the long, rubbery button on the side. "Mom?" I called into the grated plastic, holding onto the side. I loved running my finger along the bumps in the rubber. The satisfying way the raised dots clicked against each ridge of my skin. The smoothness, the grain.

Dad glanced over at me, and the car veered onto the shoulder slightly. His head snapped back, focusing on the road. "Here," he said, tapping my hand. "Take your hand off. She can't beep back." 40

I let go, and the walkie-talkie hung on my wrist. The long antenna flicked onto the dashboard, making Dad look over again. Nothing came through the line except crackling silence.

"Try again," Dad said.

"Mooooooommmmm!" I whined into the walkie-talkie. She still didn't answer.

"Mom! Mommommommom!"

"Okay," Dad sighed. "That's enough." He turned the music back on, drowning out the static and the white noise of the road.

A stone is soft as wax, tribunes more hard than stones. A stone is silent and offendeth not, and tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.

The tires kicked up more and more dust. Burnt orange haze overtook the faded asphalt. The road seemed to grow longer, and we crept along the highway in heavy winds, plains that the rain hadn't yet touched. Weeks before, the last few days of school, our teacher had given us a talk. She sat our class down, the girls on one side of the room and boys on the other. She quieted the chatter, and I paid attention. She told us that all ofus were special, very special. That we had bodies, parts of which others could see and some parts they shouldn't.

"Especially not if you don't want to. Your private parts are yours. And if someone asks you to see, you tell them no. And then, you have to tell your Mommy and

Daddy."

Her face, drawn up and severe, dared us to laugh. I understood how serious she was, how afraid. She had given her talk too late for me, but I thought a lot about her 41

words. "You have to tell your Mommy and Daddy." She was compelling me, and her words barely left my thoughts for a moment.

But she gave me the words, sewed up my tongue, and allowed me to say for myself, "I've been hurt." I tested out these words, how I would tell my dad. I had started to tell him a few times but stopped when I felt silly. My cheeks burned. My chest seemed heavy and filled with rocks.

I watched Dad for a moment, his eyes flitting from the rear-view mirror to the road to the radio. Then to me. "What?" he asked. He squinted, his blue-gray eyes tiny behind his glasses.

"Nothing," I said. That had to have been the third time that happened. Maybe more. On the way to church. As he was making pancakes. I had done this before: stared dumbly at him, full of things to say.

He looked back out at the road, over the miles and miles of flatness ahead. We had driven far beyond the rain, into dryer, smoldering heat. For hours, we rode over the heat mirages, hallucinations of water over the pavement, until finally, a sign read "Next

Gas Station 125 miles" before the exit. Dad pulled over at the station, a little store with two rows of pumps in the front and several parked eighteen-wheelers in the back.

Dad handed me a five. "Go to the bathroom. Then get some us snacks." I crumpled the bill in my hand. He started pumping the gas as I went in the tiny, un­ airconditioned store.

After getting the key to the bathroom, I spent a few minutes in front of the soda case. Water dripped down the glass, obscuring the labels. The foggy windows were a great excuse to open the doors and stand in the blast of cool air. I picked a grape soda for 42

myself and a diet soda for Dad. The bottles sweated the moment I touched them, droplets

sinking into the creases of my fingers and running down my arms. I held them in bend of

my elbow as I picked out Starburst and Atomic Fireballs, which I knew Dad wanted but

wouldn't ask for. I left the pennies in the little plastic bin and ran back to the car. Mom

had come and was done filling up. She kissed Dad on the cheek and waved good-bye

before she hopped back in her van and drove off.

"Go wait in the car," Dad said. He popped open the box of Fireballs and stuck

one in his mouth as he went to pay for both fill-ups.

I got back in the car and put his drink in his seat. All the condensation had

evaporated. Water is gone so quickly in the desert, without explanation.

Dad revved the engine and put us back on the road, refueled and more alert. I

asked him if he wanted to play Twenty Questions. He nodded stiffly, and we played until the sun started to set behind us.

"Is it an animal?" he asked.

"No."

"Vegetable?"

"Yes," I said. Dad knew I picked things relating to the ocean and the beach. In a game of hypothetical scenarios, I didn't want to be anywhere but the beach. He bit his lip a little. May I'd stumped him.

"Is it green?" he asked.

I am the sea. Hark how her sighs doth blow ... Then must my sea be moved with her sighs.

"Yes." 43

"Is it seaweed?"

"Yes," I said, laughing. He got some of my guesses in two tries. He knew me,

could see right through me.

Dad gave me the walkie-talkie to tell Mom to get off at the next exit, that we

would stop for dinner. I held the clunky thing to my face, talked as loud as I could.

Mom gave a scratchy response, saying that we'd better stop off for the night. Dad flipped

on the headlights. The sun was rapidly disappearing, and the sky went from dark pink

and orange clouds streaking the sky to a creeping darkness.

I bring consuming sorrow to thine age. "Dad?" I looked everywhere but at him.

If I couldn't see his face, his eyes begging me not to tell him, I could say what I had been

compelled to. I let my head droop as I told him. I gave him the words my teacher gave

me: Someone hurt me.

The soft drone of the road remained. Then Dad pulled off onto the shoulder,

scuffing his bumper in the little scrub-brush and filling his tires with briars. We stopped with a jolt, a momentary leap out of my seat. The radio was still humming static in the

background, and the walkie-talkie's low battery signal beeped intermittently as Dad

stared at me.

I didn't return his gaze but watched dirt hop up from the floorboards as I dragged my feet across the carpet.

"When?" he asked. His voice seemed to shake the air with its angry, trembling force. He shut the car off so his voice rang clearer.

"I don't know," I muttered.

"You don't?" 44

"No." I sniffled and realized I had already been crying.

"When?" he asked again.

On hour's storm will drown the fragrant meads: What will whole months oftears

thy father's eyes? Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee. 0 could our mourning

ease thy misery! Then I broke. I told him everything I knew how. I cried on his shirt,

leaning awkwardly over the gear shift. I cried until the sun set, until Dad revved up the

engine and drove too fast to that night's resting place. And then I cried into my own

hands, pouring tears into the dusty creases of my palms. I couldn't see if Dad's cheeks

were wet too.

A week later, we caught up with my brother on the other side of the country. He

was visiting with our family while Mom, Dad, and I dragged our baggage through the

desert. Night after night, I slept on sleeper sofas and cots at the foot of Mom and Dad's

creaky full-sized beds. Our nights were full of mismatched sheets and scratchy

comforters. But Austin had stayed put, sleeping in one guest room with one nightstand

and one breakfast nook where he ate bowls of chocolate cereal, the kind Mom wouldn't

buy.

When we were all together as a family, Mom's niece Dana made beet salad and

baked chicken with homemade dinner rolls. She used real butter that melted into the split at the top. I loved Dana. She looked excited about everything I said, interesting or not.

"Ya'll are so quiet," Dana said. I had picked through the beet salad for the raisins, and Mom ate slowly, chewing much longer than necessary. "Guess you did just come all the way 'cross country though." 45

Mom smiled as she chewed. Dad took another chicken breast from the dish in the center. Dana's kids kicked each other under the table, and her husband took them aside to give them a talking to.

"But seriously," Dana asked as she passed the basket of rolls, "aren't ya'll excited about moving closer to home?'' She looked over at me, her light eyes wide and smiling.

"You'll get to see us, get to go see Memaw and Papaw. Are you excited about moving?"

She asked me, resting her hand on my shoulder.

Shall I speak for thee? Shall I say 'tis so? 0 that I knew they heart, and knew the beast, that I might rail at him to easy my mind I stared back into her eyes, the same clear blue as Mom's. She blinked, waiting. She really wanted to hear what I had to say.

"Yes," I said finally. I went back to my plate, picking at the beets that bled all over the blue and white china.

At Dana's church, I watched from the behind a car as my brother and my dad walked through the graveyard. They had left the fellowship breakfast early, and Austin trudged behind Dad as they got farther and farther out of earshot. I followed, not too close. Dad stood in between gravestones, while Austin leaned on the rusty, rod-iron gate.

Both stubbornly held their arms crossed.

Until Dad slapped Austin, hard. He reeled, catching himself on the gate. When he stood, Dad slapped him again. And yelled. And slapped. Until all he could only hit him. Until his throat burned with every accusation, every screamed charge of blame.

That he let me be raped. That he did nothing, said nothing. 46

Sirs, stop their mouths. Let them not speak to me, but let them hear what fearful

words I utter.

My brother fell on his knees. The hems of his khaki shorts darkened in the soft,

wet dirt. He shielded his face with his elbow, hiding as best he could, but Dad grabbed

his arm, jerked him up, and slapped him again.

Ruler ofthe great heavens, are you so slow to hear and see crimes?

I let this happen. I did nothing to ameliorate Dad's rage and watched as blow after blow landed on my brother's face. Stopping the beating would have been easy.

One look, one little squeak of protest would have given Dad pause enough for Austin to run away. I could have spared him the pain, the humiliation of being so emasculated and

shamed on the cusp of adolescence. I could have said enough.

I watched. The scrapes on Dad's knuckles, the dirt in my brother's fingernails, all of the grit and blood was for me. Watching Austin being punished felt right, satisfying. I didn't want to look away. I wanted to see every moment of the revenge my father executed. HELP ME. I'M IN HELL.

My grandmother sprinkled prayer rocks on her neighbor's lawn because she said

they did drugs and had nasty little children. And they weren't married. She had prayed

and prayed, until finally, Sunday morning, Grandma bought a plastic baggie full of little

dirty quartz pebbles covered in a thin film of oil. The label, gold-bordered and

professional, had a church name, a bible verse, and a set of directions. "Use this

instrument of prayer to focus your energy on that which you require The Holy Ghost to

touch."

After the cornbread and the greens and the fresh tomatoes and the chicken-fried

steak and the carrots and pound cake with homemade peach preserves, Grandma left a

sink full of dirty dishes and stepped outside, the screen door banging behind her. I watched her through the window, saw her walk to the chain-link fence and bow her head.

She opened her plastic baggie and picked a few pieces out, sprinkling them on the neighbor's side of the fence. Her lips moved quickly as she shook the last bits of grit and oil from her fingers.

Grandpa was scraping the plates into a plastic tub full of the morning's dishwater.

He must have seen her through the window over the sink, but he went on washing the dishes. "Put the butter back in the icebox," Grandpa said to me as Grandma started walking back to the house.

47 48

Grandpa asked me to help him. He didn't ask my cousins, who had already

recessed to the living room to flip through the ten measly channels. And I didn't

disappoint. I put everything back in the fridge: the ketchup, the hot sauce, the covered

leftovers. I gathered all the napkins and put them in the hamper by the back door. At

which point, Grandma had climbed the three steps to the landing.

She set the bag on the roll-top desk, shutting the cover. "Ifthey's still here in a

month," Grandma said, sitting down at the desk. She rubbed her large calf muscle,

covered by opaque hose.

"What?" I asked.

"What?" Grandma reproached.

"What if they're still here in a month, ma'am?"

"That's better," she said, still rubbing her calf. "Ain't nobody lasted that long when I put The Holy Ghost to work on 'em." Grandma fixed her hose and retreated to the bedroom, leaving Grandpa and me to finish cleaning the kitchen.

Grandpa hunched over the sink, piling up dishes waiting to be finished. I liked rinsing dishes. Spraying water until the suds slid away and the surface unslicked, but

Grandpa had set a little plastic tub in the sink, filled with murky water. I liked setting plates in the drainer but not putting them away on the shelves. Grandpa wiped his hands on his slacks instead of using a kitchen towel.

"You wanna bake somethin, kiddo?" He asked me, and his forehead relaxed a little.

I nodded.

"What kind?" Grandpa set the last dish in the drainer. 49

"Apple."

"Ain't got any apples. Out of season. Try again."

"Chocolate."

Grandpa nodded. "Get the big bowl out."

We knew the recipe by heart, but Grandpa still gave the orders. I reached under the cabinet and snuck the big bowl from underneath glass bowls stacked like nesting dolls. I set it on the table and kept walking to the pantry for the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda. Grandpa had already set to work greasing the cake pan with a paper towel slathered with shortening.

"We're out of spray," Grandpa explained. "You wanna try it?" He handed me the pan and put the paper towel over my hand. He curled my thumb over my ring and pinky fingers and guided my fmgers over the curves, into the seams of the bottom.

Grandpa tilted his head down to see over his bifocals, and he put my hand in the bucket of shortening. The thick, waxy stuff stuck to the paper and soaked through to my hands.

The grease settled between my fingers, beneath my fingernails. "Get it all, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

When I was done, Grandpa sprinkled flour in the bottom and tapped the underside until the white powder jumped, clouding the air momentarily. The chalky smell permeated for a moment, and I blinked until I teared up, removing all the grit from my eyes. He shook the pan to coat the rest of the surface, until every tiny white particle clung to a glob of shortening. Complete and inviolable. 50

"If you don't get every bit, the batter's gonna stick. And I don't like it when I spend my time on an imperfect thing." Grandpa scowled through his smile. "Makes me mean."

"Meaner."

His lips twitched. "Sharp as a tack and twice as flatheaded, kiddo," Grandpa said and set to work on the batter.

He knew exactly how the batter should look at all stages, when he should add more sugar, and how long to stir before the flour would get too tough. I watched as the eggs and milk and flour and sugar became something completely different. The transfiguration of base objects into something more. Grandpa tapped the edge of the sifter and cocoa powder, like the softest silt in the river, drifted over the yellow batter.

"Get another half-cup of sugar," Grandpa said. I reached across the table and picked up the cup. "Half."

Grandpa stirred everything with a wooden spoon, and I peaked over the edge of the bowl as the sugar, chocolate, and cake batter swirled together into a silken mountain, like the cartoon ice-cream swirls. He and I held the bowl over the pan, and wave after wave folded over on each other until Grandpa smoothed them out with a spoon. A spoon he gave me to lick as he eased the cake into the oven.

"I'm gonna go tell those knuckleheads to go outside," Grandpa said.

Grandpa didn't yell, although he said he did when he was younger, and his demand that my cousins go outside prevented them from getting in his way and getting him angry. Doctors told him to reduce his stress, to count to ten. I didn't hear grandpa from my spot at the kitchen table, but the front door slammed. My cousins ran under the 51

window as I sat, licking the rest of the batter off the spoon. The sugar had gotten in between the fibers of the wood, and I let my tongue absorb every last bit before I tossed the spoon, along with the bowl and measuring cups, in the dishwater.

I had almost finished washing dishes when Grandpa came back into the kitchen.

He took my place at the rinsing sink and shook off the soap suds before dropping the dishes into the tub. I looked out the window, over to the yard where Grandma's prayer rocks lay scattered in the dirt. Their house and everything around it looked the same.

Amidst the tall, weedy grass, a dingy blue plastic wagon sat in a bald patch of dirt. The pecan tree hung over the rusty refrigerator on the curb, and the acres of back yard disappeared into a dense kudzu-consumed wood. Dirt caked on the side of the off-white aluminum siding, and the wood-framed screen door was warped and never shut all the way.

"Do you want the neighbors to move?" I asked. The wind picked up, and the trash next door fluttered in the breeze.

Grandpa didn't look up. "Not up to me anymore." He set the mixing bowl in the dish drainer and wiped his hands on the pockets of his pants. He turned on the stovetop, heating up the remaining coffee from breakfast and setting two cups and saucers on the counter.

I looked through the glass oven door, spotted with thick, brown grease. The cake had barely risen, and Grandpa shut the light off. "Don't do no good to look." The coffee bubbled in the pot, churning into the domed lid.

He stirred in two tablespoons of sugar and a few dribbles of cream for me and filled his to the brim. We sat at the clean kitchen table, and I admired the order around • 52

us. How the closed cabinets hid the stacks of mismatched dishes. The flour, sugar, tub

of shortening, and all the leftovers were in their right place. I sipped. Grandpa had made

mine just right. Warm, sweet, and smooth.

At that moment, one of my cousins ran up the back steps, through the kitchen, and

into the living room. Each of his steps echoed, shaking the hollow floor and rattling our

coffee cups. Grandpa breathed out sharply and put down his cup. He walked slowly out

the front door, and I followed as soon as I heard the automatic slam. Grandpa came up

behind my cousin and grabbed his ear.

I could tell he said something softly into the ear he gripped, but my cousin yelled.

After a moment, Grandpa shook him, and he quieted. I never heard his voice. When he

let go, my cousin sank to the ground, sitting Indian style with his arms crossed. Grandpa

strode back to the house, leaving him sitting in the middle of the yard.

The cake had collapsed, Grandpa discovered. My cousin bounded through the house and shook the foundation at exactly the right time to make this happen, when the expansion of the air pockets would cave in at the slightest breath. We stared at the sunken coffee-colored mass, and the oven's heat rippled over my face. Grandpa touched the edges, testing their resiliency. The center was gooey but not underdone. Like someone had chewed a piece and spit it back on top.

I learned that cakes are delicate, that every moment in the oven is perilous, fraught with things that could go wrong. The formation of the perfect symmetries, the lattice work of air pockets and tiny threads, is formed intentionally by one who knows the recipes, the tried and true formula. We made a trifle out of the salvageable parts, topped the cake pieces with vanilla pudding, and called it a day. 53

After putting the last touch on that night's desert (one Maraschino cherry on top

of a glob of pudding) Grandpa left to find Grandma, and I sat at the roll top desk and

searched around for a piece of paper to draw on. Instead I came upon the package of

prayer rocks. I ran my fingers along the little baggie, and oil and tiny pieces of grit coated my skin. The jagged edges of the rocks pock-marked the plastic let the grease drip through, and I had been anointed accidentally.

Once I realized what I'd done, that I'd inadvertently made myself the subject of

Grandma's prayers for the Holy Spirit's intercession, I ran to the sink to get it off. I washed my hands, but even after a couple scrubbings, my hands were still slick. An unseen film remained.

That night at church, I slipped out of Bible study to go to the bathroom. I wandered down the hall, scraping my fingernails along the faux wood paneling. At this hour, I made the only noise, clicking Mary Janes, swishing cotton dress. I found my way to the church office and looked through the window into the darkened room. With the shades drawn, only a little gray evening light fell on the large bookshelf full of pamphlets and King James Bibles. Opposite the shelf sat a table with all the other prayer paraphernalia: oil imbued with the Holy Ghost for anointing ailing body parts during prayer, sanctified water for sprinkling on household objects, crosses, and prayer rocks, same gold label, each with a different verse. I tested the door, to see if it was unlocked.

The hinges creaked, unoiled, and I opened it enough to slip through. Every sound I made reverberated in the unnerving quiet. 54

I picked up a vial of the sanctified water, and the label warned that the water was

only as effective as the strength of the user's prayers. I squeezed the plastic bottle, shook

the contents, but saw nothing floating inside, nothing special about the color or substance.

I set the vial down, taking care not to make any more noise, and turned to the bookshelf.

On the middle shelf were rows and rows of little comic books and folded sheets of

cardstock, all with titles like "Exorcism," "The Wages of Sin," and "God-Fearing."

I picked up "The Wages of Sin" a little comic book withnewsprint-paper. The

gray ink smeared all over my hands, where the skin still felt oily from before. I opened

the book up to the middle, and the double-page spread depicted the Lake of Fire. In the

swirling flames, drawings of people interrupted the smooth circular pattern of the fire.

"Help me," one said. "I'm in Hell."

I turned the page, and the contorted face of a man, skin melting from his face and revealing the skull underneath. A speech-bubble jutted out beside his drooping mouth.

"I doubted the Holy Spirit. I doubted the power of Christ. Now I will forever burn in hell. Don't make the same mistake I did!"

I heard the voices screaming, the fires crackling, and the hot breeze of Hell rustling in my ear. I was no longer in a church office on a balmy summer evening. The sweat gathering at the nape of my neck came from burning brimstone, blazing lakes.

Whistling gales and screaming picked up, and the taste of smoke crept into my mouth, ash into my eyes. I shut the comic book, fluttering the pages together as I put it back in its place, and the noise stopped. A faint ringing in my ears remained.

I didn't bother sneaking out. I scrambled out of the office, through the hallway back to my Bible study class, where I made it in time for prayer requests. The class sat in 55

a semi-circle. Heads bowed. Eyes closed. I sat next to my cousin and let my hair fall around my face so the teacher wouldn't see I still had my eyes open.

"Does anyone have a problem?" the teacher asked.

My cousin Jenifer raised her hand, her head still bowed. "My ankle got hurt last week, and now my shoes make a blister. It hurts real bad."

Grandma and the teacher were the same age, wore the same floral-printed dresses, and thick stockings. The teacher's hair, though, was white instead of dark silver, and she wore short glasses on a gold chain. She opened her eyes long enough to walk over to my cousin. She stood between my cousin and I, and she brushed my arm as she reached into her pocket for a glass vial of anointing oil.

Out of the comer of my eye, I saw the teacher reach under the table and daub oil on her ankle. I waited for my cousin's wound to heal, in an instant, the way Jesus drove out the demonic Legion into a herd of pigs, but the redness, newly sheened, persisted even through the teacher's ministrations.

"Lord, Holy Ghost, Almighty God. Come into this girl's ailing foot, so that she may more easily walk and minister and stand in service to You. Lord, compel Your Holy presence on this earth, and save us, wretched though we are. I ask in Jesus' precious name," the teacher paused. I waited for the brush of the Holy Ghost's presence, the ruffle of God's breath on my neck. Anything. "Amen."

My cousins and I were dismissed to the sanctuary for evening service, and Jenifer dabbed her finger on her gleaming skin, rubbing the anointment between her fingers. She was the cousin who talked about demon possession in hushed tones before we went to sleep, the cousin who always wanted to be prayed for and protected from evil. I wanted 56

to ask to be anointed too, but I didn't think I was important enough. Jenifer knew everything that was wrong with her and reveled in the attention her easy confession of hardship brought her.

I found Grandpa sitting in a pew by himself and sat beside him while the rest of my cousins crowded around Grandma in front. She stood in front of the altar, chatting with our Bible study teacher. Grandpa read silently from The New Testament. I watched him turn the page out of the comer of my eye but didn't want to disturb his reading.

Instead, I watched as women with canes, men with overhanging guts, and children filed in through the double doors. By now, the light through the short windows came from a streetlamp, and the high vaulted ceiling cast shadows that seemed to consume the room.

Only the lights near the doors were on, giving the great room a strange, ominous ambience. No bright, sunny overheads. Nothing shedding light from above.

When the preacher climbed the short stairs to the dais, the crowd dispersed.

Grandma and my cousins sat at the opposite end of my and Grandpa's pew. Families filed into separate pews, and the few single men, widowers mostly, sat at the other end. In the front sat the most elderly. A woman whose head trembled involuntarily. A man so fragile, his skin looked as if it had been sanded right to be bone. The cracked, flakey skin threatened to break, revealing a brittle, porous bone underneath. I touched my own arm, the plump, bouncy skin and smooth underside. I couldn't imagine the touch of that skin, that grotesque delicacy.

The congregation didn't sing at night. Grandma brought us to hear the Word and nothing else. The preacher set his Bible on the pulpit, flattening the binding with the heel of his hand. He nodded to a deacon on his left, signaling him to shut the doors. While he 57

waited, the preacher rolled up his sleeves over his pudgy arms. The tight cotton dug into his soft skin.

"Let us pray," the preacher said, gently but loud enough to reach the back. The congregation bowed their heads.

Again, I didn't close my eyes during prayer, but I did bow my head. I wanted to sneak a look at Grandpa, to see if he was praying too. I ran my fmgers through my hair, making sure more fell in my face, and turned my head slowly. Grandpa's eyes were closed, but he didn't bow his head. His chinjutted out slightly, he looked like he was ready to take a punch to the chin.

"In Jesus most blessed holy name, Amen."

"Amen," the congregation responded. Except Grandpa and me. The preacher pulled up his pants a little, situating them over his paunch, and walked to the other end of the stage. "The wages of sin," he began. He shook his head, as a dad shakes his head at a disappointing report card. "The wages of sin is death."

Romans 6:23. I knew that verse well. Our teacher made us write it out, recite it, and make posters depicting death and eternal life in crayon. I knew that verse, but death was a word. Only a word to draw in black marker or make bolder.

"The wages of sin don't stop at death," the preacher said, his voice rising. "The devil himself could be lurkin about!" A lady in front of me caught her breath. The sound echoed in the quiet room.

Frenzies start with a little murmur, a wisp of fear or panic. In church, the amens and loud hummed assents grew gradually loud, more frequent. Until the congregation's voice overtook the preacher's, and the preacher howled. Grandma muttered prayers to 58

herself, her head thrown back with abandon. No mussing with her tightly curled hair. No care or attention to her posture.

The preacher had stopped preaching and instead strode across the stage, seeming to shake the hollow platform. He pointed at people in the audience, "Are you a soldier in the fight against the Devil? Amen?'' He paused to hear a man give his emphatic response. "Amen!"

And back to the other end of the stage. "Do you have the will to stand against

Satan? The Deceiver of Men! Amen?'' A few of the women lifted their arms to the sky, projecting their words to the sky and letting them rain back upon them. My cousins and other kids stamped their feet on the tile beneath the pews. Clicking patent leather shoes and the dull thump of loafers percussed under the low roar of prayer.

Grandpa sat with his arms crossed, and I couldn't tell which was more foolish: tearing at the air and yelling to myself or sitting quietly amidst the chaos. Grandpa, though, was wholly unaffected. He nodded when the preacher quoted scripture or called for an "amen" but didn't stoop his head to pray or let loose his clenched fists. The preacher never pointed at him, though, the way he often pointed at me. Grandpa would not be accused.

Muttered prayers and stamping feet swelled into yelling. People stood, walked freely through the aisles, without regard for the well-ordered pews and family spaces.

The preached had become background noise, an occasional rising and falling melody in the roaring crowd. A man who I saw working at the grocery store fell to his knees, arms raised about his head, and wept in front of the altar. The preacher used him as an opportunity to draw attention back to himself. 59

"He is Lord of all! Lord of all!" He yelled. "He takes you into His hand and squeezes and wrings all the evil outta you. Until you can weep with abandon. Amen?''

"Amen!" The congregation shouted in reply. Followed by more yelling prayers in tongues. I looked over to Grandpa again, who hadn't moved, and decided I would be like him, except, I had a sense I was in the wrong by sitting still. I could have pretended, fallen back in a swoon of praise, but I knew better, even then, than to fake losing myself.

One of the women from the front row, one with hair thinning in large spots. She limped up to the stage and yelled "Jesus Christ! Savior! Heal me, Father!" She grabbed the front of her dress and tore until the first three buttons flew into the congregation. She alternated between screaming nonsense and crying. "Showna hossahnah bledto treefo!

Heal me Jesus!"

The preacher, who had been leaning on the podium, strode across the stage. He reeled back and struck her on the forehead with the heel of his hand. She screamed and fell backward onto the floor.

I slid past Grandpa's stock-stili knees, between him and the shelf of Bibles and hymnals, and sneaked out the back. Standing outside the door, the wailing and moaning sounded like the people inside were in pain and begging to be set free. The long hallway leading to the bathroom carried the echo of every shout and "Amen" and "Praise Jesus," and I walked farther and farther away from the noise, until I stood outside. The first stars had begun to peak through the clouds, and I watched as they blinked.

Grandma used so many names for the Devil. The Adversary. Lucifer. Satan.

The Fallen One. The Morning Star. I wondered if the evening stars, the benign dots 60

flashing in the distance, were the opposite of Satan or if they were another incarnation.

The cool chill on my neck told me they were the latter.

When we got home, Grandma stood on the front porch and glared at the next-door neighbor's yard, her arms crossed. The summer night started to grow dark, but the single

hanging light bulb harshed the soft gray shadows the midsummer night cast. Grandpa had heated up another pot of coffee and was hulling strawberries with his pocketknife. I

stood between the two of them, looking to her and then to him. I wanted to ask her if she thought she might see something, but that might be disrespectful. I thought about asking

Grandpa if he wanted something to happen at all, but he was engrossed, the deft movement of his fingers making quick work of a few pints of strawberries.

"What if the prayer rocks don't work?" I asked.

Grandma turned to look at me. She was far taller than I was, and her downward gaze made me feel small.

"Will you try again?"

The look on her face, confusion tinged with anger, caught me by surprise. Even as a kid, I still knew the concept of Plan 8, making allowances for failure, despite not wanting to. But the prospect of disappointment, of her requests not being answered, didn't occur to her. She rattled off prayer after prayer that had been answered in God's time, she said, but the wished-for result had come through. The garden produced fat tomatoes and bug-free greens. Grandma's part-time job at a grocery store gave her more hours. Her brother's dementia had slowed in progression, and his general health had 61

improved. So how could I doubt God's time, she seemed to ask with her long, wordless

stare.

Grandma sat on the rocker beside Grandpa and told me to go play with my

cousins, who were all running up a big hill and rolling back down again. I left Grandma

and Grandpa, sitting and rocking, but didn't join my cousins. I went back behind the

shed, looking back at the house next door. The lightning bugs had started to come out,

flashing yellow in front of the dingy aluminum siding.

As I watched the movement inside the house and heard the slam of the back

screen door, I believed that they would be gone in a month, but so would I. I'd go back

home, to a new house my parents were buying. Grandma got rid of us both with one

prayer. Despite spending months building my faith, reading The Revelations before bed, taking me to church, I would be cast out and never return to the true church. The church the spirit moved. The church that howled and tremored.

When I got home, for months, I had nightmares about Hell. I dreamt of The Beast and The False Prophet, but the most persistent of the dreams was the vision of Hell. In these dreams, the comic book with people swimming in the Lake of Fire, speech bubbles jutting out from their mouths, came to life. Howling. Roaring. Other dreams were of everyday things, cleaning my room, going to school, going to the grocery store, but the

Devil would be hiding in the corner or would put his scaly hand on my shoulder. He would show me that vision ofHell again, the clawing screaming mass of people begging me to be saved. The dreams were so loud, and I woke up screaming but paralyzed. 62

My new room had shadowy comers, little pockets untouched by the porch light outside my window. Or the nightlight. Or the light of the office at one and two in the morning. The clothes in my closet moved subtly with the air conditioner. The indistinct shades of gray bled together, and my whole room moved in the quiet of night. I prayed and prayed, but the dark spots never went away. Shutting my eyes tightly only heightened the movement in the air. I felt every breath of the demons, every motion of a passing spirit.

This nightly dance of waking to the presence of demons continued long after I'd left Grandma's church. After a few years, getting into my teens, I still dreamed of the

Devil and Hell, even as I tried to pray my way to sanctification. I asked to rededicate my life to God, in my parents less ecstatic church, no less than five times. I was baptized twice, and after each time, I emerged with water up my nose and one peaceful night of sleep.

My parents' church had spotlights hanging from the rafters, a section of pews in the balcony taken over by sound equipment, and a full and reserved crowd. Everything was light and sound, friendly and bright. The preacher hummed through his sermon rather than yell. This was a classroom, another place I sat and listened without needing to respond. The cross above the baptismal pit was lit up, yellow and vivid white. Huge banners hung from the ceiling, below the stained glass. "He is risen." "Lamb of God."

Both times I was baptized, the preacher offered me to the church, asking if they would accept me into their family. I stood knee deep in the carefully chlorinated water, cold and still. The congregation uttered their assent, like a ripple through a calm pond.

"I baptize you in the name of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost," he said, 63

holding my head in his hand. He coached me to lean back into him, wiggling his fingers on the nape of my neck. "We are buried in his likeness and raised to walk in the newness of life."

Baptisms were spread out so that each person had their moment to be recognized, their faith celebrated. My baptisms and rededications weren't faith; these were attempts to quiet the pages of comic books, to save myself from Hell. But I never got rid of the feeling that I had been prayed upon, that the Holy Ghost now worked against me, and I would never be moved again. A CLEARING IN AN EXPANSE

At nine, I kissed my best friend. We weren't like the other girls in our class, the kind who braided each others' hair and puckered our lips for a slathering of pink, fruity lip gloss. Instead, she looked for excuses to tap me on the shoulder incessantly, tag me too hard, and grab my hand. She kept her hair in a shaggy, short cut that I envied, and sometimes, she pulled my long, wild ponytail. At daycare, we stayed the latest, until dusk or later, until her dad showed up sighing, deflated or my mom scurried inside the empty yard, flustered and apologetic.

My best friend and I stole away, behind the swings in the underbrush of our semi­ wooded suburb. We were older than all the other kids and needed to be alone together, to talk about older things. The littler kids had abandoned their tea sets, their flattened innertubes, and Dixie cups to gather mold and mildew in the tangle of briars, and my best friend and I ran past briars and stepped on the plastic toys, cracking beneath our tennis shoes. Until finally, we chased each other to a secluded spot no seven-year-old or supervisory adult could find.

Breathing heavily, we sat on a fallen tree, smiling at each other and our new­ found hiding spot. The heat, sticky even in the shade, waved between our bodies.

Lightning bugs flicked on and off, and the drone of crickets buzzed over my gasps for breath. Our lips touched inexplicably, briefly, and our eyes remained wide open. The fleeting touch fell upon me as easily as the decent from a slide, no pause or hesitation.

64 65

We were supposed to kiss, to touch, and to do so in secret. My mind glowed, rosy as sunset, and when I went home that night, I felt only absence on my bare lips.

The next day, counselors rounded us all up for a day-trip. We sat together but didn't have thumb wars. Or play slap-hand. We sat in the back, away from the other little kids. An empty seat between us gave her no excuse to bump her knees against mine and certainly no reason for me to rest my arm against hers. Instead, she asked me if I wanted to know what it felt like to pass out. I told her I didn't know what she meant.

"It's like going to sleep, except a minute is like a whole night. I can show you how to do it." She leaned back in the seat with her arms ready and twitching to prop herselfback up.

When I said okay, when I said she could do anything she wanted to me, she checked up front to see if the counselor was watching and then slipped her two fingers in the hollow of my neck, where the collarbones and trachea meet. She pushed me against the window, giggling the way the girly girls did. I tried to take a breath, to cough. The sensation wasn't quite drowning, wasn't quite choking, more like my throat empty of anything inside. Her steady pressure on my neck made me squirm, and her fingernails dug into my skin with every beat of my pulse.

Before I realized, I had hit her, flailing to get her off of me. I tried to kick but she'd pinned my legs under hers. When she'd finally given up and let go, I planted my knees firmly on her thighs, so that she lay sprawled across the back seat. I leaned my full weight into my hand across her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut, begging wordlessly "Stop. Please." I held her in my hand, her mouth opened in a desperate scream. 66

We had attracted an audience, other kids who watched the two of us struggle underneath one another but not the adults in the drivers' seat. Their heads popped over the seat, clustered cheek-to-cheek. I eased up on her a little, her eyes opening slowly.

We looked at each other like we had after we first kissed: confused but ready to do it all again. After a moment, we sat up, both sitting in the middle seat, and when their eyes were off of us, she let her hand fall against mine.

I only wanted my best friends, the girls with whom I played elaborate games of house. The girls with whom I saw a grown-up future that didn't exist anywhere I saw. I wished we could stay forever in that make-believe world that we had created for our purposes.

But I grew up in Sunday school, in partitioned rec rooms furnished with clusters of metal folding chairs and dying house plants in every corner. My parents dropped me off early and picked me up late, and I sat quietly before class reading our texts: contemporary biblical dramatizations, testimonials, and, of course, the Bible. One morning, I read a story about a girl who said she was very sick because of her sinful attraction to other women. She went on for pages about the power of prayer, but I read the paragraph with the words "I had a girlfriend for two years" over and over. A cold grip crept up my neck as she described the emptiness she felt with this girlfriend of two years. Like realizing your lavish feast is poisoned on your last bite.

A boy slumped in the chair beside me, peeking over at my magazine and trying to look uninterested. "Why're you reading that?" 67

"I don't know," I said. "It was open to this page." I threw it down on the table and leaned back in my chair. A couple of other kids from our class loitered around the partition, chatting.

The boy leaned over, in case the girls waiting outside came in. "If I could get away with it, I'd shoot them all. Put 'em out of their misery." He spoke the same way he might've to a girlfriend: low, throaty, letting every breath warm my neck. My heart thumped against my throat, and after one slow exhale ruffling my kiss-curls, he sat back in his chair.

"Good," I said, not really knowing what I meant. I crossed my arms, preventing myself against picking up the magazine, rereading the story again and again. He looked at me crooked, head tilted and vaguely grinning.

We opened our Bibles as the rest ofthe class started to trickle in, and I watched the boy as he searched the topical index. I opened my Bible to the middle, the psalms, and read less drastic verses about blessed people, God's people. Our Sunday school teacher arrived a little late with a donut wrapped in a napkin and a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He licked chocolate frosting off his fingers before opening his lesson book and

Bible. The teacher thumbed through the tissue-paper pages, with sticky fingers, and talked about the things we ought not do.

I listened to every word, while the boy, leaned over his handout and doodled spirals and circles. A sketch of a woman's body with disproportionately large breasts and no head. He turned the paper so only I could see it, and I looked too long then away too quickly. The boy smirked and shaded the lines heavier, making her pop off the page. He ignored the teacher when he asked questions to the class but answered the right way 68

when asked directly. His inclusion in the conversation was as effortless as his departure into his own little world.

That evening, the church held a fellowship dinner. Our parents and others were eating dinner in the fellowship hall, spooning casseroles onto little plates. The boy's parents sat next to the preacher and his wife in a snaking line of chairs, and I saw the boy get up for another soda and leave, even though he shouldn't have. After no one questioned his absence, I slipped out back. I saw him on a swing, pumping his legs as hard as he could to reach higher into the sky. His scrawny legs propelled him, and he bit his lip, focused.

When he saw me open the gate and sit on the swing beside him, he slowed, letting his legs drag the ground. Then, he jumped and lost his footing in the overgrown grass, landing against the fence. He leaned against the chain-link for a moment, righting his balance and kicking the dirt.

The boy scowled. I didn't laugh. The sun was setting, and the sky blazed orange and pink over the treetops. Shadows obscured our faces from one another, but the playground was still lit enough to be outside.

"Man," the boy said, dusting off his khakis. "Fucking shit." He shook his head, like he was clearing water from his ears.

I relaxed, swung back and forth a little as he talked about his girlfriend, a girl I knew. She had corkscrew curly hair and a nosering. She listened to The Smashing

Pumpkins and wore ripped jeans.

"Of course, she's not saved," he said finally. He looked in my direction, but I couldn't see his eyes. 69

"I know."

"Don't you care?''

We watched the sky turn a deep lilac, and I noticed the crickets' buzzed overwhelmed all other distant noise.

"You want to see something?"

"What?"

He pulled me down a path, well-worn and free of underbrush. We stopped, and I stood next to a thin pine while he stood in pile of ash that used to be a bonfire. Little stumps of wood formed a circle around the powdery mound.

"You want to see it?''

"See what?" I tried to make out his shape against the trees, and in the light of dusk, discerning him from the shifting leafy shadows proved difficult.

"You know."

I didn't.

He unzipped his pants and walked in my direction. He was close enough so that I felt his breath on my neck again.

"It's getting dark," I said, turning my face away.

"We still have time," he said. He took my hand and guided it down his pants.

Under the layers of cloth, his undershirt tucked into his boxers, the wide pockets with his keys and loose change, I felt the heat of his body. His clammy skin and coarse hair. I withdrew my hand the same way I did from spiders.

"What are you doing?" I put some distance between us, backing up to the path. 70

I could barely make out his shoulders shrug up but saw that he hadn't removed his hand from his pants.

"We should go back," I said.

His hand started to move back and forth, and I turned my back to him. "Don't," he called after me.

"I'm going back."

"Wait," he said but didn't walk forward.

I walked into the glow of the porch lights, the little beacon drawing me to evening services. I didn't hear his clumsy footsteps behind me. The organ prelude bellowed into the hallway, and instead of going inside, I sat behind the choir loft. I could still see the preacher, the pianist, and most of the congregation. The crowd had thinned since the morning.

After the prayers and hymns, I saw the back door open, and the boy slipped into a pew out of my sight. The boy knew the way back, and he sat, listening or not, in a place he belonged. I found myself unable to do the same. KITCHEN

My Memaw, barely taller than me, called me an ever-growing girl, "and an ever­ growing girl needs to eat good," she would say, marking my height next to hers on the masking tape on the doorjamb. She tucked a towel into the waistband of her navy slacks and told me to get a measuring cup. "One cup." She looked in the cabinet by the fridge for a bright red coffee can with a piece of masking tape over the manufactured lettering.

"Black-Eyed Peas." In her perfectly measured hand.

Five foot even, Memaw kicked a beige plastic stepstool all around the u-shaped kitchen. When she squinted to read labels, her eyes crinkled in the comers, making the raised mole on her cheekbone draw closer up her face, probably into her peripheral vision. Without really looking, she reached in the back of the cabinet under all the other pots and pans for her cast iron Dutch oven. She set it on the stovetop and kicked the plastic stool back over to the sink. The plastic screeched against the plastic floor, the brief cry like an otter. She set me on the stool and washed her hands and mine, rubbing soap between my knuckles. The wrinkled pads of her fingers reached into the smooth youth of my hands. When I tried to rinse the suds off, she kept scrubbing at the tips of my fingers.

She picked up a dried paper towel draped over the dishdrain. I wiped my hands and before I could toss it in the trash, she picked it up, smoothed it back into a rectangle,

71 72

rehanging it to dry over the wire-frame rack. Memaw cared about every scrap of paper, every little thing that could be utilized to clean, to cook, to be re-used and repurposed.

The silver metallic measuring cup plunged into the multitude of dried black-eyed peas, hitting the bottom of the old coffee can with a ringing thud. Disturbing the settled order oftheir compartmental existence. Rattling the percussive legumes in a shimmy­ shake rhythm, improvised maracas in the kitchen. Memaw's little gnarled hand clasped the measuring cup in her right hand, and guided my left hand over the pot.

Her chilly, dishpan hands led my hand to catch cascading beans. The fall of peas sounded like the swish of sequins on my dress-up clothes. The drop of water from sprinklers. The swing of many tiny braids.

"Catch the ones that don't look right. The squished ones. The ones that's too dark." She tilted the cup back, slowing the flow. I spread my fingers to open the gates, let the worthy ones through. I brought my fingers back together to snag an offender, but I pulled out a good one and let two bad ones go through. We went through a whole cup that way, and Memaw shooed me out of the way. Four more cups to fill the pot.

Each pea slipped through her finger, and she plucked out the bad ones, the too dark, the too hollow, the ones she just didn't like. She threw the bad ones in a plastic tub of left-over dishwater.

"You fill it up with water after you get all the beans in there." I stepped up to the stool again and stared at the black pot as she turns on the tap. White frothy bubbles formed and dissolved around the beans, and the clearer still water looked black against the iron.

"Now what?" 73

"Leave it alone. I'll cook' em at two." She lifted the Dutch oven by the side handles, heaving it from the sink to the counter and from the counter to the stove top.

"Look in the icebox for the grease tub." Memaw wiped her hands on the towel tucked in her waistband.

I walked to the other side of the kitchen and opened the fridge acrack so I didn't hit her with the door. Behind the grape juice and the buttermilk, a yellow plastic container with masking tape over the brand name. "Grease Tub." The edges curled up and frayed at the ends. I handed it to Memaw and shut the door quickly. Tempting as the coolness was in the July heat, lingering in front of the fridge or the freezer meant a quick pop on the butt.

"Can you pick it up?" Memaw asked, pointing at the large cast iron skillet on the stove top.

I kicked the stepstool to the stove and loomed over the rim of the pan. The bottom was covered with bacon fat from this morning's breakfast, crumbs ofbiscuits and the crispy, thin sheets of scrambled eggs floating through the oil. The grease was heavy with smells and tastes caught in its depths. Even still, the saturated oil was slippery, runny, too quick to touch. "I think so."

"Pour it in the tub," she said, popping the top off.

I grabbed the handle, its cool weight against my palms. The bottom scraped the heating element on the stovetop as I tried to lift, but I couldn't move the pot. My arms tensed, straining without effect, and in the moment of being crushed by an insurmountable weight, I felt light, wispy. I couldn't even struggle. 74

Memaw put her hand on my back to right my balance, and the treble clink of the pot back to its place on the stove prompted me to step off the stool and get out of the way.

I was glad to be shooed again. The kitchen air was heavy with cooking no vent fan could remove. The thick smell of butter, the richness and the nauseating fullness, had thoroughly leeched into the cabinets. The kitchen smelled like a full day of cooking coming home from vacation. The oven and the fridge doors couldn't be open at the same time, lest you be trapped in the two square foot space in front of the sink. The window was so small, Memaw made the curtains from half a pillow case.

Memaw sent me out to the garden with the yellow plastic tub of used dishwater.

"Pour it on the tematers. Ifthey's enough, water that wimpy-lookin cornstalk."

I opened the screen door, balancing the bucket in my arm. I sloshed a little water on the front steps as I came downstairs. The air outside was cooler in the shade of the pecan trees than in the kitchen. I walked slowly, careful not to spill any more.

After a few minutes staring at the row of tomatoes, water dribbled over the sides of the bucket and splashed on the newspaper lining the roots of each. Only a little bit left for the com. I set the tub down and ran my hands over each yellowing, parched husks.

All of them needed more. The haze of mid-afternoon forced my hand, and I dumped everything I had on the closest stalk, wiping out the last crumbs circling the bottom. The choice of which to dote on came to nothing more than chance, the one I was ready to love.

I twisted the yellowing, drooping leaf around my fingers. "Grow," I said, as bits of the leaf crumbled and fell to the ground. "Grow." STRETCH MARKS

My body expanded into the vast landscape of woman too fast, and my skin stretched and tore holding me together. I'm still ridged with collapsed purplish silver scars. Spiderwebbing up the fleshy underside of my arms, stretching across a now bony, protruding hip. I still have the reminder that the soft vulnerable parts of my skin were once parts fleshed out like those women Rubenesque paintings, with unashamed full bellies and wide hips. But now, I'm a made thing, half of what I was.

75 SUNKEN

My parents took me to the Labrea Tar Pits a lot when we lived near LA. Other families went to the beach or drove out to the Tehachapis, but we went to the tar pit, the zoo, the museum. A fun trip to the beach doesn't really stay with me, as much as I'd liked to recall the feeling of water and silt slipping through my toes. But Labrea had a way of staying in my thoughts: the paintings of terrified wooly mammoths in the visitor's lobby, the bones at the edge of the water. I knew the place from the air, the way a park smells after a long barbeque, gas and charred wood overpowering the wet smell of moss and dirt. The LA air tasted of smog and pollen, gritty on my tongue, and I stood on a solid wood platform over the bubbling soup of gas and tar. I tossed a handful of grass over the top. At first the debris floated, like it would in any other pond, but then, the blades stood up on the water and sank as they were sucked below the surface. I couldn't tell how many pieces of grass I threw in the water; they all joined together and sank at the same rate.

I felt real danger at La Brea, a place where once things were set in motion, they only sunk farther and farther away from their source. The tar, deceptively, lured animals, humans, and insects and hungrily devoured them all. And one creature could not sate the bubbling, churning pond. Not now. Not through the eons and eons the tar has existed.

The shores drew people to the water, to fall prey, to be set in motion without hope of return.

76 77

When I was nine or ten, my family moved from our two bedroom apartment, with

miniature washer drier combo and an ironing board that blocked off the kitchen, to a

house with a step down into the living room. With the new house came new

arrangements, a new school, more hours at work for Mom and Dad, and after-school

daycare for me. Dad dropped me off in the morning at six-thirty before any of the

counselors arrived. We sat in the empty parking lot, listening to the radio. Mom picked

me up, usually the last to arrive around ten til seven.

The bakery next door to my daycare sold day-old bread, bags of stale donuts, and

fruit sodas. On days when we were allowed to play outside on the rubbermatted

playground, I swore I smelled the warm yeast over the garbage dumps lining the alley. I

wanted to feel the hardened sugar scrape the roof of my mouth as I bit into a donut. That

soreness lasted all day, and after eating five or six or seven of the mini-donuts, the frosted

kind in the bag, my whole mouth throbbed. And I still wanted more.

Mom took me to the bakery a few times, on federal holidays or after doctor's

appointments. The Korean couple sold commercially manufactured bread alongside a

couple loaves of homemade French bread. Their day-old selection sat in a basket beside

the soda cooler. We bought a loaf of stale bread to feed to the ducks and enormous catfish

at the park. She bought a diet soda to fill up her wide-mouthed plastic cup and shook her

head no when I reached for the drink case door, but she caved and bought me a grape

soda and a bag of donuts.

I threw my backpack in the trunk of Mom's SUV and took my snack up to the front. I ripped the bag open, spilling a few crumbs on the floorboards. Mom started the 78

car, and while the engine idled, she took her sunglasses from on top of her head and

checked her hair in the rearview mirror.

I was already on my second donut. Or maybe the third. I barely chewed, four or

five quick mashes and then down the hatch, washed down with a little of my soda. The

carbonation burned my mouth, and I thought the sensation cleansed me, searing all the

bad things from my body.

"Did you finish all your homework?" Mom asked.

"Yes," I said, "I only had spelling and math." I put another donut in my mouth.

Mom looked over at me, and I saw what she saw in her sunglasses: a girl double-

fisting mini-donuts, a half-empty bottle of grape soda between her pudgy thighs. ''No

reading?"

"I finished at recess."

She turned her attention back to the road, making a left into the park entrance. I

put the bag in the back seat and finished the rest of my soda. When we'd parked, I

picked up the smiley face plastic bag with our stale bread. That day was cool, autumn or

early spring, and the sun glared off the pond.

Mom liked feeding the fish more than the ducks and pushy swans. A small

overhang stood over the water's edge, part of the museum's courtyard, and we stood at

the guardrail balling up pieces of white bread. I loved the feeling of the bread in my hand, squishing it into a ball and then flattening out the curves to make it a square. I tore

away the crusts so I could manipulate the soft insides. I tossed the crust over the railing, and Mom watched intently for the big fish to break the murky surface. 79

A few smaller fish nipped at the crust and the pieces Mom threw out, but I had

what the big fish wanted. I tossed the ball of bread into the center of the cluster, and it

sank slowly, little fish taking off the rapidly dissolving edges. But they cleared off

rapidly as a wide mouth took in the bread and all the surrounding water. Mom laughed, a

loud joyous laugh I couldn't help smiling at. She threw another piece at the big fish, and

another and another. His feelers skimmed the surface, and we watched the barest hint of

its back glint in the sun.

The food attracted more fish, even bigger fish. The size of my arm. The size of

my leg. The eyes of the big catfish, wide and unblinking in the cloudy brown water,

watched the surface impatiently as Mom and I reached deeper into the bag for the last

few slices. The fish all floated, the steady motion of their tails keeping them as close to

the surface as possible. When we tossed our crumbs over the edge, three mouths opened

wide and dove upon the little crust of bread. All three swam back immediately. I threw

the whole end piece to them, and the fish fought, thrashing against one another. Their

massive bodies whipped sharply at the others' flexy torso. Their impatient eyes glared,

and the little minnows came back to the surface, taking the crumbs that dissolved in the

big fish's fight.

Mom and I laughed again, and she handed me the bag to dump the rest of the

crumbs into the pond. Little mouths sucked in the last of the day-old bread, and big

soulful eyes pleaded for another. One more.

I stole food in high school. In the crowd, when no one was looking, I slipped a whole chicken sandwich wrapped in oil-blotted wax paper into my jacket pocket. I paid 80

for my fries and my milk, with two sandwiches and a cookie in my pockets. Not even the

other students in line noticed. Being the fat girl, the fat girl who wore combat boots, the

fat girl who wore baggy jeans and trench coats, no one wanted to look at me.

I gave my food away, to the small circle of friends I had. The pot-smokers, the

death metal kids, the Goths. I tossed the sandwiches in the middle of the table and ate the

cookie in two big bites. A junior whose name I didn't know burst out into song.

"Did I ever tell you you're my hero?" She sang loudly, her arms raised up, in

mock transcendent joy. She wore a silver tank top and didn't bother to shave that

morning, but no one mentioned that fact to her. She was too pretty, too much like a doll

for a small imperfection like that to be noticed.

"Hey, did you get something today?" another junior at the table asked.

"No. That's like the millionth time you've asked." The two continued to argue,

both picking up a sandwich. The junior girl dipped hers in a puddle of creamed com and

ketchup.

I ate quickly, scarfing the second cookie. Chrystal sat beside me, folding pieces

of notebook paper into complicated triangles. She didn't have any food but spent lunch

doodling on several notes she planned to pass during class or in the hallways.

"You have such small handwriting," I said as I watched her write "From:

Chrystal" on the outside of her intricately folded paper.

She smiled awkwardly, trying not to show her crooked teeth. Everything about

Chrystal was small and spare. Her hands, her thin hair, her stature, her voice.

"It's pretty," I said. "Your handwriting. Very neat." I was almost done with my fries and tried to keep them away from her paper. 81

"Thanks," Chrystal said softly.

"Hey, does anybody got anything?" the junior girl yelled out.

Chrystal shook her head and pulled out another sheet of notebook paper. She drew an aquarium, with little rocks and a man in a diving suit, little jets of bubbles floating up to the surface. She started writing a note inside the drawing, leaving space in between sentences for the occasional fish to swim through the page.

"How'd you think that up?" I asked. "I'm not reading or anything. Your drawings are neat."

She shrugged. "I don't know. I put my pen to the paper and start going."

I wiped my hands off with a napkin and dug through my backpack for a sheet of paper. "Like this?" I put my pen to the paper and started drawing and drawing, random shapes until the margins were full of leaves and vines.

"Write me a note when you're in fifth," she said.

The next day at lunch, I didn't steal. I didn't eat. I sat with Chrystal and gave her the note I wrote her the night before. When she read it all, we held hands under the table.

I didn't need anything else.

My parents took me to a nutritionist when I was thirteen. A scrunched face, twenty-something, with thick black eyebrows and stick arms. She introduced herself, telling me her name, what she did ("Help people eat to live."), where she was born, how many brothers and sisters she had, and what her favorite color was. When she was done, she looked at me expectantly. She prompted me, asking the same series of questions she answered. She only got one word answers from me. 82

Finally, Scrunched Face gave up playing nice. We sat at a table, the long skinny

kind we had at my school lunchroom, and she folded back the pages ofher legal pad,

clicking her pen top.

"Let's start out with what you eat on a typical day," she said. "And you can be

honest with me." She eyed my arms crossed over my stomach.

I stared at the wall behind her, posters of pyramids and marathon runners.

"What did you have for breakfast this morning?"

Another poster detailed the interworkings of the digestive tract. In her long,

expectant silence, I followed the winding path from he mouth to the twisting intestines.

"Did you have toast or cereal or maybe some-"

"Cereal." I said finally.

"Okay, good," the nutritionist said, scratching on her legal pad rapidly. Her

handwriting was a slanting mess of large script. "Do you remember what kind?"

"Cocoa puffs." I watched her write something nearly illegible and underline it.

"How much do you think you had?"

"I had a whole bowl, and then a halfbowl. Then half of that. And half of that.

Until I ran out of milk."

She nodded and stopped writing. "You filled the bowl all the way up?"

"To the very top." And put my hand over the bowl to prevent pieces from spilling over as I poured the milk. I had to wash my hands after breakfast so they wouldn't be

sticky with souring milk.

"How much milk did you drink?"

"I filled it to the top." 83

She nodded again. "And why did you do that?"

The question was obvious but all I knew was that I had to keep eating. And

eating. Nothing else would do.

I shrugged.

I hated Sunday nights when I was too young to have a say. Mostly because as

soon as we finished lunch, after waiting an hour for a table during the after-church rush,

Mom and Dad drove through neighborhoods, looking for Open Houses. The long,

wandering drives killed time before evening service, and in spring or summer, even

cotton dresses got itchy and uncomfortable in the back seat, where the sun came in bright

and the air conditioner barely spit two puffs of coolness together.

Dad drove through neighborhoods with great oaks older than the houses on the

blocks. There, my head stopped aching, and the balmy sun only blinked in occasionally.

One of the few things I remember praying for was that my parents parked the car under this huge tree, its roots looked like arms pulling a body from a hole in the ground. I prayed they would go inside and leave me to watch the tree and sleep in its shade.

We left that neighborhood, though, and Dad drove to sunnier roads, with houses on acres and acres of pasture. Stacks of hay dotted the green fields, and Mom pointed out the horses to me.

"Wouldn't you like to live here?'' Mom asked.

"It's too much," Dad said. 84

After spending the day looking at strangers' houses, the sun started to set. Time

to go back to church, still dressed in the morning's floral print dress. Scuffed white flats

that pinched my toes.

During the service, I dozed off on Mom's shoulder. Had it been morning, she

would have roused me, but she let me feign sleep, close my eyes and try to sink into my

dreams. The preacher kept going and going~ despite his voice cracking as he grew

louder. I knew it was well after six-thirty. Another time the preacher went on like this, I

held Mom's hand so I could keep her watch in sight. I gripped the empty pew beside me,

where my brother should have been. He could skip church now that he had a car. My

nails scraped the upholstery, and a scream swelled into my throat, threatening to release

and echo from the baptismal pool to the balcony.

When service finally came to a close, when we stepped into the humid, spring

night, my stomach growled loudly. On the short drive home, Dad made a u-turn and

drove by a neighbor's house to make sure my brother's car was still parked in their

driveway.

"Can't we go home?''

"Stop it," Dad said quietly. He turned into an empty driveway to make a turn.

As soon as Dad cut off the engine in our driveway, I unbuckled my seatbelt,

letting it zip back and clang against the door. I rushed to the front door, bouncing on the balls of my feet to get in the door.

"Stop," Dad said firmly. "You won't get in any faster."

I ran to my room, taking off my toe-pinching flats, my too-snug white tights. I unzipped my dress halfway and wiggled out of it, even though the fabric made faint 85

ripping noises as I strained the threads. I took out my barrettes and my earrings, both

rhinestone, and rifled through my drawers for a long, nightgown.

Finally comfortable, I walked to the kitchen, expecting to smell something

cooking. Instead, Mom and Dad were no where to be found. I sat at the table, the vague

ache in my stomach moving to my throat.

Dad emerged from the hallway first, having changed clothes too. He walked past

the table where I sat and into the kitchen, separated by a step. I hated the step because I

always tripped over it and forgot it was there when I left the kitchen.

"We're having cereal for dinner," Dad said, and I heard the clatter ofbowls as he

reached into the cabinet.

"But that's breakfast."

"Well, now it's dinner."

"But that's not fair!"

Dad sighed and gathered a couple boxes from the pantry.

"I'm going to tell my teacher!" I had never threatened my father, and as soon as I

did, the air seemed thinner.

He set the boxes on the table and slid a bowl in front of me.

"I will."

Dad's lips narrowed into a straight line. "No one's going to believe you've

missed a meal in your life."

My face burned as he poured the cereal to the rim of the bowl, and he dumped

milk into the flakes, spilling a little on the bare wooden table. He sat at the head of the table, rubbing his eyes under his glasses. I waited for the cereal to get soggy so the 86

crunching wouldn't bother him. Or for him to move. Or for Mom to come into the

kitchen and cut through the silence.

When all three happened, I shoveled the food into my mouth. I poured more into

the soggy mush and ate the dry flakes that fell on the table. I crunched and crunched

until my mouth hurt, until my lips stuck together, coated with milk and sugar. I ate the

last powdery crumbs and learned never to argue with Dad.

Day Planner, Junior Year of college:

7:00AM- Wake up to the sound of the fire station testing their sirens.

7:05AM- Give up on getting back to sleep. Get up for a jog.

7:55AM- Shower and essential hygiene.

8:19AM- Meet classmates in dining hall. Grab coffee and plain bagel.

8:22AM- Discover bagel is rock-hard and toss it in the garbage on the way to class.

8:27AM- Climb up three flights of stairs for lecture. Spill coffee.

9:45AM- Run to the bathroom after the world's longest history class.

9:48AM- Refill water bottle jammed between notebook and deodorant.

10:01 AM- Stumble into next class just in time.

10:14 AM- Daydream and doodle.

11:15 AM- Run to the bathroom after the world's longest literature class.

11:16 AM- Wait in line.

11 : 18 AM- Wait outside for the dining hall to open.

11:25 AM- Meet friends. Smell fried chicken and pizza and rapidly lose interest in the hot line. Go for the salad bar. 87

11 :31 AM- Give up picking through wilted leaves and slimy carrots.

12:01 PM- Run to publishing office. Work until time for next class.

1:30 PM- Take notes for a friend missing class.

2:45 PM- Run to choir practice.

3:30PM- Run to work.

3:51PM- Put on apron and wash the load of dishes the previous shift neglected. Bus tables. Take out the trash. Make coffee.

4:02PM- Leave a cup of coffee on the back counter to grow cold and undrinkable.

6:00 PM- Absently nibble on stale scone. Sweep up the crumbs and toss the rest.

7:19PM- Try to read through notes. Crowd rushes to the counter in anticipation.

9:59 PM- Shoo the last remaining customers by mopping around their table.

11:01 PM- Heat coffee up in the microwave back home. Dump sugary, milk-coffee in the sink.

11:04 PM- Study notes on the couch. Fall asleep.

11:25 PM- Roommates arrive and make popcorn. Eat a few handfuls and watch I Love the 90s.

12:06 AM- Take notes into bed to study.

1:14AM- Throw notes offthe side ofbed. Fall asleep.

After college, all the momentum and drive I possessed melted away. All my plans stopped, and I moved back in with my parents. I was unemployed with a BA in

English and no plans for the future. 88

I picked up cooking as a hobby to fill the long, useless days of waiting for letters

of recommendation and faxing transcripts. I learned how to cut French fries and how to

dice onions. I read through Mom's Betty Crocker cookbook from the 70s, taking care to

separate the pages blotted with oil and sticky with dried corn syrup from when Mom and

I made a pecan pie years ago.

Making dinner became a way to kill two hours and earn my keep. Big meals.

Simple but well-planned. Two vegetables, one green and one of another color. One

starch and one protein. I cut up an onion and set it aside in a covered bowl. Then, I took

a walk out to the mailbox and came back to peel potatoes. Leave the kitchen. Come

back. Peel more potatoes. Preheat the oven. Unload the dishes. Load the dishes. Cut the potatoes into steak fries. Toss with oil. Bake. Start on something else. Anything

else. Never sitting down.

I loved baking and made breakfast for my parent's Sunday school class. They never asked, but since I wasn't going to church, I could at least send them away with a treat. Coffee cake. Zuchinni bread. Pumpkin bread. Biscuits.

For Christmas, I spent hours melting chocolate, crushing candy canes, and shaping the ganache into little truffles to send to my friends. The chocolate slid through my fingers as I coated each layer. Butter. Cream. Slick and shiny. I scooped out masses of cooled chocolate, my hands warming the little spheres. I washed my hands raw to get the mud-like substance out from under my nails.

I baked dozens and dozens of cookies to give away, to Mom's co-workers, to anyone. Mexican wedding cookies, coated in powdered sugar, chocolate chip peppermint cookies, gingerbread cookies, anise sugar cookies, Chai spice cookies. As soon as scoop 89

after scoop of dough plopped onto the pans, I made scrubbed the bowl clean and started

another batch. When I was a kid, licking the bowl was the best part of baking, the real

reason I baked. I scrubbed every dish clean. Now, I was an assembly line, driven to get

as many cookies out of the house as I could. I couldn't stand the sight of sweets and

relaxed as soon as I saw the trays of cookies and truffles and cakes and candies leave my

sight.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and saw a dark shadow under my

collarbone. Is that a bruise? I thought, leaning in closer to the mirror. I touched my skin

gently, expecting to feel soreness. Instead I touched bone. My skin seemed thinner,

more fragile. And not my own.

I did not, as a rule, look at myself in the mirror, but I'd opened a door,

scrutinizing this bone, my ribs that now stretched my skin tight across my chest. I couldn't stop running my fingers over the place on my body where you could see the core of me right at the surface. And I wanted to know my body.

I took off my shirt and saw a whole shadowy row of ribs up my side. I counted seven on each side, digging my fmger into each dark groove. My spine, visible from the neck to my waist, made a particularly satisfying thud as I tapped my fingers on my neck.

And if I breathed in, I saw all the sharp tendons and tiny muscles in my neck tighten and contract. My collarbones looked deadly sharp, and I slumped my shoulders to make them obtrude and stood up straight to make them v into my shoulders.

I finally looked at my face: clear, smooth, and angular. In college, I'd always complained about my chubby cheeks and had convinced my roommate to get a haircut 90

with me, to help hide both our flaws. Her haircut softened her sharp jaw. Mine only emphasized my round face.

Now, my cheeks sunk in slightly. No more chubby cheeks. My jaw line sharpened into a pointed, strong chin. The dark circles under my eyes appeared to be eye-lined or shadowed as they had when my face was more filled-out and forgiving.

Every line, every piece of evidence that I didn't sleep was etched deeply into my skin. I didn't know when to stop. Like eating hot soup too fast, burning the inside of my mouth, my throat, blistering but unable to stop. FRIED

Most days, running is an unbelievable high, one I don't have to pay ten bucks to

get in on. One that I know is good for me and that people don't hassle me about. I wake

up at 5:30 wide-eyed, and when my alarm goes off at 7:01, I sit up and put on my socks

and shoes, getting to the gym by 7:09. I run, eight minute mile after mile, my pulse

beating in my fingertips. The shuddering warmth stretching across my legs is the same as

the one I felt smoking up in chilly basements and midnight woods. Aching, feverish.

Sweaty, goosefleshed.

I used to get high with a boy I knew. He'd tell me that I wanted him, and I put up

with his stupidity to smoke up. He looked at my lidded, blank eyes and saw desire in my

compliance. You want me, he said, fiddling around with his skull lighter. He lit up,

blowing smoke in my mouth. I only wanted the pipe, not his kiss. My tongue wrapped

around a pill rather than his lips, and I lay on my back, staring blankly at the ceiling as

numbness spread from my face to the point of my toe.

Other days, say after a sleepless night or bar-crawl, running is hell. I roll out of

bed, after hitting snooze a few times, and shuffle to the bathroom, checking the scale three or four times to convince myself of the need. The head rush as I touch my fingertips to the floor isn't the pleasant kind. I'm dizzy, strung-out, a tunnel of dark stars

91 92

threatening my sight. I get down to the gym at 7:22AM and wheeze through four miles, regardless of my body's protests.

In high school, I drank three cups of coffee to get me through first period and took two pills to keep me going through second and third. I sat with the drug crowd during lunch and traded my Xanax and Prozac. I took handfuls of diet pills and skipped lunch with a girl I liked. Chrystal gave me her Ritalin, which she didn't want anymore since she was on heroin, and I gave her my Amytal, which I didn't want since I hated sleep.

We never spoke to each other sober and lasted all oftwo weeks. We spent hours on the phone, swearing that we would stop everything, and then got high making stupid decisions. Chrystal cheated on me with an ex-boyfriend the day before we broke up.

Weeks later, I slept with a girl I barely knew.

Every morning, good or bad, I add something new to my workout. Increased incline. Running faster. Running longer. Farther and farther. The voice in my head urges me to do more, to do a hundred situps. To get on the elliptical, crank up the incline, and go. I grip the handles, tightly, and close my eyes, sweat dripping on my eyelashes and running down my face. I can feel the rush, a tingling numbness that says

I've left my body behind. I am transcendent, high above myself. DON'T MOVE

I can't seem to get over you. I'm pretty sure it's because of my mother. Not that

I have some strange Oedipal thing about girls with black hair and light blue eyes. Not that I have some primal, embarrassing need to be nurtured or breastfed. These things probably shouldn't be said. Least not to you, since I've never even told you I kind of love you. Let me back up.

There's a light in my apartment that I never turn on. Even though the switch is beside the doorframe and the light illuminates the entrance, the place I need to see when I come in after dark. Only my guests seem to turn this light on. I let them into my apartment, kick off my shoes, and put up my keys. And the guest flips the switch while

I'm fumbling around with junk in my pockets. I look up at the light, bewildered and unnerved that this thing I never think about turning on.

And now, you'll be my guest, and I didn't want this light bulb, this eureka flash, to return. Because you see, I was perfectly happy in the dark, and I don't need to be reminded of the dormant fixture, the thing I know is there but don't acknowledge.

I was thirteen when Mom told me explicitly to stop talking about my feelings. No nebulous sense of rejection. No wishy-washy psychoanalyzing about the way she washed my socks. She shook me when I said I wanted to die, told me never to stop talking. Not to stop feeling the pull of suicide, but to stop saying so. I'd said "I wish I'd never been born" over and over, and finally, I'd even worn out my mom's listening ear.

93 94

Every time I let you go, swear to be done, you keep coming back. We talk, and when the conversation ebbs, I ready myself to say something that will make you stay or go. Anything to shake us out of this holding pattern. And the way you look at me during this long silence is preemptive. As if to say: don't even start. SPEAK

As a kid, I spent more time in Aerostar vans than any other kind of car. My parents had one. My friend's parents who drove me to swimming lessons had one. My maternal grandparents had one. We sold our van, a couple years used, before the door stuck mid-slide and the upholstery curled upward, revealing the foam and box-springs underneath. The van was massive inside, with tall enough ceilings for me to stand at six years old. We took out the middle seat, and the front seat, the driver, felt so far away. I could barely see where we were headed, how long our trip might be.

By the time I spent summers alone with my grandparents, their van had deteriorated. The air conditioning faltered, recirculating the hot summer air. Rust ate away at the white paint around the wheel-wells, and the interior, although thoroughly vacuumed and shampooed, retained the smell of every greasy bag of fast food that ever sat on the floorboards. That van shuttled my entire family to my grandmother's hospital room and eventually her funeral.

The summer after her death, when it was just me and my step-granddad, we waited in ninety degree heat at the departure ramp. The passenger side window didn't roll down, and the driver's side had a wind-guard, letting only the thinnest breeze into the car. Sweat gathered in my elbows, soaked into the collar of my shirt, and my bangs lay flat on my forehead.

95 96

"You don't gotta leave," Papaw said. He pulled out a handkerchief, with one hand

still on the steering wheel, and blotted sweat from his face.

"Mom and Dad already bought the tickets," I said. "I have to get there soon." I

looked out the window at the fountain spraying water into the air. Although the water

was probably algae-ridden and lukewarm, I longed for it, and my mouth dried in

anticipation of a cool spritz on my face.

Papaw moved the van up to the curb, putting it in neutral. A man got out of a cab

in front of us, carrying only a briefcase, and other cars passed the Aero star on the left. I

took hold of the door handle. The lock had been broken earlier, and the child-safety

couldn't be deactivated.

"Whatever it is, I'm sorry," Papaw said. He began to cry and shook his head.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." I had never seen a grown man cry, but the expression suddenly

meant something to me. Papaw wept with abandon, shaking violently. His hacking

coughs racked his body, and the handkerchief he used to wipe the sweat from his face

was soaked and sticky.

"Let me go," I said, but he didn't move to open my door. "I'm going to be late."

Papaw kept crying. "Please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He spat as he talked, and his

eyes were shut tight.

I didn't look at him anymore. I crawled over the seat into the back and got my

duffle bag out of the trunk. When I had everything, I opened the sliding door, which

stuck halfway, and said goodbye. I shut the door, slamming it out of necessity, and

walked away without a hug. Without the promise of"I'll see you next summer." I left him completely alone, crying, yelling apologies at me in his thick, sobbing voice. 97

Air-conditioning in the South was always a surprise and a relief. The moment I walked into the airport and the double automatic doors shut away the outside air, the sweat started to evaporate from my forehead. My skin felt clean again in the coolness.

An hour previous, I looked out the kitchen window at an acre of land, rows of com, a wood pile, blackberries, tomatoes, and crabapple trees. All interrupted the hills of yellowing grass. Low-hanging tree branches shaded the patches of bare ground, where fallen pecans sat crumbling, half-eaten. Here, the smooth, marbled hallways gleamed.

The sun streamed in from the floor to ceiling windows, reflecting off the chrome in between the benches. The light refracted around the echoing, mostly empty airport.

My plane wasn't even scheduled to board for a little over four hours. I had lied and told myself! was right to do so. I settled down onto a bench next to the door, to watch people come and go. To watch the glisten on people's foreheads slowly fade into nothing. The sweat had traveled to the ends of my hair, making the tips look like little paintbrushes. Even the slightest movement caused the hair to brush against my neck, tickling and itching simultaneously. I tapped my foot incessantly. My whole body shook.

I sat for a minute, zipping and unzipping my bag. Touching my things to make sure I'd packed them. I knew I'd gotten there early, but I didn't know ifl'd be leaving.

What if I had to go back? What if my ticket, the one Dad had promised would be here when I called sobbing, didn't go through? I gathered my things, with still hours to go before the flight.

I found the ticket counter, without help. I stood in front of the desk, fiddling with the tips of my hair, and thought the lady behind the counter was old but in a pretty way. 98

She couldn't have been more than 25 and smiled at me behind four different shades of

navy blue. Navy vest. Navy shirt. Navy tie.

"Can I help you?" She had shiny, black Shirley Temple curls and smooth brown

skin. Her nametag said Niki. "Are you here with your parents?"

I've always had trouble talking, getting words to come out of my mouth smoothly

or at all. When I was five, this inability to get a sentence out might have been cute, but at

thirteen, I saw the frustration in faces as I paused mid-sentence. I couldn't think of the

word and how to shape it. I knew the answer. The idea of it hung nebulously in my

mind, but nothing came out. I shook my head.

She picked up the beige phone from the desk and pressed one of the buttons,

lighting it up red. "Hey, I think I have a problem."

I pictured the phone calls to my mom's step-dad, maybe one ofher siblings who lived nearby. They would pick me up and take me back to the house all because I couldn't say why I was here. Because the words wouldn't come out. "My dad said he bought an electronic ticket for me and I was supposed to pick it up here."

Niki stopped for a moment. "Nevermind. I got it." She hung up and started typing on her computer. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

I knew that people read the last names first and gave her my name backwards.

She typed in a few more keys. "It's a one-way ticket. Where are you going?"

"I'm going home. And these are my bags."

Niki raised her eyebrows and leaned across the counter, so she could whisper.

"You don't have a passport or government ID, do you?" She said it even though she would have let me through either way. 99

I took my military ID out of my pocket and set it on the counter. It didn't snap

like Mom's driver's license because it had gone through the wash a couple times. The

gray, faded picture vaguely resembled me, and I was recognizable only by the halo of

bushy hair.

She looked at me, back at the fuzzy black and white picture, back at me. She

typed some more, and the printer whined and clicked, spitting out a ticket. "Okay. Your

flight's not for a few hours." She put the ticket in a jacket and handed to me. "Don't lose

that."

I held it tight, creasing the edges. I held onto it, even when I went to the

bathroom. I tucked it under my arm as washed my hands. I didn't let it go. Sweat from

my palms dampened the edges and eroded the lettering.

I dug through the outside pocket of my bag to find an elastic band. I gathered the hair at the nape of my neck, running my hands through a knot beneath layers of waves.

Only a year ago, Mom worked through a knot twice this size for hours. She had gone on

a two week trip to Baltimore, and when she was away, Dad didn't remind me to brush my hair. He drove me to daycare everyday and didn't see any difference, didn't notice that the knot knitted the ends of my hair together. Mom spotted the knot when she hugged me, resting her hand on my neck. Instead of the soft, thick curls she was used to holding, she felt a fat lump and a coarse mat of hair. She sent me to bed, telling me that we would take care of tomorrow, when I was supposed to be watching Saturday morning cartoons and eating bowls of cereal. After breakfast at the dinner table, I sat on the floor in front 100

ofher as she lined up combs and hair clips. She sectioned off pieces of tangle-free hair to

see this knot in its entirety.

"You're getting old enough that you should remember to do this for yourself."

Mom held my hair at the scalp while she worked on the ends, but every stroke of the

comb still pulled. I clenched my fists, and she gave me Tylenol but didn't stop.

Mom tried to make it better for me, as I closed my eyes trying to forget what was happening. She told me stories about her hair and the trouble it'd caused her. About how

one of her brothers stuck gum in her hair and how she had to give herself bangs to make it look right.

"They don't really flatter my face, but I think they look alright on you," Mom

said, loosing a small subset of the knot from the whole. My scalp throbbed, and I dug my nails into my forearms. As she told me stories, I could picture how long and gorgeous her hair used to be. When Mom did yard work or took a short trip to the store, I used to look through her wedding albums, with her homemade Swiss-dot dress and her mahogany hair longer than her veil. I knew I could never look like that.

"When my hair was that long, I used to have to roll it around those frozen cans of juice concentrate. I'd wash my hair at night so I could go to sleep with my rollers on.

Then in the morning, Mama' d help me take out the clips and brush it all out. The night before the wedding, I had to make sure all the cans were full. That way, they'd be so heavy, I'd have to lie down."

I'm sure Memaw did some damage control with Mom's long pigtails as a kid.

She probably rubbed peanut butter into the pieces of gum her brother maliciously stuck on her head. She most certainly braided her long rope of hair and finished it off with a 101

purple scrap of ribbon. She sat her at the kitchen table and trimmed Mom's split ends,

fanning her hair out to make sure she got them all. They talked about boys, work, and

school. My mom, though, sat hunched over, back straining and sweat gathering behind

her knees, picking through my hair strand by strand. She looked at each piece and saved

every one she could, until it hurt me too much, and she brought out the scissors.

The intercom switched on, and after a moment of crackling silence, someone on

the other end hung up with a sharp click. I sat at the end ofthe row facing the gate, never

letting go of my backpack strap. I watched the crew mill around the desks. Only a few

people in the gate were passengers, and my flight was one ofthree departing that day. A

handicap access car drove through the corridor, and I swore the woman on it was my

grandmother. She wore the same kind of cotton dress, covered in blue and pink floral,

hair curled tightly against her scalp, the same way my grandmother looked when she

came from the beauty salon.

My grandmother, Memaw, died earlier that year. I visited her in the summer

when my parents didn't know where we were going to live the next school year. Memaw

and Mom's step-dad Papaw drove across two counties to pick me and my brother up

from my Dad's parents. But Memaw didn't accommodate us in any other way. She didn't indulge me or set aside her routine. I interloped, sat in on their settled life.

Every morning, Memaw reached into the fridge for a tub of margarine, coating an aspirin so she could swallow it better. She put the pill on her tongue and jerked back her head as she forced it down with a glassful of water. She made breakfast, mixing Cheerios and Raisin Bran into bowls and slicing up bananas to go on top. She poured the milk, 102

leaving the top of the cereal dry, and sprinkled a teaspoon of sugar on top. She set out a

row of vitamins and blood-pressure medication for her husband. And he shuffled into the

kitchen after she called out "It's ready." But not too loud.

While my brother Austin rode the mower across acres of grass, the three of us went for walks. I sped ahead or lagged behind, and their pace remained slow and constant. They had set this pattern years ago and would not be moved, so I orbited rather than directed.

I followed Memaw around the house and talked nonstop. Everything I said was nonsense. Retelling the plot of a book I read. Obvious observations about our surroundings. Saying how much I loved tomato sandwiches or Nintendo or my new shoes. And I had no tact. I talked to her while she did things that probably brought her solace. Weeding the garden. Snapping the ends off green beans. Re-stitching a hem.

She never said much to my ramblings. Sometimes she nodded but usually continued whatever she was doing. I talked persistently so that she would say something back, but she let me keep going. And when I finally ran out of things to talk about, she'd slip my sleepshirt over my head and sit on the egg carton mattress. She'd pick up my powder blue brush, the kind with the stiff but yielding bristles, and start working through my tangles. She brushed in short swipes until she could sweep through my hair in one long stroke. Memaw kissed me on the cheek, and the smell of Oil ofOlay, sweet and soothing, overpowered me. "Goodnight," she said finally. "I love you."

I looked at my watch, noting that I still had four hours until my flight was scheduled to board, and the only people around were still wearing navy blue uniforms 103

and nametags. This was the first summer after Memaw died, and I still went to that house. Mom and Dad drove the eight hours to South Carolina, and I had the backseat to myself, since my brother was off at college. I stretched out across the seats, watching treetops breeze by upside down. We moved across country several times, and Austin and

I used to fight when I was a toddler and he was ten. Then, he turned thirteen and turned up his walkman, resting his head in the corner between the window and the seat for the long car ride. This year, he was surly and withdrawn with his friends, and I went to

Papaw's house by myself.

Mom had asked if I wanted to visit South Carolina. She told me how much it would mean to Papaw, since he was still having a rough time, and by that she meant she was still having a rough time and didn't want me to see. The way she asked though, I didn't think I could say no. When we pulled into the gravel driveway at the end of the long unpaved road, the July heat had erupted into a summer storm. Mom cried as softly as she could as we pulled up to the house Memaw used to live. Tears streamed down her cheeks, one after another, like the rivulets of water falling from the tin roof. For the first time, Memaw wouldn't shuffle down the stairs and stand with hands folded in front of her. She wouldn't stroke the back of Mom's head, her fingernails catching on the thick brown waves.

When I arrived at their house that summer, Papaw took the steps over the crawlspace one at a time, setting his cane down first and easing his shaking foot to the brick. I could stay in that quiet house, with that quiet man, listening to the echo of absence over the sound of rain pelting on the roof. 104

Dad got out in the rain, carrying my bag into the shelter of the carport. He came to the door and pulled an umbrella :from under the seat, flipping it open as I stepped into the pouring rain. Water still bounced up :from the concrete. Warm splashes of rain and mists of steam brushed against my bare legs. He bent down slightly to give me a hug, and water slipped :from his neck to mine.

"Be good," he told me. He left the open umbrella in the carport and jogged back to the car. They came back the next morning to go out for breakfast and say goodbye, but

Mom couldn't stay in that house without Memaw. Her presence overwhelmed the place, and the quietness, without a pot of black-eyed peas cooking or the sewing machine running, unsettled me.

And all that remained was him. Papaw's back hunched over in a C-shape, and in order to keep him standing upright, he had to wear leg braces and move in shuffling steps with a cane. Every morning, he picked up a pair of shoes :from beside his armchair, dangling from the knee-high metal brace. Still in his dingy undershirt and slacks, he would hold the shoes to one side and sprinkle a little talcum powder into each one, timing it so his involuntary tremors spilled just enough into each one. Then, h~ opened up the leather strap and hit the braces into the pre-made holes in the soles until they snapped together. He sat in his wide, umber armchair every night and polished his dress shoes, prying the braces off one pair and putting them on another.

Papaw decided I should have something to do during the day other than sit and stare at the TV. He talked to my parents and arranged for me to work for one of my mom's stepbrothers. I had been offered fifty bucks ifl could fill a pallet with big slabs of river rock. I wore my hair up in a bandana, protecting it from the dirt and grime of a 105

day's work outside, and I wore gardening gloves, with caked-on dirt that crumbled away when I flexed my fingers. When my step-uncle dropped me off at Papaw's house at the end of the day, dusty and wound up, I had to talk to somebody.

"And then, I had a tomato sandwich for lunch, and we worked some more. Then,

Randy drove me home and gave me two twenties and two fives." I told Papaw.

"That's great," he said, folding his shaking arms around me. My arms fell to my side. He didn't let go when I did.

I tried to duck under his arms, but Papaw held my shoulders, gripping as tight as he could, my bones reverberated with his movement. His grip caught my hair, newly loosed from a ponytail. He backed me against the wall, the sharp comer boring into my back. The word was on the tip of my tongue. Stop. I heard the words in my head.

Don't. And I still couldn't speak. You're hurting me. Rather than forcing air out, my chest sunk in, collapsing under the weight of my unspoken words.

He kissed me on the mouth. Stop. I thought back to an advice column I read in

Mom's magazine. If you don't want someone to kiss you on the mouth, tum your head so it'll land on your cheek. I turned my head, but he grabbed my chin and pulled me forward again, pulling the hair stuck to my face with sweat. Stop. His tongue forced its way past my lips, between my teeth.

Stop. Even if I had the chance, the word still wouldn't come out. Stop. He breathed the acrid, hospital smell ofListerine into my mouth, and I couldn't breathe out.

Nothing would come out.

He let go, and I still felt his tremors like cobwebs on my skin. 106

When the jetway finally opened up and passengers started milling out into the gate, I put my backpack on and stood by the roped off aisle. The weight of my bag strained my shoulders, and I gripped the ticket, until the lettering crinkled together. I had made the ticket almost useless. The barcode smudged onto the otherwise white paper, and the lettering of my name was almost unreadable. I would have to speak for myself.

I had never been on a plane by myself before. My first plane ride was with my dad at nine months, but at twelve, I had to know what adults knew. Mom and Dad had carried me through the jetway and buckled my seatbelt as soon as we got to our seats.

They bundled me up in a felt airline blanket, pulled the shade shut, and gave me gum for the take-off and landing.

I didn't think of the gum or the blanket that day. I only knew to get on the plane and go, flee. Run. Don't look back. And I needed to know how to do that. After the call for a few specific passengers to the ticket counter, I stood in front of another counter and took a long shaky breath. The lady, a middle-aged southern lady, smiled and asked if she could help me.

"Is my ticket still okay?" I asked. "Do I need a new one?"

She took the ticket and maintained her vacant smile. "Yes, dear. You can wait in line when we call boarding." Her mouth barely moved.

I stood aside but didn't sit back down. When the smiling lady called for the first wave of boarders, I was first in line. I gave her my ticket and watched as she snapped off the perforated edges. "Enjoy your flight." Walking down the jetway, I looked at the seat assignment. 14D. I squeezed the ticket in my hand as I stepped onto the plane, past the 107

pilot's seat and flight attendants. I found my seat without my mom's guiding hand or my dad shuffling behind me, corralling my steps.

Dad had gotten me a window seat, for which I was grateful. I didn't have any intention of leaving the safety of this seat for the duration of the flight. Instead, I leaned against the window and thought about home, the new home my parents closed on this week. My grandparents' home was the only place that had been familiar, but as the flight crew milled around and people took their seats, I realized that I was never going back.

Today was the last time I'd visit South Carolina, and I'd never know what going home felt like again.

The seat belt sign chimed, and the door bolted shut. I pulled the shade down, tucked my arms into my short sleeves, and lay awake during the tlriee hour flight.

Mom met me in the lobby, past the security checkpoint. She craned her head to see over the crowd, looking past me, around me, everywhere but in my direction. When she finally did see me, she looked at me as if I'd been so obviously hidden, the same way

I look at my keys when I've been looking for them for an hour.

She held me, and my arms hung limp at my sides. "I didn't recognize you with your hair pulled back," she said, her words muffled by my shoulder.

I didn't say anything, didn't move, but held my shoulders taut against her hug.

Mom reached for my hand and tried to take my backpack, but I wouldn't give her either. "When I'm looking for someone in a crowd, I always think of their most distinguishing feature." We started walking to baggage claim, and she kept talking to fill 108

the space of my silence. "And you have hair that sticks out in a crowd. Not too many people with hair as long and pretty as yours."

She was lying to me. I hadn't washed my hair since I'd been working outside.

The humidity caused little flyaways to poke out of my little bun, and it smelled. Sweat, dirt, grit. Not pretty. Nothing like hers. Nothing like a girl's hair is supposed to be.

"With it pulled back, you made picking you out hard. You don't need to hide your hair."

I didn't make a conscious decision, but I knew I didn't need to stand out anymore.

I didn't need to be wanted or noticed. And certainly not desired. I let my mom talk, listening but not responding. By then, I was tired oftalking, of letting myselfbe known, and on the car ride home, Mom asked me if I wanted to cut my hair again.

"Because if it's getting to be a bother, we can have it thinned again. Or trim it a little shorter."

I told her no. I always had long hair as a kid. Mom didn't take me for haircuts too often, to make sure the length stayed about the same. She cared for my hair more than I did, brushing it, fixing barrettes hanging by a thread, rubbing baking soda and lemon juice into the strands tinged blue-green by chlorine. I didn't pay any attention to the thing affixed to me, to my identity.

I swam every week for a few hours, and I never once ran my hand over the billowing strands of hair in the water. Other girls marveled at the transformation of their hair in water, how it wafted gently, how curls straightened into fine wisps and how kinky curls were tamed in the undulating water. I was oblivious, swimming instead to slick my hair behind me, to forget it existed. 109

After the swimming lesson, a mom corralled the group into the showers. The mom treated the girls who were not her daughter like peripheral distractions. Things that got in the way of admonishment and instruction. We all showered off in bathing suits, in an open shower pit. My bare feet slid on the tile, blue like the pool, and I sat on a bench, rinsing my hair myself for once.

A girl in my group (once a best friend?) struggled under her mother's grip, wanting to shampoo her hair herself She bent over, draping her hair over her face.

"Don't do that," her mother said, but the girl slathered shampoo at the nape and rubbed suds into the tips ofher hair. "It's going to get in your eyes."

The first stab at defiance always hurts, and I watched as the girl flipped her hair back, standing upright. Foams of suds streamed down her face, into her eyes, her mouth open mid-yowl.

Watching her dodge her mother's touch, I gratefully rubbed shampoo into my ends. As she screamed, refusing all efforts to allay her pain, I leaned my head back into a stream of water and rinsed. Until the white foam fell around my feet. Until my hair was slick and clean. I was the good girl. The one who listened. The one who didn't know how to say no.

This girl, the one-time best friend, probably fared better than I did. Though her first attempt at independence caused her a moment's anguish, she had the guts to scream no. FIXED

In the first days of winter, before snow lost its magic and became another inconvenience to slog through, a girl never quite got over visited me. These chilly days retained a certain wonder. Cars and buses scooted along the avenues, sputtering out puffy little clouds like cotton balls on a kid's diorama. Long, sparse branches shook loose the last of their leaves, and amidst the traffic lights and lit shop fronts, Christmas lights hung from awnings and blinked against the jeweled landscape of the night-bright city.

Winter made my heart beat faster. The fluttering thump against my chest was my well-calibrated thermometer. And as I stood on the street waiting for her, I kicked myself for being underdressed. Instead of wearing my bulky jacket that would have easily accommodated two more layers, I wore short sleeves under a fake fur-lined coat. My hands exposed to the cold grew numb, and the freezing air negated all the heat that higher blood pressure, wide open veins. It's counterintuitive to be so open when the air is so hostile.

The street vendor glanced at me from behind a row full of red and blue hats and t­ shirts. I paced, trying to keep warm. I bounced on the balls of my feet to speed up circulation. Winter was new, treacherous. The chill would eventually wear me down, steal heat and suppleness from my body until I was nothing but a dried-up, depressed

110 111

shell. But the cold that day was seductive, new, and thrilling. I wanted to feel her cold

hands.

I waited by the zoo entrance, knowing that she had breezed into town yesterday.

And after the hotel check-in, the conference, the all day meeting, and other insanities, she

said she'd call me. Exactly like last year.

I leaned against a bike rack, then quickly pushed myself away as I saw a layer of

bird shit dangerously close to my coat. I picked at the lint gathering on my shirt and

checked my phone every minute. Finally, my phone buzzed in my hand.

How should I answer? Pretend I don't know who it is? But everyone has caller

!D.

"Hey," I said.

Jumping right in proved correct. She responded without a moment's hesitation.

"Hey. I'm done. So, do you want to grab dinner?"

As if we hadn't talk about tonight for months. I had already chosen a quiet place,

a diner that I could order cup after cup of coffee and stir over and over. I needed

something to do with my hands around her.

I gave her the name of the place and directions. And waited some more. My

parents always made me late as a kid, dropping me off late for band practice and ballet,

and I dreaded being glared at by my teachers. Their looks triggered a deep feeling of

guilt, and I developed the habit of being early to everything when such things were in my control. Class, work, interviews, appointments. And for the most part, waiting doesn't bother me. 112

But my hands shook. My knees almost gave out beneath me. I tried to calm

myself and flipped open my phone to leave a voicemail. That way, when she saw me, I'd

be smiling, nonchalant. I'd smile broadly, mouth "I'm sorry" to her, and listen to the

silence on the other end for a moment. "Hey, I've gotta run. Talk to you later."

She didn't catch me on the phone. She came up the escalator, carrying two

binders and a large messenger bag. Travel-mussed and exhausted. Her cheeks were

flushed bright red from the cold, and her short dark hair stuck up in the back. Still, she

set her notebooks on the newsstand and took me into her arms.

"Sorry it took so long." She had already fished a cigarette from her bag and dug

in the front pocket of her dress pants for a lighter.

I said that I'd only been there for a couple minutes. Not a big deal.

"Oh god," she said as she let out her first drag. "No breaks today." She flicked ashes unconsciously and then swears when she realizes they floated my way. "Sorry.

Usually, no one sticks around when I smoke."

I shrugged. "It doesn't bother me." And really, I wasn't paying attention to the smoking. I looked for anything different. Her hair was the same. Same three piercings in her right ear. Same far-off stare as she took another drag.

"So where is this place? We should start walking."

We both walked quickly, more like heading to work than to dinner. Half a block later, I led her into the place I'd so carefully picked out, spent weeks thinking about, even knew what the weekly specials were.

We got a table next to the window, butnot one next to a draft. The heat from the kitchen warmed the whole room, filling the air with the scent of bread, thick cream 113

sauces, and pastries. I took off my jacket, hoping she would notice the skin-tight shirt I picked out. I should at least take advantage of the ill-advised decisiontodress in one little layer.

She flirted with the server, a cute twenty-something with short dreadlocks and baggy khakis. She asked about the specials, making sustained eye contact and nodding.

"We're gonna need a minute," she said. "Thank you hon."

I had already planned out what I would eat that night. Something cheap, in case I needed to pick up my own check. A food I could play with and not seem weird.

Something to keep me occupied and distracted. And something that made me seem low­ maintenance. Minestrone with two pieces of rye toast and a cup of coffee. I looked over the rest of the food that I could have had: the rich cream sauces and the cheese fries and the devil's food cake, dripping with caramel and ice cream.

I watched her deliberate for a moment and start talking, slapping the folds back and forth. "So, I'm not even sure how to explain this. I wasn't really dating this girl, but we were getting there, you know?"

I knew.

She flipped through the menu again. "Anyway, we were talking and every time we got to a point where I was like 'Oh, this makes sense. I'm really into you.' She freaked out and said she couldn't be around me anymore."

I knew.

"One minute, she's all freaked out by her feelings and telling me she can't be with me, and the next, she's kissing me. The whole thing was just-"

"Confusing. I understand." 114

The server came back, and I asked what the other soups were, to give the illusion

of spontaneity.

She ordered, quickly taking my menu and sliding them both into her hands. She took every opportunity to touch, to brush her fingers against the server's. She smiled, a

broad toothy smile. With charm to burn.

But that's, strangely, what I liked about her. The fact that she wasn't afraid to reach across the table and put her hand on my knee. And I wanted to sink into the weight of her touch instead of tensing every muscle. I didn't slap her hand away or fidget until

she got the point. I sat still, relaxed. And I craved her touch, even if it didn't mean anything to her. Even though her hand on my knee was nothing special to her. I needed her to lie to me. To say anything to me with her easy touch.

The server brought our drinks: coffee for me and water for her. She pointed to the server's apron pocket at a neat row of plastic-wrapped straws. The server looked down and laughed haltingly, like she'd been tricked.

"Thank you, dear," she said, tearing into the wrapper with her teeth.

I set the miniature cream pitcher by the sugar I also wouldn't use.

"You drink it black?"

"Always have." I sipped slowly, intent on making this cup last.

"I could never." She smoothed her hair down and stretched. Her arms reached high, and her sweater hitched over the waistband of her dress pants.

"I like it. I've taken it black since I was a teenager."

She smiled. I smiled. We smiled. 115

The server set our meal on the table, dropping a couple French fries on the table in front of her.

I asked for a spoon. My voice kept getting lost in the clatter of dishes in the kitchen and the water spraying in the background.

"What?"

"A spoon," she said loudly, pointing to my steaming bowl.

"Oh, be right back."

I smiled. "Thanks."

She smiled. "No problem."

Oh but there was a problem. And that was an illustration.

I dipped my toast into my soup, swirling around the peas and carrots and zucchini. The bread absorbed the broth until it turned red and mushy.

"How's yours?" I ask. She had ordered the low maintenance veggie burger and fries. Nothing pretentious. No sauce. No a la carte ordering. No special instructions.

No need for special attention.

She licked ketchup off her fmgers before blobs dripped down her wrists.

"Anything tastes good after the shit day I had today."

I took a bite of my toast. I could tell her the law of thermodynamics equalizes heat. When one puts a tepid, porous object, like my dry toast into a hot, liquid object, the heat spreads out through the object, making one even temperature. But would she really be interested? Instead, I kept stirring until a chunk of the bread falls off. The laws of physical science demanded this state. 116

I got a spoon and scooped a piece of zucchini onto the spoon, the released it back into the bowl. Then fished for a carrot. Then a big fat kidney bean. I didn't feel like I could jump in.

"How are things going with you?" She asked, wiping her mouth. She'd already finished half of her burger. "I've been talking your ear off over here." She squeezed more ketchup onto her plate.

"Good," I said. "Busy."

She chewed, watching me expectantly. Performance anxiety had always been my downfall. Maybe I could tell her I made lamentable scores on all manner of standardized tests. But then she'd ask why that mattered. Why I felt I needed to perform.

"What've you been working on?" she prompted me, like any well-adjusted, socially-adept person would.

"Nothing new," I said. "I'm really looking forward to Christmas. I'm so over work right now."

She laughed. "Good luck with that."

I took a couple bites of soup quickly, but she had almost finished.

The server comes by, takes our plates, and puts the check in the middle ofthe table. I pull out my credit card, but she picked up the leather folder, shaking her head. "I got it. I get comped for this kind of thing. We'll say I ate a lot."

All I can say is "Oh. Okay." and look at my soup. I put my animal cracker in the last bit I didn't want to eat. It slowly bloats with broth, and pieces around the edges fall away and sink to the bottom. 117

The winter air suits me for this evening. Cold air can't hold on to anything: particulate matter, tiny droplets of humidity, a sultry whisper. The barest hint of moisture in our breath floats between us in little clouds and dissipates. Every vocal vibration, every warmed exhalation, falls to the earth soundlessly.

Nothing stays in the air tonight. She move from one topic to another, and I let every word drop around me. Talk of politics and work, which we're both so passionate about, falls apart like the ash at the end of her cigarette. She had told me she had quit this summer, and I believed her. Not that I'm mad, but why did I trust that she had quitfor good! These prolonged silences between us, the interest that can't be continued, bring attention to my long smiles and my inability to maintain eye contact.

The air looks sharp, crisp, and I appreciate the cold illumination of the fact that we can't sustain each other's company for very long. Unlike the befuddling haze of spring when I met her. Every touch of my shoulder, every gaze lingered like the inescapable pollen showering her car. Life floats in spring. Dandelions. Humidity.

Falling blossoms from trees. She walked through so much suspended life when she ran up the porch steps. She held out her hand, guiding me (and a friend but she doesn't really count. She was looking at me. I thought. Or was that another example of the hazy air playing tricks on me) to her car. We (and the friend) went out and shared a pizza. The warm smell of bread baking. The honeysuckle wafting in from the open door. I didn't have to take the scents, the prolonged looks. Every part of that evening remained in the air, on my skin. We sauntered down the strip and drank fizzy Italian sodas, raspberry and orange. We stayed until the marquee lit up and the lightning bugs flashed in the park. 118

\ Does she remember that night the way I do? Of course not. Maybe she thought I

looked like that girl in her 3rd grade math class and that's why she stared. Maybe her ex's

ex had the same color hair or the same t-shirt.

I hope she remembers some part of that night. The cool breeze from the wall unit

AC ruffiing the hair on your neck. The feel of clean khaki shorts against her skin. A long

wait for dinner. Dogwood branches in an empty wine bottle at our table.

Maybe she only remembers the movie we saw. Some terrible no-brainer, shoot­

em-up epic something or other. I think we only went to get out of the humid, mosquito­

ridden streets. Only the friend (yeah, she was there I guess) really wanted to see the

piece of shit.

I took off my sandals and spread my long skirt like a blanket over my folded up

legs. I loved that skirt, how it flowed, how it hung off my body. I put the box of sour

candy behind my knee. She felt for the candy in the middle of the movie, patting my

foot, my calf, before she found what she wanted.

She smirked at me as I wrote something down in the middle of the movie, rifling

through my bag for a pen and paper. She leaned over to whisper in my ear.

"What are you writing?"

"Notes."

"What for?"

"Me."

"Why?"

"To remember something I thought of." 119

She let out a low hum, polite laughter in the theatre. Vibrations that tickled my neck.

"Why are you laughing at me?"

"It's cute."

But nothing sunk in. Instead, the heavy feeling in my chest that I'm so familiar with tonight stayed in the air between us until we parted.

And now we're here, after two years. I watch as she closed her eyes for that last drag, the one you enjoy the most. Inhaling deeper and exhaling with a long sigh. She has to sate her hunger with that breath, otherwise the whole cigarette would have gone to waste. I know she loved the first drag too, could barely wait for it, fumbling around with the lighter, swearing when the wind stole her fire. But the first is only relief, quelling the thirst. The last is satisfaction. I understand why she couldn't quit for good.

"Sorry," she said, snuffing out the embers on the edge of a trashcan. "We can go now."

We headed over to a bar, to meet some of my friends, and her hand hovered over the small of my back in the crowd. The train-ride is short, and we stand, her body swayed towards mine as the train takes a curve.

After two or three drinks, we still don't have a lot to say. The bar grew more crowded with happy-hour interns and research assistants, young boys wearing jeans and blazers. Girls wearing lanyards over pearl necklaces. All fodder for conversation, making any talk of ourselves blissfully difficult. And with the beer came her inevitable cigarette break. I tagged along, the only one who wanted to sit through a long cigarette on a cold day. 120

"You don't have to stay," she said, blowing smoke behind her into a row of juniper bushes.

"I like it," I said. "The smell."

She nods as she takes another drag, raising one eyebrow. "I'd offer you one, but I don't think that's what you want."

"No, I shouldn't smoke. Makes running pretty painful."

''No, you really shouldn't," she said. She points at me with her cigarette, suspended between two fingers. "It's a bad, filthy, dirty, disgusting habit that people should be ashamed of."

I giggled and sat on the railing across from her. "I don't see you being properly ashamed."

I watched as she took her last drag, which got dangerously close to her fingers.

But I knew that she has control of the flame. I knew she wouldn't let herself get burned.

She let out a sigh, her eyes closed in mid-exhale. "I'm more than properly ashamed. I'm downright humiliated, having to come outside just to feed this nasty habit."

She smushed her cigarette in the brick of the wall, below the address. She dragged the ash in a straight line and threw the butt in the wastebasket. I watched as she went back inside and stared for a moment at the mark she had made.