A Girl Called Sidney

by Courtney Yasmineh

  “What? Seriously! You could do wet T-shirt contests and you’d win hands down. Most chicks only have big tits ‘cause they’re fat or fake. You got the goods, Sid.”

  Preston read some of the Kerouac quotes from Playboy out loud to me. He was getting really animated. He kept looking up and interrupting himself to tell me to drive faster. He was suddenly all pumped up about how I wasn’t driving fast enough. He wanted me to pass the semi truck in front of us. We’d been happily going along at my idea of a safe speed all night and I never had to pass anybody.

  “Shut up Preston, I’m doing a good job. Just go back to sleep.”

  “Sid come on man, this is bullshit! Fuck this guy! These roads are made for passing! Grow some balls Sid!”

  “I’m not passing.”

  “God damn it Sid, this guy is ruining our time! We were doing great!”

  “It’s not a race Preston, shut up.”

  “Pass him! Put the pedal to the metal and fucking PASS HIM!

  “I don’t want to!”

  “Come on, sister Sid! You can do it! Don’t be such a little coward! This guy’s a load! Do it! Do it!”

  I pushed down hard on the gas pedal and felt like closing my eyes. The Volare had a spot where it wouldn’t get any faster unless you really pushed hard on the gas so I shifted my weight and shoved my foot forward. Our car lurched forward into the left lane. The yellow line was divided where I crossed but a double line was coming, a hill was coming, over the hill a pack of cars was coming and suddenly Preston was rolling down his window. As we came up alongside the trucker’s cab, Preston lifted his body out of the passenger window, had only his legs still inside, with his butt lodged on the doorframe. He was waving both his arms over his head and shouting something that at first I could not decipher, but which turned out to be: “Up Your Ass With Mobil Gas! Up your ass with Mobil gas you fucker! You think you own this road? Get out of my little sister’s way!”

  I was screaming, “Preston cut it out, you idiot!”

  Brandy sounded the alarm by standing up and barking. We got well past the trucker and I pulled into the right lane ahead of him. Preston was back in his seat rolling up the window, laughing hysterically, then suddenly he was crying.

  “Preston, what’s wrong? What is wrong with you?”

  “Sister Sid … why is this happening to us? Why is this happening? Why does Dad have to be such an asshole? Why is Mom so fucked up? I can’t stand it. It’s like a John Steinbeck novel. All his people are always getting fucked with by life, by other people. Steinbeck makes it sound like it’s all some epic thing like the Bible. God is testing us little sis. God is testing us. Why are you so strong? I think you turned out to be a good person all on your own. How did you do that?”

  “I didn’t. I’m only seventeen.”

  “Yeah you did. You already did it. I’m glad we’re doing this. I’m glad I’m with you. Brandy’s glad too. Look at him.”

  We both turned and looked at Brandy’s big head sticking up between us from his perch in the back seat. He licked Preston’s face and nuzzled his neck until Preston was smiling.

  After a while Preston started telling me, “I have one more year of college left. Dad says he can’t pay for it. I might not be able to go back.”

  “Oh no, that would be really bad.”

  “Yeah and what about you, Sid? Isn’t this going to be your senior year?”

  “Yeah next fall.”

  “What will you do?”

  “What do you mean? We’ll probably go back with Mom right?”

  “I don’t think so Sid. I don’t think anybody’s going back. I don’t think there’s going to be anything to go back to.”

  I tried not to think. I kept driving. The morning sun was coming straight over the endless trees to the East as I drove along the outskirts of the big mining town of Virginia and then out onto the last highway to the cabin. The trees were towering and crowding the road and the sense of the power and magnitude of nature was evident. True wilderness, long stretches unclaimed by human beings. A sense of peril filled me as I contemplated how far we were from easy salvation. We had no way to call anyone for help out here. There wasn’t a phone booth anywhere but in the middle of the bigger towns. There were no houses for many miles and no gas stations for many more. I wondered how my mom was feeling about being up here for so long by herself.

  Summer was just beginning in this far northern land and it was still chilly on this morning drive in early June. The foliage was fragile, a shade of light bright green on the white birch bows, on the quivering aspens. The hint of what was to come, what Mother Nature had in store as we drew closer to the lake, was evident in the tall exposed sheets of blackish bedrock, so unlike anything seen in Illinois or Wisconsin. These outcroppings of ancient rock, seemingly as old as glaciers and dinosaurs, made me want to pull over, lie flat, resting my cheek on the cold surface, be one with the deep energy of the lake area, the woods, the wilderness. I wanted to hug and kiss every tree. The pines heralding our arrival were so tall, so strong, so numerous. Silent conquerors. This primal place brought out the best in a person. I looked for a small handmade sign around the bend that had been standing for as long as I could remember. Yes, there it was. Someone had fashioned this plaque of sorts—a sheet of plywood stained black, and white birch twigs attached probably with small finishing nails, so well made that it had been withstanding the extremes in weather year in and year out. The small sign read, “Why Live In God’s Country Without God?” Underneath that, in smaller letters, was the faded and barely legible name of a church. I had no idea whether the church existed still or not. I had the feeling that the church had been disbanded long ago. The saying was just as strong without a church to go to. Stronger. I loved it. I believed it. I agreed with it. This sign beat the hell out of the one over our kitchen table in Chicago—which my parents lived by.

  We made it to the next roadside station for gas and provisions and I pulled in to fill up our tank one last time. I opened the car door and was bowled over by the intoxicating aroma of pine and earth and freshly unfurling leaves. The air was as crisp as an icicle. The sky was crystalline blue. My God, what a place. Preston and Brandy were both out, Preston holding Brandy’s leash and both of them peeing on the same bush simultaneously. I pumped gas and went inside to use the toilet.

  When I came back to the counter to pay, I saw that there were fresh baked goods from the town bakery. Since Preston had eaten all the doughnuts, I bought a big white paper box of cinnamon rolls with white icing for us to take to Mom.

  I thought the woman running the counter was someone familiar from past summers but she didn’t seem to recognize me. I had spent enough time up here every year that most of the people looked familiar even if I didn’t know them.

  We were back in the car, with the heat blasting now because it was a whole new level of chilly as we turned out onto the lake road. We crossed the old dam and the water was higher than we’d ever seen before, roaring over the dam in a great waterfall, high with spray. Many times in the past we crossed barefoot, balancing at the crest of the dam over the tiniest trickle of water. But that would have been mid or late summer. Preston knew the river that emptied into the big lake much better than I did. One summer when he was younger he convinced our mom to drop him off with the canoe at a place up north on the river. He canoed back to the cabin over several days, camping alone with a pup tent, and portaging the heavy canoe around the dam. Preston had always been an adventurer.

  Once we passed the dam, we were home free. I couldn’t believe we were almost there. The night had gone so quickly and I wasn’t even feeling tired. I was so excited to be there in that beautiful land, God’s Country. Yes, it was.

  Last stretch, trees and tall grasses lining the crude blacktop road.

  Last turn, grasses lining a gravel road wide enough barely for two cars to pass.

  Last several hundred feet were only a packed down dirt trail for car tires with grasses growing up between the tire
tracks.

  Last stop, our old driveway of tall grass and wild-flowers, just beginning their summer jaunt, the old red truck parked out in the open, old tarp thrown off, old sticker of a cheerful black bear on the driver’s side door.

  I switched the engine off. Preston let Brandy bound out unleashed. Brandy started barking. I decided to honk the horn. I started honking and Preston jumped out and started jumping up and down with his arms over his head.

  Our mother, a truly beatific look of overwhelmed joy on her face, came out into the high grass covered with dew, an apron around her waist, her arms out to see her son.

  I opened my door and got out and went to our mother and she hugged us both to her and I felt we were right to come. I felt we were loved and had done the impossible and had succeeded in making the long drive. I had delivered us. Everyone was happy and Brandy was making us laugh, racing in circles, running down to the lake and back up, running rings around the entire cabin. He knew how to express himself thoroughly. I felt like doing the same and I began to run and he ran with me. We ran down to look at the magnificent lake, sprawling in its wide unmarred excellence, its unspeaking divinity, its godly grandeur. I dropped to my knees in the sweet tall grass and gave Brandy a hug as he licked my face. “We made it old buddy. We made it.”

  MY NEW JOB

  Days at the cabin unfolded with quiet deliberation, each of us rapidly seeing our futures unfold. Preston started working at the nearby resort tending the grounds; raking the beach, mowing the lawns, cleaning the fish house. He didn’t love it but he needed the money and he could walk down every morning and back in the afternoon. Mom had installed a phone and the phone was ringing a lot.

  Every morning Mom talked to a lawyer whom she obviously liked a lot. She would get off the phone and tell us about this guy. He had an office in downtown Chicago. She had never met him in person, didn’t know what he looked like, but she loved his attitude. She kept calling him “a real roughrider.” He was saying she needed to “get her ass back down to Chicago” right away and reclaim her place in her home. He had a viewpoint that none of us had considered: that Dad could sell the house and take off and Mom would be high and dry. As it is, she didn’t have any income and Dad had frozen her access to their joint checking account. Mom said she was afraid to go back, that she was going to have to go back on the bus again and be in the house. We were scared for her and for ourselves.

  Dad was calling her a lot. At first when we arrived he called about us. He and Mom had a big argument but in the end it seemed right that since Dad had been so horrible to Preston that we would want to go up and be by our mom especially since we usually spent our summers at the cabin anyway. Dad wouldn’t stop calling though and Mom got to the point where she was hanging up on him and he called back over and over. Mom told us that he was threatening to come up and kill us all.

  If I answered the phone, thinking maybe I could talk some sense into him, he would start swearing and yelling. I couldn’t really tell what he wanted at that point. Everything he yelled over the phone was a threat. It seemed like he hated us. It seemed like we hated him.

  I knew I needed to make money. My mom had heard that the biggest resort on the lake was hiring girls my age for cabin-cleaning and waitressing. My mom drove me over to the resort one morning so I didn’t have to go alone and because I was a little scared to ask about a job.

  Inside the old lodge I spoke with the owner—a big man with a playful joking personality who said his family was all from Chicago. I liked him right away. He must have thought I seemed okay because he introduced me to Margaret, the cook in the lodge kitchen and told her to show me the ropes. She was not sure about me at all and she made that clear to him and to me. Margaret showed me around the 60-year-old log kitchen and the stool I could sit on by the big warm stove with many burners and three ovens. In the mornings I was to peel potatoes from a huge burlap sack into an equally large tin pan filled with water. That sounded like an okay job to me. I had peeled many potatoes for my mom and knew just how it was done with a metal peeler. I could picture myself doing that and even kind of enjoying it. She showed me how the tables were to be set for the fishermen’s breakfast and again for dinner.

  She brought me out to the back and introduced me to her daughter-in-law, Jeannie, who was in charge of the rental cabins. Jeannie walked me through a couple of cabins, talking as if I’d been scrubbing toilets and wiping dust off the tops of light bulbs all my life. Although I knew how to clean a toilet, I had never considered wiping the dust off the top of a light bulb and it had never occurred to me that dust would accumulate there. In each cabin bathroom there were exposed lightbulbs over the sink and they all needed dusting every week. Who knew?

  Jeannie was cute and sassy, maybe thirty years old at most. She was married to the cook’s son who was the groundskeeper for the resort. She told me they had two little boys, and that they lived in one of the cabins on the resort property. Her husband was out chopping wood in a far corner and she waved at him as we walked briskly from cabin to cabin. Jeannie walked with a sexy fun air of confidence and enthusiasm. She had a tight thin body, and it made sense to me when she mentioned that she had her own horse she rode in barrel races in a pasture at the other end of the property. She had red hair in wonderful natural waves and bangs that hung just a bit over her bright blue eyes. She had light skin and freckles. She wore a calico-print cotton blouse tied in front at her midriff, and high-waisted flare-legged jeans that were too short but somehow looked great with her lace-up brown work boots. I thought she was wonderful.

  I followed Jeannie back to the lodge to see where I would pick up my cleaning supplies when I arrived at work. We saw my mom sitting on a bench near our truck. “Mom, this is Jeannie. She’s in charge of the cabins and she’s showing me how to do the cleaning on Saturdays. It looks like I have the job!”

  Jeannie extended a firm hand to my mother and I saw my mother hesitate.

  “Hello,” my mother smiled her fake demure smile at Jeannie. “Sidney, what? Oh, you’ll be cleaning? Are you sure? I don’t know … that’s very hard work … ”

  “Yeah Mom, that’s the job. Helping in the cabins and in the kitchen and in the dining room. It’s great.” I was happy about it and I wanted to make sure Jeannie understood that.

  Jeannie jumped in with her impatient manner, “Yeah, well, Sidney seems excited about it and she’s willing to give it a shot so let’s just let your daughter see what she can do. If it doesn’t work out she can quit … unless she gets fired first! Ha ha, right Sidney?”

  I wasn’t afraid. I thought it was perfect. It actually sounded fun. I would have to be there at six in the morning every day. I would peel potatoes and set tables. Then I would serve the fishermen their breakfasts. After that I cleared the breakfast dishes and reset all the tables. I would have to wash the dishes some days too. Then I could go home on weekdays and not come back until four. I would help serve dinners some evenings. On Saturdays I would clean cabins.

  I started the very next day. I drove over in the Volare. It was only about three miles down the road toward the town.

  Margaret did not suffer fools gladly. When I got there the first morning she acted like I should just jump in and do everything she asked, but there was a lot I didn’t know. She taught me how to run the old-style dishwashing machine, which had racks for the dishes on a conveyor belt that you manually shoved along until the dishes were under the spigots for the burning hot water and spraying dish soap. You yanked down the sheet metal doors with wooden handles on either side of your rack of dishes and let the burning water and stinging green soap do its magic. Then, without burning your hands or forearms you hoisted up the metal door on the far end and pulled the clean dishes out onto the end of the conveyor belt where they cooled. Margaret was disgusted that I was afraid of the hot water and the dirty dishes. She showed me how you picked up every dish and scraped it clean into a big metal garbage can at the front of the line and I felt like I might vomit when I saw all the
people’s discarded food. I didn’t want to touch their dirty dishes.

  The cook snapped at me, “I’ve never worked with a spoiled city slicker before and I hope you won’t make me regret it now. I’m giving you a chance here. Maybe you can learn to make something of yourself. If you can’t, I’ll fire you. I have no time for spoiled little rich girls.”

  “Well good because I don’t either,” I answered. I thought I saw her smile.

  I felt great about working every day, making a paycheck and tips. The people around the lodge were nice; the fishermen, the older couples who’d been coming every year since the ‘30s. The owner from Chicago was a big out-of-shape guy who didn’t seem capable of running such a labor-intensive operation. He and his wife had only owned the place for a few years. His wife was tiny and smoked and drank coffee all day and switched over to some kind of brown liquor in a lowball glass every afternoon. She wore well-made wool skirt-and-jacket sets with nice dress shoes and silk stockings the way older women in Chicago did. She seemed to have no desire to adapt to the Northwoods. Somehow she knew something about me, because every once in a while she’d throw out some clever comment or quote or French phrase, and she’d look at me. I would usually get what she meant and she’d say, “Right Sidney?” And then she’d wink. Her husband would joke, “Well good thing you’re here Sidney because more than half of everything my wife says is completely lost on the rest of us.” They made a strange couple but they seemed to genuinely like each other and to enjoy their circumstance.

  The owners must have bought the place and kept the staff because Margaret the cook knew more about everything and had been working there forever. Margaret would tell the owner and his wife how to do things and they’d do it. The cook was the one who was really running the place and she knew it and she was always mildly disgusted and looking down on the rest of us, the city slickers. It was a nice coincidence for me that the owners and I were from Chicago, and that they too were obviously urban people by habit. Margaret was always taking an “us against them” viewpoint. She felt that she and the other locals were more hardworking. I don’t know whether that was actually true. But she had herself convinced and she’d go out of her way to convince me.