Unclaimed Baggage

by Jen Doll

  PART II

  July

  26

  Doris

  A week later, I roll out of the comfort of my bed, head to the bathroom, and take a look at myself in the mirror. There I am, same as I ever was, dark hair, kind of a mess from sleeping, dark eyes, which I rub to wake up a little more, sixteen years of existence in human form. Sometimes when I stop and look at myself, I dare to think I’m pretty. Other times I avoid looking at myself at all, because what I look like isn’t really the point. I always think it’s strange when I overhear girls complimenting each other on their looks. Oh, you’re so beautiful, I’m so jealous, I HATE you, one will say, and the other will say, Ugh, I’m awful, YOU are the gorgeous one! (Even if she thinks she is and the other isn’t.) What’s pretty, anyway? It’s whatever we’ve been told by each other, by society, and it changes according to the decade and era. Just look at old paintings, or even magazines from the ’70s and ’80s. The beautiful people looked a whole lot different than they do now.

  But no matter what I look like, I’m not like a lot of other girls in my town. I don’t know if it’s because of Teddy or if it would have happened anyway, but I’m different, the way Maya is different, the way Nell is different, maybe. The way Stella was different. Fighting against what’s generally accepted hasn’t helped me win any popularity contests. But it’s better to do what you think is right … right? Even if you rock the boat. That’s what Stel said, and if there’s one person I truly believe, it’s her. Even though it’s the kind of thing Sunday school teachers will tell you—and you know how I feel about that—beauty really is more about what’s inside than what’s outside. My aunt Stella was the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.

  * * *

  After I brush my teeth and comb my hair and pee, I head to the kitchen, where Mom is making oatmeal, a dish she always refers to as “the breakfast of champions.” (I know she didn’t make that up on her own, nor does she even have the proper cereal for the tagline, but I let her have it.) Dad’s outside mowing the lawn, which is his second favorite thing to do, I think, after watching football. The scent of fresh grass permeates the kitchen, and I breathe in deep. I love that smell.

  “Good morning!” I say, and my mom waves her wooden spoon at me.

  “You got another postcard from your friend,” she tells me, pointing the utensil at the counter of the island that sits in the middle of our kitchen. A pile of mail waits there.

  “Ooh,” I say, and reach for the latest installment from Maya, which is at the top. This one’s a vintage card that says GREETINGS FROM ALABAMA across a map of the state, which features cartoon drawings of a guy with a gun and his dog, a guy fishing, a guy mining, and a guy with a football. You know, all the key Alabama activities. I turn it over.

  DORIS, MY DEAR DORIS, this card seems to have forgotten that people other than men exist in our grand state! Can you draw me something that better reflects the current sociocultural reality, and how much time we spend reading internet articles about feminism? Speaking of realities, Hannah and I are now AN ACTUAL MOTHER-FREAKIN’ ITEM! I did what you said and made a move. I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk during free time while the campers were having a canoe lesson. And she did and we talked and she likes me too and now I am kinda-sorta SWOONSVILLE. What’s going on back home? I think it’s time you made a move, if you can find anyone worth making a move on, that is. I know, I know. A PAUCITY OF RESOURCES. But maybe someone got cute over the summer? Miss you dreadfully but now I never want to come home. XOXOXOXOXO write back soon.

  I have a million questions I want to ask Maya, and I’ve started writing a response in my head that includes a lot of!!!!!! and .

  “Ahem,” says my mom, interrupting my train of thought. “Can you explain something to me? What does Maya mean she’s ‘an item’ with this other girl? Is that how you girls talk now?”

  My mom has never accepted that Maya likes girls romantically. She has passed it off as a phase, as Maya trying to be “attractive to boys,” as Maya trying to be mysterious and different, and now, apparently, as just the way kids talk nowadays.

  “Mom,” I say, “we’ve been over this before. Maya is a lesbian. That means she’s a girl who’s attracted to girls. And she’s dating a girl who’s a counselor at the camp she’s working at this summer. It’s not a phase. She’s always felt this way.”

  Mom shakes her head. “She must be confused. Her poor family.”

  I feel anger flare up in me. “She’s not confused, nor is her family poor. Why do you always act like she can’t really feel the way she feels? What’s wrong with being gay?”

  “It just makes things so much harder,” she says, shaking her head sadly. And then she narrows her eyes at me. “Are you sure you’re not gay, too?”

  “Mother,” I tell her. “Stop. I have a gay friend. I am not gay myself. Even if I don’t date anyone, because the boys in this town are abysmal. But if I was gay, for the record: There would be nothing wrong with that.”

  She looks at me doubtfully, and I know she’s thinking about how I’m always hanging out with Nell now, and Grant sometimes, and how she wishes I were always hanging out with Grant. Since I hired him, she’s made several references to how good-looking he is, how nice his family is, and what a cute couple we’d make. I know she dreams that the captain of the football team and I will date and fall in love and marry and have babies and live in this town forever, just like she did with my dad. (How little she knows about the truth of Grant Collins! Or how little I am head-cheerleader material.)

  But I see this as a strategic moment, and I’m going to use it.

  Mom is not a fan of the balloon festival. This is because it’s loud and crowded, and because a lot of times teenagers get drunk in the woods and “wreak havoc,” as she says. (That means break things and spray paint things and possibly have sex.) Every year I get a lengthy lecture about it before she finally lets me go.

  But if she knows Grant is going, there’s a chance she’ll be on board a little bit faster than usual.

  “If you’re really going to that balloon thing”—she rolls her eyes—“you need to have something in your stomach.” She fills a bowl with oatmeal and slides it across the island at me, and I grab a spoon.

  “So, tell me the plan,” she says, putting a lid on the oatmeal and leaning across the counter on her elbows, her eyebrows lifted.

  “I’m going to go pick up Grant and Nell,” I explain calmly, because calm is always the best practice when dealing with parents, “and then we’re going to drive out to the campgrounds and pick a safe spot to set up camp, and then we’re going to see the balloons and walk around and maybe play some card games. I promise if anything seems off, I will come home immediately, and otherwise, I will probably be asleep by ten and then you will see me the next day.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you sleeping in the woods with a boy,” she says.

  “He’ll have his own tent!” I say. “And Nell and I will be together in hers. And there are literally hundreds—thousands!—of people around, including a ton of adults, including Nell’s parents.”

  My mom is utterly conflicted. If I’m sleeping in the woods with Grant, that eases some of her worries about how I might be gay. It sounds romantic. Maybe we really will fall in love, watching the sunset from the giddy heights of a balloon ride. But she also lives in fear that I might do something “untoward.” I’m still not totally sure she doesn’t in some way blame me for what happened at the water park, just like Mrs. Stokes did. And if her dear daughter were ever to be caught with her top down around a boy again—or worse—I think she would very nearly expire from shame.

  Anyway, what I’ve told her isn’t completely a lie. But I don’t say that Nell’s plan is to pitch our tent as far from her parents as we possibly can. And I definitely don’t go into how I’m not sure Grant has his own tent (we might all be in Nell’s), though I do know he has his own sleeping bag. He bought one at Unclaimed the other week.

  She si
ghs. I eat my oatmeal slowly. The most important part of parent-child negotiations is the pacing. Come on too strong, you lose because you seem to want it too much; wait it out, it’s probably yours. Time’s ticking, though: I glance at the clock. I need to be at Nell’s in twenty minutes.

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m not going to get pregnant just because I’m sleeping in the woods near a boy,” I say. Bringing up the p-word might backfire entirely, but I can’t wait anymore.

  “Doris, don’t you dare even say that!” she says, swatting me with her spoon and frowning. “That is not something to joke about! Girls have lost their reputations and ruined their lives! And the lives of their families!”

  “You know it takes more than just a woman to make a baby, Mom,” I say, but she gives me a death stare, so I try to reel it back in. “You have to trust me. I’m your daughter. You’ve taught me well.” I give her a hopeful smile, and she relents.

  “I know. You would never … but I worry. I can’t help it,” she says. “In two years you’ll be off living on your own at college … and who knows where you’ll go after that. You’re so much like your aunt; it scares me sometimes.”

  We’re quiet for a minute, remembering Stel. I feel sad, but with a twinge of happy. I can tell she’s going to let me go.

  “Aw, Mom!” I get up and give her an awkward hug, since she’s back at frenetically stirring her oatmeal, and kiss her on the cheek. “I’m not leaving the country. I just need to be me. What are you doing today?”

  “We have a huge order for a family reunion: two hundred chicken wings, with Buffalo sauce! Plus my famous chess pie.” She grins. “Money for Samford!”

  My heart hurts a little because, while I appreciate that she wants me to go to college, she knows my heart is set on Brown, not on the Alabama Baptist college she and my dad went to together. High school sweethearts who never left each other’s side, they might be one in a million.

  But I don’t want to start talking about college. “Don’t forget the celery sticks,” I tell her, because she always does when she stores something at home instead of in her catering company’s kitchen. “Remember, they’re in the bottom drawer of the fridge, under the onions.”

  “Thank you, honey bun,” she tells me. “Have fun and be good!” She kisses the top of my head good-bye.

  Then I’m on my way to Nell’s house. This is my first campout. At the back of my mind, I can’t help wondering about what my mom said.… Does Grant actually have his own tent? And, more to the point, do I want him to?

  27

  Grant

  There used to be plenty of fanfare when I was leaving for a big game, or even a small one, because in my town even the tiniest games are still pretty big. Mom would hug me and kiss me on the cheek, and maybe tousle my hair if there wasn’t a bunch of other dudes around. Brian would high-five me, or pat me on the back in a fatherly way. I haven’t seen that in a while. But this morning, as I’m lugging my gear to the foyer so I’m ready when Doris picks me up, my mom is positively beaming like in the old days, and Brian has given me a high five twice. Which is kind of funny, especially since I’m about to go camp out with two girls, but like I’ve said before, these girls are different.

  Even better, ever since the playhouse confession, I’m starting to feel like I’m different, too. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol. I’m daring to hope I might be moving in the right direction. Maybe it shows.

  “Doris is such a good influence!” I’ve heard my mom gushing into the phone when she talks to her friends. “She may not go to church, but she’s a real sweetie pie. And Nell is new in town—have you met her family yet? Her mother is an actual rocket scientist!”

  I survey my stuff in the hallway: duffel bag (I wonder what Nell would name this one) packed with a clean T-shirt and shorts and boxers and a hoodie in case it gets cold at night. Mom’s stuffed a load of fresh-baked cookies in there, too, so my clothes are going to smell like chocolate. Could be worse. There’s my flashlight and spare batteries, a first aid kit, bug spray, water, and some ropes and other camping stuff that I’m sure I’m not going to use. I’ve got my new sleeping bag tightly rolled next to the duffel, and that’s when I realize I don’t have a tent. Whoops. Probably should have thought about that before now.

  I hear Mom and Brian chatting in the kitchen, and go in to find them. “Hey, um,” I say, standing there and feeling kind of silly. “I’m a little late to this, but: Do we have a tent?”

  Mom looks at Brian, and Brian looks at Mom. “That would be helpful, huh?” he says. I nod. “Yeah, follow me!” We head to the garage, and he starts digging through the boxes piled up high on shelves in front of the family cars. It’s almost like I’m back at Unclaimed. I’m never going to look at a container the same way again after this summer. “Hold this, will you?” he asks, handing me a cardboard box that says G, FOOTBALL.

  It’s got no top, so right away I see the first football I ever owned and my tiny helmet from the peewee games I played in elementary school. It’s like a slap in the face to the former me.

  “Oh, sorry, man,” Brian says, noticing my expression. He reaches for the box, but I hold on to it. That’s when he notices my fingernails. “Is that … nail polish?” he asks.

  “Yeah, it’s for a joke,” I say, which is the first explanation I think of. I’m certainly not going to tell him that Fireworks now lives in my bathroom, and sometimes my pocket, or that Doris and Nell have taught me the phrase “touch-ups.” I’m also not going to reveal that so far the nail polish trick is working better than anything else I’ve tried to get me to stop drinking.

  He doesn’t press, though the expression on his face makes it clear he thinks I might have gone off the deep end.

  “Can you believe I ever fit into this stuff?” I say to change the subject, digging into the box. I pull out the miniature pants and shirt styled just like a professional uniform to reveal a bunch of gilded trophies. Even then, I won. I always won, until I lost.

  “Maybe someday the twins will want to use that stuff,” he says, and looks at me carefully. “Maybe you’d want to teach them. I bet they’d like that.”

  “Maybe,” I say. I think about how my dad taught me to play, back before any of the other stuff happened. I remember throwing footballs in the yard for hours. He’d never get bored, and neither would I.

  “Here we go!” says Brian, pulling down a large backpack-tent contraption. “All the components are in here. You can carry it around on your back. Do you know how to put it together?”

  “Um,” I say. He glances at his watch.

  “I’d show you now, but I have an appointment about the Dorsets’ yard in ten minutes.”

  “That’s OK,” I say. “The Dorsets need more help than I do. I’ve never seen their lawn any color but brown. Can anything actually grow there?”

  “We’re going to try.” He pats me on the back. “Have fun camping, Grant. Drink plenty of water; it’s going to be a hot one. Call me if you need troubleshooting on the tent—or anything.”

  “How hard can it be?” I ask.

  28

  Nell

  The balloon festival really is epic. I’ve seen hot-air balloons before, but never a whole field of them in different stages of life. Some are still half bubbles on the ground, tethered and attached to hot-air pumps. They look like living, breathing creatures as they slowly fill with air. Some are still flat little balloon worms clinging to the grass. And some are floating above us gently, hovering and bobbing like weird jellyfish of the sky.

  We lug our backpacks and sleeping bags and tent equipment and Doris’s mom’s cooler packed with homemade treats from our parking spot to the entrance to the festival grounds. From there, we’ll have to walk to the campsite, Doris explains. She quickly lapses into narrator mode as we go.

  “The balloon fest is an annual tradition in town and has been going on since the seventies, when the mayor instituted an annual Fourth of July balloonfest hoedown. Luckily, they’ve since dropped the ‘ho’ p
art.” She laughs. “No one really wanted to square dance, or at least, once the nineties got here, it was kind of a lost cause. But at night when the balloons are all tethered, bands still play on the stage over in the south field, and there’s a pretty awesome fireworks display. The Allman Brothers used to show up. One year Willie Nelson came, and all the parents were so excited.”

  “Hey, should we find a spot to camp and drop off our stuff?” asks Grant. “This backpack tent thing is heavier than it looks.” He wipes some sweat from his face.

  Doris points at a wooded area in the distance, beyond all the balloons and vendors selling T-shirts and souvenirs and ice cream. “We just need to navigate through the crowds to get to the campground end of things.”

  We forge ahead, listening as we go. Doris is explaining how they schedule the balloons with different takeoff times throughout the day to keep them from hitting one another as they rise—before the staggered start times, that actually happened, but luckily no one was hurt. Farther off on the horizon I see balloons that look like tiny little dots, the way houses or cars appear from the air when you’re up in a plane. “People come from everywhere for this!” she says. “There’s a circuit of balloon festivals happening in places from New Mexico and Mississippi to Quebec, and some of the participants fly around all year, going to all of them.”

  “I guess once you own a hot-air balloon, you really want to take advantage of it,” I say. “Where do you even keep it when you’re not using it?”

  “A giant suitcase?” quips Grant.

  We pass a crowd of people waiting to go on balloon rides. I’m all set to jump in line, but Doris and Grant guide me back.

  “Waiting can take forever,” Doris warns me. “It’s the old-people version of camping out to get the new iPhone. My favorite time to go is right at dusk. All the crabby kids have generally been taken home by their parents at that point. Sometimes you get on board with a newly married couple wanting to see the sunset, though, and that can be upsetting.” She wrinkles her nose, remembering. “PDA-wise.”