The Thong Also Rises

by Jennifer L. Leo

  It was early morning. I was trying to keep sleeping, but my mother was violently shaking my foot. She had turned on all the lights in our low-ceilinged hotel room and was dripping water off her raincoat onto my bedclothes.

  “Gina! You’ve got to get up and help me right now. I’ve done something terrible.”

  I sat up fast. This pale woman frantically flinging raindrops, her gray hair wild, was so unlike my cheerful and practical British mother—whom lightning, poisonous snakes, and even war had never been able to rattle—that I was alarmed.

  “I’ve done something awful,” my mother said, sitting down hard on my feet. “I’ve stolen something.” My heart flopped into my throat—had my father’s death unhinged her? She seemed frantic with distress and my mind filled with preposterous thoughts: Had she stolen jewelry? A gun? Had she shot somebody?

  I scootched to the foot of the bed. Julie and Tessa and I watched as with shaking hands she opened her straw bag and removed an object hidden under her scarf. “Oh, dear,” she said, unveiling the object of her crime. And here it was: a five-inch-high pink plastic dashboard mascot of a roguish little boy. He was holding his outsized dick in his hand and pissing into a little toilet. By means of the handle on the toilet, the penis of this fiendish boy could be ratchetted up or down. Coming out of early morning Mass, glowing with the beauty of the sacrament and the fresh Capri dawn, my mother had stepped into a shop to buy postcards. This hideous toy, grinning at her from the cash register, had struck her like a blow. She had told the shopkeeper it was a shame to have such a thing in such a beautiful setting. She had offered to buy it from him. No, he had said, shrugging, it was a present from a friend. And then he had turned his back. It had taken her only a moment to commit her crime, to swish the ugly thing into her big straw bag and hurry out into the wet street.

  I was outraged and pushed her off my feet. For this she got me up? But my mother was in a frenzy of anxiety.

  “What if he saw me?” she says. “What if he told the police? What if it gets into the papers?” She imagined the headlines for us, something like this: PROFESSOR’S WIDOW STEALS OBSCENE TOY. “Gina,” she said, “you’ve got to go right now and explain to that man. Apologize for me.”

  Now I was scared. Was my mother coming unglued? Why did she have to go and do this crazy thing? And now she wanted me to fix it. But I was proving good at denial these days. “I need more sleep,” I told her. “I’ll take it back later.”

  “We’re not taking it back,” she said. “I just want you to explain to the man and apologize for me. Tell him his island of Capri is so beautiful that he shouldn’t have such an ugly thing on his cash register. It doesn’t belong. Offer to pay for it.” She opened her wallet, her British self again, mustering her troop.

  “It doesn’t matter what’s on a store’s cash register,” I argued, exasperated now. “It’s his store.”

  “Yes it does,” said my mother firmly. “It’s ugly and we’re not giving it back.” She wasn’t suffering from madness after all, I realized, just grief and offended aesthetics.

  I got resentfully out of the cozy bedclothes. With very bad grace, I took the envelope of lire my mother handed me. Perhaps I even looked up crazy in the Italian dictionary.Then I put on my shorts and sweater and stepped out onto the drizzly street. I was aware that I was being a graceless daughter, that Julie or Tessa, who were devoted to my mother, would have embraced the mission of clearing her name. But I was the one who spoke a little Italian. I walked across the cobbles towards the shop, rehearsing my speech, full of dread. And then an idea occurred to me—a way to postpone the moment of walking into the shop. A gesture that might almost redeem me in my own eyes. Minutes ticked by as I ducked in and out of tourist shops, hoping that my cousins were worrying at my delay and not enjoying breakfast without me. At last I lit on another boy-statue, this one a terracotta cherub, genderless, mostly wings.

  Armed with my bland cherub, I crossed the street and walked fast into the pillaged shop and straight to the counter before I could lose my courage. But the shopkeeper was talking to a friend, which gave me time to be nervous, time to look at the cash register, where the nasty boy must have been, time to wonder—absurdly—how the shopkeeper could even keep shop, as though nothing had happened, with his interesting mascot missing from right under his eye.Time to wonder whether he knew already the reason that brought me here, while he chatted deliberately on and on.

  Finally, the friend moved away from the cash register. I stepped forward, my cherub in hand. I pushed the envelope of lire across the counter, and then I unwrapped the cherub. “This is for you, signor,” I told him. “My mother,” I said, pointing to the empty spot, “has stolen your boy. She is matta, crazy,” I told him in broken Italian, dancing my fingers on either side of my face to show him crazy. “My father is dead,” I told him.

  “Bene, bene, it’s all right,” he told me, mostly bored. But I pressed the modest cherub on him. “Non, signorina.” He didn’t want it and tried to give it back to me.

  “Take it!” I said, and fled from the shop. In the drizzly street I cried for a long time, for my father, for my mother, for my unkindness in not recognizing her theft as a symptom of grief. Then I wiped my eyes and went back to the pensione.

  On the night we left Capri, my cousins and I leaned over the white ferry railing. The black water was foaming far below us as we ploughed away from the magical island, and we had a job to do. “Here he is!” said Julie. In a moment, she and Tessa were merrily balancing the toy on the railing, pushing the tiny tank handle up and down a last few times. My mother’s crime embarrassed me still, and my own unsympathetic heart, but then I was laughing, too, as the three of us, with a giddy hoot, consigned the unzipped boy to the waves.

  Gina Briefs-Elgin teaches composition and creative nonfiction at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico. She writes about travel, confectionary, the decorative arts, and the literature of mysticism. Her favorite activities are traveling with her husband and son, riding Amtrak, and fishing trout streams (although it dismays her to catch anything).

  NICOLE DREON

  And Then I Was Eight…Again

  Childhood can last forever.

  THE IDEA OF BUDGET TRAVEL AS A NOVELTY WOULD appall my mother.A lifelong penny pincher, coupon clipper, and notorious tightwad—even Arthur Frommer’s prudent advice pales in comparison to my mother’s frugality. Were she the Queen of Sheba, she would bellow from her deathbed, “How much for the casket?” before proclaiming emphatically, “That’s ridiculous,” and croaking.

  Her fiscal woes were only complicated by my father’s own neuroses—a man who would routinely sprint up mountain peaks just to declare himself the winner; then, unabashedly, relieve himself in front of the Cleaver’s Sunday picnic while they pondered whom he was racing. As a family we embraced nature with the same fleeting satisfaction one might allot a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Had Henry David Thoreau’s Walden appeared in our car on a family vacation, we’d have balled up the pages and used them as toilet paper. “Don’t worry,” my mom would have assured us, “you’ve seen the movie before. It’s the sad one with Jane Fonda.”

  “But Mom,” my brother and I would have howled in unison, “the paper hurts when we wipe.”

  The consequences of such parenting were a seamless blur of childhood vacations spent sling-shotting across the country. The routine was always the same. Right before the park entrance we’d slow to a crawl, Mom would lean over and read the sign through her coke bottle glasses and sigh, “Ages eight and under free.” Knowing what came next, I’d cry out immediately, “No, no, no, I’ve been eight for three years!” It didn’t matter. In our family, my brother and I were like ageless movie stars. I once asked my mother what year we visited Yellowstone, and she replied, “When you were eight and your brother was six.” Shortly thereafter, I found a photo of our family in front of Old Faithful—my brother had a beard.

  One of the summers when I was eight and my brother was six
the car we called “Lemon” had the audacity to overheat in Badlands, South Dakota. Besides throwing a crimp into our packed agenda, it left us stranded, like the cliché, on a lone desert highway. When we piled into the front seat of the tow truck, my and Allen’s skinny legs dangled limply above the floorboard. Mom squished up against Dad with the window rolled all the way down.

  We had an Aunt Sherry who lived outside of Rapid City, and Mom informed us we would be staying with her until Lemon got fixed. Allen begged her to take us to a real hotel like the one in Cincinnati with the vibrating beds. I asked who Aunt Sherry was and why we’d never heard of her. “She’s your Uncle Jack’s first wife,” Mom told us, “they were divorced before you were born.”We’d never met Uncle Jack either. I’d only ever heard Mom talk about him in that tone she used with her adult friends. “The last one he married was going to get deported,” she’d say. “He was old enough to be her father.”

  Aunt Sherry came to get us in an old blue pickup. Allen and I rode in the back and ping-ponged around the truck bed every time she pumped the brakes. “You two O.K.?” Mom would holler from inside the cab every now and again. Aunt Sherry wore short cut-off jeans and cowboy boots, and we could see her boobs through her t-shirt.They weren’t like the boobs in Dad’s nudie magazine, the same magazine I once whipped out in front of our babysitter and she nearly died of a coronary. “What,” she gasped, horrified. “What would your father say if he knew you were reading Playboy at the dinner table?”

  “He lets me read the articles,” I lied and then tried not to spill macaroni on the grown-up girl’s privates. No, Aunt Sherry had real swingers, more like my mom’s, and it made Allen and me giggle.

  It felt like forever before we finally pulled into Aunt Sherry’s driveway. She hopped out first, and Allen and I staggered to stand up on our sea legs. “Now you kids,” Sherry spoke to us slowly, “stay away from Bruno the attack dog and don’t go near his duck ’cuz they are friends. And if the geese give you any trouble wave your arms in the air and pretend to be bigger.” As soon as I heard the words dog and attack in the same sentence my hands got clammy and my eyes rolled back in my head.

  “Oh come on, Colie,” my mom tried to coax me out of the truck two hours later, “you can’t stay out here all night.” I could and I would. I could not fathom being mauled or pecked to death.

  “The rattlesnakes will get ya, if ya stay out here at night,” a deep voice rumbled that apparently belonged to my Uncle Brooks. Uncle Brooks wore black socks with sandals and his legs were plastered with mosquito bites, but his authority on rattlesnakes had me bee-lining for the house.

  “Do I look bigger than the geese?” I screamed mid-sprint, flailing my arms in the air. “Dad, open the door, here I come.”

  “You look like a big ’tard is what you look like,” Dad scolded when I reached him. “Run with your arms down, sissy, it’s faster.”

  “Oh honey,” Sherry said soothingly. “The geese are out back for the night.”

  Two days had passed when Aunt Sherry decided she had had enough of us asking why there were thirteen dressers in one room and none in another, or why we couldn’t drink water from the tap, or why Uncle Brooks only wore one sock when he fell asleep in the yard. “We’re going to the pool,” she announced after breakfast. “Get your little swimmers on, let’s go.”

  “Yippie, yippie,” Allen and I jumped up and down. “Let’s go, let’s go.”

  For as long as I can remember my dad and brother wore matching Speedos to the pool—a father/son ritual our whole family agrees haunts my brother to this day. Dad would parade around proudly in front of the pool girls when Mom had her glasses off; my brother’s little orange trunks fell off without fail on the slide. By the time we reached puberty, we forbade our father to sit with us at the beach. “Don’t come near us in that ball buster,” we’d warn him.

  “All the Canadians wear Speedos,” he’d tell us proudly. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because you’re not Canadian, Mr. Banana Hammock, now beat it.”

  “Would you two be nice to your father,” my mother would murmur without looking up from her book and then Dad would sulk and head farther down the beach.

  Aunt Sherry knew everyone at the community pool in Rapid City, and she was still gabbing at the concession stand when we stripped off our nylon shorts and scurried for the shallow end. My feet burned on the pavement so I ran faster; Allen clasped the sides of his Speedo and tried to keep up. We didn’t get out of the water until Aunt Sherry offered us a popsicle. “I want cherry,” I told her, and she started rummaging through her purse.

  “This looks red,” she announced and surfaced with a dripping piece of wax paper from the depths of her big, black body bag.

  On the way home, Mom was worried because Aunt Sherry was talking funny and the brakes in the truck still didn’t work. When we pulled into the driveway, Uncle Brooks was sprawled on the lawn like a rotting carcass. His comb-over was wafting in the breeze, and Bruno’s duck was pecking at his head. When he suddenly sat up and started sputtering, “What the hell…what the hell are you people doing up so early?” we all jumped back in our seats.

  Sherry staggered out from behind the wheel and hollered at him, “Brooks you dumb shit, it’s four in the afternoon.”

  “Well goddamn,” Brooks coughed dumbfounded. “Well goddamn if it is.”

  Later that night, Sherry didn’t take the chicken out of the freezer in time to defrost for dinner, so we had hot dogs outside on the picnic bench. Brooks stood on the lawn chair and vacuumed bugs off the lantern, while we shouted at each other like old people.

  By morning Dad was on the phone with Lemon’s mechanic, and he had that serious look on his face. Mom stood behind him whispering, “How much? How much?” and he motioned her away. Allen and I had a new game where we took turns jumping on the couch to make dust clouds. “Aunt Sherry,” Allen blabbed during bounces, “at night when we’re camping, Mom pees in a bucket in the camper.” I started howling until Mom slapped my leg.

  We left Aunt Sherry’s at dusk because Dad didn’t want to drive Lemon during the day when it was hot out. We spent the next four weeks touring the country in the dark like a band of little refugees. First, though, we headed to that place where the faces were carved into the mountain. “Whose faces are they, Dad?” we asked anxiously.

  “A couple of ugly guys with big noses,” he told us.

  “Do I have to be eight?” I probed.

  Mom yawned and answered, “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Nicole Dreon works for ESPN’s X Games in their research department, where she interviews adrenaline junkies on a regular basis. She is an East Coast transplant who headed west after college in search of cowboys, but is still single nine years later due to her fear of horses. Nicole recently climbed and worked on a documentary film about the Rwenzoris Mountains of Uganda. The only time she’s set foot in an office was to work for Points North Heli-Adventures in Alaska, where she traded a paycheck for heli-time. When she’s not on the road, she calls Truckee, California, home.

  We woke up at daylight a few hours later to the sound of the roosters. I rolled over and noticed a familiar image. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a perfect smile, and an absurdly proportioned figure. Barbie sheets! I LOVED Barbie throughout childhood and may even harbor a secret desire to be Barbie with her great life, car, townhouse, wardrobe, and boyfriend Ken. She can do anything. And here I was in the middle of the jungle in Bolivia sleeping on Barbie sheets. I never had Barbie sheets at home. I was never even allowed to have the Barbie car or townhouse.This was true splendor. When we finally got ourselves out of the Barbie comfort, we went to inquire with the hotel owner about the river boats. The owner sent us down to the river, but mentioned that she didn’t think that the boats were running this time of year. We checked out the small town. Small houses built of wood with thatched roofs, animals running around, and beautiful vegetation. Not a tourist in sight. We were lucky there was a hotel there. With Barbie sheets n
o less.

  —Joanna Popper, “The Back of the Bus with Mom”

  JENNIFER COX

  Hot Date with a Yogi

  She was dripping with sweat but beset by a wardrobe malfunction.

  NATHAN TAUGHT BIKRAM YOGA, THE INDIAN DISCIPLINE of yoga in a room heated to 100 degrees (the idea being that it relaxes your muscles, releasing trapped toxins and allowing you to efficiently sweat them out). I’d been put in touch with Nathan through my friend Kate at the Australian Tourist Commission in Sydney.

  Our date was tonight, but in his message Nathan suggested I come to his class that afternoon, then we could go straight on to our date afterward.

  Unfortunately, I’d had my phone switched off. Date Protocol: I felt it was bad form to take a phone call from your next date while the current one was still in progress— and now it was already afternoon. I stuck out my arm and hailed a cab downtown.

  I arrived at the Bikram center with five minutes to spare. As I dashed up the steps, I caught sight of a completely gorgeous man disappearing into a room, steam already condensing madly on the windows. He was followed by a group of star-struck women (and a couple of men). If that was Nathan, I could see why the class was so popular…and why the classroom was hot and steamy. (I’m always happy to embrace my inner shallow.)