Songs for a Teenage Nomad

by Kim Culbertson

  “Okay.” I take a breath. Alexa watches me, waiting. “Four years after my dad split, she married Ted. Red Mustang. He’s the first one I really remember. He didn’t last long after we moved to L.A. He wanted to be a producer or director or something.”

  “That’s original,” Alexa says.

  I tick our cities off on my fingers. “She took that one pretty hard. Then it was Chuck in Bakersfield with the Explorer. Art in Gilroy with the Freelander. Freeloader is more like it. And then Steve in Manteca with the Excursion. That guy had a whole separate family in another city. Total loser. Then we went to Sedona, Arizona, for a brief new-age period my mom went through when I was nine.”

  “Another Ford?”

  I nod. “Yeah. Tom. Two-toned Maverick. He left us in the middle of the night, and a week later we moved to Santa Barbara where my mom knew a guy.”

  “Santa Barbara’s nice,” Alexa offers, moving her ladder again.

  “It was okay. I went to, like, three different schools there, depending on who Mom was with. But then Dan ‘Call me Dad—it’s just one letter away’ showed up and moved us to Sacramento. Gray Ford Taurus. He lasted the longest of any of them. They even had a real wedding with flowers and food and stuff. My mom wouldn’t get out of bed for three days after he left.”

  “That sucks.”

  “I ate a lot of cereal during those three days.” I stop, thinking about the week following Dan’s exit. Living in the U-Haul. Eating Burger King because a friend of Mom’s worked there. I don’t tell Alexa this part. “Then we met Ted Number 2. He had this battered, lemon-yellow Ford truck with a bench seat. He was blond, tan, a total surfer guy—younger than my mom.”

  “Sounds cute,” Alexa says, taking a break from her painting to stretch her arms and back.

  “Very cute,” I nod. “He was going to San Diego to design surfboards, so we went with him. We were three blocks from the beach in this tiny house. We ate pizza a lot and listened to the Stones, Cat Stevens—he had great taste in music. Drew would say it sucks, but it doesn’t. When Ted Number 2 moved to Hawaii without us, I told Mom she should never trust a guy in a Ford ever again.”

  “At the least,” Alexa agrees, watching as I finish up the railing. “And now you’re here.”

  “Rob. Silver-blue Ford Focus.”

  Alexa snorts. “Your mom has a slow learning curve.”

  “Yeah,” I sigh, placing the paint top back on the can. I think back to that night in the small kitchen in San Diego. Mom’s penny landing on Andreas Bay. She was so eager to leave, anxious and flighty. I wanted to stay in San Diego, but Rob thought it was important for us to get a clean start. I told him none of our starts had ever been clean.

  ***

  I slip on my headphones and pay three dollars to get into the game. I am convinced that headphones give me an immediate excuse for not being with someone. If not, at least they make me look less lame for being alone. This is what I tell myself, though I don’t totally believe it. Ben Harper will have to be my date for the evening. His rendition of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” floods my ears, a strange musical backdrop to the rough, gritty game before me.

  I have actually never been to a football game and am surprised by the energy around me. The air seems smoky in the translucent evening, lit by the field lights that look like transmitters for alien communication. Andreas Bay sweatshirts dot the metal stands to the right, splashes of bright blue and green. The other school’s colors are red and white, and their fan-filled bleachers to the left look bloodstained.

  A rail-thin girl sneaks in under a curl in the chain-link fence to the side of the visitors’ stand. Cass Gordon. She doesn’t show up to school, but she comes to a football game? She climbs to the top of the bleachers and parks herself in the middle, a dot of black among the red shirts.

  I look back at Cass, who has no awkwardness with being alone. With my life, you’d think I’d be a pro, but I’m not. I don’t know whether to sit down in the bleachers or hang out on the dirt track that circles the field like a drained moat. I don’t see any students watching the game; most just seem to be milling about in clumps, like they would at a dance or a party. None of the clumps are familiar, so I opt for the snack shack. I’m hungry anyway, and it will give me something to do.

  A girl from my Spanish class is working behind the counter. She’s the nice, student council type, so full of school spirit that I imagine she has to be drained once a week or she’ll pop. I slip off my headphones.

  “Hi, Calle!”

  And she knows everyone’s name.

  “Hey…” I, however, do not.

  “I’m Kayla. From Spanish.” It seems like half the girls in the freshman class are named Kayla.

  “Hi.” On the chalkboard behind the counter, someone has drawn pictures of hot dogs and sodas and candy bars in a crooked border. “Can I get nachos and a Pepsi?”

  “Absolutely!” Kayla will end up as a cruise director. She rushes to the back counter and dips a paper tray into a glass container of chips. Standing on her tiptoes, she leans onto the pump that oozes the orange cheese onto the chips.

  “Do you want peppers?” she asks over her shoulder.

  “No, thanks.” My mother is on such a health kick lately that she’d have a heart attack if she saw me eat this fluorescent goo. I hand Kayla three dollars. The can of Pepsi is cold and wet from the cooler. A piece of ice rolls around the rim.

  I sit near the bottom of the home bleachers and eat half the nachos before they congeal. An announcer’s voice fills the air.

  “Stevens is down on the thirty yard line. Second and seven.”

  Whatever that means. I search for Sam’s jersey. He’s on the field, Number 21. He looks like an upside-down triangle with his huge shoulder pads and narrow waist.

  He breaks from a pack of jerseys and runs toward the end of the field. People around me jump to their feet, cheering.

  “Touchdown. Sam Atkins!” The announcer’s voice says his name as one looping cry.

  The people around me high-five and yell through cupped hands. Their energy warms me. I smile and watch Sam. His teammates surround him, smacking him on the helmet and shoulders, which looks like it hurts, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

  “They haven’t won a game all year.”

  I’m not totally sure the woman next to me is talking to me, but she doesn’t seem to be sitting with anyone. She is old, maybe seventy, and her skin is ashes and coal. But I mostly notice how tiny she is. If it weren’t for her thick gray hair, I would take her for a small child at first glance.

  “Hmm?”

  She looks at me from under thin gray lashes. Her eyes are the color of blue Kool-Aid, and they stand out against her dark face, deep and liquid. They are too young in her mass of gray-black wrinkles.

  “They haven’t won a game all year,” she repeats. “Can I have a nacho?” She points at my half-eaten nachos tray sitting between us.

  “Sure. You can have them all.”

  She picks up the tray and balances it on her small, blanketed lap. Pulling a soggy chip from the coagulated mass of cheese, she pops it in her mouth and licks her fingers.

  “Yummy.”

  “Not bad for toxic waste.”

  She lets out a deep laugh that shakes her whole body. The nachos nearly slide right off her lap. The laugh passes as quickly as it escaped.

  “I’m Emily Martin,” she extends her small hand.

  I shake it. “Calle.”

  She looks back out over the field. “Who are you here for?” She extracts another goopy nacho and points it vaguely at the field.

  I flush. “No one really. I mean, Sam Atkins invited me.”

  She raises her eyebrows. Or at least I think she raises her eyebrows. She doesn’t actually have any eyebrows, just brow bones. The skin there seems to rise, and her forehead skin wrinkles.

  “He’s a good ballplayer, that Sam. His grandfather…whew,” she lets out a puff of air and downs another nacho. “Now there was a great foot
ball player.” She licks some cheese from her fingers.

  “You knew Sam’s grandpa?”

  She nods. “Tom Atkins, Senior. But he didn’t take his scholarship. Stayed on at the grocery.” When I shrug, she adds, “The Atkins family owns Bay View Foods.”

  “I’m new to Andreas Bay.” Bay View Foods is the main supermarket in Andreas Bay, except for the Safeway. But most of the locals shop at Bay View. Safeway’s for traitors who don’t buy local.

  “Ah. I thought you were.” She sets the empty nachos tray between us and pats my leg. “The Atkinses have been in Andreas Bay since it was founded in 1892. Sad story, that family.” She frowns and looks out over the field. “Listen to me. Gossiping about things nobody really knows. Still, if it hadn’t been for that Gordon girl…”

  “You mean Cass?”

  Before she can answer, another cry goes up from our section, and I realize the game is over. We’ve won for the first time this year. People pour out of the stands, and I am swept away by their movement, finding myself suddenly standing on the dirt track near the field, my nachos plate, my soda, and strange, tiny Emily somewhere behind me.

  I look for her, but the crowd has condensed at the bottom of the stands and on the track, a sudden pack of sardines marinating in this rare victory. I study the visitor stands. Cass is no longer clumped in the middle.

  Scanning the crowd, my eyes lock with Sam’s. His hair is messy from his helmet, and he has two thick black streaks under his eyes. He sees me, smiles, and mouths, “Thanks for coming.”

  “You’re welcome,” I mouth back, a warm chill spreading through my body like bathwater as he’s swallowed up by the crowd.

  ***

  My mother has become a vegetarian. It truly sinks in the Saturday after the football game when I wake up and discover our refrigerator full of soy dogs, tofu patties, and Rice Dream.

  “Mom!”

  “Yeah, sweetie?” Her voice emerges from the office-exercise room. She has Fleetwood Mac on, and Stevie Nicks sings “Gypsy.” I can hear my mother singing along, her voice high and airy—not like Stevie’s at all.

  “Where’s the milk?”

  She comes out of the room dressed in cobalt-blue yoga pants and a tight black T-shirt; she has a hand towel draped around her neck.

  “I bought Rice Dream. It’s the same thing.”

  No. It really isn’t.

  “Umm. I like regular low-fat milk. And Golden Grahams.”

  I check the cupboard. There are no Golden Grahams. I look at her. Wait for an explanation.

  She bites her lip and mops her forehead with the towel.

  “Golden Grahams are full of refined sugar, honey. They aren’t good for you.”

  Refined sugar? It’s happening again.

  “Mother.” She knows she is in trouble when I call her that. “We’ve lived here barely two months, and you’re already totally different.”

  “Calle Lynn, that is not fair and not true.” I’m always ‘Calle Lynn’ when she is ‘Mother.’

  With each new move, my mom gives her life a makeover. Which was fine before. It never changed my stuff really. But this is too much.

  “Mother,” I say again. “In Los Angeles, it was facials, Pilates, and California cuisine. In Sedona, we communed with the energy of the vortex, and we hung crystals all over the house. In Sacramento, you developed an intense fascination with floral arrangements and color-coordinated furnishings.

  “In San Diego, you surfed…no, you bought a surfboard and bleached your hair. You wore flip-flops to work. Now, you’re a vegetarian yogi, Mother. Which is fine—it’s fine. For you. I just want to wake up and have milk and Golden Grahams.”

  I hear Rob come through the front door. He enters the kitchen, sweaty from a run. He stops, glancing back and forth between my mother and me. “What?”

  I sigh. “Your wife is now a vegetarian. Look in the fridge.”

  He does and then looks at my mom.

  “Alyson?” Rob has a way of asking a question with almost every word he speaks. He often only speaks in one or two words. Very economical.

  “So now I’m on trial for wanting to live a healthy lifestyle?” In every argument, my mother makes herself into the defendant. Maybe she should go to law school. Or stop watching those ridiculous court shows on TV.

  “No trial.” Rob picks up a container of tofu from the top shelf and shakes it. It slides around in translucent-looking goo. He wrinkles his nose, replaces the container, and closes the refrigerator door. “No hamburger?”

  “Red meat is horrible for you. Kelly at work gave me an article…it was horrible. You should read it.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I’m just trying to do what’s best for us as a family.”

  Now I look like a jerk because I’m making a big deal out of this. It’s not like she’s murdered the old couple next door or something. She’s just…she’s just her. She always does this.

  “Maybe we could also get regular milk? You can buy the organic kind. And normal cereal. No granola!”

  She nods and puts her arms around me, smelling of jasmine oil. That’s something about my mom that never changes. She has always smelled like jasmine.

  ***

  “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me…

  Sitting bolt upright in my bed, I wait for the strains of the song to drain from me as the moonlit room replaces my dream. I pick up my clock so I can read it. I always place the bright green numbers face down on my nightstand or I can’t sleep. I look at it. 4:30 a.m. And it’s almost Monday. My alarm will go off for school in under three hours.

  I shake my head and stare out the window. The moon, smug in the night sky, stares back. It’s been awhile since I dreamed about my Tambourine Man. Once I asked my mother about the song. I was twelve, and we were eating pancakes at an IHOP just off the I-5. I remember that she looked at me strangely, her eyes dark.

  “I hate the Byrds,” she said. “Eat your pancakes.”

  I don’t ask her anymore.

  The song is gone now, but my heart still pounds. Something is seriously wrong with me. Sam said I am a strange girl. Those were his words. Strange. Girl. I scan my bookshelf. In the green glow of the clock I hold like a flashlight, I see Jane Austen, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, and J. R. R. Tolkien cohabiting.

  A teddy bear Red Mustang Ted gave me is stuffed between a book of world poetry I never read and a dictionary with all the Xs next to the words I look up. My CDs form flat plastic rows along the top shelf. I pause, my eyes on my music.

  I listen to strange music.

  I listen to my mother’s music. She loves Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen and Alicia Keys, and I breathe it in through her. Some of it’s mine, but my mom always seems to make it hers. She likes Taylor Swift a lot more than I do, even though I’m the one who bought the CD. And just last week, she took my Ingrid Michaelson disc and hasn’t given it back.

  A girl in San Diego once told me that I like all the music her thirty-six-year-old brother likes. She wasn’t mean about it or anything; she just thought it was interesting that I didn’t listen to the same music as other kids did. And I don’t have an iPod or a cell phone. I have a Walkman. No one buys CDs anymore. And I don’t know any of the latest bands. Don’t know about podcasting or how to text message someone. No Facebook (Mom would freak!).

  I’m strange.

  I push the covers aside and walk silently to the front door, the dream already lost, my heart slow and rhythmic. I can hear Rob snoring, little putters that sound like a distant moped. I open the door and pad out in my socks to the edge of the street where I can just make out a thin band of the sea, still dark, even in the light of the moon. A strip of aluminum in the night. My socks are soon soaked.

  My mother had me when she had just turned nineteen, which never seemed that unusual. But Alexa’s mom is forty-eight and Drew’s parents are over fifty. My mom was five years older than I am now when she had me. Maybe she and my dad met at a club where she was working. He was older, playing in a
band. Maybe he wrote a song just for her.

  My mom keeps two pictures in a side-by-side silver frame. In the first, she is pregnant with me. Her hair is dark, and she wears a man’s white T-shirt over her round belly. Maybe my father’s shirt. In the picture, she’s looking away and laughing, her hand settled over her belly, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders. The other picture is me three months old, round-faced and blinking after a bath, a towel draped over my head.

  I never thought until now that my father must have taken those pictures. Said something to make her laugh. Dried me off after the bath with a blue-edged towel. And then he left, and my mom and I began our Ford tour of California. We had each other. And we had our music. Her music.

  Sam said “strange girl.” Standing there in the chill, the sea air pawing its way into my hair, I know it’s my mother who makes me strange.

  CHAPTER 7

  ISLAND IN THE SUN

  Mom storms out, door slamming…I should’ve known better than to ask about what happened with Dan, should’ve known she’d freak out. Needing to dream, hide, I play Weezer full blast; she’s no longer home to tell me to turn it down. The sky through my window is white sand. A bird sits on the sill; if I invite him in, I won’t be so alone…

  Tabitha Daly’s two low pigtails stick out like handlebars. When she talks, they ticktock back and forth, a hypnotic clock. It distracts me, so I am not totally listening to her.

  “Calle?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What symbol should we do for our society?”

  Somehow I have ended up with a cool group for our English project. Sam’s in my group, much to Amber’s annoyance. I laughed when she got stuck with Caleb Wilkins. He doesn’t do anything but pick his nose and draw Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, in compromising positions on his plastic binder cover. Trey Carter is also in my group. He’s really funny but takes school seriously, so he won’t just expect the rest of us to do all the work. And Tabitha knows everything. She’s like the person version of Trivial Pursuit.