When I came to live at The Mission last fall, it was just starting to be cold: there had been an early snow in Saxon Hills, super powdery, a mean kind of snow, and I was hanging out behind the mall most of the time with a guy named Ger and a couple of girls I didn’t know, freezing already, when someone said we should check out The Mission, the Farleys had it going on. What the fuck was a Farley? I didn’t care. I was so cold. One of the girls said the Farleys were taking in street people. One of the girls said, “Nerd-Ass, let’s check out the Farleys.”
Sometimes I go by “Nerd-Ass,” sometimes just “Nerd,” but I don’t usually let people call me Sarah. My names come from the fact that I scrounge the racks for paperback books and I’ve always got a couple with me, usually ones with the covers torn off, even only parts of books with like a hundred pages missing, and they’re all stupid books, just to read. I don’t talk about it—the books aren’t anything, and I’m no student. But you care about a thing, on the street, and that thing can become you, sort of. People think I’m a nerd because I’ve got half a paperback book in the pocket of my jacket, and I know that’s dumb, but it works too. A nickname’s a kind of money. Once I sold a paperback that had a cool cover to a girl on a cigarette break behind an Eckerd’s for a box of tampons. She thought the book must be good, since I was selling it. I played pitiful, cramps and all, and that helped.
The Farleys are a fucking cult, maybe forty of them, and I think more in other Farley houses in other parts of the country, that’s what people say. Most of the Farleys live in the upstairs rooms of The Mission, although a couple have rooms that they share downstairs. It’s a kind of rank or military thing: when a Farley gets promoted to the upstairs, they become Super Farleys, or some such crazy bullshit. Five or six of them have jobs in Saxon Hills and pretend lives out there. I think a few might even live out there, and really pretend, but come to the nighttime meetings at The Mission, and those ones, they’re Secret Super Farleys. Those ones, the Farleys call them “Normals,” and everyone thinks it’s funny.
The Farleys are nice to the street kids, though, and to strangers. They take in anyone, they’ll feed us, take our share of the diddly we get from Social Services, as though the fucking government gave a shit about us, and the Farleys make it a group thing, living all together. Everyone matters to a Farley, but not as much as a Farley. We’re not allowed upstairs: only the Farleys go upstairs. That’s where the singing is at night, and the lights they try to hide with extra thick curtains and a couple of boarded-up sheets of ply. We can hear the Farleys go at it, singing and stomping and tapping, and there’s something wild—right over the edge of crazy—that we can hear through the ceiling, all their made-up hymns about the messiah.
Apparently, Farley himself is going to show up soon. He’s coming back to us. He’s going to save us. What a fucking relief that would be, I say. It’s in each of the songs they make everyone sing if they want dinner:
Far from here he roams
Man who knows
Man who knows
Farley is alone
Man who roams
Man who roams
When he meets the beggar be
Man who knows
Man who roams
Farley gives to thee
Man who knows
Farrr-llleeeyy
When he meets the child who cries
Farley knows
Farley roams
He shall dry that eye
Farrr-llleeeyy
When he sees our dire fate
Farley roams
Man who knows
Our souls shall he embrace
Farrr-llleeeyyy
Far from here he roams
Man who knows
Man who knows
Farley is alone
Man who roams
Man who roams
Our souls shall he embrace
Our souls shall he embrace
Farrr-llleeeyyy
Farley’s not Jesus or Mohammed, and he’s not the son of any god I’ve ever heard about. The Farleys don’t believe in God, not really, or in any kind of salvation or afterlife. They don’t seem like terrorists to me, but I don’t work for the government: since the government hates me, I hate the government. And here the Farleys are, waiting and singing. They want to be saved by Farley, and they’re fucking banking on it, he’s coming any day, but he’s probably just a Normal, that’s what most of them think. He hasn’t been here before, so he’s the mystery guest. Who knows what will happen when he gets here? Farrr-llleyyy.
The stories about Farley are good ones, and the Farleys who tell those stories, they get that batshit look in their eyes, like it’s the only truth and they’re going to hit you with it like you’re a melon and it’s a big stick. They rub their secret lucky medallions with their thumbs, just like gamblers or like that pimp in O.C. I didn’t want to know, when they told stories about Farley.
I don’t sell myself, by the way.
Once, and it’s probably once upon a time, Farley was walking along the highway, on the side of the road, like every homeless person ever. A storm was coming: he could see bad news clouds, and lightning, and he could hear the thunder, and the birds were all flying and screeching. There was no place for the birds to go. The birds were flying into each other in the sky, the weather was so bad. It was a religious moment. So what did Farley do? He took off his clothes and walked right into the storm.
When the storm was over, Farley came out, and he was covered in feathers. The birds had given their feathers to him, the Farleys say, and he was protected by his feather bodysuit.
The birds, man, the Farleys say, and roll their eyes and rub their medallions. They gave themselves to Farley. Don’t you see? I don’t see. In other stories, he has no feathers at all. So what’s the deal about the feathers? Why didn’t Farley keep his feathers, since they were so important?
Once, Farley was in DC, and the President was there, and the President was eating lunch at a counter where there had been a protest—it was like during the sixties or something—and Farley served the President a hamburger. When Farley handed the President a hamburger, Farley asked, “Sir, do you think we can stand up now? We have sat at this lunch counter a long time.” The President apparently began to cry, who knows why, Presidents aren’t like that, and he answered Farley, “Young man, you’re standing up already. You’re living a good life. You keep asking those questions, son.” At least, that’s how the Farleys tell that story—especially when they talk about sitting down and standing up, which they do a lot during their evening services. They sit down, they jump up and stomp their feet, and then they stand up and sing.
I’m guessing, because that’s what the Farleys sound like from the first floor—for all the months I lived there, I never got in upstairs, although I tried to sneak up a few times. I even climbed one of the trees one night and tried to spy in, thinking they’d be distracted and maybe I could see. I just wanted to see. I wasn’t going to do anything. The Farleys are good about their privacy, though. The Farleys know who’s a Farley.
Services can go eight, nine, ten, eleven hours. The Farleys must be on fucking speed, maybe Dex or some boutique thing, because a lot of them go to work the next morning right after services—which I guess helps being even crazier, if you never sleep. I’ve been there, in my head. The street’s no place to sleep. I wish they’d sell me what they’re on.
At The Mission, my job was laundry. The Farleys like to keep clean, and they need their shirts and vests ready every night—they wear the same clothes each night for their services, and those clothes get pretty skanky, with all the sitting and standing and stomping. For two meals a day and a place to sleep, with three other girls in a little room that used to be a dining room when The Mission was a farmhouse, I did the laundry in a big tub. Four days a week, with a fifth day reserved for listening to different Farleys teach us Farley stories and fucked-up songs. It wasn’t very hard work, just boring—I always get the boring jobs, but I know to
quit them, that’s my MO, and probably my whole future, it’s already going to happen, that’s how the future goes. But this wasn’t bad: living at The Mission all winter kept me warm. Saxon Hills is too cold when the wind comes knifing down that valley like it’s cutting into your face.
The weirdest part about the Farleys is that there’s no Farley leader at The Mission, or at any of the other houses, far as I can tell. There’s some kind of Council of Farleys, and they meet and decide who does what, and whether I would ever get to be a Farley, and who has to be a Normal, and who does the laundry and who does the cooking, and who has to leave. The house rules can be weird, but they’re the rules, and it’s the Farleys’ house, so they get to say and you get to behave. They’re nice people until suddenly they’re not, and then they’re fucking dangerous. I don’t know what weapons they have stashed, but I do know that a couple of boys downstairs tried to steal from the Farleys and disappeared damn quickly. Farley justice seems a lot like street justice. People will cut you, they’ll break your arm with a shovel or something. You’re a girl, you’re in more trouble. If it’s over money, you’re done. I admire that.
I was only going to stay the winter, but I lived with the Farleys longer than I expected. Doing tubs of laundry, hanging all of The Mission’s clothes on the lines strung around that dining room—the old dining room was the laundry area too—was just work, and work’s only work, boring, but so’s life. When the weather got better, I could do the laundry indoors and hang it outdoors on lines strung between a couple of big trees. It was spring. I could stand outside and shut my eyes, and the laundry would be hanging there like all of the Farleys together, around me, or really all of them in the night upstairs, that’s what I imagined. Shirts and vests drying and flapping in front of me and behind me, and hidden inside those open, spinning lives, I could just disappear. That was my favorite.
I don’t really know how to explain what I have been feeling, or why it’s different, but for the past month or two I’ve been able to go away, in my head, even though remembering at night still makes me scream in my dreams, and I’m still drinking. I can’t tell what I’m feeling. I’m always so stupid about figuring it out myself. It takes a cancer case named Christmas to make me want to understand—Christmas and her stupid hat.
Picture a backpack, one of those gray Army/Navy ones that used to be cool to carry in high school, made of heavy canvas, the kind that opens and closes with buckles and straps everywhere, kind of Metal, and seems to have everything inside. I know those backpacks well, because the Farleys bought a bunch at a sale in town, and the Normals all had one, so you could always recognize a Normal somewhere else. Picture just one of those backpacks, and how everything a person has ever done or felt can go inside, can be buckled inside and carried along—it’s what we do, carrying all of our memories and shit. Reach into that backpack to find something. Let’s say you’re looking for a photo album that you had printed at the mall, family photos from a barbecue the day before the big annual family reunion, and reach around in the backpack without being able to see in there, and you’re grabbing around and you find everything else there is—it feels like you’re touching all sorts of things you had forgotten, pieces of your old life that you don’t recognize—but you can’t find your photo album, no reunion shots in the little book. That’s how I feel. That’s me, the life’s the backpack, and I can’t find what I’m looking for, but I can touch everything else, pieces of me.
Christmas didn’t need a place to stay. She has a room at her Aunt Nikki’s, who sounds like a totalizing bitch wonder. Christmas’ mom didn’t want her anymore. From what Christmas says, she was fucking up in school, and stealing, and her mom thought she should change friends and schools, and her mom had a new job, and Nikki doesn’t have any kids, so here we are, Christmas in Saxon Hills. I don’t know how much of that I believe, but no one tells the truth. Her name’s not Christmas, and my name’s not Nerd-Ass. Although I did tell Christmas when we got on the bus that she could call me Sarah.
I won’t ask about her treatment plan. I know that phrase. I was going to be a nurse.
So what was Christmas doing at The Mission? I think she was doing what most of us do: she was running. She didn’t have her stuff, though, just a dumb little purse with bears and sequins on it, and her knitted hat, and her plaid. She always wears that ridiculous plaid, even when the plaids really, really don’t go together. Really don’t. A girl can be on the street for three years, I told Christmas, and still want to throw up when someone wears all those plaids together.
She had a honking big knife, too, but she ditched it once she learned about the Farleys’ rules—how dangerous it was to bring a knife into The Mission. So she’d stash the knife in the crotch of a tree near the house before showing up, and grab her blade again at the end of the day.
The Farleys were sure Christmas was going to be a great Farley. I mean, holy shit, she wasn’t even going to live and they wanted her to be a Farley. They didn’t treat me like that. I think it’s her cancer thing, that’s why. I think a Farley who’s only thirteen, who joins and then dies, would be good for the Farley cause, like some kind of ad. I think the Farleys wanted Christmas as a mascot.
Everyone wants to be nice to the dying kid, or at least make all of the right moves, bob their heads and make that Awww noise you hear from the same people who probably kick their dogs—but watching TV or something, even those people, they see a dying kid, and Awww, even when the kid’s made up, those people are still like Awww. And a lot of people aren’t made up, right? We’re real. Still, they can’t help themselves, they make that noise, which means it’s what they feel.
Man, emotions and people, yo. The worst feelings we have are more intense than the best feelings. They’re bigger feelings. We feel hate more than love. People are susceptible to bad feelings, more likely to be jealous instead of being happy for someone. Like I might want to kill myself instead of feeling like this has to be the worst and it can only get better. All of the bad feelings sink to the bottom of the lake and we don’t know how to swim—okay, that lake thing’s bullshit, I know. Feelings have nothing to do with lakes or swimming, I was just thinking about that because of Christmas, and the day we went to the quarry. But bad feelings are so easy, they’re everywhere, they’re in me more than any other feelings, and I know the whole human race is like this. I’ve seen.
Good feelings are hard to keep. Like you have sex with someone you love, and you have a good feeling—and everyone can have that feeling, it’s there, just have it. Or kids and how cute they are, and how sad it gets when a young kid’s going to die. That’s a real feeling, even if it’s an instinct, an Awww you can’t put into words.
I met Christmas, and before I knew it, I was making the noise, Awww, because I felt the noise too.
Before the Farleys eat, they sing this song:
Oh, Farley, Farley,
Thanks be
For the Earth our bounty
For the Sun our friend
Oh, Farley, Farley,
Thanks be
For the river and wind
That bring me thee
Farley, Farley
The Farleys end their food hymn with a crazy little series of finger taps—tap, tap, fist, tap, tap, and another thanks be. Always, at The Mission, that crazy Farley touching and tapping, touching each other, touching and tapping in some kind of code meaningful only to them. They don’t do it when they’re in public, and the Normals don’t either. It’s just the Farleys with the Farleys in private, when they admit to each other that they’re Farleys. I wish I knew what the Farleys know—but really, I just wish I knew something. I don’t know shit, and I think that’s permanent.
The fourth or fifth day after Christmas showed up at the The Mission was brutal, a heat wave, and the nights hadn’t been any better, with killer humidity and no wind and the kind of hot that makes me just lie there with myself. It had been one of my dull workdays, and I was sweating and awful all day, moving garbage bags
of wet laundry out into the yard to hang up. I had sprained my pinkie too, bent it backwards as I dropped one of the bags of wet laundry. I was bitchy. I smelled bad, which I usually don’t care about, but I was on my period and I smelled me.
That evening, before it got too late, Christmas and I and three of the Farley girls and two other kids living at The Mission had arranged to go to the quarry for a swim, about a mile down the path through the woods. The quarry’s cool. There are really tall, chunky cliffs on two sides of a series of deep pools and rocks to jump off and long, weird fish that you can see from above, swimming slowly down there as though they were on black-and-white TV in that super dark water. I love those glidey fish. The fish slide and turn for no reason, they’re free.
Most of us didn’t have bathing suits, just underwear. Christmas had a bathing suit—someone must have told her to bring it—but her suit looked like last year’s, because the crotch was too short and the waist was bunchy. Her bathing suit had a big yellow flower on one shoulder, like a fake medal, the rest of the suit kind of orange or red. She must have bought the thing before she got sick, and taller. Not that a bathing suit would have fit her string body anyway, all skinniness and really pale skin. She’s that age when nothing fits. She had just gotten her boobs too, and they must have hurt, they were real high up on her chest, and I thought they were going to be big, depending what the cancer did to her and when.
It had to be cancer. She’d had chemo for sure, because she had those gray lines in her lips, and while she wouldn’t take off that knit hat, you could tell she had no hair, and her eyes had fallen back into her head, like they were looking at big shit we’ll never know. Or won’t see for years, if we’re lucky. I don’t know why dying people get to see what’s out there, even though they’re going there soon, you know?
Christmas in July Page 6