Finding Casey

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  But not that day.

  “Laurel,” Seth said that morning, “it’s time to test how you do in public.”

  I didn’t know what that meant. “Can I take Aspen with me?” I asked.

  Seth said, “Yeah, but she better not cry and draw attention to us.”

  “She won’t cry,” I promised.

  “Don’t you start talking to anyone,” Seth said. “Just because someone smiles at you doesn’t mean you can trust them.”

  “I won’t.”

  Seth in his Levi’s, his cowboy hat, Abel’s bracelet on his arm. We went to Walgreen’s so Seth could fill prescriptions, even though he didn’t believe in taking Western medicine. “Big pharma,” he called it. Corrupt. Ruining the environment and especially the rain forests. He always said, Everything We Need Comes from Nature. So I wondered why were we getting pills? Then Frances explained to me that these prescriptions were for special pills to sell, not to take. It was business. One single pill could sell for one dollar per milligram, so a fifty-milligram pill of a thirty-pill prescription was fifty dollars for one and thirty pills times fifty milligrams equaled fifteen hundred dollars. Easy money, she said. Money we can use for good things. People bought them to feel high and that wasn’t hurting anybody, it was a Victimless Crime. Frances, Caleb, and old St. John sold them for Seth in places like the Pueblo or Española, or Chimayo, where Frances says there’s a Church of Miracles I’d have liked to see more than go to Walgreen’s, but Seth was the Elder and he made the decisions.

  I walked alongside him while he filled up the shopping cart with toilet paper, which we did use, chips, soda, and candy bars, things we never ate. When he went to the pharmacy to get the pills he had almost a full cart of things to buy and I wondered where he was going to get the money to pay for it because lately he was yelling a lot about not having any cash flow and how no one ever died from eating beans and oatmeal and fasting was good because it cleaned out the spirit. Just looking at the chips I remembered the salty taste of nachos from Before, and the bubbly sweetness of soda and how a Snickers bar got stuck in my teeth and tasted so good all day. I hadn’t had one for years. It wasn’t my birthday—Seth made everyone at the Farm take January first as a birthday, including Aspen—but I wondered if it was maybe my real birthday, from Before. How would he know unless Abel had told him? Abel was in the desert now and always. I couldn’t ask because Seth didn’t like to talk about his brother. I didn’t even remember Abel’s face anymore, unless I looked in the mirror at my neck, so I tried not to do that. But it must have been my Before birthday because Seth gave me a present of a five-dollar bill. He said, “Get something for yourself,” and then he grabbed my arm hard where he always did, just above the elbow, the bruises hidden by my sleeve. “You can walk around the store by yourself, but don’t try anything stupid because I’ll be watching,” he said, low and slithery, like he was talking snake language.

  Five dollars. Abraham Lincoln. The president with the wart on his face who wore a tall black hat and always looked sad. Someone had killed him, but I didn’t remember when or how or who did it or why. Seth said the Outside World wasn’t safe and it was better for me to forget anything from Before and to Live in the Now. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held real money in my hands. Usually in our café I worked in the kitchen, so I didn’t handle money. Sometimes I’d find a quarter on the floor and put it in the tip jar, but I didn’t have any money that was all mine and separate. Everyone gave their money to Seth so it could be distributed equally. He paid the bills. The money felt soft in my fingers, and had a funny smell to it, not dirty, but different from anything else. I tried to imagine how many people had touched this bill and where those people lived and how their lives were going and if every single person in the Walgreen’s had a five-dollar bill, then that was a lot of money and buying and spending and it made me feel kind of dizzy to add it up.

  Aspen was being so good, sleepy against me, her thumb in her mouth. I looked at the store shelves filled with so many things to choose from: magazines, batteries, light bulbs, boxes of Bisquick, paper napkins, flavors of cereal, cookies in packages, nail polish in all the colors, so many kinds of shampoo and conditioner, Tylenol Allergy, Tylenol PM, regular Tylenol in pills or capsules, even liquid Tylenol medicine I almost could remember the taste of—cherry? I’d forgotten that stuff existed. All kinds of toys, lotions and lip gloss, alcohol, peroxide, hair bands, jars of bubbles that came with a wand, blue, pink, black, and red flip-flop shoes, white tennis shoes, black tennis shoes, underpants, T-shirts with different sayings, Christmas lights in red, green, blue, white, purple, gold, pink, Christmas cards, ornaments, decorations—it was all there, new, wrapped up in plastic which is as bad for the environment as paper diapers but not as bad as plastic bottles which slowly leak poison into the water table and also clog landfills which are what Outsiders call dumps but it’s the same thing.

  When I saw the pet-food section something made me stop and look and think of the pregnant dog. There were toys and balls, chew sticks, treats, cans of food, boxes of food and dog beds and then I saw a red leash. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t, because it felt like I’d forgotten to do something very important, and then something bad had happened that I could never fix. I still can’t explain why it happened or what caused it, all I know is that my cheeks itched and I reached up to scratch them and felt hot tears running down my face like snot when Aspen got a bad cold that one time and I had to wipe her face all through the entire day and night. I didn’t feel sad, but I was crying, just tears at first, then pretty soon this terrible noise started and I looked around to see where it was coming from and who was making it and it was coming out of me and next thing I knew Seth had me by the arm and everyone was looking.

  This woman at the cash register kept saying, “Honey, are you all right? Do you need me to call the cops?” I wanted to say, “You must be as stupid as me. Don’t you know there are no cops?” but I couldn’t make words, only sound. Seth hauled me out to the truck and pushed me in so hard I almost fell on top of Aspen who was starting to whimper which is a noise Seth hates so I try not to let her do it. I covered her mouth with my hand.

  He drove really fast and I didn’t have my seat belt on which was a crime and I prayed if there were cops that one didn’t stop us because that would mean a ticket and paying more money out we didn’t have. Seth cursed the whole way back to the Farm. Words that offendeth the Lord that we used to believe in until we changed to believe in Our Creator because we could earn more money being Native American.

  When he came to the gate at the end of our driveway, he slammed on the brakes. “Go open the G——damn gate,” he said and I wondered what happened to the five-dollar bill, if I had dropped it in the store or outside the store and I knew I was going to be in big trouble either way. I opened the gate and he drove through, stopped the truck, and then he got out before I had time to shut the gate. He left the truck there with the door open and walked me to the barn so fast my feet hardly touched the ground and in the barn he slapped me so hard that I could hear the bones in my neck go pop-pop-pop in directions they weren’t used to going.

  After it stopped hurting, he did it again, but there was no noise that time. My neck felt hot and my face hurt and when I looked up, the world had gotten all swimmy and Aspen was crying. I tried to shush her.

  Seth said, “What the f—— got into you?” and I really did try to stop sobbing but it was like someone else was inside my body making all those noises. “Laurel, get hold of yourself or there are going to be consequences,” he said and up came his arm and I ducked but instead of hitting me again he grabbed Aspen out of the sling and held her up by one arm which made her scream and he started walking toward the door like he was going to put her in the truck and drive away without me. I knew if that happened I’d never see her again.

  I remember that I clapped my hands over my mouth to stop the noise and how I calmed down really fast because I had to. Inside I was howling like the
coyotes that roam outside at night smelling our chickens, but outside I was just breathing heavy through my fingers.

  Who would take care of Aspen if I was gone into the desert like Abel was?

  Seth wasn’t her father. Abel was, but he was gone.

  Frances didn’t like babies.

  Caleb had been arrested for hurting his own baby and old St. John said all men should get vasectomies because of overpopulation and how we were f——ing ourselves off the planet.

  When Aspen was born, Abel tried to get me to give her to these people who couldn’t have babies—for a lot of money—but after he and Seth thought about it for a while they changed their minds and said it wasn’t safe, it would leave a trail and I could keep her. I was so happy to keep Aspen with me all the time because then I wasn’t lonely.

  I held out my empty arms and said, “Seth, I love you and I promise I’ll never make another scene like that.”

  But he just held onto Aspen by her arm and I was so afraid.

  “Hush, little baby,” I told her, “don’t you cry.”

  Seth said, “Is that supposed to be singing?”

  I know my voice is terrible, but Aspen didn’t care.

  I told Seth, “Please forgive me for going crazy like that. I don’t need to be Outside the Farm ever again. As long as I have Aspen, I don’t need anything else.”

  It took a long time for him to believe me. It was very cold, but I didn’t care if I got frostbite. When he gave Aspen back to me her arm was red where he held onto her and that night it turned black and blue. It stayed bruised for weeks but nothing was broken. Just before he slammed the barn door shut, I said, “Seth, I’m sorry we had to leave before you got your cart full of things,” and I meant it, all those salty and sweet tastes just sitting in the cart, he must have been so disappointed.

  He started laughing. “Do you even know how stupid you are?” he said. “I never planned to buy any of that s——, it’s overpriced, processed crap idiot people are addicted to, and I only loaded up the cart so the pharmacist wouldn’t think I was a drug dealer, you stupid c——.”

  Such a bad word. Stupid me for thinking I knew anything.

  I thanked Our Creator that Seth had the prescription filled before I went nuts on him because then who knows what he might have done. Every so often he put his hand around my neck and rubbed his thumb across my scar and said, “Remember the day you got this? Remember why?”

  As if I could ever forget. I didn’t want to lie there and get that thing done to me that I hated and I said one word, no, and the broken bottle came down. I never said “no” again.

  “If it wasn’t for me saving you you’d be a pile of bones in a forest picked clean by buzzards. I can take Aspen away anytime I want.”

  I knew he was right.

  “You think it’s any better Outside? People act like they care but they will screw you any chance they get,” he said, and then he’d whisper, “Remember what happened to Abel?”

  I remembered. I tried not to ever think about it but sometimes I dreamt it. Darkness, fighting, a knife, and blood, so much blood. And don’t say a word or I’ll leave you here, too.

  Then Seth must have felt sorry for me because he said, “Do you think I like doing this, Laurel? You make me do this,” and he shut Aspen and me into the barn in the dark and I heard the padlock snap shut.

  I was instantly grateful. I loved being in the barn, sitting on the dirt floor smelling hay smells, horse feed, gasoline, and grease. Aspen and I made a bed in the straw and cuddled. My mind kept seeing a red dog leash and black-and-white dog, so I told her the story of the Princess of Leaves to make the picture go away. Two days later he let us out. I never told him, but I loved the dark. After your eyes adjust, it is easy to find the exits. No one sees how ugly you are. Once Abel locked me into a cupboard but that was before Aspen came along. After she was born he hit me less, and then one day he wasn’t here anymore and I hope Our Creator can forgive me but I was glad he was gone.

  I heard Brown Horse nickering through the barn walls. If I reached around a knothole in one of the boards, I could press the automatic waterer for Brown Horse, get a handful of water, and drink it. I was still nursing Aspen. If I got hungry, I would take a handful of the sweet grain we fed Brown Horse. In the dark, you can’t see the mouse turds and it tastes like granola.

  So when Mrs. Clemmons came into the ICU at eight A.M. first thing I did was look for the exits. There were two, a doorway to the hall and the door to the bathroom, which had a lock but no window, so it wasn’t any good as an exit, only as a hiding place, which left only one exit. It would take me four steps to get around her if she came too near me. The hall led to other ICU patients’ rooms, but also to the elevator and the stairwell. There were two fire exits. The windows didn’t open. Two floors down was the tiny cafeteria with the acoustic-tile ceiling and fourteen green tables and chairs and the lady behind the counter serving corn, spinach, rice, and beans. She was not a good cook like Frances, but this morning she saw me taking food out of the trash and said if I showed up when she closed, four P.M., she would give me something for free.

  I could be gone before Mrs. Clemmons in her brown pants, purple shirt, and the pearls had a chance to tell anyone. I would go back to the Farm. It was only ten miles. If I stopped at the Pueblo, someone would give me a drink of water, maybe even something to eat because Indians are nice, and I could tell them I knew Louella and Billy Cata. But what was the point of escaping without Aspen? That was the part I was having trouble figuring out.

  After the crashing, the doctors put a tube down Aspen’s throat to breathe for her. It went puh-shoo-up, puh-shoo-up, all the time, and the heart monitor had its own beep-beep sound, like a tiny horn on a tiny car that a doll might drive. They did so many tests. Spinal. Electro-encephalograph. Blood. The nurses in ICU were different from Emergency in that they only ever had two patients. They were either in the room with Aspen or in the office between the rooms where they watched televisions of their patients. Susie was our first nurse, older than the Emergency nurses, but she was nice and talked to me and Aspen, saying “Hello, darlin’ ” and “Let’s clean you up” without telling me I was a bad mother to let her get so dirty. She said at six A.M. she had to go, but there would be another nurse to take over for her, and it was true, because a nurse named Leilah was here, and she wrote her name in red marker on the white board in Aspen’s room. “Nurse: Leilah. Goals for the Day: sponge bath, normal temperature, think positive.”

  She wore the blue pajama-scrubs and Mrs. Clemmons wore regular clothes, so I knew she wasn’t a nurse. She wasn’t a doctor, either, because they wore green scrubs with white coats. Volunteer ladies, no matter how old they were, wore pink jumpers like the old ladies down in the room next to the room made of windows. They were in charge of Information, a word that had so many words inside it I got tired thinking of them.

  Formation, form, on, trim, rim, am, ma, man, fort, mart, art, mint, moon; those are a few; in for it makes a bad story. After Aspen had her crash in the CT room, the doctors looked at me and told each other in loud voices how sad it was that malnutrition could happen in this day and age, how a mother who didn’t vaccinate her child was asking for illnesses just like this, and they talked about a television show called House, and yelled at the nurses to do whatever they wanted right that minute, no matter what they were doing, even if it was important like cleaning a “port.” Susie told me that was short for port-a-cath which was short for portable catheter which Susie said people who are bad sick have to have.

  Cat, there, hate. But Mrs. Clemmons had something to do with the hospital because of her ID tag with her photo on it and the computer chip inside. “Good morning,” she said and smiled. “I understand Aspen had quite a harrowing night. How are you faring?”

  Harrowing? Faring? Fare or fair? I couldn’t tell what she meant, but I said, “Good morning,” anyway. Always be polite. “Aspen is still sleeping. They gave her medicine, but it’s not enough yet or she wo
uld wake up.”

  Mrs. Clemmons nodded and smiled.

  Already I had cracked opened the drawer on the bedside table where the Bible was. If I needed to witness to get her to leave me alone, I would start with Psalms because lots of people know the famous one, the twenty-third, and I can recite it by heart. When Seth and Abel were Christian, they talked about Psalms a lot. It doesn’t mean “tree,” though it sounds like it. After Seth figured out he could make more money being Native American, we stopped being Christian. Their prayers are made up right on the spot. “I’m all right,” I said.

  She smiled a lot. Never trust smiles from strangers. They want something. Strangers will steal from you; they will screw you every time. Aspen’s ventilator made the puh-shoo-up noise that meant it was taking breaths for her. Every couple of hours the nurse came to suction it out and those quiet times when the machines stopped made me so nervous I thought I might throw up.

  “You’re very brave,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s a lovely day outside. Not too cold and the wind’s stopped.”

  “Yes, I noticed from the window that the trees are still. Thank you.”

  This Ardith Clemmons had very dark brown eyes that hid her thoughts from me. She wore wire glasses that slipped down her nose like Old St. John’s did. That pearl necklace with the very large pearls puzzled me. If they were real, then she was rich, so why did she have a job? If they weren’t, then that meant she was attached to Worldly Things and Materialistic, which means you don’t have the Compassionate Spirit and you should take a sweat and chant and fast until you do. Her teeth were so white and perfect that I was ashamed of mine. In the back where no one could see, I was missing two molars. One knocked out by Abel, one I pulled out myself so it would stop hurting.