Norma has been standing in the pantry door, looking into the darkness for a can of soda. She finds one and closes the door. She crosses the kitchen and hands her the can and a glass of ice. Dirty Norma’s bare toes are filthy in their flip-flops. They hold the remnants of some dark purple nail polish. Norma stares at these toes against the beige and cream linoleum until she hears the pop of the can. There is the hiss of the bubbles. There are the gulping breaths of air as Dirty Norma swallows the entire soda without ever putting it on ice. She hands Norma the can, the cold, unused glass. Dirty Norma belches and Norma can smell the corn syrup on her breath.
“Why don’t I give Ted a call?”
“Go right ahead.”
So Norma does, taking the cordless into the dining room, out of earshot.
“Hi. So, there’s a friend of yours here.
“Uhh, Norma.
“Yeah weird, right?”
Norma lowers her voice to a dead whisper. “How do you know her?
“But.
“I see.
“Fine, tell me later.”
When she hangs up, Dirty Norma is no longer standing in the kitchen. Norma hears the television in the living room. Dirty Norma has made herself at home. She’s watching the end of a talk show. The topic is BULLIES. Norma stands behind her, staring at the woman’s head. Her hair is matted with grease. Dirty Norma turns. “Hope you don’t mind I turned on the tube.”
“Make yourself at home,” Norma says. “Ted’ll be here soon.”
Dirty Norma points her index finger at Norma, a gun, a finger parting the hedge. You’re lonely. Just like me. “So, you want to have a baby,” she says. Dirty Norma jerks her chin toward the computer screen. The monitor’s been shaken awake, someone’s hand on the mouse.
And Norma nods her head yes. This woman does not seem to be the sort who might say, Oh, I just know it’s going to work out for you soon! So Norma decides to tell her about it. She’s trying to formulate words that explain what her life without a baby feels like, but none of the words are right. It hurts. It’s unjust. That sounds dumb. Teenagers are locking their newborns in broom closets. Also dumb. Infertility is death doled out in tiny, monthly doses. The clock on the microwave flashes 12:11, as if it’s counting down.
“That’s kind of like the trouble I’ve got,” Dirty Norma says.
And Norma stops wondering what this woman is doing here. The universe works in mysterious ways. First the hawk, then the other Norma. Norma’s face opens wide, her arms, her heart. “You can’t get pregnant either? Oh, Norma. Oh. It sucks, right? It’s awful. And think of all those years you tried to not have a baby, right? And the—”
“No.” Dirty Norma smiles slightly. Screech goes the world. “I need to get unpregnant.”
“Unpregnant.” Norma’s dry lips stick together.
“Yeah. I thought Ted could help me.”
“Ted?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I need some money.”
“Oh.”
“Ted’s my brother.”
The air has fled Norma’s lungs. Even this meth-head disaster of a human being can get pregnant. There is frozen, hardened steel in Norma’s veins. Unwanted cells divide and multiply in Dirty Norma’s belly. Norma backs away, fearing a fog of violence. Norma imagines blood, clawing the sides of her thighs as she leaves. “There’s more soda if you want.”
* * *
Ted ducks his head back into his car, reaching across the seat for something. He emerges and looks not at Norma but into the corner of the garage where they’ve stashed a highway YIELD sign stolen in Ted’s younger days. “She’s my sister, Norm.” Ted turns to face her. His eyes bug out. “My sister.”
“My god.”
“Yeah.”
“Your dad’s other—”
“Yeah.”
It’s not something they have often spoken of, and when he brings her up now Norma realizes how Ted has grown into being a fearful person and how she, Norma, has helped him do that.
“Have you met her before?” She gives Ted back dimensions he once had. Maybe he still has them. The possibility he might have a secret, be a secret. The possibility of kindness and depth, wonder, and maybe even grief.
“She came by my office today. Some friend of a friend of hers works there and told her that there was a Ted Jonsen in receiving. She just showed up. It freaked me out. She wants to borrow money. She scared the receptionist, so I told her to meet me here instead.”
“She rode her bike. A little boy’s BMX.”
Ted nods. “She’s my sister, Norm.”
* * *
In the garage Norma finds a garden trowel. The day is already humid. She chooses a spot along the side wall. She’ll dig. She’ll plant as many trees as she goddamn wants. It’s not like the universe cares if we are good or bad. She drives the trowel into the ground. A number of small roots cut across the cavity. Norma slices them with her trowel and they make a meaty sound. A bit of moisture collects on the severed cross sections. Norma pries a rock from the hole. She avoids the worms, minding not to cut their bodies in two.
Dirty Norma has followed her out. She stands beside her bike. She must have gotten the money from Ted.
Norma looks up to the sky. Reproducing is simply a matter of hormones. That’s all. There’s no judgment in it. It can happen to any asshole. Norma knows plenty of jerks who don’t deserve their children. Her cousin Louis quizzes his kids whenever there’s another adult around. “What are the heat panels on the space shuttle made out of? What birdcall is that? What are the three branches of the government?” She has only scratched the surface of the hole.
“You need help?” Dirty Norma asks.
But saying it’s hormones is the same as saying witchcraft or sorcery. What’s the difference between hormones and magic potions? Neither of them are believable or explainable.
Norma hands Dirty Norma the trowel. There’s a spade on the deck. Reproducing is nothing more than making photocopies. Or plagiarism. It comes easily to cheaters. Norma finds the spade. She digs behind Dirty Norma. The day is warm. Then why does she want a baby so badly? She strikes the soil with her spade, balancing her feet on top of the dull end. Her actions are jerky and ineffective. The spade barely takes a bite. In the heat Norma can smell the fertilizer mix that her neighbor spreads on his lawn. She stops digging. She wants someone who belongs to her, someone she is a part of. It is plain and easy. It is tender.
Dirty Norma is much better at this digging than Norma. Maybe she’s been in prison. She’s really attacking the soil, making a difference. Norma looks at the ground to keep her balance, keep her head. It’s a tiny hole she’s dug. It’s not much to ask for.
Norma’s period is giving her cramps. She stares out across the yard, slowing the world down.
When they first moved in, the grass had been rolled out in strips of sod. It bothered Norma that first season. She could detect the edges of each roll, as if some night a lawn crew might return and roll the sod right back up again. Sometimes it is easy to hear what the grass is saying. To hear the message in the humming engine of the never-ceasing lawn mower five houses down.
A delivery truck backs up across the street. Norma focuses her attention on the head in front of her. Rage creeps in quietly, intimately, nearly unrecognized like a message whispered down a phone line made from paper cups and a string. In rage comes. Or it has been there a long while, sleeping. The afternoon opens up, awake now. The afternoon presents a notion Norma had not considered before: violence. She raises the spade above her head. I could crack the blade into the thin bones of this woman’s skull, Norma thinks. I could divide her like a worm, cut her into chunks, seeds I’d bury in the yard, planting baby trees. Trees that grow babies. The choreography becomes clear. How the white brain will leak from inside Dirty Norma like moisture from a severed root. Red blossoms of blood flowering and a harvest of new humans come fall.
All around them are the small sounds of nature. Heat me
eting green leaves, the sprinkler, the invisible bugs who are doing it in the grass, resilient now to pesticides, making babies in the yard. Norma tightens her grip on the spade’s wooden handle. That dark head. The shovel’s blade would lodge into the skull, then Norma would probably have to wiggle it free to take a second whack. In that moment of true horror, of committing true harm to another human’s body, something would be exchanged, mingled, met. Something would be compensated. She’d give the world a reason for being so cruel to her. Norma still might never get a baby but at least she’d know why, and a reason would be something she could hold on to at night.
The strands of Dirty Norma’s hair are separated into clumps. That head, one day a long time ago, popped out of some lady and the lady was happy to see it, happier than she’d probably ever been in her life. The lady drew the head up to her nose and smelled its black fur. She didn’t care that the head was covered with scum and filth and blood. The lady dug her nose right down into the scent. That, or else Dirty Norma spontaneously sprung to life from some rotten idea.
The spade loses its bite. The delivery truck finds first gear and pulls away. Norma breathes, tasting the air’s human scent, sweet as sweat. Soon, any minute now, she’s going to put down this spade without injuring anyone.
A starling chirps. The world starts turning again. She looks down into the hole. It has gotten quite deep, deep enough to hold a tree if Norma only had one. She bites a ragged hangnail from her finger, chewing for a moment, then spitting it out into the hole. She plants a bit of herself, covering the hangnail with soil, replacing the sod as best she can, patting the lumpen mound.
ALL HANDS
Sweat makes a Rorschach blot on the back of my uniform. Coast Guard–issued poly-blended cotton never needs ironing but this shit does not breathe in Galveston’s heat. Say the Gulf of Mexico is a stomach—we’re stewing in the hypoxic dead zone. That means low oxygen, brown algae, and the curious side effect that boy fishes drown out the girls. I don’t know why.
I take a bite of pizza, walking down the wharf to my office. I smell the crusty sea. I smell the burn of cargo cranes. Surrounded by giants. I smell gas and oil. The gulf’s got twenty-seven thousand abandoned wells beneath its surface. I smell my dinner, warm comfort of grease. It smells delicious.
Last night I fell asleep at my desk. No tank ships or barges. No SARs to coordinate. I kept the radio up loud enough to wake me in case I needed to tuck in my shirt. Semper paratus. Sure. Sure. No such luck tonight.
The tankers that dock here to load are as big as entire towns, vacant city blocks. And taller still, solid walls of steel. I can make out a few letters on her side: CEAN IANT. She’s empty, plenty of freeboard, taking on a load over at the facilities. I finish my meal, last bite of crust before stepping inside the trailer.
“Evening.”
“Evening.”
“When’d she get in?”
“Hour ago.” Garza’s a newish MIO. Nineteen, twenty. The local lady he’s dating is waiting for him in the parking lot, pumping the AC in her Grand Am.
The wharves are vending machines for the local women. They select the option that suits their needs: a sailor in port for one or two shifts; a merchant marine who comes and goes on three-week rotations; or a coastie stuck in station for four long years. It’s an easy arrangement I myself have enjoyed.
“You’re the duty officer tonight?” he asks.
“No, ma’am.” Sanctioned slang, pulling his chain. “Thought I’d skip down to Marine Safety for the all-night pancake breakfast.” USCG-approved chuckles. “Care to hang around?”
“Hell, no. I’ve been here since oh eight hundred.”
“You check her out yet?”
Garza winks. “I didn’t want you to get bored through the wee hours.”
“Thoughtful son of a gun.”
Garza salutes like some feathered drum majorette and disappears into a night that is dark, and hot, and filled with the chirping of insects.
The trailer quiets. My pizza slice has left a German shepherd–shaped grease stain on its paper plate. There’s no denying that strange things happen in the state of Texas. I tack the dog/pizza plate up on my CO’s corkboard. He’s an animal lover. He also enjoys Italian foods. Always thinking toward promotion, yes I am.
I shove back out into the evening, hopping wharves over to the tanker.
“Permission to board?”
The ocean’s dark as crude. No moon.
The reply sounds like “Permission granted, dork.”
Tankerman’s alone on deck. He’s got a red kerchief tied round his neck and it suits him. A red neck. I’ve never seen this guy before, but it’s simple: we don’t like them; they don’t like us.
I hear the ping and rattle of her hull getting charged. Dockman fills her. Pipes and pumps. She gurgles with gasoline. I try not to think of the girl I can’t stop thinking of.
* * *
A full inspection takes two hours going by CFR standards. I start with the voids. My back’s to the bulkhead and there’s a planet’s worth of ocean just outside, licking against the tanker, saying, Don’t mind me. Nothing happening here. Nothing except the metric tons of storm and riptide and killer sharks that the ocean runs with. I check the welds for corrosion, fingering their lumpy seams. I don’t like sharks. I check the pumps for leaks. Mostly, I don’t even like the ocean. I check the emergency shutdown systems, listening to the ship, ticking off items on my checklist.
Is it dark inside her?
Check.
Is it scary?
It is.
Do I like it here?
I love it.
I think of the girl.
Check.
Six months ago she pulled a ten-dollar bill from her schoolbag as if she were going to pay me for services rendered. Her underwear rode up to cover her belly button. My boxers were the color of a Band-Aid. She’d stretched the bill between her hands like a proclamation. Sitting back down on my knee, she’d said, “He’s so cute, isn’t he?”
“Hamilton?”
“Uh-huh.” Her eyes glazed, gaga over the bill. “Don’t you just love him?” She rolled her heinie against my thigh.
“Hamilton?” I asked again.
Her answer was slow. “I call him Alexander.”
A real patriot. I snaked my arm into her flabby abundance. “I’m more partial to this.” I nibbled her shoulder. Her skin was soft and thin, like a frog’s or a worm’s, some gentle creature that grows mutated arms from its ears before the rest of us can even point to the source of the poison. A girl.
“Founding Father,” she said, which made me feel creepy. I have a few years on her, four or five, but I don’t want to be her daddy.
And there I was thinking her body and mind were untroubled by the pursuit of popularity, untouched by the concerns prettier girls faced, while the whole time she’s going straight to the top, dreaming on dead patriots.
She turned, eyed my federally issued shorts. “You ready for one more round? Just to make sure it worked?”
She was as fertile and plump as any field I’d ever plowed. She was also the first girl I’d ever met who actually wanted it to work. “No condom,” she had said. “Once more. Just to be certain.”
I liked this girl mostly because I couldn’t understand a thing about her. I lay down, ready to serve my nation.
* * *
Tankerman and Dockman are still at it when I finish the inspection of the ship. On deck it’s dark. Deck. Dock. Dork. Dark. Like a game of anagrams we played in Cape May. A few lights off the wharf leave the water thick, black, and bottomless. “You got a minute?”
Tankerman bristles and turns. Rough trade.
“I’m going to have to charge you with negligence. You know why?”
He shrugs, grabs his dick.
“You’ve got no flame screens on some of your vents. You’ve got product leaking into the water from the flange on the transfer hose. Can’t you smell it spilling from the outboard flange? I don’t n
eed to tell you the kingdom come if you got flame in that tank.”
The man lifts his eyebrows as a single ridge. That’s all he’s got to say. Like, This job sucks. Like, I hate you coasties, anyway, and I could give a shit about product in the gulf. He’ll take the violation, slap on the wrist.
I pass him the ticket. “You’ll need to appear before the ALJ. This has the date on it. Bring a copy of your COI and your Z-card. Got it?”
Tankerman grunts. Tankerman’s a beast.
It’s midnight under a skillet when I turn to leave. Wishing I had another slice of pizza and a flashlight. Wishing I could stop thinking about the girl and what I’d done. I reach for the wharf ladder without calculating how she’s been loading gasoline for two hours. She’s riding far lower and that ladder’s not where I left it. Doesn’t stop me from clawing and flailing and grabbing for it on my way down, down, down, falling between the barge and the wharf. Four or five stories, way too much time to consider the trouble I’m in. Like no PFD, like what my CO will have to say about that. I hit the sea and the smack knocks any lingering sense out of my head.
I’m underwater. After the first shock of being wet, heading deeper into the black sea, I remember what they taught us—kick off your shoes. I remember the girl, like maybe I deserve this. She was way too young. I swim to fight against the descent, to reverse it even, feeling all I don’t know about the depth and darkness below me, the crush from above.
What’s down there?
Twenty-seven thousand abandoned wells.
What else?
I couldn’t say.
Isn’t imagining worse than knowing?
Yes it is.
* * *
After we’d done it for the second time the girl had shown me her American history paper.
Alexander Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis, on January 11 in either 1755 or 1757. He was illegitimate, meaning his mother, Rachel Faucette Buck, was not married to his father, James A. Hamilton. Still, Alexander became the first U.S. secretary of the treasury under George Washington. He established a national bank and a system of tariffs. He helped found the U.S. Mint and the Revenue Cutter Service, an outfit that would become the Coast Guard one day.
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