Lila Blue

by Annie Katz

  Just then the neighbor's spotlights came on and the miracle of light on breaking waves captured our attention. Constant motion, miracle after miracle.

  The next morning, Lila called Janice after we had our walk. It was ten o'clock, which was early for Janice but plenty late enough for the rest of the world. I couldn't stand to listen, because it seemed my whole life was at stake, so I went upstairs. I found a writing tablet that Jamie had been drawing on before the seal pup and Mark's adventure consumed all our time. I took the tablet to the window seat, where Chloe and Zoe joined me, and we all studied Jamie's drawings.

  They were done in black ink, which seems strange for an eight year old. I remember wearing out the eraser on my pencils in third grade when I tried to draw anything. None of my friends drew in pen. We wrote cursive in pen when we were trying out pretty pen colors or practicing our signatures, but we never used ink for drawing. Jamie was unusual, so this was one more way he did the unexpected.

  The first drawing was of Chloe and Zoe sitting in the window seat looking at him with the ocean and sky behind them, but he had drawn me sitting between them. In the drawing I looked so much like them it was eerie. Somehow Jamie had captured me and Siamese catness at the same time. Maybe in his world the cats were his sisters and I was added to the set. One new sister, bigger, but essentially the same.

  The second drawing was of Mark walking up a mountain trail. Trees and bushes were beyond him, and following him on the trail was what appeared to be a ghost dog, very large and wolf-like, transparent. I couldn't tell if the dog was friend or foe. I wished Jamie had put the dates on his drawings so I could know if this was before or after our cove adventure.

  The third drawing was of Jamie, Mark and me swimming in the ocean toward a big wave that was ready to break over us. It reminded me of my big wave dream, but I don't know if Jamie drew the picture before or after I told him of my dream. If I had prophetic dreams and Mark heard spirit voices, maybe Jamie had intuitive visions he recorded in drawings.

  Jamie's drawings were simple and sophisticated at the same time. He used very few lines, sure and strong, almost like some Japanese ink drawings our teacher had us try one time in art class. We were trying to copy a bamboo stalk painting, but it was much harder than it looked. Jamie's pictures were not self-conscious though, and I felt I was eavesdropping on a private language, as if his drawings were a way he talked with himself. I decided to take them down to see what Lila made of them, so I tore them carefully from the pad and put them in one of Lila's big art books, which I left out on the table.

  I thought Lila would let me know when she was finished talking with my mom, so I used the waiting time to write a letter to Janice. I figured I could always tear it up and start over.

  Dear Mother, I was worried about you yesterday. You didn't sound like your best self. I'm writing you this letter because I want to share with you what I'm learning here in Oregon about my best self. Lila is teaching me to cook and knit, and to study the ocean, and to think about my life in a different way. I love who I am here. I never knew who I was in Sacramento. I didn't have an identity that felt right.

  It's like needing the perfect pair of shoes, shoes that fit beautifully and feel comfortable, shoes you can wear anywhere with pride, like those black heels you wear everywhere. I needed something, I didn't even know what, but I found the perfect fit here. I've never had the perfectly comfortable me until I came to this little town. I'm at home here. I want to stay. I have friends and a job offer and there's a room for me here. I cook for Lila and clean up after myself and follow Lila's House Rules as best I can. 1. Be impeccably honest. 2. Stay clean, safe, and sober. 3. Be responsible roommates. 4. Communicate clearly and completely. 5. Solve problems wisely. 6. Support one another. 7. Be happy here now.

  I think these are good house rules for us to have, too. Maybe for everybody. They sound easy, but so far they are not. One afternoon I broke nearly all of them. But I'm getting better. In this letter I'm trying to practice all of them together.

  What are our house rules, Mother? Did you have house rules when you were growing up? I'm growing up. I want grownup rules now.

  I've changed. These few short weeks have changed me, and I know what I want for the first time in my life. I want to live here. I'm happy here, and I wasn't happy there. You're not happy there. Maybe you could be happy here?

  I love you. I know you've always done the best you could for me, for both of us, and I know it was very hard sometimes. Lila is giving us a choice, giving us a chance to make things better. Please let me take my chance for a better life. I beg you. Let me stay. At least for seventh grade. Please. Your daughter, Cassandra Blue Teledin

  I knew I wasn't going to send the letter, but it felt good to write it all down. Signing Blue in my name was a surprise to me, but I left it there. If I went to seventh grade in Rainbow Village, I would be Cassandra Blue, not Sandy Teledin. I was brand new. My letter was the truth here and now. It was something to hope for, something to work toward.

  I was ready to face whatever Lila had discovered on the phone with my mother, so the kitty girls and I left our cozy window seat and went down to our cozy couch in the living room. Lila was in the kitchen making fresh coffee. Fresh brewed meant one minute to her, not one hour, so she always made small pots, and her coffee was delicious.

  She brought me a cup and sat on the couch with us and looked at the sea. We breathed a while together, watching the waves and enjoying the coffee, and then she put her cup on the table and turned toward me.

  "Here's the deal," she said. "Janice is in trouble. She was driving home from work, drunk, and she ran into a parked car. She’s okay, but both cars are wrecked."

  "She never used to be that drunk at work," I said, hoping it was true.

  "She lost her job, and she got a ticket for driving drunk."

  "So she's madder than usual," I said.

  "She's upset, yes. Mad may be the correct term, in the sense of insane mad, because she's still drinking and maybe using something else that affects her brain."

  "She's not her best self," I said.

  Lila smiled and nodded, "That's exactly right."

  "So what can we do? Besides pray, I mean."

  "Prayer may be the most powerful thing we can do at this point," Lila said. "She says she wants you home, but she doesn't have a plan once you get there. I told her I'd pay her rent for three months, so she doesn't have to worry about a place to stay, and I told her I'd keep you here as long as you want to stay, but I won't send her money."

  "Good. She'd drink it up."

  "She might. But more importantly, she needs a reason to get a job. Sometimes poverty is a great motivator."

  Lila went on, "I told her I'd send temporary custody papers for her to sign in case you'll be attending school here in September."

  "I want to stay here," I said.

  "I told your mother I think it would be best for you to stay here for the school year. That would give her time to get things together or let them fall apart even more, which sometimes needs to happen before we wake up."

  "Yes," I said, feeling that writing everything down in the letter helped make my dream real enough to grow into something solid and strong. "Did she agree?"

  "She did not disagree. I think there is hope," Lila said. "So we can hope and pray."

  "Good plan," I said, feeling relieved and happy. Before I came to stay with Lila, I thought "hope and pray" meant there was nothing that could be done. Now I knew hoping and praying could be the most powerful actions in the world.

  Tuesday Lila wanted to go somewhere for a change of scene, so we decided on Dragon's Head Preserve, a natural area north of town where there were trails through old growth forests to the top of headlands overlooking the sea and the Big Fish River estuary. Hiking was new to me, so when Lila said it would take about three hours all together, I was nervous. Walking down the beach and around to the cove was the extent of my hiking experience.

  "You'll be surprised, Cas
sandra," Lila said when I looked horrified at the idea of a three-hour hike. "You're in excellent shape now from walking every day. You'll love it."

  I wasn't so sure, but I figured I could always fall back on impeccable honesty and tell her if I had to turn around and go back.

  We packed backpacks with pears, cheese, and blueberry scones, along with plenty of water. We had little fold up rain slickers, hooded sweatshirts, and cloth hiking hats, so we were all set. I even remembered to tuck in my emergency lady's kit, because the calendar predicted my third menses would start soon.

  The morning had been foggy, but as soon as we got on the road headed north, the fog clouds broke up and disappeared, leaving clear blue sky with no wind. The sunshine coming through the car windows was actually too warm, so I rolled down my window and let cool air wash over me. My braids made riding with the windows down more fun, because my hair wasn't slashing my face and eyes the way it did when it was all long and wild.

  There was a low stretched-out bridge over the Big Fish River wetlands, and right after the bridge, Lila pulled over and stopped the car on the broad shoulder. Down in the wetlands was a herd of very large brown animals. At first I thought they were a new kind of cow or maybe gigantic Oregon deer, but Lila said, "Our golf course elk, seeing what mischief they can get into this morning." She counted out loud until she got to seventeen. "They're all still alive, looks like."

  "Golf course?" I asked, wondering if it was a special breed. She handed me binoculars from her backpack, so I sighted in on what looked like the leader, a huge animal who seemed dumb and annoyed at the same time, someone you would cross the road or the river to avoid.

  "We've had a running feud in the county for years between the folks who like having a herd of elk as neighbors and those who want to murder them for tearing up the golf course."

  "Golfers versus Elks," I said, handing her the binoculars.

  She laughed. "It gets pretty serious though. I wrote a reasonable essay discussing both sides of the controversy, and I got hate mail from both factions. I decided to avoid the elk issue."

  "Good thinking," I said. I could see the guys down at Rainy Hardware in the run down stuffed chairs by the TV wall, plotting ways to murder the elk without getting caught. "Was anyone hurt?"

  "Two years ago, right down behind one of those houses, Abe Jacksly shot a couple of the elk who were trampling his rhododendrons. Instead of scaring the herd away, it made the bull mad. The bull charged Abe, who dropped his rifle, grabbed his wife, ran out the front door, jumped in his truck, and drove off."

  Where she had pointed I saw half a dozen houses with big green back yards. Each property had a little boat dock on the river. The houses looked well cared for but old and unplanned, not like houses you'd find in a California housing area. I could imagine the whole elk herd in someone's back yard. Yikes!

  "Then what happened?" I asked, laughing but feeling sorry for Abe at the same time. Other cars had stopped now and other people got out to count the elk.

  "When they came back the next day, their big back porch had been ripped apart and all their flowers and shrubs had been eaten or trampled to death. Plus they had the two rotting carcasses to dispose of. The elk lovers said that if he had let them be, the elk wouldn't have torn up everything, which is probably true. They would have eaten all the plants they wanted and moved on."

  "What did he do with the bodies?"

  "That was a chore," Lila said. "He got a backhoe out there to bury them in his yard, but the county officials and fish and game people wouldn't let him because it would pollute the estuary. He finally paid to have the dead elk hauled off and buried somewhere else. His wife told her friends his little shooting spree ended up costing them more than a new kitchen would have. She may never forgive him."

  I laughed and laughed. When she grinned at me with a puzzled look, I said, "Grandma, living in a small town is fun."

  She laughed too. "Now you're getting the idea, Cassandra. TV is ever so dull compared to life in Rainbow Village."

  We got back on the highway and turned up an unmarked gravel road that wound around for several miles before we reached our destination. At the preserve trailhead, there was a graveled parking area and a brown port-a-potty. There was one other car, another little old Honda like Lila's, only dark blue. I guess hikers drove the same sort of cars. No Limos or new Caddies here. The trailhead was marked with a carved wooden archway featuring dragons on either side of the name Dragon's Head Preserve.

  There was a little covered station with a log book so you could let park officials know who was on the trail that day. Lila signed us in with the date and time we entered. The rules were posted nearby, and they essentially said don’t touch one single thing and don't put one foot off the marked trail or else something terrible would happen to the delicate headland ecology. I thought they were being a little extreme, but with idiots around willing to shoot anything with eyes, I guess you had to be specific.

  The trail was steep and muddy. Lila went first stepping over huge exposed roots and giving me her hand to help me find secure footing. "It levels out soon," she said when she noticed I was panting.

  I was twelve and she was sixty-five, and somehow I’d thought old people weren't as strong or energetic as kids, but I was wrong. I was beginning to think my grandma could do anything. I tried to imagine Janice on this trail with her tight jeans and high heeled sandals, and I started laughing. "Let's don't take my mom here when she comes, okay?"

  "Not her cup of tea?"

  "She'd despise it."

  "Then she'd miss a rare and beautiful thing," Lila said, kneeling down and showing me where the tiniest orange capped mushrooms were growing underneath a rotting fallen tree. They were perfectly adorable, like a bit of magic I almost missed.

  We stood back up and I felt the trees looking down on me. They were so tall and so big around they seemed ancient. "How old are these trees, Grandma?"

  "These are old growth, which means they've never been cut down for timber. Many of them are more than a hundred years old," she said. "Great great grandmothers, these old ladies." She bowed Namaste to each of the nearby ones, and they seemed to bow back, their top branches swaying in a breeze that didn't reach us down on the trail.

  "That would be the 1880s," I said, trying to imagine such a long time to be alive and standing in one place on the planet. Wow. I bowed to them too, and I felt their love pour down on me like misty light. "Grandmothers," I said, feeling small and blessed.

  Soon the trail leveled out as Lila promised, and I followed behind her as silently as I could. She stopped often to point out colonies of tiny purple flowers or a single white trillium, a delicate flower standing fearlessly on its strong stalk.

  Farther along we crossed little streams that trickled under wooden plank bridges. In the wet banks of one of the streams grew clusters of leafy skunk cabbages with yellow flowers and the strong odor that gave them their name. I was happy to move out of their range.

  After about forty-five minutes of walking up the mountain, we stopped to sit on a fallen tree and have a snack. Everything tasted so delicious I couldn't believe it. "Grandma, these are the best scones I've ever eaten. And the pears!" I was groaning with pleasure and she laughed.

  "This is why people hike, Cassandra. Spending an hour in nature away from the noise and pollution of society awakens the senses in a way nothing else can. We're visiting heaven. Spend enough time hiking and you can hear angels sing."

  "Angels sing? And see fairies dance? Are you sure?"

  "Absolutely. I've heard the angels and seen the fairies with my very own ears and eyes. Pay attention. You will too."

  After we snacked and sat enjoying the music of the breeze in the tops of the grandmother pine trees, we drank water and packed everything in our backpacks and started walking single file again on the packed mud trail. Before we had gone a hundred yards, Lila stopped, alert, touched my arm to stop me, and lifted her chin to direct my gaze.

  Barely thirty fee
t from us were a doe and two fawns. They had stopped still and were looking at us the way we were looking at them. The fawns were so pretty and delicate, and the mother looked as beautiful and healthy as her babies. They were in a grassy clearing up the hill slightly from the trail.

  Lila started talking very gently to them. "What beautiful children you have," she said to the mother. "So pretty, clean, and healthy. You are a wonderful mother. Beautiful lovely creatures, all of you."

  Lila was practically singing them a little song about how pretty they were. The doe relaxed and winked at us. Then she bent and started licking her babies' faces, first one and then the other. The babies moved closer to their mother for more attention.

  Lila kept murmuring to them about how beautiful and sweet they were, and the mamma deer seemed to be replying, Yes, my babies are perfectly wonderful, and thank you very much for noticing.

  We stayed there about ten minutes admiring them. Finally Lila bowed to them and I did too, and we slowly went ahead on the trail. The doe and fawns lifted their heads to nod goodbye and slowly moved up the hill away from us.

  Conversing with deer was almost as good as seeing fairies dance. I didn't realize you could talk with wild animals. I knew dogs and cats and even Buster the parrot would interact with you if you talked with them, but I didn't know wild animals could understand English. My Grandma Lila Blue talked with deer.

  Before long we moved beyond the trees into the headlands where there were only tall grasses and endless sky. We kept ascending on the narrow dirt path until we came to the top of Dragon's Head. From the trail we could look up and down the coast of Oregon in both directions for miles and miles. It seemed we were on top of the world. The trail took us close to the edge of the cliff, not close enough to look straight down, but plenty close to see the ocean all around and know we were high, high above it.