We Contain Multitudes

by Sarah Henstra

  “Why not bring Walt back, then, to read you Leaves of Grass?” I asked.

  Your palm stroked my ribs. “Did he even do public readings?”

  “I can grant anything, Jo. I can get you into Walt’s house, if you want. You can hang out with him.”

  “No, thanks,” you said.

  I had to think about this. “Is it that Walt might be better on paper? He wouldn’t measure up in real life?”

  “I wouldn’t measure up,” you said.

  I pressed a hand against your hot ear. “Walt would love you. Walt is going to love you.”

  There was silence. Then a sniffle.

  “Are you crying?” I asked.

  “No,” you said, but I felt a tear roll onto my sternum, which made me laugh.

  I wiped your cheek. “Walt Whitman is going to adore you.”

  You were still quiet.

  “I adore you,” I said.

  You sat up and smiled, teary and flushed. “You do, don’t you?”

  “I really do,” I said.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Friday, April 8

  Dear Little Jo,

  I know we’re not really writing anymore, and I know I already said I was sorry a few times in person. It still doesn’t feel like enough somehow, so I’m just going to write it out. Get it down hopefully once and for all. Maybe this is what they mean by a formal apology: It doesn’t feel like it sticks until it’s written out.

  We were in your bedroom, sitting on the floor just inside the door. Not in your tent yet, although that’s where we were headed. You were kissing me and you stopped and said, “Are you okay, Kurl?”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Sometimes I get the sense that you check out for a few seconds. As though you suddenly jump ship, and I’m the only one here with our two bodies.”

  I said I didn’t know what you were talking about. But of course, Jo, of course I knew. I’d felt it—exactly what you described, like I’d gone somewhere else.

  “Maybe it’s related to your uncle in some way,” you said.

  I didn’t move a muscle and I didn’t say anything. But I mean you must have felt me pulling away even further because you rushed in to say more: “But my point is that I don’t care what it’s related to,” you said. “I just don’t want you to worry about calling a limit, or saying ‘no’ to me. Ever. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You’re not hurting me,” I said. I tried to add in a laugh to it, but we both knew it wasn’t a real laugh.

  “Can we change the subject, please?” I said.

  “Okay,” you said.

  So we sat there a minute totally silent while I tried to think of another subject. My brain had nothing in it though. Just white noise. Static.

  “Have you started writing that autobiographical essay for the college application yet? The ACE piece?” you said, finally.

  “It’s under control.” Small talk, I thought. We were making small talk, like distant cousins or something.

  “I can help you with it, if you want.”

  “Nah, I’m good. Thanks though,” I said.

  “It’s just that I sometimes worry a bit when we’re together,” you said, rushing the words, “that maybe you’d let me push you past where you’re comfortable, or where it’s feeling good to you. You know, because you’re used to Viktor doing it.”

  I swung forward onto my haunches and spun around to face you. “I’m not fucking broken, all right?” I said. “I’m not like some broken thing you have to hold together.”

  “I know that, Kurl. I just wanted to have it said.”

  “Stop acting like a fag for one second, would you?”

  Your head snapped back so hard that your hollow bedroom door gave a loud thwack.

  “Seriously,” I said, “you can be such a fucking pussy sometimes.” My voice was terrible. Terrible.

  You got up off the floor, backed over to the chair by your desk, and sat down. The worst thing of all was how you were trying to not let me see you were crying and also to not take your eyes off me, both at the same time.

  It was like a contaminant had leaked out of my mouth. A chemical spill. There must have been a stench. I mean I’ve inhaled this exact poison for five years now from my uncle. No surprise really that eventually it would build up and boil over.

  So that’s when I started saying I was sorry.

  Right away you said, “It’s okay,” but I said, “No, I’m serious, Jo, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  “I know you didn’t,” you said. “Ignore the crying.”

  I kept apologizing, and you kept saying to forget the whole thing. Finally you asked if we could please pretend it never happened. We went downstairs and made ourselves dinner from the stuff we found in the fridge: eggs and oven fries and eggplant and peppers.

  But I know the night was ruined because of me. And I know it’s not going to go away. A chemical spill doesn’t just soak into the dirt and disappear. I don’t know what it’ll take to clean it up, but maybe a formal apology is a place to start.

  Jo, I am sorry for what I said. Forgive me?

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Sunday, April 10

  Dear Kurl,

  Yesterday was amazing, wasn’t it? It was hands down the best birthday I’ve ever had. Thank you for my lantern! The LITTLE WIZARD from Detritus, which you fitted with an LED/battery mechanism so that I don’t burn the house down in a kerosene fire.

  You confessed that you’d had it since before Christmas but had been too shy to give it to me back then. “It’s for the tent,” you murmured, when I unwrapped it, and laughed at me when my face heated up at the thought of my tent with this red light glowing over our skin.

  It was my first civic protest, but I’m fairly confident it won’t be my last. The whole day felt like the future. The warm sun on our backs promising summer. The whole Otulah-Tierney family pitching in—Bron’s mother, her sister, and the twins handing out leaflets, her dad passing around a thermos of hot chocolate to our group. I loved all the chanting: “No spills, no fear, tankers are not welcome here!”

  As usual, the credit for the successful event must be laid at Bron’s feet. Her mother said as much: that none of them would even know about the oil-tanker issue if Bron hadn’t been delivering her weekly lectures at their breakfast table. In a way the whole day was an Otulah-Tierney-family festival in Bron’s honor, since she’d just received her acceptance to the Stanford journalism program, her top choice.

  But for me, the aspect of the day that made it feel most like the future was the briefest of moments, Kurl—thirty seconds, forty-five at most. Do you know what I’m referring to? You held my hand. We were marching along in the crowd, in public, in broad daylight, and you reached out and took my hand and held it. The best part was that it didn’t feel strange or unnatural at all. It felt right.

  Bron ruined it, bless her over-politicized little heart. She poked her head between us from behind and said, “Okay, see? When you two can do that at school, in the hall, without any recriminations: That’s when we’ll know we’ve achieved equality, and not until then.”

  Yours,

  Jo

  PS: In reference to your last letter: I formally forgive you. I forgave you the first time you apologized. Anger is a relatively small thing, Kurl. We are large, remember? We contain multitudes.

  Thursday, April 21, 5 p.m.

  Dear Kurl,

  I heard the news because in the middle of Math class Ms. Basu started to cry. She must have been sneaking a look at her phone under her desk while we were in groups grading each other’s homework. I saw her suddenly cover her mouth and choke back a sob.

  I went up to her and crouched beside her desk and asked her what had happened. Usually Ms. Basu isn’t very chummy with students, but she must have been too distraught not to tell me. She took her hand away from her mouth and whispered, “Prince died.” Then she said, “Excuse me,” and she stood up and rushed out o
f the room.

  I didn’t really believe it at first. I walked back to my desk, entirely calm. But two seconds later this girl named Dia said it out loud, to everyone: “Prince is dead.”

  With the teacher gone, everyone was free to scroll around on their phones to find out more, and everyone shared all the details: the emergency landing, the canceled concert. The supposed case of influenza. They speculated: Avian flu? Or overdose? We’d all been hearing the drug rumors over the last couple of years.

  No one in the classroom other than Ms. Basu got very upset at the news even though Prince is supposedly the pride and joy of Minneapolis. I thought of Lyle and the other Decent Fellows, imagining their shock and dismay. I thought of Bron and Shayna, of course, and you—but then I think of you every three or four minutes, Kurl, regardless of the circumstances, and I knew you were too recently introduced to Prince to feel much more than surprise at his death.

  Lonely, though. I felt suddenly excruciatingly lonely, and I missed my mother. Who may or may not have even been a fan of Prince.

  Anyhow. When Ms. Basu didn’t come back, I packed up my stuff, wandered into the hall, and eventually found Bron and Shayna in the stairwell. Both of them were in tears. We hugged all around and talked about how glad we were to have visited Paisley Park last year—how unbelievable it was, retrospectively, that we’d been just in time, that it had been our last chance.

  Then Bron happened to glance over at Shayna’s phone. “Why is Axel texting you?”

  Shayna hid her screen from Bron, but she’d clearly gotten good news: Her tears were gone and she was trying, without great success, to hide a smile.

  “What?” Bron said.

  Shayna hesitated. “He wants me to participate in this Prince tribute night he’s going to do.”

  “He’s already thinking about a tribute? That’s just… opportunistic,” Bron said. “That’s downright sleazy.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Shayna said. She held a hand up to stop Bron from saying more. “You know what? I don’t have time for this.” And she headed down the stairs.

  “Where are you going? First you blow off my tanker protest, and now you’re ditching me again? Today? I need you, Shay.”

  “It wasn’t your protest,” Shayna said, over her shoulder, and I could tell from her tone this was part of a longer, ongoing argument. “And this isn’t your day, either. Prince is dead; it affects all of us equally, all right?”

  Bron and I followed her down one flight of stairs, but then Bron suddenly sank down cross-legged on the landing in front of the window.

  “Are you okay?” I sat down next to her, but I was thinking about you, missing you. Maybe whatever class you were in, you hadn’t yet heard.

  “Axel is such a sleazeball. He talks like he’s got all these connections in the music industry, like he’s some kind of major talent scout or something. He’s basically convinced Shayna to drop out of school. Meanwhile he’s nobody. He’s this coked-out loser. I can’t stand him. I told her I’m not going to the Ace with her anymore.”

  “Isn’t he giving her gigs, though?” I said.

  “Sure, but he only pays her in booze and weed. Last time, I was like, ‘Dude, she can actually get all the weed she wants from her own father,’ so he goes, ‘How about some MDMA, then? We should go dancing sometime; you girls would look so hot rolling on molly.’”

  “Ew.” I scanned the crowd streaming down the stairs past us, hoping to see you.

  “It’s a little more than ‘ew,’ Jonathan.”

  I looked at her. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t say anything to Lyle, but I’m starting to get really worried about her.”

  Is my sister in mortal peril? Bron takes everything so seriously that it’s hard to tell, sometimes, which of her bandwagons to jump on. On the other hand, I’ve been so preoccupied in recent weeks with you, Kurl, that it’s possible I’ve overlooked the extent to which Shayna is getting caught up in something dangerous.

  Anyhow. Bron says she wants to do something for Prince tonight. A wake of some kind. She has invited us all for a sleepover.

  I hope you can come, Kurl. I want to see you.

  Yours,

  Jo

  Friday, April 22

  Dear Little Jo,

  I guess now you know why I was so distracted while you were giving me the grand tour of Bron’s house. You showed me that freestanding bathtub in the master bathroom—I don’t think I’d ever been inside a master bathroom before or even known there was such a thing—and you said, “It’s as if a giant bird came in through the skylight and laid an egg in the center of the marble floor, and they simply hollowed it out and attached a gold-plated faucet to one end.” I mean I did hear what you were saying. It’s just that I couldn’t really pay attention, because all I could think about was the hot tub.

  You, Bron, and Shayna were already all in there by the time I got up the courage. Izzy and Ezra were slouching around in the den, and to kill even more time I asked them if they were sad about Prince.

  Izzy said, “That purple guy?” and Ezra said, “Oh, gross.”

  No surprise really that if Bron’s parents worship Prince as much as she says they do and all the Otulah-Tierney kids grew up listening to his music, at least a couple of her siblings would rebel against the family tastes.

  When I can’t put it off any longer I go out on the patio in just my boxers with a towel around my shoulders. I sit on the edge of the hot tub and stick my feet in.

  “Adonis approacheth,” Bron says, and Shayna goes, “Oh, this is going to be good.” They do this a lot lately, those two. It’s like finding out about you and me gave them free rein to treat me like a sex object.

  I’m so nervous I can barely get the words out. I say, “I want to show you guys something.” And I strip the towel off my shoulders, swing myself down into the middle of the tub, and stand waist-deep, facing you so that Shayna and Bron can get a good look at my back.

  So what happens when Adonis takes off his clothes and reveals that he’s deformed, ugly, scarred?

  What happens is that they go very, very quiet. I was expecting gasping or retching, or I don’t know, some reaction. Something. Bron at least would ask what happened to me, or something, right? I’m standing there in front of them listening for something, anything, and it’s so silent behind me that I suddenly wonder if they’ve jumped out of the tub and run away and I haven’t noticed.

  And meanwhile there you are in front of me, Jo, with wide eyes and your hand on your throat and tears coming up in your eyes. I mean I did expect that.

  Total silence. Finally I sort of awkwardly swish over to the seat next to you. I hook my legs over your lap. Sitting sideways so that my back is still mostly visible to Bron and Shayna. I mean maybe I should have let them off the hook then. Sunk lower into the water or something. But their silence made me paranoid that I was showing them and they somehow weren’t seeing. That I would have to keep showing them again and again, forever, and we’d all be stuck in this eternal loop of horror and pity and shock.

  You wrap your arms around my kneecaps, and I thread my arm underneath so I can hold on to your ribs and feel your heartbeat and try to pace my own with it to calm myself down.

  Then I start talking, and I tell them the whole story: This is why I quit the football team back in September. I’d gotten stomped in the back, the wind knocked out of me. Coach Samuels was worried I might have broken a rib.

  I kept saying, “No, no, I’m fine,” but during the very next down he noticed me wince or something, and pulled me out again. And when I refused to strip down for the medic, they got suspicious.

  Samuels is ordering me to show the guy my injuries, and I’m backing away, basically playing keep-away around the locker room with him like a total lunatic. Finally he says I have to show him my back, or I can’t play.

  I start more or less begging him: “I’ll sit this one out, Coach; I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow. I won’t come back until it’s tot
ally healed up,” but he smells bullshit because he says, “Now. You let us treat you right this second, or you’re out for good.”

  Finally I say straight out, “Listen, you don’t really know what you’re asking. This goes beyond this game and this one hit, all right? You have all these legal obligations to report stuff.”

  And he goes, “That’s right, son. Now show us your goddamn back.”

  So that was it.

  “So you walked away.” Finally. Finally someone in this hot tub besides me is saying something. Shayna. Her voice is normal.

  I untangle myself from you and turn to let the hot water cover my shoulders. “So I quit the team, yeah.”

  “It wasn’t just scars, though, was it?” Bron says. “Or else you could have lied. You could have said someone did it when you were little. A bad babysitter. Or even your dad, years earlier, before he died.”

  “No, a lot of it was fresh, that day. Uncle Vik lost a bid on a roof.” Bron’s brains are terrifying sometimes, aren’t they? I mean she figures things out faster than anyone I know.

  “Why hasn’t Coach Samuels followed up?” she says.

  “I gave him nothing to go on,” I say. “He’s stopped me in the halls a few times, asked me how things are going. But what am I going to tell him?”

  “The truth!” Bron says. “You have to report this, Kurl. You need help.”

  “There you go again,” Shayna says to her, “making shit your business that’s not your business.”

  “My friend is in trouble,” Bron protests. “When my friend is in trouble, I consider that my business”

  “Well, that’s a guaranteed excellent way to lose your friend!” Shayna heaves herself out of the hot tub, splashing me in the eyes and leaving a wake that lifts us practically off the seat. Without bothering with her towel, she stalks across the deck and into the den, ramming the patio door behind her so hard it rocks back on its rails.