by Danzy Senna
Walter came into view. He had on reading glasses and was holding a book away from himself and squinting. “Lib, you won’t believe what they’re saying in here about Jane Austen. That she’s gay, for God’s sake! It’s outrageous.”
I edged Mr. Pleasure closer to the porch so I could see clearer. Libby sat cross-legged on a lumpy flowered couch with an oatmeal-colored afghan thrown over her lap. Large paintings hung in muted colors on the walls, and white marble sculptures with sharp edges stood in the corners of the room. These same sculptures, I realized then, stood on the dark lawn around me. Someone was an artist.
Just then their son came in. He was back from camp. He was older than me, a real teenager. He was eating a brownie and looking for something he had lost under the furniture. He kept saying “Shit!” under his breath.
I was just settling back in the saddle to watch the show when their golden retriever, with a big, stupid grin on his face, came bounding around the corner of the house toward me. Mr. Pleasure leapt backward on her hind legs, letting out a wild whinny. I almost fell off but grabbed her gray mane and clung on.
But it was too late—Walter had wandered to the screen door, pulling off his glasses with a perplexed expression on his face. He stood behind it, frowning into the darkness.
I sat very still on Mr. Pleasure, who was pawing the ground now, calming down as the dog wagged his tail and laughed at us.
“Nicky!” Walter called into the air. “Will you check behind the house? I just heard a horse out there and I want to make sure that Sheila character and her queer kid haven’t let any of the horses loose.”
Nicholas yelled out from some unseen location, “Can’t you check? I’m watching the game.”
His father looked back into his book and grumbled as he walked to his armchair. “C’mon, Nick, just take a quick look.”
I moved Mr. Pleasure to the side of the house now, next to the porch. I kicked her sides hard, pulling the reins to my right, to try to get us back in the woods, but Mr. Pleasure stood stock still, shaking her head with a rattle of metal.
Nicholas, groaning in exasperation, came out into the darkness and onto the porch with big, wooden steps. I peered around the corner. He still had half of the brownie left in his hand. He looked in the opposite direction from me, toward the white sculptures. He whistled, and called, “Here, Pudd’nhead…Here, Pudd’nhead!” The dog went up the steps to him, leaping at his feet with his tongue rolled out and dripping.
Nicholas ignored Pudd’nhead and walked in my direction to the side of the house.
I closed my eyes, as if it would make me disappear, and sat holding my breath, waiting to be caught. After a moment, I opened my eyes to see Nicholas staring at me from the porch with surprise and some amusement. He had his mother’s dark hair and delicate features.
We stared at each other in silence. Then, slowly, his lips curved into a smile. He yelled out, “Dad, I think it was just Pudd’n getting into some garbage. I’ll just take a look.”
I heard his mother shriek back, “Well, close the door, Nicholas. There’s a wretched draft.”
Nicholas gripped Mr. Pleasure by the reins and, without saying a word, led us over into the woods, to the path that I had emerged from.
When we were a safe distance away, he looked up at me. “Well?”
I started to speak. My throat felt parched, and I could feel a hollow thudding in my chest.
“I was just taking a ride, and Mr. Pleasure started off in this direction. I couldn’t stop him. I mean her. I guess we got kinda lost—”
Nicholas touched my sneakered foot gently and cut me off, saying in almost a whisper, “Hey, don’t worry. No big deal. I know who you are. You’re Jesse, right?”
I nodded. My heart was still thudding, and I worried that he could hear it, so I squirmed around on the saddle, hoping the squeaks would drown the sound out.
Nicholas stroked Mr. Pleasure’s nose, then glanced back toward the house as he said, “Do you want me to take you back to your place? It’s kind of dark out.”
I shook my head, blushing, and twisting Mr. Pleasure’s mane around my finger so that I cut the blood off. “Nah, you don’t have to. I think I can find my way back.”
But Nicholas shook his head. “No, you’ll get lost. There’s a lot of false trails back here. Besides, you shouldn’t be out alone in the woods tonight. There’s a murderer on the loose. Escaped from the local prison. I won’t tell you what he did to little girls, but it wasn’t pretty. Didn’t you hear about him?”
I watched his face, then said, “Yeah, right. Tell me another one.” I tried to sound as tough as my mother, but really I was a little nervous.
He nodded. “It’s true. You must not read the papers.” Then he smiled mysteriously and said, “Scoot. I’ll hop on behind you.”
In a flash, he had mounted Mr. Pleasure, who groaned under the weight of our two bodies. Nicholas smelled of chocolate brownie and clove cigarettes. His arms slid around my waist to hold on to Mr. Pleasure’s reins. I gripped the horse’s mane, and we started at a brisk trot through the woods, back to the small house.
We didn’t speak. I watched the patches of star-bright sky through the jungle of trees as we rode, and imagined I was a cowgirl leading my men to safety. I leaned back a little into his chest and made clicking noises to Mr. Pleasure.
When the cottage finally came into view, I felt a well of disappointment rise up in me. I could just imagine my mother going through another six-pack of Rolling Rock on the front porch and singing along with Bob Dylan.
Nicholas rode us into the stable. He slid off the horse, then he held out his arms and helped me down, with his hands around my waist. We stood in front of Mr. Pleasure, looking at each other under the warm light of the barn.
His eyes were a startling indigo blue, striking against his dark olive complexion.
His eyes flowed over my hair, my face, my neck.
“How old are you?” he asked, his voice breaking slightly.
“Fourteen.” I was twelve, but had lied automatically, not really sure why.
“That’s funny, my parents told me you were going into the eighth grade,” he said with a knowing smile.
I shrugged. “I’m retarded and stayed back a grade.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
He moved away and unbuckled Mr. Pleasure, then put the saddle and bridle away with quick, knowing expertise. He led Mr. Pleasure into her stall and locked the horse in. With a curious, crooked smile, he turned to look at me.
I stood shivering with my hands in my jeans pockets. I was wearing a T-shirt, and my arms were goose-bumped in the cold.
“Well, you should go inside. It’s late. Your mom’s probably worried.”
“Thanks. I mean, for taking me back and everything.” I bit my lip. “Could you do me a favor and not tell anyone that I was back at your house? Please?”
He frowned and walked toward me. His eyes seemed cold all of a sudden, like inkblots. “Why? What were you doing back there, anyway?”
“Nothing. I mean, I just—”
He laughed. “You were spying, weren’t you? You’re a Peeping Tom.”
I looked away, scratching my leg through my jeans. I wondered why he was acting so suspicious of me.
I started to turn away, but he grabbed my arm. “Hey, I’m just teasing you. Don’t get all upset. I won’t tell anyone.”
He was still holding my arm, and I turned to him. I shrugged. “Okay.”
He looked me up and down. “Well, I better be getting back. My parents are going to wonder—”
“Yeah, me too. ‘Bye, now,” I said, hearing my voice crack, like a boy’s. I turned to head back to the house. I heard him call out after me, “See you around.”
I made my way back to our house reluctantly, dragging my feet, thinking about Nicholas and his family and the murderer in the woods.
Inside, the house was dark. It was later than I thought. I bumped into a chair at the kitchen table, and it made a lou
d scraping sound. The living room was pitch dark as well, but I could hear music playing. Italian opera. I was making my way over to the tape player to turn it off, when I noticed a figure seated on the couch, and I started.
“Shit, Mum, you scared the hell out of me. What are you doing in the dark?”
“Where in the fuck were you?” was all she said.
My words came out quickly, sounding like lies even though they weren’t. “I went out for a ride on Mr. Pleasure, the mare. And I got lost in the woods and ended up behind the Marshes’ house. And that kid Nicholas, their son, rode me back home, and he just left. Sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to scare you. It was funny, though. I mean, I almost got thrown off the horse when that damn dog—”
“Spying on the Marshes, huh?” she said, cutting me off. I thought she was just kidding, but then she barked: “Get over here.”
I went toward her, tentatively. When I was close enough, she grabbed my arm and pulled me down so I leaned over her.
She said it quietly but clearly, her words floating across the dark air between us like vapor: “Hon, I’m gonna say this once. Don’t ever, ever, come home later than you tell me. You hear me? I was scared shitless. I thought I was gonna have to go out looking. I thought they had you. I thought they had found you and were gonna use you as bait.” She started to cry, and her grip loosened as she pulled away from me and roughly wiped her face dry. She spoke in a softer tone, sounding broken and exhausted as she said, “Fuck it all. I mean, when are you going to understand that this isn’t a game? I learned just a week ago that the Feds got Jane. Found her in Oregon, living on some farm with her lover. She’ll probably get a sixteen-year sentence to Marion. They’ve got her, baby, and they’re gonna get us if we aren’t more than careful. We gotta watch our asses, not get too close to anybody. You know that. I taught you well. Stay away from those rich fucks across the woods. Hear me? They’re just like my own goddamn family—the kind of liberals who would like to see me fry. Remember that.”
I just stood there in front of her for a few minutes, my arms hanging loosely by my sides. I felt dirty and guilty.
There was a long pause as she sniffled into her arm. Then she peeked up and said, “She’s going to hate me. She’s going to think this was all my fault.” I knew what, who, she was talking about, but knew better than to say anything.
Finally she said, “Go to bed. Go on.”
I left her sitting there, sniffling to herself. Before I went up the stairs, she called after me: “I love you, Baby Bird. Remember that.” She sung a line from an old soul song: “You are everything, and everything is you.”
I took it as an apology, and shouted back: “I love you too, Mum.”
soundtrack to a pass
It sounded like a child crying or a cat in heat. Unpleasant. Pleading. I covered my head with a pillow. It was my mother doing her morning mantras out on the lawn. The sound was grating, unsettling to me. I had heard somewhere that you pray for only the dead or the doomed. I didn’t want to pray for Cole. I wanted to use more practical methods for tracking her down, like sending word through the underground to tell her where we were, or simply going to find them ourselves in Brazil. Sometimes when I asked my mother about trying a new tactic, she would say, “It’s not so easy, sweetums. We’re still prisoners of those fucking Cointelpro goons. Every move we make is a risk. We’ve got to choose the right moment, or we’re fucked.” Other times she was more optimistic and would pat my head rather gingerly, look away, and say, “Don’t worry, babe. I’ve got it under control. It’s only a matter of time.”
After the mantras, my mother would do her Tai Chi on the broad field between the stable and the forest. She usually wore tights with rainbow leg warmers, a long T-shirt, and her feet bare. Her hair had gotten light around the roots, and she was due for another henna. From my bed, I often watched her out the window, her body seeming to be frozen in whatever pose she had struck. But she only appeared to be still, balanced on one leg with the other bent in the air, her arms in a delicate karate pose before her. She was actually involved in a barely perceptible motion, one which I could measure only when I closed my eyes and then opened them a moment later to see she had changed positions.
I should have been asleep during that hour of the morning before dawn. But so often I was awake with the first coming of light, rigid, the tips of my fingers tingling with some vague anticipation, as if waiting for something, someone, during that hour when my mother believed she was alone.
Those days when she worked for the professor, I was left by myself to ride the horses in circles on the lawn, read novels on the front porch, and watch television on the mangled black-and-white TV the Marshes had sold to us for thirty dollars. I missed my mother when she was gone, even for those few hours, and my heart would leap at the sound of our clunker van pulling over gravel.
Sometimes, when the boredom and loneliness got to be too much, I walked the long road into town, where I would wander the aisles of Woolworth’s, staring at all the things I couldn’t have. The town was run down, depressed, despite the university in the next town over. Most of the shops there looked like they belonged in another era—the candy bars covered in dust, the clothes on the racks dingy and faded. There was one particularly strange shop at the edge of town that never seemed to get any business, Hans’s Toy Shop and Doll Hospital. In the front window was a sad little display that included a G.I. Joe doll posed holding his gun pointed at the outside world; a battery-operated monkey with his cymbals poised to crash together; and a huge, black baby doll who wore only diapers and a T-shirt that said “Jackson” across the front.
Some days I went in there because I knew I wouldn’t bump into kids my age. The store owner, Hans, an old German man who looked like a gnome with his stark-white beard and small wire-rimmed glasses, let me play with an Etch-A-Sketch that sat beside the cash register. Once, Hans even let me glance in the back room at his prized “doll hospital.” A long row of naked dolls, with identical blank expressions, lay side by side on a folding table. All the dolls were deformed in some way: a missing limb, a punched-in face, a chewed-up foot. Beside them on the table was a row of tools. I was at once fascinated and terrified by the sight of the crippled little creatures who waited to go under the knife.
Most days, though, I just wandered the main road, crossing the street whenever I saw other children. There weren’t many of them around those summer afternoons. Walter Marsh had told my mother that most of the local kids spent their days at the YMCA camp at the other end of town, or in summer school, trying to pass into the next grade.
I sat at a bench in front of a chili-dog stand one afternoon, munching on a corn dog and reading a book about horses my mother had bought me the day before. A group of girls rode up on brightly colored bicycles. It was sweltering outside, and I wore a pair of cutoff jeans, my hot-pink Converse sneakers, and a thin olive-green T-shirt. It said in bold white letters across my chest, “Join the Army: Travel to distant lands, meet fascinating people, and kill them.” Alexis had given the T-shirt to me when we’d left Aurora. Alexis had been the only other kid there. She was the daughter of a battered wife who was hiding out from her ex-husband. Alexis had a fragility to her. My mother said it was a form of posttraumatic stress syndrome. She was forever terrified that her father would show up with a baseball bat to kill her mother. We slept together on a mattress on the floor, and she often woke in the middle of the night, crying, remembering her father’s wrath. Alexis and I had become inseparable that year. She had been my last real friend.
I felt a sharp longing for Alexis now as the group of girls walked past me. They all were dressed alike in pastel short-shorts and little half-blouses that showed off their belly buttons. One of them, a blond girl whom I had seen once before, said something to her friends, and they all cackled wildly. I put my book inside my backpack and stood up to leave. I heard one of them say behind me, “What the fuck kinda zoo did she escape from?”
I turned, and they all were looking a
t me with amused disgust. Another one, who wore a pair of high-heeled sneakers, laughed, and said, “I don’t think she speaks English.”
I took off running, not caring that I looked crazy, just wanting to get home to the quiet and secrecy of our cottage.
Once I was out of town, I slowed to a walk. I felt stupid for caring about those silly girls. Cole would have stood up and shoved the big blond one. She would have had some witty comeback. “Yeah? Well your mama’s so fat…” But I had been silent, a coward. Just then I heard a car come up the road behind me. I thought it must be the mean girls from the chili-dog stand, and quickened my pace. But the car didn’t pass me. Instead it trailed behind me. I was too scared to turn around and see who it was, so I kept walking, face forward. I imagined it was the Feds. They had finally caught up with me. Then the image distorted into Hans. I wondered if he was a Nazi and had glimpsed the star around my neck. I saw myself on his table of dolls, preparing to go under the knife.
I heard a familiar voice.
“Hey, you. Want a ride?”
I turned to see a silver Saab—the Marshes’ car. Nicholas was driving. He looked funny behind the wheel, too young to be driving.
He pulled up to the side of the road, and I walked over to the open window. Inside he was smoking, and blasting some rock song that I didn’t recognize.
“You in some kind of a hurry? I saw you running.”
I bit my lip, embarrassed, and glanced back down the road toward town. I half-expected to see the gaggle of girls on their bright bikes following me. I imagined them trying to catch me with a butterfly net and return me to the zoo. “Um, I was just exercising. You know.”
“Well, are you gonna get in, or are you gonna stand there all day?”
I slid onto the leather seat. Nicholas was wearing cutoffs too, which made me feel less freakish. I sat close to the door, as far from him as possible, and immediately began to twist a lock of hair around my finger.