The View From Who I Was

by Heather Sappenfield

  She turned to the pond, lined on the far side with cattails and bud-laden bushes. “This is like a different world.”

  “I like that about the desert,” Angel said. “How it holds hidden worlds. Sometimes I hike that way along the valley floor.” She pointed beyond the pond. “Hawks live in a tree down there. Sometimes they leave these on the ground.” Angel held out a feather. “This is for all the things you’ve survived. And for our friendship.”

  The feather’s reddish-brown tip was followed by a thick dark-brown stripe, then thirteen stripes below that, reminding Corpse of a tiger. At its end, a fluffy white tuft abruptly became the shaft held by Angel. Corpse’s hand covered her mouth.

  “You have to treat it with respect,” Angel said.

  “No problem.” Corpse took the feather, ran her two fingers up one side and down the other. “Thank you.” She leaned her elbows on the deck railing and admired it.

  Angel joined her at the rail.

  One stripe had a break in the middle. Corpse decided that was ours. She traced its break and mentally thanked the emergency room doctor.

  “William wants to be a doctor,” she said.

  “Yes,” Angel said. “He always has.”

  “You’ve known him a long time?”

  She shrugged. “My grandfather and his grandmother are old friends. We’ve been hanging out at powwows since we were in diapers.”

  “Oh,” Corpse said. “What do you want to be?”

  Angel shrugged. “A writer maybe. Someone who helps my people somehow.”

  My people. I pictured Sherman and Kenny. All we had was our screwed-up family. I pictured Ash glaring at us. Tanesha scowling at us. Manny shouting, “Chingado! ” All those eyes in the halls.

  “How about you?” Angel said. “What do you want to be?”

  Corpse twirled her feather, head tilted, and thought, Happy, loved, a scientist. “No clue.”

  On the pond were lily pads. The breeze gently textured its surface, rocking the pads.

  “I wonder how charred it is down there by the highway,” Corpse said. “I keep thinking about those guys’ families.” Her voice broke, and before I knew it, I hovered over her shoulders.

  Angel pressed her lips and leaned on the rail.

  “That was lucky. The rain. To lose all this would be a shame,” Corpse said.

  “I didn’t want to know you.” Angel smiled in the way that transformed her face. “I didn’t like that dream I had, and I only remembered you from the conference. When you got here, I tried to keep my distance, but I kept running into you. I finally decided to stop fighting it. I’m glad I did.”

  “Me too,” Corpse said.

  “My dream,” Angel said, “was that you were my roommate at Yale.”

  Corpse stiffened.

  “I think I’ll listen to that dream. I’ve decided to go to Yale.”

  “Even knowing how screwed-up I am?

  “You seem okay. And my dreams are never wrong.”

  Corpse looked at her sneakers. Gabe at Harvard, Angel, probably, at Yale. I didn’t know what to think. Maybe after spring break we could consider college. Maybe then we’d feel worthy of these people who risked themselves on us.

  “I can’t commit to anything until my family is better.”

  “And if they heal apart?” Angel said.

  “Then they heal apart,” Corpse said. “Right now things are not okay. It would be like abandoning that guy under the fire last night.”

  Their eyes met.

  Angel: He was already dead.

  Corpse looked down.

  Angel shrugged.

  They leaned on the rail, taking in the scenery. Down the valley, a hawk appeared above the cottonwoods. It rose in a sleek, soaring curve.

  “Maybe your feather came from that one,” Angel said.

  Its wings adjusted in slight movements against the currents.

  William, Angel, and a few other students stood at the back of Mr. Handler’s Prius. Louise came out of the counseling office, the screen door clapping behind her.

  “Well,” she said, “go if you must. Thanks for everything.” She hugged Mr. Handler.

  “No, thank you. I gain far more than you do when I come here.” He turned to the rest of the kids. “From all of you.” He looked worn-out but content.

  Roberta marched up. She and Mr. Handler regarded each other.

  Angel stepped from Corpse’s side and hugged Mr. Handler. A couple other kids did the same. William shook his hand, and Corpse noticed his grip was light, like he was giving Mr. Handler something delicate.

  “Good luck this summer,” Mr. Handler said to him. “Good luck to you all.”

  Roberta hung at the back of the group, studying the asphalt. Corpse had an urge to slap her. To shout, Hey! These people care about you! But I remembered Roberta’s scowl in the counseling office after she’d passed through me, her astonished face at Circle.

  Mr. Handler and Corpse walked to their sides of the Prius. They opened its doors.

  William, with Angel at his elbow, followed Corpse. “Angel has my number,” Corpse said to him. “If you’re in Leadville, come for some ice cream.”

  “I might be on a diet. Slimming down for college.” He grinned.

  “Bye,” Angel said, and she and Corpse hugged. “Let me know how it goes with your dad.”

  Mr. Handler seemed to absorb her words as he watched them across the Prius’s shining roof.

  “I will,” Corpse said. She started to get in the car but felt as if she was leaving something important. Too important. She turned to Angel. “Maybe you can come visit me this summer?”

  Angel’s eyebrows rose. “I have to work.”

  “A few days?”

  “Maybe.”

  Corpse got in and closed the door. She rolled down the window. Mr. Handler started the car, and Angel said, “You had a sky blue bedspread. With clouds. Okay. I’ll come see how rich white folks live.”

  Mr. Handler pulled from the lot and waved his arm out the window. The Prius ascended the road, and Corpse craned around and looked through me out the back window. The kids were talking in a group, but Louise and Angel watched the Prius.

  “Amazing place, isn’t it?” Mr. Handler said.

  “Yes.”

  Angel grew smaller. Corpse held up her thumb, and Angel was the size of its nail. Her eyes rose to where the fire had been, across the ridges’ waves to the horizon. The Prius crested the rise, zinged over the cattle guard, and started bouncing along the washboard dirt road.

  “In the middle of nowhere,” Mr. Handler said, shaking his head.

  The dog sprinted out to them.

  “Crazy animal,” Mr. Handler said. “I wish they’d tie it up. I’m afraid I’m going to hit it.”

  Corpse pictured the dog chained up, yanking and choking itself as it snapped and barked, frantic to get to Mr. Handler’s car. This dog would break its neck trying to chase them.

  The dog’s fierce barking trailed off, and she watched it in the side mirror, braced in the road, fangs bared. Did that dog ever curl by the fire and let itself be petted? She craned around, looking through me again at the space where she imagined the school to be, curled in its valley. Middle of nowhere. DEAD GIRL GOES NOWHERE. In nowhere, we finally started to puzzle ourself out.

  Twenty

  From Oona’s journal:

  Ice floats because it expands as it solidifies. If ice sank, all ponds, lakes, and oceans would freeze, and life on Earth, as we know it, could not survive.

  —Biology: Life’s Course

  Chateau Antunes smelled of Corpse’s favorite enchiladas. Sugeidi stood at the kitchen sink, water rushing from the tap into a sudsy bowl, and her hands disappeared into white bubbles. Her skin was the same hue as Angel’s skin, and this made Corpse smile. She tried to picture
the distance between Fort Defiance, Arizona, and Monterrey, Mexico.

  “Smells good,” she said.

  Sugeidi’s hand flew to her heart.

  “Oona! No sneak!” Then she grinned. Across the chest of her maid dress was a handprint outlined in bubbles, and Corpse laughed. Sugeidi dried her hands in her apron, and Corpse saw that dress in the way Sugeidi did, so she didn’t hug her like she’d planned. Instead she walked to her, put one hand on her shoulder, and kissed her cheek. In the corner of her eye, Mom appeared in the doorway but stepped back.

  “I missed you, Sugeidi. It’s good to be home,” Corpse said.

  Sugeidi assessed her, and Corpse straightened under her scrutiny. “You mend,” she said.

  “I’m getting there.”

  “Bueno, Oona. Bueno.”

  “Bueno,” Corpse said.

  Mom came in. “You’re back.” Her words sounded rehearsed. She stopped at the breakfast bar.

  “I’m back.”

  I noticed Mom had caverns in her cheeks and around her eyes, even rivulets between the bones of her wrists. Though taller than Corpse by three inches, she seemed breakable. Corpse walked to her and hugged her. Cautiously, I blanketed them. It felt okay. Nice.

  Mom sighed and her arms circled the low part of Corpse’s back. She laid her hollow cheek against Corpse’s hair.

  “You can stop worrying now,” Corpse said.

  Mom pulled back. Her right eye quivered, and she wiped her cheek. “I see that.” She looked over Corpse’s shoulder at Sugeidi. “Tell us about your trip.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’ll be back from Chicago late tonight,” Mom said.

  Corpse touched Mom’s arm, and Mom looked down. Part of Corpse wanted to flee back to Angel, to anywhere. This seriousness, this much suffering, was a disease. She climbed onto a stool and Mom took the one next to her.

  “I’m starving,” Corpse said. “Are those enchiladas ready?”

  “Sí,” Sugeidi said. She pulled the pan from the oven and turned the knob from warm to off. With a spatula she dug out the red-sauced enchiladas and filled two plates that she carried to them. She drew two glasses of water, set a bowl of corn salad between their plates, and stood at the counter.

  “None for you?” Mom said.

  Their eyes had a conversation Corpse couldn’t decipher. I realized it was Saturday, a day Sugeidi was usually with her family in the trailer park. What had gone on with just them here?

  “I eat already,” Sugeidi said. “Tell, Oona.”

  Corpse told them about greeting the sun, and the rock in Dr. Yazzie’s pocket, and the dead guys in the fire, and the feather Angel gave her. Neither of them spoke or even blinked with doubt. Instead they leaned close, hanging on her every word.

  “Thing is, I’d held them on some sort of pedestal. An ideal,” Corpse said. “But William and Roberta and Dr. Yazzie and Angel, they’re just people. Regular people. Like us.” Her eyes met Mom’s and Sugeidi’s, all their struggles suspended there, and they burst into laughter.

  Day faded to night, and in the dimming kitchen, the triangle of their heads seemed lit.

  Gabe’s arms felt so good. They were made to fit together, I decided.

  “You look better,” he said. “I’m not sure what it is.”

  “I am better.”

  He kissed her and she kissed him back, like on the dance floor. She weaved her fingers into his hair.

  “Wow!” he said. “Much better.”

  “I thought a lot about you. About us,” she said.

  “It must have been good.”

  They kissed again. Corpse pressed closer, and he pulled her tighter. Her kisses moved along his cheek to the stubble at his jaw. Seemed to crackle across his dimple. She kissed his ear, and they looked at each other in a way that had never existed before. One of his hands ran up her back into her hair. He peered over her shoulder through the living room and into the kitchen.

  “Where is everybody?”

  “Sugeidi just left to visit her son. Mom’s watching a movie downstairs. Dad’s flying back from Chicago.”

  “That sucks. That he left. Your mom’s great.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. She’s really trying.”

  “I’ve never said thank you, Gabe. For loving me through it all.”

  “If this is how you’re going to express it, thank me all you want.”

  They kissed again, whole bodies kissing. I drew back, kept seeing Roberta. Gabe’s hardness shouted beneath his jeans, and Corpse molded herself against it. How did she know to do this?

  “What happened at that school?” He fingered the heart on her necklace.

  “I figured some things out.” She snuggled closer.

  “I don’t have anything with me. Like rubbers,” he whispered.

  “Why would you? I’ve been like a corpse.” She stumbled on “corpse” and her eyes darted around, then over her shoulder.

  “What is it?” Gabe said.

  She shoved my judging aside. “I’m going to go on the pill. I’ll see the doctor next week.”

  “Wow!” he said. “Things are really looking up.”

  “I’ll say.”

  They laughed like they’d robbed a bank, and he hugged her closer.

  “Are you really a virgin?” she whispered.

  “Yes. I told you, Hernandez men love once. You’re the one that’s hard to believe is a virgin.”

  “Believe it.”

  She ran her thumb across his dimple. She thought how Gabe had his people, too, how they anchored him. She took his hand and led him to the velvety couch.

  “Oona—”

  “It’s okay. I promise.”

  I squirmed as she lay on the couch and pulled Gabe to her. He settled carefully between her and the couch’s back. His hardness pressed her hip and she turned toward it, wanted it in a way that had nothing to do with reasoning or doubting or judging.

  He traced the plane of her cheek. Moved down her sweater and slid his hand underneath it. She arched her back as he tried to unclasp her bra, but he couldn’t figure it out.

  “Gabe Hernandez not good at something?” she whispered, unclasping it for him.

  His fingers trembled against the flat of her belly and stayed there, memorizing it. He reached up, noting each of her ribs, till he found her breast. Breathing hard, his finger haloed her nipple and everything disappeared but Gabe and her and their pulse. She lifted her sweater and he looked at her, leaned down. She felt his warm mouth. He moved to her other breast, and she thought she’d explode. She pulled Gabe on top of her.

  Humping, I thought, and the word drifted to the back of her skull. DEAD GIRL HUMPS.

  She paused. Gabe’s mouth hovered over hers. They exchanged breaths, and she reached down to his pants. “Just our jeans,” she said. She unbuttoned and unzipped both their pants.

  Gabe took on an intensity we’d seen only on the soccer field. This, along with underwear on underwear, put Corpse over the top, and her breathing rose an octave. Gabe’s too. Their humping grew furious, and it became her favorite word. Her head bloomed, and she gasped and dropped back on the couch. Gabe lay limp on top of her, and wet spread into her pubic hair.

  “Wow!” he said against her ear.

  “And we’re still virgins.”

  He laughed gently.

  I sighed on their intimacy.

  The door between the kitchen and the garage opened and something heavy clunked against the stone floor. They bolted up. Gabe zipped and buttoned his jeans. Corpse zipped and buttoned hers. Their eyes met, realizing how this would look, and they lay back down.

  Dad closed the door, walked through the kitchen, paused at the doorway to the dark living room, and continued down the bedroom hall, suitcase rolling behind him.

  Gabe
and Corpse burst into muffled laughter.

  Twenty-One

  From Oona’s journal:

  Most living cells have an internal pH of 7.

  A change in pH, even minor, can be damaging.

  —Biology: Life’s Course

  Corpse walked to the bank of dining room windows, knelt before the peaks, and held out her open palms just as the sun shot rays over the mountains’ jagged line. “Good morning,” she said.

  I dropped back to study how the sun’s rays traced her body. She closed her eyes and considered how Sugeidi had stayed on her day off to welcome her home with her favorite meal. How Mom, Sugeidi, and she had been a trio. She thought of Gabe and flushed.

  Today: Dad.

  She tried to plan how she’d start their conversation, but her mind ricocheted to Ash. Tomorrow she’d work things out with her. Corpse crinkled her nose, knew they’d never be friends like they were, but she could at least make things, well, nicer.

  She took a deep breath and cleared her mind. “Courage,” she whispered.

  Though it was Sunday, Dad was already in his office, she was sure. She’d carry in the LIFE game as an excuse. Keep her butt in that chair and chitchat about Chicago and her trip. She’d gently lead their talk toward Portugal.

  Nervous as hell, I clung to silence.

  In the living room, she took LIFE from the cupboard. She passed through the kitchen on the way to Dad’s office. Mom ambled in, still in her fleecy robe and rubbing her eyes.

  “You’re up early,” she said. “I just woke up. My head hit the pillow and I was out. I didn’t even hear your father come in. Did Gabe stay long?”

  “An hour.” Corpse turned away to hide the heat rising up her neck, hoped Mom wouldn’t notice the LIFE game, but Mom just moved to the coffee machine and poured herself a cup. She opened the fridge, poured half-and-half into her coffee, and stirred it. Corpse tried to imagine what it felt like, sleeping with someone who wouldn’t talk to you. She pictured Mom and Dad hugging their bed’s edges, their backs like armor. Last night Corpse had slept face-down so the wet of her underwear pressed into her. She wore them still. Maybe she’d wear them for a week.