The View From Who I Was

by Heather Sappenfield

  Mom leaned her hip into the counter and sipped her steaming coffee. Her eyes glittered and she looked so pretty. “I haven’t slept like that in years.”

  Corpse moved down the hall toward Dad’s office on watery legs. Each bobbing step rocked the game under her arm. Return of the little marching army. She bent her hips, her knees, her ankles and stayed lower with each stride, trying to eliminate that sound. It didn’t help. She straightened. Maybe this was just her new walk.

  She came to Dad’s office door and paused. She filled her lungs and reeled herself back to that mountaintop with Angel, the sun bursting over that horizon below. She conjured the warm splash of its rays and wondered why it was harder to confront the people you loved than it was to confront strangers.

  Dad’s phone rang, that annoying regular-phone ringtone, and he answered. He talked more on that phone than he talked to us and Mom put together. She understood a little of the finance jargon.

  Dad laughed. A rare thing. “Thursday?” he said. “Thursday would be good.”

  Dad never said “good” that way. Who listened on the phone’s other end? Why was he, or she, lucky enough to hear him talk this way? Corpse turned furious that Dad refused to laugh with Mom or her. She strode into his office, to that chair, and sat down, erect as a soldier, LIFE across her lap. I hung in the doorway.

  Dad studied her as he talked into the phone. He really was handsome, especially with the gray peppering his temples, but his eyes had taken on a slinking look. He was so successful. People trusted him with their money. To them he must be smooth, polished, charming. Who was he to that person on the phone’s other end? Did anybody really know him?

  “Okay,” Dad said into the phone. “Talk to you Thursday then. Goodbye.” He set his phone near the top of his desk. “Oona. How was your trip?”

  “Who was that?”

  “A business associate.”

  “You laughed. You laughed with him. Or her.”

  Dad just stared.

  “You promised things would be different.”

  He didn’t flinch. I admired his composure. “That good,” he said.

  “That good. What are you doing?”

  “Working. I—”

  “Where’s the ‘new man’ who sat on the edge of my bed in the hospital?”

  So much for gentleness.

  He examined two papers, bright against the dark wood of his desk and framed by his hands.

  “How have you tried, Dad? Have we gone to a show? Out to dinner? If anything you’ve gotten worse. You don’t even come into my room to say good night anymore.”

  “I stopped working in Chicago.” He stared at those papers. I envied that Angel-Kenny bond. “I’m here. For dinner each night.”

  Corpse snorted. “That’s going well. Dodging conversation with Mom. Retreating down here. What are you hiding from?”

  “Hiding?”

  “Why won’t you laugh with us?”

  “Laugh?”

  “What are you afraid of?” Corpse realized the question was actually more to herself, and she lifted her chin to hide it.

  “I’m not afraid, Oona. I—”

  “Bullshit.”

  Dad raised his eyebrows, but his eyes had turned razor black. He nodded in that unknowing way, stopped and scratched the back of his head. “Thanks for that assessment.” Would he lunge at her, slap her?

  “Coward.”

  “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Coward.”

  Dad’s phone rang and he reached for it, but Corpse got there first, LIFE hitting the floor with a jingle-bang.

  “Hello,” she said.

  A voice like Ms. Authority said, “I’m looking for Tony Antunes.”

  “He’s busy.” Corpse hung up. I wondered if Dad had been faithful to Mom.

  “Oona!”

  “Dad?” She’d never said anything more bitter. She didn’t care how sharp he seemed. She picked up the LIFE box, opened it, dropped his phone in, and forced down the groaning lid. Dad settled back in his chair, his mouth slightly open and cocked left.

  “Would it kill you to play this game with me?”

  Last night with Gabe. Now this. She was out of control.

  “Oona!” His face was pale.

  That flute music seemed to swell beneath her feet. She closed her eyes and pictured Angel handing her that feather. Sugeidi sitting on her bed, washing her blistered feet. Mom so pretty this morning.

  “I may have been the one to kill myself,” she said, “but you, me, Mom—we’ve all been dying for a long time. I’m trying to live, Dad.” She watched those words ride the edge of her voice and register in his face.

  He looked at her like she’d stabbed him. He leaned forward, clunked his elbows on the desk, and rested his head in one hand. He ran his fingertips across his forehead. I slunk to him and hovered near his shoulders, fascinated. From here Corpse looked older, completely in control. Not like the girl I understood.

  “Must have been some school.” His words fell to his desk.

  She didn’t say anything, just kept that truth-stare boring into him. I squirmed.

  Dad’s hands landed on his desk with a thump, and he shot up. Through me. His eyes lost their focus as a yawning inkiness surged into me. I stifled a scream.

  He strode to the window wall, opened a glass door, and left.

  Corpse blew out her breath. She turned back around in her chair. With sheer will, I forced back that darkness, yet it hovered at my edges.

  Dad’s phone rang inside the game, weird, muffled, like from far away. On his shiny desk were those papers. His computer whirred. She stared at those papers and listened to that whir. Numb.

  The carved wooden clock on the credenza behind Dad’s desk said 7:37. Corpse stared at nothing. She looked at the clock again: 7:57. If she listened carefully, that flute played on. She rose, walked to the middle of room, and set out the LIFE game on the Berber carpet.

  She selected a blue car and a red car. She put a little blue man in the blue car and a little pink woman in the red car. I urged her to flee, tried to make her understand, but she tuned me out. She set the cars on the start space. She sorted the money, the cards, and spun the dial, its whir taking over the room, slowing to that tick, tick, tick till it stopped.

  Icy air from the open door flowed across her, but she wasn’t cold. She chose the Start Career route over the Start College one, realized she needed to select a career, and chose Mechanic $30,000. She moved the red car eight spaces and landed on Snowboarding Accident, Pay $5,000. She paid the bank.

  Dad appeared, and she watched him amble along the windows. His hands were deep in his pockets and he watched his feet, which were hidden behind the window frames. When he stepped through the door, she saw he wore slippers. He closed the door, walked to her, and looked down at everything. He sat at the board’s opposite side.

  “You’re the blue car.” I trembled, but her courage rippled like that pond behind the Oasis House.

  He nodded.

  “It’s your turn,” she said. “You start by spinning the dial.”

  Twenty-Two

  From Oona’s journal:

  The total amount of water in a human of average weight is approximately 60 percent, but this amount progressively decreases from birth to old age. During the first ten years of life, the greatest decrease occurs.

  —Mr. Bonstuber

  Mom pulled away from the curb in front of Crystal High, and Gabe and Corpse waved. Corpse could drive herself to school now, but she loathed driving, and besides, Mom liked this new ritual.

  Though snow was piled high around them, the morning held spring’s warm promise. As they strolled up to the entrance, Corpse leaned to Gabe and whispered, “I’m still wearing that underwear. From Saturday night.”

  He raised his eyebrows and smirked at h
er. After two more steps, he looked at the clear sky and laughed out loud. They entered the double doors, grinning.

  On the big, carpeted stairs, the immigrant girls were huddled. Two bawled. Corpse stopped. She started toward them. They looked at her with surprise. Their faces closed. Gabe took Corpse’s hand and led her to the stairs. As she and Gabe ascended, she tried not to look at those girls, but her neck betrayed her. She watched them, and they watched her.

  That first long hall was loud with talk and shouts and laughter and lockers banging, yet a bubble of hush followed them like on her first day back. I trailed along, out of reach. All those heads seen from above made Crystal High seem like a documentary, and I marveled at how different this was from the Indian school. Was this always what happened when bodies were squashed in one building with bells and classes and cafeteria food? What rumors had spread in our absence? Gabe squeezed Corpse’s hand and kept walking.

  “Hey, Oona,” Clark said. “See you in Bio.”

  Her thankful hand touched his arm.

  They crossed the Student Union and Corpse searched for Ash, ready to make things better with her. But Ash wasn’t at the table by the windows where she usually held court. She wasn’t at her locker either. Corpse stowed her books, stored her backpack, and pulled out her AP Bio textbook and folder.

  Gabe set down his backpack, pulled her close, and kissed her. He looked down, beyond her books pressed between them, toward her underwear. She did too. They laughed.

  “Bye,” he said.

  “Chingado!” Manny called. “Get a room!”

  Corpse rolled her bottom lip with her teeth. “Bye.” She banged shut her locker and took one last glimpse of Gabe. He was locked in a glare with Tanesha and Brandy. She couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders were braced and the girls sneered at him. Tanesha seethed a word Corpse couldn’t hear, and Gabe shook his head. Everything around her turned to echo and slow motion, yet Gabe could take care of himself.

  She started toward Bio. In the Student Union, “Why don’t you play with your own kind?” stopped her. Tanesha.

  Corpse kept moving on the same watery legs from yesterday’s walk to Dad’s office. The clack of Tanesha’s heels stayed close behind her. A few of the immigrant girls stood on the Student Union’s far side, hugging one another goodbye. They stopped and watched with tear-striped faces. Corpse glanced around for Ash, who would love this, but she wasn’t there.

  “Hey, rich white princess. Like the taste of our skin?” Tanesha said, almost yelling, and Brandy laughed. I shot to the ceiling.

  Corpse stopped. She closed her eyes. She heard those coyotes on the hill at the Indian school. She saw those nighttime flames across the highway. That dead guy on the stretcher.

  “User bitch,” Tanesha said.

  Before I knew it, Corpse had dropped her books. She spun and rushed at Tanesha with her hands out. Tanesha recoiled, but Corpse’s arms wrapped around her. Tanesha smelled like shampoo.

  “Get off me!” she said, but Corpse held her tight.

  Corpse said into her ear, “I love him. He loves me. Can’t it be that simple?” She stepped back.

  “You’re crazy!” Tanesha said.

  Corpse nodded. “Loco.”

  Mr. Handler arrived, in a lavender golf shirt. “What’s going on, ladies?”

  Corpse looked from Tanesha to Brandy. “Why can’t we just get along? It’s only skin.”

  Tanesha’s eyes narrowed. “It’s more than skin.”

  “Is it?” Corpse said. “We use the same shampoo.”

  “Ladies—” Mr. Handler said.

  “You’re not Chicano,” Tanesha said. “You’re not one of us.”

  Corpse’s spine lost its resolve. She stepped back and looked down.

  “Stay with your rich white boys,” Tanesha said.

  “Tanesha—” Mr. Handler said.

  “What’s white, exactly?” Corpse said. “And you’re way richer, Tanesha. You have family. People.”

  Corpse gathered up her book and folder. Eyes everywhere. Tanesha and Brandy stood with their mouths cocked open. Mr. Handler looked about a thousand years old. Ignoring the watchers at tables, the gapers lining her path, Corpse headed to Bio.

  At the classroom door, she leaned against the wall and pressed her forehead to the hall’s cool cinderblocks. Might Tanesha be right? I thought of that hole in Gabe’s sneaker the first day he walked us home. How we hadn’t told him about Yale. Were we using him? She opened her eyes.

  Mr. Handler stood in front of her. “You all right?”

  She nodded.

  “You sure?”

  “I’ve been dead. Nothing’s worse than that.”

  The bell rang, and Mr. Bonstuber nodded to them as he shut the door.

  Mr. Handler took a breath that filled his chest, and he pressed his lips. “I thought you were going to slug Tanesha. But that hug might have been even better. Brilliant!”

  Their eyes met.

  “I had an email from Louise this morning. Roberta’s giving up dancing.”

  They both knew what he was doing: bringing Corpse back to that Indian school. But she was glad for the news. She straightened. “That’s great.”

  “She said seeing a white girl as screwed up as you helped somehow.”

  Corpse bit her lip. I’d never considered that he’d invited her to that school for anyone but us.

  “Also …” His face turned serious. “Witches. Ghosts.” He smiled and frowned all at once. “Let’s keep believing.”

  Across the white board in AP Bio, Mr. Bonstuber had written Genetic Engineering and underneath that Bacterial Transformation. Mr. Bonstuber walked down the row of lab tables, setting a chart for recording data on each. Lab day. One predictable thing, at least.

  Mr. Bonstuber set the chart at Ash’s vacant seat, and her lab partner slid it in front of him. Everyone else watched Corpse and whispered to each other like a beach-ball-sized tumor had sprouted on her forehead. She hunkered down, prepared to ride out the storm of gossip after that scene with Tanesha.

  Mr. Bonstuber returned to the lectern. “At each of your tables are five petri dishes. One has the starter colony of E. coli. The other four have Luria broth agar in them. That’s food for E. coli bacteria. As I said before, E. coli is the most common bacteria found in the human gut. This E. coli is naturally sensitive to ampicillin. Two of these dishes will be controls. The other two, the experimental ones. For those we are going to try to get these bacteria to take on ampicillin resistance through a humanly engineered plasmid. Remember, plasmids are circular pieces of DNA that carry their own genes for specific functions. To get the E. coli to take on the plasmid, we must make them competent. What does that mean? We must make the cell walls susceptible or ready to take on plasmids. We’ll do this via calcium chloride and heat shock. What I’m saying is review, people, right? The steps are here on the board.”

  Corpse had missed class discussion last week, but Mr. Bonstuber had assigned her the reading about the experiment. He didn’t usually recap like this, so she was sure he’d done it for her benefit. She eased a hair tie from her jeans pocket and finger-combed her locks into a ponytail.

  She and Clark spread out the four petri dishes for the starter colonies and labeled them Control 1, Control 2, Experimental 1, Experimental 2. All the while, Corpse felt eyes boring into her. The usual hum of discussion on lab days was laced with whispers.

  Clark leaned over. “Don’t worry; it’s not you they’re interested in, really. It’s Ashley.”

  “Ash?”

  “Well, I wasn’t there. I’m not her favorite person anymore. Actually, I never have been. But lately she’s taken to calling me ‘dork.’” Corpse gaped at him and he shrugged. “Fine with me.”

  “I’m sorry, Clark. You’re not a dork.”

  “We all can’t be brilliant and beautiful, Oo
na.” He grinned at her slyly. “Ashley’s always had a … an edge that made me … nervous. Anyway, Saturday night her parents were out of town, and she had a party. A rager. Apparently she got drunk. Drunk drunk. The cops came. Most of the baseball team was there, and they’re going to end up suspended.”

  Corpse looked at him.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Some of the soccer girls too.”

  “Oh, Ash.” Corpse inventoried which girls Ash would have corralled. She missed soccer, felt awful for abandoning the team.

  Clark fixed his attention on the petri dish and test tubes in their wooden rack as he poured calcium chloride from a beaker into each tube. “But what everyone’s really talking about … ”

  “Clark? What?”

  “You know I say this as a friend, right?”

  Cold breathed up Corpse’s spine. “Yes.”

  He opened the petri dish with the starter colony of E. coli. He lifted the straw-like inoculating loop and scraped some of the bacteria into each tube.

  Corpse sensed he was working up to something, so she took the calcium chloride beaker, rinsed it out in one sink, walked to another sink Mr. Bonstuber had filled with snow, and scooped the beaker into it. She set the beaker on the lab table, and Clark pushed all four test tubes into the snow.

  “Apparently Ashley shouted something like, ‘Oona Antunes sucks! She does everything for attention! A user! That’s all she is!’”

  Corpse froze.

  “She was really drunk.” Clark added the plasmid to test tubes three and four. He cleared his throat. “Word is, she yelled this as she was dancing on her dining room table.” His voice cracked as he said, “Topless.”

  Corpse imagined cops pulling Ash down, her boobs jutting around. She’d had countless dinners with Ash and her parents at that polished oval table.

  “She slugged a cop. No clue how she wasn’t arrested. My bet is she’s being suspended today.”

  Corpse pushed a second beaker forward, crossed her arms on the chilly black tabletop, and let her head drop into them. Eyes everywhere. She didn’t care. She pictured Ash’s moonlit tear. She felt Mr. Bonstuber standing before her on the lab table’s other side.