Into the Valley

by Ruth Galm

  “My family doesn’t know yet. Well, no one really knows. When you called, I took that as a sign! I could move up here near you. A new city, fresh start. We could go out together.”

  “I don’t go out much.”

  “Well, we could start, you know. We could have cocktail parties and potlucks and things.”

  “Maybe you should go back to Ed,” was all B. could think of to say.

  Louise’s slack face shook. “I didn’t think you’d say that. I thought you of all people would say something else.”

  B. tried then to tell Louise about the carsickness. But the other woman stiffened. “Well that’s quite strange,” she said coldly. “You should see a doctor.” B. told her she had and it hadn’t helped, and after that Louise grew quiet and said she was going to vomit from the martinis and B. took her home.

  She passed out on B.’s couch. In the morning, Louise’s black makeup flaked under her eyes and her cheeks were rutted from the couch. She made a fuss about an early appointment and spilled her coffee in her rush to leave. After that the rug was stained and the carsickness was worse and B. decided to try San Francisco.

  &$9

  She woke up sometime after midnight. The television was blaring a rainbow screen. She switched it off. The girl snored lightly, mouth open, arms flung out across the bed and hair splashed across the pillow, face calm and untroubled.

  B. went into the bathroom for her travel bag—she could at least comb her hair. But when she opened the bag she found her nightgown folded neatly on top. How many days now had she slept in the dresses? She took out the nightgown and held it up before her, the filmy length pleating onto the floor. Then she removed the top of the back of the toilet, lifted the nightgown by one finger, and sank it into the water. It billowed like a last gasp. She forced it under and replaced the lid.

  She walked back into the bedroom and watched the sleeping girl. B. was closer to the girl’s mother’s age, she realized. The girl’s mother having undoubtedly worn the kid gloves, danced with the Brylcreemed boys, perhaps received her own vanity set. The realization made B. sad and weary. The girl’s knapsack was next to the bed. B. opened it. The notebook was on top. She held it up to her face but she could not make out the words in the dark. The girl moved. B. put the notebook back in the knapsack and crept into bed.

  24.

  They slept in the warm room until noon. The bill when they checked out was too much to use just the roadhouse money. B. excused herself to the car for a moment and reached under the seat. When the clerk counted out her change, she stared at the dirty worn bills in place of the beautiful crisp one. She shoved them in the ostrich-skin purse. Outside, the carsickness was in full bloom. Her temples pounding and jaw clenched in the searing parking lot with dead grass in its cracks. In the rearview mirror, she noted the sallow flecks in the whites of her eyes, the lines in her forehead.

  They stopped for gas. B. hooked one of the rusty pumps into the gas tank and leaned against the car. Her gaze landed passively around her. On her legs, sunburned and growing hair. On the filthy bone-colored heels. On the back of the girl’s head, the white part in the two braids and the blonde down against the brown neck. Next to the gas station a dun-colored eucalyptus break stood motionless in the heat. B. watched it, waiting for movement. She decided she could make her plan later. She could drive with the girl for now. Why not.

  When the tank was full she went inside and returned with coffees and two packages of doughnuts.

  “I don’t eat that,” the girl said.

  “Oh.” B. hesitated, then slid both packages under the seat. “The guy inside said there’s a gold rush park just down the highway.”

  The girl did not look up. “We studied it in school.” She was flipping again through the torn LIFE magazine. B. sipped her coffee, hiking up her dress to rest the paper cup between her legs. She liked the idea of her legs splayed like the girl’s. But she did not want to see the magazine again, the magazine agitated her. She started the engine and drove past the eucalyptus break, where no branch had moved.

  “Which direction should we go?” B. asked.

  “I don’t care,” said the girl. “Not Sacramento.”

  B. took a road north. The girl lit a cigarette. The smoke and the musky scent and the half-nakedness felt more normal in the car now. Today, the girl wore only the suede vest, without a bra, and the jean cutoffs. Long gray feathers were braided into her hair on each side of her head. She fiddled with the radio until a rock-and-roll station flickered in and out. A man was singing low to an accompaniment of calliope bells. B. tried to open her mind to the bells, to the man’s slithering tones. But the odd notes and exhortations seemed to highlight the dirt and dead insects on the windshield, the trash on the road.

  “Maybe I should head to San Francisco,” the girl said. “Jed is probably sick of them by now, waiting for me. He told me we’re soul mates from another life. Like a cosmic link. Like I’m his Cleopatra, his old lady from another time.” B. was sure Jed was no Anthony but held her tongue. “So those dingbats can ball him all they want. For now.” The girl put her feet up on the dashboard and picked at some open skin on her knee.

  “Maybe you should go,” B. said.

  The girl turned to the window. “Maybe.”

  They drove through an eerie stretch of wooden stakes high in the ground. Unnaturally bright green vines climbing up the brown wood. B. finally understood they were hops. She had the sensation from the stakes that she and the girl were filing through enemy lines, row by row bellying to the other side.

  She could feel the girl staring at her now. “You’re pretty,” the girl observed in her impassive tone. “Like a movie star.”

  B. fingered the diamond brooch. “Thank you.”

  “I’d rather look like something,” the girl went on. “Like Janis Joplin.”

  “You don’t seem like a drifter,” she added.

  “I’m not drifting. I’m visiting. I might stay.” B.’s mind folded up the defeats of the realtor, the university man, the grocery store in her mind. She made herself see the valley as a long golden plane and herself golden in it. She deliberately did not think of the checks or the banks.

  “Driving, drifting, whatever . . . You still don’t seem the type.”

  The golden image vanished. “What about you?” B. said testily. “You’re drifting.”

  “But I’m young,” the girl concluded in her flat tone.

  The inside of B.’s head lurched.

  “I haven’t decided my plans yet,” B. said.

  “This country has it all wrong,” the girl said. “I’m going to Spain. Andalusia.”

  “Spain is ruled by a dictator. It’s authoritarian.”

  “And then to Morocco. India, China, Istanbul, you get it? Forget this apple pie bullshit.”

  “The Chinese are Communists,” B. said faintly.

  The girl brought her feet up on the dashboard, picking at the calluses on her toes. She whistled “Yankee Doodle Dandy” through her teeth as she pulled at small springy strips of dead skin.

  B. realized then that a black car had been in the rearview for some time. A kind of sedan.

  The girl closed her eyes and scratched her legs absentmindedly.

  B. had not seen any other black sedans in the valley.

  The girl was raking her nails up and down, eyes still closed, and B. saw then the scabs like raspberries across her skin.

  “That’s poison oak,” B. said. “You need ointment.”

  “Ointment,” the girl repeated.

  She opened her eyes and looked irritatedly at B. “I left my mother in Fontana.”

  “I’m just telling you, that’s poison oak. We should find a druggist.”

  The girl sat up and examined her shins. She sucked at her teeth. “When the fuck did that happen?”

  “You don’t wear any stockings.�
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  “Are you kidding me?”

  B. glanced back at the black sedan. It was several lengths behind them. She continued on the two-lane highway. She would try to avoid the freeways now, she decided. At the first intersection the gas station attendant with his large green-peaked pimples pointed them east for a pharmacy. B. drove and when she realized the black sedan was no longer behind them, she felt no relief.

  They reached the town and the pharmacy and B. stepped out of the car, smoothing her dress out of habit, the wrinkles now deep in the fabric. The girl crossed her arms, slouching in her seat.

  “I don’t like doctors.”

  “It’s not a doctor, don’t be silly. It’s just poison oak. He’ll give you some medicine.”

  “What do you care?”

  “You can’t walk around with poison oak.”

  B. went inside, the girl following reluctantly. It was an old pharmacy with wooden counters and hundreds of drawers, a dusty film in the air blown around by table fans. B. approached the short bald man behind the counter. “We need something for poison oak, please. Do you have any calamine lotion?”

  “I don’t serve those types.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He flicked his chin at the girl. “No shirt, no service. We’re not over the bridge here.”

  “I’m paying,” B. said.

  He scrutinized B. for a moment. “Alright. But I don’t want her in my store.”

  The girl was revolving a rack of support hose in the corner. The firm white sides of her breasts visible through the vest. B. whispered to her that it might be better if she waited outside, and the girl leered at the pharmacist. “Fucking pig,” she said but walked out.

  The man watched the door after the girl was gone. B. shoved some roadhouse money onto the counter and took the calamine lotion and cotton balls.

  “Asshole bourgeois capitalist pig.” The girl spat at the sidewalk.

  B. did not think the girl knew what the words meant.

  “Apple pie bullshit.”

  B. handed the girl the bottle and bag. The girl stood with them, unmoving.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know how to do it.”

  “You’ve never put on calamine lotion? For a mosquito bite?”

  “I dunno.”

  The girl looked at her expressionlessly. The druggist was right to be wary of such a foreign, feckless creature, B. thought. B. pulled a cotton ball out of the bag and kneeled to the girl’s legs. Over each red patch she dabbed the milk and blew gently. “Just let it dry. It will help the itching. If you scratch, you’ll spread it.”

  The girl stared down at her plastered legs.

  They walked to the car in silence and the girl slouched in her seat, the white-splotched shins up against her. B. felt an unexpected lift. As if something had passed between them, small but important. Her head felt momentarily still, her body free from nausea.

  “I can drive, you know,” the girl said. “If you want a break.”

  “I like to drive.”

  The girl began chattering, as if she’d felt the lift too. “Jed wants to get a motorcycle, to ride around Spain . . . I’m gonna learn the guitar and how to sing. We’ll ride around and earn bread playing on the streets, you know, and we’ll see the country—see, go, see.”

  B. was trying to get inside the statements now. “But where will you stay?”

  “We’ll bring a tent,” the girl said. “We’ll live like gypsies. Be in nature and be with the people.”

  B. pictured the girl in a bright flamenco dress with the tiers of ruffles, a large flower in her hair. She felt a pang of envy. But it was ridiculous, wasn’t it? For anyone to live that way.

  “A chick I met near Fresno lived on the land with her old man. They were on a real reservation, you know, camped with the Indians. The Indians just dug what these two were getting at, they didn’t even charge them. Anyway, the chick learned all kinds of prayers and dances. She taught me some.” The girl ran her fingers over the braids. Her eyes narrowed as if she was deep in thought. “I think we should do one of the Indian prayers.”

  B. laughed. Then she saw the girl was serious.

  “I thought you’d be hip to it. Being out on the road and all,” the girl said.

  Blood rose to B.’s cheeks. “Well, I guess so.” She did not believe the girl knew a true Indian prayer. “I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

  The girl smiled for the first time since B. had picked her up. “Pull over here,” the girl directed.

  They were next to a pear orchard. The trees were larger than in the other orchards and B. was secretly relieved they’d be hidden at least. The girl disappeared into one of the rows. B. followed. Halfway in, the girl picked up a stick and started carving a large circle in the dirt. “Take your shoes off,” she commanded. B. removed the bone-colored heels. She did not know why she was following along.

  With the same stick, the girl began drawing a sun and a moon inside the circle, very seriously, standing back at points to check her work. She added stars. The dirt was grainy between B.’s toes; she forgot the still-open cut. The pears gave off no scent, only the smell of dirt and leaves. When the girl finished the drawings, she began to orbit the circle. She put her palms up and out and began: “Dear moon, we are your children. Show us the way. Dear sun, we are your children. Show us the way.” The girl’s voice was loud and solemn; B. suppressed another urge to laugh. “Mother Earth, we are far away from you, we are lost. Show us the way. Show us in the stars. Sun and moon, we give ourselves to you, show us the way.” The girl began to ululate. “Heya heya heya!” She sped up and began to spin and hop around the circle. The movements fascinated B.; she had not imagined the girl to have any energy at all. “Heya heya heya! Oh! . . .We don’t give to the government man or the business man or the police man . . . Heya heya heya! We don’t give them a goddamn thing . . . Oh! Heya heya heya! We give to the people, the people, the people.” Dancing and moaning, the girl grabbed B.’s hand and pulled her along. “We give ourselves to the sun and the moon and the earth and the stars cuz we need your protection, man! We need you to show us the way! We’re ready to take back the way!” B. felt ridiculous, going around in the circle, until the girl released her abruptly and she was left to watch her twirling fast in the center of the circle, arms wide, braids whipping out, utterly free.

  Are you funny about women, is that it? Don’t you want to be normal? Her mother’s voice sharp and panicked into the phone. And B. had wanted to ask her, plead with her, “Is that all there is? Isn’t there anything else?” But she’d told her mother everything would be fine.

  B. watched the girl chanting and dancing around her. Then she stepped into the circle. She turned around slowly. Slowly, slowly the pear trees went by. The carsickness felt remote; her body empty. She began to sob.

  The girl stopped. She stared with the same blank stare from Sambo’s. Without a word, she turned and walked through the dirt drawings back to the Mustang. After a few moments B. followed.

  They did not speak of the Indian prayer again.

  Their motel room that night had a single queen bed with lumpy mattress, dripping faucet, cracked plaster walls. The girl fell asleep immediately while B. lay next to her aware of every breath, of the heat radiating off her brown arms and legs. She tried to count the cracks in the ceiling. The carsickness still remote; the banks abstract and unsubstantial in her thoughts.

  She took the girl’s hand and held it. The girl inhaling and exhaling so easily.

  25.

  They woke late again. They stopped for lunch and the girl devoured a meatloaf sandwich, two scoops of chocolate ice cream and an orange soda. (B. had coffee and bits of Danish.) Afterward they drove aimlessly on the small roads. It seemed easier now for B. to drive without speaking, to follow wherever the road took them, the girl’s feet up on the dashboard, hot wind
through the windows. (The heat itself now a welcome stupor.) The carsickness was still subdued. Maybe if she could stay this way with the girl. Maybe, she thought, something with her had cured it.

  When the sun was just above the western hills, they intersected the freeway again and came on a small carnival by the side of it. The girl perked up.

  “Can we stop?”

  The rides were old and ramshackle. But B.’s lower back ached from driving and the girl was too excited.

  “Okay,” B. said.

  The girl bounced in her seat until they parked. She asked B. for money and went to the entrance without waiting. It was all seedy: the half-dozen rickety rides with rusting metal and flaking paint, the faded concession stands, the operators’ road-weary faces. The music oomped-oomped and the dingy bulbs winked. There was a whirling tilted octopus ride, bumper cars, an airplane merry-go-round for small children, a spinning column of swings. But no Ferris wheel. B. would have liked to go above the valley again; she would have liked to compare it with the buttes. The girl made her ride the bumper cars, the clanging and crashing and sparks of which B. hated, and then the octopus, which made her neck ache. When the girl insisted on riding the spinning column of swings, B. refused and she watched the girl go around, long braids and feathers sailing, face indecipherable. B. bought her a caramel apple and an ice cream cone. (The girl had not refused anything since the doughnuts.) She bought herself a bag of popcorn and they walked along the midway as the last blue in the sky blackened.

  “He doesn’t understand that sometimes a person just wants to see something pretty. What’s wrong with that. The ocean, for example. And I thought the governor’s mansion would be like Pasadena. Once on a field trip we visited a grower’s mansion and I’ll never forget the long curtains like silk or velvet or whatever, all soft and shiny . . . A person just likes to see that.”

  Any sudden effusion was related to Jed, B. now understood. “I don’t think you have to explain yourself,” she said.