“I won’t stay here, Jen. You know that. I hate it here. Delores doesn’t even like me.”
“Well, maybe if you wouldn’t be so snotty to her, she would.”
Carly gets up. Picks up her loaded backpack. Makes one final sweep to be sure she hasn’t forgotten anything. Then she walks to the door. Places one hand on the latch. Still crying.
“I mean it. I’ll do what I say. I’ll go. Right now.”
She looks out through the little round window. It’s nearly full-on dark. Just the slightest tinge of light still glows on the western edge of the sky.
All the lights are off in the house. Delores turns in early.
She can hear Jen crying. But nothing else.
“I’ll walk right out and leave you here. Now come on, Jen. This is not a game. This is our life, our actual life. And it’s time for us to move on from here.”
She watches Jen cry. Listens to it. Listens to herself cry. Then she gradually eases the door open.
“Wait!” Jen calls. “Don’t go yet. You have to take this. It’ll keep you safe.”
Jen levers to her feet and runs the three steps to where Carly is standing. She slips something off from around her own neck, something that was hiding under her shirt. A black-and-white feather, three or four inches long, with some kind of symbols painted on in red. It has a thin strip of leather wrapped neatly around the shaft and formed into a loop on top. It’s on a leather thong.
She slips it over Carly’s neck.
“Keep it under your shirt. Against your skin.”
“I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“Maybe it’ll protect you whether you do or not.”
“Or maybe it won’t do anything at all.”
“So it can’t hurt anything.”
Then Jen goes back and sits on the bed. Knees drawn up tight. Arms wrapped around them. Refusing to look at Carly again.
Carly opens the trailer door again. Carefully. Slides through before the part where metal contacts metal.
She’s out into the night.
She walks down the driveway to the road, looking over her shoulder five times. Waiting to see Jen run after her.
She stops at the road. Squats on the balls of her feet and waits.
It’s barely cool, and the dark feels enveloping but not entirely safe. She thinks of snakes and coyotes. Angry dogs. She touches the tips of her fingers to the red dirt, as if for balance. But she’s not really sure that’s why. Maybe more to ground herself. She crouches like that for a time. Long enough for her leg muscles to ache. Fifteen, twenty minutes, maybe. The feather tickles her chest. It’s not an altogether unpleasant feeling.
Jen never follows.
We’ve got ourselves a situation here, she thinks. She remembers those words, in Teddy’s voice. And remembering Teddy’s voice floods her with homesickness. But at no time did she ever actually intend to walk off Wakapi land without her sister. It’s just not a possibility she’s set to accept.
She walks back to the trailer and lets herself inside.
Jen is lying facing the trailer wall, her back to Carly. Carly strips down to her T-shirt and climbs into bed. They lie in silence in the dark for a minute or two.
“I’m glad you came back,” Jen says. Clearly still crying.
“I’m leaving tomorrow night,” Carly says. “I’m just giving you a little more time to come to your senses. Better get to work on that.”
She almost slips the feather necklace off and gives it back. But then Jen might think she really is staying. That’s why she doesn’t. Probably why. Unless, somewhere inside her, Carly’s thinking she needs all the protection she can get.
Neither says another word all night. But Carly sleeps very little. And she gets the impression that Jen is awake for most of the night, too.
Situations are like that. They take up all the time you used to use for working and eating and sleeping. They soak up your whole life like a black hole in space soaks up the sunlight. And then, where you used to have a life, all you have left is a situation.
WAKAPI LAND
May 17
Carly slips out of bed while her sister, Jen, is still asleep. Her eyes are burning and sore, as if she tried to keep them open in a sandstorm. She feels a little sick to her stomach.
She dresses quietly and slips out of the trailer, careful not to wake Jen. It’s after dawn, but not much after. She lets herself into the unlocked house. The house is always unlocked. People don’t lock their doors around here. Or, at least, Delores doesn’t.
Delores is in the living room, making her bed. It’s the first time Carly has gotten a look at where and how Delores sleeps. Her bed drops down out of a cupboard in the wall, the way some people’s ironing boards do. It’s built in. Carly has heard of beds like that and might even know what they’re called. It might be in there, in her, somewhere. But she can’t get her brain to work.
“Little one. Good,” Delores says. “Help me get this darn Murphy folded back up. My grandson the carpenter made this for me, and he was so proud, but it’s gettin’ to be more trouble than it’s worth. I swear, might come a time I have to just leave ’er down. Gettin’ harder ever’ day. Not sure how long I’ll manage.”
“OK,” Carly says.
The old woman’s face changes.
“Oh,” she says. “You. Thought you were your sister.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Carly says, not bothering to hide her feelings.
“Just that she tends to bounce up earlier. Usually.”
“We had a rough night.”
Carly takes hold of the end of the bed and lifts. Once she gets it partway up, it seems willing to go the rest of the way on its own. She closes the cabinet door behind it.
That’s how you put something away, she thinks. Nice and neat. Now you see it, now you don’t. She used to be able to do that with everything. But now she knows. Some things don’t store so easy.
Delores nods twice. Carly assumes she’s to take that as a thank-you.
“You can’t have my sister,” Carly says.
It would have been easy to cry in the middle of saying that. But she doesn’t. She closes a cabinet door on at least that much emotion.
Delores crosses her arms across her chest. Lifts her chin.
“Know how long I been on this earth, little girl? Ninety-two years, that’s how long. In all that time I had a lot of strange things said to me. Thought I’d heard it all, matter of fact. But you might of just won the prize there. You think I’m takin’ her against her will?”
“No,” Carly says. “Just against mine.”
“Uh-huh? That so? Well, maybe your will for what your sister ought to do ain’t the be-all ’n end-all. Maybe your sister’s will for what your sister ought to do is more to the point. Can you blame her for not wantin’ to go back and live with that man?”
Carly realizes her mouth is open. Hanging wide.
“Yes! I can blame her! And I do!”
“You got blame trouble, then, if you could blame some poor child for not wantin’ to go back to a man tried to force himself on her.”
The room turns a bit unstable. Carly finds herself reaching out and touching her fingers to the cabinet. Just to be on the safe side. She has to run a path in her mind. Trace it back. Delores never met their mother. This can’t be happening. This is not the way things are supposed to be happening.
“Who told you that?”
“Use your head, girl. You didn’t say it. Who’s that leave?”
“Jen told you Teddy tried to force himself on her? That’s a total lie!”
“Why would she lie about it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s the whole question,” Carly says, winding more deeply into the panic. “Why did she tell you that?”
The circular motion of her thoughts is accelerating. Making her dizzy. Why is Jen acting like this? Why is everything that used to be solid suddenly fluid? Why are the few things that used to be dependable suddenly upside do
wn?
“I don’t think that is the question,” Delores says. “Here’s what I think’s the question: Why didn’t she tell you?”
A pause that feels like an age, an era. It’s probably two or three seconds. But some two- or three-second spans are longer than others.
Carly marches out of the house. Stomps across the dirt to the trailer. Throws open the trailer door with as much noise as possible. She wants Jen awake. But Jen is not even there.
Carly steps out again and looks around.
Jen is carrying a pail and the milking stool into the goat corral. She must have woken up when Carly did. Either that or she was never asleep. Maybe she was only pretending to be asleep. Maybe Jen pretends a lot of things. Maybe Carly doesn’t know Jen at all. But if she doesn’t know Jen, she doesn’t know anybody. And that’s a possibility right now. Anything is. Carly’s life could be anything right now. Since it obviously isn’t what she thought.
Carly strides over and ducks between the rails of the corral.
Jen notices. Turns her head toward Carly. Takes in the look on Carly’s face. But she doesn’t react in any special way. Maybe things were bad enough last night that Jen figures they’re still just that. Just that bad and no more.
Jen pulls the stool up to the oldest momma goat. “You’re up early.”
“Never got to sleep. You told Delores Teddy tried to molest you.”
It’s not a question. So she doesn’t put a question mark on the end of it.
Jen begins milking the goat. Carly can hear the distinctive light ringing sound of the stream of milk hitting the side of the pail.
“You’re not answering me,” Carly says.
“Didn’t think it was a question. Are you asking me did I or didn’t I?”
“Sure,” Carly says. “Let’s start there.”
Jen milks for a long time without answering. Carly wants to grab her sister’s shoulder and forcibly turn her around. A second later she wants to strangle Jen.
“I said it,” Jen says. Still not looking up from her work.
“Why? Why, Jen? Why would you do a thing like that? Tell me. Why?”
At first, Jen doesn’t.
Then, after a time, she does.
“Because he did.”
The world spins on its axis for a brief time without much of anything happening. No one speaks. Carly’s brain doesn’t put out much activity. It’s just a fallow period, in which everything holds still. For a change.
Then Carly awakens. Suddenly.
“How could you lie about a thing like that? How can it be so important to stay here that you’d lie? It’s been, like, four days. Not even four days. How can this place mean so much to you? Why would you lie?”
“I wouldn’t,” Jen says.
Carly walks around to Jen’s left side and sits down in the dirt. Cross-legged, right in all that potential filth. Just to make sure she doesn’t fall down instead. Just to preempt disaster. The baby goat comes around and nibbles at her hair. She shoos him away.
Jen is refusing to look at her.
“It was while you were away at the lake,” Jen says. “I was sleeping, and then he was in the bed with me, and he had his hand clamped down over my mouth. He was real drunk. He said he wouldn’t hurt me, but I had to be quiet. Mom wasn’t home anyway, but maybe he didn’t want the neighbors to hear me scream. I kicked him where it hurts, and then I jumped out the window. And I ran in my pajamas all the way down to the bar. I went over hedges and cut through yards so he couldn’t see which way I’d gone. So he couldn’t follow. It was cold.”
“You jumped out the second-floor window?”
“Yeah, and it hurt, too. Really bruised up the bottoms of my feet. Like bone bruises. They were just getting almost completely better when we started walking.”
“You were dreaming.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You said you were sound asleep when it happened. You dreamed he was there. And then you woke up when you jumped out the window.”
Jen’s hands stop moving. The goat kicks out lightly with one back hoof.
“Fine. Believe what you want, Carly. You always do anyway.”
And on that line, the tears come back. For both of them. At almost exactly the same time. It’s tedious to have so many tears. Tiring. Carly keeps expecting to run out of them. It’s discouraging to keep waiting to touch the bottom of a bottomless well.
“Why would you tell that to Mom and not me?”
Jen’s tears come faster now, and she wipes her eyes furiously on the back of her sleeve.
“Because…well, why do you think, Carly? Look what happened when Mom tried to tell you. You called her a liar. You turned on her. You hated her. You never forgave her. You wouldn’t have believed me anyway. You only believe what you want. So it wouldn’t’ve done any good. I didn’t want you hating me, too.”
A movement catches Carly’s eye. Apparently Jen’s, too. Because they both look up.
A woman is riding up the driveway on a white horse, towing two saddled, riderless horses behind her. Pulling them along on lead ropes attached to their bridles. One is a big bay, the other an old mostly-brown paint.
“Virginia’s here,” Jen says, sniffling. Wiping her eyes again.
But Carly already knew it was Virginia. Because of the woman’s hair. It’s so long that she had to gather it all up and wear it over her left shoulder to keep from sitting on it. It trails over her thigh and onto the saddle.
The woman rides right up to the fence. Her white horse leans his head over the rails. Stretches out his neck. As if he’d always wanted to meet a goat.
“I think maybe I came at a bad time,” Virginia says.
Jen shakes her head vehemently. “No, it’s OK, Virginia.” But she doesn’t try to hide the fact that she’s crying.
It strikes Carly that maybe nobody would expect otherwise from them. Their mother is dead. Teddy is not quite findable. They have no father. They are very far from home. Their tears must not be much of a surprise to anyone.
Usually when you see two girls crying, you ask them what’s wrong. But in their case, nobody even needs to ask.
Virginia says, “Delores told Alvin you girls were all caught up on your work, that there wasn’t much left for you to do. So I thought you might like to go riding. But if I came at a bad time…”
“Yeah,” Carly says. “We were sort of in the middle of something.”
Jen jumps to her feet, startling the goats and knocking over the milking stool. “I want to go riding.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Carly says.
“Well, I am. I’m going.” Jen marches to the fence and ducks through the rails. “Can I ride the paint?”
It’s an ugly replay of last night. Carly always thought when the chips were down, Jen would do what Carly says. But this is the second time she’s seen through that lie. When the chips are down, Jen does what Jen thinks is best. Carly’s judgment doesn’t even get its day in court.
It strikes Carly, all at once, that she really might have to choose between leaving without Jen or not leaving at all.
She struggles to her feet and dusts off her jeans.
“Fine, OK,” she says. “I’ll go for the ride, too.”
It’s a decision made purely for expedience. She wants nothing less than to climb up on a horse and not get the answers she needs from this conversation. But Jen is going. And Carly doesn’t want to let her go alone. She wants them to have a chance to talk some more. And she doesn’t dare let that fine thread break. The only thing that’s held them together for days.
If she lets her sister go now, Jen might really be gone. Gone gone. Out of Carly’s life forever. Or, anyway, that’s how it feels.
It’s a real enough feeling to get her into a saddle.
That’s pretty damn real.
The big bay horse carries her along through what must be the life of someone else entirely. There’s a rocking motion to the bay’s gait. It’s almost hypnotic.
Carly feels around for that place in herself that’s deeply agitated. The way your tongue feels for a sore tooth, unable to leave that pain alone. But she can’t entirely find it. She’s too disconnected. The pain she’s rooting around to find is in her life, and she’s…well, she doesn’t know where. Somewhere else.
Jen is riding beside her, so close that their wooden stirrups occasionally bang against each other.
Virginia is riding a few lengths ahead.
Jen is eating the last of her breakfast. Delores scrambled eggs and folded them in fry bread, like a breakfast sandwich. Handed one up to each girl before they rode away. Carly finished hers before they got to the end of the driveway. Jen has been savoring hers. Eating with both hands. Riding with no hands at all, the paint horse’s reins resting on the horn of the saddle.
As Jen takes a tentative bite, a crumble of egg gets away from her. Bounces off the saddle and lands in the dirt.
“Ahhh,” Jen says, half standing and twisting around in the stirrups, as if that will help to locate it. Seeming not to worry about unbalancing herself. Seeming not to notice that the ground is a long way down.
Then again, she jumped out a second-story window.
Carly pushes the thought away again. It’s just a thing she heard. She doesn’t know for a fact that anything like that ever happened at all.
Jen pops the last bite into her mouth.
Carly takes an even tighter grip on the saddle horn.
“Now I don’t know what to believe,” Carly says.
It seems like such a reasonable thing to say. But it’s met with utter silence. Long and…utter.
Then, suddenly, Jen says, “Screw you, Carly.” She drums on the paint horse’s sides with her heels.
The horse breaks into a trot and catches up with Virginia’s horse.
Carly rides behind them for a time, a little unsure as to what just happened. Then a light dawns. Things come a little clearer.
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