All the Lost Things

by Michelle Sacks

  Anyway, after we said goodbye and Happy Holidays to Pete, Dad was in a black and cloudy mood and we had to skip the ice skating and just go home in the car in silence. Later, Mom slammed a lot of cupboard doors while she was making dinner and said “YOU WANT TO SUFFER, DON’T YOU JOE? IT’S THE ONLY WAY YOU FEEL PUNISHED ENOUGH.” In my bedroom, Clemesta and I built an ice-skating rink out of aluminum foil and Lego bricks and sent my dollhouse family out for a special Christmas treat, which they enjoyed very much.

  I already have two things on my Christmas list for this year but I wrote them in pencil in case I change my mind.

  Outside, I spied an American flag twisting in the wind and then a roadkill animal splatted on the ground.

  “DEAD WOLF,” I said.

  “I don’t know if there are wolves around here,” Dad said.

  “Are too! I love wolves. I think that dead one was a Mom wolf and she was probably defending her cubs because they don’t let anyone mess with them. They are very fierce.”

  Actually human moms are fierce too, because once when I told Mom about Neshi being mean to me and calling me TERRIBLE NAMES, she got so mad that she went up to her at the school gate and hissed at her like a snake.

  “You’re a real little cunt, aren’t you?” she said, and Neshi ran off shaking in her boots. Later, her mom tried to call but Mom tapped DECLINE on her phone and made her go away. Fierce moms are a little scary but not when they are on your side.

  I cupped my hands and blew into them. “That’s called wolf whistling. It’s how you call wolves. Or moms sometimes, like on the street.”

  Dad smiled at me in the mirror.

  “Let’s do a staring contest,” I said.

  “Can’t when I’m driving.”

  I flopped my head back. “Will there be any fun parts today or is it only driving?”

  Dad opened another soda. “Fun, too,” he said.

  I sighed. “It feels like we are driving to the END OF OUR WORLD.” I closed my eyes and tried to use telepathy to find out what Miss Ellis was teaching the class. I hoped she would be missing me and my smart answers and advanced sponge brain soaking up all her GIFTS OF KNOWLEDGE. I tried to think of Kindness Week ideas. Maybe I could give the homeless lady on our corner some money from my piggy bank. Or maybe I could tell Mom I forgive her. Forgiveness is kindness too.

  I tapped Dad’s shoulder. “Is Mom back home from her girls’ weekend?”

  Dad coughed. “Yeah, I think she is.”

  “Oh.” I chewed all the white moons off my nails and dropped them on the floor at my feet.

  “Shouldn’t we go back home now, too? So Mom doesn’t miss us.”

  I pressed the mosquito bite on my leg, which had already grown a rough scabby piece on top to keep the blood from leaking out.

  Dad looked at me in the mirror and his eyes were a tiny bit worried-looking.

  “Don’t you want to see the surprise? The place?”

  Clemesta squeezed my hand. “Think, Dolly, think,” she said.

  “The best part is coming up,” Dad said. “You don’t want to miss it, do you?”

  “I guess not.”

  Dad swallowed the last gulp of his Red Bull and the empty can rolled to the floor. “Good,” he said. “You’re going to love it.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  MINISTRY OF HOPE.

  CHURCH OF SAINTS.

  HEART OF CHRIST OUR LORD AND SAVIOR.

  God was everywhere around here but the people didn’t look like they were happy about it. They all seemed sad.

  I turned around in the seat to look out the back as we passed a sign.

  WELCOME TO TENNESSEE, it said.

  “That’s another state for America,” I said.

  “Dolly, I don’t like this,” Clemesta said. “Not one bit.”

  “Stop it,” I said. “You’re spoiling my adventure with Dad with all your NAGGING and GLOOMINESS.”

  “I don’t think it’s an adventure,” she said.

  “It is too, now ZIP IT already.”

  Dad turned left and pulled the car up on a patch of road that went into a field.

  “Give me a minute,” he said. He pulled up the map and traced his finger along the squiggles. I laid my head back against the seat. The car didn’t smell of pine trees anymore. Now it smelled of our empty cans and wrappers. Mom wouldn’t like the mess. Her mind would be very unclear and unhappy.

  Dad drove off and I waved to some horses we passed in a field. They were from Tennessee and they told me they were the fastest racehorses in the world, faster than cars or lightning.

  “DEAD DOG,” I said. “Wild dog. They make angry ghosts. They howl at the moon and spread fleas.”

  “Look ahead,” Dad said. “Those are the Appalachian Mountains. Aren’t they beautiful?”

  “I guess,” I said. “They look like ordinary mountains to me.”

  I ate my Moon Pie. It didn’t taste of the moon, just regular chocolate and marshmallow. I pressed my stomach again. It felt hard, which Mom calls BLOATED and that happens when you don’t eat nutritious food and also when you don’t go to the toilet. I counted the days without a number two and there were three of them already.

  “That’s from all the junk food,” Clemesta said.

  “I know.”

  “You didn’t go to the toilet since Saturday.”

  “You didn’t either. I can try a magic spell, maybe that will work.”

  “I don’t think it will,” Clemesta said. “I think our magic is broken.”

  “Nonsense, you goofy goofball,” I said.

  REAL CHRISTIANS OBEY JESUS.

  BEAUTIFUL HEART GOSPEL.

  WE BUY AND SELL GUNS.

  Dad turned on the radio to listen to the news. It was the same stories as before, just in a different voice. The song that came on afterward was called Lazarus Rising. I never heard it before so I couldn’t sing along.

  I rubbed my eyes. “Are we getting closer?”

  “All the time.”

  I kicked off my shoes. I watched the fluffy hairs on my legs as the sun lit them up. One day probably soon, I will have to get rid of them with the pink strips Mom keeps in the bathroom. I will yell FUCK every time I yank one off but my legs will be lovely and smooth.

  Tennessee was full of flags but not just United States ones. Some houses had another kind of flag that Dad said was called the CONFEDERATE FLAG and that’s the old flag they used to have when the South wanted to be separate from the rest of the country and made everyone fight a war.

  “Because they wanted to keep having slaves,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are they still hanging the silly old flags?”

  Dad shrugged. “I guess they want to remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “I don’t know,” Dad said. “Other times. How things were before.”

  “But that’s stupid. It’s the wrong flag.”

  “They feel like it’s their flag.”

  “But it isn’t. They didn’t win the fight.”

  “Yeah,” Dad said. “I guess a lot of fights can’t be won. Everyone just loses in the end.”

  I thought about something. “Like when you and Mom fight,” I said.

  His eyes stayed on the road.

  “I guess you’re winning now.”

  The road and everything around it was the same no matter how far we went. Trees, mountains, churches, flags, old flags, farms. I tried to remember the word for when caterpillars change into butterflies.

  MENNONITE CHURCH.

  MOUNT GLORY BAPTIST.

  CROSSROAD CHURCH OF CHRIST.

  I brushed out Clemesta’s knots and then we switched. I looked out at the houses along the way. They reminded me of the places you see on the news, all broken down and ruined after a very big storm. A tsunami is a big storm. It’s a SLY FOX word because the T is a trick and you aren’t meant to say it out loud. I don’t like SLY FOX words or SLY FOX people. Those are people who trick you
into thinking they are helping solve all your dreams but actually they are making everything terrible. Like YOU KNOW WHO.

  “You have to leave, Anna, or he’ll drag you down with him.”

  That’s what he told Mom.

  “You should have left him years ago. Really, you never should have married him. I always said that, didn’t I?”

  He said that in the Nomad Hotel. He had that special kind of room with a door that connects it to another room. I was in one room and Mom was in the other. I was meant to be sitting with the headphones on watching Minions on the iPad but I took them off and listened at the door.

  “It can be an open-and-shut case,” he said. “You just…embellish. Those bruises she has from falling in the park, you take a couple of pictures, you make your eyes wide, you say, ‘Yes, Your Honor, he’s always had a bad temper.’ You’re an actress, Anna. It won’t take much.”

  “I guess I’ll do whatever it takes,” I heard Mom say.

  “There’s the other stuff too,” YOU KNOW WHO said. “You have that option, of course. If he…if it happens again.”

  Mom went quiet.

  “Either way, Anna, my advice is: find something. You don’t want some endless battle where you can’t leave the state, you can’t move. Your life will be on hold. It’ll be a nightmare.”

  “I know,” Mom said, in her saddest and softest voice, in the voice she uses on CAN’T GET OUT OF BED DAYS.

  “Paul and I will help,” YOU KNOW WHO said. “Whatever you need, we’ve got you.”

  They stopped talking after that. I guess they got busy with OTHER THINGS.

  “I hate that man. I hate him so much I wish he would explode.”

  “Me too,” Clemesta said. “I think maybe the wish came true.”

  “Did it?”

  “Well, he’s nowhere near us now.”

  WAFFLE HOUSE.

  LOVE THE SINNER HATE THE SIN.

  CHEROKEE SOUVENIRS.

  “Cherokees are Native Americans. Miss Ellis says we stole America from them.”

  Clemesta tugged at my dress. “Do you think Mom knows we’re in Tennessee?”

  I shrugged. “Moms know everything.”

  “I don’t think she knows this.”

  “Well. Then she should try harder and pay more attention.”

  We sat in silence. A bug flew into the car and I waited for it to land on the window. It was a fly.

  “I wish you were a ladybug,” I told it. “That would have been GOOD LUCK. This is just regular luck.”

  Right then, we passed a big billboard that said THIS WAY TO DOLLYWOOD THEME PARK. I flipped my head around to read it again.

  “Dollywood!” I said. “Is that the surprise?”

  “You bet,” Dad said. “It’s a theme park and it’s even got your name. How about that?”

  I squealed and high-fived Clemesta and planted a million kisses on her head.

  “You see,” I said. “I told you that Dad wasn’t telling WHITE LIES. This is a one hundred percent real adventure just for us. He wasn’t lying,” I said again. “He was telling us the truth the whole time.”

  Dad parked the car and we waited for the special Dollywood tram to collect us and take us up the hill to the theme park, which was like a magical special place hidden high up on top of the world.

  “How come it’s called my name?”

  “Well,” Dad said, “there’s a famous singer and actress from around here, called Dolly Parton. It’s her theme park.”

  “Famous like Mom?”

  “Well, Mom only made one episode of a show. She isn’t such a big star.”

  “She will be. She said so.”

  Dad made his hands into two tight fists but he didn’t say anything else.

  The tram arrived, and we climbed aboard with three other families. We had to listen very carefully as the lady called Jan told us about the rules for STAYING SAFE and HAVING FUN, like no standing up while the tram was moving and checking you were tall enough for the rides.

  I watched a pair of sisters who were sitting in the row in front of us. They were wearing matching dresses and shoes, and they both wore their hair in long braids tied with red ribbon, so they looked like twins even though they were just regular sisters.

  “We’re real twins,” I whispered to Clemesta.

  “Exactly,” Clemesta agreed. “Not like these ugly sisters.”

  “Jan,” I said. “My name is really actually Dolly. Dolly Rust.”

  “Well, isn’t that nice,” Jan said into her loudspeaker. “We have a real Dolly here with us today, folks.”

  The sisters looked back at me like they were GREEN WITH ENVY which is what happens when you are so jealous it makes you want to throw up. I made a face at them behind their backs and imagined how it would feel to snip off their yellow braids with Miss Ellis’s giant pair of craft scissors, which no one can use except for her because they are so sharp and TREACHEROUS.

  Dad put his head in his hand and rubbed his eyes.

  “Don’t do that, okay?” he said in a soft voice into my ear.

  “Do what?”

  “Tell everyone your name.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Dad said. “I could get in trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “Uh, for taking you out of school.”

  “Oh.”

  “Does Mom know you’re doing it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is she mad?”

  “Nope.”

  “I won’t tell anyone my name,” I said. Dad patted my leg.

  “Good girl,” he said.

  Clemesta poked me in the ribs.

  We hopped off the tram and lined up to buy tickets, and then we were inside Dollywood, which was like being inside a fairy tale that gets made into the real world. But not the Disney one, another kind. Anyway I was very excited with the butterflies back inside me, because it was a whole entire village of fun stuff, like restaurants and popcorn shops and slushy parlors and candy stores and there were people everywhere and balloons and delectable chocolate-marshmallow-spun-sugar smells and kids screaming with all the fun in their lungs.

  Dad and I sat at the ice cream parlor and ordered sundaes. We watched the families pass by on their way to get food or stop by the gift shop for souvenirs. Everyone looked like they were visiting with their whole entire family and that made me feel bad for Mom that she wasn’t with us.

  I finished the last scoop of melted ice cream. Lots of people were riding around in those wheelchair-bikes for people who are so big they can’t walk anymore. Mom wouldn’t like that part. She’d say, “Honestly, some people just make such bad life choices.”

  I put a hand to my puppy-fat belly. I made a head-note to do my jumping jack exercises later, because that would help get me in good shape before we got back home.

  Dad pulled out the special treasure map the lady had given us at the entrance, which showed you how to find everything in the park.

  “It’s like the map of America you have in the car,” I said. “Except America isn’t a theme park.”

  “Mm,” Dad said.

  “But imagine if it was, and every place was actually a very fun ride. Or a scary one. Or maybe somewhere you could win something. It could be called Americaland or Americawood.”

  “Mm,” Dad said. He tapped my head. “You’ve got quite an imagination in there, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “It came with my brain.”

  I read out the list of the places you could go and the rides, like DAREDEVIL FALLS and DEMOLITION DERBY and SKY RIDER, which all sounded sort of scary. I don’t like scary things, which maybe means I am a SCAREDY-CAT but who cares because I am only just new to being seven and not ten years old or something like that.

  Dad stood up and slipped the map into his pocket. I was a pinch mad that he folded it up and made it all crumply inside his jeans, but I didn’t tell him.

  “You should probably hold my hand so I don’t get lost,” I said.

  He
took my hand and gave it a squeeze and I held on tight and I made sure not to do anything annoying like swing arms or ask to be swooshed up into the air, which makes grown-ups irritated and gives them sore shoulders.

  The first thing we passed was the EAGLE MOUNTAIN SANCTUARY where real American bald eagles were perching in trees behind giant nets to keep them inside so they wouldn’t fly away and get lost in the sky. They were enormous and strong and MAJESTIC and that’s obviously why they got chosen to be on everything from the United States of America, like the coins and the buildings and T-shirts.

  There was another dad next to us with his son and he told him, “That, son, is the symbol of American freedom.” He was wearing a T-shirt that was very tight against his muscles and his son was carrying a huge stuffed tiger. He didn’t have muscles. He had a wobbly belly and very pale skin like he got dipped in flour.

  The eagle spread his gigantic wings like he wanted to fly but he only went as far as the net. Then his wings flopped down and he flapped back to his perch.

  “They clip the wings,” Dad said. “That’s why they can’t fly.”

  The eagle looked at me with his black eyes. He was fuming.

  “I’m sorry about your wings,” I said.

  He tossed his head. “Me too,” he said. “And you are a kind-hearted treasure, Dolly Rust.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “But don’t tell anyone else my name.” I put my fingers to my lips and zipped them up.

  The boy with the tiger looked at me. He was jealous that I could talk to the eagle and he couldn’t. He made his hand into a gun and pointed it at my head. Then he pulled the trigger three times and shot me dead.

  “Never mind,” the eagle said, “he will probably die young from falling into a tar pit.”