“Only that day?”
She gives me a gentle shove. Much gentler than when she literally shoved me off our porch into the hydrangea.
“I’m sorry. Okay? I know it hurt your feelings that I didn’t move home. But being here is good for me. It gives me some space. Obviously being on campus was too toxic. And being at home feels too smothering. It’s not you, it’s Mom and Papi. They mean well, but they handle me like I’m made of spun glass.”
She gets a text and glances at her phone. She laughs and holds it up. Mom, just checking in.
“I have to figure this out on my own. How to move forward. I have to control something. And this . . . being on my own, here, makes me feel like I am.”
I can see that. “Tonika’s really nice.”
“She is! Wyatt is too. You’ll meet him another time. He writes a column for the Daily.”
I stare into my tea, hoping to avoid any conversation about journalism. “So is this where you’re going to live in the fall?”
She sighs. “I wish. But Lola will come back and want her room. So it’s kind of up in the air. I’m trying to take things one day at a time, you know?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
No matter how sweltering our cramped main floor gets in the worst heat of summer, the basement is always a refuge. Stuffed to the ceiling in some corners with generations worth of stuff, sure, but that’s what you get when you live in the house your mom grew up in.
It’s ancient and tiny and falling apart, but there’s history here.
On the absolute worst summer nights when Nor and I cursed our parents’ refusal to get air-conditioning, I used to haul a pile of blankets down and sleep on the cool concrete. Nor would never come, though. She preferred to sweat it out in her suffocating bedroom rather than sleep with the shadows and ghosts.
One night my mom came down with her own blankets and slept with me. She told me she used to escape to the basement too when she was little. I thought maybe this would be our thing, like Papi and Nor had cooking together, summertime slumber parties, telling mother-daughter stories, really listening to each other without all the other stuff always getting in the way. But it happened only the once.
I’ve dragged some photo albums down to the basement from the living room—baby pictures and elementary school report cards. Nothing earlier than photos of my mom, pregnant with Nor. I pull out a few of those—my parents all young and fresh, Mom looking like she’s playing a pregnant lady in a play, a basketball stuck up her dress.
Then they’re both beaming and bleary-eyed in the hospital, staring at a bundle of Nor, my mother’s hair stringy and plastered against her forehead, Papi hunching over the hospital bed, near collapse.
Mom was in labor with Nor for more than twenty-four hours. She’ll tell you the bare minimum, if you ask, but when she does, she’ll look so haunted you’ll never ask again.
Papi remembers Nor’s birth differently. Like some great athletic achievement, an Olympic triathlon, or climbing Mount Rainier. My birth story is the one that haunts him, but Mom will tell it over and over to anyone who’ll listen.
They thought I would come slowly, since Nor had. So they weren’t worried when labor started while they were hiking on the east side. Mom wasn’t even convinced it was labor. Apparently I’d been torturing her—her word—with Braxton-Hicks contractions for weeks. Braxton-Hicks aren’t true labor but are very real in their pain and intensity, which my mom will let you know if you do not already and maybe even if you do.
They took their time getting off the trail and back to the car, the better to help the labor along. Mom didn’t want to spend another miserable twenty-four hours in the hospital if she could help it, so she planned to labor on her own as long as possible.
Toddler Nor was with them—I grab a photo of her in one of those baby backpacks, probably not from that day, but close enough—so they took the time to change her diaper and get her a snack before they began the drive back into Seattle.
As soon as they hit the highway, the labor started getting more intense. (At this point in the story, Mom will say, “Things were really progressing!” and Papi’ll say with the look of a man who’s done multiple tours of duty in a combat zone, “The screams . . . I’ll never forget the screams . . . ”)
Nor claims she remembers, but probably she’s heard the story so many times it’s burned into her brain. They had explained to her in toddler terms what happens during a birth, but they had been planning to have Uncle Joel babysit when they went to the hospital, so no one was quite prepared for labor in an enclosed space with a toddler present to scream along.
They were on the 520 Bridge, a mile-and-a-half-long bridge across Lake Washington, when my mother screamed at Papi to pull over because she could feel the head crowning. But it’s this narrow bridge and there’s not really a shoulder. It was rebuilt a few years ago, with nice walking paths and more space, but apparently when I was born, it was completely unsound, structurally, this bridge that actually floated on top of the water, and Papi tried to pull over the best he could, but really that meant he blocked a whole lane of traffic, so all these cars were honking and traffic was building up as they tried to get around him.
And it’s a floating bridge, right? So this was a super-stormy day—at least, according to Papi’s telling of it. My mom rolls her eyes when he gets to this part and says there were “light showers.” But to Papi, the only thing dividing the choppy, black waves from his pregnant wife, their almost-born baby, their toddler, and the car they were all in was a flimsy traffic barrier.
At this point Papi always points out that he can’t swim. “No one has backyard pools en la zona 18,” he’d say. But I mean, if we all plunged over the side of the bridge in a gale force wind, I think we were pretty much toast even if he could swim.
Of course Papi called for an ambulance, but the traffic was all backed up because we were blocking a lane, so he didn’t even know if an ambulance was going to be able to get through. All they had were those ancient flip phones, so he couldn’t Google how to deliver a baby, meanwhile Nor was screaming her head off, so he dug around and grabbed a shirt from his soccer bag in the backseat—they still have the shirt, I swear to god—so he could be ready to swaddle me or whatever.
Mom swears Papi started freaking out then that they needed to boil water. Like, that’s what they do in all the movies, right? And he was all “¡Agua hervida! How do we boil water? We’re surrounded by water but it’s not boiled!”
While he was freaking out about the lack of boiled water, which I’m pretty sure is for sterilizing instruments they didn’t even have, Mom reached down and pulled me out. (I gather it’s more complicated than that, but she makes it sound that easy.)
So there are no exhausted but happy pictures of them with me in the hospital. We did eventually get to a hospital, but everyone was sort of in triage mode at that point and I’m just lucky they remembered to pick me up from the nursery when they headed home.
That harried beginning set the tone, I guess, because there are only a fraction of the number of baby photos of me as there are of Nor. I get it, the novelty wears off. Keeping a baby and a toddler alive makes snapping a cute photo a lower priority.
Anyway.
It turns out keeping us alive was the easy part.
The basement is cool as always, and I know I’ll find more photos down here, more history than the limited scrapbooks from upstairs. Mom did have a life before childbearing, after all. There’s camping gear, an old trampoline, the collapsible clothesline thing that stays inside most of the year because line-drying in Seattle is kind of more aspirational than practical. Tools that never get used, holiday decorations, the DIY treadmill desk Mom sprained her ankle on the first time she used it.
I know there’s a bin labeled PHOTOS near the holiday stuff, because I see it every year when Mom sends me to dig out the Christmas tree stand. It’s buried unde
r some fabric from back when Mom used to upcycle thrift store sheets into circle skirts and sundresses, very Maria von Trapp. I haul it out.
I sit down in a clear square of space with the bin, but inside, instead of a treasure trove of heartwarming family photos, I find some old baby clothes, random financial documents, and expired passports.
I grab the passports—the pages with Guatemala stamps could go in the scrapbook. But bank statements from before I was born, probably not.
If the bin labeled photos contained baby clothes, maybe the bin labeled baby clothes has photos? I haul the supposed baby clothes out from under a knockoff Barbie DreamHouse.
My impeccable logic delivers, sort of. There are no baby clothes inside. It mostly looks like paperwork, but more of a miscellaneous jumble than the financial stuff in the other bin. I settle in to sort through. A miscellaneous jumble could be promising.
A bunch of paperwork for Papi’s immigration status, Mom’s college transcripts, our vaccination records, some wedding photos—jackpot. My parents a million years ago, Mom with her hair long and curling around her shoulders, Papi clean-shaven, eyes bright. I set the best ones with the stack of usable items.
Some ancient zines and poetry chapbooks are another find from the baby clothes box. I decide not to bother with Mom’s high school yearbooks. If I get desperate I could copy some pages, but I don’t want to cut them up without permission.
The rest of the box is paper, and I’m about to pile everything I’m not taking back on top when a word catches my eye: Snowblood. I pull it out. It’s not a single sheet, but the cover of a thick spiral-bound manuscript.
From Lady Snowblood to Kill Bill:
How the Ongoing Legacy of Male Filmmakers Perpetuates the Male Gaze in Film Depictions of Female Vengeance
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE, CINEMA & MEDIA
AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Katherine Messer
January, 2002
A WIDER STANCE
I stay off main roads
a woman alone.
At least the convent’s garments
are less likely to catch the eye.
But even in the habit
of the Mother Superior
the wrong man could
consider me prey.
My hazy plan
to find the monsters
and vanquish them
is hazier with every hoofbeat.
I only know
I cannot bear inaction.
Childhood dinners
with visiting nobles
were torture worse than
embroidery lessons.
Until, that is,
we received a visit
from the Duke of Anjou
and his wife.
Isabella of Lorraine
intrigued me because of
her age
(older than her husband)
her education
(raised to rule Lorraine)
her conversation
(unconcerned with her role)
The duchess was also
unconcerned with my role.
Girls did not speak
at the dining table
and yet Isabella
directed questions to me.
Mother’s eyes upon me,
I was in a quandary. After all
it would be ill-mannered
to ignore a guest.
The next night I was seated
far from the duchess
but I had been emboldened.
A taste of having my voice heard
and suddenly I wanted the whole pie.
Mother banished me
to dine in my room.
I snuck instead to the stables
to practice footwork
with my makeshift sword.
I jabbed and parried with a bale of hay
dropping the improvised weapon
when Isabella’s voice cut
through the horse’s whinnies.
Widen your stance, darling.
I whirled around, feet still close together
and toppled to the side. She laughed.
But it wasn’t a laugh like Papa’s
or Philippe’s when I’d stumble.
Claim your space.
A wider stance
a stronger base.
Use the strength
in your entire body
not only your arm.
To my amazement
this noble lady, this duchess
lifted a hayfork and
spread her legs wide.
Though Father had taught me
the basics, I somehow believed
my childish world revolving on my axis
myself the only girl in all the world
to ever lift a sword.
Isabella knew sword-fighting.
She said she must
for she loved her husband
very much and what if
someday
he were taken from her
and she had to avenge
his honor?
Anjou is not so far.
I think.
If Isabella and her husband
have escaped the raids
she will help me
discern what’s next.
I hope.
Anjou is not so far
but Minuit must rest
as he is powered
by muscle and bone
and not a grief so pure
it could fuel me
to the ends of the earth
until my sword
sinks into the flesh
it seeks.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I get to the church so early the doors are still locked. There’s a man curled up in a sleeping bag on the landing, but he doesn’t move a muscle when I knock. I wonder if he’s so deeply asleep he doesn’t hear me, or if he’s learned to tune out whatever doesn’t involve him.
I hope he’s not dead.
No one answers the door and I don’t want to keep pounding, in case I wake the man, so I settle on the bottom step and pull a book on medieval France out of my bag. I’m still trying to figure out the distance from Marguerite’s home estate to Isabella’s in Anjou, and how long it would take to travel by horseback.
“I know a lot about France,” says a voice right over my shoulder.
I slam the book shut. At first I thought it was the sleeping-bag dude, but no, the mansplainer is none other than Isaac the Overconfident.
“Geez, jumpy. I was only trying to help.”
I so don’t want to deal with this guy, especially right now when there’s no one else around. But precisely because of that, and because he has a passion for deadly weapons, I plaster on a careful smile. Not so friendly that he thinks I’m going home with him; but not so cold he decides I’m a frigid bitch.
“Thank you.”
Apparently my smile wasn’t warm enough.
“Yeah, you sound really grateful.” He sits on the step right next to me. His sweatpants brush my leg. I want to move but I’m frozen and I’m pissed that I’m frozen because I’m not a delicate flower, I’m the kind of girl who gets up and moves if a guy makes her uncomfortable (aren’t I?) but I shouldn’t have to be any kind of girl; I should be able to sit here and wait for t
he doors to open without carefully weighing my every shift and breath to be sure I don’t set off a brosplosive.
“I could be teaching this class, you know. Whatever you want to know about medieval warfare, I could tell you.”
He smells nice, which pisses me off further. He should smell like corn chips and body odor and his mother’s basement.
“What, you giving me the silent treatment?” His hair is flat and parted in the middle, like a washed-out Severus Snape, with none of Alan Rickman’s appeal. “Are you one of those girls? Too good to talk to me?”
“No, I . . .” And again the rising fury that I can’t respond how I want to respond, that I am absolutely too good for him, not because I’m any sort of girl, but because he is the sort of guy who feels entitled to every girl’s perfect smile, perfect attention, perfect response to every unasked-for lecture. “I was just listening to you.”
I hate myself. But that appeases him for a second. Behind us, the sleeping bag rustles.
“If you’re serious about swordsmanship, you’ve got some work to do,” Isaac says. “I was watching you last class.”
That’s enough to propel me off the step. No thought for whether he might breathe fire. I’m not sitting pressed up against him for another second. “I’m just doing some research,” I say from a safer distance.
He nods. “You’re not really built for swordsmanship anyway.” He smirks. “Swordswomanship? You’re top heavy, so your center of gravity is all wrong.”
Top heavy. Suddenly all I can feel are my boobs. It’s like the days right before my period starts when I’m so aware of my boobs with every step, like they enter a room before I do, shout their existence at me every second. Except right now it’s all of that, but also there’s nothing else. I am all boob.
“Here, I’ll show you.” He’s on his feet, he’s right in front of me, too close, he’s reaching into his bag, there isn’t even time to panic before he pulls out what turns out to be a collapsible umbrella.
I stumble back, which he takes as invitation to demonstrate his umbrella-wielding skills.
I glance around. It’s a busy street. It’s not like he’s got me in some remote location. Not even like we’re alone inside the building. Nothing’s going to happen to me.
We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire Page 13