by Amanda Foote
Six days and nine hours into my time in Oklahoma (spent almost entirely indoors and almost entirely in my new bedroom), I walked in to her office.
Marlene’s cat Lucius was curled up in her lap at her computer desk, his eyes following her fingers as they flew across the keys. When we had arrived a week earlier, Lucius had greeted us at the door like he hadn’t eaten in three years, though Marlene’s neighbor had fed him not two hours before we got home, and he smelled distinctly of pickles. “Laura would never feed him pickles, she knows better,” Marlene commented, and we decided it must be some weird after-smell of something he ate. But he kept showing up in the kitchen, day after day, reeking of pickles. “Why do you smell like pickles, Lucius?!” she exclaimed dramatically on the fourth day. But he just meowed and ambled away.
Her office was decorated with the signs of a deeply Hispanic upbringing, very little of which came through in Marlene’s day to day life. I like to think that for her it’s one of those things similar to growing up being forced to go to church. Once you grow up you realize it’s not the life for you, but you’re still ingrained with a deep respect for it. A large black sombrero with silver embroidered edges hung on one wall, along with a gallery of paintings featuring bright, neon colors and vigorous dancing characters. There was a watercolor painting that looked like an original, that possibly a talented teenager or child may have painted a long time ago. It’s edges were faintly yellowed, though it looked like it had been well cared for. It featured a big blue flip flop, with dark red flames skirting up around the bottom of the shoe. Underneath the flip flop were written the words, “La Chancla.”
I almost laughed. I’d been threatened by La Chancla more than once before. Mom was slow to anger, but even she was not a Spanish mother exempt from a temper tantrum while wielding a flip flop, if I dared to talk back.
“Marlene,” I said, causing her to jump. She had been vigorously writing, mid-sentence. She glanced up at me from her computer. “I think it’s time I go back to school,” I offered.
She pondered my face for a moment before nodding tightly. “Yes, I imagine you might be right.”
Three days later I found myself sitting in a classroom listening to my English Literature teacher drone on about the merits and meanings of Capitalization, tapping my pink eraser on my notebook, and wondering why I’d decided to return to this. Much of school was like this for three days, boring and inconsequential. Then I met Liberty Bell and Bobby.
It was lunchtime and I had spent most of my study period in the library finding new books to lose myself in. These nine books rested beside me on a lunch table, and I had one propped up in front of me while I half-heartedly shoved bland mashed potatoes into my mouth. Suddenly, I became aware of someone sitting at my table. Two someones, actually. Two someones who had definitely not been sitting there when I sat down. I looked up and paused, bite of potato halfway to my mouth, threatening to fall off the fork.
“Hi,” the girl said. She stared at me with giant green cat-eye painted eyes which rested in a slightly plump, olive-toned face surrounded by thick, clear plastic glasses like you’d see in an eighties movie, under a head of perfectly straight, dark brown hair scattered with pink and purple streaks. She was wearing a black T-shirt that said “George Strait” in big letters across the front. Next to her perched a boy clad in khakis and a button-up dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a dusting of dark freckles on his tan skin and under his similarly bright green eyes, a crew cut adorning his small, thin head. “Hi,” he said also.
“Hello...” I closed my still-open mouth and responded, setting my fork down just as the mashed potatoes fell back to the plate.
“Who are you?” the boy asked.
“I’m Heaven.”
“What?” the girl questioned. “Like, for real?”
“Yes, for real.”
“Quite a name,” breathed the boy.
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m Liberty Bell,” the girl offered.
“Bobby,” the boy tipped his head toward me, as a cowboy might tip his hat in a western film. They stared at me for a moment. I was about to turn away from them and back to my book when Bobby said, “Are all of those books yours?”
Liberty Bell rolled her eyes. “You mean, do all of those books belong to the only other person sitting at this table? Of course they do, doucheface.”
Maybe I’ve seen too many movies because the word “doucheface” sounded really odd coming from the soft, slight twang of her voice. I guess I half expected all Oklahomans to be polite and reserved. I had forgotten that teenagers are teenagers, no matter where in the world you are. “Yes, Bobby, they’re mine.”
“You sure read a lot,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“It passes the time.”
Again, a moment of uncomfortable silence. “Sorry, I just realized that we came over and bombarded your space,” Liberty Bell apologized. But instead of getting up and leaving me to my books, she continued. I refrained from rolling my eyes. “We just noticed that you were new and sitting all alone so we thought who better to make your first acquaintance in Shawnee than us?”
“And who are you, exactly?” It felt a little rude coming out of my mouth, but then, they were being a little rude first.
“Well, like I said, I’m Liberty Bell, and this mop-head is my big brother, Bobby. We live here in Shawnee and have... well, pretty much our whole lives. We’re technically twins, though we’re not really. Not in the sense that most people consider twins. But we were born six minutes apart and he seems to think that him coming first makes him superior in some way but honestly I think that’s a load of BA-LO-KNEE.”
“Liberty Bell here thinks that she’s superior because she gets better grades than me but the fact of the matter is that I have a girlfriend and she doesn’t have a boyfriend and she’s just really jealous.”
“Not true.”
“True.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever back.”
“Whatever times infin-”
“Hi,” I interrupted. “Still here.”
Bobby gave me a crooked half grin. “Basically we were wondering if you were in need of any friends.”
I thought about it for a minute, both intrigued and somewhat repulsed by these two argumentative and undeniably mid-Western teenagers. I sighed inwardly before shutting my book. “Sure, why not?”
✽✽✽
The backwater streets of Shawnee, Oklahoma were a stark contrast to the bustling hub of L.A., and I felt the change of pace deep in my bones. People were quiet here, but somehow also loud and obnoxious. They said things like, “Hey, how are ya?” and “See ya later, alligator.” They knew their neighbors, let their dogs walk out the front door to potty, and teenagers converged at the local bowling alley like locusts. If I didn’t have my books to bury myself in, I might feel like this was the smallest place in the world.
Bobby and Liberty Bell Armstrong were both seventeen, but they didn’t usually act like it. This is not to say that they generally acted very childish. On the contrary, they both seemed to be very mature and level-headed young adults... most of the time. But get one or the other on a tangent about their sibling and you may find that childishness can manifest itself in many forms. And these tangents occurred more often than not. Despite their argumentative nature, however, I found myself enjoying their company. It was a distinct change from what I was used to in California, and change is what I was craving.
I didn’t have any classes with either of them, but we ate lunch together every day, and after school they would take me to a snow cone stand on Saratoga Street called Janie’s. Liberty Bell got a medium Strawberry Daiquiri with ice cream every. single. time., but Bobby was adventurous and tried a new flavor each time we visited. On a Wednesday afternoon two days after I met them, he was trying a flavor called Tiger’s Blood. “I wonder if it will taste like real blood,” he mused, at which Liberty Bell rolled her eyes.
I’d learned the
hard way that Liberty Bell was slightly crazy about her name. I had made the mistake the day before of calling her “Liberty.” We were sitting in the library at lunch, and she was asking for book recommendations. This of course led to me roaming the library searching for books to have her check out. The stack of books in front of her was steadily growing, and she would let me stack up to ten before she told me to chill out.
She sat at our table reading the first few pages of one of the books, and from two bookshelves away I said, “Here’s another one you should add, Liberty.” I didn’t hear anything at first, though maybe if I’d been expecting a reaction I might have realized her silence was a warning sign. Suddenly this tiny little shrill was coming up from our table. I peeked around the bookshelves. Liberty Bell had stood up, her hands still on the table, clenched into tight fists. Her face was red and her fists were white. “Uh... are you okay?” I managed, a little bit terrified. She shook her head, braced herself, and took a deep breath. “Libert-”
She glanced up at me as she sat back down, her calm demeanor restored. “I will forgive you this time, because you did not know. But don’t ever call me Liberty again. My name is Liberty Bell.”
I stared at her for a second, wondering if she was totally serious. Then, “Got it,” I said, and returned to the bookshelf.
Now, as we sat on top of a wooden picnic table just outside of Janie’s, I was careful to say, “Liberty Bell.”
“Yeah?” she responded before taking a giant bite of her snow cone, most of which spilled down her face and her purple tank top. There was a small speck of vanilla ice cream on the tip of her nose.
She would tell me, years later at night in a quiet dark dorm room, that her parents once had a “family friend” who called her Liberty instead of Liberty Bell. He was not a nice or good or sane man, and after her encounters with him Liberty Bell had contemplated changing her name altogether. She eventually came to the realization that her name was not to blame for the actions of this sick man, he was. So Liberty Bell, she stayed.
“What do you guys do for fun around here? Don’t you like, go cow-tipping or something?” I counted the people in line at the snow cone stand. There were seven.
They glanced at each other then back at me before bursting into laughter. “This town’s not quite small enough for that,” Liberty Bell answered, still clutching her stomach in laughter. When they settled down, Liberty Bell said, “There’s lots to do. There’s a movie theater-”
“That’s where I work!” Bobby cut in.
“...more than one, actually - a bowling alley, a skating rink, lots of restaurants, parks, sometimes people throw parties, you know. The usual stuff.”
“The usual stuff.” Thinking about this, it occurred to me that they had “usual stuff” back in California too. Probably more stuff to do than anything I could find here. But most often Lila and I could be found both sprawled across my bed, reading our separate books. We never actually did much of anything, though Lila had always begged me. I’d never been much of a socializer or a people person. But change is what I wanted, right? If I wanted to make the constant ache in my gut go away, change is what I needed. “Well, what do you two usually do? I want to be like an actual Oklahoman. Show me the ropes.”
Liberty Bell grinned. “Gladly.”
✽✽✽
A week later, on a Tuesday evening, I came home and the house was sweltering. It felt like walking into a sauna as I swung the front door open and was blasted with a splash of hot air. I checked the thermostat - 87 degrees. The A/C wasn’t even on. “Dear God, woman!” I yelled. “Why do you keep it so warm in here?! Are you aware that it’s a billion degrees outside?”
I threw my purse on the counter and glanced at Lucius; he had made himself comfortable on a stack of envelopes by the toaster. He looked at me, and he farted. It’s a long, slow hiss, like a sorry excuse for a balloon. “I know you did that on purpose,” I said to him. The rank smell of pickles hit me. “You’re gonna be in so much trouble when we figure out where you’re getting your supply.” He meowed indignantly, as if to say, Yeah right. Marlene ambled in from the den, clad in pink pajama pants and a black spaghetti strap top, no bra, same bun in her hair. She had her red bedazzled glasses on. She looked at the thermostat as well, turning the A/C on.
“It melts my cold soul,” she said.
Thirty-seven minutes later I found myself attempting to rush through college applications a mere two weeks before graduation. Marlene came in from the mailbox and handed me an envelope with scrawly handwriting. “Letter for you,” she said. I tossed it aside without thinking, concentrating on my personal essay for yet another Oklahoma university.
She sat down at the table next to me. She picked the letter back up and set it on top of my laptop keyboard. “Heaven, I really think you should read this.”
I gave her a sideways glare, sighed and picked the letter up. She ambled away smugly, still clad in her pink PJ pants adorned in painted coffee mugs. The envelope had my name and Marlene’s address on it, and the return address was accompanied by the loopy script of a name I almost recognized. “Cadence Highwater,” I read aloud. It took me eight seconds to process this. I finally realized that this was a letter from my… sister. The one my parents had failed to tell me about. “Why should I read it?” I asked Marlene.
She clasped her hands in front of her, elbows on the table, almost as if she were ready to pray. “Heaven, she is your sister, whether you like to believe it or not.”
“Sisters earn that title. I don’t even know this person. I don’t owe her anything.” I knew I was being ridiculous, I could hear the tone in my voice, but I couldn’t stop myself. She reminded me of them, and how they lied to me, and that felt unfair. I felt bitter, betrayed.
“But do you owe your parents, Heaven? They wanted you to get to know her, that’s why they brought you together at their funeral. What does it hurt to read it?”
I slumped in my seat. “How did she get this address anyway?”
Marlene stood up and wandered into the kitchen. “I gave it to her.” She returned and set a sharp letter opener gently next to my arm. “I told her to write to you. I told her words are your weakness.” With that, she disappeared into her office.
“That’s totally not fair,” I said to the space she left behind. I picked up the letter opener and set it back down. I picked it up again and held it at the edge of the envelope, ready to slice it open. I set it back down again. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, envelope still in my hands. I picked up the letter opener and sliced right through the top of the envelope, pulling the letter out gently. It was handwritten on pretty sunflower stationery, in the same sloppy cursive as the envelope. Her handwriting looked almost identical to my mom’s.
Dear Heaven,
I know that you don’t have much interest in hearing from me. To you, I am the lie that your parents kept a secret. The only people you felt you could trust implicitly, and I am what they broke your trust for. I would hate me too.
But you are the only family I have left in the world. My adoptive parents, Cary and Debra, they were both in their 50’s when I came into their care, and they both passed away last year. Your parents were beautiful, Heaven. I was 16 the first time I even found out they existed. I’d suspected for a long time that I was adopted, due to my parents’ ages, but I chose to feed into the lie my parents gave me. It seems that parents lying to their children is not as uncommon as you would think. But when your mother wrote me that first letter, everything came together and it all made sense. And your parents never gave up on me. Every birthday and holiday, they sent me presents and money. When I turned 17 I left my parents, but yours continued to support me. I was broke, alone, and I even spent half a month in juvenile detention. But the letters never stopped coming, and they never stopped caring. And that meant more to me than anything. It was your father, actually, who finally convinced me to come back home to my parents and set my life back straight. That was almost two years ago. I got to spe
nd those last months with my parents, and that is time I will cherish forever. I couldn’t have known they would pass, and if I’d still been on the streets, I might never have even heard.
So you are the only family I’ve got left, Heaven. You and your aunt Marlene. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but it means so much to me. And I should probably tell you the real reason why.
A year ago, I was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia. I have fought long and hard but the doctors tell me there is little left that they can do. They suggest that I prepare for the worst, and so I am. Maybe you don’t love me but maybe you could learn to. Please, Heaven. I need my family. I need you. Don’t make me face this alone. I just want to get to know you. That’s all I ask.
Your sister,
Cadence
Her words touched a deep, quiet part of me I didn’t recognize, and I cursed Marlene for letting Cadence in on my weakness. After a moment of quiet contemplation, I knew that my parents’ betrayal had never really been a fault of hers. I’d known all along, but when you lose everything you have, you grip onto whatever you can find. I used my feeling of betrayal as a crutch to latch onto my anger. And that wasn’t Cadence’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. And who was I to deny her a family when I’d just lost most of mine? After a brief discussion with Marlene and grabbing a pen and paper, I wrote Cadence a short reply.
Cadence,
I don’t hate you. Not even a little bit. I hate rain, stoplights, ambulances, and black Buick LeSabres. Marlene and I agree - you should be with family. Come at your earliest convenience. We’ll see you when you get here.