This Little Light

by Lori Lansens

  I wrote the blog about skirting. I wrote a satirical blog about dress codes for boys. I wrote about how, in the interest of tearing down the patriarchy, women should consider keeping their own names—even though my mother said she’d been happy to take Miller over Frumkin. (I vow, here and now, to forever be Rory Miller.)

  I wrote a blog about that black teen being pulled over for driving a red Ferrari in Calabasas. When the cops found out his dad is that Hall of Famer, they turned the near arrest into a selfie-fest.

  And I wrote a long blog about abortion. At this moment, I wish I’d kept that one to myself, because right now the media and social networks are dissecting everything I’ve ever written, saying that my blogs contain dog-whistle messages to the Red Market. Oh. My. Fucking. God.

  There’s all the Jewish conspiracy shit online now too. The fact of my Jewishness is trending, but the Jews don’t exactly wanna claim me. Who can blame? Jewish groups are distancing themselves by arguing that my father was unobservant, as was his father. True. And that he had a lapsed-Catholic mother. True. And that my mother’s father was also unobservant, and had married a shiksa. True again. My parents and I are admittedly Jew-removed. Jew-lite is what they called it, respectfully. But whatever Jewish is, I am still part of that.

  Otherness. Our subtle otherness is what bound me and Fee. From the start, it was always the two of us, indivisible within the Hive. But lately Fee and I have been keeping secrets from each other. I mean, Fee kept a pretty huge secret from me about something that happened when she went to visit her abuela in Cerritos. And I didn’t tell her about Jinny Hutsall. I also didn’t tell her that I’m pretty sure that what I saw Jinny do is the reason we’re in all this trouble. When she wakes up, I’ve gotta tell Fee the truth. Everything.

  I mean, maybe not all at once.

  So, my confession? I spied on Jinny Hutsall in her bedroom. I’ve been doing it since the night she arrived. From my side window, overlooking the patio, I have a clear view into her bedroom next door. I didn’t just spy on her, hiding behind my curtains—I videotaped her. It was wrong, and I know that, but you have to understand, and I hope Fee understands, that I was gathering evidence, because Jinny Hutsall is the real criminal in all of this.

  The reason we’re here? I think—I mean, I still don’t know for sure, but I think it’s because she knows about the footage on my palm-cam, which is in my room, behind my big dresser, where I dropped it yesterday. And I think she told Jagger Jonze. And the two of them wanted me shut down.

  Was that seriously only yesterday? It feels like a thousand years ago.

  I nearly broke my stupid toe trying to move my heavy dresser to get my stupid camera. It’s super-small with a super-long lens—my birthday present from Aunt Lilly. I don’t know if I hope authorities have found it or hope they haven’t. If they see what I recorded, Fee and I could be vindicated, or maybe they’ll destroy it. If they didn’t find my camera, I need someone I trust to get it from my room.

  Zee, Bee, Dee—my girls? Fucking pain of betrayal.

  Where are they now? Delaney, Brooklyn and Zara? Our sisters? Our hive? Well, it appears they’re pulling an all-nighter with Jinny Hutsall and Reverend Jonze, still dressed in their white gowns because gorge, tweeting at us from their little command post in the cul-de-sac, begging us to turn ourselves in. They’ve set up tables and a coffee station for the investigators, and they’ve been posting selfies with hot cops, and quoting Sinner Scripture that they multi-tag with sad-angry-pukey-face emojis. Like they’ve ever tweeted scripture in their entire lives. Traitors.

  And my father. Sherman Miller is still “helping with the investigation.” Would it occur to Sherm that I might remember Javier’s cabin in the woods? That we might come here? Doubtful. On the news they’ve shown pics of him with Sugar Tits, leaving their stunning mansion in Hancock Park. Where are they going?

  Before my parents split, my mother often brought up the idea of downsizing to a small place near the old Farmers’ Market or in the Hancock Park area. Sherman said he’d shoot himself in the head before he’d relocate because traffic, but I think it was more the downsizing thing, like, his ego wanted to upsize, upscale, upgrade. He wanted more, not less. Shelley never really cared for Calabasas, but Sherman loved our life, he said, plus I have to admit that I’d have pitched a holy fit and died if they’d made me leave my hive. Never. No.

  “There’s no place to walk to here,” my mother used to say. There are actually many places to walk—clean, wide sidewalks in Hidden Oaks, beautiful hiking trails in the mountains—just no place to walk to. Her big-city soul never got used to the suburbs. People use that term “fish out of water” as if it’s so whatever. But fish actually die when they’re taken out of water. So.

  I wonder what it was like for my parents when they came to America as new immigrants. California has the highest population of expat Canadians anywhere in the world, but Shelley said it was still a bit of a culture shock—the cars, the money, the swimming pools and movie stars in the Hollywood Hills where they first lived—especially for her. Shelley grew up in a humble Toronto townhouse, daughter of two hard-working parents. My beloved Gramma and Pop.

  Sherman grew up rich in Winnipeg, dreaming of the SoCal life—sunshine and ocean breezes, year-round golf, and tennis. He’d tell people they left Canada because they hated the cold. Shelley would correct him: “You hated the cold, babe.” I thought that was an incredibly weak reason to just up and leave your country, until we spent one magical but brutally cold Christmas with my grandparents and aunt in Toronto.

  When he started law school, Sherman had aimed to become a defense attorney and make big money handling celebrity cases in Hollywood—that had been his goal. Then he met Shelley Frumkin, busty and blond, with big green eyes that look into, not at, a person. I’m sure Sherman loved her passion and her spirit and her brain, but I know what really got him sprung: Shelley Frumkin was the kind of woman who put others first. Sherman needed to be first. Match.

  After my parents were selected in the immigration lottery, they headed for the coast and found jobs, together, at a firm that did a lot of work with immigrants. Long before I was born, they went out on their own to become Miller Law. Work didn’t stop when they left the office. Phone calls. Field visits. Computer time. The more hours they logged, the more successful they became, the more money they made, the happier Sherman was. But Shelley never made peace with money, unless she was spending it at a discount store. Even before Sherman left us, she bought her clothes at Dress for Less. And she insisted on doing so much pro bono and charity work. I guess they never really wanted the same things.

  I’m the reason they ended up in Calabasas. Shelley was nearly forty when she got pregnant with me after years of failed in vitro. Neither she nor my father believed in God, but they still called me their little miracle. When Shell was just a few months pregnant, they moved from not-kid-friendly Hollywood Hills to very kid-friendly Hidden Oaks. My parents moved for the reasons that most people do these days. First and foremost? Clean air. Shelley couldn’t bear the idea of raising her child in the coral fog of pollution that hung heavy over their Hollywood home. Pollution was prohibited in Calabasas, driven out by the coastal wind currents and trapped on the other side of the valley. My parents wanted me to have the best. Best air to breathe. Best schools to attend. Proximity to the ocean. Natural environment. Huge house. Piano. Horseback-riding lessons. The best of the best. But I truly wonder if the best is actually best. For anyone.

  I ended up at Sacred Heart because that’s where my parents’ neighbors and friends—the Leons, and the Sharpes, and the Rohanians—were sending their kids. Five impressive buildings on fifteen hillside acres—the Grand Ballroom and chapel on the south side, the elementary, middle and high schools on the north, two Olympic-sized swimming pools, three sports fields, rigorous academics. I’d begged to go to Sacred Heart Nursery School with my little besties when I was four years old, so Sherman and Shell toured the incredible campus, and met the sw
arm of caring teachers, and drank the Christian freaking Kool-Aid. They didn’t worry that I’d be the only non-Christian at Sacred because I’d actually be one of many non-Christians at the school. People in Calabasas send their kids to the “best” school, and it’s just so whatever if Jesus goes there too.

  Did my parents ever discuss that I might be sucked into the Christian vortex? Did they understand the magnitude of their experiment? Or were they just relieved—like they could cross me off their list? Rory happy with friends. Check. I mean, the cul-de-sac is a village and that village raised me while my parents were off saving the world, or whatever Sherman was doing all that time. Not to say that they were absent, especially not Shell, but they weren’t always present either. And they never felt guilty about working late or business trips, because they knew I was happy with my friends. At home in their homes. Kissed good night by the neighborhood moms. The God stuff? Guess they figured that at four years old I’d be able to figure all that myself.

  Guess it’s no surprise I’m fucked-up. My friends and I lead such confusing lives. We write essays about Jesus’s love for the poor and disenfranchised then go shop Louis and Prada. We laze around our pools snarking on those who have not, idolizing those who have a shit-ton. We’re jumping back and forth all day long—spiritual double Dutch—and it makes me seriously dizzy. I see it. Really. Clearly.

  I’ve had a front-row seat to the grooming of Christian women. Women must be quiet, and women must not hold authority over men, and women should stay in the kitchen and let their husbands lead the household, and the world. I mean, it basically says all of that in the Bible. But me and Brooky and Zara and Delaney and Fee, we have never been down with that sexist crap. And lots of the other girls aren’t either. Honestly, bet half the virgins at the ball tonight will be hooking up by end of senior year. And some of them, yes, a few of those Christian girls, will hit up a Pink Market contact for a morning-after pill, or an abortion.

  I wrote my blog about abortion in freshman year when it was all anyone was talking about. My mom told me about Roe v. Wade and her opinions on a woman’s right to choose years ago, when I was prolly too young for the conversation. I watched how it all went sideways as the Crusaders got more violent and started setting bombs at abortion clinics. Aunt Lill said the Pink Market was born in one big push because social media. Word spread through the ether, and girls whispered at school, and all of this was happening as I was asking questions about God and religion and a woman’s control over her own body.

  Then a guest speaker came to our school. A little leprechaun-lookin’ priest who introduced himself as Father Joe. He told us he’d been invited by Pastor Hanson to join us that day to share his “Love of Life.” But first, he said, he was gonna show us a video, which he did—an eight-minute montage of ultrasound images with fetuses doing somersaults and sucking their thumbs in amniotic fluid, scored by a children’s choir singing “Amazing Grace.” We Sacred girls were just looking around at each other like wha…?

  After the film ended, the priest took the mic to explain that the film we’d just seen of the miracle of life in the womb was taken from fifty recent mandatory ultrasounds performed in one of the states where abortion had yet to be banned outright.

  “Fifty innocent lives,” Father Joe said, his voice cracking. “Forty-nine angels.” He motioned to the back of the room and this adorable little three-year-old boy with blue eyes and white-blond curls comes running down the aisle and up to the stage and into the priest’s arms. Father Joe picked up the scared little boy and held him high for all to see. “This is David. The sole survivor.”

  The rest of the girls clapped loudly as little David began to cry, but I was boiling with rage. Like, first off, don’t do that. Don’t show fetus images to emotionally manipulate us and confuse the issue. And don’t bring this terrified little sweetie onstage so we can applaud him for being unaborted. Plus, how formally stupid is it to essentially say that the mandatory ultrasound only changed the mind of one out of fifty people, who might have made a different decision anyway? Not exactly a point for your side?

  After school, hanging in my room with the Hive, I went off about the whole Father Joe thing. To shut me up, or shut me down, Zara declared abortion is murder, and too upsetting to talk about. Zara’d never shared that opinion before and it pissed me off to think the priest’s stunt might have swayed her. Delaney said she thought God would totally understand abortion in the case of rape or incest, but was undecided on what God might feel about abortion in other circumstances. Brooky said God gave us the right to choose, and people should stay out of other people’s business. Fee didn’t say she thought that abortion is murder, but she did call it selfish, saying, “What about adoption?” because no matter what, it’s only nine months, and what a beautiful gift to give a couple who can’t have a baby. That’s so Fee.

  This past year has been vile. All those celebrities being outed for having had “illegal abortions”—doesn’t matter if it was yesterday or twenty years ago—and their social accounts bombed, and their careers ruined. The baby-daddies who were part of the unplanned pregnancy? Sometimes even financed the crime? They shrug and move on from the new scarlet A. Abortion. Fucking abortion. The president seems to have thought endorsing the business of purity balls would put an end to sex before marriage and cut down on illegal teen abortions. They seriously thought that putting condoms behind the counters with an ID requirement would stop teens from having sex. And that making birth control pills and morning-after pills impossible to get would create a society that would evolve past the need for Planned Parenthood or legal abortion clinics. They call the measures a way to encourage American “repopulation” and “repatriotation”? Ugh. You hear rumors about pregnant girls being sent away to these private birth houses, but what if some of those birth houses are actually run by criminals? Guess when you think of it, the government created an opening for an organization like the Red Market. Maybe it does exist.

  For the Hive, the conversation about abortion is hypothetical anyway. It’s not like we know any girls who have needed an abortion. Or even any girls who’ve actually had sex. So abortion is an abstract idea to us, really. Plus, I mean, seriously, in that position? We say the things we say, but who knows what any of us would do if we got pregnant. Even Zara. Who knows?

  Since the Social Policy lady from my school creeps all our social accounts, I was careful not to take a stand for or against abortion in my blog, but made the case that no matter personal opinions, or state laws, abortions are still going to be performed. My mother helped me research some horror stories from history when women tried to end their pregnancies by throwing themselves down the stairs or performed surgery on their own wombs with knitting needles and coat hangers. The Social Policy lady didn’t say a word about it, but our health teacher, Miss Vogelvort, said she’d read it, and would pray for me.

  Fee is moaning beside me. I don’t know what’s happening. She might just be having a bad dream? It started a couple of minutes ago and she’s getting really loud. Fuck. I’m afraid someone might hear. I’m gonna try to wake her up.

  * * *

  —

  I woke Fee up to stop the moaning, but she’s confused and crying for water. I have no choice, I gotta go out there. At least the winds have kicked up and the sky’s clear of low-flyers. Poor Fee.

  * * *

  —

  I checked the dirt road that leads away from this sketchy little neighborhood. No cars. No lights. I checked the Airstream next door. The television was still on, so it was possible the drunk dude was awake, but more likely he was passed out. I also thought of Javier’s words, “Don’t let him see.”

  The Santa Anas fought back when I tried to open the shed door, and they lashed my face and bare arms as I dashed through the weeds toward Javier’s truck. There was no barrel of water in the flatbed. No half-drunk bottles. A quick search of the cab turned up nothing.

  I looked over at the drunk guy’s truck. I had to check. So I ra
n toward it in a crouch, my eyes on the windows of the trailer—terrified the guy’d see me. I hid behind the truck and checked the flatbed. No water jugs or bottles. I ducked and flattened, moving closer to the cab to see if he’d left anything inside there. I couldn’t believe it—a small bottle of freaking Gatorade on the floor of the passenger side. So not just water, but electrolytes and sugars and whatever to make Fee feel better from all the retching, right?

  The truck door hinge screeched when I tried to open it. I stopped and held my breath, afraid that drunk guy was gonna come out with a shotgun. Plus, I’m thinking, What if he knows about the bounty? What if he recognizes me from TV?

  Finally, I eased the truck door open and leaned in to snatch the Gatorade. Then I saw something moving in the trailer through a crack in the broken dog door. The drunk guy? Perro? I didn’t stick around to find out. I grabbed the bottle, closed the truck door as quietly as I could and ran back to the shed. I looked out the window to see if anyone was coming out of the Airstream. No one. Nothing moved. Nothing happened. Finally, I sank down beside Fee.

  She couldn’t believe what I was holding in my hand. “Gatorade?”

  She snatched the bottle out of my hand, uncapped it, raised it to her lips, and gulped and swallowed, and gulped and swallowed until the bottle was empty. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she looked up at me with this face like she was gonna die. I didn’t know what was happening at first. And then it hit me. Pee? Oh my freaking God, was that pee in the Gatorade bottle?

  Fee took a couple of deep breaths. She was actually surprisingly calm when she finally said, “Tequila.”

  “Wha…?”