And Other Stories (21 page)

For Elise Matthesen, and the
necklace of the same title.

Joshua
Tree

Emma Bull

My name is Tabetha Sikorsky. Yes,
that’s usually spelled “Tabitha,” but spelling has never been my
mom’s hot subject. I’m not sure what my dad’s hot subject is, but I
hope it’s wood shop, since he’s now living in Phoenix nailing
roofing on tract houses.

That beats the hell out of being a
manicurist in the middle of the desert in the most horrible town in
the world. Which is what my mom is. Which makes me the daughter of
a manicurist in the middle of, etc., etc. No comment on where that
falls on the beats-the-hell scale.

I’m sixteen. The school district
thinks I’m seventeen (when they think of me), because my mother
faked my birth certificate to get me into kindergarten when I was
four. Kindergarten is free daycare. It wasn’t till third grade that
I realized my real age wasn’t a secret of Defense Department
proportions, and Mom and I wouldn’t go to jail if it came out that
she’d forged my birth certificate. But it was still a while before
I stopped getting dizzy and sick to my stomach every time someone
asked, “And how old are you, sweetie?”

I don’t want anyone to think my mom
doesn’t love me. I’ve seen her with people she’s said “I love you”
to, and I figure she does a better job of loving me than she does
with most of them. She just has a short attention span. I bet I was
24/7 interesting when I was the new Cabbage Patch baby, but now I’m
only intermittently riveting. I try not to use it up.

We live in a town that wouldn’t
exist if it weren’t for the Marine base. They put military bases in
the middle of nowhere because real towns wouldn’t take that crap.
In our case, they put the base in the center of hundreds of miles
of desert and let a town happen around it, like a parasite. That’s
us: Tapewormville.

If you’re just
driving through, it probably looks like a thriving little burg.
Look! They’ve got a Seven-Eleven
and
a Circle K! If you stay, you
have time to notice that the successful businesses deal in the
following: barbering (there are more “MARINE HAIRCUTS” signs in
town than stop signs) liquor (drink here, or take-out); fast food
(pizza delivery is big); strippers; and auto body shops. The body
shops are because, after coming into town to drink and watch girls
take off their tops, the Maggots try to drive back to the base.
It’s not just an economy, it’s a whole ecosystem.

Not that the only people on base
are the Maggots. The officers are mostly older, married with kids,
even. Even Marines grow up eventually. Still, it’s like living in
an occupied country. I read someplace that people in Guam want the
U.S. military base out of there, but they’re afraid the economy
would tank. Well, here we are: Guam with no ocean.

Normal towns have plenty of
laundromats and supermarkets and clothing stores and stuff. Not
base towns. The base has its own washing machines. It has a mess
hall and a commissary. Uniforms come with the gig. And for
everything else, like videos and cigarettes and magazines that
aren’t Soap Opera Digest, there’s the PX. So that leaves the
townies’ needs, which can be met by one scabby Wal-Mart twenty
miles away.

It’s probably pretty clear that I’m
not a base kid. I was born a townie, and I’m scared shitless that
I’ll die one. I’m more scared of that than car wrecks, earthquakes,
or AIDS. This is the kind of town you can’t possibly stay in all
your life. So why are there so many people here who’ve done exactly
that?

That’s the real reason the town
hates the base. On base, people get reassigned, moved around,
resign their commissions.

They can leave.

Which raises an interesting
question: To get out of this town, do I have to join the
Marines?

I’m writing this because Ms.
Grammercy gave us an over-the-weekend assignment for Junior
English: write our autobiographies. She had to explain to the back
of the room what “autobiography” means. Okay, that’s not fair. I
already knew, and Maryanne Krassner probably knew, because she
reads them if they’re by actors. But I could see the rest of the
townies in the back two rows hearing “autobiography” and thinking,
“Cars?”

I thought it was a bullshit
assignment. We’re in high school. How much autobiography are we
supposed to have? But I’ve sort of gotten into it.

To encourage our creativity (she
actually said that) Ms. G. gave us a list of questions we could
start with. Here they are:

1. What is your name?

2. How old are you?

3. Who are your parents? What do
they do?

4. Do you have brothers or
sisters?

5. Where were you born? What is
your hometown like?

6. What career do you want to
pursue?

7. What is your favorite kind of
music?

8. What person has had the most
influence on your life?

9. What problem in the world is
most important to you?

Here’s what I wrote to turn
in:

My name is Tabetha Sikorsky. I’m
seventeen years old. My mother’s name is Cheryl and she’s a
manicurist. My father’s name is Arthur and he does construction in
Phoenix. My mother and father are divorced. I don’t have any
brothers or sisters. I was born here. It’s small but okay. I would
like a career at a store maybe a record store. My favorite music is
Eminem. The person who had the most influence on my life was Ms.
Keating my 3rd grade teacher because she was smart and still
pretty. I think the problem in the world that’s most important to
me is pollution.

I think it’s a masterpiece.
Especially considering what I had to work with.

I picked Eminem from an unbiased
study of the T-shirts in Mr. Kuyper’s Geography class. Two Jennifer
Lopez, one U-2, two Bone Thugs ‘n’ Harmony, three Led Zeppelin (and
isn’t that sad?), four Eminem. The Ms. Keating thing I just thought
was funny. As for the world problem—oh, excuse me, “the problem in
the world”—how am I supposed to pick one? Global warming, poverty,
war, torture, nuclear waste disposal, the whole damn government,
everybody else’s government. I was sitting next to the trash can,
and I had an inch left before the margin, so I settled on
“pollution.” If you cross the margin lines on your notebook paper,
Ms. G. takes points off. It’s as if we’re figure skaters and she’s
the Russian judge.

I take it back about not being able
to write your autobiography at sixteen/seventeen. I just realized I
know everything that will happen in Ms. G.’s class on Monday. I’ll
pass my homework over Luis Perez’s shoulder, and he’ll make a big
deal of reading it and laughing before he passes it up. (I was
going to write that I wanted a career as an exotic dancer, but then
I remembered Luis. He stifled my creativity.) Piper Amendola will
toss back her Pantene Pro-V hair and hand in twenty typed pages
with the comment that she found the assignment “really useful and
interesting.” Ms. G. will tell the front of the room that they’re
all clever and going to heaven or college, whichever comes first,
and the back of the room that we don’t seem to be
trying.

And if I know what will happen
Monday, why shouldn’t I know what will happen next month, in ten
years, everything right up to when I die? I can write my whole life
story now. But some things are too big a waste of time even for
me.

•

Monday went as predicted, except I
forgot to mention the hangover from Janelle’s birthday party. I
knew I’d have one; I just forgot to mention it.

The party Janelle told her stepmom
about was on Saturday. But Sunday we went over to Little Mike’s rec
room for the real thing.

When I was a kid, and I thought
about what I’d have when I got my own place, it looked a lot like
Little Mike’s. It’s embarrassing to write that. Black-light
posters, for godsake. A couple crisscross strings of Christmas
lights “for atmosphere” (of what? Trailer-park holiday cheer?). A
black vinyl couch that makes fart sounds when you move around on
it, no matter what you’re wearing. A red shag carpet that smells
like dog pee when you’re close enough—like when you sit on the
floor (I only did it once). And the incense, of course. “African
Love.” I think he bought it at a truck stop.

But Mike’s okay. He’s always up for
hosting a party, as long as you give him money for the beer. If you
want pot, though, you have to bring your own. He doesn’t want to
violate his parole. I don’t have the heart to tell him that
supplying alcohol to minors has got that covered
already.

I really thought I’d get through
Sunday night without a crappy moment. TLC was playing loud on
Mike’s stereo, my third beer was in my hand, Janelle was sitting
beside me singing along, Barb and Nina were dancing and pretending
they didn’t notice the guys watching them.

Then suddenly, boom. Everything
sucked. I have no idea what set it off. Nina was shaking her big
butt and her big boobs, and I could tell that in her head she
looked like Lisa “Left Eye”. But she really just looked sloppy and
sad. Barb’s water bra bounced up and down, and the guys watched
like the young males in the herd watch the female who’s going into
heat, planning to be first with the most when she’s ready (in this
case, after one more beer).

Suddenly everyone in the room
seemed to be on the fast track to pregnancy, jail, or a seasonal
job on the line at a fruit packing plant. Including me.

I looked at Janelle, and she wasn’t
singing along anymore. For a second I thought maybe she felt it,
too. The crappy mood almost lifted. Then I realized what was
actually up with her face, and helped her outside to
puke.

Little Mike’s place is at the edge
of town. His backyard is basically miles of sand, rocks, and
mesquite. There’s even a joshua tree right behind the garage, a
pretty sickly-looking one (though how can you tell with joshua
trees?) with its two branches twisted like rejects from a grade
school pipe cleaner project.

I held Janelle’s hair out of her
face while she did the deed. Janelle never just throws up and gets
on with her life. It’s a big production number that goes on
forever. The motion sensor light over the back door had turned off
by the time she got serious about it.

Janelle sounds like she’s dying
when she pukes, so I tried to distract myself, but the desert in
the dark doesn’t provide much material. I pretended the tree was a
psycho killer with two heads sneaking up on a houseful of naughty,
naughty teenagers. A psycho killer with shaggy, spiky hair. Stupid
hair. Stupid psycho killer, making your big move on a bad hair day.
Don’t you want your picture in the paper?

Janelle and I became best friends
in fifth grade. Actually, we became twins. I stole Mom’s paring
knife, and we cut our thumbs and pressed them together in a sacred
ritual in Janelle’s garage. We wore the same clothes, loved the
same bands, crushed on the same TV stars, had the same opinions—I
bet it drove everyone nuts.

We recruited Barb and Nina to the
posse the next year. It was girl heaven. Sleepovers at my house,
when my mom would give us manicures at the kitchen table. Parties
at Nina’s, whose dad works in the bakery at Costco. Afternoons
riding Barb’s uncle’s horses. Saturdays when we’d dress up in
clothes Janelle’s stepmom was giving away and pretend we were
making a music video.

It was at Nina’s quinceañera that I
first made a joke that Janelle, Barb, and Nina didn’t get. It
didn’t happen again for a while, but that was the first
one.

I handed Janelle a couple of
tissues and let her swish her mouth out with my beer (then let her
keep the bottle). “Thanks, Beth,” she said, “you are the best
friend ever. I just really love you.”

I don’t know why, but the
puker/hair-holder relationship generates these feelings of
intimacy. It wears off in about an hour, or sooner if you screw it
up.

“Do you ever think
that growing up isn’t as good as it was supposed to be?” I
said.

Our moving around had turned the
light back on, so we could even see each other. Her face was still
blotchy and pale, and the dark liner around her lips was smeared.
“What?” she said.

“When we were little
kids, it just felt like we were on this big adventure. Now it’s
like we’re on a guided tour of a landfill. Do you know what I
mean?”

She frowned. “If you don’t want to
be at my party, you don’t have to stay.”

“It’s not the party!
But don’t you ever feel like there’s something really important out
there, that we aren’t getting?” You’d think I’d have learned to cut
my losses by now.

“Oh, God, Beth, I get
enough Jesus crap from my stepmom.” She took a big swallow of beer
and said, “I’m going back in.”

Of course, I did, too. Everything
was swell. I had another beer, and we were all laughing and happy.
Wahoo.

Here’s what I
think I’m having trouble with: this
is
what happiness is. When I was
a kid, I thought I’d just get happier and happier as I got older,
and have more things to be happy about. I based this theory on
observation of select adults. The problem with my results is that I
couldn’t tell the difference then between happy and fake-happy. Now
I know you pretend to be just frigging ecstatic over everything,
maybe because you’re so glad it’s not worse. Pleased to meet you!
means, Thank God you’re not a cop! or, I love this car! means, At
least it’s not a ‘78 Datsun with bald tires and bad
hoses!