Banana Rose (5 page)

“Sissy,” she screamed in my ear. “This is fun!”

I yelled back, “So Taos isn’t so bad?”

She made a face that meant, I wouldn’t say that, but just for now I’m enjoying myself.

We danced ourselves into oblivion. Chairs took up space, so the hall had no chairs. If you were in the hall, you were dancing. If you needed a break, you went outside. No one danced as a couple. We each moved to our own energy, communicating with the music, sometimes in sync with someone for a few moments until the energy moved on. You weren’t a good dancer or a bad dancer. You just danced and followed the patterns of sound and light from blinking projectors. I felt the hall’s height when I flung my head back at a particularly wild beat of the band. The ceiling was held up by huge vigas made of ponderosa pine.

Rita danced by again and kissed me. I was two years older than Rita, but in high school she had been more popular. She had a lot of friends. None of them did well in school; they were always on the phone with each other or practicing new dance steps in the living room. I was quiet at home and pretended I was above caring about clothes and rock ‘n’ roll, but secretly it bothered me that I didn’t know how to dance. I couldn’t ask Rita, though. I was afraid she’d make fun of me, that I wasn’t “hip.” And besides, you never ask your little sister anything.

In my third year of college, I had a boyfriend who was like a witch. Russell knew things about people. He knew I didn’t know how to dance without my telling him, and at the first party we went to he didn’t let me hesitate when the music started. He grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the dance floor. “That’s it,” he kept repeating in my ear when we came close to each other. He led, and I followed. It felt like the first time I’d been on ice skates without holding on to my father’s arm. Just out there on the ice all by myself. I was finally out there dancing! First, I felt wonder—it wasn’t even that hard. Then I felt awe—why had I been so scared before?

“Good, Nell, good,” Russell whispered again. I wanted to dance forever, to make up for all those years I’d hid away in high school. By the end of the night, I’d become a go-go girl or a backup dancer for the Supremes. I loved my body.

When I moved out to Taos four and a half years later, everyone danced like they were electrical strobe lights flashing on and off. I jumped right in and moved my body to totally new dimensions. By then, I’d begun painting, and all I wanted to do was to capture that feeling on paper. A realistic approach would never work—it would be too corny so I tried abstraction. But I had trouble getting it on paper in the abstract because I wasn’t good enough.

Here I go, starting to criticize myself again, I thought. Just then, Lightning bumped into me. I grabbed him and whirled him around. Even as he was turning, he pretended I wasn’t there. I was an adult to Lightning, I suddenly realized. I was a teacher at his school, and adults weren’t cool. Mostly I felt like a kid inside, maybe twelve, sometimes seven. I felt younger and younger living in Taos.

Too quickly, it was one in the morning and we were standing outside. The heat and sweat of my body met the edge of cold under the heavy sweater that I’d pulled over my head. Neon had parked the jeep up on a dirt patch near the Hall, and it was rattling and chugging in place, his rubber chicken bouncing in time to the motor.

“Cannon has to warm up a bit,” Neon said. He wore an ankle-length purple velvet cape, buttoned at the neck.

“Sure, sure,” we all said, our breath fogging at our mouths. Most people were still in there dancing or had gone. We were giving Blue and Lightning a ride home.

Suddenly, a long low blue Chevy full of local teenagers drove up and stopped abruptly, nose to nose with the jiggling Cannon. An empty beer bottle sailed out the driver’s window and smashed against the foundation of the Hall. I grabbed Rita by the arm as I heard a yell of “Go!” All four car doors flew open, and six kids dashed out, grabbed Neon, and spun him around so his cape floated out in back of him. We all stood frozen. The black sky was broken by stars. The music chopped out of the wooden front doors. The sharp November air cut through my lungs as I screamed, “Leave him alone!”

Neon stumbled and then held out his hands. “Listen, we’re all brothers.”

Rita crept behind me toward the Hall.

The skinny kid who drove the car—he was no more than sixteen—spat in Neon’s face. Then they all ran, jumped in the four open doors of their car, and zoomed down the road, yelling,
“Pendejos!”
out the windows, their back wheels spitting gravel at us.

Blue ran over to Neon and grabbed him by the arm. “You okay? You okay, sugar? Say something so I know you’re okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.” Neon put his hand on Blue’s shoulder.

I walked up slowly. I was afraid Neon would feel humiliated.

He didn’t, though. He looked down the road. “They don’t see we’re all one, do they?”

“Maybe it’s the cape, Neon. Or the color of your jeep, or your funky chicken,” I joked. We all laughed and it seemed to ease things.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” I asked.

“No.” He shook his head. “Only here,” and he put his hand over his heart. I thought he was kidding, but I looked at his face and saw he meant it.

Rita emerged from where she had hidden behind the open door of the hall. “Whew, this is a weird town. I’m glad I’m leaving soon. There’s trouble here.”

“Let’s go home,” I said, turning toward the still-chugging jeep, trying to ignore Rita’s comment, “before it runs out of gas.”

We all sat quietly in the car, passing the night shadows of buildings along the road. A dog appeared at the turn by the Talpa Elementary School and tried to bite the tire and then receded into the darkness.

We let off Blue and Lightning just below the hill to their house. Blue hesitated, as if she wanted to say something. Then I could see she thought better of it and let the door shut.

We drove to the Elephant House farther down the hill. Rita complained about being cold and jumped out of the car as soon as it stopped in front of the commune.

“Good night, Neon.” I turned to him and said it quietly. I put my hand on his knee. It was a gesture of gentleness. I felt mixed up about him; he was a fool and a huge human being all at once.

He took my gesture as a come-on and tried to kiss me. I could tell it wasn’t one of our usual friendly greeting kisses. It was meant to be more serious, but his eyes closed too quickly and he missed my lips. Instead he kissed the air near my ear as he tried to aim for my face. He didn’t see that I’d moved my head.

“Neon,” I said. “That’s not what’s happening between us.” He was good-natured. He nodded and said, “Okay, Banana. I understand.”

When I got into bed that night, I reread the single postcard I’d gotten two weeks earlier from Gauguin. The card pictured a donkey wearing a hat. His handwriting was hard to read. He was at a small beach town, practicing music and eating cheap shrimp. “I’m thinking of you,” he wrote. And he signed it “Love.” I put the card under my pillow and fell asleep.

I
DROVE
R
ITA
to the bus station the morning after Thanksgiving. It was early and shadows were long. It hadn’t snowed yet, but it felt like it would soon. Rita was still groggy. We were late, so there was no time for her to make coffee at the house.

“You should have planned and gotten up earlier,” I told her as I gassed it around the curve.

“Oh, Nell, don’t start,” she whined.

“I’m afraid you’ll miss your bus,” I said.

“I’m not missing that bus. Maybe there’s a coffee machine at the station. Great! I can have leaky brown piss.”

“Or you can just go back to sleep on the bus,” I suggested.

She groaned. “All the way to New York with no java. Nell, get me some!

The bus was late. She got her coffee. After a fast hug, I watched her climb the bus steps. My eye caught her leg—she was wearing a short, tight skirt and black tights, and her calf was thick and chunky. It had always been that way. She was a great runner. My sister! A flood of feeling rushed through me. Then the bus pulled away and she waved from the back seat.

I walked across the plaza. No one was around. I felt a little melancholy, but I cheered up when I entered Señor Murphy’s Candy Shoppe. I chose a piñon crunch there. If I had gotten an almond crunch it would have been cheaper, but the piñon ones tasted better. Also, piñon nuts were local.

“Isn’t it awfully early to eat candy?” The old woman behind the counter smiled at me.

“No, it seems a perfect time and perfect that you’re open,” I teased back.

I reached for the square held in tissue paper and walked out the door. Strips of bells were hung on it for Christmas, and they jingled uproariously as I left. My sister was gone.

I drove back to Talpa slowly, savoring my candy, looking at Taos spread out to my right. I felt the relaxation of having the whole weekend free before me. I’d gotten through my time with her. That’s the most I could say. Rita never did see my paintings, and I don’t think she cared. I doubt I had imparted any wisdom to her either, as my mother would have liked. Hell, I laughed to myself, I think my wild and crazy sister ended up being freaked out by the place. I suddenly realized my mother would have felt the same way. I got a sweet revenge from that thought, and then it was tinged by an emptiness.

When I got to my house, I pulled out my paints. Yellow, I thought. I have to make a painting that color and I want the feeling of a rooster in it. I squeezed lemon yellow onto the palette and then a dab of green, orange, and for some reason black. Then black led me to squeezing on vermilion, which led to a very dull olive. I felt suddenly as though something were pulling me down someplace far away from my original rooster.

“Hey, Banana, come quick! There’s someone at the door,” Happiness yelled into my room.

Why can’t she just go answer it herself? I thought, but I carefully placed my palette on the nearby table and headed through the kitchen.

It was Gauguin! He was tanned, a pack on his back, his arms stretched out toward me.

“I missed you, Rose.” He grabbed me as he closed his eyes. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“Gauguin—” Stunned, I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Then I stepped back, so I could see that it was really him. Yes, there was that wide nose, the red eyebrows, the scar across his chin, and those glasses—I reached for them. “Still didn’t get them fixed, huh?”

He became shy. “Yeah, and I’m running out of masking tape.”

We laughed.

“I missed you, too.” I finally got it out. “Missed you a lot.”

We were back in each other’s arms. His glasses dangled down his back in my right hand.

Gauguin stepped away and looked at my face. He was nervous. “I missed you the whole time. I got to Machu Picchu and stood on my head, and all I could think was, ‘Nell, Nell, Banana Rose, Rose, Nell, Banana.’ I had to go all the way to the Andes to realize what I wanted. I wanted you.”

I nodded. When we kissed, I saw those stars again, the ones I saw when I stepped on the rake way back when I first met him, and I felt water, all kinds—rivers, streams, oceans—run through me.

T
HREE WEEKS AFTER
Gauguin moved back, we drove around the Bosque del Apache, a huge bird sanctuary south of Albuquerque. Gauguin hummed—no, he sang that tune I loved, that spiritual about going to heaven someday. The man in the song doesn’t know when it will be, he may be way across the sea. I loved the way Gauguin held the notes. It was like pouring honey out of a green glass jar. From time to time I looked over at him. He wore a crumpled white shirt, stained khaki pants, and a pair of old policeman’s black high-top boots he’d found at the Goodwill in Minneapolis before he moved to Taos. We blasted the heat in the truck—that was one good thing about that white truck—old Betsy Boop had a great heater, so we didn’t have to wear jackets. We could just mosey around the Bosque all afternoon and be comfortable and look at birds. I had a bird book on my lap and a pair of borrowed binoculars. Gauguin had just bought the fourteen-year-old pickup, and we had come to the Bosque to celebrate his purchase.

We drove at the most twenty miles per hour. All around the reserve the hills and mountains were volcanic rock. I spotted a blue heron. When that dinosaur bird lifted its great wings, I imagined we were back before Christ and all the commotion about religion. Gauguin and I were cave people on our faithful mastodon, the White Nostril. I told Gauguin this.

He paused, then cocked his head in a way that I knew something funny was about to come out. “You know, Banana Rose, I’m Li’l Abner, and you’re a little abnormal.”

I grew more and more in love with Gauguin, but especially I loved his mind. Out of the blue, I turned to him. “Gauguin, what do you think the difference is between a man and a woman?”

He bit a nail off his pinky that was bothering him. “I don’t know. Why’d you ask?”

“I want to know. What’s it like to be sitting next to me and be a man?”

“Pass me the water bottle. It’s on the floor.” He pulled over, and as the motor jiggled in idle, he unscrewed the cap and drank. I knew he was thinking. He handed the bottle back to me. “Banana, I guess I don’t feel that much different than you. I know I’m a man and you’re a woman” he shrugged his shoulders—“but sometimes I feel such tenderness for you—for your cheek or your small hand. When I’m kissing your breast, I feel so much wonder, I almost become a woman, like I melt into you.”

That was sweet, but I wanted more. “Yeah, but what’s the difference?”

“I’m not sure what the difference is—maybe there isn’t any deep down. Sometimes I feel uptight that I feel like a woman. My dad’s real macho. He always wore the pants in the family, you know, master of the house and all that shit. I never felt like that. Maybe I loved my mother too much.”

Gauguin had told me that as a boy he’d played army all the way through age fourteen. His mother worried that he should have grown out of it earlier. He often made the sounds of the different guns for me—he could imitate twenty-one different gun shots. “Here’s a bullet that ricochets off a tin roof, goes through a glass window, hits a cookie jar, and then sinks into the buttocks of a cheesecake on the table.” He motored up his mouth, puttered, spurted, and ran his tongue along the side of his cheek.