Girlchild (21 page)
I
t’s not like I haven’t ever cracked the hope chest’s lid before, but I only looked at the letters bundled on the top, then closed it quick again. I never moved anything around, never so much as pulled a ribbon on those stacks. Mama’s superstitions were as hereditary as anything else, and I was afraid of upsetting the balance she’d arranged with old man Death. I never stepped on cracks, either, but this is mine now and the lid sounds different when I open it, quieter, like it knows I’m not sneaking this time. It’s warped from the plant Mama kept on it, and I lean its curve against the wall and start taking out papers. And the first answer to my questions about “What’s in the hope chest?” about “What’s so important?” is: a lot. A body can sure hold on to a lot of paper in a lifetime, even a short one, and when that body’s gone, not many of those papers make sense.
t’s not like I haven’t ever cracked the hope chest’s lid before, but I only looked at the letters bundled on the top, then closed it quick again. I never moved anything around, never so much as pulled a ribbon on those stacks. Mama’s superstitions were as hereditary as anything else, and I was afraid of upsetting the balance she’d arranged with old man Death. I never stepped on cracks, either, but this is mine now and the lid sounds different when I open it, quieter, like it knows I’m not sneaking this time. It’s warped from the plant Mama kept on it, and I lean its curve against the wall and start taking out papers. And the first answer to my questions about “What’s in the hope chest?” about “What’s so important?” is: a lot. A body can sure hold on to a lot of paper in a lifetime, even a short one, and when that body’s gone, not many of those papers make sense.
Here are a few things of Mama’s: every assignment I ever brought home, even from kindergarten, bundles of letters from Grandma to her, every single card my brothers ever sent, even if all they wrote on it themselves was their name, was a first initial. Nothing is that surprising, though, until I find a set of pictures almost in full color. They’re of a swimming pool and trees. And my brothers. Hendrix. Hendrix. Hendrix. Hendrix. Mama isn’t in any of them, but it’s easy to imagine her standing worried by that water, afraid for her boys. They must have visited a place with a pool,
they’re splashing around in it, their briefs all the same, stripes running horizontally across. They look happy, the flash doesn’t scare them at all, and I wonder if that’s why Mama kept these pictures, particularly these. To remind herself that whatever else she didn’t do, she made sure all of her children knew how to survive in elements she would never master.
they’re splashing around in it, their briefs all the same, stripes running horizontally across. They look happy, the flash doesn’t scare them at all, and I wonder if that’s why Mama kept these pictures, particularly these. To remind herself that whatever else she didn’t do, she made sure all of her children knew how to survive in elements she would never master.
And there’s a picture of me that Mama took. I’m wearing the suit I wore to the lake that summer, a two-piece the color of wine lipstick, shimmery and dark, light purple lines curling over the tops of my not-yet breasts, swinging up in waves around the bottoms. I can tell from the look on my face that I’m impatient to get away from the camera and into the lake that rolls out behind me.
There are black-and-white photos too. Mama and her sisters wearing matching dresses like the Girl Scouts of Other Nations in the illustrated section of the
Girl Scout Handbook
. They stand in perfectly graduated height and I’m dizzy when I look into their eyes, eyes about the same age as mine. It’s like the photos become a pop-up book, their helplessness cut from the paper and scored, they take shape on my lap and I feel Mama’s hands squeezing, her eyes bright and begging, but I don’t know what she wants anymore or who she’s asking.
Girl Scout Handbook
. They stand in perfectly graduated height and I’m dizzy when I look into their eyes, eyes about the same age as mine. It’s like the photos become a pop-up book, their helplessness cut from the paper and scored, they take shape on my lap and I feel Mama’s hands squeezing, her eyes bright and begging, but I don’t know what she wants anymore or who she’s asking.
Underneath the pictures there is a thick bunch of legal-sized papers, curled up on the end from so many years in the hope chest, from all the miles it’s traveled in our immobile mobile home. There is a small note on top addressed to Johanna Ruth Hendrix c/o The Santa Cruz Legal Aid Society, and it tells her, “The County of Santa Cruz protests the release of this information,” and the information whose release is being protested is my mama’s, my family’s, my own. The reports, written by V. White and the State of California, are linear and sure, they’re positive about times and places, make no bones about guilt or truth, and they begin like this:
CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD
HENDRIX, Johanna Ruth
116 Holway Drive
Santa Cruz, California
116 Holway Drive
Santa Cruz, California
W
hen a Calle resident passes on, it is customary to not know what to do, say, or where to look. The very phrase “passes on” can be confusing as it implies a forward motion hitherto unfamiliar on Calle streets. This confusion is natural, and for Calle residents who aren’t directly affected by the death, meeting those in mourning for the departed soul is best avoided. However, if the waning supply of frozen meals necessitates leaving the house, for example, or one drink is in order after the day you’ve had, the following guidelines will assist in handling most encounters with a minimum of discomfort.
hen a Calle resident passes on, it is customary to not know what to do, say, or where to look. The very phrase “passes on” can be confusing as it implies a forward motion hitherto unfamiliar on Calle streets. This confusion is natural, and for Calle residents who aren’t directly affected by the death, meeting those in mourning for the departed soul is best avoided. However, if the waning supply of frozen meals necessitates leaving the house, for example, or one drink is in order after the day you’ve had, the following guidelines will assist in handling most encounters with a minimum of discomfort.
A primary goal during any occasion for mourning taking place on the Calle is to have one’s actions be as inoffensive as possible. The bolder acquaintances of the deceased will make a phone call or perhaps deliver a store-bought card. The less bold will attempt sympathetic shapes with smoke rings from the safety of their kitchen table and say nothing. Mass cards or other devotional objects do not come into play here except for the usual found at every kitchen table on the Calle: cut decks brought home from the casinos, the machined slit at the top alerting handlers that this deck is too worn for the tables and gamblers whose soft hands learn the nuances of a worn card faster than the shape of a woman’s curves. During such times, these cards are shuffled more thoughtfully than usual, the dealer often needing to be reminded to deal, of the game still being played by the living.
In lieu of the usual mementos, then, souvenirs in the form of paperwork are distributed directly to those suffering most. Early visitors will assist the bereaved, especially if she is underage, with application forms for social security (SSDI) and surviving child benefits (Form 410-414), with discussions of emancipation if deemed necessary, and with the kind of grief that turns one into an adult overnight (see Form 831b, use black ink only).
If you’d like to contribute something to the memorial, flowers say all you can’t and shouldn’t. Be they gladiolas, wisteria, or toilet paper, a floral arrangement is simple and meaningful, a comfort to the mourner who will miss her mother’s sure hand in the garden. Your florist or bartender can guide you in selecting something appropriate.
Attire in this circumstance should be considerately chosen. The cleanest shirt with the most buttons still attached for men and longer skirts, to the knee if possible, for women. Floral patterns should be avoided, and uniforms of any sort are frowned upon.
Once at the actual funeral, if you are unfamiliar with the customs of the family in mourning, follow the lead of others. This will usually take you to the ice chest wherein you will find ice-cold beverages. The bottle opener will be attached to a string on one of the ice chest’s handles. After you’ve had some refreshment, pay your respects to the person who has died by having a bit more. If you are worried about what to say or what not to say to those surviving, some examples of phrases better avoided are “She was a piece of ass” and “Live by the bottle, die by the bottle.”
Specific foods are prepared in mourning situations, often the same ones consumed in front of the television during car races, the interminable circles of the cars mimicking the circles of the Calle as well as the circles of life and death. After filling your plate with potato salad and beans it is appropriate to become completely smashed,
putting your arms around strangers and sobbing heartbreak over the deceased. Your very presence will thus add meaning to the occasion, whether you eventually pass out or not.
putting your arms around strangers and sobbing heartbreak over the deceased. Your very presence will thus add meaning to the occasion, whether you eventually pass out or not.
The question about whether children should be present at the memorial is best answered with other common questions asked at this time, such as: Where else would they go? and, Who would watch them? Most important, however, is the question: Where else could they acquire the necessary tools for coping with adulthood’s losses without this atmosphere to provide the appropriate conditions? Funerals are usually where Calle pubescents have their first drinks, as the adults around them realize that life is indeed too short and distribute the alcohol themselves.
Many Calle teens have their first sexual experiences during funerals and memorials. There is no doubt that usually subdued teenagers find these experiences an incredibly meaningful way to express their grief. It is important, however, to advise children, teens, and those who just act like them, to be on their best behavior. For example, one should never slip behind the Porta-John brought for the day’s function and kiss her neighbor, who wears his father’s leather jacket and reeks of cologne, should never kiss him right on the mouth and find that his lips are bigger than they look, that his tongue is cold, and that, even though his dad’s jacket almost fits him now and despite all the practice he’s had in the field behind their two houses, much of which she’s witnessed, he doesn’t kiss like a man at all.
If a mourner did suffer this slip in decorum, she would surely say something after the kiss and not run around to the front of the Porta-John and turn the handle, would never hide inside, climbing on the lid of the toilet to watch through the vent as the boy, and boy he is, returns to his seat and high-fives his friend. The high-fives betray his belief that he’s caused feelings to flower in her, which will alleviate the pain of this new crushing reality, instead of
the ones he’s actually made bloom, cheap and tough as funeral carnations: nausea and instant regret.
the ones he’s actually made bloom, cheap and tough as funeral carnations: nausea and instant regret.
For further details on how to behave under these sorrowful circumstances, refer to more comprehensive works, such as those by Emily Post or the Manners section of the
Girl Scout Handbook
.
Girl Scout Handbook
.
P
igeon left a casserole on the porch. It’s left over from the Lions Club picnic held yesterday in Mama’s honor. They pushed the tables together behind the Truck Stop, stacked them high with pies and wieners and potato salad, and threw the back door open wide so the jukebox could save us from talking. I managed to stay even after I kissed Marc behind the Porta-John, but the thought of food only reminded me of his disgusting tongue, so when “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” came on, I snuck in the back door and out the front and headed unseen for home. At least that’s what I thought, but Pigeon must have noticed and that’s why she brought the casserole. Tuna, with peas. I didn’t answer the door but I watched her through a corner of the curtain, knocking and calling and then setting down the dish, tightening the tinfoil around its edges.
igeon left a casserole on the porch. It’s left over from the Lions Club picnic held yesterday in Mama’s honor. They pushed the tables together behind the Truck Stop, stacked them high with pies and wieners and potato salad, and threw the back door open wide so the jukebox could save us from talking. I managed to stay even after I kissed Marc behind the Porta-John, but the thought of food only reminded me of his disgusting tongue, so when “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” came on, I snuck in the back door and out the front and headed unseen for home. At least that’s what I thought, but Pigeon must have noticed and that’s why she brought the casserole. Tuna, with peas. I didn’t answer the door but I watched her through a corner of the curtain, knocking and calling and then setting down the dish, tightening the tinfoil around its edges.
I don’t eat it even though I like to look at it, and there’s no other food in the Nobility that’s still good, though I can’t bring myself to throw away the sliced cheese turning to liquid in the wrapper, the milk turning solid in the carton. I’m pretty sure I’m not hungry, that I can’t get hungry, that I’ve forgotten how, and I’m happy like that until a melancholy music makes me remember. The Four Humors Ice-Cream Truck is coming slowly down the Calle. Not playing its usual ragtime ditty, the echo of a sweet sugar high, but instead, the saddest song that ever made its never-ending way through scratchy speakers and across front yards. The most forlorn
music ever to entice children from Big Wheels and jump ropes comes rippling down the Calle, and before I know I’ve decided, I’m reaching into the tip jar, stepping to the door, down the porch, sliding in between parked cars to stand on the Calle and be noticed by the Ice Cream Man.
music ever to entice children from Big Wheels and jump ropes comes rippling down the Calle, and before I know I’ve decided, I’m reaching into the tip jar, stepping to the door, down the porch, sliding in between parked cars to stand on the Calle and be noticed by the Ice Cream Man.
As he climbs from the driver’s seat to the window in the back, the truck lurches under his weight. I can smell his sweat before I see his face. His onion odor mixes with the sweet sugar of pixie sticks and licorice that hang down in a tangle of Christmas lights from the window’s top and sides. The twinkling lights rinse the Ice Cream Man’s face in alternating shades of red and pink and green.
He does not speak, but inclines his head to the side to indicate the fading menu and then looks down at the pavement so pointedly that I follow his eyes and find my order there at my feet, in the way the skid marks almost curl into letters, reminding me. “Two drumsticks,” I say. Mama’s favorite.
He takes the money with one hand, and with the other turns a switch on a lamp whose bare lightbulb reveals cardboard boxes and cases of soda stacked to the ceiling. He holds first one bill and then the other up to the bulb, examines each side carefully, then sets them on a six-pack of root beer and opens the freezer in front of him with its stickers of spiral-eyed, upside-down children enjoying giant popsicles in the shapes of rocket ships and atom bombs. They stand on their heads, frown at their ice creams. The dry sound of ice scraping against ice reaches me with the shuffling of frozen cardboard and rasp of the Ice Cream Man’s breathing. His voice comes around the freezer’s lid, more melancholy than the music that still fills the air. “Don’t go,” he says. “I have it right here.”
The spiral-eyed children fall away as the Ice Cream Man pushes two drumsticks through the canopy of candy and lights. His face shines red and green, is so slick I can’t tell the difference between sweat and tears.
I open up one drumstick as I walk up the Calle. Flowers, candles, mementos are accumulating on the shoulder, washing up from the road, from the river of people that have come by to pay their respects. I kneel down beside a bouquet of toilet paper roses decorated with drops of dew-like glue, the saints whose faces glow from Save-Rite-bought candles, San Gerardo Maiella, San Martín de Porres, San Simón, Niño Jesús, and Saint Jude. Other candles with no visible saints flicker or have died. Purple and white and yellow wax puddle the asphalt. There is a picture of “Johanna,” so the writing on the label says, preflight. It is a picture of a picture, fuzzy, and too small in the round frame. I finish my drumstick, and then I leave the unopened one to melt between a rosary and a wooden truck, a dirty length of yarn tied through its front bumper.
G
randma’s sent my sixteenth birthday gift from her Space 2 on Taylor Street in Portola, California, far from casinos and the desert wind. It arrives wrapped in a shoebox, furniture for a doll’s room made from crochet and scrap: shag rug, bureau with embroidered gold handle, bed with mattress, quilt and pillow, fireplace with twig and paper to burn, a bent paperclip as its grate, and a hope chest whose lid hinges back to reveal the links of stones, small as beans before they sprout, their chain broken here and here, together in a row as long as ten, apart alone as one. And with them, her instructions, to protect them, to join them, as if the people of a family could be held together with gold plate and hot glue. And just below that, one more tear from Grandma’s felt-tip on onionskin,
a few more make believes for one of your shelves
. The furniture is for the little girl I’m not anymore, the one Grandma and I are both saying good-bye to. The stones are for the adult that even the State is starting to recognize, the woman I’ve become, and what Grandma thinks that woman might do.
randma’s sent my sixteenth birthday gift from her Space 2 on Taylor Street in Portola, California, far from casinos and the desert wind. It arrives wrapped in a shoebox, furniture for a doll’s room made from crochet and scrap: shag rug, bureau with embroidered gold handle, bed with mattress, quilt and pillow, fireplace with twig and paper to burn, a bent paperclip as its grate, and a hope chest whose lid hinges back to reveal the links of stones, small as beans before they sprout, their chain broken here and here, together in a row as long as ten, apart alone as one. And with them, her instructions, to protect them, to join them, as if the people of a family could be held together with gold plate and hot glue. And just below that, one more tear from Grandma’s felt-tip on onionskin,
a few more make believes for one of your shelves
. The furniture is for the little girl I’m not anymore, the one Grandma and I are both saying good-bye to. The stones are for the adult that even the State is starting to recognize, the woman I’ve become, and what Grandma thinks that woman might do.
Grandma swears that one day a Hendrix will shine bright enough to light her world, or a corner of it, or at least her table where she sits and drinks her beer with ice and listens to talk radio deep into the night, her television gone, sold to buy drugs for one of her children, food for one of her grandchildren. Always stolen from, always replacing, always forgiving, always believing, that sums up Grandma Shirley Rose and this is her summing up of me. Even
before the Briefcase Men started showing up at Roscoe Elementary, before my name appeared in the
Gazette
, Grandma had these words to say, quietly, over coffee and oatmeal, over RC and bologna sandwiches, “Someone’s got to make it and it has to be you,” her sweet, sick Grandma smell mixing with the smoke of her cigarettes, the cold breeze from the Calle, and the sage-and-sandpaper sound of her voice, pushing me to do it, to take my chance, to make belief.
before the Briefcase Men started showing up at Roscoe Elementary, before my name appeared in the
Gazette
, Grandma had these words to say, quietly, over coffee and oatmeal, over RC and bologna sandwiches, “Someone’s got to make it and it has to be you,” her sweet, sick Grandma smell mixing with the smoke of her cigarettes, the cold breeze from the Calle, and the sage-and-sandpaper sound of her voice, pushing me to do it, to take my chance, to make belief.
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