Sister Golden Hair: A Novel (23 page)

I heard her crying in the bathroom. But really, why should I feel sorry for her? She was a 3 moving to a 2. I was fed up with her. I’d spent most of my childhood trying to cheer her up, and now I was exhausted. So exhausted I could not sleep. No matter which way I turned, my back was stiff and my eyes speedy and wide open.

I heard my mother go into the bedroom and yell at my dad, who was in bed, as usual, reading. My mother screamed at him and my father came rushing out of the bedroom, ran down the stairs, and walked over to Julie’s duplex. I ran out onto the front yard, barefoot in my long T-shirt. The grass was cold under my feet and the stars above were like specks of ice.

Julie swung open her door wearing a pale-pink nightgown and holding a glass of white wine.

“How dare you talk to my wife like that?”

“This is between the two of us, pastor.”

She spit out the last word, as if it were a curse.

“You’re a wreck,” my dad said, grabbing her glass and flinging the wine out on the sidewalk.

“You’re the wreck,” Julie said, furious now, coming at my dad and pointing her finger into his chest, “with your dream-therapy bullshit.”

My father’s face stilled; my mother must have told Julie, complained to her, about his spiritual floundering.

She put her hands on her hips.

“Clean up your own mess, pastor,” Julie said, “before you tell me to clean up mine.”

My dad swung back around toward our duplex.

“In the house, Jesse,” he said to me. “Now!”

My dad was downstairs smoking his pipe; I could smell the sweet tobacco. He didn’t want to talk. He’d told me to go to my room where I now lay staring up at the ugly overhead lampshade with the black dots of dead bugs. I felt like I was in a fairy tale that was running backward, like in school when the teacher wound the film strips the wrong way. The church with the eternal light on the dark altar, the expanse of grass between the church and rectory, my room with the diamond-pane window, and the deep organ chords moving into my room and around my bed, that place and time was a sort of heaven—the end, not the beginning, of the fairy tale. Ever since we’d been thrown out, our life held no purpose; it was like riding in a driverless bus, careening ever closer to the guardrail. I’d had enough. I was getting off.

I loaded a pair of corduroys, my smiley face T-shirt, a sweater, several pairs of underwear, and the
Big Book of Burial Rites
all in my black patent-leather suitcase.

This wasn’t the first time I’d run off.

At six, when I’d heard we had to leave our first rectory, I’d packed up my dolls in this same suitcase and run to an old barn on the church property. At eight, after hearing we had to move again, I’d run to my friend’s house. Even though her family was not home, I spent six hours waiting in their backyard. In Philadelphia, when my dad first told us we were moving to Virginia, I’d set out with my school backpack full of apples to the graveyard at the end of our block. I planned to wait until my parents and brother moved, and then I would sneak back into the house and sleep on the wicker furniture on the side porch.

The other times I didn’t have a plan, but this time I intended to hitchhike to New York City. If I couldn’t find any other job, I figured I could always work as a prostitute. Maybe I wasn’t beautiful, but I was young, and I knew that, as sick as it was, creepy guys liked young girls to tickle them with feathers.

I dropped my suitcase out the window. Unfortunately the lock gave and my clothes scattered over the grass. I crept down the stairs. Phillip stood in the kitchen in his pajamas staring into the fridge. In the dark, the radiating light made him look divine.

“Where are you going?” he said, letting the door suck shut; the light extinguished and he was my brother again.

“For a walk,” I said. I wanted to be candid with him, but it was too risky. Nothing would sabotage my freedom.

“Now?”

“I need some air.”

“Can I come?”

“You go back to bed.”

“What about the guy who eats little kids’ fingers?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Remember you promised if you ever ran away you’d take me with you.”

“I’m just going out for a walk.”

He headed up the stairs with his handful of Oreos. I felt bad about lying to him now, but I’d come back and break him out too once I got settled someplace.

Outside it was chilly, the grass crosshatched with frost. Light moved at a slower pace at night, outlined objects in silver-lavender. I ran around the side of the house and gathered my clothes back into my suitcase. A dog slept on an old ski jacket behind 2A, and Mr. Ananais’s cat, Hector, looked up at me briefly, then put his head back on his paws on the window ledge.

I was trying to figure out what my new Social Security number should be; I knew I had to keep the first three digits the same, but I intended to change the rest and my name too. I was thinking of Veronica or Agnes. To be honest, I didn’t want a name but a number, like 99 on
Get Smart
. I liked the sound of 72 and also 68. When I got to my crash pad in New York I would dye my blonde hair jet-black, like Cher’s.

I wanted to run out of Bent Tree, but I knew that would look even more suspicious than the already suspicious fact that I was walking around at 2:00
AM
. So I walked fast down the incline toward the highway saying good-bye. Good-bye, mountain with your dark pine trees and white-ridged mushrooms growing on dead trees in a way that was both cool and creepy. Good-bye, luna moth with the Mardi Gras–mask wings. Good-bye, Sandy’s underwear drawer with the zebra-skin panties and blood-red lace bra. Good-bye, Snowball. Good-bye, Dwayne. Good-bye, Dwayne’s chewing tobacco. Good-bye, fat lady in 15A who exercised in front of the TV on a bath towel. Good-bye, hoarding guy in 5B with newspapers piled up to the second-floor windows.

Hello, adventure!

I would have to walk along 419 for a while before I got to the 81 ramp. I’d decided it was too risky to catch a ride from anybody on that strip. How terrible would it be if my principal picked me up? Or Dwayne’s dad on his way back from the bar? Not that many cars passed anyway.

When I finally heard an engine, I ran and hid behind the bushes on the little woodchip island in front of the Texaco gas station. I worried it was my dad driving around looking for me or, worse, the police. I decided to get off 419 and walk lot to lot.

First I crossed the lot in front of the Allstate Insurance building. It was like running up onto an empty stage. The asphalt glittered under the lights. Then a few yards of bare trees and on to another lot in front of the courthouse, then the lot in front of the post office. All the buildings, private or municipal, looked pretty much the same: two-story, nondescript structures in brick and glass. In the black glass I looked like a girl made of smoke. I would slip into the night and become one with everything, like my dad was always talking about. I’d be the same as a fern frond or a Styrofoam cup on the side of the highway.

I moved through another patch of woods into the lot of the Hardee’s; then the Long John Silver’s; then the McDonald’s, almost to the highway ramp. The shining yellow-and-red building looked like a piece broken off from the sun. When I was five, a McDonald’s had opened down the street from our rectory, and for a long time I thought it was the best place God had created, with the sweet fries and the strawberry milkshakes. I’d included it in my prayers, after my immediate family and before my grandparents.

When I was almost across the lot I heard a car moving behind me and ran for a bush in another woodchip island floating between the highway and the lot. The car slowed and turned. I was afraid it was my dad, his overcoat pulled over his pajamas. But as the car moved past, and I saw the teenagers in the front seat, I remembered that behind the McDonald’s Dumpster
was a path that led to a spot where kids laid down blankets and had sex. I clenched my fists and stuck my fingernails into the palms of my hands. The slight prick of pain reminded me that I was substantial, that I wasn’t blowing away into the dark.

Finally I walked up the ramp.

Part of me wished my dad would come get me, but he was too preoccupied with whether the snake in his dream meant renewal because it shed its skin, or whether it meant he needed to face the evil side of his personality. Maybe I could run to Jill, we could paint our toenails, regroup, and then set off together. But though I wanted to see her, I had no idea where to find my friend. My dad had told me not to worry, that the universe would care for Jill, but I’d found, so far anyway, that the universe was not so reliable.
We are as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean
, my dad read out to me. But I wanted to love Jill and have her love me back. I wanted people to love me and I wanted to love them back. I didn’t want to give Jill over to the universe. I wanted to love her myself.

I looked down the highway, hoping that before too long a car filled with flower-power hippies would pick me up. They’d be long-haired, smiley, wearing floppy hats and love beads. They’d have names from nature, like Snapdragon, Leaf, Bear. They’d drop me off in New York City before heading upstate to their goat farm. I’d seen a lot of hippies on television but only a
handful in Roanoke. When you did see them, because they were so rare, they looked out of place, as if you were hallucinating. Once I’d seen two girls playing tennis topless, hitting back and forth and laughing, their long hair swinging as they lunged for the ball.

But no hippies came. Only a few trucks and a white Cadillac. Out here, kudzu covered the trees and the air was cold. Nobody stopped. I sat on the guardrail and ate a few of my Fig Newtons, looking up at the tent caterpillar’s old nests, spread gauzy white all over the trees. I thought of my family sleeping in their beds in the dark duplex. Phillip slept in the small room off my parents’, a walk-in closet really, with just enough space for his twin bed. He slept sprawled out in his toolbox pajamas like a drunken sailor. My parents had spooned in the old days, my dad wrapped around my mom, but now they each stuck to opposite sides of the bed. My dad slept on his back, his head propped up with pillows in a way that seemed baronial. My mom slept on her side, her arms around a pillow, her face taut; even in sleep she was a 5 moving toward a 4. I thought of Kira and Snowball, of Julie in her silk sleeping mask and how Sandy slept with Noxema on her face. I even thought of my old unicorn girl, up above Bent Tree, curled on a soft patch of moss.

I wondered where I’d next lay my head. I had thought I could get at least to DC sometime after daybreak, but I’d obviously miscalculated. Maybe I should get off the highway and find a spot in the woods to sleep. I thought
of the variety of crash pads available to a brave wayfarer like myself: the teepee, the geodesic dome, the shack constructed entirely of old car parts.