The Way We Bared Our Souls (12 page)

I DIDN’T LIKE THE WAY
I’d left things with Ellen.

I texted her to see if she’d gone home after our meeting at the Psalms airfield.
no
, she eventually wrote back.
the tracks
.
She didn’t exactly invite me to join her, but within ten minutes I was downtown at our old hangout next to the Santa Fe Railroad.

Ellen was sitting on the boulder where we’d all scratched our names freshman year. Alex. Juanita. Luis. Brett. Even Kit’s name was there, though I couldn’t remember ever seeing him at the tracks. Ellen’s name was carved the deepest, as if she thought she might disappear without that hold on the rock.

She sat with her legs dangling over our inscriptions, spinning an unlit cigarette between her fingers. Her eyes were still red and puffy. Exhausted. I sat down next to her. No trains in either direction.

“Remember how we used to come here?” she said, without meeting my searching gaze.

“Yeah.” I scanned the bright, industrial horizon beyond the tracks for signs of life. Two years ago Ellen used to round up me and various other Agua characters to chill in this same spot at night if there wasn’t a party or something going on. It was just a place to be, though you’d think we could’ve come up with a better location, at least somewhere that served late-night tacos.

“Though frankly, Ellen,” I said, no longer afraid of her unpredictable wrath, “I never understood why this was your favorite spot. When I wasn’t scared that we’d get caught drinking here, I worried that someone would have one too many beers and stumble onto the tracks when a train was passing.”

“Yeah, well, I should be so lucky.”

“Please don’t say things like that.”

“Okay, fine,” she said defiantly. “You want to know why I was always dragging you guys out here? Because I liked to fantasize about jumping one of those trains and getting the hell out of town. Out of the Land of Entrapment. It didn’t even matter where. I just needed to escape. And then, sometime last year, I figured out a much easier way to go about doing that.”

Ellen and I used to sit alone together at those impromptu train track parties and daydream about leaving Santa Fe. Our town was so quiet, so hippie-dippy, so far from
everything
. I wanted to smell the ocean. Ellen wanted to be anonymous. But the difference was that I was content to wait until graduation to make my move, while Ellen’s desire to flee was much more urgent. Unstoppable. A freight train.

“Escape from what?” I said gently.

“This. My life.”

“Come on, Ellen. Is it really that bad?”

“Jesus, Lo. You’re so naïve sometimes. You don’t know what it feels like to see your father—the guy who unceremoniously abandoned you, FYI—stumbling drunk down the middle of the street on a weekday afternoon. And you have to pretend you don’t recognize him because you’re with your friends and you’re mortified. And you don’t know what it’s like to have a mother who constantly buys you things because she thinks it’s an adequate substitute for spending time with you, loving you. Hell, even knowing what your favorite color is.”

“Pumpkin,” I said automatically, remembering that Ellen had told me that once in middle school art class. For a second she smiled. Then her face fell again like a stone.

“Lo, you don’t know what it’s like to just . . . want to erase yourself. Completely.”

That shut me up. Had I really been that ignorant of Ellen’s problems? I just thought she’d been rebelling. Fairly normal teenage stuff. I hadn’t known that she was hiding so much.

Her gaze was still fixed on me. Then, as if I were the one who needed comforting, she reached out and put her hand tenderly on my back.

“Listen, Lo. I’m not blaming you for having nice parents and ridiculous backyard chickens and a charmed life in general. I’m really not. The more well-adjusted people in the world, the better, right? And I know you’ve suffered your own hardships lately. I’m just saying that you can’t understand. And now
this
. Your—no offense—
asshole
of a disease is forcing me to be . . . present in my body in a way I haven’t been in over a year. It’s like, I knew how to deal with my emotional pain. That was easy. Vodka, pills, cigarettes, weed . . . the other thing. . . .”

“Meth.”

“It was just a few times. I’m not a total idiot.”

“I know you’re not. You’re really effing smart.” She turned her head away. “You
are
, Ellen. Remember in eighth grade when you got into a debate about global warming with Mr. Henry? You totally schooled him. I think he went straight home after teaching biology and bought an electric car. I thought you were the coolest girl I’d ever met.”

“Anyway,” she said, “yesterday I could self-medicate all my feelings, but now that isn’t an option. And not only that but I’m dealing with all this physical pain too. It’s like now both my mind
and
my body are revolting against me.”

“I’m so sorry, Ellen,” I said. And I meant it. “I would take it back from you if I could.” Did I mean that?

She scoffed and removed her hand from my back. “Yeah, right. Are you sure? Or are you just fooling yourself?”

“Why are you so angry with me? You think I’ve never felt pain? Grief? I was just trying to
help
us. Heal us. I had no idea that we’d all be swapping like this. I was just as misled by Jay as you were!”

Ellen sighed and threw her unlit cigarette onto the tracks. I wondered if she could give me back my disease through some kind of vengeful osmosis. After all, weirder things have happened, especially in New Mexico.

“I know,” she said. “What happened is
all
of our faults. We were all playing with fire. Imagine thinking that our problems would just disappear because some dude spit on our backs and then ran a glorified group therapy session.”

An approaching train’s whistle blew in the distance.

“Ellen,” I said, “I know that part of you still wants to get on a train and leave, and I know that you’re pissed off. Mostly at yourself.” She flinched. “Wait, listen. Maybe this week is an opportunity to face whatever it is inside you that leads you to do all this super-unhealthy stuff. It might feel like a dark place to go, but can you try just looking at it openly instead of fighting it? Maybe you’ll be surprised. You’re tough as nails—everybody knows that—but it’s okay to be sad sometimes. It’s okay to hurt. I’ll help you. I’m here for you. And plus, a lot of people would be really heartbroken if you disappeared. You keep us on our toes. You’re like . . . thunder and lightning and the rainbow all wrapped into one.” Ellen dismissed my praise with a skeptical laugh.

“I’ll try,” she said eventually. “It’s just that I feel so . . . defeated most of the time. Before I even begin. And it makes me lash out at everyone and push them away.”

“I know,” I said. “And it’s okay. But let’s try to do something about it.”

“Thanks, Lo. To tell you the truth, I’m sort of looking forward to spending time with you this week. I’ve been . . . lonely.”

I leaned my head against her shoulder. “No more.”

Our cell phones buzzed simultaneously with a group text from Kit, telling us that we were
all going to dress up for zozobra.
way
up. black tie,
he wrote.
think prom. no arguments. see you in a few hours. xokit.

“Can you believe him?” Ellen laughed. “He’s, like, loony tunes all of a sudden. I’m kind of digging it.”

She shifted her leg to reveal the remainder of Kit’s engraving on the rock:

“I am too,” I said. “I haven’t seen this side of him for a long time. But of course it’s been there all along, just . . . buried.”

“It gives me hope,” Ellen said.

“Me too.”

Just as the whistle had promised, a train rumbled past and drowned out our voices. I put my arm around Ellen. For a few minutes we just sat in silence, on the rock inscribed with our names and our memories, watching the metal train cars pass by, headed to parts unknown.

EVERY YEAR, AS PART OF
the Zozobra tradition, we stuff the giant wooden man with our burdens before we burn him. In the weeks leading up to the festival you’re supposed to write down your problems on little slips of paper and submit them to the festival organizers. Then, on the big night, your problems go up in smoke. The idea is that the fire eats up all your gloom. You burn your burdens in effigy and keep your fingers crossed that they disappear in real life too.

I know the ceremony is purely symbolic—mostly just a way of attracting tourists to Santa Fe—but it’s also fun, and I actually get excited about it every year. I try not to think that gloom must have been built into the fabric of our city if every year there’s an event organized to take it away.

In loyal adherence to Kit’s instructions, I decided to wear my prom dress from last year, when a senior named Cale Hannigan had invited me to be his date. I’d felt pretty then, even though I was nervous to attend prom with someone older (and in the closet, it turned out). But tonight I felt beautiful.

My floor-length gown was asymmetrical, with one strap over my right shoulder. It was grayish-purple, which I was told brought out the green in my eyes. It hugged my figure all the way down to my knees, and then flared out like a mermaid’s tail. It was sort of hard to drive a dirty station wagon in such a fancy number, but I made do.

I hadn’t seen Kaya since she’d left the airfield in a hurry that morning. I was still feeling uneasy about her episode, so I told her that I’d pick her up at her house and we’d drive to Zozobra together.

I was running late due to lingering at the tracks with Ellen, but Kaya wasn’t out front when I pulled up. Once again, Mrs. Johnson answered when I knocked on the door, stumbling slightly in my silver heels. Good thing I hadn’t honked the horn.

“I still don’t understand why you kids are dressing up for Zozobra,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Last I checked it was a casual event, not a debutante ball.”

“We just thought it would be fun,” I said. “Something different. And plus, we’re celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

“Well . . . today sort of marks a new start.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just . . .” I stammered, trying to dig myself out of this hole.

“Hi, Lo,” a barely audible voice said above me. Hallelujah, I was saved. Kaya descended the stairs gingerly, arms folded across her chest. Her strapless empire-waist black gown grazed the rug, even though she was wearing heels.

“Wow, Kaya,” I said. “I feel like I’m watching one of those slow-motion scenes from a romcom. You look amazing. That
dress
is amazing.”

“It’s my mom’s,” she said, crossing the foyer. Mrs. Johnson began fussing with Kaya’s earrings.

“Are you sure you want to wear the silver ones?” she said. “You have comfy plastic ones that would look just as good.”

“These are fine, Mom,” Kaya said. “I promise I’ll be careful. The day I manage to injure myself with an earring is the same day I get my female license revoked.”

“All right, then. You’ll be home by nine?” Mrs. Johnson said.

“Is . . . ten okay?” Kaya’s mother frowned. “Mom, you promised you’d give me some breathing room.”

“I know I did, baby. It’s just hard. Okay, ten. Or earlier. And stay away from the fire.
Far
away. The head of the Kiwanis Club is a notorious drunk. I wouldn’t trust him with matches, let alone lighter fluid and fifty feet of ultra-flammable tinder.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. The fire will look like candlelight from where we’re sitting. Love you.”

“I love you too, baby. Be careful.”

I was happy to see Kaya in such a normal state after what had happened at the balloon field, but the minute we got in my car, she became sullen and quiet. She stared vacantly out the window as I unsuccessfully tried to make her laugh by telling her about the gymnastic maneuvers I’d had to make in order to fasten the zipper of my gown without any help—or without spraining any ankles (at least as far as I knew). But I wasn’t breaking through. I decided to take a more direct approach.

“So. How’s it going?” I said. “Do you feel any better since this morning?”

“I don’t know if ‘better’ is the word. I feel different. I feel heavier.” She was slow getting her words out, as if they too were heavy.

“How do you mean?” I said. She was quiet for a moment.

“When you first proposed this experiment,” she said finally, “I sort of thought it was another one of your whims, like when we were kids and you started the séance club.”

Ah yes, the Santa Fe Séance Club. I’d almost forgotten. The SFSC met two times total and hadn’t managed to recruit any members besides a younger neighbor girl who used to worship me and Kaya. But when Mrs. Johnson got wind of it she quickly pronounced our membership activities “satanic,” and our association fizzled out.

“Ha,” I said. “I thought
you
launched the Séance Club.”

“Okay,” Kaya said, “maybe we were mutually inspired. Remember how we tried to contact Judy Garland at our inaugural meeting? ‘Come back, Dorothy!’ ”

“Because, you know, if Judy Garland came back from the dead we’d clearly be the first people she’d want to talk to.”

“Right,” Kaya said. She bit her top lip. And then her bottom lip. And then her tongue. “Anyway. I didn’t really expect this ritual thing to
work
. I kind of just wanted to . . . well, you know. I don’t get out much. Lo, it’s so weird to be vulnerable physically. It’s what I said I wanted, but I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. This afternoon I shaved my legs for the first time. Mom had never let me have a razor before, but I drove to the pharmacy so I could buy one on the way back from the airfield.”

“I thought you might be up to something,” I said.

“And of course I cut myself shaving. Like, immediately. First pass of the razor. Like my shinbones were magnets. But when I felt the pain—at least what I can only assume was pain—I started crying and then I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t sure if I was crying from happiness or sadness or what. It was the first time the blood in my body had ever mingled with . . . a feeling. You know? Something that wasn’t just . . . numbness.” She pulled up the black chiffon of her dress and pointed at her shin. “Look, ninja Band-Aids.”

“Cool,” I said, at a loss for words. For some reason I couldn’t reconcile Kaya’s half dozen ninja Band-Aids with her report of uncontrollable crying.

“I guess I don’t really have a context for physical pain,” Kaya said. “Like, I’ve seen movies and stuff where people get shot in the stomach and double over, but I couldn’t begin to fathom their actual suffering until now.”

“Just like I could never imagine what you were experiencing by
not
feeling pain.”

“Yeah. I guess I’d never really thought about it the way everyone else seems to. I didn’t think I had something that anyone else could ever
want
. Like when I got all those letters after that article came out. People saying things like how dare I whine about my incredible gift. Guys saying they wanted to father my ‘bionic’ children. I was just . . . mystified. And now it’s so strange to see you enjoying my condition.”

“What?” I felt like I’d been caught shoplifting or something. “That’s not true. . . .”

“Come on, Lo. You’ve always had a terrible poker face. You obviously like the results of the trade. I’m not mad at you. I haven’t seen you look so happy in a long time. Not since the summer, anyway. I guess before your aunt got sick.”

My aunt. I hadn’t thought of Karine all day. Noticing this made me feel guilty, but also . . . lightened. “Yeah,” I conceded. “I guess you’re right.”

“But Lo, I don’t think you totally understand what you’ve gotten yourself into. I don’t think you understand that what you’ve got right now is dangerous. I know my mom can be a pain in the ass, but she’s probably right to overthink everything I do.”

Suddenly, I desperately wanted to change the subject. “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Hey, what exactly happened this morning? When you said you had a vision? You were really . . . out of it for a few minutes. Kit said you might’ve been having . . . flashbacks or something?”

“I guess that’s what you’d call them,” Kaya said. “I saw things that happened a long time ago. I can feel pain now, but so far it’s always . . . associated with these images of my people. Even the shaving cuts. In the shower I closed my eyes and saw a young Pueblo girl running bare-legged through thick and spiny underbrush . . . like she was trying to get away from something.” She tugged hard at her earring. “I dunno. I guess you wouldn’t understand.”

“Because I’m not Native American?”

“Because you have a bright life ahead of you. And your ancestors haven’t been decimated. So you can’t comprehend what it’s like to know in your bones and to see in your dreams how your whole family’s future was stolen, long ago.”

I thought of the entire Indian villages of women and children that were massacred here, of Apache warriors fighting losing battles against superior firepower on the frontier, and about how I only knew about these things secondhand from American history class.

“I can at least try,” I said. “Like Kit tries.” Kaya turned away to gaze out the window again.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Okay,” I said, but I was bummed that she wasn’t letting me in.

“Jeez, I never would have guessed how much high heels hurt.” Now it was Kaya changing the subject. “Is it normal for straps to dig into your skin like this?” She held up her foot so I could see the blisters forming behind her ankle.

“Unfortunately, yes,” I said. “Comes with the territory. Beauty is pain, my dear.”

• • •

We arrived at Fort Marcy Park just as the pre-Zozobra entertainment was reaching a crescendo. The place was packed. Local artists hoisted papier-mâché dragons aloft, and children carried glowing white balloons that from a distance looked like UFOs. The night air swam with the smells of fresh tacos, fry bread, and tamales. Indian women sold anise-flavored bizcochito cookies in little paper funnels. Families of all shades and sizes spread out on red-and-black Navajo blankets, while hippies drummed in circles at the margins of the crowd—either under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms or the magic in the air. Then there were the Kiwanis Club sponsorship tables to remind us that nothing is ever
that
cool, even when you’re setting fire to things.

Kaya and I walked the periphery of the park to Kit’s meeting place. Kaya’s heels started sinking into the irrigated park grounds, so I knelt down and undid her sandal straps.

“Hey, you should undo yours too,” she said. “You might not realize how much they’re biting into you.” Sure enough, my skin was crisscrossed with red welts, so we walked barefoot through the grass as the sky darkened around us.

“Ah,” she said. “That’s way better.” I took her word for it.

A troupe of Hopi dancers made a clearing in the crowd. I recognized a girl from school, Mary Falling Leaf, among them, but she looked completely different in this setting. She wore a white ceremonial dress covered in tiny bells, and as she danced solemnly to a drum accompaniment, she jingled in perfect tandem with the rest of her troupe. I tried to catch her eye, but couldn’t. She was carried away by the music. I knew that feeling.

Our boys were easy to spot in their black suits. I’d never seen Thomas wear anything other than a T-shirt and Levi’s, but tonight he looked like an African dignitary, maybe even a prince. Kit didn’t look half bad either. He’d even smoothed back his Mohawk with hair gel. He was busy arranging grapes, cheddar cheese, and Oreo cookies on a gray picnic blanket when Kaya and I strolled up with our metallic heels in our hands.

“No Ellen?” Kit said, looking disappointed.

“She’s driving herself,” I said. “But what are we? Shredded taco meat? How about a ‘You look beautiful, girls’?”

“Girls,” Kit said, dropping to his knees and seizing our hands in high dramatic fashion, “you look ravishing tonight.”

“That’s more like it,” I said. Kit kissed our hands and stood. Thomas rolled his eyes and glanced nervously toward the Zozobra proceedings, skipping over me entirely. Maybe my dress didn’t highlight my eyes after all.

“So why did you want everyone to dress up anyway?” Kaya said, settling down on the blanket and smoothing her dress around her.

“Lucita and I did this same thing last year,” Kit said cheerfully. “I just wanted to relive the memory.”

“Oh,” Kaya said. She fiddled with her earring. Before that morning, I’d never heard Kit talk about Lucita without despair in his voice, if at all. Now it seemed he wanted to talk about her ardently, and at every opportunity.

“Lucita liked to turn little, everyday occasions into events,” he said. “Sacred ceremonies. Speaking of which, would you ladies consider joining me and Mr. Kamara for the second annual Zozobra Cookie Gala, commencing now?”

“Our pleasure,” I said and sat beside Kaya on the blanket.

The festival atmosphere was infectious. Even Kaya and Thomas appeared less sulky the more cookies we ate. Still kind of sulky, though. I didn’t know why I always felt as though I had to start from square one with Thomas every time we saw each other, even if we were just passing in the hallway and I tried to smile at him. I never knew from minute to minute what kind of signal he was going to emit in my direction—real warmth or just smoke. But I was determined to have fun. Determined not to think of Ellen’s pain. Determined not to think of Lucita’s death, or of my aunt. . . .

“Save any cookies for me?” Ellen said, sneaking up behind us. I was relieved that she’d made it to the festival and quickly tugged her down to blanket level. She wore high-top Converses with her black minidress and easily made herself comfortable.

“Any sign of Jay?” she said.

“No,” I said. “Just the usual Fiestas crowd. Sorry.” But the truth was, I’d forgotten to look for him.

Kit tried to tackle Ellen playfully, but she kicked him off.

“Geez, Kit,” she said, clearly irked or in pain, and I felt guilty once again. “Try to stay in your own body,
por favor
.”

A group of drunken college-age kids walked by our blanket. One of the girls wore a bikini top and carried a hula-hoop. When she accidentally tripped over the hoop, she cursed and then kept walking, leaving it on the ground. I leapt to my bare feet and grabbed it.