Found:
February, 1982
Broken eggs and spilt milk this morning at the Reservation. I’m four, my hair is long and flowing. I’m officially retired from the pageant circuit and we’re going to have pancakes to celebrate. ‘Mama, hurry! I’m hungry!’ I stamp my foot.
Mama is tired. She stands in front of the refrigerator for a moment, puzzled. She looks at me, looks down, and doubles over, dropping the eggs and milk. They land with a weird plopping sound but when I look down, everything is kind of a red orange, watery. She screams for my dad, runs to the bathroom, still doubled over. Daddy runs from the other end of the hall, blocks me from the bathroom. ‘Jim! The baby…I…’ Her face is a broken puzzle.
‘Goddamnit, Rachel! Go in the other room!’ There is a plopping sound again, and Mama howls, tries to pull something out of the toilet. I run back to the kitchen and hide. I stamped my foot and the spider plant tips over. The soil is black and gritty. I can hear water flushing over my mother’s keening in the next room. The tears don’t stop what seems like a year and she spends hours upon hours running baths, sobbing.
Texas Hill Country
October, 2014
The dirt here is an orangey red. It makes me think of that Gillian Welch song about red clay
I am out in Austin for a wedding in Texas Hill Country. My parents and I are travelling in tandem; they’ve delivered a fresh batch of newly minted RVs to a dealer outside of Denton, maybe? I don’t really listen to the details. I’ve flown in – a swift searching for another something. The wedding is for a childhood friend, a tall curvaceous blonde who was 1st in her class.
The wedding takes place under live oaks. Texas has register of live oaks…did you know that? They call it the Historic and Heritage Trees Archives. I love that someone has taken the time to think about these trees, to make sure they are acknowledged and looked after; it almost makes me check my misanthropy at the door.
The Bride’s father looks like hell on ice. He fell off a riding barstool a few years ago and broke a few ribs. That’s when they found the cancer. He is – quite literally – a dead man walking, wraithe like, his expensive suit a navy blue shroud. I look at these two men – handsome, godlike to a 3 year old, now worn and weathered, courtesy of life and nicotine. Still handsome; silver foxes, I hear one of the wedding party whisper.
‘Girl, look at you!’ He pulls me close, kisses my forehead. ‘I was looking at you, thinking about that time you came over to swim. I said to your mama, ‘’Does that little girl even know how to swim?’’ And she just looked at me confused. ‘I don’t know…she had lessons when she was a baby…’ And you just jumped in like you didn’t even know fear. Sank right to the bottom.’ He takes swig of his bourbon, his eyes already red from crying and booze. ‘’I think your mama was in shock.’’ His eyes flick over to my mother, to Claudia. ‘You just stood there, your mouth open like a fish, Peggy. You ‘member that? Claudia jumped on in, clothes, hair, and all.’ He laughs, then coughs. I look bewildered at my mother, at Claudia, at my date. My mom is frozen, losing colour fast. I don’t even think Daryl notices, as he and my dad trip off outside to smoke.
‘I didn’t know what to…I couldn’t move.’ Claudia touches her hand. ‘I put you in swimming lessons two days later.’ She chokes up, pushes her chair. ‘I did so many things wrong. I just couldn’t move.’
‘Mama…it’s okay, honestly…’ But she is already gone. Claudia looks at her retreating back, then at me. ‘Rachel…we do the best we can.’
‘Miss Claudia…I didn’t say anything. I’m not even thinking anything…kids move so fast. I know that.’
She nods, eyes brimming. ‘I’m gonna go check on your mama.’ My friend Becca leans across the table, squeezes my hand. I look at her, still confused. ‘What the fuck just happened?’
Becca shrugs. ‘Weddings, my dear. Weddings.’
Later that night, I am undressing. I stop and stare at my body in the mirror. My own daughter is 3 now, and I know how fast they move, human shapeshifters. I think about water, about what it can take away, about what it can give back. I think about a scar, faded, 24 stitches, and the two scars that now lay over it, overlapping: three episiotomies. The first, when I was four, jumping into another pool. Mid-air, I turned, I guess, put my foot back on the pool edge…I remember the feel of the sun-soaked concrete lip, the scent of honeysuckled humidity, then…nothing.
I run my finger over the second scar, lumpy and think about that 3-day labour, the water that was supposed come gushing out whilst that sweet blue baby swam laps. When it finally did come gushing out, it came out with such force, it brought blood and my blood pressure with it. I remember the debate on that table, about whether they would need a transfusion, about whether I was going to make it and I remember that first wave of blackness before that lovely anaesthesiologist
– from the Sudentenland, no less, his accent so familiar—hits me with that injection that rendered my limbs useless for 12 hours. It took days for my legs to not feel like leaden sandbags that I dragged down the hall to the NICU. I run my finger over the third scar and shiver. I then pull my nightgown over my head, turn out the bathroom light. I fall asleep thinking about bayou country, about the almost overwhelming urge I used to have to rev the engine and let my dream car sail off of I-10 into the brackish water, about how cars and trucks would hurl past me. About how the storms can come in so fast, so fast you don’t have time to think. About how I try to drive Highway 90 whenever I am in the ‘Sip, because the dead are happier when they can see open water. When I think about how I’ll die, I am terrified and hopeful that I’ll drown.
***
Dayton, Ohio
June, 1989
Every summer for the last 4 years we come back here, spend hours at the apartment complex’s pool. This summer, I am back on my own. My third solo flight, hours stretched out ahead of me. I sat next to a gorgeous elderly woman who chain smoked Benson and Hedges gold the entire flight. When we deplane, she slips her lighter into my hand. ‘So you have light even in the dark.’
She reminds of an older version of my grandmother Lo, who is waiting at the gate. I stare at the window, look down and the endless expanse of ocean. A couple of summers ago, we were on a flight back to the US and our plane caught on fire. They kept talking about a point of no return and how we weren’t there yet. I think about that...How do you know when you’re at the point of no return? I’m only 12, but that sounds like horseshit to me. My dad dropped me off at the airport on a Monday afternoon. My brother had just come out of a coma and his tiny body was strapped up like a goat in the meat markets in Athens. ‘He’ll be fine,’ my dad says, lighting a Kool. ‘I promise, honey. He’s going to be fine. You just get on the plane and be good. Be good.’ I nod, shift under the weight of my backpack.
A week later, I am playing Shark Attack! With my cousins. My eldest cousin grabs me from behind and pulls me under water. I fight him off viciously, terrified. I elbow and kick, my lungs burning. In that moment, I can feel chlorine every-where but the world is black with red at the edges. I’ve always thought water would be my death.
Rio de Janiero, Brazil
April, 2019
The waves come in hard and fast at Copacabana Beach. The waves come in fast on Copacobana Beach. We are standing (I am only ankle deep, but bent over, helping Sandman). Our arms are linked, the three of us and a wave crashes into us and sends us all into a watery somersault. For a moment there is just blind panic. I can feel both children’s hands. But I cannot see them and I am not sure I know which way is up. My heart is hammering and there is that black curtain again, just about to fall.
Another wave passes over me and I’m dragged down to the sand and pulled far enough that I have a sand scrape down my arm. Thirty seconds later, we are all scampering, slightly terrified. Both chilren’s eyes are huge as we scampered back to hotel. 'Mama...Mama. I won't ever underestimate the ocean, I promise. I was having so much fun until it was scary. I mean, it was fun after it was scary but that water...I thought it would carry me off. Or you!' She pats my bottom. 'Even with your big butt.’
Texas is NOT Louisiana and Louisiana is NOT Mississippi. I made the latter mistake once, thinking my Deep South lineage could translate into South Louisiana. In retrospect, I always knew it was going to be a bridge too far, that I was trying to make amends for someone else’s choices. All we can do, I realise now, is make amends for our own. I still like to light up an occasional cigarette, take a drag, and watch the smoke move into the air.
I think sometimes about the most perfect summer I ever had: 1997, Oxford. Living out of each other’s houses, sun-soaked barbeques, holding hands, linking arms. Riding around in the back of pick-up truck on our way back from Sardis Lake…it seemed too perfect. If I close my eyes and tilt my head up to this Constable light, I can almost feel the wind running over me.
I think about tornado warnings and climbing up on the roof to watch the storms pass through, the things you do when you’re 20 and still believe that immortality is yours and that would be a good thing, to be immortal. I look for any excuse to crack a window, to turn on a fan, to generate that sound of wind shaking the trees, the corn, the barley.
A tornado came barrelling down the I-75 corridor once. I slept with my windows open, my robe thrown across the bed. It was baking hot that summer, too hot for jammies. The rain that came before the tornado had finally cooled the world to sleeping weather. I heard glass shattering around 2 am but enjoyed my sleep too much to investigate. The next morning, a small pane of glass lay shattered in the centre of the floor. A bit more wind, a bit more force…
Years later, I am driving in Tulsa, the sky illuminated raging greys. I strap my daughter into her car seat, pull back out into traffic as sirens begin to wail. ‘Let’s stop at that bookshop we like,’ as I pull into the parking lot of a large metal warehouse structure. ‘We have some time.’ Helena looks at me, her eyes huge, knowing. ‘Sure, mommy. Maybe they’ll have _Monsters at the End of This Book_.’
The tin roof shakes and the wind howls overhead. ‘Holy Sh*t! Check this out!’ Someone shouts from the front of the store. I race to the front in time to see a huge twisted mass of clouds and rain whip off to the left of the bookstore. Helena is wrapped around my legs. I pick her up, pull her close. I bury my nose in her hair and carry her into the café. We eat deliberately and slow.
‘Mama?’ She lays her hand flat on the table. I was really scared.’ She looks down at her plate. ‘I think I wet myself a little.’
I lean forward, put my hand over hers. ‘Oh, sweetie. I was really scared, too. And I KNOW I wet myself.’
Fire
It is fire that brought me to Tulsa. I’d never really given Tulsa much thought, really, outside of one of my favourite people being from there and reading about American genocides. ‘Flyover country,’ they call it. It’s funny how that term ‘flyover country’ applies to any place just to the right or the left of where a person is from. Ohio, I’m told by East/West-coasters is flyover country. Back when I drank a 5th of whiskey to forgive myself and wash away what I thought were sins, I’d have laid a guy out for that kind of trash talk. And here I am, shifting my point of reference yet again. What comes after Oklahoma? What will become ‘Flyover Country’ now? I’m staring out the window, the radio murmurs just enough to keep the things we aren’t saying at bay.
‘You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma…You’re the reason God made Oklahoma…’[1]
‘Mama! The sky is so blue...how is it so blue and wide?!' Helena’s voice is full of wonder from the back of the SUV.
I am sick with exhaustion and thinking the same thing. How could I not have known the the sky in Oklahoma would be so vast? How in the hell am I even in Oklahoma?
'We're almost there. Just up under the bridge,' Daddy says. 'I....I didn't see anything in the rearview mirror. But I knew...'
I nod, re-focuses. 'Has the state trooper phoned? I know you said they would be re- staging the accident. Do they know when?' I stare out of the window at the flat landscape. The accident footage and been posted within 40 minutes of the accident. The last 48 hours are blurry around the edges. I saw the vehicle on fire from 6,000 miles away. Sometimes I loathe Facebook.
'Nah, darlin'. Not yet.' He sighs deeply and ribs a hand across his face. 'Goddamn sunovabitch,' he mutters. I’m not sure who he means: the driver or himself. I’m not even sure it matters.
We turn off the highway, drive along plat roads. 'I couldn't find her purse anywhere. They didn't have it at the hospital. I keep thinking, she will be so pissed not knowing where her purse is.'
We exchange glances, laugh. 'It's better to be pissed off than to be pissed on,' we say in unison. The laughter drifts off into tense silence again.
Helena has dozed off, a small mercy. Gravel and chert bounce off the SUV’s tyres and fender.
'This must be it,' I say, eyeing the portly man walking towards them, part gnome part Charlie Daniels.
'Y'all must be the RV people.' He helps me down the step side. 'That sho' is sumthin'.' He scratches the side of his head. The wreck is around the side. You can drive back if you want to.' The daughter glances into the cab at her father. He is shaking almost imperceptibly.
'That's a great idea, sir. Daddy, you and Hellie drive round. I need to stretch out my legs and this baby.' I turn to the mechanic. The introductions are short. 'Can you walk me through what I am about to see?'
'Well, there ain't nothing left of the front. I mean, that went fast?'
'Any chance anything from her purse may be salvageable? Anything at all? My dad...he...'
'Sweetheart, there ain’t nothing going to be intact from the front. Hell, you're lucky they even got as much of her out as they did. She was on fire and all.' The air has turned acrid and metallic. There is something else under the smell of charred metal.
I blanch…burned skin.
I climb into the wreckage, grateful I thought to pack boots, breathing through a handkerchief. Daddy joins me, eyes awash. 'She’s still sleeping.' He looks at the broom handle she's using to push charred plastic and ash around. 'We're not going to find her purse, are we?'
'Oh, Daddy. It is not looking good.'
We find two unscathed quarters. On the drive back to Tulsa, I stop thinking of myself in the third person. My hands are covered in ash, there is a tadpole-sized fetus swimming laps in my uterus. This is really happening. And all I want in that moment is sleep and a turkey bacon BLT. Maybe a milkshake. Oooh, and a slice of pie. I look out the window so my dad and I won’t see each other cry.
Later I try to sleep but my brain is whirring. Back to Bad Windsheim, Germany and the spring I stopped going to school and started playing with fire. I would light Q-tips on the stove and run back into the living room to light candles. I stole the candles from the E-Center, a shopping centre at the back of our block of flats. I would stare at the flames for hours.
Back in Tulsa, Google has become my closest friend: research at my fingertips since my friend Becca went back to Austin. I find an aesthetics team for waxing – my one regularly concession to vanity. They are twin sisters: Rio and Tabitha. Rio used to wax Steven Tyler and my vulva has never been so smooth.
Comments
Post a Comment