An accessory to
her mother’s latest escape, Marie is on
her way to a new school. She plods down a road that
is choked with tropical growth. As she straightens her
new plaid uniform, Marie pictures a tapestry of unknown
girls mocking her, when her senses are overtaken by
a stench carried in the muggy air. Neither the plumerias
nor the gardenias can mask the smell. Just before her
heel touches down, Marie sees the strange ground underfoot
and jumps aside. Her stomach leaps as she sees the large
moss-brown colored disk, surrounded by a crimson pool.
She examines slight ridges and golden spots before seeing
two caving eye sockets gaping upward at the unclouded
sky. With a catch in her breath, she identifies the
tire-flattened frog, as big as a dinner plate. She has
never seen or smelled anything like it, yet she feels
a visceral familiarity with the scene.
Marie quickens her pace to get past the dead frog.
She is unable to exhale the smell of decay that has
taken up residence in her nostrils. Her legs now stable,
she recalls a dead armadillo that was cracked in two,
lying on the Texas roadside as she stared out of the
passenger window of her mother’s hot car. Austin
had been one of their previous landings where her mother
spent many late nights in the bars with a few musicians.
One night, her mother tipped into her room telling her
to pack up by morning because “the time has come
for all good women to go see their country.” Her
mother always joked that she would “just keep
hopping to hotter places until the flames are leaping
at my heels in Hell.”
Marie’s thoughts again focus on what lies ahead
on the tropical road; she must survive the second day
at another school where she has just landed. She tries
to picture herself carrying a full lunch tray through
the narrow aisles between tables crowded with laughing
girls. On her first day there, she avoided the crowd
by nibbling a candy bar in the school’s courtyard
after getting lost in the surrounding conversation conducted
in all new pidgin words. As she approaches the final
bend in the road to school, beads of sweat dapple her
polyester uniform shirt.
She picks her way through the crowded open air corridor
at school as if wading across a stream. She checks her
watch and ducks into the bathroom where she lingers
in front of the mirror. In spite of all her brushing,
patting and fussing, her cowlick defies her. She looks
like an impostor in the strange uniform, like a “tartan
Martian,” as her mother joked that morning. She
consults her watch again to count down to the last minute.
She jumps into her first class just before the bell.
She pictures what would have been had she been there
any earlier; a clatter of conversations while she would
sit silently, eyes straight ahead.
During her slog through the day, Marie thinks of a
million clever things to say, but the words never travel
from her mind to her mouth.
“You’re from Seattle?” the girls
ask, “and Arizona? How many places you been?”
“Melody there went to San Francisco,” one
girls says with a nod across the room.
“We went there too. For about a month,”
Marie replies in a flush of red.
At the age of 13, Marie has lived in Seattle, Ashland,
Reno, Austin, Albuquerque, Phoenix and finally Hawaii,
connecting the dots with visits to every town in between.
She lived in Seattle until she was 8 and has averaged
a town a year since. For this last jump, her mother
sold their rusted-out car to buy plane tickets to Hawaii.
“The Arizona desert was making me look old before
my time,” her mother proclaimed as they boarded
the plane.
Marie wades through the crowded path to her next class,
second-year French. She keeps her eyes on her notes
to look busy until the bell finally rings. Madame Francine
asks the girls to describe a scene in French using their
new household vocabulary. Marie slumps down in her seat
with her light brown hair falling across her eyes and
recalls her life in Seattle five years ago. She remembers
walking into their old kitchen for breakfast where her
parents were. Their eyes jumped to the doorway. Marie
felt a jolt. Her father was usually long gone by that
time in the morning, he mother still in bed, yet on
that day her mother sat at the table, while her father
loomed on his feet ready to pounce. Her mother had already
made pancakes, cold on the counter, even though Marie
did not care for pancakes; they were Anthony’s
favorites and he had died a year ago.
“Marie, we need to talk,” they started.
Her father would be moving out that day.
“You are not to blame,” they said, implanting
the idea in her head for the first time.
“We will all be better off in the end,”
they said.
Madame Francine calls on Marie, as Marie figured she
would since most teachers try to draw out the new kid.
With a shallow breath, Marie squeaks, “la mère
fait des crêpes avec la confiture,” the
mother makes crepes with jam.
“Très bien, Marie. Pour le petit dejeuner?”
Madame Francine says.
“Non, pour le diner,” Marie replies.
The teacher nods and Marie exhales with a rush of relief
to be out of the spotlight. With her flushed cheeks
cooling, she thinks back on the time that her mother
had let her and her little brother, Anthony, eat donuts
for dinner years ago at Pike Place Market. Anthony,
who was about 3 at the time, had blops of red jelly
filling down his chin and shirt. Encouraged by their
mother’s laughter, Anthony bit into the middle
of another donut to squish more blops of filling down
his front. His eyes flashed with glee. When they returned
home sick and sticky, Marie overheard her father scold
her mother.
“You have got to be more responsible. You are
their mother, Libby,” he said.
“Oh, lighten up, will you? Carpe diem and all
that,” her mother replied.
“Libby, it’s time we act like adults. We
have a family. Kids need structure, discipline,”
her father said.
“What do you know about kids? About your kids?
You barely see them; besides a little fun never hurt
anyone,” her mother said.
Marie realizes now how many variations on that theme
she had overheard when they were still together, although
during their last year together, after Anthony died,
they barely bothered to speak, let alone argue.
Upon the “au revoir,” Marie grabs her books
and skitters out of the French classroom. She swings
in and out of her remaining classes, as if swinging
from vine to vine to get through the day. At last, she
finishes her second day and begins to walk home. Marie
notices the snug houses that compete to stand out with
their bright colors of lime green, pink, light blue
or lavender, yet the tropical vegetation dwarfs the
houses and subdues the bright colors. She peeks into
each open window at the living room. Family photos crowd
the end tables and floral pillows bookend the sofas.
A few toddlers squeal around in one front yard with
their arms waving while their mothers talk on the Astroturf-covered
front step. The toddlers shout “hi” and
Marie waves with her eyes cast on the root-buckled pavement.
As she approaches the flattened frog that she had seen
that morning, she holds her breath. She walks along
the far edge of the road. Her throat tightens, as she
glances at the russet smear surrounding the frog. She
tries to suppress the images that hover in her mind.
Marie cannot help but think of her walk home in Seattle
when she was just 7. From across the street, she could
see the olive green weathered shingles of her house
in the University district. The light drizzle made the
fuchsia azaleas glow in the flat gray light. She stopped
at the curb to wait for a car to pass so she could cross
the street. In the speeding car, she noticed two teenage
boys, slumped down in the seats with baseball caps pulled
low on their brows. A quick movement at the curb caught
her eye. Anthony bounded out from behind a parked car.
Before Marie could muster a peep, she heard the screeching
brakes, the muffled crack followed by a painful silence.
The car drove out of sight. She tripped off the curb
with buckling knees. Bright red pools radiated from
underneath her brother’s head. A rivulet of blood
ran from his mouth down his pale cheek. The dispersion
of blood on the wet street was all that moved. She looked
from her brother to her house, to her brother to her
house, but did not see her mother. All of the air collapsed
out of her lungs as if she had landed flat on her back.
She ran into her house and found her mother in the
kitchen laughing on the phone. Her mother was wound
up in the long phone cord like a spring. Her mother’s
long auburn ponytail was tangled against her neck. Marie
could not speak, but her light green pallor alarmed
her mother. Libby followed Marie out to the street,
where Mrs. Stewart stood guarding the 4-year-old boy,
who looked like a baby bird fallen from its nest. Mrs.
Stewart had called an ambulance, she informed them.
Marie’s mother stood on the edge of the curb unable
to go any farther into the street. As the ambulance
came into sight, her mother pitched forward with her
hands on her knees. She wailed in a haunting echo of
the siren.
After the paramedics loaded her brother into the ambulance
in a whirlwind, they lifted her mother by the elbow
into the back. They wailed down the street out of sight.
Mrs. Stewart took Marie to her house next door where
they waited for Marie’s father in the living room.
A loud clock on the mantle acted as a metronome for
Mrs. Stewart’s fiddling. At last, her father came
to the door in a burst with his car idling in the driveway.
As soon as Marie saw him, she collapsed in tears.
On their race to University Hospital, her father fired
questions at the windshield.
“How could this happen? Where was Libby? What
did you see? How could this have happened?”
Marie sobbed and could not answer. At the hospital,
they learned that Anthony had died. They all drove home
suffocated by guilt and grief. The silence was broken
only by the squeak of the windshield wipers. The silence
of the following year was broken only by the clank of
forks at the dinner table that should have been set
for four. A year later, her father moved out.
Marie continues to walk to her new Hawaiian home with
thoughts as tangled as the tropical vegetation she passes.
She arrives at the apartment building, adorned in front
with a shirtless man with two large rolls drooping over
his waistband. Marie passes to get the mail and lets
herself into her apartment. She leafs through the envelopes
that appear to be bills and starts her homework. When
she realizes that her mother will be home soon, she
begins to make dinner. A half hour later, her mother’s
key clicks through the door.
“How was your day?” Marie asks her mother.
“Okay. I accidentally spilled a glass of water
down a customer’s back. Good thing it was just
water. How was yours?” her mother says, smoothing
back some stray hairs.
“Okay, I guess,” Marie responds. “Don’t
worry about the water. I am sure everything will work
out. Dinner is almost ready.”
“Thanks. What’s on the menu tonight? PB
and J soufflé? Oatmeal Wellington? Lobster-shaped
meatloaf?” Libby asks.
After dinner, they sit on the steps in front of their
apartment with their knees under their chins. A warm
breeze blows in a red spray of sunset and the scent
of gardenias. Libby nods hello to the shirtless man
and faces Marie.
“Tell me more about your new school,” she
says.
“Not much to tell,” Marie replies.
“How are your classes? Did you meet some of the
girls?” Libby asks.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine, at least
the classes. Understand the pidgin? No can. Dis haole
is so lolo,” Marie says of herself with a smile.
Marie looks away and says, “But seriously, questions
sound like sentences, words are strange and I just stare
back like a dummy.”
“I am sure you will catch on in no time,”
Libby says. “You just have to jump in.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Marie says. “Not
sure why, but I thought a lot about Anthony today. It
was over six years ago and it still makes me sad. I
just wish I could have done something.”
“You know, they say that ‘time heals all
wounds,’ but it’s not really like that.
It’s more like you are hit by a stone in a still
lake. At first you are immersed at impact, but then
you just keep doggy paddling away until the waves hit
you with dampened impact and frequency. It will never
go away, but you will keep getting more time in between
the sadness.”
“I guess,” Marie says. “Well, I am
off to bed.”
“Okay, ’night, love you,” Libby says,
leaning her elbows back on the top step to stretch out.
Marie wakes up early to
the hushed sound of her mother talking on the phone
in the other room.
“It will be just this once. I promise,”
Libby says.
“That was different,” she continues after
a pause.
“It’s expensive here. We need a little
help to get by,” she continues.
“I know,” she says. “Okay, okay,
thank you.”
“It would be the last thing I would ever want,
but, well, would Marie be better off, well, with you?”
Libby asks. Marie’s heart pounds.
After a long pause, Libby says at last, “No,
no, you’re right. It would be hard with your new
family.”
To her surprise, Marie exhales with relief.
Marie puts on the tartan-Martian uniform and finds
her mother in the kitchen staring into her coffee cup.
Libby looks up at Marie with a shy look in her eyes
that Marie has never seen before. Marie heads to the
door and says, “We will make it work, Mom. We
always do.” As she passes the shirtless man, he
says, “St. Francis School? You can take that path
at the corner. It’s a shortcut.” Marie thanks
him and heads down the dirt path. Marie pictures the
school ahead, full of laughing girls, confusing words
and muggy air, and resolves to have lunch in the lunchroom.
Near the door. |
