Where No Gods Came

by Sheila O'Connor

  Where No Gods Came

  Sheila O'Connor

  UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

  Ann Arbor

  Copyright © by Sheila O'Connor 2003

  All rights reserved

  Published in the United States of America by

  The University of Michigan Press

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Printed on acid-free paper

  2006 2005 2004 2003 4 3 2 1

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  O'Connor, Sheila.

  Where no gods came / Sheila O'Connor.

  p. cm.— (Michigan literary fiction awards)

  ISBN 0-472-11365-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3565.C645 W47 2003

  813′.54—dc21 2003008360

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, to real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN13 978-0-472-11365-1 (cloth)

  ISBN13 978-0-472-03051-4 (paper)

  ISBN13 978-0-472-02571-8 (electronic)

  For Mikaela, Dylan, and Tim, who dreamed the dream with me

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sherwood Anderson. “American Spring Song,”

  Mid-American Chants. New York: John Lane and Co., 1918

  Walt Whitman. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,”

  Leaves of Grass. 1881

  Heartfelt thanks to the following: Wendy Weil and Emily Forland for their labor and leap of faith; my readers: Reid Jensen, Callie Cardamon, Anne Hickok, and Kim Palmer; Stuart “Morley” Shaver for that invaluable Legion lunch; the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Bush Foundation for fellowships that made this book possible; Charles Baxter and Nicholas Delbanco for choosing it; Chris Hebert and the staff at the University of Michigan Press for delivering it into the world; Mary Rockcastle for her infinite goodwill; Martin Case for everything, always; and finally Dylan, Mikaela, and Tim, who believed from the beginning and whose generous spirits sustain me. Without you, nothing.

  Contents

  Faina McCoy - Where Is the World?

  Lenore - A Smart Girl

  Faina - Minneapolis

  Lenore - Ancient History

  Cammy - Missing

  Faina - The New Girl

  Lenore - Departure

  Faina - Sheep

  Faina - Ghost in the Graveyard

  Lenore - The Accident

  Cammy - First Snow

  Faina - Jimmy Cordova

  Lenore - Winter Dream

  Faina - Sisters

  Cammy - Family

  Faina - Gifts

  Cammy - Closing the Circle

  Lenore - Survivors

  Faina - Stew

  Cammy - Sweethearts

  Faina - The Message

  Cammy - Luck

  Lenore - The Whirlpool

  Faina - Protect Us

  Cammy - Running

  Faina - Empty

  Cammy - What Was Ahead

  Lenore - Intensive Care

  Faina - Shelter

  Faina McCoy

  “I had been long alone in a strange place where no gods came.”

  —“American Spring Song,” Sherwood Anderson

  Faina McCoy - Where Is the World?

  I go back to San Diego for my beginning, because I can't shake from my mind the old life: hot sand and salt water outside my window, my father's coffee left on the stove, the early morning silence of our house, my father always gone before I'm awake. And, in the last days, the stench of Wiley, fully clothed, asleep on our living room floor.

  No, I won't go back to Wiley. Instead, I carry what I have to keep to tell my story: the clutter of my aqua bulletin board, the archery ribbon I won at the summer park program, my poster of Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy. A shoe box full of poems, words to songs I want to remember. Spiral notebooks I've been writing since fourth grade, full of margin doodles and daydreams I jotted down in class. A note with the initials of all the boys I liked in sixth grade, taped to the back of my underwear drawer. Next to my bed, my father's old black phonograph, my green case of 45s, my first and only album.

  I go back to Mission Boulevard, the sidewalks sizzling and edgy, as though the whole city is close to exploding. Girls with tangled hair panhandle; their bare bellies flash over the tops of their filthy hip-hugger jeans. Navy men bristle and spit at the hippies who hand out flowers. Most of the shops along the boulevard have changed their names. The Place, Magic Carpet, Electric Avenue. They sell black lights, psychedelic posters, pipes for smoking grass. On the street corners, with their guitar cases propped open for donations, boys strum guitars and sing James Taylor, Cat Stevens or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. They sing off-key in high voices that sound nothing like the originals. What else have I saved? My daily visits to Keith's Coffee Shop where I've eaten breakfast since first grade. The powdered sugar doughnut and carton of chocolate milk quickly slipped my way, the cracked vinyl of my usual stool sometimes cutting into my leg. My schoolbooks spilled out over the counter so Keith can quiz me to see if I've learned anything. Keith, tugging at his red goatee, “Let's see what you know today, young lady.” The folded dollar bill I pass him at the last second.

  I go back there, am there, sitting next to my father at the horse track. School is just out for the summer; it is June 17, 1973. We've driven to Hollywood Park for my twelfth birthday. He hunches over the Form and says he needs to win big so we can buy groceries.

  “What about your paycheck?” I ask.

  “Spent.”

  I'm anxious to go prowling, to hang out at the windows and wait for the rush of bets. “Stay still for once,” he tells me. In his mouth, the tip of his cigar is gnawed and wet. He shifts nervously in his chair, arches his back, stretches his arms behind his neck to crack his knuckles.

  “Stop it,” I say. “You know that bugs me.”

  Tense, his breath comes in shallow snorts. He falls into his old, distracted habit of tugging at the rim of his fishing cap. He's worn this cap since I can remember, because it hides his high, bald forehead and the smooth patch at the top of his head. His belly bulges against the pearl snaps of his cowboy shirt. “Goddamnit. Goddamnit,” he says as his horse fades. “God damn it.” His bets never win. “Son of a bitch.” He slaps his palm against his forehead. “We gotta quit.”

  Out in the hot sun of the parking lot, he pauses with his hand on the car door. It's my birthday; he has something important to tell me. He hasn't had a handful of luck in six months. There are people breathing down his neck for bad debts. He flops his heavy arm over my shoulder. “My back's against the wall. You have no way of knowing.”

  This has happened before, and we got past it. “You've still got your job at the marina. You can pay it off bit by bit.”

  “It's not that easy.”

  “We can rent a cheaper place. You're always complaining about the rent anyway.”

  “This is different. It's the real thing.”

  Now he clears his throat, leans against the car, stares into the sun, tugs at his cap. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, won't look at me. “Faina,” he says, “I got to get back this money. Swear to god, baby. Wiley's
got a gig lined up, some oil rig deal; it's incredible money. The thing is, it's pretty far.”

  I listen to the wheeze of his chest. “How far?”

  “Somewhere off the coast of Australia.”

  “Where?”

  “How the hell should I know? They fly you there; I don't need a map.”

  “You. But what about me?”

  “I'll send checks every month. That's the glory of it. This deal is one stop short of hell; there's not a damn place for me to spend the money. No gambling. I'll just be floating on the ocean saving up money, sending some home for you to get by on. I'll work off my debts. Come back for you as soon as I can. Maybe a year.”

  “A year? Back where? Where will I be?”

  “Well, that's the good news,” he says, shuffling his feet. “You'll be in Minnesota with your mother and Cammy.”

  “Minnesota!” I scream.

  I know Minnesota—farms, fields, people in black rubber boots milking cows—we studied it in geography. I don't know my mother, don't want to. I climb into the car, slam the door, refuse to speak. He touches my elbow, whispers, “Listen to me.”

  I turn my back to him, stare out at the stretch of empty cars. My fisted hands tremble. Wiley. This is all Wiley.

  “Faina, you're acting ridiculous. It's not forever. Besides, your mother isn't feeling well; she needs to spend time with you, face it. And you could get to know Cammy, too. She's your sister. Like it or not, these people are your family.”

  The inside of my nose burns. My face is numb. “Forget it.”

  “Fine,” he says. “You can live on the street.”

  “Fine,” I say. “Great birthday.”

  At home Wiley, lounging on our lawn chair, burps between swigs of beer. “Happy birthday, young lady.”

  I flip him the finger, slam the screen door in his face. I despise Wiley for showing up in our lives and ruining everything. Before he came around, we were happy. It was just my dad and me. Sure my dad gambled some; he even had his nights when he stayed out drinking, but after Wiley, he was always at the track, coming home past midnight with different women. Wiley hooting and hollering until the morning. Wiley, with his long sideburns winding down his face, his brown teeth. Wiley telling my dad it was a waste of a life to work for a living.

  I know my father will follow me with a string of apologies, so I stretch out on my bed and wait. I've lived in this house since I can remember and I love my room, my bookcase of wood and bricks he built me, my green flowered bedspread. Outside my window, the sound of the ocean, the bits of conversation from people passing on the beach, the words I turn into stories when I can't sleep. This is what belongs to me.

  I don't know my mother; she gave me to my father when I was a baby. She didn't feel up to raising more than Cammy. When I was little, she sent me a few cards, presents, an occasional picture. I used to dream about her, about what it would be like to live with her. I imagined her brushing my hair before school, taking me shopping for shoes, tucking me in at night. I used to watch other mothers with their kids to find out what sort of things I was missing. But then, after awhile, when people asked, I just told them she'd died. It saved me a long story.

  Out on the front lawn, my father and Wiley are arguing. I crouch under my bedroom window and wait for my father to refuse Wiley's oil rig scheme.

  “It's your big break,” Wiley says. “Think of the money. Besides, you can see for yourself she's getting beyond you. A girl her age needs a mother.”

  “You don't know her mother. I don't think Lenore would be much help to anybody.”

  “That's not your problem, Bobby. You've done your time. Let her old lady pick up some of the slack.”

  “She doesn't want to go.”

  “For Christ's sake, Faina's twelve. You don't ask a kid that age what they want to do.”

  “But Australia?”

  “Why the cold feet now? We're all signed up. You can't stay here, not with the money you owe. You think she'd be safe?”

  “Liar. You don't care what happens to me,” I scream, then slam down the window so hard the glass rattles.

  My father shakes his head at me, buries his face in his hands. Wiley heaves his body out of the lawn chair, pats my father on the back and leaves.

  When the clatter of Wiley's car finally fades down the alley, my father comes inside, knocks twice on my bedroom door and walks over to me. “I'm looking for the birthday girl. I've got something for you, honey.”

  “I don't want it.”

  “Faina. Please.”

  He hands me a small package with ballerina wrapping and a white bow. It's a blank book with a cover marbled like Easter eggs.

  “I thought you could use this for your stories. Maybe a kind of diary. Who knows. Something to put down your thoughts while you're away from me.”

  I fall into his chest and for the first time in a long time, I'm crying. “You're not really going? How could you decide something like this without asking me?”

  “It's so beyond us, honey. It's so beyond us.”

  Over and over again, he kisses the top of my head. I don't feel his tears drip on my hair, but I feel his chest and I know he's crying.

  By the end of the week, a moving-sale sign is taped to our front porch; our two bags are packed and hidden in the hall closet. The things we'll take. My father's suitcase is small. He's packed only the few clothes he'll need for work on the oil rig, the wooden box I carved and painted for him last Father's Day, his leather shaving kit, pictures of me in an old Christmas-card envelope. My duffel bag is stuffed full of my clothes, a new gray sweatshirt jacket for Minnesota weather, all new underwear including the bra he asked the saleslady to pick out for me, a new toothbrush, a hairbrush and, of course, the diary. The rest of my keepsakes are loaded into a big cardboard box marked FAINA MCCOY and stored away in a locker somewhere near Chula Vista.

  Everything else we own is priced with ragged pieces of masking tape. People rummage through our house, carry out the toys and games I've outgrown: Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, my Etch-a-Sketch. All that goes for a quarter apiece. The customers will buy anything: hangers, my chipped ceramic poodle bank, ice-cube trays, bamboo shades. Some arrive in beat-up trucks to haul out my bed, our couch, my bookcase. I sit at a card table and collect the money. Perched on an empty beer case, I add up the items, count out the change. When they want to bargain, I point them toward my father, who always says, “Have at it.” Although it seems he's letting go too easily, I can't blame him. It's hard to haggle over the price of a torn lampshade. When the house is nearly empty, I hand him the shoe box of money, our lives worth a grand total of $327. “Don't knock it,” he says. “It's your plane ticket.”

  “I'm going to Keith's,” I say, banging the screen door closed behind me. I don't want to join my dad and Wiley for their farewell celebration—cold beer and beef jerky on the front porch.

  At this time of night, only a few customers straggle into Keith's place. “Isn't it a little late for breakfast?” Keith jokes. “I saved you your usual. Too busy with the sale to stop by?” He slides the powdered sugar doughnut over the counter toward me. “I hope you eat better than this in Minnesota.”

  “We sold most everything.” The doughnut sticks in my throat like paste. “Today's my last day.”

  Keith wipes his damp rag over the clean counter. He unscrews the lids from the half-empty ketchup bottles and refills them. “It'll be good to see your mother and sister again. What's her name?”

  “Cammy.”

  “Yeah, I knew it was something unusual. Your folks really had a thing for original names.”

  I shrug, keep chewing. As long as my mouth is full I can't answer. Keith leans on the counter in front of me, lifts his pouch of tobacco and rolling papers out of his apron pocket. He sprinkles a dash of tobacco along the crease. “Your sister will probably take you under her wing.”

  “Yeah.” To me, Cammy has always been just a tiny square of school picture, a snapshot who always appeared older
and prettier than me. “A regular blonde beauty,” my father called her. This year she was nothing, not even a Christmas card, and I was secretly happy. I had been wanting to lose her for a long time, to get rid of the ghost who stole my father's loyalty. “Why should she care about us?” I told him. “We're hardly even her family.”

  Cammy and my mother. My father and me. “That's the court order,” he always said. “That's the way it has to be.” From what I knew of it, we left them in Minnesota when I was a baby, or rather, my mother left me. My father moved the two of us to California so he could have a chance at acting, but he ended up in San Diego repairing boat engines. This is the life I know, San Diego. Not my mother, not Cammy, just the waves crashing me to sleep, the narrow back streets, the stray cats slinking down the alley, Keith.

  “I had a friend,” Keith says, leaning on the counter, blowing smoke rings, “who made great money on an oil rig. There's no doubt about it, it's good work if you can get it. Your dad is doing the right thing. In the old days, parents left home all the time to make money for their family. This is nothing new. You'll come back in a year, all grown-up and talking with one of those midwestern accents; we'll just be sitting here, drinking the same cup of coffee, and you'll wonder why you were ever sad to leave.” Keith brushes the hair away from my eyes. “Write to me.”

  He prints his address on a paper napkin. I pass him the folded dollar bill like I've done every day since first grade. “Not today. This one's on me.”

  For the last time, I close the door to Keith's and listen to the bell ring.

  Walking home I try to memorize the back streets: flower baskets in full bloom, surfboards stacked against the gray cottages, the smoky smell of charcoal and burgers grilling, the sand scraping under my sandals. I welcome the lull of evening, the sun almost swallowed by water. This is where I belong, I repeat to myself. I live here. I can't imagine a life far away, I can't imagine a life without my father.