We girls were named for famous twins. Artis for the hunter Artemis, Dad reminded us when we whimpered that the gear he made us carry was so heavy it hurt. Paula for Apollo, famous for playing the lute. “I’ll make you musicians,” he said, “if I have to kill you first.”
Once we started school, Mom tried to return to the bank job she had had before we were born, but most of the tellers were gone. Her old boss said it was cheaper to use ATMs. Robots, we called them.
So Mom started a business. Sunflower Daycare, run from home. She painted the door with giant petals and silkscreened T-shirts so yellow they almost smelled like mustard.
For our birthday that year, Dad taught us to strum. “Only electricity you need,” he said, “is the kind you make yourself.” We begged him to let us wear our frou-frou flowered skirts. “It’s a holiday.” He gave in, but dressed the same as always himself: baggy jeans and a denim shirt with metal snaps, red high-tops and a skeleton stud in one ear. He shook his fingers, so we did, too. “Feel the buzz?” He showed us how to shuffle our soles on the storm-colored concrete, build up a spark, then give the guitar a shock. Zing went the strings, charring our nails.
He showed us how to play by ear, to hear our bellies fill with air, then make our fingers mimic the sun and clouds and wind. We listened to Rex chase squirrels, then made the strings squeal. We matched the sounds of spiderwebs squeaking in the armpits of doors.
Dad told us to peel off our socks and feel the vibrations on the cold, bare basement floor as we plucked. Our big toes swelled with the sound that echoed against unfinished walls the color of soot. Our fingers turned to meat, our bones creaked. He made us play through the pain after our skin cracked and bled. We thought every dad did.
“If we used picks,” he said, “we wouldn’t build up calluses.”
The lesson done, he told us to figure out how to play Happy Birthday on our own. We thought every kid could learn a song in an afternoon, too.
“And then?” we asked.
His eyes grew round as cakes. “You’ll get a present.”
If we didn’t do what he said, it would be just like any other day. But with bloody thumbs.
“Happy birthday to us,” we sang along as we picked out the notes, wrong then wrong then finally right. One of us learned, then taught the other one how.
We mounted the stairs on frozen toes. “Now we’re ready for our present,” we told Dad.
He pointed with his beard. “You got it in your hands.”
“The guitar? It’s not a toy.”
“Damn right. What you got is an antique.”
“All our friends get toys.”
He shook his head, and the room darkened. We heard the clink of his nails on the metal of his belt buckle. So we shut our mouths, and his hands went silent, too.
Haley and Nevaeh and Bo got thumb-size talking dolls and motorized hamsters for their birthdays. They got game systems that fit in their pockets and dolls that looked exactly like them. Most of all we wanted toy robots that would sing us to sleep when Mom was stuck in her room with Dad, behind the closed door, making sounds we thought we would never try to copy on the guitar.
We fished Rex’s ball out of his house and used the guitar as a racket. We took turns throwing and whacking, plinking the strings so much Dad heard and stormed out.
He grabbed our hair at the scalp, yanking hard enough to give us bald spots. If chickens were plucked alive, their skin would sting like this. They would peck holes in his hand, but what could we do? Our mouths were made soft. “Didn’t I tell you it’s not a toy? Why do you make me teach you things the hard way?”
Why do rabbits run out of their holes? we asked each other with our hands, smoothing our hair. Why did Rex jump on the kitchen table whenever we opened the back door and accidentally let him in? Why had we tried to break the guitar when we could feel in our fingers that we were born to carry it everywhere, that it was part of us, like an extra arm?
Now his belt did come out. But we didn’t want to remember what happened after that.
Our Papu died when we were five. We didn’t know how. We didn’t know why. We didn’t know much.
But we overheard Ya-Ya, Dad’s mom, whisper, “I always knew you’d kill him.” She was talking to Dad, who sat, with her and Mom and us, in the front pew at the funeral. A black lace veil hung over her face, and her voice was soft, but we could read her lips, while everyone else closed their eyes for prayer.
We stared at her shiny black pumps, the kind of shoes our teachers wore. You could see your face in them if you looked close enough. Dad’s lace-ups were scuffed. Mom’s high-heeled sandals showed off nail polish the color of bruises.
We weren’t supposed to peek or eavesdrop. Ya-Ya liked to say, “Keep your nose out of it.”
But it was too late. Our eyes and ears and noses had minds all their own. There was no way to un-know that Dad had killed. And could again.
Our black vampire dresses itched against the unforgiving wooden pew. Moldy lettuce smells and old lady perfume mixed with monster-movie organ music.
We wanted to cry for Papu, but we were too big. How often had we heard that only babies cry? Old people, too. Ya-Ya’s face reddened like a Swedish Fish.
We wanted to ask why people had to die. We had never known anyone who had before. Why, why, why? We wanted to ask every question that had ever been invented, we wanted to do every search that was ever done on the internet, but our mouths wouldn’t move. Our teeth clamped tight. We couldn’t open up, even to breathe. We had to sniffle through our nostrils. The air thickened with snot.
The priest said we would see Papu again in heaven, but he didn’t say when. Tomorrow? This winter? If he was an angel now, would we find him in the snow? Could we lie on the ground and flap our arms and legs in the fluffy flakes and become angels, too? We wanted to ask Mom, and if she didn’t know, we wanted her to ask a teacher.
“He’s in a better place.” The priest ruffled his robes while lifting his head to the sky. “Up there.”
On the ceiling? In the clouds?
2
We still didn’t know. Frosty breath clouded our eyes. We strummed the air, playing snow guitar, the way he had taught us.
No. We taught ourselves.
We thumbed the snaps on our coats and the buttons on our bellies, a reflex, trying to connect. But we couldn’t feel a thing, our puffy down like a layer of bear on our skin.
Those chocolate bars still swished in our gut, too sweet. Too different?
Yes.
He was always trying to keep us separate, even then.
We slid closer together across the brick wall, letting it shelter us from the storm. He taught us how to survive the elements.
And how to kill.
Stained light through church windows beckoned us inside to rejoin our kin. To thaw, to hide, to talk? We couldn’t decide.
What could we tell them? What did we know? The snow blew sideways, so we had to lean our heads on each other’s shoulders and close our eyes to invite the glimmers in.
3
Dad scooped us out of bed, still wrapped in rubber ducky quilts, and carried us out to the Bull. His beard reeked of coffee and bacon, his breath a whiff of forest fire. He stacked our hats and coats and gloves next to us in the covered flatbed and headed up the mitten of Michigan. We leaned against the windows in lawn chairs, facing each other, feet touching, Rex taking turns napping in each of our laps.
“We’ll let your mom sleep,” Dad shouted from the front seat. “When she wakes up, we’ll tell her winter’s over.”
“Is it?”
“You want it to be?” He honked on the empty road, and the sun came up. Then he blasted the radio and sang along.
Who else had a dad who let them decide? Who else lived with the boss of the world?
We studied all the holidays in first grade. There was one Easter Bunny, one Santa Claus, and one Groundhog. We weren’t surprised Dad knew exactly where he lived.
We also knew The G
roundhog didn’t know anything Dad hadn’t already figured out. He knew we stuffed our smelly socks under the bed instead of cleaning our room. That we lied when we said we would never do it again. He could make hail pelt down in the middle of a picnic.
The Bull climbed the interstate. We crunched granola bars and sucked juice out of boxes. We shouted out the highway exits till we came to ours.
Finally we slid to a stop, Rex cannonballed out, Dad hauled a backpack as big as a motorhome over his shoulders, and we tumbled off our seats, the scratchy nylon whistling when we rubbed it the wrong way. We brushed off specks of sleep. Our laps chilled with sweat where Rex had slept.
We pulled snowpants, coats, and furry boots over our pajamas and climbed the steps to a deer blind that made us invisible. We squabbled over binoculars and squinted so hard we said we could see underground. No sign of The Groundhog yet, or anything else. All the houses and people must have disappeared. Or they were invisible, too.
Dad wore his winter uniform: flannel, jeans, and fleece. No coat. Just a cap flipped back. “Wake up, Groundhog, and smell the gunpowder.” He clicked the safety off his rifle. He always brought it with him into the woods, whether he meant to use it or not. It was his right, he would say, if someone asked. But no one dared.
“He won’t shoot it, will he?” We didn’t ask him directly. There’s a time for questions and a time for guns. Dad taught us that. Rex cocked his ears and tried to bolt. Dad clutched his collar till he choked.
“Come on,” Dad whispered, not loud enough for The Groundhog to hear and run away. “You think you’re a bear? You ain’t nothing but a fat-ass squirrel.”
We crouched to keep warm. “Don’t move,” Dad said, as if we could. We were frozen still. At least we weren’t at school, looping letters till our hands ached. If only those kids knew we could change the seasons without lifting a finger.
“Cold enough?” Dad asked.
Every bump on our skin said yes. Dad rubbed our arms and told us about the time he spent with Wild Pete up in Alaska. That year he rode moose, he said, steering with their antlers. Leading hunting tours into the woods where no cars dared. Catching bears in net bags, making them yowl before setting them free. Plucking feathers from pheasants in flight. Making cougars scatter like chipmunks. Trekking up the side of McKinley, no rope, no help, climbing like an animal, sniffing the way. No more implausible than Sunday school stories we heard at Ya-Ya’s church.
From his monster pack, Dad whipped out thermoses and flasks, hot chocolate and throat-burning whiskey, sandwich bags of homemade jerky. He pulled out gloves without fingers, whistles without sound. Orange caps to keep us from shooting each other by mistake. Our hair hung down from the hats in double ponytails like icicle lights.
He brought out little gifts from his Alaskan life: a pocketknife inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a peacock feather—or was it from a phoenix? A narwhal tusk, he said, but we saw a unicorn. And fairy wings. He said they came from hummingbirds.
From his Santa sack emerged hand warmers and rocks so hot they must have come from the core of the Earth, the middle part we had learned about in school. Then beaver fur to wrap around our necks, coin-size whale blubber to savor like candy, wolf teeth to chew through childish thoughts, Dad said.
The wind blew upside-down, across the field and up to the bitter winter sky, but it didn’t chill us. Anymore.
We were a pile of fur. We forgot why we were there. We were lost in Alaska.
And then he appeared, The Groundhog himself. “Look!” Dad said, sliding the binoculars over.
“Does he see his shadow and slink back into his hole? Or is he through sleeping?” Dad really meant: Whatever you want him to do, he’ll do it.
Spring or a lingering winter? We weren’t sure what we wanted anymore. Six more weeks of winter didn’t sound so bad. If it was like Alaska, we would take it. We would ride on moose and fly on hummingbirds’ wings.
But all the kids at school would hate us. You must be cold-blooded if you don’t like spring, they would say. They would ask us, Whose side are you on?
We wanted to drink flasks of hot chocolate mixed with whiskey and eat homemade jerky. We wanted to stay in this deer blind with Dad until next Groundhog Day.
“Is he done sleeping?” The blind shook with the stomp of Dad’s big foot.
We heard the words start to form, then stop, not yet in our throats but in the spaces behind our eyes. The open palm of the Y in yes, then the skin-pricking tips of the N in no. We had seconds to answer before the earth would open up and we would be sucked in. Seconds to decide. Should spring start now?
Dad grabbed our hands and planted them deep in the back of his neck, the warmest spot this side of the core of the Earth.
Finally, we said, “Yes.”
Then it was over. Dad dropped our hands and the sun streamed down. The Groundhog hadn’t seen his shadow. “Yes.” We had said yes. The snow began to melt in our mouths before the whole word was out. Frost turned to slush. We found ourselves standing in puddles.
Dad loosed Rex, who chased all the animals from their holes. Bang bang bang! Dad shot into the air, the way he did on New Year’s Eve. “Happy New Year!” we yelled, as if it were, pretending everything was starting fresh.
The rifle bucked, convulsing the whole blind. Its fire warmed our fingertips, our bodies, and our heads.
What was Dad shooting way up in the air? Heaven? Was that where Alaska was? Papu, too?
It was cold out there, but we were growing thicker skin. Calluses everywhere.
We pressed a finger on our nose, then chin, which was how we told each other not to tell anyone. We still haven’t. Even we forgot, until now.
Why invite others to laugh? They wouldn’t believe Dad let us change the weather. They would say we lied if we told them he taught us how to wish a thing and make it so.
Did it matter? We saw with our own eyes. We could see everything out there, even our steamy breath, our sticky sweat. We whooped and walloped along with the dog.
4
That was the year of our epic flu. No wonder—we had lingered so long in the punishing cold. Just as we were doing now, letting the chill numb our lips so much we could barely speak.
Which was perhaps the point. We could argue better with our elbows and knees, those sharpest of bones.
Sometimes he spent all morning before his shift fluffing up our pillows and singing us to sleep. Other times he called us babies for complaining of pain. We could disagree about the way he had nursed us back into the thick of life, boiled marrow for broth, cooled our foreheads with a stern glare, steamed up the room with his hot temper so our chests would clear. How he was two different dads, depending on the day and the person you asked.
Like Granny?
Exactly.
5
Hello?” we said in stereo, then placed the cordless landline where we both could hear. Hair banded into bushy tails, we lit like squirrels on a wire. Flame-resistant nightgowns scratched our scabs. Who would call us so early? We knew who.
Granny never said hello back, but she was there. She had called us every morning that past week, before the alarm went off and Mom had to wake up to open Sunflower. Granny urged us every time to run away from home. “That man you live with is a wolf,” she said again.
Our dad? She got the animal wrong. He was Moose, but we didn’t tell Granny. We were taught not to talk back.
“You can’t stay in a house,” she said, “where you get hurt.”
What did she mean? we asked each other by stretching our shoulders up to our ears. Then we tapped our temples to say, How did she know?
We hardly knew the route to school, around the block. We were only seven years old. Where could we go?
If our teacher had told us to run away, we would have. She was soft and warm and real. But Granny was a disembodied voice we never saw. Not even on video.
At first we lapped up every word she said. Mom’s mom. How could a mom have a mom? That was almost like kids hav
ing kids.
“Tell me everything your folks do and say to you.” Her voice was toothless and spongy.
We stared into each other’s startled faces, looking for the right answer. All we saw was our reflection.
“I’m collecting evidence,” Granny said. We wanted to ask what that word meant, but our lips wouldn’t move.
The day before, Dad had said he would teach us how to drive, fast as a boy. He had slicked his hair back and flicked his cigarette ash on our shoes. “I’ll make you a famous race car driver someday.”
“Better to be safe,” Mom had said, the shoulders of her T-shirt speckled with babies’ spit-up, “and work at Lucky Seven.”
If we shared that conversation with our Granny, would that give her evidence? And if she knew we wanted to be faster than a boy? Than a man? Than an animal? Would she say we were evil, too?
“They won’t let you see me. Isn’t that reason enough?” Granny asked.
We shook the phone to silently say, That depends on whether Granny is good. If she were in a movie, we would know. She would have cheeks like lollipops and would break into song. Maybe she had hamster cheeks or none at all. How could we tell?
We cupped our hands around the phone, pressed it closer to our ears. We might have heard our parents in their bed, turning in their dreams.
Once, we heard Dad call Granny a loon. We didn’t know that was a bird; we thought it was a balloon, without the ball. Without the air that made it rise and fly and flee. The helium that had seeped into Granny’s brain and made her float. Dad also called her airhead.
“Whose side are you on?” Granny asked.
Our side, of course. But whose side was that?
We didn’t say yes, we would go. We didn’t say no. We didn’t say anything to Granny after hello except good-bye.
At breakfast, we asked Mom why we never saw her mom. Dad answered for her. “She doesn’t live in our world. She sees things that aren’t real.” But so did we. We had imaginary friends. Then he asked, “You know what paranoid means?” We didn’t. “What about schizo?”
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