The grainier brown-and-white photos of ancestors unknown to me were either taken in the sugar-beet fields of Minnesota or outside Beijing, and Mom has organized them on the wall so that you’re constantly jumping from one continent to the other. And as if this isn’t disconcerting enough, the last frame in the hallway is a watercolor of Yue Fei, a twelfth-century Chinese warrior who has absolutely no genealogical ties to us. I would never admit it to Dad, but Yue Fei and my Chinese ancestors in brown and white are about as real to me as Prince Charming and the seven dwarves.
I have accepted that half of who I am will have to be learned through translation the way you learn a foreign language. But that doesn’t change what I know in my gut, which is that nothing is like the original. I’m sure Mom and Dad intended these images to boost my sense of cultural identity, but instead they remind me of everything I don’t—and in most cases can’t—know about who I am. The past I know best is the one not hanging on these walls, the one guarded upstairs in dusty albums on dusty shelves, not ready to be hung here on display.
The glowing embers crackle as I peel off my clothes and crouch naked onto the brick hearth. My arms reach into the mouth of the fireplace and bits of cinder stick to my splotched and puckered skin. When I try to rub the soot away, it streaks me with black instead. I have hair-thin cuts on my legs from the fawn’s hooves—at least two dozen—and they sting with the soot I’ve just rubbed in. The bricks are warm, and I inch closer to the dying heat, practically touching the cork-like logs. Blood pumps to every corner of my body, every crevice, and I feel as though my skin is going to split open, it’s so taut with life.
And then I hear it. A buzzing I haven’t heard for almost a day. And with the buzzing, the lights. Not just one light, but every light in the house. The quiet, peaceful sunset has been overshadowed by hundred-watt lights, and a small part of me is disappointed. I round my hands next to my temples and peer out the window. I can feel it happening, can feel my rescue mission hardening into memory, into the fodder for a good story to be told one day many years from now around a full dinner table under dim light. As the moon fades, this adventure begins to sink below the surface of my mind. I push away from the pane, wind my way up the stairs to my room, and get dressed.
“That you, Peg?” Mom’s voice is raspy.
“Power’s on,” I whisper.
“What’re you doing up?”
“Hot chocolate,” I say. “Want me to put on the coffeemaker?” I peek into my parents’ bedroom to see Mom rustling upright from under their thick layer of blankets. She smiles big like Grandma Babs before her eyes are open, then scratches her head and yawns.
Dad flips himself onto his stomach and yanks the layers of blankets over his head before poking his hand out from under it all to find his cell phone on the bedside table.
“It’s 4:30 in the morning, people.” But a second later, I see him swiping across the three-inch screen.
“Six hours of sleep is plenty,” Mom says.
“School’s three hours late,” Dad sighs. “No, they couldn’t possibly let you enjoy a day at home with electricity.”
“Your cheeks are bright red, honey,” Mom says. “Hope you’re not getting sick.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
By the time I get downstairs, Dad’s complaints about living in a household of morning people have faded into the buzzing silence of an energized home. In just one day, a practically microscopic layer of dust has developed on the toaster and coffeemaker and the little milk frother I bought Mom for Mother’s Day last year. I halfheartedly brush off the dust with my index finger before picking up the sugar bowl and a packet of chocolate mix. I grab the spoon on the counter and dip it into the packet of brown powder for a preliminary taste that sets my salivary glands on fire. Right as I dig in for a second spoonful, I hear footsteps.
“Grab me a mug, will you, Peg?” Mom has come down in her zip-up robe and slippers that date to sometime before my birth. The worn fleece elbows are no longer a bright green but the color of a grass stain. Absolutely nothing about this robe is bright and cheery. The plastic zipper is chipped and jagged, and as if all this weren’t enough reason to throw it out, the hem has unstitched itself in the front so that Mom has to hold up the sides to walk, the way you would hold up a full-length evening gown. I watch her whisk to the fridge in her non-gown and remember there’s no milk.
“There isn’t any, Mom.” I am able to pull off a guilt-free tone.
“You didn’t drink a whole carton, Peg.” The flatness of Mom’s voice tells me she was banking on her morning latte. She scans the kitchen counter and the recycling bin, a frown crumpling her forehead beneath which the torturous idea of an early morning without coffee is most likely taking form.
I feel cruel watching her search for something I know she will never find, but the idea of fessing up to the milk and everything that goes along with it is pointless. Either way, there will be no milk for her coffee.
“What’s all this, Peg?” I turn away from my hot chocolate pouch to find Mom examining my snow pants. “They’re soaking wet!”
“Went outside,” I blurt matter-of-factly, as if taking a stroll in knee-deep snow at the crack of dawn is normal. I spoon in another mound of hot chocolate mix into my mouth.
“When?”
“Remember when my cheeks were so pink?” Sparkly, brown particles billow from my lips as I speak.
“Why would you put on your old, cut-up snow pants instead of the new ones for a walk?”
“Just grabbed what I saw first,” I say. The premenopausal stage that Mom is entering makes her incredibly irritable and has practically turned her hair gray overnight (which increases irritability), but there is one upside. She occasionally overlooks anomalies like a walk in the freezing cold before dawn. She can also be forgetful. For example, she has just mistaken the new snow pants in her hands for the old pair she herself threw out last year.
“These aren’t the pants,” she mumbles to herself as she picks them up and examines them.
“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” Dad looks exactly like he did in bed five minutes ago, just vertical. “I haven’t brushed my teeth yet, Peg,” he says to me. “Thought you should know.” Before he swings behind the counter, he sees Mom at the fireplace. “What’s all this?”
“I went out in the snow this morning,” I say. “To see about that fawn.”
“Did you find it?” Mom asks, putting down the pants.
“No.” My first lie.
“Well, I just spotted them without stepping a foot outside,” Dad says. “Mother and baby. Clear as day.”
“Not the twins?”
“Nope,” he blurts.
I slide off the stool to see for myself.
“Don’t believe me?” Dad’s mouth is drooped open like he’s still asleep.
The baby is nestled half-under the belly of its mother. The snow is no longer smooth like it had been yesterday but punctured and streaked—proof of my night with them.
“They were active last night,” Dad says.
The shuffle of Mom’s slippers down the hall startles me from the window.
“Where are you going, Mom?”
“There’s milk in the garage,” she answers, sneering. “There’s that sugar-free coconut milk under the workbench.” She huffs down the hall, grumbling about how she hates coconut milk.
“I’ll go check.” I backtrack to the fireplace for my boots and whisk past her toward the door.
The adrenaline that took me into the cold last night is of a different variety now. Instead of adventure and rescue, it’s the fear of being found out that takes me outside. Since last night, the brilliance of the snow under the moonlit sky has taken on a weak yellow-gray hue.
In the garage, the spilled milk has been absorbed by the rough cement floor. I drag the bag of cut grass to the corner and throw the sta
le hot dog buns into the trash can. The milk carton is empty, and I kick it toward the recycling bin. Mom’s thermos and the afghan are the only incriminating bits of evidence that something out of the ordinary happened. I drop the thermos into the trash can and watch it sink under sharp-edged tufts of crumpled paper. As for the afghan, I roll it up and bury it inside an old snow saucer that I cover with a burlap bag.
“Peg?”
“Found it, Mom!” I race to the workbench and grab the coconut milk.
“Your jeans are cut up too. Not just the snow pants.” Mom has trudged through the snow in her slippers. The bottom of her robe has turned a dark grayish-green and droplets of water trickle down her ankles, but she’s too busy trying to read my every move to notice. She pulls me in for a morning hug, but it feels more like a snare. “The jeans weren’t like that yesterday,” she says quietly into my ear.
I pull away and hand her the milk.
“You tried to save it and it fought back.” Mom’s not half as premenopausal as I’d like to believe. “They have such sharp hooves,” she says examining the jeans in her hands.
“How would you know?”
“I wasn’t always a ‘Shakespeare junkie,’ as you say.” She rattles her head and purses her lips. “You think I never did anything a little crazy?”
I am staring blindly into the white while my mind filters what I can and can’t tell her. That the fawn’s twin is still alive? Sure, I could tell her that. That I ran after them through the wetlands and could barely drag myself home? That one I’d prefer carrying to my grave.
Mom gazes blankly into the cold and scrunches up her shoulders. “I once brought home an injured goat that had strayed from a nearby farm. I fed it, even tried to bandage its leg that had been cut on our barbwire fence. I broke my glasses trying to wrangle that animal into the pen. Dad was furious, wouldn’t talk to me for days. But Mom was different. The next day, she bought me the Wonder Woman glasses. She didn’t know Wonder Woman but liked the name because I was curious. You know, full of wonder. For her, the name fit.”
“Why didn’t you become a vet?”
“I’m pretty happy being a Shakespeare junkie,” she says, staring blankly ahead. But I wonder if she means it.
“It ruined your thermos,” I say, pulling it out from the trash.
She crouches to pick up the collar and hangs it on the hook above the workbench. “Really? A collar?”
“It didn’t work.”
“I’m not surprised,” she says, rolling her eyes, and I feel the density in the air lighten. “But let’s keep this to ourselves. Dad doesn’t need to know.”
“I saw the twin fawn last night, Mom. I was sure it was dead.”
“That’s impossible.”
Her flatness stuns me silent. “Impossible?” I brace myself.
“It was hit on Barry Lane three days ago.”
“Did you see it happen?” I feel sick. The images of twin shadows galloping through the snow flash across my mind as a second wave of nausea washes over me. Or am I going crazy?
“It was killed instantly, Peg. It didn’t suffer.”
“Some jerk speeding, I assume.”
“No one was speeding. It was dark.” There is a protectiveness in Mom’s voice that makes me clammy.
“Was it you, Mom?”
“No,” she says, pulling me into her arms against my will. “Peg, he’s torn up about it.”
“Dad? Devastated?” I push away from her chest. “He thinks we should grab our bows and arrows and go on a hunting spree.”
“He’s not coldhearted, Peg.” She pulls me close and we walk to the side door of the house. I can feel her warm breath on my earlobe. “To be honest, Peg, you and Dad are very much alike.”
We reach the end of the hall, and I spy Dad leaning into the refrigerator.
“Want a salami and cheese sandwich, Peg?”
“Sure,” I say. “But there’s no bread.”
“There are stale hot dog rolls in here somewhere.” Dad rummages through the various plastic bags folded and bound with rubber bands on the top shelf.
“There’s nothing,” I say. “I’ve already looked.”
“I hope you didn’t go feeding it to all your wildlife mooches this morning.” Dad has resumed his aggressive anti-wildlife rhetoric, but I am able to scratch below the words to find a vulnerability. I reach for the salami at the same time Dad does and our fingers touch.
“Jeez!” Dad and I scoff in unison.
“I was here first,” he says.
Things are back to normal, and the slightly disturbing thought that we may not be so different, he and I, fades under the friction.
8. PEG
Wednesday
Jeb twists around in his seat to talk to Rachel, who sits behind him and is clearly not interested. Her head is buried so deeply in her paperback that her nose is practically touching the page, but Jeb is unstoppable. Or blind. Or just doesn’t care that his chosen listener has no intention of doing so.
“You lost power last night, right?” His voice is jittery and his eyes are red.
Rachel slowly shrugs, her gaze never leaving the page I know she’s not reading. Jeb is Rachel’s Becky Bartholomew, and as hard as it is for me to imagine, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that compared to Rachel, I’ve got it good.
The second hand on the clock above Mr. Ditman’s desk seems to be ticking in slow motion. My eyes drift closed literally every two seconds, and only with the shuffle of another student entering the classroom are they startled open. Even Jeb loses his entertainment value when up against a sleepless night. Another shuffle of feet and I open to find Becky in her blah, skin-colored coat. As soon as she slips behind her desk, she starts up, just like Jeb.
“Never slept better,” she mutters. “Contrary to popular opinion, no connection with the outside world isn’t so bad.”
I know Becky’s talking to me, but I pretend to be asleep because normal people leave you alone when you’re asleep. The problem is, of course, that Becky’s not your typical person. I feign being asleep anyway, but my shoulders are tight and the hair on my arms is standing on end, waiting for her spiderlike index to scratch my shoulder.
After a while, however, the hubbub of whispers and zippers and rustling paper gets me drifting off. I breathe in deep and exhale hard. My neck muscles loosen and my forehead droops heavily into my woven fingers. My eyes are rolling to the back of my head. My stomach dives inward toward my spine. A tingle buzzes through my shoulders as my body approaches relaxation, and I shiver. And right as dream images begin to form, Becky’s sinister finger taps. Tap, tap, tap. Her signature three. There is an element of genius in her timing. Becky would make a much better torture chamber consultant than editor in chief.
Mr. Ditman walks in looking scragglier than usual.
“Let’s get started, people.” He throws his leather jacket onto the back of his chair and clears his throat. “I know we’re all surprised that school is on time today after the storm,” he says. “But let’s focus.” He clears his throat again. “Now open your books to page 467.”
This textbook, My World and Yours, is as heavy as a brick but not quite as interesting as one. Today, when I pull it to the desktop from the floor, it feels more like a cinder block. Pain shoots through my lower back as I heave it upward. I turn to the right page and stare at the title, “Cold War and Postwar Changes,” and my eyes close. For good.
“Wake up back there!” Mr. Ditman is clapping.
I shake my head and open my eyes as wide as they will go. I pull hard with my eyebrows but they close again.
“I had a rough night too,” Ditman says. “Broken water pipe, leaky basement, the works.”
Whenever a teacher offers up anything personal to his class, there’s always some student, typically the worst, who suddenly becomes all ears.
“What pipe?” Jeb asks. My World isn’t even out of his backpack yet.
“Hot water heater,” Mr. Ditman answers with curt civility, the way I answer Becky.
“Is the heater exposed to an outside wall?” Jeb doesn’t disappoint.
“Yes.”
“How did you thaw your pipe?”
“A workbench light did the trick.”
“You should get yourself some pipe heaters. They wrap around like a heating pad, but you don’t have to plug them in.”
Ditman huffs in recognition but keeps his nose in his textbook, Rachel-style. And suddenly, I feel a tinge sorry for our clown. So far this morning, he’s zero-and-two, and the official school day is just one minute old.
Ditman pries his head from the pages long enough to gaze outside before doing something I’ve never seen him do at the start of class. He slaps shut his book.
“This is Social Studies, right?”
We all nod or mutter its equivalent except for Oblivia, who answers firmly, confidently, like it’s a real question. She’s even got her hand half-raised, half-raised only in the name of modesty.
“What was social about last night, class?”
“Nothing,” Jeb blurts with a sneer so big that his wad of blue gum topples from his fat rubber lips to the floor.
“Is that your gum?” Oblivia asks disgusted.
“No, it’s your gum,” Jeb answers.
“I don’t chew gum,” Olivia says.
Oblivia and Jeb turn out to be a match made in hell.
“Nothing? Really?” Ditman asks, this time looking Jeb straight in the eye.
Hold-Up Page 12
