Bright Angel Time

by Martha McPhee

  Monica had pale, translucent skin and stringy orangish hair that fell in clumps as if she had just five thick strands. You could see through it to the pink of her scalp. Her eyes were suspicious, little red slits like a lizard’s, that watched. Nasty eyes searching others, roaming them to see what it was that they’d taken from her, as if anything they had had been stolen directly from her. Beneath the diamond-shaped slide on the vast field that was our school playground, she searched me with those lizard eyes as I told her about hundred-dollar days.

  “Dad gives us a hundred bucks for our birthdays and we can spend it on whatever we want as long as we spend it with him.” I made it sound like he’d been doing this forever, but hundred-dollar days only began after he left.

  “He must really love you,” she said. I looked at her until she had to look away. I loved watching her eyes quiver. I loved hearing her wavering soft voice, laced with a rasp of wonder. Cautious. Afraid to let me know too much, yet still revealing everything. It did something for me, her jealousy, her pain. It made me feel like I really had a lot.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I shrugged my shoulders and pulled up my socks. “And the hundred doesn’t include lunch or any of the extras, like a show or a carriage ride. That’s why I go to New York. There’re more extras. Julia goes to the racetrack to gamble. A different one each year. But there’s not much else to do at the racetrack.” I didn’t mention Jane, who refused the hundred-dollar days, who sent Dad’s presents bounding back to him.

  “I’d go to the racetrack,” Monica declared. “I’d rather double the money than spend it.” Little blue veins shone through her translucent skin. She thought she’d said something smart and that made me mad. Especially because Julia had won.

  “No, you would not go to the racetrack,” I said. “Because you’d lose. Besides, in New York I collect rocks and minerals and paraphernalia for my collection.” I loved that word, so lusciously big and sophisticated, rolling off my tongue. “We go to these tiny shops in basements and they’re jam-packed with gems and fossils and rare rocks. I’ve got a soft blue kimberlite, the rock in which diamonds form. Hundreds of ancient fossils, and a nugget of gold. I’ve got all the tools for collecting more rocks and minerals and just this year Dad bought me a rock tumbler.”

  “What would you want with a bunch of rocks?” she asked.

  I gave her a look. That question annoyed me. “Make a million dollars is what. Some day I’ll know so much I’ll be able to prospect for gold and diamonds and I’ll be worth a lot, a whole lot.” Then I looked into the sky, searching it, pretending to calculate while Monica studied me. Her fingers played with the holes in her tights. It was cold, late autumn. Only the silver beech still had leaves. They would hold on all winter, turning yellow, until spring, when new leaves would push them off. “Last year Dad took me all the way to South Africa to look for gold. We traveled 6,800 feet down in the ground in an elevator to get a nugget of the rock that gold comes from.” That was a lie, of course. I wished I had my bit of gold with me so that I could show it to her. I decided then that I would carry it with me always. “All the gold we saw down there, it was worth millions of dollars.”

  “A hundred-dollar day,” she said, her eyes far away in the trees.

  “You should get your mom to give you one,” I said, flexing my toes inside my shoes.

  ♦

  One of the hardest things about living in the camper was changing clothes. I changed a lot. I changed at least three times a day. In part because the temperature was always changing. In part because it was just something I liked to do. But I learned to master putting on a new dress without revealing any of my body, slipping one arm out, the other in. Lifting one dress off, the other on.

  “I’m going to strip you,” Nicholas said, catching me practice. He stood in the doorway of the camper, sunlight flooding in behind him. A beer can rested in his hand. His eyes were red circles, bloodshot, hidden behind wisps of thin blond hair. He was always drinking beer. “In the middle of the night while you’re sleeping.” Of the big kids, he was the biggest, and he scared me the most. He had said there were so many of us, odds were one of us would die, soon.

  ∨ Bright Angel Time ∧

  Getting Away With Things

  Anton taught us to love and we all tried to learn. When we were all in love, times were great, and after a fight there was always a lot of love to go round – everyone always trying to make everyone else feel better. I was in love with Finny, but since he betrayed me with the rock I gave him the silent treatment and started to love Timothy. I knew it would irritate Finny. Love became a sort of currency with which you could negotiate – the more love you had, the better off you were. We tried to outdo each other with love. Julia was in love with Nicholas and at night they’d sneak out of the camper to wander off by themselves. Jane and Caroline were in love and together they loved James who loved them. He taught them to identify birds and arbitrated for Jane when she and Anton fought. James and Mom loved each other. They’d spend long hours talking about poetry, memorizing and reciting poems to each other. But best of all was when Jane was in love with Anton. When Jane was in love with Anton she’d tease him about his clothes – the lime green Bermudas, the tunics and shirts exploding with colors, the striped shirts and checked pants. “Oh, come on, babe, do I have to teach you a sense of style too?” he’d say, smiling at her with that pouty flirtatious grin.

  Mom was in love with Anton and Anton would never let her out of his sight. Sofia and Nicholas were beginning to love Mom. Caroline already loved Mom. She helped Mom learn the rosary, which Anton had taken to chanting in the evenings before football. We were limber, falling freely, and our world was opening up. Wide. And even Jane was happy. We fell freely backward to each other. Human pillars, we fell and fell and fell.

  The thing about us was that when we all got on we didn’t need anybody else. The world was ours. Or the desert, at least. Some of the most fun we had was getting away with things. Some of the most fun we had was washing up. We washed up in hot springs and when we couldn’t find a hot spring we washed up in hotels. Early, but just after the customer from the night before had left. A roadside hotel. The long kind, flat against the sky, beneath a neon sign. The customer would have left the key in the lock, the way you’re suppose to, and we’d pull into the parking lot, cautiously and through the intercom Anton would tell us the numbers of the rooms that had keys dangling from the doors. We smelled. Dirty. The nine of us lying all over one another. Our clothes wrinkled. Quick like thieves we flashed from the camper to the rooms, showering before the maids got there. My insides raced. Even Jane liked this and momentarily we were complete and perfect and I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Anton loved to get away with things. Mom stood by his side, smiling and proud. We’d roll into town on an empty tank. We could go down lanes marked ‘private’ and not get in trouble. We could go down roads with big orange warning signs about the bridge being out and the bridge wouldn’t be out, or if it were out Anton would find a way around it. We visited parks that were closed, but the rangers let us in. Anton believed. He had faith and even the police couldn’t catch us. If they tried, he’d outrun them or lose them, or if they did pull us over they wouldn’t ticket him.

  “Finny, babe,” Anton said through the intercom. “Put the dope away, babe. No one look out the windows.” We’d seem suspicious if we looked out the windows. He’d taught us that already. The flashing lights swirled over the road and the sirens hollered. Timothy kept squealing that we’d get arrested. “We’re gonna get arrested,” he’d say, his eyes and toothy mouth opening wide. “Arrested.” The camper rolled to a halt. All of us a little nervous. “Bloody hell,” Julia said, trying to sound like James. Nicholas held his guitar and James switched off the cassette player. Each time the same. Sofia put on lipstick. She said she had always wanted to fall in love with a policeman. Caroline said a prayer. Jane stopped stitching her needlepoint.

  The policeman walked stiffly in blue, metal clinking.
Mirrored glasses. Finny rolled up the bag of dope and slipped it in the Wheaties box. I worried about the roaches in the cab ashtray. “Roaches.” I liked that word. It was one of those words that using made me feel big.

  “Well, officer, I’m a, I’m a little embarrassed about all of this,” Anton said, stuttering. His drawl thickened. The policeman asked for his license and registration. Anton had two licenses – one from Texas, the other from New Jersey – so that if he did get ticketed he could divide them evenly between states. Through the intercom you could hear Anton fumbling for his wallet. Inside the wallet there was a J-87 badge. Deputy Commissioner of Parking: Texas State Department of Transportation. It had belonged to his father-in-law – the oil heir – and was an honorary badge the state gave to rich people who ‘contributed’ to the construction of roads.

  “Pardon me, Commissioner. I apologize for the inconvenience, Commissioner.” The policeman tipped his hat and bowed away. Anton told him to have a nice day.

  Sometimes Mom would take a turn. She’d lean across Anton and smile up at the officer and embarrass him. “Officer, it’s just, it’s just…I apologize. You see it’s my fault. It’s my period and II…” Embarrassed, he’d back away.

  Sofia would start painting her toenails again and Julia would flirt with Nicholas again and Finny would dig into the Wheaties for the dope again. The sky was blue, blue and wide with absolutely no clouds.

  ♦

  We rode the minibikes into town sometimes to do the shopping. A couple of us kids on a bike and we zoomed off as fast as we could.

  Anton gave us some money and stickers that read, THIS AD INSULTS WOMEN and we were supposed to sneak them onto boxes that showed women in a compromising way. Women sweeping or ironing or cooking or wearing aprons or doing the laundry. He was trying to teach us things, claimed that was his job. “We’re his acolytes,” Julia said dreamily, lifting her left eyebrow. Mostly we didn’t care about all that. Mostly we just wanted to ride.

  It was vast out there, with nowhere, absolutely, to hide. And though the bikes were little they could move pretty fast. I liked riding the 50 by myself. You could see us spinning doughnuts and you could see us doing wheelies. Sometimes we rode as fast as we could to nowhere, just out, away, zooming over the bumps and leaping into the air. We were riding over sand that used to be a sea. A few patient clouds mocked the blue sky. Air rushed over me and I shut my eyes, feeling the speed. A wake of dust kicked up behind and the soothing sound of the motor sang in my ears.

  We raced. I was racing Timothy when I fell, chasing him actually, through a field of flowering Joshua trees. The trees flowered red, white and blue and we camped near them just because of that. Anton said it was unusual for them to be flowering this time of year and Mom said we were blessed. We had hiked through that field so that we could see all the trees. Hiked haphazardly, without a plan, all of us spreading out into the landscape until we’d gotten ourselves good and lost. Anton loved to get lost. He’d get lost just to get lost and find his way out. Mom had said we were blessed on that hike when a storm rolled in and the rains came down. We were standing there, all over the place, between the trees. The sky turned yellow and the air began to smell, first like an herbal bath, then like mildew and sewers, and as the light turned yellow all the various plants took on the most magnificent colors. Their own colors, but intensified, no longer muted by the sun and heat. Radiant reds and greens and yellows and browns and it was as if we were inside a prism. We had absolutely no idea where we were. “To be alive,” James said. “‘To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life!’”

  “Joyce,” Anton answered. “I always believed that line myself. But add, ‘to be lost’.”

  I was riding the Honda when I hit a creosote bush full throttle and my pubic bone smashed into the handlebars and the minibike somersaulted. We landed together in the sand with the hot engine singeing my shin. All around tall grasses. Brown. With a wonderful straw smell.

  ♦

  It didn’t take long before everyone knew about my bruise, a big, deep purple bruise on my private part, punctuated with tiny spots of black. It was so ugly I told Mom, because I worried something more serious was wrong with me. I worried I wouldn’t be able to have babies and thought maybe I should go to a doctor to check it out. I suggested we go home.

  “Don’t be a silly-billy girl,” Mom said. “Worrying about babies. You’re eight, Kate.” She smiled down on me, pushing her curls behind her ears.

  Then Timothy started teasing me about my bruise and Nicholas too and Sofia and even Jane and Julia thought the bruise was funny, so after a while I began to think it was funny too, except that it hurt. And since everyone knew, I complained.

  “Do you want me to have a look, babe?” Anton asked. He squatted down in front of me and held my hand. We were in the camper. Outside the sun was setting and the sky was all fuchsia.

  “I think it would be a good idea if he checked it, Kate,” Mom said. “Since it makes you such a worry wart.” I felt special that he wanted to check it. I thought checking my bruise was the kind of thing a father would do and I wanted Anton to love me like that.

  Anton put a blanket on the table and lifted me onto it and told me to lie back. Mom stood beside him, pressing her thumbnail into her lip and smirked at me for being so silly. I kind of did feel silly for worrying about babies.

  Some of the others came in and out. The screen door banged. Mostly they stayed outside, doing their own thing. I felt kind of sick and feverish. No one had ever seen my private part before except when I was a baby and I couldn’t remember that. I wished I were wearing better underwear. I took it off. The elastic was frayed and holey. It had been nice underwear, white with a band of fringy lace. Mom used to say that elegant people wore only white underwear. She said we should always have on clean, fresh underwear in case something happened to us, like a car accident or a plane crash, and some stranger had to look at it. I imagined the four of us dead and strangers lifting up our dresses daintily, inspecting our underwear. Mom didn’t say stuff like that anymore.

  Anton’s hand was cold on my stomach. I couldn’t look him in the eye while he inspected the bruise. I drooled. I could feel the drool wet on my cheek and I wiped it away and the back of my palm was shiny with it. It wasn’t that easy showing Anton my private part. But he spoke gently, like a father, so I did as he said. Relaxed, took deep breaths. Mom started fussing around in the kitchen, preparing things for dinner.

  I flinched. I didn’t want to feel anything. I was afraid it would hurt. But it didn’t. Instead came a chilling, whispery sensation. Like I was cracking. Unfamiliar. Mom opened the refrigerator and something toppled out. “Fuck,” she said. Anton’s head was really close, inspecting. I thought of Julia, who loved to inspect. Then I thought about her pictures on the chalkboard and remembered her pointing to the clitoris and the labia, left and right. I almost started laughing, thinking about her pictures. I really hoped something serious would be wrong. My eyes opened wide and my stomach tightened. I wanted to laugh. It seemed like forever was passing.

  “Relax, babe,” he said. I heard Jane yelling at Julia. They were fighting about something or other and I wished I were out there to fight with them, or better, to mediate. Inside it was really hot. I wished Mom were holding my hand the way she used to when I’d have to have a shot at the doctor’s office.

  “It’s a pretty big bruise,” he said. A million knots formed in my stomach. “Relax, Kate,” Anton said again, his voice almost impatient. Goose bumps rose all over me. Suddenly I had this awful feeling crushing through me. I was staring into the camper ceiling. It was dirty, filthy. I wondered if he loved me. I was afraid he didn’t love me. Mom had promised he did. I thought of the way he loved Julia and how she always flirted with him. I wished I could flirt with him.

  “Does she look okay?” Mom asked.

  Someone came to the screen and asked for something. “How’s the bruise, Kate?” Sofia’s voice.

  “She’ll
be fine,” Anton said. “You feel a little better, babe?”

  And he stood up and kissed my forehead. “How about a little game of football?” he asked.

  ♦

  Family prayer and rosary.

  “We’ll do three Our Fathers, ten Hail Marys, and one Glory Be. The idea,” Anton says, “is to chant as the Muslims do and while chanting reflect on whatever you think. Though the idea is to train yourself to think about God.”

  Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Ten times. Those are the only words I can remember. The others I mouth, but there is something soothing in the repetition. I want to learn the words by heart. I love saying them. I want this chant to last forever.

  “If you don’t know Hail Mary or Our Father it doesn’t matter, follow in spirit.”

  After one decade Anton stops and tells one of the joyous mysteries, the Annunciation, and tells the story of God deciding to become man and of God telling Mary by sending the angel. “There doesn’t seem to be anything more joyous than God making himself man to man in the body of a woman.” Anton’s head remains bowed. He asks Julia to read Psalm 4, which she does. “Some of the psalms are didactic and repetitive, but this one I particularly like.”

  During the psalm I can’t think about God. I think of Anton checking my bruise and of how even so the bruise still hurts and then I remember how it had felt, shivery and good, when he’d touched it. I feel dirty. I think about all of us loving each other, about times being good, but how now, even so, I want to go home.