Like Mandarin

by Kirsten Hubbard

  But the small space beyond the door revealed none of those things—just more of the same shabby brown carpet, pouring into her room like sewage. The same weird stains on the ceiling. The only furnishings were her bed, a tall dresser that leaned to one side, and a bookshelf with no books. Scuff marks patterned the lower third of her walls. There were no posters, no drawings, no photographs. No personality. As if the girl living there considered it a temporary apartment.

  “It’s pretty shitty, yeah?” Mandarin asked, as if reading my mind. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, I’m glad you made it over here.”

  “Really?” I said before I could stop myself. I hugged my textbooks more tightly.

  “Sure.” She grinned. “I mean, I thought you might not come. I’m not dumb, y’know. I get how weird this is.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “I said I’m not dumb, all right? Course it’s weird. I’m, what, three years older than you? And you’re here to help me. How is that not weird?”

  I shrugged again.

  “It’s bizarre,” Mandarin said. “But here’s the thing: I got no shame. I know you’re, like, some kind of child genius, yeah? So I’d rather have you help me out than one of the kids who’ve been going to school with me since fifth grade. They’re all assholes. Not even worth the butts in my ashtray. If I used an ashtray, that is.”

  I didn’t know what to make of the cheerful tone of her voice, her grin. It was like she took pleasure in being a misfit. While I felt exactly the opposite.

  “I really do need help, though,” she went on. “I just slacked off and nothing makes sense to me anymore. And I promised I’d graduate. I promised my dad, I mean. He’s a good guy, deep down. But I can’t stand it when teachers try to jam their faces in my business. I’d have asked another student for help, but, like I said, so many of the smart kids are assholes, and the passably decent ones are, like, terrified of me.…”

  She glanced at me. I probably looked terrified.

  Her grin appeared to have frozen to her face. “Well. Want anything to drink? Or a snack?”

  I shrugged for the third time.

  “You don’t say much, do you? It’s all right. Just make yourself at home. I’ll be right back. And don’t worry, I won’t bring you tap water.” Mandarin pulled the door shut behind her, leaving me alone.

  Alone in Mandarin Ramey’s room.

  I hugged my books so tightly the corners bit into my stomach. It was surreal. What every boy and man in town—and most of the girls and women—wouldn’t give to take my place.

  When I heard the phone ring on the other side of the house, and Mandarin answer, the temptation to explore became irresistible.

  I didn’t know how long I had. So I started at the closest point: Mandarin’s dresser. Opening the drawers would be too invasive, so I settled for the Indian basket on top. I combed my fingers through the knickknacks inside: barrettes, bandages, tampons, a windup plastic puppy.

  The top shelf of her bookcase held a dead cactus in a pot. It looked like old-man flesh, wrinkled and white-whiskered. A stereo stood on the shelf below. On the shelf below that, facedown, as if it had toppled forward, a picture frame.

  I picked it up. It was a Polaroid of Mandarin as a little girl: scowling, the sun in her eyes, wearing jeans with an elastic waistband and a white T-shirt.

  The photo reminded me of the way she’d looked the first time I’d seen her, eight years earlier. I wondered who had taken the picture. The person behind a camera told as much as who was in front of it. My pageant photos in Momma’s album were proof.

  I set it back facedown on the shelf.

  When I turned around, the first thing I saw was Mandarin’s bed. I stared at the balled-up comforter, the rumpled sheets, the pillow still indented from the curve of her head. And suddenly, I imagined her there: rolling across the mattress, her black hair sticking to her naked back, a male forearm curling around from underneath—

  I blinked the image away as Mandarin burst through the door.

  She thumped two glasses onto the dresser, shoving the Indian basket carelessly aside. “It’s ginger ale,” she said. “I considered lacing it with a shot or two of vodka, but then I thought, ‘Nah, she ain’t the vodka type. More of a Peach Schnapps kinda girl.’ Am I right?”

  “Well, no … I’ve never—”

  She laughed. “Just yanking your chain. Course you don’t drink. But seriously, what do you do?”

  I hesitated. “What do you mean?”

  “Like, what do you like to do? If we’re going to be working together, we’ve got to be pals too, right? So tell me: how do you fill your time, Grace Carpenter?”

  I fumbled through my brain. I hated questions like that. I never knew what to say, what was babyish, and what wasn’t.

  “I read a lot,” I admitted to Mandarin’s bare feet. Her toenails looked jagged, almost bitten. I wondered if the bottoms of her feet were scarred from all the stamped-out cigarettes. “And I spend a lot of time in the badlands. Looking for rocks and things.”

  “No kidding?”

  She sounded genuinely surprised. I risked a glance up.

  “Like what kind of things? Like, arrowheads?”

  “Sure. Or like, fossils and …”

  Mandarin was on her hands and knees, reaching under her bed. She pulled out a jar filled with what looked like broken wedges of peanut brittle.

  They were arrowheads. Maybe fifty of them, all jumbled together. Did she have any idea how ancient they were? She should have wrapped them separately in soft cloth and tucked them carefully into a shoe box, like I did my rocks.

  Mandarin motioned me over. “What do you think?”

  She unscrewed the top of the jar and dumped the arrowheads onto her bed. Involuntarily, my hand shot out and grabbed one.

  “It’s perfect!” I exclaimed. “Look at it. Blue-white chalcedony, and not a single chip. Do you know how rare that is?”

  “No clue.”

  “It’s old, too. You can tell it’s old. Like ten thousand years. These aren’t even called arrowheads—they’re projectile points. They’re older than the bow and arrow.”

  I knew how much of a nerd I was being, but I couldn’t help it. At least Mandarin seemed interested.

  “Lemme see.” She stuck out her hand.

  I set the arrowhead on the cushion of her palm. She examined it thoughtfully. “Huh,” she said. “What do y’know.”

  “And this one! It’s tiger skin obsidian. My all-time favorite.” I held the amber-colored stone up to the light. “See the glow?”

  Mandarin tipped her head to the side. Her eyes were the same color as the arrowhead.

  “Where did you get all these?” I asked. I’d been hunting for years, and I’d only found seven. Only two unbroken, and even those were chipped.

  “Oh,” she said dismissively. “Around.” She swept the arrowheads back into the jar. I hoped she’d offer me one, but she didn’t. She set the jar on the floor and then flopped onto her bed. “Have a seat,” she ordered.

  “So, where do you want to start?” I asked, as if I hadn’t heard her. “The Pony Express?”

  “Start at the beginning. I’ve forgotten everything. How about cave people? Start with them.” She smacked the bed beside her. “Sit!”

  At last, like an obedient dog, I perched on the very edge of her bed. I thought I could feel the heat of her mattress through the fabric of my jeans. I shook my head and flipped open the history textbook in my lap.

  “You know, I don’t think cave people are in here,” I said. “And we’ve got math to cover too. And I have to be home for dinner by seven. My mother takes it seriously.”

  “What, dinner?”

  “Well, yeah … She likes to cook.”

  Mandarin sat up and peered at me, as if I were some strange specimen she’d collected in her arrowhead jar. “I bet you even sit around the table,” she said. “Wow. I ain’t had a family dinner li
ke that—I don’t think ever, to tell you the truth. Then again, a well-meaning but drunk-ass dad and a shameful daughter ain’t much of a family. My mother killed herself before I moved to town.”

  “She did?”

  I recalled what I’d heard about Mandarin’s mother. Supposedly, they’d spent the first half of Mandarin’s life together, hopping from small town to small town in the southeastern corner of the state. Then, for reasons nobody knew, Mandarin moved in with her father in Washokey. About the mother herself, rumors were scarce.

  I’d definitely never heard she was dead.

  “Wanna know how she did it?” Mandarin asked.

  “How she …”

  “It was really gruesome—not for the faint of heart. You better sit down for this one.” She paused, as if I weren’t already sitting. “It happened in our old apartment. First, the cops found a noose made out of knotted-up dishrags, but my mother didn’t own enough to make a proper one. Then, in the hallway, they found a whole bunch of sleeping pills, but just over-the-counter ones, lying all over the ground. And then, in the bedroom, know what they found? My mom, dead on the ground, with duct tape wrapped around her mouth like ninety times. She’d suffocated herself.”

  Suddenly, I found it hard to breathe. I wondered if Mandarin had been home when it happened. If she’d seen the body. “I—I’m so sorry.”

  Mandarin shrugged. “I’m over it.”

  I nodded. “Well, we don’t have much time,” I said. “Maybe we could come up with a list of community service ideas, and then we could—”

  “Aw, screw community service.”

  I shielded my chest with my textbook as Mandarin rolled off the bed, stomped across the room, and kicked the wall. So that’s where the scuff marks came from.

  “But I thought you wanted—” I began.

  “School is horseshit.”

  I mouthed the words I’d seen on the door of the bathroom stall as Mandarin flounced over to her stereo and jammed it on to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.” It was kind of embarrassing, like a movie sound track that didn’t fit.

  “I love this song,” Mandarin said, pacing around the room. “Do you? Probably not. Everyone around here likes that hokey country shit. Anyway, I know what I said. And I meant it at the time. I always got good intentions. I just hate it, all of it. I’m not stupid, even though people think I am. It’s just—there’s got to be a better way, y’know?”

  I tucked my feet under the bed so they wouldn’t get trampled, trying to make myself as small as possible. “A better way to do what?”

  “To get out.”

  “Out of where?”

  “Of where?” Mandarin laughed contemptuously. “Of Washokey! Of this little cow-shit town in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing here! We’re hundreds, thousands of miles away from anything worthwhile. The whole town’s falling apart, the people are rotting, but for some fucking reason it’s like nobody ever leaves!”

  She stopped pacing.

  “It’s suffocating. And it ain’t just suffocating me, but everybody.”

  I thought of her mom and the duct tape.

  “Everybody’s dying a little more every second,” she said. “Like frogs stuck in a septic tank. But not a single person in this shit town gets it. Nobody gets it.”

  To my astonishment, she dropped to her knees. Right in front of me, on the hideous old-man carpet. She grabbed my hands. I willed them not to shake.

  “Except maybe you, Gracey.”

  Why do I get it?

  “Did you know I read your essay?”

  I swallowed hard. “You did?”

  “They had ’em all hanging on the bulletin board outside Beck’s office. I had a couple chances to flip through yours while I waited. I read it and I was like, finally, here’s somebody who understands!”

  I had trouble meeting her eyes. Because how could my essay have meant something to her when I’d written it for them—all the people she hated?

  “It was just for the contest.… I don’t even remember what I wrote, exactly.”

  “You’re not like the rest of them. All everybody does here is bitch and moan about how they want to move to the big city, how there’s never nothing to do here—but they don’t mean it. Not truly. Otherwise, they’d try. But you …”

  She squeezed my hands.

  “You’ve got your shit together. You know how easy it is to get stuck in this place, and unlike the rest of them, you’re actually trying to get unstuck. You see, Gracey? We’re two of a kind. That’s why I wanted you to come over. We’ll die here if we don’t get out.”

  She was so close to me I could see my reflection in her pupils.

  “You’ve still got lots to learn. But we’re two of a kind. I can feel it.”

  Two of a kind.

  What if she’s right? implored the hopeful girl inside me, pounding on the bars of my rib cage. You have it in you. What if I really could be like Mandarin?

  “M-maybe I should go.”

  “Go? Why?”

  Because I’m not you, I wanted to say. You’re wrong, and the girl inside me is wrong. I’m nothing like you at all.

  I couldn’t look at her as I pulled my hands from hers, closed my textbook, and stood.

  “It’s not like I’m asking you to run away with me,” Mandarin said. “I just wanted to talk. Even in your essay you said—”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” And then I fled.

  I listened to my sister sing while I did the dishes. Her voice was as warm and fluid as the sudsy water pouring over my hands. She was rehearsing Andrea Bocelli’s “Con Te Partirò” for the upcoming pageant.

  In Italian.

  It had all started the afternoon when Momma put an Italian opera album on repeat. After just two loops, Taffeta was singing along. She couldn’t understand Italian or read Italian words. But she could sing Italian perfectly.

  That was my sister’s secret weapon.

  It was a mighty good one. So good it seemed almost blasphemous for something that transcendent to be unveiled in a small-town pageant. I’d been in dozens of child beauty pageants and attended dozens more. I’d never heard a contestant sing in another language. As a matter of fact, outside of our crappy high school language classes, I’d never heard anybody in Washokey speak another language, other than the handful of Mexican migrants who picked sugar beets in the fall.

  I drizzled a trail of lime green soap over a pink plate and scrubbed. Although I never admitted it, I loved listening to Taffeta sing. As long as I stayed in the kitchen while she rehearsed, I could eavesdrop without Momma’s knowing. But that night, Taffeta seemed tired. It was past her bedtime. Momma’s off-key screeching kept interrupting the song. And worst, the memory of what had happened at Mandarin’s house kept pushing against the backs of my eyeballs, threatening to flood.

  Mandarin Ramey had invited me into her world. And I had refused her.

  But her world isn’t what I thought it would be, I thought, trying to console myself. Just like her crummy bedroom, or the inside of her house. The reality was entirely different from the fantasy. Like opening Pandora’s box when I’d only considered the engravings on the outside. I thought she’d be her confident, carefree self.

  I didn’t know she’d be so vulnerable.

  When I pulled my arm from the suds, I noticed Mandarin’s address—34 Plains Street—still visible on my skin. I reached for the dish soap and squeezed a trail over the angular red letters. With the rough side of my sponge, I scrubbed until my skin felt raw.

  “Grace?” Momma called. My sister stopped singing. “Could you come here a minute?”

  In the living room, Taffeta stood on top of the coffee table, wearing her new blue pageant dress. Her cheeks glowed pink with exertion. My mother, kneeling in a pool of sewing debris, squinted at the needle she was attempting to thread.

  “You want me to do that?” I offered.

  “No, I wanted you to …” She paused. “Just a second. One second
. Almost got it. Oh, it slipped. These things are awful. There! It went in. Lovely!”

  I glared at her. She was being Princess Adrina: teacup-toting British royalty out of a bad television miniseries. Her newest character to go with the phony accent. Even when we were her only audience, she felt it necessary to pretend. The real Adrina Carpenter emerged only when she yelled. Or on those mornings when she sat staring at the kitchen table, inexplicably depressed.

  “I need you to hold the dress tightly around Taffeta’s middle while I sew it together. This is real fine quality fabric, did I tell you?”

  With both hands, I pulled the dress taut around Taffeta’s middle. I leaned away from Momma as she leaned in to stitch. Even so, I was assaulted by the scent of the apple conditioner she used to glossify her brown hair, mulled with the smell of the spicy cinnamon gum she liked to chew. A pleasant fragrance to anyone else, but it made me gag. I breathed through my mouth.

  Mandarin’s mother is dead.

  The thought set my insides reeling. Everybody knew that Mandarin lived alone with her father, Solomon Ramey, a man who seemed to exist only in and around his bar—except for the time I saw him at the Sundrop Quik Stop. He was tall and gaunt, his face dreadfully unique: a beaky nose, yellow skin, thin black hair, a crumpled brow. Like some kind of bogeyman. When I tried to imagine him at home with Mandarin—the two of them drinking coffee at the table or eating canned chili in front of the TV in that dark house—the scenario seemed outrageous. Almost as outrageous as my helping Mandarin with her schoolwork.

  Mandarin’s mother had always been this shadowy, mysterious figure the town knew little about. Some people supposed she was an alcoholic. Others claimed she had a pain disorder. Physical or mental, they never specified. Still others assumed she was simply too poor to take care of her daughter.

  Nobody guessed Mandarin’s mother was dead.

  A dead father, like mine, was nothing shocking. In a town where every man owned at least two guns, hunting accidents happened frequently. Also mining accidents. And car wrecks, like the one Momma’s parents had been in, even though the county highways were wide and lonely. Washokey men always found ways to get themselves killed. Often explosively.