Like Mandarin

by Kirsten Hubbard

  Fathers, in a way, were expendable. Having a mother was the important thing, the thing that made you normal.

  Well, except in my case.

  Momma tapped Taffeta’s stomach with the back of her hand. “Can’t you suck in a bit more, baby?”

  “But then I can’t sing.”

  “At the pageant you’ll have to suck in and sing at the same time. You might as well start now.”

  Taffeta glanced at me. Then she sucked in her belly as best she could and attempted to squeeze out the notes.

  Without looking at me, Momma remarked, “So I heard you went to tutor the Ramey girl today.”

  I practically jumped. “From who?”

  “I’ve got my sources.”

  Polly Bunker. Alexis’s mom had spies everywhere, probably including Plains Street. Half the mothers in town were part of her coven of gossips.

  “I don’t like you going over there,” Momma said quietly, as if Taffeta couldn’t hear her. “That girl’s a tramp.”

  “I know that,” I said, hating the plaintive tone in my voice. “But she needs help in school. Ms. Ingle asked me to. It’s for my service project.”

  “I thought we decided you’d work backstage at Little Miss Washokey!”

  “You decided that.”

  She shook her head. “That girl’s beyond help, Grace. The mother’s who-knows-where, and the father’s a drunkard. You know what they say about him.…” She lowered her voice even more and tipped her head toward mine. “About how when Mandarin was younger, he used to—”

  “Momma, I don’t want to hear it, all right! I know what they say!”

  “I just don’t want you getting mixed up with a girl like that. There’s no future for her but trouble. Believe me, I know! I know better than anybody. And the last thing you need is for people to associate you with her. They’ll look down on you, too.”

  She wound the thread into a knot and then snapped it off. “You can let go now.”

  In my bedroom, I slammed the door and fell face-first onto my mountain of pillows. They had been my grandmother’s, and they reeked of musk and age. I smashed my face into them so deeply I could hardly breathe.

  My mother was clueless. Didn’t she see? She was only making Mandarin seem better.

  Late that night I lay awake with a single white sheet pulled over my ear. It was warm out, and I had left my window open. The darkness chimed with the midnight music of crickets.

  Several minutes had gone by before the low hum rumbled into my consciousness. Distant at first, the sound grew louder and louder as it approached, until it came around the corner and surged into a roar. Smashing one hand over my nose, I kicked off my sheet, darted across the room, and slammed the window shut right as the mosquito truck lumbered down our alley. I could see it through the chinks in my backyard fence as it hunched along, saturating the air with poison.

  I remained at the window until the truck rounded the corner. The roar faded into a dull rumble. Now the crickets were silent.

  I’d forgotten that spring brought mosquitoes, followed by the pesticide trucks to destroy them. Spring also brought the cottonwood snow that stuck to the bottoms of my shoes. It brought the agony of fire-ant bites, the crash-shatter of thunderstorms, and the dread of another sunburned summer. Three endless months with nothing for me to do except reread old books and accompany Momma and Taffeta on pageant trips.

  Even more than summer, I dreaded that first yellow cottonwood leaf in August, which meant autumn, and the start of school. At least school filled my time.

  Most of all, I dreaded Washokey’s winters. The chapped hands, the puddles in the hallways, the searing winds during our walk to school. The burny belch of radiators, making our classrooms reek like wet dog. And the two dreary weeks of holidays I spent cooped up with my mother. It took centuries for spring to arrive.

  Spring—which I dreaded.

  I dreaded every season. How tragically depressing. Like when I sat in class, staring at the clock, willing the second hand to move faster. Until I remembered I had no place to go. Not until college, at least.

  As long as I lived in Washokey, would there be nothing for me to look forward to?

  I stared out the window, both my hands gripping the sill. In our backyard, which we rarely used, I saw a plastic baby pool filled with stagnant brown rainwater. My rusty bicycle, half hidden by dry grass. A pair of Taffeta’s old red pageant shoes.

  I sighed, then crossed the room and fell back onto my bed.

  I found myself thinking about an incident in seventh grade. A bird had somehow flown into the busy cafeteria during lunchtime. He darted from one side of the room to the other, flying faster and faster, until at last he slammed into one of the enormous windows. Then he picked himself up, dove across the room, and slammed into the opposite window. Thunk. He did it again, and again. The cafeteria was filled with hoots and laughter while the bird wrecked himself against the deceptive square of sky. I’d wanted to shout at everyone, to shut them up. But even if they’d heard me, no one would have listened.

  Right now I felt like that bird.

  Mandarin’s words flared back to me all of a sudden, as if she were flitting back and forth across the dark room beside me, beseeching: We’re two of a kind. I can feel it.

  But how did she know?

  And then I remembered: she had read my essay.

  Sure, I’d written it for the judges. But there were some truths, too. Things I didn’t quite believe but wanted to. About how we all had leaders inside us. And we couldn’t let other people hold us back. Because that first step into the future had to be ours alone.

  Before I fully realized I was moving, I’d jumped up, yanked open my dresser drawer, and thrown on my clothes over my pajamas. I shoved my desk chair over to the window. Heaving it open, I climbed from the chair onto the sill. I lowered myself until my feet were dangling in the open air, over the ground almost ten feet below.

  I hung there for a moment, my heart thumping.

  Then I let go.

  Although the county dump was only a couple of minutes out of town, the alley behind Main Street was littered with discarded couches, avocado-colored appliances, and Dumpsters overflowing with trash. Drops of sweat rolled down my back as I jogged down the alley, dodging the forsaken debris.

  I passed behind the hospital where we’d all been born: a two-story house converted into a clinic. Next came the row of offices for mining companies and telecommunications, the gas station, and the Sundrop Quik Stop. The grocery store was on the other side of the street, along with the Buffalo Grill, the bank with an ATM no one trusted, and a solitary clothing shop that also sold souvenirs and fake turquoise jewelry. There wasn’t much more to town than that. On side streets, the junk shop, the post office, and the Washokey Gazette. Bars and churches—Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopal—all of which served as the social headquarters for Washokey grown-ups.

  Solomon’s was the only bar located next door to a church. As I approached it, I heard the twang of country music, along with male laughter slurred by booze. My jog slowed until I was trudging with my head down, as if there were a wind to lean into, though there was no wind, not that night.

  I stopped when I saw the yellow chow dog sprawled in front of the bar’s back doorway. Milky cataracts fogged his eyes. He panted at me, his purple tongue hanging out like a piece of Canadian bacon. Usually, he slept out front.

  I stood on the other side of the alley, breathing in the lingering scent of mosquito poison, watching the dog’s barrel chest rise and fall, and I thought, I can’t do this.

  Suddenly, the door swung open and Mandarin burst out, along with a blast of music. It seemed almost magical, as if I’d willed her appearance through telekinesis. She wore a black cocktail apron, spiked with pens and straws, and she’d tied back her hair in a proper ponytail, with elastic instead of yarn.

  “Grace?” she said. “What the hell?”

  I realized how creepy I must have looked, standing there in the shad
owy alley. I took one step forward, then halted as a man came out of the doorway behind her. He was tall and thin with bug-out eyes and a dopey smile, like he couldn’t believe his good fortune.

  “Who’re you?” he asked me.

  Ignoring him, I took a deep breath. “I wanted to apologize for the way I acted earlier,” I said. “It was stupid.”

  “Hey,” Mandarin said. “No big deal.”

  “I’m really embarrassed.”

  “It’s no big deal. Truly.”

  When I glanced up, she was smiling, but there was nothing mocking about it. “I really am sorry.”

  “All forgiven. Now cut it out, will you?”

  The knots in my stomach finally began to unwind. “Whose dog is that?” I asked, pointing at the chow with the toe of my shoe.

  Mandarin looked at him fondly. “He’s kind of everybody’s, but I guess he really belongs to my dad. Name’s Remington, like the gun, but we call him Remy.”

  “Remy Ramey,” I said.

  “Sleeps most of the time. He’s, like, sixteen. Even older than you.”

  “So …” I glanced at the door to the bar, still half open.

  Mandarin laughed. “Don’t even think about it. Hell, I’m too young to be here myself legally, but because of my dad, I get away with it. Anyways, I can get off early if I want.”

  “Right now?”

  “Sure, right now. How ’bout we go for a walk?”

  The dopey-faced man cleared his throat. We both looked at him. “Just you wait a minute,” he began. “You said that—”

  “Never mind what I said.” Mandarin shouldered him aside. “Half the time what I say is full of shit.”

  His eyes grew even bulgier, like a disconcerted pug’s—the complete opposite of scary, which I had assumed all Mandarin’s men were. Mandarin withdrew a wad of folded bills from her apron, unwound it from her hips, and tossed it into the weeds beside the back door. She shoved the bills in her pocket. Then she nodded at me, and we took off down the alley together.

  The irrigation canal ran along the southern edge of town, with narrow ditches branching in every direction. They gurgled beside the roads and along the edges of pastures, free water for people’s sheep and horses. When I was eight, I’d leaned over a ditch to pat a neighbor’s horse and had tumbled in. Because no one had seen me fall, I’d been forced to crawl out and slog home alone, leaving a snail trail of muddy footprints behind me.

  Ever since, I’d avoided the canal and its treacherous ditches. But that night was different. The twitter of night birds tickled the air, and the only light came from the moon. Mandarin and I sat on a rocky bank, our feet in the water.

  “And everybody starts looking around, all of us thinking the same thing: ‘What’s that god-awful stink?’ ” Mandarin brought her cigarette to her lips and took a quick pull before continuing her story.

  “Then we notice the farmer. One of the hills variety. The type of guy who looks all blinky and weird when you see him in the grocery store, like the lights are too bright for him.”

  I nodded in recognition.

  “He’s wearing these big rubber farm boots, and they’re completely caked with shit—so much his legs look like big hairy monster paws. Like, every possible kind of livestock manure. Cattle, sheep, chickens. Probably even elephant and brontosaurus. He sees everybody staring his way, and for a second it seems like he might take off. But instead, he comes over to me and he mumbles, ‘Can I get a whiskey and water?’ ”

  I giggled. “No explanation?”

  “No! No apology or nothing.” Mandarin kicked up one submerged ankle, sending water flickering across the surface. “And then I—Hey, look!”

  At first I thought she was pointing at the rusted corpse of a car partially hidden in the reeds across the canal. Then I saw the bird with feathers like autumn leaves rummaging through the undergrowth.

  “That’s a pheasant,” Mandarin told me.

  “I know,” I said.

  Too late I wondered if I should have pretended not to know—the way I did in class so no one would think I was trying to show off.

  “Once, I had to do an art project out of their feathers,” I said quickly, “when I was a little kid. I hope they didn’t have to kill one, you know, for the project. But I made a tiger, from all the striped feathers pasted on construction paper. Fangs from candy corn. My mother was angry when I brought it home. She thought I should have made a bunny, something cute.”

  I brought my fingers to my lips. The story had burst out on its own, as if it had been churning in my throat all this time. Maybe that was what happened when you had nobody to talk to. Thoughts and memories kept piling up, and when you finally had an outlet, they all came flooding out, like the river when they opened the sluice gates into the canal. Whoosh.

  “It figures,” Mandarin said. “Parents got nothing better to do in this town than interfere. Sometimes it’s enough to make me glad my own mom’s dead.”

  She pulled the rubber band from her hair and shot it into the water, splintering her reflection into a thousand tiny ripples. The pheasant screeched and bustled away.

  “Scram, before the hunters get you,” she said. “I love those stupid birds. They’re one of the only good things about living in Washokey.”

  I mustered up my courage and asked, “Why do you hate it here so much?”

  “Well, for one thing, the way the stupid macho assholes in this town take anything that’s beautiful and free and then shoot it.”

  I felt a little stunned. Hunting was Washokey’s favorite pastime, and belittling it was one of Washokey’s greatest taboos. Almost everybody hunted. I’d even seen a photo of Momma in an orange hunting vest when she was about my age. Her father had been a hunter. And his father. Back forever. I hadn’t thought about the act of hunting much. But I knew I hated the mounted animal heads decorating Washokey businesses.

  “The trophies are the worst,” I said.

  “Right!” Mandarin nodded emphatically, as if our crossroads of opinions were a celestial coincidence. “Like a severed head’s a thing to brag about. It’s sick. Displayed right above the food in the grocery store, and over the tables at the Buffalo Grill—like they’re supposed to make us hungry. And what’s worst of all is when they play mad scientist and glue parts from different animals together. Like jackalopes. As if nature ain’t creative enough herself.”

  “So why else?” I asked.

  “Why else what?”

  “Why else do you hate Washokey?”

  Mandarin stood. For a moment, I thought that I’d asked the wrong question, that our night was over.

  “If you don’t know, one day I’ll show you.” She reached down to unroll the cuffs of her jeans. Her long hair shrouded her face. “When I think of a way. But I don’t want to talk about it right now.” She righted herself and tossed her hair back, and I saw she was grinning. “I feel too good tonight. Too high. What a fucking gorgeous night!”

  She dropped her cigarette onto a boulder and stamped it out with her bare foot. I wanted to ask her how she did it, why it didn’t hurt. “Mandarin—” I began, then stopped as she unfastened her jeans.

  “I’m going in,” she announced.

  “In the canal? But … the water, it’s polluted. It’s runoff from all the farms. And it’s got to be cold.…”

  I scooted away from her as she stepped out of her jeans and pulled off her shirt. Her white bra was patterned with tiny daisies, her underwear lacy black.

  “But what if …” I tried to object.

  “If I drown? I guess you’ll have to save me.”

  With that, she stepped off the bank into the canal. I crawled closer to the edge to watch as she reappeared, pushing her wet hair out of her face.

  “Get in!” she shouted.

  She plunged below the surface a second time. Then she burst out, flipping back her hair with a razor of water. Her skin gleamed like wet brass. I could see her nipples through the fabric of her bra before she sank back in.

/>   “Is it freezing? Did it get in your mouth?”

  “Who cares? It’s only water. What’s the good of being alive if you don’t do anything?” She flicked a spout of water at me. “Other than surround yourself with lifeless things?”

  Lifeless things? I wondered, uncomprehending. Like taxidermy?

  Then I remembered our conversation in her room, when I’d told her I liked to wander the badlands, collect rocks and fossils. All lifeless things. Suddenly it seemed like such an empty, pathetic hobby. At the very least, I could spend my time collecting something alive.

  Like … what? Beetles?

  I knew that wasn’t what Mandarin meant. She was talking about experiences, not objects. I should be collecting life experiences.

  Which I had no experience in.

  I hesitated only a moment more. Then I began to undress, awkwardly, one foot getting stuck in my jeans when I tried to tug them off. In my pajama shorts and top, I knelt at the very rim of the bank. The water looked like liquid asphalt, hot and bottomless. I touched the surface with my hands as Mandarin sank back underwater.

  She burst out again—but this time, she grabbed my arm.

  With a great splash of black water, I tumbled in. Mouth open, eyes open, stinging shock and cold. At last my floundering feet found the bottom. It felt like cake batter, clotted with river gunk and rotten plants and who knew what else. I wiped the scum from my eyes and opened them. Mandarin swirled around me, laughing.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I complained, the closest I could get to being angry. “I was coming in.”

  “It woulda taken hours! You got a tree branch up your ass, or what? Relax. Enjoy. It’s a fucking gorgeous night!”

  Without another word, she closed her eyes and fell into a back float.

  I watched the drops of water roll off her cheeks. Then I imitated her, falling back until the surface caught me. The sky was blue-black, cloudless, like a baker’s countertop smeared with sugary stars. I tried to relax, but every second I was aware of Mandarin’s presence, as if the water had a slope to it, tilting me in her direction. I held my arms at my sides to prevent the awkwardness of our limbs knocking together.