by Lane, Nina
“Visitors have to earn their stay,” North told my mother.
“How?”
“Work in the kitchens or gardens. Help with laundry. Clean. Asha keeps the work schedule, so we can talk to her about it.”
My mother crossed her arms. She was wearing a yellow skirt and a purple tank top studded with yellow flowers. Her long, wheat-colored hair fell in waves to her tanned, freckled shoulders.
“All right,” she finally said, snapping her fingers at me. “Come on, Liv. Let’s get settled. I need some rest after all that driving.”
I dragged a suitcase from the trunk of the old car that had taken us so many hundreds of miles. North showed us a bedroom in the main house, then brought us to the kitchen where an older woman with frizzy, blond hair explained the work schedule.
“Liv can do that.” My mother pointed at the column for gardening. “And cleaning in the kitchen, right?”
I nodded.
Asha wrote my name in the column. North looked at my mother.
“And you?” he asked.
“I’d prefer not to be outdoors.”
“What are you good at?” North asked.
“She makes pretty jewelry,” I put in.
“Well, maybe you can help out in the workshop.” North nodded at Asha, who wrote my mother’s name on the chart.
“We won’t be here very long,” my mother said.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t work,” North replied.
North had been at Twelve Oaks for over a decade. He played the guitar, did macramé and woodwork, and was in charge of the commune’s website. The day after we arrived, he took Crystal to his workshop and taught her how to use different tools and materials. He sold wooden bowls, signs, and decorations at art fairs and the farmer’s market, so he was well-equipped to help Crystal with her jewelry making.
“He’s nice,” I ventured one morning when my mother and I were getting dressed. “Seems to know a lot.”
Crystal shrugged, looking at herself in the mirror as she tied a purple scarf around her hair and applied lipstick.
“He’s no different from the rest of them, Liv.”
But he was. He was one of the few men who didn’t seem interested in my mother sexually, and she didn’t set out to try and seduce him. Maybe it was the environment of Twelve Oaks or the fact that she didn’t have to sleep with him in order to stay… Whatever it was, I welcomed the change.
One afternoon when I was picking basil, North stopped by the garden and tossed me a flat, metal medallion, the size of a half-dollar, attached to a silver chain.
“What’s this?” I caught it with both hands.
He squinted his eyes against the sun. “Read it.”
The medallion had an inscription—Fortes fortuna iuvat.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“Fortune favors the brave.” North tilted his head. “Like it?”
Wariness coiled tight in my chest. I took a step away from him. Despite the fact that he was different, I’d had a shield up for a few years now, ever since a couple of perverts, my mother’s so-called boyfriends, had messed with me.
“Uh, thanks,” I said to North.
He studied me for a second. “You’re like a turtle, you know?”
“A turtle?”
North thumped his chest. “Hard shell. Hiding. You been on the road long with your mama?”
“Since I was seven.” I had no idea why I was telling him the truth.
“School?”
“I’ve been to a ton of schools.”
“What’d you like most?”
“I don’t know. English, I guess.”
“Come on. Let’s see where you’re at.” He tilted his head to the house where most of the commune members lived.
I wasn’t really afraid, just because there were always people around and little risk that I’d ever be alone with North. My mother and I stayed in our own bedroom in the main house, where about a dozen other people lived. Bedrooms were private, but we shared the other living spaces and kitchen. Some members lived in small cabins dotted around the farm.
North nodded to the rough-hewn trestle table and took a stack of homeschooling workbooks from a shelf. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I did the work he gave me, then frowned at the look on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“You ought to know advanced algebra and geometry by now. Maybe even some precalculus.”
I stared at him. With his shaggy hair and scraggly beard, he looked like he’d never set foot inside a classroom, let alone knew anything about mathematics.
“You know about that stuff?” I asked.
“Sure. I studied physics in college.”
“You went to college?”
A wide grin flashed behind his beard. “You think I’ve been a hippie my whole life? Yeah, I went to college. MIT. Plasma physics was my thing.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “So how’d you get from plasma physics to organic gardening?”
He tugged at the tiny, beribboned braid in his beard. “Sometimes you end up on a different path than the one you started on, you know?”
I didn’t, not really. I’d never started on a path by myself. I’d always just been dragged onto one.
North sat across from me at the table and opened a math workbook.
“So what made you take a different path?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Just life, Liv. No one’s immune from anything.”
“Are you sorry you left MIT?”
“No. Sorry about other things, though.”
“Like what?” I knew I was prying, but I was curious. And North didn’t seem to mind.
“I hurt people,” he admitted. “Did a lot of hard living before I found Twelve Oaks. Drugs, drinking. Fights. Arrested a few times. Hit rock bottom when a girl and I partied too hard. I blacked out. She ended up in the hospital for alcohol poisoning. A doctor got me into a rehab program, and as soon as I was done I moved out here. Lived in Berkeley for a while before a friend told me about Twelve Oaks. Came here and never left.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Twelve years, I think. Thirteen?”
I could see why he’d stayed for so long. It was a nice place. The fragrant smell of simmering marinara sauce came from the kitchen, along with the low hum of people talking. A woman sat sewing in front of the fireplace, and a few kids ran around outside, kicking a ball. Everyone seemed content, at ease.
Even my mother.
“So, look.” North pushed the workbook toward me. “We’ll start with basic concepts and equations. Work your way up.”
I wasn’t all that crazy about doing the work, but I knew I was behind most other kids my age when it came to education. And because I wanted to catch up, I agreed to meet with North every morning.
Some of the other kids in the commune attended public schools, but my mother didn’t enroll me since the school year was almost over. The younger kids were homeschooled and worked in a cabin that had been set aside as a schoolroom.
The work wasn’t always easy—North pushed me hard, even with things like trigonometric functions. He was a good teacher, patient and insistent even when I tried to claim it was all beyond my comprehension.
“Nothing’s beyond your comprehension, Liv, not even the reaches of your own mind,” he said.
I had no idea what he meant, but he was prone to statements like that. We studied in the morning, and I helped in the kitchen and gardens in the afternoon.
I got to know others in the commune. Greta, the woman with long braids and piercing blue eyes adorning her weathered face. Susan and Tim, a young couple with a new baby named Penny. Sam, Parker, Emily—seven-year-olds who surfed the Internet after making soaps and macramé baskets. Roger and Clara, teenagers around my age who’d lived at Tw
elve Oaks for five years.
My mother spent her nonwork shifts in North’s shop. Whenever I went to find her, she was working on a new jewelry technique, or North was showing her how to use a special type of pliers or file. They sat next to each other at mealtime. She went with him to unload boxes for the farmer’s market. He worked in the garden alongside her.
Not once did I see them touch each other. Not once did my mother spend the night away from our bedroom.
Near the barn, there was a stone-rimmed campfire and benches set up, and every night a couple of the men would build a fire. We sat around it, listening to people play various instruments, sing songs, tell stories.
I always sat silently, watching the flames, feeling the warmth around me.
One night I watched my mother. She sat on the other side of the fire. She looked different, younger. Her hair had grown even longer, and she usually wore it in a high ponytail to keep it out of the way. She hadn’t worn much makeup since we’d come here.
North came to sit beside her, bending to say something close to her ear. She laughed. It was a genuine laugh, unforced, and I felt it spread over me from across the fire.
In that instant, I never wanted to leave Twelve Oaks.
For several months, it was good. Then my mother saw the necklace North had given me. I’d put it in the nightstand drawer and almost forgotten about it. She found it when she was looking for her glasses.
“North gave this to you?” she asked, holding the disk flat in her palm.
“Yeah. A while ago. I can’t remember what it means. The inscription. Something in Latin.”
She had an odd look on her face. I didn’t get it. I do now, but I didn’t then. I just shrugged and returned to my book.
The following morning North and I were working on lessons as usual. He was explaining ratios in right triangles when my mother came in and sat beside me.
“Just thought I’d see what you’re learning,” she said.
I felt her watching me for the next few days. Felt that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I hoped she wasn’t planning for us to hit the road again.
“Come on, then. Test time.” North thunked a book beside me as I sat drawing at the trestle table after dinner.
The kitchen had been cleaned and everyone was drifting outside toward the campfire. I made a face at the book.
“I hate tests.”
“Never say you hate learning. It puts up a block.” He rapped his knuckles against his head. “Makes it hard for the knowledge to get in.”
I sighed, but pushed my drawings aside and opened a paper on which he’d written a bunch of equations. He left the room while I worked, then returned a half hour later to check the test. I sat there fidgeting.
Finally he wrote something at the top of the paper and pushed it back to me.
I stared at the blue circled number. “Ninety-four percent? Really?”
He grinned. “Really. See what you’re capable of? You just have to believe you can do it.”
He pushed his chair back and stood, then reached out to run his hand over the length of my hair. It didn’t feel weird or remotely sexual—more like an approving, fatherly pat on the head.
“Nice job,” he said. “We’ll get started on pre-calc tomorrow.”
He ambled out the door toward the campfire. I looked up and saw my mother standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at me. My heart hitched. I swore she was looking at me with hate.
“What did you do with him?” My mother’s question was low, simmering with anger. It was late, the campfire long died out, everyone in their bedrooms.
“Do with him?” I still didn’t get it. As far as I’d always known, my mother’s relationships with men were sexual, and there’d been no evidence that she had anything physical going on with North.
Her eyes narrowed. Her face had that hard look again, the one she hadn’t worn in the months we’d been at Twelve Oaks.
“Don’t play innocent with me, Liv. You think men haven’t noticed you’re filling out? Why else would you walk around in shorts and T-shirts so tight your tits are visible?”
I stared at her in shock. My shorts came almost to my knees, and my T-shirts were baggy old things we’d gotten from Goodwill. And while I knew I was developing, I made a conscious effort not to draw attention to that fact.
“I… North’s just teaching me algebra,” I stammered.
“For now.”
“He’s not a creep,” I said.
“I know that,” my mother snapped. “But throw yourself at him, and what’s the man going to do?”
“You’re wrong. I—”
“Turn around.”
“What?”
“Turn around.”
I had no idea what she was doing. I turned around. I heard her opening a drawer, then felt her grab my ponytail and yank my head back. I gasped. Pain spread across my skull.
“Crystal, what…”
“Shut up, Liv.” She yanked harder, then I heard the sawing of scissors, the clipping as my hair fell away from my head.
“No!” I tried to pull away, but her fist tightened. Tears sprang to my eyes.
“Be still,” she ordered.
I stilled. Felt myself cower, unable to resist the command. My heart shriveled.
She sawed fast, and the next thing I knew, the pressure released and she let me go. I spun to face her. She held the long coil of my hair in her fist, her expression still cold.
Tears rolled down my cheeks. I put my hand to the back of my head, felt the shorn, tattered ends of hair close to my scalp.
“Now you’ll learn something about vanity.” She threw the ponytail at my feet and stalked out of the room.
I sank onto the bed and cried until my throat hurt. I didn’t realize until then how much a part of me my hair was—how it both connected me to my mother and set me apart from her. Like her hair, mine was long, straight, and thick, but it was dark while hers was blond. For some reason, that distinction was very important.
When I finally dried my tears, I picked up the scissors and tried to even out the ragged mess my mother had left, but I only succeeded in making it worse.
Finally I threw all the cut hair into the trash and cried myself to sleep.
Everyone was shocked when they saw me the next morning. I mumbled something about my hair having been too much trouble, so I cut it off. After breakfast, I ducked outside to the garden. My mother was nowhere to be seen.
I was picking tomatoes when a baseball cap landed on the dirt in front of me. I looked up at North. He gestured to my hair.
“Thought your head might be cold.”
My throat tightened. “Have you seen my mother?”
His expression closed off. He shook his head. I put the cap on and stood, brushing off my knees. I started back to the house when his voice stopped me.
“Hey, Liv.”
I turned. He stood with his hands shoved into the pockets of his torn jeans, his bare feet dusted with dirt.
“You know where to find me, yeah?” he said. “If you need anything.”
Dread curled in my chest. I blinked back tears.
“Yeah.” I took a step away. “Thanks, North.”
I hurried back to the house. The bedroom I shared with my mother was empty, all our stuff packed away. My dread intensified when I saw our car parked near the barn, my mother standing beside it.
She jerked her head toward the passenger seat. “Get in. We’re done here.”
“Wait.”
We both turned at the sound of North’s voice. He stopped in front of us.
“Goodbye, Crystal.” He spoke in a distant tone to my mother.
She didn’t respond. North looked at me, reaching out to hand me the picture of me and my mother beside the campfire.
“You take ca
re, Liv.”
I nodded. I pushed the photo into my pocket, where the medallion was safely tucked away. Other people came out to say goodbye, but my mother didn’t let me linger. Within fifteen minutes we were on the road. I sat hunched against the passenger door, my arms tight around myself.
“You tried to sleep with him last night, didn’t you?” My question came out bitter and sharp. It was the only weapon I had. “And he rejected you.”
“Shut up, Liv.”
I could almost see it—Crystal standing at the doorway of North’s bedroom, all soft blond hair and creamy skin, her robe lowered just enough to show a hint of cleavage. But North hadn’t wanted her. Or if he had, not like that, not her sexuality, cold as a diamond beneath her beauty. Her humiliation must still be scorching her from the inside out.
Because everyone wanted my mother.
“You’d never be good enough for him,” I said. “He turned you out like the whore you are, didn’t he?”
She reached across the seat and slapped my face. I pressed my hand to my cheek. Tears stung my eyes. I knew then that I would leave my mother.
I will not be like you, I thought. I will never be like you.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Olivia
an I come in?” my mother asks.
Her question breaks me from my shock. “What… what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.” She stands, running her hands over her thighs. “It’s been a while.”
“Yes, it has.”
We look at each other for a second before Crystal picks up two bags on the bottom step. My hand shakes as I dig into my pocket for my keys and pass her on the stairs. I unlock the door and push it open, stepping aside to let her enter before me. She smells like lavender. Her favorite scent.
She drops her bag and a square, leather case on the floor, casting a glance around the apartment.
“Cute,” she remarks. “Looks like a place you’d see in a magazine. How to make the most of a small space.”
I follow her to the living room. I can’t stop staring at her, some part of my brain registering the changes wrought by the past three years.
