by Micol Ostow
unlike shelly, margie-merri wasn’t in, up, down for anything.
margie-merri—and here shelly snorts and rolls her eyes—she didn’t understand that Henry was too much, so much, filled to bursting. that He couldn’t be contained. that it would be selfish not to share Him.
margie-merri would rather have forsaken all Henry than sacrifice her own small bit, the amount of Him that she could fight in one tightly balled fist.
i think: it is just as well that she didn’t stay. i would never have understood her, margie-merri. i could never get someone like that.
clearly, margie-merri had no sense of family.
and there is no room for that sort of thinking, here on the ranch.
here, now, forever. on the ranch.
obviously the little apartment in the haight wasn’t big enough to hold Henry and all He had to share. it wasn’t long before He bought a van secondhand and headed out to the desert, out to the ranch, out to forever, family in tow.
it was dreamlike, this idea, this notion that we had all just up and followed Him. like something out of a fairy tale, out of a storybook. out of a fable scripted in a dead language, scratched on wafer-thin parchment in spindly scrawl etched in disappearing ink.
but did that make Henry the pied piper? or the golden goose?
it made a difference, you see:
whether we’d clutched at His tail feathers in the hopes of brushing our fingers against something gilded.
or whether we were infested, we were the vermin, and He, Henry, was leading us out, away, gone.
dirty hippies. free love.
it made a difference.
but i couldn’t be sure. not then.
not yet.
junior
junior wants.
according to shelly, back in his old life, back in the before, junior was some kind of small-town god.
attractive, amiable, athletic. a classic american good-old-boy hero.
on the surface, junior is the most wholeness i have ever encountered. even teeth and sandy hair and eyes like ocean. eyes like infinite.
still, though: he is here. in the now. in the fractured fantasy.
he is here; therefore, he is broken. must be broken.
it is an unavoidable piece of logic: in his own way, junior is fractured, shattered, shrinking. running out his half-life just like all the rest of us, here on the ranch.
i see the way he seeks approval. takes it as the mark of confidence that it is when Henry awards him a girl, two girls, a group, a gaggle, for the night. these things make junior feel important, which Henry understands.
Henry understands: junior needs to feel important. Henry can do that for him, and does.
Henry knows how to give people what they need.
my first night here, my first campfire. Henry picked. me.
shelly and junior wandered off, entwined.
and Henry rose.
“dirty hippies.”
He winked. it was the punch line to a joke, but finally—i got it. i understood.
we: all of us. all of our family. we’d been made to feel dirty, outside, other.
but this, the ranch: it was, is, always will be home.
here, we have nothing to explain, nothing to account for. here, we are only ourselves.
and we have one way—our own way—to fill our hollow places up.
free love
the fire throws sparks.
i stretch forward, unafraid. i like to feel the flames lap against my cheeks.
“mel,” Henry says, His voice like a clap of thunder, “will you come with me?”
no one has ever asked before.
certainly not uncle jack. never.
so when Henry takes me to the barn, to shelly and junior and hunger and hands, i go with Him.
i go with Him. i go slack. i give myself over.
and when shelly puts her mouth on mine, puts her hands on me?
with Henry watching, His gaze sharp, potent, approving?
i follow her mouth, her hands, with my own. i fill her hollow places.
i float.
ice
with junior, though, it is different.
junior’s hands are cold. just the tips of his fingers skating along my bare skin makes me shudder, makes me shrink.
makes me fold in on myself.
with junior it is different.
i know, though, what Henry expects of me. and so i go along. He has been so much, so many things, for me, given so much to me. i cannot disappoint Him.
and so. i tune myself to another frequency. i detach.
but i cannot float. not fully.
junior is too cold for that.
through my squeezed-shut eyes, i can still see junior, so clearly. i see him like he is carved of glass, ice, crystal. my eyes go right through him, and i am relieved when he collapses, finished. pulls away from me.
shelly puts a hand over mine. Henry drapes an arm around my shoulder, kisses me on the forehead like i imagine a father would.
i can be your father.
“i told you,” He says.
“i told you that you would love my family.”
i nod. His voice is a lullaby, and i begin to sway, to give myself over to the haze and the clouds and the undertow. the ogre in the sky is breaking apart, reassembling himself into a cocoon of safety. that is the power of Henry’s orbit. His pull.
His half-life.
still, though: i see.
i see junior. see the way that junior wants.
i see the way he soaks in Henry’s aura, basks in Henry’s light.
i see the way that he embraces the fever.
he is glass, ice, crystal.
and he is primed to shatter, to splinter.
to melt.
after
the man on the sofa shakes his head, pushes himself up on one elbow. sleep crusts the corners of his eyes.
he blinks, shakes his free wrist, peers at his watch. his hair is flattened, pressed against his skull from where he dozed off on the sofa.
he looks small, disoriented. confused.
“what time is it?” he asks. “was i—?”
then he takes in junior: six feet tall, clad in shadow, cheek spattered with mud.
junior, bearing down on him.
“who are you?” the man on the sofa asks. he is still uncertain. still not quite concerned, not too terribly worried about the turn that this evening has taken.
he should be.
junior draws himself farther, higher, until he is tall as a tree, a tower, a tornado.
he slides his pistol from his waistband, cocks it.
click.
my stomach clenches, a swarm of hornets, fluttering wings locked in beat.
“i’m the devil,” junior says.
“and i’m here to do the devil’s business.”
then: silence.
then: sounds.
then: fever.
and i can do nothing to stop it. not any of it.
the half-life, the orbit, the vortex has opened, and we are all being pulled inward.
we are all being crushed by gravity, by antimatter, by the yawning black hole.
we are all collapsing in upon ourselves.
trash
“you wouldn’t believe the sorts of things that some people throw away.”
this is what shelly says to me.
she tells me about the things that people, most people—many, many more than you might think—cast aside.
she explains that people are wasteful, careless, empty. human beings are. that they have no sense of the value of objects.
human beings waste all kinds of things.
specifically, human beings waste food.
and this is how the family, our family, Henry’s family, has learned to eat. has discovered the way to feed ourselves.
we eat what other people toss, what they reject. what other human beings waste.
and. we eat well. it is almost too much to be
lieve, but we do. we eat well.
it’s part of the system, part of the process, this hunter-gatherer method that the girls have, at Henry’s suggestion, devised.
once a week or so, a group of us, maybe two or three, are sent to the nearest town—about fifty miles away, at least an hour by car—where we park behind local restaurants.
“and you just… beg?”
i cannot fathom this, can’t imagine the outstretched palm, the plaintive face. the bald need, the raw, open request.
never mind what might have happened if i hadn’t been found, hadn’t been adopted, been collected by Henry on the park bench, that day, in the haight. never mind that i might very well have been reduced to begging to fill my porous membrane.
to plug the holes, to fill the wants, the needs.
i might very well have been. but He did. and so i wasn’t.
i wasn’t. because of Henry.
which means: now, i will fathom. i will imagine. i will do this.
for Him. for us. for our family.
my first time.
i am nervous, but eager to participate. to contribute. to be an active member of the family, our family, my family.
shelly is going to show me the ropes.
this is reassuring to me. shelly and i have, after all, shared nearly everything that two people can share.
we are almost the same body, shelly and i. almost blood. we are true sisters. so i am relieved that she is the one to shelter me, to show me the ropes.
she nods at me. “remember to smile.”
she grins, part demonstration, part genuine emotion. she throws back her shoulders, reminding me of the soft goosefleshed skin that ripples beneath her thin top. reminding me of another reason why people want to give her things.
why people want to fill her up.
“the busboys. the runners. they can’t resist,” she says. “that’s why Henry sends the girls. and, i mean, they have so much left over, the restaurants. at the end of the day. they have so much extra.”
it is the end of the day. we are cloaked in dusk, dusted in the first sprinklings of starlight.
the idea, the notion that there could be extra? could be more? could be infinite?
it is dizzying, dazzling. it makes me feel drunk with fullness, makes me feel fizzy, makes me feel like small sprinkles of starlight. makes me feel like dusk, taking hold.
shelly raps on the back-door exit of the restaurant. after a moment, a smooth, brown-skinned face appears.
small, round eyes drink shelly in as she keeps her shoulders pressing back, keeps her smile pasted to her face, keeps in mind the family. the extra. the infinite.
they exchange a few words, a meaningful glance, and then the brown-skinned boy disappears back into the restaurant.
i panic briefly. what would Henry do if we were to fail? if we were to come home empty-handed?
we can’t. i can’t. there is no letting Henry down.
there is no disappointing Henry.
the boy returns, this time with a paper grocery bag balanced in the crook of each elbow.
my entire body, my entire being, sighs. shudders with the relief of success.
outside of the car, shelly shows me our bounty: sacks of rice, day-old vegetables only beginning to turn, lettuce wrinkling weakly at the edges. meat that should freeze well.
so much. extra.
i ask what would have happened if no one had come to the door, if the brown-skinned boy hadn’t wanted to help us.
she points to the two tall metal dumpsters planted at the far end of the parking lot.
“there’s plenty in there,” she says. “you’d be surprised.”
but i wouldn’t. i wouldn’t be surprised. i can’t be surprised, anymore.
i get it now.
now, i know.
you wouldn’t believe the sorts of things that some people throw away.
you wouldn’t.
but i would.
human beings waste all kinds of things.
back inside of the car, shelly clasps my hand under hers. we wrap our fingers over the worn gearshift of the pickup.
“Henry is going to be impressed,” she assures me. “Henry is going to be proud. of you.”
her fingers are warm, they hum with energy, and i cannot think of another time, of a before, of any other member of my family
who knew what it was to be proud. of me.
to love. me.
but no matter.
that is why, as Henry explains, there is no before.
only now. only infinity.
only the undertow.
and me,
adrift.
legend
the story goes:
Henry’s mother once traded Him for a pitcher of beer.
i don’t learn this from Henry, of course; Henry never speaks of the before, any before, and certainly not His own.
if you ask Henry, He has no parents. He has shaken off His too-tight skin, shed His ego, rejected all but the now.
but still:
the story. goes. it breathes. it gathers its own momentum. it weaves its way about the ranch, snakes through, wiggles underneath doorjambs, presses flat against windowsills, shimmies from ear to listening ear.
shelly is the one who finally shares it with me.
my listening ear may well be the last to be bent. some of the others here on the ranch still keep me at arm’s length, still seal themselves off from me, curl themselves tightly in their own cling-wrap casings. leila is too distrustful, too creased with anger. junior is too preoccupied with the gaping chasm of his cavernous wants.
some of the others still see me as other. and i, them.
thank goodness Henry’s love is enough to make up the difference, to fill up the hollow, empty spaces.
enough. more than enough. so much more.
thank goodness Henry’s love is free.
some of the others still see me as other. and i, them.
but shelly? shelly will share anything. she will share anything with me.
that is why we are sisters, shelly and i. that is why we are closer than paper dolls, tighter than stitches on a quilt.
that is why shelly and i are nearly blood.
shelly will share anything. with me. and she does.
and so, she does.
“a pitcher of beer.” she leans forward on sharp elbows, mouth puckered in a perfect o of disbelief.
we are shucking ears of corn for dinner, heaps, mountains, towers of corn. we work in quiet synchronicity, bent over a splintering wooden picnic table, peeling thick hunks of corn silk back from the grainy, raw pearls of butter-pale kernel.
we toss the empty husks into a large metal garbage bin pushed to the side of our table.
the trash quickly piles up.
i roll flosslike strands of corn silk between my thumb and forefinger, thoughtful.
beer.
“beer,” she repeats, though i have not spoken aloud.
(that is how close, how connected shelly and i are. she hears the things i have only said on the inside. she is my inside. that is how close we are. sisters. near-blood.)
“beer.”
she repeats it with shrill outrage, spits the word past her lips as though it were poison. as though it is beer that is the real issue here. as though there were something else, some other substance for which Henry could have been traded that might make more sense, that might be acceptable.
as though there were any excuse for voluntarily giving up Henry.
she doesn’t look at me, can’t see the fury that i feel molding, melting into my features. but she can feel it.
(because she is my insides, my secret spaces. because we are connected.)
“she was, um, a waitress,” she goes on. “and i guess she drank?”
i guess.
“and Henry was with her one day, at work? i think He was still pretty little back then. like maybe six or seven or somethi
ng like that.”
i cannot reconcile the notion of a young-boy Henry. there is too much Henry, so much, a watershed of Henry, to think that there had ever been less.
no.
“she had some friend, some other waitress, a woman who couldn’t have kids no matter how hard she tried. it was real sad,” shelly says, like she knew this woman personally, was well acquainted with her sorrows, with her hollowed-out core, with her wants.
“so the story goes that they were drinking, you know, once they’d finished their shifts? and after a few too many, this friend, this woman? she offered Henry’s mom a pitcher of beer in exchange for taking Him home.
“and Henry’s mom agreed to it.”
she agreed to it. agreed.
who could ever do that? who could ever give up Henry?
no.
i feel a small rumble, a tickle at the back of my throat. before i even realize that i am going to speak, the words are there:
“so how did He—?”
it is perfunctory, my question. shelly is deep, lost in the legend. she is reflecting inward, talking mainly with her own mirror-self. i can see this. all i need to do is sit silently, to open my listening ear. to be her mirror-self. the way that she is mine.
i can do that. that, i can do.
“an uncle. or something. came to pick Him up a few days later.”
a few days later.
days.
so.
assuming this story is true:
how many days?
how many days later?
when was the decision made to retrieve Henry? what changed people’s minds?
and what happened to Him, during that grayspace, that squishy, unspoken time that he was pent up, smothered, caged in with that woman and her wants?
assuming the story is true.
assuming that—that the story is true, that this is a sequence of events in which Henry was genuinely involved—assuming all of these things, i will still never know.
