She practices her mystical look in the mirror and tells me to grab the Ouija board. “Governor Anotubby will meet us in the Oracle Cave for a reading.” She’s wearing red Capezios and a designer dress looted from a store in Tulsa right after civilization collapsed. A short skirt and a runway walk will make the most important Choctaw in the world a true believer. She brushes concealer over a blemish on her chin and checks the lacquer on her nails.
“A girl has to maximize her assets.”
I don’t say, “You haven’t been a girl for a long time.”
I don’t ask, “What will you do when the last makeup in America is gone?”
She sent her only son all the way to Oklahoma City on a quest for wrinkle cream and lip-gloss, “As well as other necessities.” He was happy to go, even though I didn’t want him to. Even though it was a very bad time, for reasons that I didn’t want to discuss quite yet. But now I wish I had.
“Maybe Joseph will find something for you, Karma,” Mona says, as if she knows he’s on my mind. “Maybe something that will lift your spirits and your. . .” She places the palms of her hands under her breasts and gives them a microscopic lift. “You’ve been looking little down—you know?”
I know. Mona is the fairest woman in the land, even if she is past forty now. Too bad her boy Joseph is stuck with poor plain Karma, who doesn’t even have a pleasing personality.
Mona smiles, and then remembers the cavity in her central incisor and tones it down. She pictures Mona Lisa in her mind. Mona Beaver is a lot prettier than that frumpy old Italian but she hasn’t quite mastered the enigmatic smile.
“It will all work out, Karma.” She kisses me on the cheek, softly, so her lipstick won’t smear. “A mother knows these things, you’ll see.”
I’ll see. For a second I feel like crying, but the tears never make it to the surface. Exactly what kind of things does a mother know?
• • •
After the sun has set behind the Ouachita Mountains, Mona perches on her special rock in the Oracle Cave with a Ouija board on her way-too-pretty legs and tells the Governor what he wants to hear—“A spirit fog covers the calendar but Joseph will return before the Dreaming Moon. He’s found. . .”
She squints into the great unknown, not quite hard enough to deepen the lines around her eyes, and ponders the Great Mystery. Everybody knows how stingy spirits are with details, but Joseph’s quest is a success. As usual.
Governor Anotubby listens while he peeks at Mona’s hemline. I sit across from her with my fingers poised on the plastic pointer and nudge it in the right direction so she doesn’t misspell important words like Chief, or Pusmataha, or, God forbid, Anotubby.
Mona gives the Governor a smile that barely shows the brown spot on her front tooth. “Any questions?”
“We’re short on drugs,” he tells her. “Especially antibiotics.”
All the pharmaceuticals in the world reached their expiration date years ago, but most of them still work—of course they might work like Mona’s readings. They might just give us something to do while we either get well or die.
My almost mother-in-law and I sit facing each other, pretending we’re not pushing the heart shaped stylus around the gothic letters on the board. We used to have scientists to tell us what to do, but now all we have is Mona Beaver, Oracle of Wilburton.
She mumbles a list of all the great Choctaw chiefs she can remember and pauses while I guide the stylus around the board. She does pretty well with Tuscaloosa and Taboca, but slurs Apuckshunubee. Who can blame her?
Mona moistens her lips when she calls on Pushmataha, the greatest Choctaw Chief and her favorite spirit messenger. She whispers his name like it’s an offer of sexual favors and turns her gaze on the Governor. He doesn’t notice I’m the one steering the heart shaped plastic pointer across the appropriate letters. Mona makes me fade into the scenery.
Governor Anobtubby is perfectly willing to believe a lipstick lesbian like Mona suddenly sees the attraction of heterosexuality. If she plays it well enough, he won’t remember what everybody knows—that Mona Beaver has never been with a man, that her son Joseph is the product of artificial insemination.
Men find that whole virgin thing a turn on—don’t ask me why—but virgin birth scares the hell out of them. That’s why Mona is the Oracle. She’s a beautiful, mysterious virgin mother—like another one I could name if it wasn’t sacrilegious.
“Pushmataha,” she says again, putting an edge on the consonants to sharpen the Governor’s attention.
Votive candles light the cave, salvaged from a religious warehouse in McAlester. The flickering light makes rock shadows flutter like owl’s wings. According to legend, Jesse James spent time in this cave. So did Belle Star, and other less famous outlaws of the Indian Territory. It’s not a proper cave at all. Just a pile of rocks crowded into a shelter for homeless spirits. Geologists probably had an explanation for it, but they’re all gone.
Names and dates are carved into the rock along with hearts and plus signs—the mathematics of romance. Joseph loves Karma is written in quarter-inch deep scratches above Mona’s head. A gray patina covers the rock, but the scratches cut through the oxidized layer into the heart of the golden stone, exposing flecks of silica that sparkle like stars in the postindustrial sky. Jennifer loves Jake now and forever is engraved below our names in letters that are rounder, smaller, more feminine. Forever has come and gone, but their profession of love is still here, frozen in time like the memory of a first kiss.
Pushmataha speaks to the Governor using Mona’s seductive voice. “Patience is the measure of a leader.”
The greatest Choctaw Chief gazes at Governor Anotubby through Mona’s eyes like foreplay is next on the agenda. Pushmataha-Mona is full of compliments and vague advice, but after a while there’s no more spirit small talk. A deep breath followed by a meaningful pause. My signal to produce the gold plated pocket watch that belonged to my father back when hours mattered.
“My, look at the time.” The hands have been stuck at five o’clock for a decade.
“Yes,” Mona runs her fingers through her recently colored hair that doesn’t show any gray after sunset. The hot dead chief is gone and the lesbian oracle is back, still looking good but out of reach.
“So Joseph will be back with the antibiotics?” The Governor makes the statement into a question by running it uphill.
Mona lets the question hang in the air until I show her the watch again.
“Indications are positive,” she says as if she’s reading answers on the crystal.
Mona’s butch girlfriend, Chris, walks into the cave as if on cue.
“Pardon me.” She gives Governor Anotubby a modified salute, as if she’s a soldier in his army. “Joseph is back.”
She looks like she wants to say something else, but instead she turns and walks out of the cave.
• • •
The Civilian Conservation Corps built the Oracle’s Lodge in 1939 from native stone and cedar, so it fits well with post-apocalyptic conditions. No air conditioning. No central heat. No electricity. None of the things that made a mockery of roughing it in the good old days of excess and luxury.
Torchlight fills the room with dancing shadows, so it’s not much different from the cave. Joseph looks like a pre-Columbian warrior in the flickering light, with his braided hair, his bronze skin, and his black eyes that reflect the torch flames like signal fires.
Those eyes are locked on the two large booty bags he’s brought from Oklahoma City. He studies them as if they are prehistoric chrysalises about to break open and release extinct monster butterflies. He doesn’t look at me, or Mona, or Governor Anotubby, and he most certainly does not look at the teenage girl with her arm laced through his.
But she looks at each of us in turn, saving me for the last. She and I stare at each other, figuring things out.
She’s younger than I am and prettier. We both know it. Her hair is the lustrous black color Mona’s used to be before the world ran out of cond
itioner. Mine must look like a stack of dirty blond hay by comparison.
Her eyes are the color of the turquoise ring Joseph gave me after his last quest. I explore the stone with my thumb while the teenager works her arm around Joseph’s waist and pulls herself so close I think she might be laying eggs inside him like a parasitic wasp.
She makes sure she is the center of attention by shifting her hip, like an old time prima ballerina executing a perfect seduction scene. Her flawless skin glows with the warmth of sexual invitation smoldering inside her perfectly proportioned chest that rises and falls in the rhythm of a bolero. Even I want to touch her.
She says, “Joseph saved my life.”
Joseph finally looks my way. He shrugs with his eyebrows. What choice did I have?
The girl shows us a smile so dazzling it makes the room turn darker. “My name is Mary.” She has the voice of a country and western singer who knows exactly how to steal your man. Funny how I never thought of Joseph as my property until this moment.
I move toward them like a coyote on the trail of an injured rabbit. I put my arms around Joseph—pulling him away from Mary. There’s a little tug of war, but it’s over in a second. I press my breasts against him, even though they’ve been a little sore lately.
I whisper, “I’m so glad to see you,” my words as full of moisture as jungle air. Like I have something special planned for later. Something that would stain my reputation if anyone found out. Something so delicious that no beautiful teenager would know anything about it.
“Hey there.” Mary pokes my shoulder. She’s found a place where no muscle covers the bone so it hurts a little. “You must be Karma. Joseph told me all about you.”
I want to say, “Has he now?” but I know I won’t be able to get the proper offended tone quite right, so I step back and take a look at her.
Lovely, ingenuous. I didn’t realize that word was part of my vocabulary. Mary glows like a religious icon, with an inner light that displays her like a neon advertisement for the Goddess of Love. She’s as ripe and ready to consume as an October apple.
It’s October now and I’m a piece of fruit that’s fallen to the ground, hoping someone gathers me before I rot. I’m standing in front of a tiny teenage girl—maybe five feet two inches tall. Goliath vs. David. She doesn’t need a sling. Mary’s body is shaped like a three-minute egg timer, exactly the amount of time it took Joseph to achieve his last orgasm—the last one I know about, anyway. She extends her elfin hand for an old fashioned businessman’s handshake, as if she’s offering me a deal. Her fingers are exquisitely shaped, but there is a layer of black grime beneath one nail. Thank God for that. Otherwise she’d be perfect.
Mary walks over to Mona, who is speechless for the first time since I’ve known her.
“Are you Mona or Chris?” she asks as if there is no significant difference between the beautiful Oracle of Wilburton and her low-estrogen girlfriend.
Chris is nowhere around. She’s never needed to compare herself to beautiful teenage girls. For the first time in my life, I wish I was a lesbian, although it doesn’t seem to be helping Mona.
Mary turns to Joseph. “You could—you know—introduce me.” Her movements look like choreography, but her words don’t match. The content is simple, even ignorant, and the tone is filled to the brim with disrespect. Pretty and unlikable—but so pretty that unlikable doesn’t matter to the two men in the room.
I can’t blame Joseph for losing the power of speech, or the Governor, who hasn’t said a word since he entered the Oracle’s Lodge. Their minds are occupied by thoughts of Mary naked.
“This is Mona,” I tell her.
“Guess I should have known.” Mary taps her forehead with her fingertips. “Joseph said she was really pretty.”
I wonder what Joseph said about me.
• • •
“Amoxicillin, clindamycin, ciprofloxacin.” Joseph stacks the boxes of expired generic antibiotics at Governor Anotubby’s feet. Enough to cure a gonorrhea epidemic.
He’s brought cosmetics for Mona, and ammunition for Chris. For everybody else he’s brought sewing kits, sutures, hunting knives, scalpel blades, compasses, bundles of athletic socks and underwear.
I see things he’s brought especially for me in the bottom of one bag, things he won’t show to anyone else. A gross of Trojan condoms, still unopened—that’s a good sign. A Victoria’s Secret chemise, still in the package—just what every girl needs to keep her warm now that central heat is gone forever.
Joseph is so full of wants and needs he can barely tell the difference between his desires and mine. That’s the way men are. He winks at me, forgetting the fight we had before his Mona-quest. The fight that wasn’t really about anything except that I feel like fighting lately, when I don’t feel like crying.
Feelings change, like when I don’t like being touched by anyone, especially Joseph. Like how the taste of blackberries drizzled in honey makes me nauseated, even though they used to be the best thing ever. Like how my favorite pair of pants are too tight now and my ankles are bigger than they used to be and all the colors in the world are a little bit too bright, and all the odors are too strong.
Joseph reaches into the bag and draws out a gold chain one inch at a time. When he’s sure everybody’s watching he says, “Ta da,” and pulls the necklace all the way out so I can see the amber pendant shaped like a heart.
He says, “Ta da,” again, in case nobody noticed what a clever thing it was.
He puts the necklace around my neck as if I just won the gold medal at the love Olympics. I pretend to be interested in the prehistoric gnats trapped inside the petrified tree sap so I won’t have to look at the identical necklaces he’s brought for Mona and Mary.
Men are so stupid, and there are so few to choose from.
• • •
“Who counts years anymore?” Mary puts her hands on her hips the way Shirley Temple used to do in old time black-and-white movies. “It’s not like there’s voting anymore, or legal drinking age, or driver’s licenses.”
“Or statutory rape,” I tell her, as if I might know a secret law that still applies even after the law books have all disappeared.
She looks younger in daylight, especially when she makes a point of ignoring me and scrambles up the rocks outside the Oracle Cave looking for signs left behind by the “olden days people.” Everything is “olden days” to Mary. She’s too young to remember cars speeding down highways or cable television. She thinks Cher and Elvis are characters from the Bible.She thinks they came from Oklahoma.
“So how old are you, Mary?”
She runs her finger over a backward swastika carved into the rock by some young man whose great-great grandfather probably went to war with the Nazis. She tells me how she was on a quest, looting the remnants of civilization for useful things.
“You know.” She turns her head so I can see the tears forming at the bottom rim of her eyes. “Like Joseph.” Mary looks at the sky when she says his name, and collapses her upper body against the boulders as if she’s a rock climbing marionette and God has just released the strings.
“The Marley men captured me.” Her voice is thick with the memory of something bad that almost happened. “A scruffy old black man was the leader. He had dreadlocks and scars and he knew all the words to every reggae song ever written.” Her tears run down her cheeks and dribble off of her chin. She wipes them away with one hand and nearly loses her balance. “Joseph killed him. Just for me, and it’s kind of sad because he might be the last black man in the whole wide world. Like an endangered species, you know. Like dinosaurs and dodo birds and Democrats and Republicans—gone forever.” She sacrifices her handholds on the rock for the sake of a dramatic gesture and slides a foot or two before she finds another.
“Lots of African Americans live with the Choctaw in Durant,” I tell her. “You could go back there with Governor Anotubby. He’ll introduce you.”
“No way.” Mary talks exactly like middle
school girls did back when there was such a thing as junior high and adolescence. She wants to be my, “Best friend forever.” She also wants to steal Joseph from me. She doesn’t see how both things can’t work out.
“How old are you, Mary?” I have her trapped on a pointed rock covered with Scotts and Heathers, two vandal lovers who came here five years in a row with a sharp knife and a can of red spray paint. Their relationship spanned from 2006 through 2011, but in 2012, Scott wrote Rachael’s name next to his own inside a heart. Below the declaration of love he printed “HEATHER IS A WHORE” in two-inch block letters. That’s how you end an argument in stone.
“How old?” I stand in her only egress so she’ll have to stay up there until one of us dies of starvation or has to go to the bathroom. Now Mary understands we are rivals in a war of love, and I am a product of the devious ancient times that tore apart the love of Scott and Heather.
“How old?” I consult my father’s pocket watch—still five o’clock. “I have all the time in the world.”
“Okay! I’m thirteen. Are you happy now?”
• • •
Even Joseph thinks Mary looks like a little girl now that he knows how old she is, but she’s still a very cute little girl, and men have a way of forgetting things like age.
“Way too young for you,” Mona reminds him, “Thirteen is the most irresponsible age ever.”
Joseph pretends he hasn’t got the slightest idea what Mona is talking about. His eyes light up for a moment, like he’s just thought of some clever way to change the subject. He starts to speak but Mona beats him to it.
“Sexual awakening.” She looks at me as if this is something all girls know about, but the world ended before my sexual alarm clock woke me up. Joseph is the only boy I ever really liked, and I was his first and only girlfriend and suddenly we were holding onto each other really tight because people get lost so easily when civilization slips away. Before we knew it Joseph was carving my name and his in the Oracle Cave with the word love in between.
“Joseph loves Karma,” I say out loud without meaning too.
Sacred Alarm Clock Page 21
