Lilac Mines

by Cheryl Klein

  Suzy is 29 years old, but she looks younger. Her hair is nearly blonde and she wears it in two loose braids over her shoulders. She stepped out of the car in a short red dress with white flowers embroidered around the collar and black Mary-Janes, although she’s since changed into a pale blue jogging suit. Her legs were tan and thick. Her cheeks are pink, her nose bears a streak of permanent sunburn.

  “You look like such a California girl,” Anna Lisa says, smiling. “You look like someone the Beach Boys would sing about.”

  Suzy laughs. “It’s my young mother look, actually.”

  “Young mother look?” Anna Lisa’s eyes reveal her surprise.

  Suzy just looks at her sister, smiling her big, beachy smile.

  “You mean… ?”

  “Uh-huh. Oh, Nannalee, I’m so happy. You should see Martin. They say pregnant women glow, right? But I swear Martin glows. He’s such a goofball, running around, painting things and talking about how we’ll have build an addition on the house for our second one. He’s already talking about the second one!”

  The Hill sisters stand in the gleaming kitchen, grinning dopily at each other. The shared thrill of bringing something new into the world. A person, a town. The shared lie, pretending there is such a thing as new. Anna Lisa congratulates her, and says, “Have you thought of names yet?”

  “Well… I want this baby to be a part of me, to already be here before she’s here, know what I mean? I think it’s going to be a girl, I really do. And I want her to be… tied to me,” she says quietly. “You know how there are words that just stick in your head for years? There’s this place where I got a haircut years ago. June of 1965.” When Suzy discovered sex and Anna Lisa discovered the girls of 3-B. “Lola Felix’s Beauty Shoppe.” Suzy sighs, “And I know Felix is a boy’s name, but that’s what I want to call her. Felix.”

  III

  WE ALL AUTOGRAPHED IT

  Felix: Lilac Mines, 2002

  “Wow, that’s some story.” Felix’s butt has fallen asleep. They are still huddled in the woods on the shack’s splintery bench, but the rain has slowed to a lazy drip. She’s glued here, ready for more stories. “So you really were married.”

  “Yep,” says Anna Lisa, “I spent the most exciting years of the 20th century married to a man in Fresno.” Framed by the hood of her sweatshirt, Anna Lisa’s face is pale and defeated. “I think I missed my own heyday.”

  “Forget it, chasing after heydays is a lost cause,” Felix assures her. Her body feels like crap, but she speaks with confidence. “That’s all I ever did in L.A. and the minute I’d find a scene I thought was cool, it was like 50 people were behind me, ready to use my little niche as a backdrop for a credit card commercial. We always thought—my friends and I—that people were imitating us, but they might as well have been chasing us, we were so out of breath all the time.”

  The bits of sky showing through the roof are a milky dark blue. “It’s probably safe to walk back now,” says Anna Lisa, looking up. “I’d better give the mule some water first.”

  Anna Lisa pours some water into a red plastic cup, which Lilac takes gingerly in his teeth. He then tosses his head back and opens his mouth, pouring the water in without spilling a drop. He holds the empty cup until Anna Lisa takes it from him. “That was amazing!” Felix can’t believe what she just saw.

  “Ernie says you can teach them anything.” Lilac smacks his flappy lips.

  Felix is not ready to return just yet. “Was Meg the only girl you ever loved?” she ventures. It sounds so romantic and so depressing.

  “No. There was Millie. Millicent Hersch. We were together for almost ten years. She stopped by the bakery for a bran muffin and orange juice—she didn’t drink coffee—and she was wearing a pink nurse’s uniform and pink lipstick, and I asked her what hospital she worked at,” says Anna Lisa.

  “When was that?”

  “1978. March 4th. You were almost a year old then,” Anna Lisa recalls, saying what Felix is thinking. This is the point where their stories meet, the intersection of History and plain old Past.

  “Did I ever meet her?”

  “Once, when you were four or five. We were at your grandmother’s house in Fresno. Your mom was pregnant again, with Michelle. Poor thing, her feet were so swollen I don’t think she left Daddy’s old green armchair at all that whole visit. Millie and I were just there for the day. Your grandmother didn’t ever really know how to act around her, and that only made Millie feel more anxious. We spent most of the time outside on the porch. It was a good thing, too, because that was the day you decided to teach yourself to fly.”

  “To fly?” Felix repeats, incredulous. But as soon as she says it, fragments return to her: the rusty hood of a car, a fuzzy pink blanket, the smell of a thick felt-tip marker.

  “I guess you thought that if you jumped off things and flapped your arms hard enough, it would happen,” Anna Lisa laughs. “First, it was the ottoman in the living room, but that drove your mom crazy. So you moved onto the porch, then before we knew it, you were hurling yourself off the hood of Millie’s car, then the top of her car.”

  “And that’s when I broke my arm,” Felix finishes.

  “Being a nurse and all, Millie’s first aid skills were fresher than mine, so she got you to sit still and wrapped you in a blanket and put you in the back seat. I drove you downtown to Saint Julian’s. You got this tiny little cast, and we all autographed it.”

  “I did love that part,” Felix remembers.

  “To tell you the truth,” Anna Lisa says, “that was the day I decided that I wanted to go back to nursing.”

  “Really? So what happened to Millie?” She remembers that someone drew Hello Kitty on her cast in bold black ink. Was it Millie? She can’t picture a face.

  Anna Lisa sighs. Is there another tragic chapter in her aunt’s life? Felix studies Anna Lisa’s compact body and wrinkled clothing. How much hardship can a person wear?

  “Well, I don’t know, exactly. At first things were good. It had been so long, and I was so needy, I think I practically smothered her. But Millie was a good person. She had a lot of room in her. She was like a well, I could just pour all my sadness into her. You don’t really want to hear this stuff, do you? I’m your aunt, I’m old.”

  “No, really, I do.” Felix smiles. “Keep going, I’m listening.”

  “Millie was great, but I sort of scared myself, after spending too much time alone or something. I started to pull away a little bit at a time. We hung in there because, well, that’s what I’ve always done. And Millie was a good nurse, she was trained to let people heal at their own pace. But she got fed up eventually with all my scar tissue. She was still young; I don’t blame her. Eventually she went to medical school in San Francisco, and I wondered if she ever ran into Jody and Imogen. But why would she? The world is really big.”

  Felix shivers. How much scar tissue does it take to add up to a cave-in, a taut rope, an alley attack? She is sure, now, that hundreds of quiet tragedies lurk behind every headline.

  “We should head back,” Anna Lisa says again. “I’m getting hungry.” She stands up and offers Felix her hand. Felix takes it gladly, the small fingers lifting her to her feet.

  Felix is grateful when Anna Lisa insists she ride on Lilac’s back. She feels dizzy as they bump down the darkening trail. “My car!” she shouts hoarsely when they hit Moon Avenue. With a white cap of snow on its blue top, the Beetle looks like a pale Smurf.

  “We’ll come back for it tomorrow. You shouldn’t drive until you’ve had a good meal and some sleep,” Anna Lisa says authoritatively. “Let’s drive through Taco Bell, beans have a lot of protein in them. Then I’ll make you some real food at home. I have some sweet potatoes I’ve been meaning to cook.”

  Felix smiles as Anna Lisa helps her into the cab of the truck. She loves that her aunt can be butch and femme in the same sentence.

  “So now I know why you’re such a good cook,” she says as they turn onto Washoe Street. “You sing
le-handedly revived this town with fucking muffins.”

  Anna Lisa shakes her head. “There’s no such thing as ’single-handedly’. Thanks, though.”

  “Seriously, that’s totally amazing.” Felix is still marveling when Anna Lisa hands her a bean burrito wrapped in paper. They sit in the Taco Bell parking lot. The moon is a perfect half circle at the edge of the windshield, white as a bone and shaped like an ear, listening to everything they say and don’t say.

  When they pull out of the parking lot and turn onto North Main, Felix whispers, “Calla Boulevard.” Her breath fogs up the glass.

  SMALL FIERCE ARMY

  Felix: Lilac Mines, 2002

  The envelope is flat, letter-sized, and adorned with small green squares. F.I.T. has the most stylish rejection stationery I’ve ever seen, Felix thinks. She flops down on the couch to open it, already thinking about what sort of dessert food she will comfort herself with. Her parents are driving up next week. After a white Christmas in the Sierras, they’ll help her move home. L.A. will be, at best, weird. She hasn’t talked to her housemates Crane or Robbie in ages, and somewhere the men who broke her ribs are still walking around. She had hoped she could go to New York, start a new life in her knitted bones. She runs her finger under the flap of the envelope, and removes the letter.

  Dear Ms. Ketay:

  Thank you for your application to F.I.T.’s Museum Theory: Costume and Textiles program. The MT department is pleased to offer you a Wesley R. Coates Memorial Scholarship, presented annually to three students who demonstrate unique abilities and are members of historically underrepresented populations. The scholarship will pay for one half of your tuition expenses for both years of the Master’s program.

  Please note that your scholarship, which is awarded by the department, is contingent on your acceptance into the university. You will be notified of your application’s status by February 15, 2003, at which time you will receive any applicable registration information. While we can make no guarantees regarding the university’s decision, students who are accepted at the departmental level typically receive acceptance packages from the university as well. Please call the number below if you have any questions. Congratulations on this honor. We hope you will seriously consider attending F.I.T..

  Sincerely,

  Ellen Doherty

  Dean, Museum Theory

  By the time Felix finishes reading the letter, she is no longer lying on the couch. She’s pacing the room, throwing in a gleeful little skip every few steps. Unique abilities! Historically underrepresented population? In her essay, she’d mentioned that she was “interested in blending masculine and feminine aesthetics in service of a queer sensibility that transcends commoditization; i.e., an empowered and defiantly queer style that is not simply ’lesbian chic.’ ” She had no idea how she would accomplish this, but she supposes they read between the not-very-subtle lines. Despite the fact that she rallied in favor of affirmative action in college, it feels strange to be on the receiving end. Well, why not? She’s spent the past four months confirming that history is not big on representing lesbians. She calls Anna Lisa at work to tell her the good news.

  In the weeks since her fight with Tawn, Felix has worked only a handful of shifts at the Goodwill. There’s been a lot to do, since Matty is gone and Tawn has been busy with interviews. This has kept them in different rooms. Felix has spent her days in thick, mothball-scented silence.

  Today when Felix arrives, a resignation letter folded in her green vinyl purse, the first person she sees is Blanca Randall, Anna Lisa’s muumuu-wearing friend, although today she’s dressed in a polyester blouse and black slacks. Just what Felix needs first thing on a nerve-wracking Wednesday morning. Felix slips her apron over her head and takes her place behind the counter.

  “Can I help you?” Maybe Blanca won’t remember her. She hopes she’ll be in and out quickly.

  “Oh, I’m just waiting for Tawn. She’s getting some forms for me. You’re Anna Lisa’s niece, right? I’m Blanca, in case you don’t remember. And I’m your new co-worker.” She smiles, forehead wrinkling and tugging on her taut hairline.

  Felix pulls her purse to her chest. “Really? Okay. It’s really nice to see you again.”

  Her face must not be very convincing. Blanca laughs and winks. “Don’t worry, I won’t spoil whatever fun you young kids have here by telling your aunt.” Felix’s heart pounds. What does she know about Felix and Tawn? Has Felix somehow failed to live up to Tawn’s wishes before even getting a chance to try? “I remember my first job. I was a shop girl in Placerville, and the other girls and I… we used to go out dancing until all hours. And how the young men used to flirt with us! That was before I got married to my you-know-what of a husband, of course, and before I really knew what it meant to be a Christian.”

  Tawn emerges from the back office, paperwork in hand. Felix gives her a how-could-you glare, but Tawn just looks at her blankly. “Oh good, so you guys have met,” Tawn says. “Felix, I told Blanca you’d be able to train her on the cash register.”

  “Sure,” Felix says through her teeth. “Um, when you’re done with those forms, can I talk to you in the office for a minute?” She heads to the back room and waits in an old, crushed-velvet arm chair next to Tawn’s desk. A CD is spinning in Tawn’s boombox, a tropical song with snowy lyrics. I’m the song that my enemies sing, the Jamaican singer concedes.

  “Joe Higgs, right?” Felix asks when Tawn walks in.

  “Yeah,” she says, eyeing Felix cautiously.

  “See, you’ve educated me,” Felix says brightly. “I wouldn’t have known that before.”

  “What do you want?” Tawn asks. Not quite hostile, just pragmatic.

  “I can’t believe you hired her,” Felix hisses. “My aunt knows her. I think she’s, like, a huge homophobe. Or at least kind of born-again.”

  “Well, you can’t really ask those things in an interview,” Tawn remarks, rearranging the papers on her desk. “There are laws about that stuff, and you might remember that I like to follow the rules. You also might remember that we’ve been short-staffed for weeks and we’re working our butts off.”

  It’s a moot point anyhow. Felix opens her purse and hands Tawn the letter. “It’s kind of formal. It’s not what I would say if I were saying goodbye as a… as someone you were dating. It’s an employee goodbye.” She waits while Tawn reads. “I got into F.I.T., I’m going to go.”

  Tawn doesn’t look up from the letter. “Congratulations.”

  Behind Tawn, the front door dings. Customers chatter and hangers slide across metal racks. Tawn seems infinitely strong, as cold and still as a glacier. The brassy, scratchy song admits, I’m bewildered all the time.

  Felix thinks of her long, icy night in the mine. What does she have to lose? “Okay, well, even if you don’t want to hear it, here’s what I want. I want to go to F.I.T. and I want to call you every night after class and tell you about all my annoying classmates and my really cool professors. And you can tell me about Blanca and Matty and the people who used to wear these clothes. You can remind me that the fashion world is just a world, not the world. And I’ll fly out and visit you on my breaks, and you can come to New York and stay in my too-small apartment in Brooklyn, and I’ll give you the dress I’ve made you in one of my classes…”

  “I never wear dresses,” Tawn says, looking at her now.

  “Okay, I’ll make you a top.”

  “That whole plan, that would be nice for you, wouldn’t it? Then you could have the best of all worlds. I’d be your keeping-it-real girlfriend, and every now and then you’d swoop down and pay me a visit.”

  “Tawn, I’m saying I like you. Why can’t you just get that?” Felix’s voice is escalating. Tawn closes the door to the office. “Why are you so suspicious of everything?”

  “Here’s what I want,” Tawn says, thin-lipped. “I want to live an on-purpose kind of life. You have, like, this checklist. You do things because they’re Good For You. I do things becaus
e they Happen To Me. And I don’t want my life to be one big accident, I don’t want it to be the sum of what’s leftover after I avoid all the things I’m afraid of. But I don’t want to be like you either, just so you know. I don’t want to be an item on your checklist.”

  “I’m not saying you should be like me,” Felix says defensively, but she’s aware, for the first time, that she’s walking in on something old and deep in Tawn. She thinks of her aunt, choosing Lilac Mines, the accident that became purpose. “Life is pretty fucking random for all of us, you know.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.” Tawn puts Felix’s letter in one of the desk’s long drawers and slams it shut.

  Somehow Felix gets through the day. Tawn leaves early, claiming a dentist appointment, even though she once told Felix that electric toothbrushes made her skin crawl. Felix and Blanca move the $1 sale rack in from the sidewalk and count out the cash register. Blanca tells Felix about her grandchildren as Felix locks up.

  “Telly is such a quiet little thing, but he’s a good strong reader, so he’ll probably do well when he’s older. And Mitch, he’s in fourth grade this year.” Blanca moves carefully across the snowy parking lot. “I’m going to the Christmas sing tomorrow night. Oops, the Winter sing. Have to be PC, right? They learn Chanukah songs, too, these days. I’m all for it, actually. It would be awful if the little Jewish children felt left out.”

  Felix sees Blanca trying to accommodate this strange new time. It gives Felix a feeling that is not un-Christmas-like. She pushes the remote on her key chain and her car beeps at her.

  “Uh-oh,” says Blanca. “Is that your car?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Look, you seem like a nice girl, so I should probably tell you: my daughter told me that the gays are using rainbows now as a symbol of, well, of being gay. Can you believe they went and made something dirty out of a nice innocent rainbow? You ought to be careful. You wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea.”