The Atlas of Reds and Blues

by Devi S. Laskar

  Mother pulls her car to the shoulder, whips out the registration and her license, rolls down the window. The policeman is young, the hair on his head a newly hatched chick, fuzzy, translucent blond. “Here you go,” she says before he opens his mouth to speak.

  He grunts. “You missed the yield.” He bends his head and clocks first the passenger seat, her purse zipper open, a dog-eared copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude splayed, spine up; then the back row and Middle Daughter calmly eating a cereal bar and looking away, out her window to the wrought-iron gates and what stands on the other side: a water fountain, a rose garden, and a columned house. An American flag from the 1790s, thirteen stars in a circle, flaps proudly atop a flagpole; underneath it a Confederate flag, with its iconic Southern Cross, waves in the wind.

  Mother does not argue that the sign has been absent, removed, for years now; that the hedges at that soft intersection have been trimmed back so that all parties can see one another. She does not argue that he has been stopping her regularly, usually in the mornings. She recognizes him, but he never recognizes her. For the first time, she fails to apologize.

  His stride back to the car is deliberate and purposeful. He returns, a pink ticket in his hand. “Pay close attention,” he says, his eyes as blue as a cloudless day. “Don’t let me catch you here again.”

  She nods in agreement, though she knows she’ll see him again within the next week and that he won’t recognize her, and then rolls up her window. “Don’t tell Daddy,” she says.

  Middle Daughter grins, then grimaces. Her eyes look down toward her hands. “Why not?”

  “He’ll be sad,” she says.

  &

  The pain like an ambulance call, waxing and waning as the red light circles through a complete revolution.

  &

  She calls out for help. The blood pouring out of her is steady and strong; a river, not a monthly tributary. She is almost out of toilet tissue. She flushes the toilet again. She spies the bath towel but it will require her to stand up and take a few steps. “Something’s wrong,” she hollers. “I can’t stop the bleeding.”

  But she pleads to deaf ears. She knows exactly what her husband is doing: he is wearing his headphones and listening to music and waiting for the timer to sound. Greta is outside chasing squirrels. When the timer sounds, he will unplug his headphones and call for their shepherd, their first baby, to come inside. Then he will call out for Greta’s human mother, and tell her it’s time to go to their friends’ house for dinner. There will be exasperation in his voice when she doesn’t answer, when she doesn’t magically appear at the bottom of the stairs, ready to go. But then he will be curious, and will come looking for her. She knows it is close to the time they will have to leave. She turns her head to the left and sees the dress she was planning to wear to the party, white with tiny eyelet flowers stitched at the collar and the hem, cap sleeves. White is the color of mourning in her parents’ world, in her parents’ culture. How appropriate. She can wear white to the hospital instead, to confirm what she already knows: that the baby no bigger than a peanut that she’s been wishing and worrying for, for nearly seven years, has left her. She looks at her hands, awash with blood that smells of iron and copper and steel. She will come home after the hospital and lie in her bed, her head propped up by pillows, a TV remote on the nightstand to change the channel. The TV will remain on for days and days, a steady chatter of talk shows and game shows and news to drown out the silence, the countdown clock ticking toward a due date that no longer matters.

  &

  The dispatcher’s radio crackles. “Well, Hollis, at least you got to work on your hobby today.”

  The agent laughs hard. “Which one?”

  The crackle repeats. “Both, I guess. You always do love to brandish your weapon while working on your tan.”

  Mother remembers the motorist in Alabama, being interviewed by PBS, right after the last election, his farmer’s tan, his candy-red pickup brandishing a gun rack in the back—and a sticker of a skeleton draped in the Confederate flag. “I’m not racist,” the motorist insisted to the blue-suited reporter holding a mic. “Don’t tell my friends, but I voted blue for the first time.”

  The first American president with a permanent tan has been in office for sixty-eight weeks and six days.

  &

  Holly Hobbie dolls are sold out. Their mother fishes for substitutes out of the clearance bin at the Durham department store going-out-of-business sale. Two of them, actually. One for her, the Real Thing, and one for the Baby Sister. The rag babies carry painted smiles and blue eyes drawn to look down.

  The pasty-faced cashier explains the meaning of Buy one, get one free at the checkout.

  “Two for one price!” their mother exclaims, pulling the cash out of her red cloth handbag.

  The new owners are not happy Holly Hobbie is unavailable. The new owners know the price of admission into any circle of friends at school or even in the neighborhood this year is the Holly Hobbie doll, with her patchwork quilt dress and blue bonnet and black Mary Jane shoes. The Baby Sister is quick to put her rag baby in the black Samsonite suitcase-coffin months before the next trip to see the cousins in India, but the Real Thing does not. She carefully keeps her doll atop her twin bed, propped into a sitting position by her well-loved pillow. She uses a blue rubber band to get the yellow yarn hair out of the doll’s face. She cuts out a picture of the Holly Hobbie doll from the Sunday mailer that has the phrase “Sold Out” in red across the torso like a pageant sash—and croons to it the new song from Grease that’s overtaken the radio airwaves: “You’re the One That I Want.”

  &

  The dispatcher’s drawl echoes, too.

  &

  Never mind that she’s been hearing this soliloquy from strangers since she was born, in the Year of the Fire Horse, twin sixes after the nineteen. Never mind the order of questions invariably changes even if the questions themselves do not: “How long have y’all lived here? Do you even speak English? Oh, well. Your English is so good. Bless your heart, you must miss your people. You stick out like a raisin in a big bowl of oatmeal. Is it true that you worship cows? Is it painful to have that red dot on your women’s foreheads? Is that some bloody concoction? I learned about India when I was in grade school. Is it true y’all are all poor and beg in the street? If everybody’s poor, where does the money come from? You certainly don’t look hungry. Bless your heart, do you know about Weight Watchers? Do you worship idols? Bless your heart, that’s akin to voodoo. I watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I heard someone on TV say it was based on a true story. Do y’all really eat monkey brains? I’m so concerned for your soul. Have you considered accepting Jesus into your heart? I think it’s funny you call your dress a sorry. I bet your mommas are sorry having to wear that contraption in public. How come y’all aren’t laughing? Don’t complain about my dog barking at you, and being off leash. You’re in America now, you should do as the Romans do, go to Kmart down the street and buy yourself some pants. Right? You should be grateful. Fifty years ago I could have had you arrested just by the way you’re looking at me right now. Maybe y’all should consider coming to our Bible study Wednesday night, it might do you some good. Have you even heard of the Bible? Don’t get all uppity on me, don’t turn away. I know you think you don’t have to listen. But this is my country. You do. When are y’all heading back? Y’all best be getting back to where you came from, you hear? No need to overstay your welcome.”

  &

  Two of the Kevlar-clad agents are within earshot.

  “He’s been picked up?” the first one asks, his voice raspy as if he’d smoked too many cigarettes.

  “Ambush.” The other voice chuckles. “He never saw it coming.”

  She remembers the birthday party for her hero the year before, all the stealth phone calls and e-mails, all the whispers between the girls. She remembers how surprised he’d been to see his oldest friends crowded around the candle-laden cake on the dining room
table, singing off key. They’d parked half a mile away, so he wouldn’t know as he drove home from his office that they were lying in wait. “Happy?” she’d asked.

  “Perfect,” he’d replied, his eyes shining with unshed tears.

  &

  She turns her eyes from the cloudy Cyclops looming across the satellite map of the Gulf of Mexico on the television screen, Hurricane Katrina bearing down on Louisiana in the coming day, to see her man of the hour dragging his scuffed shoes through the door. He walks into the kitchen, carry-on strap slung across his shoulder, hair tousled, the circles under his eyes like tree rings. He pets Greta and gives the girls bear hugs as they grab their backpacks and run out the door for the intermittent car pool she has managed to join. He stands there and she smells the weariness, the noxious airplane smell, on his clothes, on his skin.

  He is home a day or two early.

  She smiles and he smiles back. She knows that look in his bright blue eyes. He wants to have his day and spend it, too. He wants to sleep enough that he feels he’s caught up on his rest but to wake in time to check his e-mail before it gets too late. He wants to go out for a run with his friends late enough that they have a chance to show up, but early enough that the overheated Southern sun doesn’t bake their shadows along the trail. He wants to have someone squeeze some oranges in the juicer but he doesn’t want to be that someone and he does not want to ask someone else to do it for him. It is almost eight o’clock in the morning and he is conflicted.

  “Can I make you coffee?” he asks, then yawns. He runs his hand through his dirty blond hair, starting to turn silver at the temples.

  “My hero,” she says, muting the TV with the blue button on the universal remote. She hugs him a second too long and he is the first to let go.

  &

  “Sounds like you really pushed that gal’s button, Hollis.”

  The agent snorts. “People come into your life as a blessing or a lesson, Paula.”

  Laughter. “Which one are you, Hollis?”

  &

  It is just a game, a pastime they play to pass the time. Every footfall creates an expectant echo of guests who are not imminent—and the array of packing boxes has been breached. The Middle Daughter says, “Let’s play the doctor game. I know where the doctor stuff is. I saw the injection thing in the bag that has the alphabet magnets.”

  The Eldest Daughter replies, “I hate playing that game. All we do is lie down. And you always want to be the hero, the doctor.” She is the girl who loves mankind but has disdain for man. She is already as tall as her maternal grandmother.

  “I don’t want to be the doctor today,” Middle says. “I want to be the broken person.” She is the girl who is so wrapped up in the idea of inventing convenient intergalactic travel that she has forgotten mankind and man, except for when an individual or a group of them single her out because of her looks, which are a lot like her mother’s at that age, curly mop of hair, diminutive in stature.

  Mother picks up a Magic Marker, jots down the exchange on the back of the pink packing slip. Her cell phone buzzes: a message from her dearest college friend. “Snagged your handsome husband at Logan. We need a witness for the ceremony!” Mother laughs, mostly to herself, and types back CONGRATULATIONS. She’s missing Jess and Maya’s official tying of the knot in Massachusetts because she’s got to work, and because someone has to be home with the girls.

  “Well, I don’t want to be the doctor either,” Eldest says. “I want to be the credit card person.”

  The Youngest Daughter laughs in appreciation. She is the boy-crazy girl, the one who has already figured out how to manipulate man and conquer mankind. She is the startling beauty, the one who will have to get an unlisted telephone number when it’s her turn to go to high school and all the boys will want to drive her home. Youngest says, “I want to be the doctor. I want to push all the buttons.”

  &

  Every day is Groundhog Day, Bill Murray version: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008. She remains cloudy about the lessons she’s supposed to be learning at the small hands of her girls.

  She comes home from the gas station, her tank is full, her credit card more burdened. The Eldest Daughter says, “You think this is bad?” pointing to the Youngest Daughter, who has just thrown red-orange crayons into the heating vent, heaped all shades of blue crayons into the VCR, and licked the cabinet doorknobs in the kitchen. No particular reason. “Just wait until she grows up.”

  &

  On the driveway her thirst is primitive: she wants to taste the blue palette of cold water, she wants to dispel the rancid ketchup taste blooming in her mouth.

  &

  They’ve hidden her baggie of chocolate-covered espresso beans. These girls who did not care for the breakfast she got up early to make: scrambled eggs and grits, biscuits and gravy. Cheddar grated from an orange-yellow block of Tillamook she’d been saving. Hash browns with crispy edges, smothered in ketchup. These girls who fed Greta three extra breakfasts today under the table when they thought no one was watching. She searches under the couch cushions and in their toy chests and the baggie is nowhere to be found. She really must have five or six right now or she will descend into a deep sleep and not pick up the children from school. Come to think of it, they were rather hyper before school today, when her hero called from Phoenix, the Super Bowl festivities lingering as background noise. The girls were jittery and especially loud, unable to restrain themselves: hitting, spitting, hissing, laughing, crying at one another. She had to interrupt his stories about the Giants’ win by raising her voice, and commanding the girls to drink extra water, get ready for car pool. She had to let go of the call when they didn’t listen, when the Youngest Daughter stuck out her tongue and the Eldest said she was the meanest mother ever, when the Middle slammed the door to the bathroom so hard the house shook.

  She begins to understand why certain types of the clown fish species eat their young: the ingratitude, the ingratitude.

  &

  She imagines how this must look to the alien observer who has arrived from outer space: the life-size neighbor Barbie dolls maintaining their Southern hospitality smiles as they pick at imaginary lint on their tennis skirts, as they do a quick runway strut to the curb and look inside their mailboxes though the mailman will not arrive for several hours, as they initiate small talk about the golf pro at the country club.

  Their applause ricochets down the cul-de-sac, and startles her. The neighbors’ claps, ostensibly in delight, sound like fireworks. She cannot think of a single time when her own mother encouraged her to laugh at another person’s misfortune. She cannot recall a single moment when her hero’s mother did not stop and offer assistance to someone in distress.

  One woman calls out in a syrupy accent, “Is that CNN pulling up?”

  &

  Once upon a time before children, she and her hero visited the Barbie museum in Japan. They learned the first Barbie dolls were born there in 1959, but the dolls themselves were white girls, either blonde or brunette, sporting a zebra-pattern one-piece bathing suit. At that time, Japanese housewives hand-stitched the limited number of outfits.

  By 2004, Barbie was still a white girl, but she had “companions”: siblings, a boyfriend, “friend” dolls from as far away as India. African American Barbie dolls were available too, but at a higher price. As well as hundreds of choices, mostly in clothes, but also in cars, homes, men named Ken.

  By 2009, Barbie dolls had a clothing line that rivaled Prada, articles written about them in Forbes magazine, a marketing and design team in El Segundo, California, and a “store to playroom door” strategic team in Hong Kong.

  &

  The sun shines without pity but she shivers on the concrete. This will make a good book someday. The feeling in her legs starts to wane.

  And a good movie. Brad Pitt can play the part of her hero. He loves Brad Pitt.

  But she’s too dark to be played by Angelina Jolie.

  &

  She wants to finish
the novel she’s been writing, sentence by sentence, comma by comma, since the girls were born. It is about a woman who does as she pleases, feels no remorse for wanting everything, feels no guilt for having some material possessions, feels no shame in her desire for equity and for her ambitions, climbs the corporate ladder with the same ease and muscle memory as a French chef concocting a soufflé, has love affairs, cures hunger and poverty, speaks her mind without consequence. It is a fairy tale that does not require a prince.

  She opens her friend Emily’s copy of Aristotle’s Poetics, sees the handwritten note addressed to her on the title page: “Look at the incline, how it scaffolds the story. It might help you make sense of all the chaos.”

  The newsroom where she works, the newsroom that she loves, has become inaccessible to someone like her: three kids underfoot and a husband circling the globe. Her hero had insisted on the move to suburbia, two months before. He said it would give the girls more legroom and green space, give himself two more shortcuts to the airport—better odds of spending “quality” time with the family when he was in town since the quantity was not in danger of shrinking. Her hero insisted even though the three now go to two different schools—the Eldest and the Youngest didn’t want to switch to the new school and tanked their entrance exams so well that the admissions officer sent a handwritten note recommending they be held back a year to “catch up.” The Middle wasn’t so cunning, and for the past two months they’ve been rising before the moon dips back into the horizon, just to beat traffic on the interstate; and in the afternoons, Mother sits in the longest car line recorded in North America.