by Tracy Ross
By the time Chicken came to me, whispering that she needed someone to talk to, she was skin on bones with bruises and sores mottling her arms and legs. Her lips were cracked, and her eyes overlarge and overly bright. I knew I couldn’t tell Horsehair that I thought Chicken needed more daily rations, but I got permission to hike her to the top of the outcropping, and we picked our way to the apex of a sandy red boulder. It looked out over a sea of saline washes and wind-scoured badlands.
“Neat, isn’t it?” I said, picking a spot with a view that extended for what seems now like a million miles. Chicken sat so close that our sun-warmed arms were touching.
“What’s neat?” Chicken asked.
“The desert. All that earth with nobody in it.”
Chicken looked at me like I’d just piloted a unicorn out of a cloud of cotton candy and landed it on the boulder where we were sitting. She picked a scab at the center of her forearm and looked at me forlornly.
“You’re serious?” she said.
“Yeah, I am serious. I like being out here, even if we’re not on a vacation. The desert makes me feel small and invisible, like a mosquito or a piece of dandruff.”
“Dandruff?” Again, Chicken looked at me like I was crazy. “Come on. Dandruff’s gross. Why would you say that?”
I thought about it and silently chided myself for saying something so stupid. I was joking around when I wanted Chicken to see what I saw. The desert in front of us was different from the one in Twin Falls. It was softer-looking and rounded, with no trace of skin-tearing lava.
What I meant was that I loved the simplicity of walking all day only to lay my head on the sandy earth at sunset. I liked the stars buzzing over my head. The desert killed people who didn’t know how to find shade or water. But it didn’t hate them or prey upon them, the way dads sometimes preyed on their daughters.
We sat and watched the shadows change directions. The sun crept a couple of inches across the horizon, and the wind kicked up the scent of fossils. Every now and then, Chicken looked up from a beetle she was poking and acted like she wanted to say something. I waited until she was ready.
Ten, maybe fifteen minutes passed. She was ready.
“What I want to know is how you managed to get through high school without getting sent here,” she said. “And why I couldn’t grow up like you did, because maybe then I wouldn’t be here.”
I felt like a liar, wishing I could tell Chicken the truth about myself and my circumstances. I wanted her to know that I’d been through everything. Well, everything short of being raped and getting pregnant by my own father, like the worse-worst cases of girls who are abused. But I wished she could see that even a fuckup like me, who’d been seriously jilted and tried to fill her emptiness with her so-called sinful behavior, had found a crack and seen the light shining on the other side of her life. I knew if Chicken could know this, it might be the best thing she learned during Challenger. But the “rules” of my job kept me from telling her the one thing that might have helped her. I knew, as counselors, we were supposed to show only our glossiest sheens.
Sitting on my perch above the desert, I leaned over and knocked forearms with Chicken. “You’re not all those bad things people say you are,” I said. “And trust me. The only reason you think I’m better than you is because you don’t know me.”
At the end of Handcarts, the kids ran eight miles into the arms of their parents. Amy and I didn’t have to, but we joined them. We ran until we saw the faint outline of Challenger’s institution-green Chevys, surrounded by adults: Wallwalker and Horsehair, plus most of the kids’ parents.
As we approached the yellow tape that marked the end of the kids’ worst nine weeks in history, many rushed into their parents’ arms. They collapsed, overwhelmed, exhausted, and enlightened. It was the first time many had seen the people responsible for having them ripped from their beds and shoved onto a plane bound for Utah. I could sense their anger, as well as their relief.
Amy and I sprinted behind them. We loitered in the emotions around us, wondering if we had something to do with it. Amy had already decided that she’d come back to Challenger for two more hitches, while I’d decided to spend the rest of the summer in Twin Falls. We hugged and congratulated each other, reflecting on our accomplishments. In the desert, we’d learned to be patient, open, and fearless. Challenger had taught us leadership, kindness, and perseverance. Though I still thought I would become an actress, I now added “youth counselor, wilderness guide, and social worker” to my list of possible professions. I knew that my successes were even greater than Amy’s: in the course of one year, I’d pulled myself up from the dregs of teenage society to become one of the top students in my class. I also knew that instead of tarnishing me, my past had given me the gifts of empathy and understanding. I felt pride and gratitude for the chances Jude, David, Wallwalker, and Horsehair had given me, which allowed me to prove that I was far greater than my circumstances.
Amy and I were just about to get too self-congratulatory, when we heard footsteps shuffling up the dusty road behind us.
Xavier lumbered toward the finish, his shirt soaked through with sweat. His fists were clenched, and he pumped them along the sides of his waist. At first I thought he was pumping with joy, or maybe pride. But then I saw that he was frowning. “There he is. The boy we’ve been waiting for,” I heard a female voice behind me say. Another, gruffer voice, responded, “First time in God knows how long I’ve seen him running without being chased.”
Xavier didn’t hear what they were saying. He trotted up to the crowd, looking for his parents. I caught his eye and smiled but was overshadowed as his dad extended a giant, Rolex-draped arm for what struck me as an overly formal handshake. But instead of taking it, Xavier recoiled. Spitting into his father’s face, he shouted, “FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU FOR DOING THIS TO ME!”
Before Amy, or I, or anyone could move, Wallwalker grabbed Xavier by the neck. Xavier struggled, contorting his body like he wanted to slam it into Wallwalker. But our leader was too strong for even a big, rage-filled boy to overpower. He wrestled Xavier into one of Challenger’s Chevys and got in, firing up the engine. As they headed back to Sheep Camp, where Xavier would start his second, nine-week round of wilderness rehabilitation, I stood on my tiptoes and peered over the dust cloud billowing up behind them.
Whispering, but hoping the sound of my voice would travel, I said, “It’s okay, Xavier. Hang in there. I know how wrong it is for them to ask you to forgive your parents.”
14
The Hospital Blues
The explosion occurred during an improvisation class the third week of my second semester at Cornish College. I jumped, my knee buckled, and I crashed, screaming like I was being murdered. A doctor at the University of Washington said the operation would be serious; I’d be in a cast from my ankle to my hip for twelve full weeks. I practically fainted when he told me, but I was in for a much bigger surprise.
I needed someone to help me through the operation, so I called my mom, who passed me to my dad. Mom couldn’t help: she was too busy, or afraid of flying, or couldn’t get the time off from her job at Parole and Probation in Las Vegas. I knew better than to complain about her lack of guts when it came to coming to my rescue. Mom couldn’t make it, period. But my dad could. He said he was free on the days leading up to my surgery, the surgery, and the days after the surgery too.
I was nervous when Dad said he was coming, but also glad to have a parent who would drive so far to sit beside me and hold my hand in the hospital. At nineteen, I still struggled to navigate my way through the world. I had thrived at Interlochen and Challenger partially because they both consisted of controlled environments with clearly defined leaders. In the city, I was overwhelmed. Maybe it was the constant rain or the fact that I’d once again started dabbling in hallucinogens, but in Seattle, I’d also fallen back into depression. Knowing my dad was coming filled me with comfort but also fear. This would be the first time we’d spent a moment alone toget
her since he’d last abused me, five years earlier. But as the day of his arrival approached and my mind started burrowing into the past, I told myself to buck up; there was no way the same dad was coming to Seattle.
I lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill. When Dad arrived, he insisted on sleeping outside. He said it was because he wanted to protect his new Toyota Celica from possible break-ins, but the decision only planted further suspicion in my mind. I couldn’t help but think that his refusal to stay in the condo, with both me and my roommate, came out of a fear of what he’d still want to do to me. Now that he was there, a part of me wanted to tell him Thanks for coming, but I changed my mind. Go home and I’ll see you at Christmas.
Clearly, I was still embroiled in playing my role as loving, forgiving daughter. And Dad, for his part, was nothing if not a doting father. On the morning of my surgery, he knocked on the door of my apartment at four thirty. I remember thinking two things when his hammering rattled me out of a sleep I’d only recently fallen into: gratitude, for all the times he’d let me snore until the last possible minute, and fear, for what I was about to encounter.
At the hospital, Dad filled out my paperwork, while I sat whimpering near his shoulder. He waited outside my room while I changed into my surgery gown. When a nurse came in—wielding a six-inch-long needle that he stuck into my spinal cord to deaden my entire lower body—Dad hovered nervously nearby. The last thing I remember before going into surgery was crying as Dad walked alongside my stretcher. “Don’t worry, sis,” he said. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
The surgery lasted three hours. Not only had I torn my ligament, but I’d ripped a silver-dollar-size chunk of cartilage off the end of my femur. Both of my doctors told my dad that any other person with such an injury would have spent the past eight weeks hobbling around on crutches. “Well, that makes sense,” said my dad. “She’s always been good at tolerating her own suffering.”
If only my dad could have been someone else’s dad when the nurse rolled me back into my hospital room on a massive dose of morphine. I barely recognized him, sitting in a recliner watching TV. I was shivering so badly from the anesthesia that my teeth actually chattered. Dad flagged down a nurse and asked her to bring me more blankets, which he wrapped around me like a paper towel around a microwave burrito. When I woke up later, gagging and coughing, he shoved a pink, kidney-shaped container under my mouth.
The night went from dark to darker. As it did, I stared at my dad’s hands in his lap and thought that the temptation to touch me must be killing him. I tried to stay awake, fearing for my own protection, but every time I whimpered—for the pain emanating from my leg seared through my entire body—Dad pushed the mechanical button in my IV drip, sending another shot of morphine into my veins. The relief was so powerful that it prevented me from telling him to stop. I needed every ounce of that morphine to get me through the night.
I fell in and out of sleep. Sometimes I awoke and felt glad to have my dad sitting beside me. He’d smile and dab my head with a cool, wet washcloth. Other times he’d reach out and tickle my arm. I knew he loved me and hated to see me hurting. But I was terrified of the monster that lived inside of him.
Soon, the knowing overwhelmed me, and in the fog of my painkiller-induced paralysis, I became convinced that I was about to be molested by my dad. I tried moving away from him, but the cast stretching from my ankle to my hip made all movement impossible. I strained my neck, searching for my dad’s hands to assure myself that they were still in his lap. My mouth wanted to scream out at him, “Get away from me! I know why you’re here!” But before my brain could communicate with my lips, a shadow moved in the hallway. A nurse stuck her head into my room and said, “We okay in here? How’s Tracy? She need anything?”
Once again, like I had for so many years, I wanted to say that I needed more than anyone could ever give me, but my dad jumped out of his chair and spoke for me.
“She’s been sleeping like a baby,” he said. “Whenever it seems like she’s hurting, I just give her another shot of morphine.”
“Well, she’s lucky, then, isn’t she?” said the nurse. “Not every girl has a daddy who will sit beside her and keep her comfortable in a hospital room all night.”
The next time Dad looked down, tears were pouring across my temples. He leaned in close and used his thumb to stop them from rivering into my hairline. I wanted to tell him to bring the nurse back, that I was scared to spend the night with him sitting beside me. But I did what I seemed doomed to do forever. I looked at him and convinced myself that he really was there to help me.
Too scared to ask my dad what had happened in the hospital—and too terrified to face the possibility that something unsavory had—I started running again. Only this time, instead of jogging, I drove as fast as possible away from the Pacific Northwest. I needed to be far away as possible from any thoughts of my parents, because I was confused about what they meant to me. The fear I had felt in the hospital erased years of “healing” that I thought I’d already accomplished. I thought I had come to a place where I could move on from the past. But the memories rose like a tidal wave. I still didn’t trust my dad.
Three semesters after enrolling at Cornish I dropped out in January of 1991. A friend, Ladan, and I left Seattle on a long vacation. We drove south to the sequoia-studded mountains of central California, and later, to the white sand beaches of Baja, Mexico. Ladan had grown up in Iran but left when the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the government in 1979. In the Sierra Nevada Mountains, we camped under trees so big you could drive a car through them, and in Baja, we swam in the bright turquoise waters of the Sea of Cortez with stingrays and glowing phosphorescent plankton.
At the end of June, Ladan and I crossed the border back into the U.S. We were out of money and in need of summer jobs. Ladan wanted to go to Northern California, where she’d heard we could work as laborers on an organic farm. But ever since I was little, I’d been fixated on the Teton Mountains in Wyoming. I convinced Ladan that we should go to Jackson Hole, where we could camp for free on public lands and find jobs in one of the most amazing natural settings in the West.
We landed there a week after leaving the Baja. Almost immediately, Ladan found work waiting tables. Since I had zero job experience—save for my month-long hitch with the Challenger Foundation and a short-lived stint at a bakery in Seattle—I found nothing. I didn’t try that hard, though. At the time I still received my war-orphan checks the navy sent to remind me that my real dad had died while in the service. My mom had bought me a pair of Hi-Tec hiking boots and a Patagonia fleece jacket when I went away to Interlochen, and before we left for Baja, Ladan and I splurged on one, faded blue extrernal-frame backpack. I bought a roll of Glad garbage sacks, a couple of water bottles, a box of gallon-size ziptop bags, and a summertime’s supply of Fig Newtons. Ladan and I set up our tent in a small valley outside of Jackson where other transient kids were spending the summer. While she waited tables at a cafe called V-Jays, I explored the Tetons.
What I found was a beauty so harsh and ephemeral I could barely stand it. The Tetons shot straight out of the ground in ragged hunks of sepia-toned granite. They stabbed the clouds at elevations of 12- and 13,000 feet. Black bears, grizzlies, and moose wandered up narrow canyons filled with yarrow, Indian Paintbrush, and bright periwinkle fireweed. I hiked with a pocket guide to flowers and learned to identify dozens of different blooms. Where crisp, metallic creeks tumbled over slick, black boulders, I took off my boots and soaked my feet until they were freezing. The sun’s rays always found me, turning my arms and legs a toasted brown color and dusting my cheeks with freckles. Though I was terrified of rounding a switchback and surprising a grizzly sow with her cubs, I kept hiking deeper and deeper into the mountains. Leaving the Jenny Lake parking lot at dawn, I followed climbers headed toward basecamp on the Grand Teton, never letting them hear or see me. Once a black bear stepped onto the trail between us, and I followed her for at least a quarter mile. She
ambled along, stopping occasionally to browse the blueberries lining the trail. She even glanced at me a couple of times, then kept walking, disinterested. I felt no compulsion to run from her, or hide behind the giant moss-covered boulders that lined the lower path. Maybe I was naive, but, for some reason, I knew she wouldn’t hurt me.
It went like that all summer. I’d leave Ladan at V-Jays, telling her I’d be back by the time her shift had ended. Driving into the Gros Ventre Wilderness, I’d look for the mountain shaped like a sleeping Indian. Below it, I would find my favorite swimming hole and hide in the reeds along its banks for hours. Whitewater kayakers would congregate to practice self-rescue in their boats, and I thought about how the mountains themselves were rescuing me, because they let me be exactly who I wanted. I liked the simplicity of walking just to get to the top of something, and then, if I was lucky, finding a snowfield that I could glissade, skiing on the backs of my hiking boots, back down. When I came to a river and knew no one was near me, I stripped to my underwear and waded, just like I had as a child. Rainbow trout hid in the deep, shadowed pools and peregrine falcons sat on treetops waiting to swoop down and catch them. When I climbed out again, I’d lay on the hot river rocks until the last drops of water evaporated off my skin.
I look back on those days and wish I was still living in them, when the mountains and rivers washed my brain as much as my body. After so many years of insomnia, ironically, camping in a land of moose and grizzlies allowed me to access a calm so deep I could finally sleep through the night. Under the scattershot stars my sleeplessness abated, and I drifted off—for the first time with any consistency—free of the worry that someone would invade my body during the night.
