All You Get Is Me

by Yvonne Prinz

  The Mexican people have a whole different take on death. They seem to view it as the other half of life. Not something to be feared. My favorite holiday when we lived in Noe Valley was the Day of the Dead, which happens every year right after Halloween. My mom and dad and I would walk down the hill to the Mission and buy sugar skulls at the bakery on Twenty-fourth Street and then we’d watch the parade of dancing skeletons and musicians and all sorts of ghoulish creatures go by. The idea is that the dead are gone but not forgotten. People wear pictures of their departed on a string around their necks and they build altars in their living rooms filled with candles and flowers and their dead relatives’ favorite snack foods and drinks and cigarettes. It’s a huge party with death as the theme. It’s awfully cool. I’ve got a ton of pictures I’ve taken in a box somewhere.

  When the photos dry I pull them off the clothesline and put them in a stack. I click off the red light and pull open the wooden door. Bright sunlight streams in and I squint like a hamster. Steve is transplanting arugula seedlings that were started in the greenhouse into one of our “small gardens.” These are special raised gardens that are replanted all summer long so we always have fresh baby greens.

  “Hey,” I call out as I walk past him.

  He lifts the wide brim of his straw sun hat. “Hey, Roar. Whatcha got there?”

  “Photos of the accident for my dad.”

  “Lemme have a look.” He stands up.

  I walk over and hand him the stack. He takes them in his filthy hands and flips through them, shaking his head. He stops at the one of the overturned SUV.

  “Hey, I know that SUV. That woman is mucho uptight. She went off on me the other day when I double-parked in front of Millie’s for a nanosecond to deliver eggs.”

  “Yeah, we kind of got that impression too.”

  He hands the photos back to me. “Good CSI work, pal.”

  “Yeah, thanks. She probably won’t even get charged.” I squint up at him. Steve’s about six feet tall.

  “Nah, but what a load of bad karma.”

  “You believe in that stuff?” I ask.

  “Sure. There’s the criminal justice system, which isn’t worth a hill of beans in this country unless you’re white and rich, and then there’s karmic justice, which is part of the natural order of the universe.”

  I nod. It makes sense to me. “Yeah. I suppose I believe in it too.”

  My mom was a believer. She always told me that bad karma catches up with you when you’re least expecting it. She also told me that if you were cruel to animals you’d come back as one in your next life. I pointed out to her that Mittens, the cat who spent hours in her lap, could really be a bully who tied firecrackers to cats’ tails. She thought about this and then she never said anything about it again. I felt like a real killjoy for stepping all over her theory.

  Steve arches his back and bends over to touch his toes. I stand there feeling stupid. He straightens up again and takes off his hat and runs his fingers through his coarse wavy red hair. He puts his hat back on and looks over at the house.

  “Tell your dad I’m going to need some help loading the truck for the market later.”

  “Okay.”

  “You gonna work it with me?” he asks.

  “I dunno.” I shrug like I don’t care. My dad pays me eight bucks an hour to work the local farmers’ market with Steve. What he doesn’t know is that I would do it for free just to watch Steve charm all the local women. I love his easy way of talking to people, getting them to try new stuff, telling them how to cook the produce we sell. His passion for the food we grow makes the market fun.

  “You know you want to.” Steve grins and I practically have to turn away.

  “You’re right, Steve, I do. I live for it. When I was a little girl I used to say: ‘One day I’d like to sell onions and garlic in the hot sun with Steve.’”

  “Aw now, Miss Roar. I do believe you’re messin’ with me and that plain ain’t nice.”

  I laugh. Steve’s earnest farm-boy imitation always does me in.

  I continue on up to the house with Rufus at my heels. I pull the screen door open and it wheezes shut behind me. My dad is at the kitchen table with a pad of paper and a pen. He’s still on the phone. I can tell he doesn’t like what he’s hearing. He has deep furrows between his eyes. I put the photos on the table in front of him. He flips through them and stops at the one of Sylvia’s foot.

  “All right, look. I’ll talk to her sister and I’ll get back to you.” He hangs up the phone.

  “Steve needs help loading later.”

  “Where’s Miguel?”

  I shrug. “I dunno. Last time I saw him he was joyriding on the tractor.”

  My dad sighs. He’s in no mood for my sarcasm. He continues to look at the photo. I fill a glass with cold water from the fridge.

  “I guess we’d better get some apricots picked too. We lost a truckful on Tuesday. We’ll have to try and make it back.”

  After the accident on Tuesday it was too late to get to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. We kept what we could for ourselves but we gave most of it away to the neighbors, and Miguel took some for his laborer friends who live in trailer camps called colonias, which is Spanish for overcrowded, hot, and inhumane.

  “What are you up to, Roar?” asks my dad, pretending he’s just curious.

  “Storm’s coming over,” I say quickly. My dad makes a face. That’s not the answer he was hoping for. I know he’s about to ask a favor but we have a deal. He can play farmer if he wants but I’m not the “farmer’s daughter.” I do my chores but that’s it.

  “Hon, would you mind? I’d do it but I’ve got to track down Sylvia’s sister.”

  I exhale heavily. “I’ll do it but you need to know that I’m doing it for Sylvia.” I put the empty glass down on the counter and head back outside. I try to slam the screen door behind me but the spring won’t let me. It wheezes shut politely. I hear my dad yelling “Thank you!” but I’m already halfway to the orchard, taking long, angry, purposeful strides.

  The first apricot I pluck off the tree smells of roses and sits heavy in my hand, warmed by the sun. I take a bite and savor the creamy, slightly tart taste that fills my mouth. I finish it in three bites, toss the pit, and get to some serious picking. Eventually Miguel joins me, his eyes crinkling up with good humor when he sees me scowling. He knows how things work around here and I can’t help but laugh with him. The bees buzz lazily around a neat row of wooden hives next to the orchard. A local beekeeper leaves them here to pollinate our plants and we get a couple of free jars of honey out of it.

  I hear Storm’s scooter whining nasally up the road just as I’m loading the last box of apricots into the cool storage room. Rufus trots to the gate and escorts her in. Her pale arms and legs look out of place against the sunbaked dirt road where she parks her scooter. She waves and takes off her black helmet, hooking it over the handlebars. I walk toward her and she saunters past Steve, stopping for a brief flirtation, making sure he gets a good look at what she’s not wearing. Her crotch-clearing skirt and tiny tank top leave very little to the imagination. Even from behind I can tell that Steve is being very good-natured about it.

  Storm is the CEO in charge of making sure I acquire a misspent youth to regret when I’m older. My dad sent me to public school in the country and Storm is his punishment. She recently shaved off her eyebrows. She pencils them in now and always looks mildly surprised. The day I met her she walked over to me and said, “Aurora? Fabulous. I’m Storm. We’re both forces of nature. Is there any doubt we were meant for each other?” That day her hair was hot pink and straightened into a pageboy. Right now it’s black cherry and pulled back into a tight ponytail. I’ve also seen it silvery blond swept into a Marilyn Monroe style and royal blue shaved into a buzz cut. Her outfits are always outrageous too. They’re the outfits you see in fashion magazines on nine-foot skeletal models. The ones where you always think, Who would wear that? Storm would, that’s who.


  Storm’s parents are fundamentalist Christians, which involves a lot of Bible reading and praying and going to church. Storm (whose original name is Hillary) figured out pretty early in the game that when she rebels, her parents blame themselves. They put on hair shirts and wring their hands and ask God’s forgiveness for the wrong turn they’ve taken in raising their only child. Then they pray for guidance. Storm keeps them on their toes by occasionally vomiting loudly with the bathroom door open after dinner so they can hear it at the dinner table or cutting herself in places on her body where they couldn’t possibly miss it. She gets suspended from school regularly, and at our school, that’s saying a lot. You practically have to run down the hallways waving a gun and screaming to get anyone’s attention.

  Storm’s parents don’t even think it’s really her doing all this. They think it’s Satan; very convenient for Storm, who counts Satan among her heroes. I try to warn her that an exorcism can’t be far off.

  “That’s an attractive outfit,” Storm says, taking in my too-big jeans cut off at the knee, gum boots, a ripped gray T-shirt, and a faded Metallica ’95 summer tour baseball cap.

  “You like it? It’s right off the runway in Milan.” I vogue for her.

  “Your knee is bleeding,” she says, unamused.

  “I’ve gotta go put my suit on, you wanna come?”

  “Nah, I don’t like your dad’s vibe. I’ll wait here with Steve.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Up in my bedroom I pull my swimsuit on and put my clothes on over it.

  Storm fires up the scooter and I jump on the back. We bump along on a potholed road that separates our farm from our neighbors, approaching top speeds of about fourteen miles an hour. I hang on to Storm’s waist as she navigates around the holes. My camera bangs against my bony chest. We travel alongside cornfields and then a peach orchard and then a cherry orchard. It’s the perfect picture of farm life. The type of thing you see in brochures where they try to coax city people to vacation on a “working farm.”

  We arrive at the swimming hole, a pretty pathetic “hole in the ground” type of thing. It sort of looks like the hole a meteor crashing to Earth might make but I’m sure the real story involves something that used to be there but isn’t anymore. Those stories always make me sad. Hardly anyone comes here, and there’s a rope swing hanging from a tree you can do the Tarzan thing on. Storm and I spread out our towels on a small patch of grass and pull off our clothes. We stretch out in the sun. Storm pulls out a pack of cigarettes from her embroidered bag and lights one like a movie star.

  “Wanna ciggie?”

  I shake my head. I like how she looks smoking but I think it’s disgusting. Besides, I’m not part of the “youth in revolt” movement she’s heading up. With her cigarette bobbing in her lips and without sitting up, Storm pops open a tube of SPF forty sunscreen and smears it all over herself. I snap a couple of photos before she notices and starts posing. I only take candids.

  “So,” she exhales, “I’ve been thinking you should tell Steve that you want him to deflower you.”

  “Oh, okay, and how do you suppose talk would come around to that?”

  She shrugs. “That’s up to you.”

  “Besides, he has a girlfriend.”

  Storm sits up on her elbows and looks over her femme fatale sunglasses at me. “I don’t see her anywhere near him,” she says evenly.

  Storm is on a campaign to end my virginity. She claims that she lost hers last summer. She came home at about eleven at night covered in hickies and loaded, walked into the living room, where her parents were holding their nightly prayer meeting, and announced that she’d just had sex. Her mother crossed herself and looked to the ceiling. Her father sighed and left the room. So it’s anybody’s guess whether it really happened or not. It could simply be another vote for Satan. Who knows?

  “Wanna swim?” asks Storm, still up on her elbows. She puts out her cigarette in the sand.

  “Sure.” I jump to my feet and dash into the murky, cool water with Storm at my heels. My bare feet sink into the mud and it oozes between my toes. Clouds of muddy water swirl around our thighs. When we’re in up to our waists, we dive in and swim for the middle. It’s deliciously chilly. We tread water facing each other for a minute and then Storm dives like a graceful duck into the murky abyss. I keep treading. The water smells briny.

  Before Storm got wise to her parents they enrolled her in every available class they could find. Something about idle hands being the devil’s workshop. Storm can swim like an Olympian, play piano and violin, tap-dance, give CPR, and throw pots. She was also a ballerina, a Girl Scout, and a prizewinning 4-H competitor all before she was twelve years old.

  My parents sent me to Yoga For Kids! which was basically day care with yoga mats and some sort of visualization therapy that I bailed on after two classes. The rest of the time they encouraged me to take time to gaze at the clouds and look for truth in a blade of grass and generally explore my “feelings.” Well, sometimes a cloud is just a cloud and a blade of grass is just a blade of grass and feelings are dangerous. Now I’m a mediocre swimmer and all I know on the piano is “Chopsticks.” I also dance like a white girl but at least my mom taught me how to take a picture. At least there’s that.

  Before Storm surfaces, I notice someone sitting on the banks behind some reeds, watching us. Storm’s head pops up. Her black cherry hair has gone blue black. She looks like a seal.

  “Hey, there’s a perv over there watching us.” I point.

  Storm wipes the water out of her eyes and squints. “That’s not a perv, that’s Forest.”

  “Forest who? Gump?”

  “Forest Gilwood.”

  “Gilwood? The kid whose mom killed Sylvia?”

  “Yeah. He’s here for the summer. His dad lives in L.A.”

  “I saw him at the hospital that day. Who was the creep he was with?”

  “That was probably his stepdad, Mega-creep.”

  Forest isn’t watching us anymore. His head is bent over a notebook in his lap and he’s writing.

  “What’s he like?” I ask, watching him as I bob in the water.

  “I dunno, kind of quiet, I guess. He mostly keeps to himself.”

  “Wow, what must it be like to be that woman’s kid?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it’s a real treat.”

  “So how do you know him?”

  “Honey, I know everyone.” She winks at me and starts swimming for the shore.

  Chapter 4

  The next place I see him is at the local farmers’ market on Saturday. I’m dragging a box of apricots out of the back of the pickup and thinking about a dream I had the night before about Sylvia’s foot. In the dream, her disembodied foot had little wings attached to it just like in the paintings my mom used to paint. The foot was flying in a zigzag pattern like a bird, higher and higher, while I stood on the ground with my head bent back, watching it. Suddenly I was aware of a dark, shadowy faceless figure standing next to me. He was watching the foot through the sights of a rifle with one eye squeezed shut and then blam! He shot at it as though it were a clay pigeon. He missed completely and I watched the foot flap its wings and disappear into the clouds. I looked around but the gunman had disappeared too.

  I spot Forest across the plaza, wandering through the market aimlessly, which is odd. Most people come here with a purpose. He looks completely disinterested in all things produce-related. He has a weathered canvas book bag slung across his shoulder that sets him apart from anyone else around here. The hippie organic farmers would embrace it as a cool accessory but the redneck farmers would call it a purse. I’m pretty confident that the pad he was scribbling on at the swimming hole is in that bag somewhere. I grab my camera and snap a stealth photo. Steve looks up at me for a second but I’ve already put my camera down.

  I keep one eye on Forest as I work the stall, making change, weighing bags of produce, giving out samples. Our farm is called The Good Earth and we’re a very popular stall becaus
e we sell a big variety of things. People around here know that we’re not USDA certified organic but we don’t use any pesticides or herbicides. My dad refused to “jump through the United States Department of Agriculture’s hoops” (as he so delicately put it) to get certified so he’s now known as something of an anarchist farmer. Fortunately he has a face you can trust with your life, and when Steve is back at school and he works this market himself, he preaches the good word about our food to anyone within hearing range. He’s accumulated quite a devoted following. Plus, when he’s not here we have Steve, and no one can resist Steve.

  When you work a stall at the market, you pick up the news of the week in snippets. You don’t have to participate; you don’t even have to make eye contact. It just comes at you. But today the news is all about “the accident.” Everyone knows I was there so I get a lot of people asking me what I saw. I don’t really want to talk about it. I shrug. They shake their heads sympathetically. I keep my head down and I hear what they’re saying: That’s the girl, she was there; poor thing. Did you hear? The Thompsons’ nanny was killed; what was her name again? I don’t remember, she was Mexican . . . illegal; the Thompsons are devastated, the kids adored her; I heard Connie Gilwood was in a terrible accident, you know her, Jerry’s wife? He sold us our first house. The one with the columns and the pool; is she okay? I hear she had a concussion; the SUV was totaled; that road is so dangerous.

  Forest makes his way over to us, one stall at a time. He stops at the Goat’s Milk Soap stall near us and smells a few bars. When he lifts his eyes to talk to the soap maker I can see, even from here, that they are sea-glass green. My pulse quickens and I think I feel the Earth move slightly.

  Steve is singing the praises of green garlic to a woman in a big sun hat who’s never heard of it. He’s practically telling her it will cure cancer. She buys two bunches and he tells her with a wink she’ll be back next week for more. I’m pretty sure she will. I hand a bag of the first zucchini of the season to a woman and count out her change. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Forest approaching. I’m not sure he’ll remember me, but when our eyes meet I see a light go on.