We Contain Multitudes

by Sarah Henstra

  Everyone thought it was funny, at first, and they jeered and piled on and held you down on the kitchen floor. Strongest guy on the team scared of a little pain, Kurl dishes it out but he can’t take it—that sort of thing. But you really went crazy, Bron said. Shayna chimed in at this point and said that you broke the quarterback’s nose. Dented the door of the stainless-steel dishwasher. Burned somebody’s face when you shoved the brand away. For a while it became a real brawl, and by the time you got free you were pretty banged up, and some of the Wolvies were quite upset. You just sort of disappeared from the party after that.

  “You know, that’s why he got kicked off the team,” Shayna said.

  “He wasn’t kicked off,” I said. It bothers me that people at school seem to be embracing this new version of the story so wholeheartedly. “He quit. Bron, you wrote the article. You said he quit.”

  “Well, it was never a hundred percent clear. The coach wouldn’t say, when I asked him, and they certainly haven’t been begging him to come back.”

  Shayna shook her head and waved an AC/DC record at us. “That party was the beginning of the end,” she opined. “Refusing the brand made him an outsider. He could never win back their trust.”

  I said, “I really don’t think that’s how it went.”

  “I’m just telling you what Rachel told me,” Shayna said. “She said things weren’t the same after that night.”

  “You mean with Kurl and Teresa?” Bron asked. “Rachel said they broke up because of that party?”

  “Wait, who’s Rachel?” I said.

  “She said that was the beginning of the end, yeah.”

  “Well, Rachel is full of crap. Teresa’s grades were slipping, that’s all. Her parents were worried about her Princeton acceptance.”

  “Who are these people?” I said. “Are we still talking about Kurl?”

  “Rachel is Teresa’s cousin,” my sister said. “You know Teresa Lau, Kurl’s girlfriend from last year?”

  No, I did not know. I didn’t know you had a girlfriend, Kurl, or had had a girlfriend, at one point. Alienated from all the common knowledge of Lincoln High, as usual.

  “They broke up,” Bron told me, but I’d already gathered that much.

  “She was such a snob,” Shayna said.

  “Because she wanted to go to college?” Bron said. College is currently a slight point of contention between Bron and Shayna. Bron is already starting to study for her SATs, and this behavior is unacceptably nerdy to Shayna. She works in little jabs whenever she can about Bron being “so bougie” and “so extra” and “such a tryhard.”

  “Was Kurl…” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to ask them. “Did it bother him?”

  Bron shrugged. “Teresa goes to Princeton now, Jojo. She wasn’t really Kurl’s type.”

  “She was a snob,” Shayna repeated, catching my eye and grimacing meaningfully in Bron’s direction. Given the dramatic drop in Shayna’s grades last year, she will likely not be going to Princeton next year, either.

  Yours truly,

  Jonathan Hopkirk

  PS: It’s Sunday evening now. I wrote this letter in bits and pieces over the whole weekend. Reading back over it just now, I’m noticing how the tone has changed, and the pacing: It’s much less breathless and rushed, isn’t it, when one isn’t trying to cram everything in into forty-five or fifty minutes? Here at home I have the time to sit at my desk with a cup of hot chocolate or a bowl of cereal and stare out over our street, piecing together the details of the day in a way that makes sense. It’s easier to write what I’m thinking about if I actually have time to think.

  Saturday, October 3

  Dear Little JO,

  I guess technically it’s your turn to write. But I feel like writing a letter more than I feel like starting my ecology report on amphibians. And it’s not like we can’t cross over once in a while. Khang doesn’t seem too fussy about how many letters I write, now that it’s obvious I’m actually sticking with the assignment.

  We did a roof today down in Bloomington. All day there were dozens of turkey buzzards in the sky. I asked Sylvan what he thought they were after and he said maybe a deer.

  I chose amphibians for this ecology report because once in the forest I found an animal I couldn’t believe was even real. A tiny lizard red as a fire truck. I was maybe nine or ten. It skittered across my palm and dug its way under the leaves and was gone. The fastest living thing I’d ever held. I remember looking it up afterward and it wasn’t actually a lizard but a newt. A Red Eft. The librarian told me the Red Eft doesn’t live in Minnesota. She showed me a map at the back of the book with its habitat range. It must have come down from Canada, she said, around the whole north shore of Lake Superior.

  Turns out mostly this newt never leaves the water. It goes straight from larval stage to aquatic adult, which is olive-yellow, speckled, with a flattened tail. But sometimes for unknown reasons it takes a detour. It grows lungs. Turns red. Goes to the woods and spends one to three years as a Red Eft before it returns to its pond or river and transforms back into a water creature. Red Efts are bolder than other salamanders. They hang out aboveground and gather in groups. They don’t even mind the sun. Probably it helps that the red skin is toxic to predators.

  I don’t know why I’m giving you all these details. Chances are not good that you’ll ever spot a Red Eft in this part of the country. But I guess if you ever do you’ll know how chancy and amazing a thing it is.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Monday, October 5

  Dear Little Jo,

  I meant to write before that if you ever get a chance you should watch a turkey buzzard fly. From the ground you can’t see its ugly face or its naked scalp. You don’t care about its filthy diet. It climbs the wind and tilts itself across the clouds. I mean it gets far enough away and what it is is magnificent.

  I’m aware that I keep coming back to these topics that have nothing to do with anything. These letters I’m writing are starting to feel like one long ongoing letter in my head. I should tell Jo about that time I saw the Red Eft, I’ll think, or, I forgot to tell Jo that these birds actually look magnificent in the sky.

  And then I’ll read one of your letters and think, People have no idea what I’m like. I mean the gap between what people see and what’s actually in my head sort of shocks me when I read your letters. I guess everyone has this gap. It’s just that they don’t come face-to-face with it very often. It’s a shock to hear that people are still talking about stuff that happened last year.

  That party. My breakup with Teresa. I mean it wasn’t even a breakup. Not in the way you hear about breakups, where there’s arguing and someone or both people are heartbroken afterward and going around saying things about each other to their friends. Bron was probably right. Teresa’s parents were really serious about her grades. They probably didn’t like that I was failing my classes.

  That’s not what Teresa told me though. She said it was because they didn’t like me fighting. She said her mother thought I needed counseling and unless I would go talk to this psychotherapist her mother knew through work, Teresa wasn’t allowed to date me anymore. I felt bad about it for a while. You probably wouldn’t remember Teresa but she was a calm, gentle person. She looked great in blue. I mean she knew she looked great in blue, so when she wanted to dress up she wouldn’t wear makeup or do anything special to her hair. She would just wear something blue. That’s what she was like. Sort of low-key like that compared with other girls.

  The whole thing happened because once after school we were watching TV at her place and her dad came home from work early and asked what happened to my face. I never would have gone over that day with my face bashed in if I thought her dad might come home from work so early and see me.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Tuesday, October 6

  Dear Kurl,

  I owe you an apology, I believe. While I was reading your last letter, I found myself becoming desperately
sorry for recounting that gossipy conversation we had about you in Basement Records. It must have been agitating in the extreme for you to read about how these personal experiences of yours have stayed in the gossip archive after all these months. It must have been painful to read. To your immense credit, you didn’t express any anger about it, just a mild surprise. My letter must have also made Bron and Shayna and me look like shallow and even vindictive people, which we are not—or at least, I’d really like to believe we are not.

  I questioned myself about why I laid out the conversation for you like that, with so much effort to remember Bron’s and Shayna’s exact words and so little consideration for how it might feel for you to read those words. The truth is, Kurl, that I burn with curiosity about you but am too cowardly to ask you questions about yourself directly. My motivation in relating that record-store gossipfest was one hundred percent selfish: I wanted to know which version of the story you would tell if I provoked you into telling it. And I confess I was gratified to read what you wrote about Teresa, your perspective on her and the reasons for your breakup. But what a roundabout, dishonest way to seek the information! In the future, Kurl, if something piques my curiosity, I solemnly swear to ask you about it rather than try to trick you into writing about it.

  And on this same subject, you asked if I mind that you “keep coming back to these topics that have nothing to do with anything.” No, I don’t mind. Quite the opposite: I want more, please.

  I looked up the Red Eft last night—not the science, but the mythology. Did you know it’s also called the Fire Salamander? It was once believed to be unharmed by burning. Apparently Fire Salamanders were seen after Pompeii, after Hiroshima, walking around in the flames. Sometimes they glowed so brightly they made people blind. I’m not sure why, Kurl, but reading these marvelous facts about your creature made me suddenly so happy that I laughed aloud. You can ask Shayna. My bedroom door was ajar, and my sister heard me laughing and asked what was so funny. I didn’t tell her, because somehow it felt like a secret—like I’d discovered some kind of arcane, secret knowledge—and this made me even happier.

  Yours truly,

  Jonathan Hopkirk

  PS: I don’t know if you pay attention to these things, but they’re running a talent contest at school called Lincoln Idol, and Shayna’s audition tape got picked for the live competition. Somehow she has talked me into serving as her backup band. Even accounting for familial bias, it’s my opinion that Shayna Hopkirk is seriously talented. She’d like nothing more than to quit school and join the Decent Fellows, and it’s a point of increasing friction between her and Lyle that he hasn’t let her sing with the band in the last couple of years, though she was pulled up onstage for cute little duets and solos frequently enough when she was younger.

  Anyhow. The show is tomorrow at 6 p.m., if you want to sit in the back row looking stony-faced and not clap for us, Kurl. I believe you have English in the morning, so I’ll be sure to put this letter in the box first thing. You’ve been dropping by Ms. Khang’s room to check for mail even when you don’t have English class, haven’t you? So have I. When we’re writing letters off schedule like this, I can never be sure when a new one will show up. It gives me something to look forward to at school besides being tossed around by the butcherboys.

  Thursday, October 8

  Dear Little Jo,

  I had to help with a roof after school yesterday. All the rain the last couple of weeks has put us behind schedule. By the time we wrapped up it was almost seven, so I figured I’d probably missed the talent thing at school.

  But Sylvan got it into his head that I had to attend this particular extracurricular event. I tried saying, Never mind, it’s no big deal, but he started telling me how he’s been worried about me since football dried up.

  You’re all bunched up under your skin, he said.

  What’s that supposed to mean, I said.

  You’re like a dog in a cage, he said, biting your own fur and bashing your head against the bars.

  Okay, okay, I’ll go, I said, just to get him to stop with the dog comparison.

  So I guess I did exactly what you predicted, Jo. Snuck into the back row of the auditorium. I took a seat next to a man with partly gray, shaggy hair and a black cowboy shirt. One of the many dads in the crowd, right? Could have been anybody.

  A couple minutes later, after this group of rappers finishes up onstage, it’s intermission, and the guy next to me turns and offers me his hand and says, Hi there, I’m Lyle.

  Of course it’s Lyle. Now that the lights are on this guy looks exactly like you, Jo. The cowboy shirt is unbuttoned and under it he’s wearing this T-shirt that says GOT GRASS? with the word grass in blue letters. No way I would have worked out that little inside joke if you hadn’t mentioned in one of your letters that it’s bluegrass music your dad plays.

  He’s offering me his hand but my hands are still filthy from shingling. Tar-black nails and dried blood all across my knuckles. I sort of show Lyle my hands to apologize for not shaking his, and of course he asks me what I’ve been up to. So I tell him about Kurlansky Roofing, and before I know it he’s taking down the number because apparently your roof has needed reshingling for about a decade.

  On the other side of your dad is this guy Cody, who Lyle tells me plays bass in their band. Cody says he used to work for a roofing company as a teenager too. He flexes his bicep and says, You’ll be thankful for that job later in life.

  You know how when you’re in an audience and you talk to the stranger next to you, and then for the whole rest of the show it’s like you’re sort of watching it together? I mean it’s not like you say anything more to the person or even glance over at each other much. But somehow it feels like you’re sharing your reactions with each other. That’s pretty much how it was for your dad and me. Some of the kids in our school are really bad. It’s not even lack of talent so much as lack of judgment. Trying to tap-dance to a Beyoncé song is never going to be a good idea no matter who’s doing it. And that thing with the yoga and the yodeling. That was one of the times Lyle and I sort of looked sideways at each other. He did this whole elaborate coughing maneuver into his fist to cover up his laughter. You could probably hear him from backstage, Jo.

  Shayna’s voice isn’t at all how I imagined. I guess I expected some airy, folky sound. You know those songs with the cutesy chorus and the verses with too many lyrics crammed in? Instead Shayna sounds like a sixty-year-old chain-smoker. And I’m saying that in a good way.

  Watching you two onstage Lyle can’t even help himself. He leans over and goes, Those are my kids up there. Grinning like a maniac with fatherly pride.

  Shayna is a good singer but I have to say the real shocker was you. I mean you never said anything about playing the mandolin. Okay yes, I had to ask Lyle what the thing was. I’d never seen one before.

  You said you were Shayna’s backup band but you didn’t say you were going to sing. And you didn’t say you were so good at it. Your voice is the opposite of Shayna’s. Higher than hers, for one. It made me realize I’ve never really heard you talk, even. It’s weird to know so much about the way a person thinks without ever having heard their voice. When you sang it was this high, pure kind of sound. I don’t know. It felt like I recognized you and didn’t recognize you at the same time.

  Then the judges did their thing. One of them compared your sound to Donny and Marie Osmond and Lyle said, You’ve got to be kidding me. He was laughing but actually looking sort of irritated about it.

  Cody said, She should be in the band, man.

  Don’t tell her that, Lyle said, or I’ll have her down my throat about it twenty-four-seven.

  Exact same sound as Rapha, Cody said. That could have been Rapha up there.

  Lyle didn’t answer, and Cody sort of ducked his head and gave Lyle a quick little pat on the shoulder as if to say sorry. I guess Rapha must be Raphael, a.k.a. your mom?

  I asked whether you and Shayna took voice lessons et cetera. Lyle s
aid it was never really necessary. You could tell he was trying not to brag, not to talk about you too much, but he couldn’t help himself. While the next kids were performing he leaned in and told me how you, Jo, quit talking for almost a year when you first started school. They had you tested and everything, Lyle said, but then he discovered that you really liked to sing, and it was as if you somehow didn’t realize that song lyrics were words. So Lyle would sing with you all the time. Not just real songs but made-up stuff, songs about How was your day? and What shall we have for dinner? so that you would communicate with him that way. Even Shayna got in on the action apparently. The year our life became a musical, Lyle called it.

  I think I dozed off for a few of the remaining acts. Three hours on a roof and no time for supper will do that to you. Sorry I didn’t stick around afterward to congratulate you in person. When I heard the vote-with-your-phone system was glitching out and they would have to recount, I said a quick goodbye to Lyle and Cody and took off.

  This morning I heard that somebody else won. I hope you’re not taking it personally, Jo. You and Shayna weren’t flashy enough is all. You should be proud because I know your Hopkirk motto is Be real and be true. On the way home last night I remembered that and I thought, That’s how they sounded up there. Real and true.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Friday, October 9

  Dear Kurl,

  After school yesterday you pulled up to the bus stop and unrolled your window. “Where’s your bike?” you called.