Prodigal Summer

by Barbara Kingsolver

  “You’d skip school together?” Lusa considered this. “When you were in first or second grade, Cole was still in high school. I never even thought about that. He was your pal. Like a big brother.”

  “Yeah.” Rickie looked down, being careful where he put his cigarette ash. “He always told me stuff. How to talk to girls and stuff.”

  Lusa raised the heel of her hand against one eye and turned away, unprepared to cry in front of Rickie. “Yeah. That was one thing he sure knew how to do.”

  The cow lowed, a small protest in the dripping silence. Her calf in the neighboring stall immediately began to bawl, as if he’d just woken up to the injustice of milk robbery.

  “Milking, huh?” Rickie noted.

  “Yep.”

  “Looks like you’re good at it.”

  “Cole taught me; he said I had a talent. Stupid thing to be good at, right?”

  “Not really. Animals, you know. They can tell what’s what. You can’t fool them like you can people.”

  The calf next door was still bawling, and she crooned to calm him: “Hush now, your mama will be there in a minute.” He quieted, and Lusa returned to the milking. There was comfort in this work. Sometimes she felt flooded with the mental state of her Jersey cow—a humble, unsurprised wonder at the fact of still being here in this barn at the end of each day. Lusa actually enjoyed the company. She’d been tempted to name her, until Cole pointed out that they were going to eat her child.

  “Uncle Herb, over at his dairy? Him and the cows is like oil and water, he says. He does all the milking with machines. Hooks up bossy to the tank and sucks her dry.”

  “Yikes. Poor bossy.”

  “I don’t think they mind it none. They’re just cows.”

  “True.”

  “How many times a day you milk her, twiced?”

  Twiced, they all said. Oncet, twiced. She wondered if that was a vestige of Old English hanging on in these isolated mountain towns. “I just milk once a day, believe it or not. Even that’s more than I need now. Just before you came in that door, I was making up my mind for this to be my last milking.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow I’m pasturing this girl out with her calf so all that milk can go to the stomach it was made for. It doesn’t do much for mine.”

  “Don’t care for milk, do you?”

  “It doesn’t cd this for Cole because he loved fresh cream. I like making yogurt, laban zabadi—I’ll miss that. But I’ve frozen enough butter and cheese to last me all winter, and fresh milk I just don’t need. Unless your family wants it?”

  “Nah, we get a gallon a day from Uncle Herb. We drink it, too. Mostly I do.”

  “Well, good for you. I wasn’t raised on it like you were.” Lusa was finished. She opened the stanchion to release the cow’s head and carefully backed her out of it. The gentle old Jersey ambled straight to the stall that held her calf, and Lusa let her in, giving her broad flank one good pat for good-bye. She felt ridiculous for the tears in her eyes.

  “Yeah, Mom said you were…something.”

  “She thinks I’m something, does she? That’s nice.” Lusa brushed off her jeans and shook bits of hay out of the tails of her stained white work shirt, which reached to her knees. It was one of Cole’s, pulled on over a rust-colored velvet T-shirt she used to feel pretty in, once.

  “No, I mean, some nationality.”

  “I knew what you meant. Rickie, everybody’s some nationality.”

  “Not me. I’m just American.”

  “Is that why you’ve got a Rebel flag on the bumper of your truck? Because the Confederacy tried to bust up the American government, you know.”

  “A southern American, then. What are you?”

  “That’s a good question. Polish-Arab-American, I guess.”

  “Huh. You don’t look it.”

  “No? What do I look like to you?” She stood under the light, holding her arms out straight against the planks of the stanchion. Her hair was curly and wild in this humidity, a strawberry-blond halo around her face in the harsh light. Small white moths batted circles around the lightbulb overhead. Rickie inspected her politely.

  “You look like a white person,” he said.

  “My mom’s parents were Palestinian, and my dad’s were Jews from Poland. I’m the black sheep of your family, and for all that I still sunburn like nobody’s business. Just goes to show you, Rickie, you can’t tell a book by its cover.”

  “I heard Mom and Aunt Mary Edna talking about that, that you were one of those other Christianities.”

  “I can just imagine that conversation.” She picked up the flathead shovel to clean up the floor of the milking parlor, but Rickie took it out of her hands, excusing himself for bumping her shoulder. She never knew how to take these country kids—rudeness and politeness in an unfathomable mix. He scraped the manure into a small pile and carried it a shovelful at a time to the mound just outside the door.

  “It wasn’t nothing against you, Aunt Lusa,” he said from the darkness, giving her a jolt. It had been so long since she’d heard her name spoken aloud. Twenty-eight days, exactly. Nobody else in the family ever said it. Rickie ducked back into the bright milking parlor. “It was just one time when they were just talking about, what if you and Uncle Cole had kids. This was before…”

  “He died. When kids were more of an option for us.”

  “Yeah. I think they just wondered, you know, how the church part would work. That it would be hard on his kids.”

  She gathered up the bucket and rag she’d used to wash the Jersey’s udder, and set the lid onto the stainless steel milking bucket. The rim felt warm.

  “It wasn’t hard on me, being mix-and-match,” she said. “I’ll grant you we weren’t really devout, either way. My dad hated his father and kind of turned his back on his religion. And I’m not a good Muslim, that’s for sure. If I were, you’d see me turning”—she rotated slowly in the barn cellar, finding east—“that way and kneeling down to pray five times a day.”

  “You pray towards the chicken house?”

  “Toward Mecca.”

  “Where’s that at, North Carolina?”

  She laughed. “Saudi Arabia. It’s where the prophet Muhammad was born, so you send your prayers in his direction. And you have to wash your hands first, too.”

  Now Rickie looked amused. “You wash your hands before you pray?”

  “Listen, you haven’t seen religious. You’re not supposed to touch alcohol or cigarettes, and women cover themselves up totally, all but their eyes.” She held her hands in front of her face, peering through her fingers. “If a man sees a woman’s foot, even, or her shape, it’ll lead him to impure thoughts, see? And it’s all her fault.”

  “Man, that’s harsh. I thought Aunt Mary Edna was harsh. You believe in that?”

  “Do I look like it? No, my mom never even wore the veil. Her parents were already pretty westernized when they left Gaza. But I have cousins who do.” Yeah?”

  “Yep. The American version is a scarf and a long raincoat. I’d always have to do that whenever we went to the mosque with Mom’s relatives in New York.”

  His eyes widened. “You’ve been to New York City?”

  She wondered what that place was in his mind. As far from the truth as this barn was in the minds of her Bronx cousins. “A hundred times,” she said. “My parents both came from there. We always tried to go back for their families’ holidays. I think the deal on religion between Mom and Dad was that we’d skip the guilt-and-punishment stuff and celebrate the holidays. Feasts, basically.” Lusa smiled, thinking of boy cousins and music and reckless dancing among lawn chairs in a small backyard, festivals of love and fitting in. “I grew up on the best food you can imagine.”

  “Huh. I thought people that didn’t believe in God just mostly worshiped the devil and stuff.”

  “Whoa, Rickie!” She laughed weakly, sitting back down on her milking stool. “Don’t you think there might be a couple of options
in between?”

  He shrugged, embarrassed. “Maybe.”

  This was her cue, surely, to shrug this boy off and shoo him home. But then what? Wait for Cole to explain her to this family? Her body ached with the burden of her aloneness. Nobody was going to do this for her. She pressed her folded hands between her knees and looked up at him. “Who are you saying doesn’t believe in God? Jews believe in God. Muslims believe in God. To tell the truth, most Jewish people and all Muslims I know spend more time thinking about God than you do around here. And definitely less of their church time on gossip.”

  “But different gods, right? Not the real one, not our’n.”

  “Yes, your’n. Same exact God. His technical name is Jehovah; all three factions concur on that. There’s just some disagreement about which son did or did not inherit the family goods. The same-old, same-old story.”

  “Huh,” he remarked.

  “Do you know that most of the people in the world are actually not Christians, Rickie?”

  “Is that really true?” He grinned sideways like a schoolboy trapped by a trick question. Then lit another cigarette to recover his dignity, raising his eyebrows in a question to make sure it was OK.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Can you say something in Jewish?”

  “Hmm. Maybe you mean Yiddish. Or Polish.”

  “Yeah. Something in a language.”

  “Between Yiddish and Polish I’m not good for much. My bubeleh lived with us before she died—my dad’s mother—but she was, like, classified. Dad wouldn’t let her speak anything but English in our house. Wait, though, let me think.” She rehearsed the phrase in her mind, then recited aloud, “Kannst mir bloozin kalteh millich in toochis.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “‘You can blow cold milk up my ass.’”

  He laughed loudly. “Your mammaw taught you that?”

  “She was a pissed-off old lady. Her husband ran off with a coat-check girl in a nightclub. You should ask me about Arabic, my mom taught me a bunch of things.”

  “OK, what’s one?”

  “Ru-uh shum hawa. It means ‘Go sniff the wind.’ Bug off, in other words.”

  “Rooh shum hawa,” he repeated, with dreadful inflection, but Lusa was touched by his effort. His willingness to stand here and talk with her about foreign things.

  “Yeah, roughly,” she said. “That’s pretty good.”

  Rickie smirked a little. “So,” he said, exhaling smoke, “did you have other Christmases? Where you’d get presents and stuff?”

  “Other Christmases, other Easters. Yep. It wasn’t so much about presents, but definitely about food. Ramadan, that’s a whole month where you don’t eat during the daytime, only at night.”

  “No kidding? You’d go all day?”

  “Supposed to. We usually didn’t. I’d just skip breakfast and try to be good for a month. But the best part is the end, where you have this giant feast to make up for everything you didn’t eat that month.”

  “Like Thanksgiving?”

  “Better than that. It lasts three days. Not even counting the leftovers.”

  “Man. A pig-out.”

  “A goat-out, is what it is. My family was nix on pork, on both sides—Jews and Muslims agree on that. But we love goat. People think lamb’s the Middle Eastern thing but the real, true tradition is qouzi mahshi, milk-fed kid. Mom and I would always go visit the Arab cousins for Id-al-Fitr, at the end of Ramadan, and they’d roast a kid over this giant spit in their backyard. Then there’s another feast four months later, Id-al-Adha, which requires an even bigger goat.”

  “I don’t think I’d care for goat.”

  “No? You ever eaten it?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing. Qouzi mahshi, yum. It’s like a sweet, tender calf, only better.”

  He looked doubtful.

  “Hey, I thought you raised goats, Rickie. What are those things with horns I’ve seen back behind your house?”

  “Oh, that was a Four-H project.”

  “And you didn’t eat your project at the end?”

  “Nah. They’re just there to keep down the weeds, I reckon.”

  “Are they for milk, theoretically, or for meat?”

  “They’re supposed to be slaughter goats. The idea was to sell them at the state fair while they were still under forty pounds or something. The judges feel their ribs and hipbones and everything and give you a grade.”

  “And did your goats make the honor roll?”

  “They were pretty good. But you can’t sell a goat around here. Heck, you can’t give away a goat around here. I know because I tried.”

  “But I’ve seen them all over the place. Here in this county, I mean.”

  “Well, see, there was this big slaughter-goat craze a while back in Four-H. Mr. Walker got people started on it for some reason, and now half the back fields in the county are full of goats people can’t give away.”

  “Huh,” Lusa said. “Who’s Mr. Walker?”

  “He’s uncles or cousins to us someways. By marriage.”

  “Everybody within sixteen miles of here is uncles or cousins to you someways.”

  “Yeah, but Mr. Walker, he’s the livestock adviser for Four-H. Or used to be, when I was a little kid. He’s prolly retired now. He’s got that farm over on number Six that’s all weedy in front? He grows chestnut trees, I heard.”

  “Chestnut trees all died fifty years ago, Rickie. The American chestnut went extinct due to a fungal blight.”

  “I know, but that’s what people say he’s growing. I don’t know. He knows all this stuff about plants. Everybody said he should have been the crop-project adviser, not the livestock adviser. That’s why he screwed up all these kids on the goats.”

  “Huh,” Lusa said. “You think he could help me find a cheap goat or two for a feast? What the hell, I’d even invite your mom and aunts up, scandalize the family with qouzi mahshi and imam bayildi.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Food of the gods, Rickie. Roast goat and roast stuffed vegetables. Actually imam bayildi means ‘The emperor fainted.’ Which is what your aunt Mary Edna would do if she saw a goat looking at her from the middle of her mother’s walnut dining table.”

  Rickie laughed. He had a wonderful laugh, wide open, the kind that showed molars. “You don’t need Mr. Walker to find you a goat. You could just run you an ad in the paper: ‘Wanted, free goats. You deliver.’ I swear, Aunt Lusa, you’d look out your window next morning and see a hundred goats out there eating your field.”

  “You think?”

  “I swear.”

  “Well, they’d keep the thistles and briars from taking over my hayfields. I could get rid of my cows. Then I wouldn’t have to learn how to run the bush hog.”

  “’At’s a fact, they would keep your briars eat down. They don’t take much hay, either; they can feed theirselves pretty good off the brush, most of the winter.”

  “Are you serious? My God, then I wouldn’t even have to run my baler or put up hay? That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

  “You need some hay,” he cautioned. “For when it gets bad. Just not so much.” He lit another cigarette from the one that was still burning. She walked over and took the pack from him.

  “Can I try this?”

  “Go ahead. Gives you cancer.”

  “I think I heard about that.” She gave a small, mirthless laugh, peering into the hole in the pack. “I’ll tell you, though, hanging on to extra years in my seventies doesn’t seem high on my list right now. Under the circumstances.” She extracted one white tube and stared at it. It smelled like Cole. “I can’t even get excited about seeing thirty, to tell you the truth.”

  “That’s how kids in high school feel. That’s why we all smoke.”

  “Interesting.” She put it in her mouth and leaned toward his lighter, which he pulled away, teasing her.

  “This really our first time?”

&
nbsp; “Yep. You’re corrupting an old lady.” She tried to inhale the tip of the flame, but her throat recoiled and she coughed. Rickie laughed. She waved a hand in front of her face. “I’m no good at this, obviously.”

  “It stinks, it really does. You shouldn’t start, Aunt Lusa.”

  She laughed. “You’re sweet, Rickie. Thanks for looking out for me.”

  He met her gaze for a second. He was a striking young man, a handsome union of his father’s dark complexion and the Widener looks. Lusa was seized and simultaneously mortified by thoughts of his bare chest and arms, of putting her head there and being held by him. What was she, losing her mind? Was this celibacy, lunacy, or what? She glanced down at her tennis shoes.

  “I really don’t want to die,” she said, a little shaky. “I don’t mean to sound like that. I’m depressed, but I think that’s normal for a widow. They say it passes. I was more just thinking that if tobacco’s the lifeblood of this county, I should support the project.”

  “Nah, you don’t have to.” He dragged and puffed away, making tiny whistling sounds with his cigarette. He looked at her sideways. “Aunt Lusa, I hope you’ll take this the right way, but you’re no old lady. These guys at school, friends of mine? They seen you at Kroger’s and said you were pretty hot.”

  “Me?” She blushed scarlet.

  “No offense,” he said.

  “None taken. I know, you and Cole used to skip school together and he taught you how to sweet-talk girls. I keep forgetting I’m not your mother.”

  He grinned and shook his head. “You are not my mother.”

  “Thank you,” Lusa said primly, feeling a little guilty for all the names she’d called Rickie’s mother in her mind: long-in-the-tooth, leather-lunged Lois. “I’m sure your mother is a better soul than me.”

  He snorted. “If that’s what you call it. My mother believes in no cussing, a good night’s sleep, and everything in the kitchen decorated with little ducks.”

  “And how do you know I don’t believe in those things?”

  “I seen your kitchen.”

  “Hey, look, I can do this.” She took a tiny gulp of cigarette smoke but mostly vamped with it dangling from her fingertips, draping her arm over the top of her head. “How old is Lois, if you don’t think she’d mind my asking?”