Saving Montgomery Sole

by Mariko Tamaki

  I found this blog once about how corporations are putting images into foods as a kind of subliminal messaging system. It also has instructions on how to home compost, but mostly it’s all these pictures people have taken of food with “distinctly political” messages in it. There’s a picture in there of a soup stain on this guy’s tablecloth that does actually look like an elephant eating a donkey.

  This guy also said government cheese is all implanted with a chemical that makes people vote Republican.

  I told Tiffany about this once, you know, thinking she’d be concerned as a person working in the food service industry, and she was basically like, “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”

  Tiffany’s theory is that we, that is, us members of Western society, are constantly having symbolism, in her words, “crammed down our throats.”

  “It’s everywhere. Messages on what to eat, who to love, what to buy—all that is pretty much already set in our corporate system and disseminated through everything from television to pizza,” she noted as she grabbed a blueberry from the toppings bar and sucked it from her fingers to her mouth. “You know I wrote my thesis on beauty pageants and their connection to the fast-food industry, right? I told you that, right?”

  “Uh,” I stammered, staring intently at Tiffany’s fingers, which, I had just noticed, did not look like the cleanest in the world. “Do you always eat that stuff with your bare hands?”

  “Oh”—Tiffany pressed her hands against her chest—“pardon me, Miss Manners. Do you want your free toppings or what?”

  There was a moment of silence while Tiffany bored holes into me with her purple-black eyes, and I tried to do as quick an analysis of Tiffany’s fingers as possible. Are they more or less gross than Tesla’s hands? I asked myself, because I eat what Tesla has her fingers all over all the time.

  Less.

  “Free toppings, please,” I concluded.

  “I thought so.”

  All this has led me to wonder if maybe there was some connection between bread and Christianity that merited further investigation. Like, was there some commercial thing behind Christians’ obsession with bread? Or maybe it was chemical?

   Subliminal messages

   Hallucinogens

  * * *

  The next morning, I was swimming in crosses. Everything looked like a cross to me: telephone poles, the plus signs on the blackboard, roads intersecting on my drive to school.

  Kenneth White, meanwhile, spent the day vying for the title of Quietest Person in Aunty. Math, silent. Bio, quieter than cement. I can only imagine he ate his lunch in silence, too. Every class, he just sat, slumped, in his seat, his arms folded over his chest. Like he was posing for a painting or something. He never looked around. Never talked to anyone. Just sat there with his book open and his pencil on his notebook.

  Staring.

  At.

  Nothing.

  Maybe he was confused because all he did at home was Bible studies. Maybe he was snickering in biology because we were looking at what Mr. Jenner called the building blocks of life, and Christians think the building blocks of life are … I’m not sure, actually. Probably not gooey cells, though. Sometimes, I’d sneak a look and he’d be squinting ahead or looking out the window. His face as still as glass.

  The only audio evidence of his existence in Aunty was the heavy, rubbery sound of his big boots clomping down the hallway from class to class.

  At the Mystery Club meeting after school, Thomas shook up his healthy snack-in-a-bottle (which looked like kale and smelled like garbage). “Those boots are killing me,” he moaned. “I mean, he’s not a terrible-looking guy. But those boots! Puh-lease! Those boots are o-ver.”

  “Yeah, and his dad thinks we’re all going to hell,” I said, licking the remnants of my snacks of cheesy twists off my fingers.

  Thomas paused midshake. “That does not change the fact that his boots are ugly, Montgomery, but thanks for bringing that up, again.”

  It was Thomas’s turn to pick a topic for Mystery Club, and so we talked about superpowers and what superpowers Thomas thinks are over- and underrated. Thomas’s list of overrated superpowers is very long. Basically anything you’ve seen any man do in a comic book, he’s over it.

  “I think we’ve all had enough of flying, yes?” he said, grabbing a piece of chalk and starting a superhero cartoon sketch on the board. “And lasers.”

  “I always thought the laser thing was kind of confusing,” I added from my semi-prone position on the floor, “because technically a laser should just shoot through a person, but it never does. It just, you know, zaps. And pings off things.”

  “I think it’s time we refocused on people who can melt and reform into different objects and creatures,” Thomas concluded, stepping back from his drawing. It was a very bumpy superhero.

  “Like Jell-O?” Naoki asked, holding her hands out like she was holding a big clump of Jell-O.

  “More like lava,” Thomas said.

  “Doesn’t feel very super,” I said. “What’s so great about dissolving?”

  “Did you see Terminator 2?” Thomas asked.

  Naoki shook her head. “Who’s in that?”

  “Not all of us are into old-timey movies, Thomas,” I groaned.

  “The former governor of our great state,” Thomas noted, drawing a loose caricature on the board with a single stroke. “Mr. Schwarzenegger.”

  Naoki shrugged. “He’s an actor?”

  “Someday,” Thomas said, dropping the chalk and dusting off his hands, “I will take you on the Netflix retro tour.”

  “I’m sure it will be very enlightening,” Naoki said, stepping forward to take a closer look at Thomas’s sketches. “You’re a good drawer.”

  “Thank you,” Thomas cooed, taking up his chalk to write out his keywords on the board. “And so, in conclusion to my conclusion, survival and adaptation, yes, is as super as it gets, darling. Let’s have more melting heroes. It’s time. Plus if you can reform into a nice-looking guy in a decent suit … well then, that’s a whole new ballgame, yes?”

  “If I had a superpower,” Naoki added, walking over to where I was lying on the floor and dropping down into a graceful kneel, “I’d have superhealing.”

  “What do you want, Monty?” Thomas asked, swinging around to point at me.

  I tried to picture myself, landing on a battlefield with a team of superheroes, watching them all pull out their weapons. Ready for the enemy. But still, I thought, you’d never know what was coming at you. It’s like rock-paper-scissors. You pull out a rock, someone has paper, you’re doomed. “Omnipotence,” I said, finally.

  “You want to be all-powerful,” Thomas asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Oh,” I said. “No. What’s it called? To know everything.”

  “Omniscience.” Naoki said, tilting her head. “I think that would be tiring. I mean, everything. And knowing it. You could never go see a movie again.”

  “No thanks,” Thomas said.

  “Okay, maybe not everything,” I conceded. “Just … what’s coming at me.”

  Thomas stood and picked up his bag, which that day was this kind of weird-looking basket like you would expect Mary Poppins to use or something. “So concludes the meeting of the fabulous Mystery Club. And now,” he finished, bowing deeply, “I’m off to continue my valiant effort to bring some modicum of culture to Jefferson High.”

  “Draaaamedy,” I droned.

  “Dramedy,” Naoki repeated, watching Thomas slip out the door. “It’s such a funny name. It doesn’t feel like a word.”

  “It’s not. Oh hey!” I said, reaching into my bag and pulling out the Eye. “Look! It arrived!”

  “Oh!” Naoki leaned over and put her face close to the dangling stone. “It’s like a mirror, it’s so black!”

  I sat up and lay the stone flat on my hand. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

  Naoki moved so she was squished right next to me, seeing it from my angle, presumably. “D
oes it work?”

  “Um, I don’t know. I haven’t really done anything with it yet. I mean, yesterday I tried to see if any of, you know, the typical ESP things would work with it. But nothing really happened.”

  “Well,” Naoki said as she stood and slung her bag over her shoulder, “you’re supersmart. You’ll figure it out.”

  “Sure,” I said, trying to sound convinced and not just disappointed. I slipped the stone back into my bag and scrambled to my feet.

  In the hallway, Naoki stopped and put her finger on my chest. “You just have to figure out what you need to know,” she said. “I bet that’s it.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  Naoki headed off to her locker, and I turned to head home.

  What do I need to know?

  I mean, maybe it’s not about a person, I thought. Maybe it’s something bigger. Don’t I have a whole list of stuff I wanted to know? I mused, grabbing my phone out of my pocket and scanning through it … until I nearly slammed into a wall, much to the amusement of what looked like the football team, and Matt Truit.

  “Nice going!” some guy in a baseball hat yodeled.

  “Watch your face, Sole!” Matt hollered. “Bus-ted!”

  Clearly, knowing the basic layout of the school would be a start.

  * * *

  I spotted the posters on my way home from school.

  THE REVEREND WHITE WILL SAVE YOU

  They were everywhere, on telephone poles and mailboxes all over, colorful, glossy photos of the Reverend White in various poses. The Reverend White had white hair and wore white suits. In the pictures, he had his arms around men and women, presumably couples, some of them with babies.

  WE WILL SAVE THE AMERICAN FAMILY, TOGETHER.

  The Reverend White looked down at me from every corner.

  “We will save you,” he said. He sounded so confident in my head.

  I stood on the street corner, California breeze brushing past me as I looked up at him.

  Save me or save this town from people like me? I thought. Save me or destroy me?

  Destroy you.

  Oh yeah?

  I spent the next two hours running from telephone pole to telephone pole, ripping down every poster I could find. He was everywhere, staring at me as I reached up and tore him in half. I needed the superpower of a million Reverend White poster-seeking hands. Until then, one at a time.

  THE REVEREND WHITE IS HERE TO SAVE YOU!

  Riiiiiiip!

  When I got home, I still had two of the posters balled up in my pocket. The house was humming. As soon as I opened the door, I was flooded by the smell of fatty saltiness, chicken and potatoes. I could hear Momma Jo throwing around pots and pans. I tried to let the door click closed as quietly as possible.

  “Set the table, whoever that is!” Momma Jo yelled over the rattle of chopping.

  “Special dinner night,” Tesla added, her voice bouncing. She was doing jumping jacks in front of the TV in the living room.

  “Why don’t you set the table?” I asked, kicking off my boots into the chaotic pile of shoes that is our doorway.

  “She asked you,” Tesla snapped as she switched to a kind of high-knee running on the spot. She had a little warm-up outfit on. Pink and green stripes. Like a Christmas elf.

  Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Tesla and I have the same mom egg and uterus and the same sperm donor. Tesla looks like the angel to my devil. I’ve got straight black-brown hair that hangs long and wouldn’t keep a curl if I glued one in there. Tesla’s got this crazy almost-red curly hair that she’s always fighting to keep in a ponytail, with, like, a million plastic bands and barrettes. Tesla’s a ball of energy. Everything she does has bounce. I don’t think it’s even possible for her to tiptoe. Like, even if she wanted to.

  Last year we got our pictures taken for Mama Kate’s birthday, and the photographer spent, like, an hour telling Tesla how much she looked like all these different movie stars.

  “What are you? You’re like a young Susan Sarandon. You know who that is? Smile for the camera there, Susan!”

  Tesla had smiled and carefully adjusted the sleeves of her flowery dress. Her favorite.

  I think I had on a polyester dress I’d found at a yard sale, and I was wearing it because it didn’t have a rip. And I’d been specifically told I could not wear anything with a rip for this timeless memento, which was one of the few things I could do for Mama Kate, who did so much for me. According to Momma Jo.

  “I’m not saying you have to wear a doily, Monty,” Momma Jo had grumbled, picking through my stack of clothes. “I’m just saying … hey, is this my sweater? What are you doing with all my stuff?”

  At the photographer’s studio, as I leaned on a giant prop foam heart, the photographer had smiled. “Oh,” he had added, gesturing toward me, just as he was about to snap the last picture, “and you, big sister, you look … very grown up.”

  “Just take the picture,” I’d grimaced, pulling at the tight sleeves on my dress.

  Of course, I have no interest in looking like a celebrity. I think celebrity culture is basically a waste of time.

  That, and my aversion to buying any clothes new from a retail chain has led most people at my school to think I’m either a Goth or a hippie. Which is hilarious to me. Because if any of them would actually do any research on either of those two things, they would see I’m not either.

  I’m not buying into a look. I’m refusing to conform to most people’s obsession with looks.

  “I’m nothing,” I told Thomas once.

  “You’re just you in your momma’s clothes,” he retorted. “You’re a teenager dressed as a lesbian in her forties. Bravo.”

  Back at the house, which smelled more and more fried by the second, Tesla dropped to the floor and started crunches.

  “First of all,” I countered, moving from the doorway of shoes to the carpet so I could stand over her, “she didn’t ask me. She said ‘whoever.’”

  “She said ‘whoever,’ but that means you,” Tesla huffed, crunching. “I can’t set the table. I’m training.”

  “For the Olympics? A noble quest?”

  “It’s Tesla’s big game tomorrow!” Mama Kate said as she jogged down the stairs. “Semi-regional girls’ junior soccer championship game tomorrow.”

  Right.

  I think it always kind of, sort of bummed my moms out that I’m not, in any way, shape, or form, into any kind of sports.

  Not even archery. Not even bowling. Not even darts.

  My moms are sporty people. They hike, they bike, they ski, they rock climb, they play lesbian baseball every first Thursday of the month. Momma Jo was a professional field hockey player when she was younger, field hockey being this weird sport where people play hockey on grass instead of ice.

  My moms met at an international lesbian intramural sports tournament. When Mama Kate sprained her ankle in a soccer game, Momma Jo drove her to the hospital. Just because. And that was it. Mama Kate even left her college so they could go to the same school in Canada.

  Then they moved back here when Momma Jo’s company opened an office in California.

  I asked Momma Jo once if there was some category for that on the sperm donor form. Like, if there was a box you could check for sporty or athletic. Momma Jo said the only boxes they cared about were human and male.

  “It’s not sperm that makes you sporty,” she added. “Trust me, I know.”

  The best evidence for this would be Tesla, who is made from the exact same genetic stuff as me and is supersporty. Every month, it seems, it’s a different sport and a different team and a different animal. In the fall, during soccer season, it was all about the Namaste Yoga Studio Cubs, because that’s who sponsors soccer teams in California, yoga studios. Sorbetties.

  “Dinner!” Momma Jo howled, banging on a pot with her big wooden spoon.

  Tesla hopped up and bounded into the dining room. I strolled. Because it’s not a race and I, unlike Tesla, do not feel th
e need to be exercising every minute of the day.

  I love our dining room. One year for Christmas my moms decided we should repaint it so it was more festive. So the walls are red stripes (Momma), lavender (Mama), pink (Tesla), and black and blue stars (me). Plus all our plates are from garage sales and antique places, Mama Kate’s obsession, so they’re all different. I always make sure I get the red bowl with the bull’s-eye in the middle. Mama Kate found it on my birthday last year.

  So anyway, there we were, eating Tesla’s favorite night-before-the-big-game meal, deep-fried chicken burgers, sweet potato fries, potato salad, and beans, like a regular lesbian family.

  “So what’s the name of the other team?” I asked.

  “The Canyon Tires Elementary Crows.”

  “Tough team?”

  “Uh, yes.” Tesla pushed her plate back. “So I think we should pray. To win.”

  “What?” I coughed.

  Momma Jo, who has a big laugh, dropped her chicken burger and laughed big. “You think that’s the tiebreaker?”

  Tesla frowned. I laughed. Mama frowned. Mama Kate is super into the idea that you shouldn’t laugh at kids unless they’re telling you a joke.

  Momma Jo dropped her fork and put her hands in the air. “Okay, okay! Look. It’s not a bad idea, Tesla. I just, I think what I’m saying is … What? I’m saying praying doesn’t win games. Praying is something people do as part of something much bigger, like a religion.”

  Mama Kate put her hand on Tesla’s hand. “What we’re trying to say is, sweetie, praying is not something you do just so you can win a game.”

  “No kidding,” I murmured, two fries in my mouth.

  “Other people are praying,” Tesla protested, folding her arms over her chest, pushing her lips into an angry knot.

  “Tesla,” Mama Kate sighed.

  Tesla banged her fist on the table. “Abigail’s parents are praying. Caitlin’s parents are praying. Sarah’s parents are praying. Pearl’s parents are praying. If they all pray and I don’t pray, we could lose.”