by A. S. King
I nodded but didn’t offer a hug. Lice spread somehow. It’s a fact.
“Are you itchy?” I asked, pointing to my head.
“I’ve had so much tea tree oil in my hair since Mom told me, I’m hoping they just stay away.”
Ellie gave me lice twice as a kid—the last time when we were eleven years old. Dad and I washed and dried every linen in the house on high heat and then put them in the microwave oven for five minutes to make sure.
Microwave ovens are like atomic bombs to lice.
“Are you coming to my graduation Monday?” I asked.
I’d asked this twelve times before. I’d given her the invitation the day I got them. I got four. I still had two left over, and was thinking of putting one in the mail with no return address. Darla O’Brien, Heaven or Hell, You Choose, The Universe, 00000.
“My mom hasn’t made up her mind. She says I can go, but she can’t figure out how I’ll get there. The van will be out for a day trip.”
“I can drive you if you don’t mind hanging around for a while,” I said.
“I think she’s planning a star party for the same night, so I may not be able to get out of that,” Ellie said. She tried to look sad about it, but star parties were the one thing she loved about the commune. They had them every other week in summer—or whenever the planets did something exciting. Ellie could tell you every constellation in the sky. It got annoying.
“So what are you gonna do about those if you have them?” I asked, pointing to her head.
She scratched her head. “I’ll probably ask you to get some of that drugstore stuff for me. Would that be okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “Because those little fuckers are using us, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Obligate parasites can’t live without a host.”
“Okay, Professor.”
“Did you know they came from gorillas, like, two million years ago?”
“Really?”
“Actually, I think that was pubic lice.”
“Ew,” she said.
“Yep.”
“Does that mean some human had sex with a gorilla?”
“I think it was just lice to gorillas. It only became pubic lice to us because we lost our body fur. Uh. Well. Most of it, anyway.”
We sat down on the grass and then lay back to look at the sky. It was clear with a few high clouds. Since I could remember, we would play the cloud game; we’d say they looked like animals or other shapes and then we’d watch them morph into other animals or things until they drifted out of view and were replaced by new ones.
“Are you gonna shave yours off?” she asked.
“What?”
“You know—your hair,” she said. “Down there.”
“Uh—no.”
She sighed.
“Why?” I asked.
“A lot of people do, I guess.”
“Does Rick want you to?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just seems unnatural.”
She didn’t answer and we lay there looking at the clouds some more.
“Have you seen Jupiter this week?” she asked. When I shook my head no, she said, “You should. Just go outside at about ten and look southeast. Can’t miss it. It’s blue and really bright.”
“Okay,” I said. But I didn’t care about Jupiter.
“Markus is coming home from college today,” she said. Markus Glenn, porn perv, lived down the road from us. He used to take the yellow school bus until he transferred to a private school in sixth grade. “You still crush on him, don’t you?”
“Not since seventh grade, no,” I said. “Remember?”
She nodded. “Did you know nearly every serial killer in history had a porn addiction? Helped them dehumanize people so they could kill them,” she said.
“You didn’t learn that at homeschool.”
“Rick told me. He’s got all these books about serial killers.”
“Wow. That’s not creepy at all.”
“Stop it.”
“Okay,” I said, but I still thought it was creepy.
Say that in a sheep voice
Star parties were a big deal on the commune. They’d bring out their drums and play beats for the stars. They’d eat organic treats and drink elderberry cordial. They would dress up.
It was all very special.
Jupiter had been around for a few months and visible every night. But cool things were happening with the moon and Pluto or something, so Jasmine called the party and the commune answered a bleating “Yes, please.”
Say that in a sheep voice.
My dad did.
It’s not that he didn’t like the commune people. He just thought they were flaky and he didn’t like that they would drum through the night during solstice or equinox or star parties.
There was something deeper going on, but I hadn’t figured it out. I had this feeling that Jasmine Blue hadn’t been very sympathetic after Letter N Day.
She’d never mentioned Darla once—nor my father, which was weird because he was still alive. In my seventeen years, thirteen without Mom, my dad and Jasmine Blue had never talked on the phone or seen each other even though they lived across the road.
Dad would pretend he didn’t know who I meant unless I said “Ellie’s mom.”
He would use the term himself, too.
“Does Ellie’s mom think it’s okay for you two to be walking on the road to Markus’s house at your age?” (We were twelve.)
“Does Ellie’s mom have a landline in case I need to get ahold of you?”
Jasmine made me keep my cell phone at home. Cell phones caused cancer. We were all talking into atomic bombs.
We all had our collective heads in the oven.
As Ellie and I cloudbusted for an hour, I watched cloud after cloud go by and saw each one as an oven. Sometimes the door was open. Sometimes the door was closed. Sometimes there was a pie baking inside. I thought of the pie as my future. I thought of the pie as an impossible goal. I knew from experience that microwaved pies tasted like shit.
When Ellie asked me a second time about college, I told her I just wanted some space. This was a lie. The real reason was tucked deep inside my brain and Ellie wasn’t going to find out. Especially considering that sometimes, it was hard to tell where Ellie stopped and where Jasmine began.
I went home and ate dinner. Chicken Alfredo and soggy garlic bread. Dad said he had to work, so I ate alone in the kitchen. Last day of school. Ever.
Being alone at the dinner table made me feel like I was in zone whatever. I had no idea who I was or what to think. I took a picture of the chair that Dad usually sat in. Its upholstery was falling apart and I’d asked Dad to replace it ten times by now, but he wouldn’t. I named the picture Ugly, Empty Chair.
When I was done, I wandered back to Ellie’s house. They’d already eaten dinner and Jasmine told me that Ellie was out with her chickens doing her chores. As I walked toward the chicken house, I passed by the shed where the bat was. I wondered if it had disintegrated yet, in that confining jar we put it in. I wondered, if it was really God, then why were we ignoring it? I decided to ask Ellie about it when I found her.
But then, as I neared the chicken house, I heard voices. It was Rick and Ellie.
As I got closer, I heard them yelling at each other.
“But it sucks! You don’t get it!”
“I’m not getting pregnant, Rick.”
“Other girls let me do it all the time.”
“Other girls?”
“I mean before you.”
“Even more of a reason for you to wear one,” Ellie said.
“You just don’t get it.”
“I guess I don’t. But I know I’m not getting pregnant at seventeen. That, I know.” Her voice wobbled on “that.” Like maybe she was going to cry.
“I can pull out right before.”
That’s when I decided to walk in.
E
llie stood, leaning against a pitchfork. Rick had a bale of straw at his feet.
I said, “Hi there.”
Rick looked mad.
Ellie looked like she didn’t know what a woman was supposed to look like.
When neither of them answered me, I decided I really didn’t want to be there for this. Ellie would talk about it for hours later when we were alone, so I turned around and went home.
I figured maybe I had something better to do than just hang around at Ellie’s like a bad habit.
Dad was still sitting on the couch working on his laptop. I stared at the painting above his head—a huge canvas he’d painted—of a modest nude.
Woman. That’s what he titled the painting.
Throughout my life, whenever a TV commercial came on that involved a skimpily clad girl, he’d point to the painting and say, “Glory, don’t believe what you see.” He’d point. “That’s what a real woman looks like.” Or something like that.
I couldn’t remember how long he’d been saying this to me, but I couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t saying it, so I bet it was since the very beginning. It was all he’d ever say when I’d turn on the TV. Wrinkle cream. Makeup. Clothing. Nail polish. Posh chocolates. Cars. Beer. Sofas. Shampoo. Toothpaste. Casinos. Gym memberships. Shoes. Pills. Diets. Cat food. Every commercial that tried to sell me the real world that wasn’t real, he’d point and say it.
The woman in the painting was fleshy and had hips. She was thick legged. Her breasts had real shape—not like Aunt Amy’s squishy softballs. She didn’t have ridiculously long eyelashes and she didn’t have tan lines. She just was.
“You need me?” Dad said.
“Just looking at the woman,” I said. I’d wondered for years if the woman in the painting was Darla, but I knew Darla didn’t look like her at all. Darla was skinny and had long hair she often tied into braided pigtails.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Never better,” I lied.
“You doing anything fun tomorrow?” he asked.
“Sure. Fun,” I said, and went upstairs and made a pact with myself not to go to Ellie’s the next day. I remembered the line about habits. The first step to breaking one is admitting you have a problem.
I had other things to do. I’d taken so many pictures in the last week, I wanted to get them into my sketchbook.
I had three sketchbooks now—full of computer-printed digital pictures. I wished I could print real pictures but Dad still wouldn’t let me into Darla’s darkroom and the last time I’d asked, he looked so hurt I couldn’t bring myself to push it.
I’d named this sketchbook The Origin of Everything. Dad had given me a blank sketchbook every year for Christmas and my birthday since I started taking pictures. He showed me one he made back when he still cared about art. It was a mix of everything creative—pictures, drawings, ideas, writing. He said it would help me work out my feelings. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t keep sketchbooks anymore. It was obvious he wasn’t working out anything.
The Origin of Everything was almost finished. I only had a few more pages to fill.
I printed and pasted Empty Jar. Beneath it I wrote EMPTY JAR.
I printed and pasted Empty Bus. Beneath it I wrote NO SEAT BELTS.
I printed and pasted Ugly, Empty Chair. Beneath it I wrote NEEDS NEW UPHOLSTERY.
I printed and pasted a random picture of a group of seniors who’d asked me to take their picture the day before. I wrote THIS IS WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE LOOK LIKE.
When I slipped into bed, I thought about how even though Woman wasn’t Darla, she was somehow teaching me stuff all along. I still thought about the fight I’d heard between Ellie and Rick. I didn’t think about college or getting a job. I didn’t think about anything past tomorrow because anything past tomorrow was just like cloudbusting—it depended solely upon the person looking at the clouds and it could rain any minute.
Saturday—It’s complicated
I’d been up since dawn taking pictures of tiny things with my macro lens. I captured dewdrops. I captured pollen. Insects. Moss. I took a picture of a dead beetle. I called it Dead Beetle. I took a picture of my pinkie toe. I called it Dad Says I Have My Mother’s Feet.
When I looked at small things—macro things—the big picture faded away.
I sat down in the hammock and balanced and then lay back. When I did, I realized that when one is looking up through trees at the sky, there is nothing a macro lens can capture. Nothing small. I took a picture of the view with my lens turned back to standard. I called it Nothing Small.
It was two days before my graduation from high school and I was more worried about Ellie than I was about getting a dress. I wanted to talk to her about the argument I’d overheard in the chicken house two nights before. I worried about how girls buckle.
Jasmine Blue didn’t allow a television in her house, so Ellie had never been desensitized to the commercials and stereotypes. Jasmine Blue didn’t allow magazines in her house, but Ellie knew what all girls knew—we were here to be whatever men wanted us to be.
We were here to touch their tipis.
I tried to think of one single message out there that said the opposite, but I couldn’t think of one. Everywhere I’d looked for seventeen years said, under the slick imagery, “You are here to look pretty, keep quiet, and touch tipis.”
I didn’t want Ellie to get pregnant. I wanted her to be educated about sex and how much bullshit “pulling out” was. I didn’t want her to catch a sexually transmitted disease from a guy who owned books about serial killers.
I waited in the hammock until eight thirty to go and find Ellie. I found her mucking out the runner duck house that was over by the small pond. She still looked mad, so it was a perfect opportunity to just ask her if she was okay.
“I’m fine. Why?”
“You look pissed.”
“I am pissed. But I’m fine,” she said. “Just the usual bullshit.”
“What usual bullshit?”
She propped her chin on the handle of her shovel and sighed. The ducks ran around outside. Runner ducks walk upright. She had two different colors of them. The chocolate-colored ones were my favorite.
“Just—you know—Rick. It’s complicated.”
I nodded. “I heard a little bit of your fight Thursday,” I said. “I didn’t like what he was saying to you.”
She sighed again.
“You know about safe sex, right? And diseases? And all that?”
“I know enough,” she said.
“Well—uh—be careful, will you?” I wished I could take her to the library and hand her over to the librarians. Please teach her about everything, I’d say.
A minute passed and I picked up the broom and swept out some wood shavings from the corner.
“I think my mom was right,” she said. “I did it too early and now I regret it.”
I felt my heart stop for a second. “You did it?”
We’d promised, on that day when we found the picture of the butter penis, that we would tell each other on the day we did it. I felt cheated, like I did every other time Ellie changed the rules.
She nodded. “Like, two weeks ago. I mean, the first time. We’ve been doing it since, too. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“But I thought you weren’t going to do it.”
“It’s not a big deal,” she said.
“Then why are you so mad?” I let that echo around the duck house for a few seconds. I said, “You can stop anytime you want.”
“He lives here.”
“So?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Yeah. I can see that. But still.”
She started to cry. “I don’t know what to do.”
I didn’t know what to tell her.
I hugged her even though lice spread somehow.
I didn’t care. Ellie needed a hug so I hugged her.
“And I have bad news,” she said.
“Oh?” I said.
“M
y mom found the petrified bat.”
“Did she toss it?”
“Not quite. I still have it. But it’s… not like we remember it.”
The ballad of Max Black (aka God)
It was dust. No matter how closely we looked, we couldn’t distinguish what used to be eyeball or wing or snout or foot. It was just chunky dust.
Ellie acted out what Jasmine had done.
“‘What the hell is this?’” she said in an annoying-Jasmine voice, while shaking the jar, disintegrating Max Black. “She just kept shaking it and yelling,” she said. “She’s such a freak. It’s just a bat. Like, who cares?”
“It wasn’t just a bat,” I said.
“I know,” Ellie said. “It was God.”
“Your mom killed God, dude,” I said. I was trying to get a laugh, but Ellie didn’t laugh.
She unscrewed the lid to the jar and she looked in at the dust.
I think that’s when she got the idea, but she didn’t say anything until we met later—after dark—to give our God, Max Black, a proper journey into the next bat world by scattering his dust.
Once we met, skinny waxing moon high in the sky, that’s not what we did at all.
Ellie said, “I need you to get that lice stuff for me.”
“Okay.” My scalp itched the minute she said it. “Bummer. I know how much you hate those combs.” Last time Ellie had lice, she had to chop a foot off her hair so she could get the nit comb through it.
“They moved,” she said.
“Who?”
“The lice.”
“But,” I said. “Head lice only live on heads.”
“They—you know—moved.” She pointed to the zipper on her jeans.
“El, that’s an entirely different thing. They didn’t spread. Those are different ones.”
“You thought they jumped until last week. What do you know?”
“I know.”
“Oh.”
“So, your head is okay?”
“Yeah. It’s fine,” she said. “Hold on. So I have a different kind now?” she asked.
“Sounds like it.”
“Where the fuck did they come from?”
I stayed quiet.
