The View From Who I Was

by Heather Sappenfield

  “Exactly. They’re just teenagers,” Scrub Brush said.

  “No. Every day it’s something. I won’t ever get things right. I need to make up my mind. Oops, it’s 9:10. See you at lunch,” Ponytail said.

  Students and adults entered the common area, most headed somewhere. Five students loitered together on the yellow grass. William was one of them, and he laughed, his whole big body shaking. The bright sun pushed sharp shadows from their feet.

  I thought about being part of that joke on him. How you could hurt someone and never know. How hard it would to be to face him this afternoon. Corpse thought about living in Angel’s dreams. She wondered how many selves she had out there in the world. She again felt caught in some weird dream. I hadn’t known she was capable of thoughts like that.

  “Lone Ranger.” William nodded to Handler and then eyed Corpse like he was a fish that might dart away. She felt the same. William became more like a whale, though, as he settled into the chair at the computer, making it seem like a kindergartner’s.

  She looked at the two colleges Louise had listed below William’s name: University of Colorado and Western State College, also in Colorado. I hovered in the ceiling’s corner. Still in shock from Angel’s glance and the talk of witches.

  “I’m from Colorado,” Corpse said.

  How stupid—she’d come here with Mr. Handler. And hadn’t William been with that first group of students we’d met, when Louise introduced her?

  Corpse sighed at me.

  William nodded.

  She remembered his soft, high voice and thought of his grandmother. “Do you like Colorado?”

  Could he hear how her words quavered?

  Corpse glanced at me. Go away! she thought.

  I turned silent.

  “My dad lives there.”

  “Really? Where?

  William typed in “CU Boulder” and clicked on the site. “Leadville,” he said. “He works at the Climax Mine.”

  Corpse had no clue where the Climax Mine was. Hated to sound dumb again, so she just said, “I’m from Crystal Village. That’s about an hour from Leadville.”

  “I know,” William said. “Mansions. Fur coats. Good ice cream.”

  “Do you ski?” she said.

  “Me? Ski? Nah. You?”

  She started to say yes, but stopped. “I’m not sure anymore.”

  William looked at her funny. Louise milled about behind them, and Mr. Handler shuffled papers in his office.

  “My uncle drives a snowcat at Taos. He took me out once.” William shook his head. “I was like an elephant on roller skates.”

  “Oh,” Corpse said.

  Laughter rolled out Mr. Handler’s office.

  “Okay, here’s the site,” she said. “Now, see this tab for Freshman Students? Click on it.”

  William took the mouse and clicked the tab as she tried to imagine him in glitzy Crystal Village, then in Leadville’s thin 10,000-foot air. A hundred and fifty years ago, Leadville had been a booming mining city. Today it was a shell of its glory days. It had a neat main street, but most of the rest of town was run down, and all of it was cast in the odd slant of that high-altitude light. So different from here.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now open Forms and Downloads.” She pointed at the button on the screen, then dropped her hand into her lap. William’s eyes followed it. She held it up. “A dumb mistake.”

  His eyebrows rose and he studied her hand. Then he looked at the screen. “Application Packet?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  A photo of CU’s red-brick campus in summer appeared, the Flatirons, giant fins of red rock, jutting up against the mountainous background. Across the screen’s top it said, Find Your Place …

  Those words froze Corpse. She felt William watching.

  “I’d like to fill out the CU application instead of the Common one,” he said.

  Corpse nodded. “You don’t need my help.”

  William scrolled down and said, “My dad’s missing a pinkie. He lost it in the mill at the mine.”

  “Oh,” Corpse said.

  He typed his personal information on the application. When she’d worked with the two students before him, their personal histories had already made her say “oh” a lot. One had both parents; the other was raised by her aunt. Each had filled out an Application Fee Waiver Request Form because they couldn’t afford the application fee. To qualify, a student’s family had to earn less than $27,000 a year with two dependents. That’s kids. Mom probably spent that much in one year at spas.

  Corpse remembered Gabe’s white sock peeking through the hole in his sneaker that first time he’d walked us home. What was his dad’s income? How poor were those immigrant girls who sat on the steps of school each morning? How much did Mom pay Sugeidi? Sure, we’d studied the rest of the world in school, but we’d never considered the poverty around us.

  “What’s a Major Code?” William said.

  “It’s what you want to study.”

  “I want to be a doctor.”

  “Okay, then pre-med. I’ll look it up.” Louise had tons of brochures, and she’d set the ones for CU and Western State on the table. Corpse opened the index and searched for Major Code. After a minute she read him the number. She sat back and pictured William in a doctor’s coat.

  When he got to the household income boxes, he clicked one in the middle: $35,000-59,999. Under Next of Kin he typed “Gina Cheveyo,” and for relationship he checked Other, then typed “Grandmother” in the space provided. When the application said Indicate the highest level of formal education attained by your parents or guardians, he checked High school graduate. At Academic Honors, he paused.

  “Lone Ranger?” he called out.

  Mr. Handler appeared in his doorway.

  “What do I put for that thing at Harvard?”

  “Oh,” Corpse said.

  Mr. Handler told him, and he typed it in for last summer and the one ahead.

  Corpse slouched back in her chair and studied the shaggy line of hair along William’s neck, the thick strip of skin above his red T-shirt.

  She noticed Mr. Handler watching. He smiled and disappeared into his office.

  William finished the application. They saved it and put it on a flash drive. While they waited for it to print off, Corpse stood and propped her knee on her chair, resting her forearms on the back and leaning on them.

  “William,” she said, careful to keep looking at the beeping printer. “Sorry about running out after your reading at that conference.”

  Louise concentrated on the paper before her.

  William shrugged, which moved the whole top half of his body. “It’s been a good joke.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. I was screwed up.” She held up her hand again. “Dumb.”

  “You’re not dumb anymore?”

  Laughter rolled out Mr. Handler’s office.

  “Careful there, Lone Ranger, you’ll fall off your horse,” William said.

  Mr. Handler laughed harder. William’s eyes met Corpse’s, and they grinned.

  I envied that grin. Envied her petting Sugeidi’s head. Envied her hugging Mom. Envied Gabe.

  The printer finished, and she handed him the application for his file.

  “About your essay,” she said. “If I were you, I’d use what you read at the conference.”

  “Then I better hope someone ugly reads my application.” When William laughed, even his ears lifted. She noticed that they stuck out and were tiny compared to his body, and she laughed despite herself. Corpse could tell that the teasing he’d gotten about her would have been like this. A liking kind of teasing. He’d be an excellent doctor. She slapped his shaking shoulder, more of a two-fingered caress. I envied that too.

  Later, Corpse wrote in our journal:

  Find Y
our Place …

  —CU Undergraduate Application

  Sixteen

  From Oona’s journal:

  The process by which the trout stays motionless in flowing water is as follows: The trout always seeks out the part of the water-body, that part of the current flow where the water is densest and coldest … Because of its bodily form, as each filament of water passes around the trout it accelerates and in doing so

  exceeds the above critical velocity relative to

  specific temperature.

  —Viktor Schauberger

  In darkness, Corpse paused before the mountaintop. Something scurried away from her. She hoped this wasn’t one of the mornings when Angel felt lazy and didn’t get out of bed. Her body started to cool, but nerves kept her warm.

  Yesterday at breakfast, when she’d asked Angel if she could come to greet the sun, Angel had said it was private. But she didn’t say she couldn’t meet her on the way down. Corpse was figuring out that people here didn’t look straight at each other very often. And they didn’t just get to the point. They seemed to talk or wait their way around things. Corpse decided to be patient about the dream.

  She heard approaching footsteps. The sky was lightening. When Angel saw Corpse, she rolled her eyes.

  “I’m not spying. I promise. I’ll just wait here.”

  Angel breathed in like Corpse required all her patience. She disappeared over the crest.

  Corpse decided to greet the sun in her own way, found a flat spot beneath a tree, and kicked away the small rocks. She kneeled just as the sun breached the horizon and the mountain’s edge, casting rays like a kid’s drawing.

  “Good morning.” She held out open palms. “Am I worthy?”

  She listened so hard her ears rang. She started sensing me again. This time like on steroids. I slunk into the high branches of a piñon pine.

  Her thoughts zoomed around. Ricocheted between relief at this escape from the hate between Mom and Dad and how angry she was at Dad for fleeing to Chicago. She remembered him in the hospital, perched on the side of her bed, saying Things are going to be different.

  Now Dad was at home when she was, avoiding them full-time instead of one day a week. She considered his not-knowing nod. The way his eyes travelled somewhere else as he nodded. What did he see? It was unsettling, like Dad had two selves. Or existed in two places at once.

  She swallowed the crisp air, felt it inhabit lungs that not long ago had stopped. The despair that had led her up that snowy path after the winter formal arrived like an image on Chateau Antunes’s theater screen. She saw Dad watching her pretend to sleep those first mornings after the hospital, saw the evenings when she was awake and how he’d fidgeted and left so quickly. She saw herself unable to stay in Dad’s office and talk to him.

  “Dad,” Corpse whispered.

  She strained to hear her heart’s nervous beat. Even thinking of Dad this way felt dangerous somehow. Like a betrayal. She ran her thumb over her finger nubs.

  “But he’s the key,” she whispered. To me. “The key, the key, the key,” she repeated, willing the sun’s rays to inject resolve into her.

  At the sound of footsteps, she rose. “How come nobody else greets the sun?”

  Angel shrugged. “Some do. In their rooms. Most don’t want to get up this early.”

  “Why do you come up here?”

  “I can’t see him in the valley.”

  “Oh.” I hated how “oh” kept slipping out of her. She rose and looked around, noticed a strip of pink surveyor ribbon fluttering from a juniper branch on the double-track’s edge. Another fluttered in the distance.

  Angel followed Corpse’s gaze. “There’s a cross country race up here in the fall. Dr. Yazzie coaches our team. He’s a good runner. Does those ultra-marathons.”

  Corpse pictured school busses lugging past Sego Ridge, up the steep roads to get here, that dog snapping at their giant tires, their tangy yellow river parked along the valley floor. She saw kids wearing numbers safety-pinned to jerseys, suffering up this mountain. She rubbed her eyes. What was it with stupid assumptions in this place?

  “Do you want to jog down?” Angel said.

  “I can’t. I lost my pinkie toes. When I died.”

  “So?” Angel said. “You made it up here in the dark, didn’t you?”

  Corpse shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “What could happen? You fall down? Bleed a little?”

  Corpse rolled her lip with her teeth. I slunk to her shoulder, willing her away from this.

  “It’s fun,” Angel said.

  “I’m going to call my boyfriend.”

  Angel shrugged and started down.

  Corpse felt like a cheat, using Gabe as a crutch, an excuse. It’s fun. Would she avoid things all her life? No. Not things. Happiness. She was avoiding happiness. Dad, Mom, they all were. Bullshit! How would she ever face Dad if she didn’t have courage for this?

  No! I said. She crinkled her nose. “Ugh!” She looked down at Angel. “Wait!”

  Angel turned as Corpse took a jog-ish step. After three, she lengthened her strides. Running down employed her heels more, so she kept her upper body gathered, and the balance wasn’t too bad. She took a reaching stride over a rock and grinned at the sense of soaring. Her toe caught and she really did soar, hands out like in a dive. She landed and skidded down the road on her chest. When she stopped, she didn’t move.

  See? I said.

  “Are you all right?” Angel knelt beside her.

  Corpse groaned but levered herself up to her knees. To her feet. One knee of her jeans was torn, and her skin inside bled. Her palms were raw. She wiped them on her thighs, leaving streaks. Wiped her cheeks and nose with the back of her hand and nodded to Angel. She took a shuddering breath and started down again.

  After ten steps she laughed like she was insane. Angel caught up to her. Their steps were loud. Corpse grinned at the air’s velocity against her skin and vowed to greet the sun for the rest of her life.

  After breakfast Angel left for class, but Corpse stayed at the table in the dining hall and ran her sore hand over the oak branches carved into our journal’s leather cover. She’d finished all her homework for the week, had emailed the assignments where they needed to go. Dr. Yazzie and the ponytail teacher, the one who’d calmed the girl scared by witches or ghosts, sat at a table across the room, speaking low. Dr. Yazzie’s face was serene. Ponytail’s was not. I could relate. I guessed the woman was giving her notice.

  Corpse opened our journal to its first page. She read our name, address, phone number, written with all the fingers of our right hand. The blue ink, our writing’s deep slant and close letters, seemed to shout confusion. She turned the pages, studied how notes or passages about water filled them. Like we’d been studying for a test. It had been driving us nuts, consuming us. She studied the margins between where she’d transcribed Dickinson’s socially acceptable poems and the originals.

  She reached the page with orbits, breathe, and home. At the bottom of that page, she now scrawled promises, then Dad, then bullshit, then the key, then courage. She was staring at the bumps in her pencil lines when Dr. Yazzie said, “Hello, Oona.”

  “Oh,” Corpse said. “Hi.”

  “Are you doing all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “May I join you?”

  “Sure.”

  He wore khaki chinos and a yellow T-shirt that said, Western States 100. Muscle traced his forearms. A tiny, puckered scar marked his temple, and Corpse wondered what had created it.

  “Are you enjoying your visit?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hear you’re doing a nice job coaching students in the counseling office. The kids say you’re okay, which is as close as we Indians come to a compliment.

  “Thanks.” Corpse smiled a little. “But they don’t
need me,” she said, like I feel like an idiot.

  He reclined back in his chair.

  Corpse heard Gabe: You’ve got to take a break when it’s there.

  “Looks like it’s been hard for you,” Dr. Yazzie said.

  Corpse dropped her hand into her lap. “Don’t tell me you can see I’ve died.”

  He smiled. “I can see you’re struggling.”

  Corpse glanced my way. I didn’t budge.

  “Mr. Handler told me your story before you arrived.”

  “Oh.” Corpse looked at her lap. “I suppose he had to.”

  It was quiet but for the muffled sound of running water, pans clanking in the kitchen, and the beat of her stumbling heart. Its rhythm was a lifeline I clung to.

  After a while Dr. Yazzie said, “I have a rock in my pocket. It speaks to me.”

  Corpse looked at his hand, concealed in his pocket.

  “It tells me you’re a good person. That you’re going to be okay.”

  Corpse tilted her head. Their eyes had a conversation:

  Corpse: Really?

  Dr. Yazzie: Yes.

  Corpse: I’m asking about me, not the rock.

  Dr. Yazzie: I know.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Will you come to Circle today?” he said.

  “Circle?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  “We hold Circle each Wednesday at ten. In the gym-

  nasium. Over there.” Dr. Yazzie pointed toward the sidewalk leading to the big building. “It’s like a town meeting. Join us.” He rose.

  Alone, Corpse opened her journal to the next blank page. She wrote:

  You’re a good person. You’re going to be okay.

  —Dr. Yazzie’s rock

  Corpse entered the double doors to the big building. She walked past a room containing two long tables that housed three computers each. A room on her left, then one on her right, held about fifteen desks facing a white board. In one, students were stuffing their books in backpacks.