by Tanya Boteju
“Didn’t Gordon’s dad tell anyone about you and Mom?”
“Oh, he tried. But he was so hammered that his story must have seemed pretty garbled. If anyone did believe him, they’ve never said anything that I know of. Thank God.” She rubbed both sides of her forehead with her fingers. She looked tired. But I needed more information.
“What about Dad—you said he ‘kind of’ knew?”
“I thought so at the time. Something happened, months before your mother left, that made me think he knew.”
We had ended up at Jill’s place, and she was tinkering with her utensil drawer, which hadn’t fully closed for over a year. I think the tinkering helped calm her.
“What happened?” I was sitting in a kitchen chair Jill had also made herself, and it creaked with my weight. I pulled my knees up to my chest.
“We were all cooking together in your kitchen, making fried chicken.”
The thought of the three of them all trying to make fried chicken together made me think of a Three Stooges scene, given that Jill couldn’t cook worth a damn and Dad had barely known how to cook before Mom left.
“Your dad was in charge of the battering and flouring, your mom was in charge of frying, and I was in charge of standing to one side and trying not to hurt myself.” She glanced at me and winked. I couldn’t help but half smile back.
“But at one point the oil spat and some of it landed on Kate’s arm. She yelped and I grabbed her and brought her quickly to the sink to run some cold water over it. As she let the water cool her burn, she absentmindedly said, ‘Thanks, my love.’ She didn’t even realize the words she’d uttered, but I did. And I looked up at your dad, standing there with his hands covered in goopy flour. Even though nothing was going on between your mom and me at that point, my eyes must have revealed the guilt I felt, and he saw it. I know he saw it.”
My eyes watered at the thought. “What did he do?”
“Nothing. You know your dad. Your nonconfrontational, peace-loving, generous dad. Maybe he just assumed it was a knee-jerk comment from your mom, but I don’t think so. I think, if he didn’t know how I felt about her before that, he did after. And he probably knew that she felt something for me, too. But he never said anything to me.”
When I heard that, my hand itched and I wanted to slap my dad silly. It was the first time in a very long time that I’d felt anything other than love (or loving embarrassment) for him. He could have at least fought for her a little bit.
Later, both of us seated at Jill’s kitchen table, I asked, “Did my mom ever contact you before the letter? Did you ever try to find her?”
“No, she’s never tried to contact me before now. But I did look. I waited a few months, thinking if she settled in somewhere, I might be able to track her down using the ‘interweb.’ ” She kicked me beneath the table. I kicked her back and then immediately regretted returning the playful gesture. I was still trying to be mad at her.
“And?”
“And nothing. If she was working, it must have been some low-key job somewhere.”
“Some shitty job’s more like it. All she’s ever done is work for my dad.” Jill looked at me, eyebrows raised. I frowned back in reply.
“Your mom has a lot of talents and passions, you know.”
Whatever. I swiveled in my chair and picked at a piece of splintered wood on the backrest.
“Anyway, I was kind of at a loss after that. I mean, she could be anywhere, really. She’s so resourceful, you know? And she loved to change things up. She could’ve just been living on the road, for all I knew.”
I thought of my mom, buying some crappy hatchback and sputtering her way from town to town, working for room and board or doing odd jobs while she slept in her car. She was resourceful, all right, but was the change and excitement she craved really worth leaving us all behind?
About midnight, Jill and I were both hungry again—I guess emotional turmoil will do that to you—so I rummaged through her cupboards and made us some peanut butter cookies. We ate them by the fire pit in her backyard, our feet meeting in the middle of the bench where we were seated, mugs of tea steaming in our hands. The smoke and crackle of the fire was a comfort.
I stared into the flames. “Why do you think she left, Jill? I mean, why did she really leave? How could she?”
Jill blew into her mug of tea, thinking. She took a sip and looked at me across the mouth of her cup. I could feel her curling and uncurling her toes next to mine. Finally she said, a sliver of water beneath each eye, “I think she left because she didn’t know how to be here after what happened, Nima. Something for her had changed.” Her bottom lip trembled—I’d never seen it do that.
Something had changed. I wanted to ask her what could possibly change enough to make a mom leave her family, but I was scared the answer might be that she’d realized there was more out there for her than she could ever have with us. As my bottom lip began to quiver as well, I let the rest of my questions dissolve into the darkness.
Later, as I wandered home from Jill’s and climbed into bed, I flip-flopped between wanting to go back to talk more, and not wanting to talk at all. I was done talking. I wanted to do something. But what that something was remained unclear in my murky mind as I finally drifted off to sleep.
“Show me.” Winnow’s powdery voice hovers between us—particles glistening like gold dust.
I try to move my feet, to raise my arms, but they remain heavy and still. I wait for the golden dust to settle over me and bring me to life, but it just lingers, bobbing up and down in a slow dance.
“I can’t,” I murmur.
“Let me show you, then,” Winnow offers, her hand moving through the shifting cloud of particles and taking my own. My arms and legs tingle back to life. She leads me through a series of steps and motions while the gold dust swirls around our bodies.
Eventually, the glistening cloud encircles us and contracts, tightening our bodies into one another’s. Her thighs press against mine, the palm of her hand finds the small of my back. I grow acutely aware of the softness of her breasts against mine, the curve of her jawline as her lips brush the spot just below my earlobe. Our mouths find each other’s, and a deep breath the color of earliest dawn spreads through my chest. Her lips part. I let mine part too. The tips of our tongues meet.
My body surges like rolling waves, crashing, receding, building, over and over.
CHAPTER 12
In the morning, I awoke exhausted but flushed from a dream now somewhat vague in my mind. I rolled onto my back and stared at the image of two bare feet I’d taped to the ceiling after my mom left. Two bare feet from the side, in motion. The metaphor was fairly obvious and unoriginal, I guess, but I’d wanted to remind myself to just keep moving forward—no fancy footwear or transportation needed—just one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.
I realized that what I really, really wanted to do was see Winnow again. Not my mom, or even Jill to get more of the story—but Winnow. I wanted to see her, ask her how she felt about me, know if we could still spend time together. Maybe Jill’s story piqued something in me—something fearful of missing out, or messing up, or not acting when I should. Or maybe I was just captivated by a really amazing person. Either way, I resolved to find Winnow as soon as possible.
I felt weird just texting her, though. I didn’t even know how to enter a conversation—written or not—with her after my barfing debacle. Instead, I started googling “drag shows” in the area and was surprised to find more than one in North Gate. In fact, there were two: one called “Chicks and Chucks” that happened every Saturday night at some bar called Chills, and another called “Tucked and Packed” the third Friday of every month at the Lava Lounge. Remembering that the words “Tucked and Packed” were emblazoned across the stage at the festival drag show, I decided that my best bet was the one at the Lava Lounge, and I took it as a meant-to-be sign that tomorrow just happened to be the third Friday of the month.
As soon as I
realized that, my heart began thudding in my chest. It was a good kind of thud, I think. But an unsettling one too. I slapped my laptop shut and started spinning in my desk chair, slowly, to allow for prime percolating conditions.
I needed: (a) a way to get to the bar; (b) a way to get home (assuming I wouldn’t be staying the night anywhere there); (c) a way to get my dad to let me go to North Gate two Fridays in a row, without knowing how I was getting there or back; (d) someone to go with?
In the end, a solution to my predicaments presented itself from an unlikely source.
After stopping by Jill’s to let her know I needed a break from our chat, I found myself wandering over to Biddy Park. I guess Jill’s story about how she’d met my mom at our crappy old house up there spurred a desire to check out the scene of their first spark. If the house was still there, that is. From what I remembered of it, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it torn down by now.
But when I circled behind the park, where a few scraggly trees grew farther and farther apart until the ground became a wide expanse of dusty, empty dirt, the misshapen form of a house ready to keel over rose in front of me.
My memories of the place as an eight-year-old were surprisingly accurate compared to what I saw now. Granted, the building seemed to grow out of the dirt itself—so dull and battered and brown were its frame and walls—but the closed-in porch and redbrick chimney somehow managed to hold their shape, even as the rest of the house tilted dangerously to one side. I spent a lot of my first eight years on that porch, just as I’ve spent a lot of the past nine years on the porch of our current home.
Being on the outside suits me, I guess.
The place didn’t look like anyone lived in it, so I decided to take a closer look. An ugly chain-link fence barely stood its ground as I swung open the front gate, and the cement walkway up to the front door was scarcely visible beneath the ever-encroaching desert of dry dust that had taken over the front yard.
Not quite willing to trespass inside, I shrugged off my backpack and sat down on a low cement bench that hadn’t been there when we lived in the house. Facing the porch, I shook my flip-flops from my feet and let the fine dust squeeze between my toes. The warmth of the dirt felt comforting, and I pressed my feet farther into it as I stared at the front of the house.
I tried to picture Jill and my mom meeting on the three sad steps up to the screen door to the porch. I could just see my dad standing pleasantly off to the side, completely oblivious to the undercurrents of chemistry taking place right next to him. I still didn’t know how to feel about all of this. Of course I was mad. Mad at Mom for being so willing to cheat on Dad, for leaving us. Mad at Jill for getting mixed up in all of this too. Mad at Dad for doltishly standing by as it all happened right beneath his nose.
But under all of that, I think I was also mad at myself—for this confusing feeling of excitement that kept pinging around in my stomach when I thought of my mom loving another woman, being someone who could just take off to find something . . . more. Obviously, that thought made me feel equal parts lousy and excited, because it meant that “more” didn’t include me.
Like I said, this shit was confusing.
My brain hurt, and just as I was about to lie back across the bench to rest my eyes for a bit, the screen door slapped open and Gordon stepped out, freezing on the top step when he saw me.
His hair looked even greasier than normal, and a dark purple bruise formed a splotch around his left eye. A bottle of clear liquid dangled from one hand. After wiping his mouth on his shoulder, he thumped down the remaining steps and across the short stretch of dirt between us. Dust puffed up around his legs and caught in my throat, making me cough.
As he got closer, I could see his eyes were red and watery, blurred with whatever was in that bottle, but also with something else—had he been crying?
“What the hell are you doing here?” he breathed over me, each word stumbling over the next.
I was still pissed at him for the whole Davis poetry thing, but I decided that “no sudden movements” was probably a good strategy for now. Finding it difficult to look into his hazy eyes, I stared at my dust-covered feet instead. “I used to live here.” I tried to keep my voice as neutral as possible. No sarcasm. No sass. Who knew what he’d do in this condition? “Remember?”
The next thing I knew he’d slumped onto the bench beside me, his elbows on his knees and his head almost low enough to reach them.
Careful, Nima. “What . . . are you doing here?” I asked, acutely aware of the limited space between us and the stale smell of cigarette smoke.
He didn’t say anything. Just shook the bottle in between his legs. The liquid swished around with a wet, metallic sound.
I thought I saw a drop fall from his face.
I tried again. “Do you . . . hang out here?”
In an instant, he straightened his back, inhaled a whole bunch of snot, and spat a huge gob to the side.
I tried not to grimace.
“Sometimes.” More silence. He took a couple of deep breaths. The bruise on his face covered his left eye and part of his cheek. I thought it best not to ask about that.
Then he held the bottle out to me, an offer.
I didn’t want to say no, in case it set him off, so I took it and raised it to my lips, just barely wetting them with what I assumed was vodka. I handed the bottle back to him and he took a couple of big gulps, his prominent Adam’s apple rising and falling as he did. After, he stared at the house and muttered something I couldn’t quite make out.
“Sorry?”
Another rise and fall in his throat. “You still garden.”
It wasn’t a question, so I just offered, “Yeah.” And then, “How come you don’t?”
He shrugged and took another swallow.
I was getting impatient, and it was overriding my sense of caution. I stretched my back and pointed my toes out in front of me. “What’s going on with you?” I finally asked.
His face fell slack. He pulled his legs in tight together and pressed the base of the bottle into his thigh, gripping the neck with both hands and staring, lost, into the opening like he’d find the answer there. He became a little boy in an instant.
I softened. “Gordon?”
He continued to stare. “You know,” he whispered.
Do I? I wasn’t sure. I just stared at him, staring at the bottle.
Finally he looked up at me. “Oh fuck you . . . you know!” He looked away and the bruise on his face seemed to pulse. “Screw it.” Abruptly, he flung the bottle at the ground and started to stagger off.
Something surged in my stomach. “Wait—stop.” I leaped after him and touched his arm.
In an instant, he pivoted and loomed over me, fists quivering by his sides. I took a step back. We both stood still for a few moments. Or decades, it seemed. And then his shoulders collapsed. He bent forward, pressed his hands into his knees, and heaved what looked like orange oatmeal at the ground between us.
I hopped back a step. “Whoa, dude.”
He spat at the ground. “Just leave me alone.” His shoulders convulsed, and I realized he was outright crying.
Okay, now I was really at a loss. But my body acted anyway. I took a step forward and reached out to touch his shoulder. “Hey.”
He crouched to the ground, a little too close to the barf for my own liking, so I grabbed his arm and pulled him over a bit. “Careful—come this way.”
To my surprise, he allowed me to guide him back to the bench. He leaned over and rested his head in his hands. I dug around in my backpack for a tissue or something, finally resorting to a paper napkin I was pretty sure I’d already used at some point. I handed it to him and he wiped his mouth, then crushed it in his fist.
“Fuck!” he yelled into his lap.
What the hell is happening? “Okay, you’re scaring me a bit. Can you just . . . tell me what’s going on?”
Staring straight out in front of him, he spoke in that same strange voice I�
�d heard in the art room—thin and faltering. “The photo.” He paused.
I wasn’t sure whether he wanted me to say something, but I offered, as reassuringly as possible, “Right.”
“So?”
“So . . . ?”
“So? Don’t you get it?”
Man. This is scary. What if I say the wrong thing? “I’m not sure I do. But you can tell me. I won’t judge . . . I promise.”
His eyes closed. Without opening them, he said in a low, careful voice, the slur disappearing, “I think—I think my body feels wrong. Like . . . it’s not mine.” Tears gathered along his closed eyelids, and I noticed he had the longest eyelashes.
Wow. Not what I was expecting. “Um . . . I don’t . . . Wow.” Helpful, Nima.
He opened his eyes, and the tears fell from them. He rubbed them away with his fists and started squeezing his knees. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered, his features caving into the middle of his face.
Everything I knew about this guy just sailed out the window. All our interactions over the past few weeks slipped through my mind. The aggression, his presence at the drag show, the photos of him, the “something” in his eyes . . . I wasn’t 100 percent sure what he was telling me, but I could see it was huge. And scary as hell for him.
“You feel like walking a bit?” I asked, partly because I didn’t know what else to say.
He rubbed his face roughly, even the bruise, which must have hurt. Through a tense, bony jaw, he replied, “Fine.”
We walked to the community garden in silence. I think Gordon was trying to process what he’d just done. His shoulders were hunched and stiff. A deep frown creased his forehead.
We sat down among the remnants of July’s vegetables and stared into some bags of leftover fertilizer for a while.
Gordon seemed to have fallen into a stupor—his body lay slack against the fence and his long legs were spread out in front of him. I realized I would have to start. And maybe offer a secret of my own.
