What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

  “I have to say, I thought living on an island would feel—smaller? Trapped? But the open water, the forest, so many stars. Feels big.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Everyone I grew up with can’t wait to leave, and they give me shit for this, but I don’t want to. I would miss it. I mean, I want to travel and explore, but this is home. My mom’s got the perfect life: mountain in the summer and fall, home on the island for winter and spring.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” I said. “You’re rooted.”

  “I am.”

  A pang of something rang in me. An ache.

  Jealousy?

  “Was your dad on the same ranger schedule?”

  “He worked different mountains and parks every season. He must have been gone a lot, but I mostly remember him home, the three of us backpacking.”

  “You got the nature/nurture combo,” I said. “What if you’d been like, Screw you guys and this wilderness crap. I’m going to be a tax attorney and there’s nothing you can do about it?”

  He laughed, sending nearby gulls flying. “I’d like to say they would have said, Whatever makes you happy, have fun! But honestly, they would have been totally disappointed and had a—what’s the drug-addiction thing where they get you in a room and tough-love-style tell you you’re fucked up?”

  “An intervention?”

  “Yes! We love you too much to watch you destroy your life learning tax codes; here’s some CLIF Bars and a pup tent—you’re going into the woods for six weeks to get clean!”

  “I’m so sorry he’s gone,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  “They sound like dream parents. You’re so lucky.”

  “Do you know anything about yours?”

  “No.”

  “No names, nothing?”

  “Hospital found me in a lobby.”

  He moved closer to me.

  “Do you ever think about doing the ‘spit in the tube and mail it in’ DNA deal?”

  I shrugged. “No.”

  “Not even to see…like, what ethnicity you are and what cancer you’ll die from or, oh, what if your ancestors are from Ireland and then you can go to Celtic fairs and do a maypole without culturally appropriating?”

  His straightforward lack of sentimental bullshit was delicious. The main thing Joellen worries about is my being “allergic to sentimentality,” which I see more as an allergy to cornball fake sincerity. Creepy words give me hives. When people’s voices get all breathy and quiet and they say stuff like I see you in reference to emotions, or describe feelings as tender, I get the major icks. I never lasted more than a day in a therapist’s office, and Joellen eventually believed me when I explained that, yes, I like people, I can love them, I just don’t want to talk about it. People say all kinds of shit they don’t mean. Creeptastic words don’t indicate emotional health. Case in point: Natan. Sean seemed an unlikely candidate to call emotions wounds or insist that we dialogue about something.

  “Maypoles are German,” I said.

  “Okay. But don’t you want your genetic code to reveal the mystery of why you hate cilantro?”

  “Are we doing my AMA now?”

  “Maybe.”

  His straight, dark eyebrows; those near-black eyes in that handsome, kind face; his lean, strong, mountain-climbing…self. Then he’s smart and funny, too? Being so near him was making it difficult to keep up with the conversation.

  “I do hate cilantro,” I said, “and it’s because it tastes like dishwater probably does. I’m pretty sure I’m generically white, and also I don’t want to get accidentally hooked up with any blood relatives, distant or otherwise. I’m respecting my mother’s privacy, and also there was a meth problem, in that there was some. In me.”

  “Oh God,” he said. “Really?”

  “Could’ve been worse,” I said. “My social worker, Joellen, always says if you have to be born addicted to something, meth is what you want.”

  “For fuck’s sake! She says that to you out loud?”

  “Because it’s got the best recovery outcome.” I laughed. He was interested, not curious. “Obviously meth is gross; Joellen was just trying to make me feel better. Alcohol is way worse.”

  “Joellen engages in some tough love.”

  “She thinks I need to cry more is all. The meth isn’t the reason I’m not interested. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s more just…I’ve lived with so many families. I’ve seen what blood relatives can do to their own kids. I’ve seen foster parents, social workers, even babysitters be kinder and take better care of kids they’ve only just met. And then there’s the opposite—wonderful birth parents who just need some help; social services who act like kids are criminals. It’s all subjective. Maybe I want to know and I’m suppressing it. Maybe I care and wish I didn’t. I have no idea anymore. I only know worrying about who I’m related to makes me tired, so I leave it alone and just wish people would stop being assholes to each other.

  Human decency is thicker than blood.

  “ ‘We’re made of star stuff,’ ” he said.

  “Yes!” Carl Sagan. Muir would have loved him. “So, for mountains in the summer, which would you rather: Olympics or Cascades?”

  He stole a cookie from my cup and chewed it. “Okay. That’s the reason I’ve never gone out much until now.”

  “What is?”

  “Olympics versus Cascades. I’ve never known anyone, let alone a beautiful girl who goes around quoting John Muir all day, who would ever think to ask that question.”

  “Oh. Well.”

  “So I guess I was waiting.”

  Not a date. Not a date.

  Fuck that. I want this to be a date.

  “Did you live with a family that camped a lot?” he asked. “Backpack?”

  “No. Not once.”

  “But…you love it so much. You know so much.”

  “I read a lot.”

  “You’re a natural. Should we go sometime? Backpacking? The sky is so black in the wilderness, so many stars that it’s like dust.”

  “I don’t know if I’m allowed. I could ask Francine.”

  “We’ll take her with us.”

  “Then Terry Johnson has to come, too,” I said.

  “As long as he packs his own bed and food.”

  “I’ll carry him,” I said. “He is a delicate creature.” Sean took my paper yogurt cup from me and set it beside his on the sand at our feet. We watched the water in the bay turn pink, the moon rise above the trees, and lights blink on in the houses and cabins on the water.

  “Like a necklace, all the lights in a row,” he said.

  “It’d be prettier without them.”

  “People need to live somewhere.”

  “I just mean trees are prettier than houses,” I said.

  He smiled. “Spoken like a Muir.”

  “Are you baiting me?”

  “Just stating facts.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay. We’re doing this now? This is where we get this over with?” I moved over to my own space on the rocks and faced him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  I took a deep breath of salty sea air. “John Muir saved your life. You said so yourself.”

  “Wait, what? He did not, when did I say that?”

  “His trail. You hiked his trail; he saved you. And you can put a pin in this for another day, but he saved me, too, and above all else, you were raised by two national park rangers! So I would like you to explain to me how Pinchot gets any play in this at all.”

  “Reality,” he said, loving this entire situation. “Pinchot understood people have to use natural resources—”

  “Destroy them.”

  “It’s management!”

  Nothing like getting worked up about nature pre
servation with a boy I liked so much, and on a moonlit night, but, God, it was exhilarating! I felt like I’d been waiting to have this fight all my life.

  I moved in for the kill.

  “Hetch Hetchy,” I nearly growled.

  Sean’s shoulders dropped.

  In California, the Hetch Hetchy valley’s beauty—photographs and Muir’s words demonstrate—was rivaled only by Yosemite. A magnificent place of natural wonder, Muir nearly gave his life fighting to save it. But Pinchot fought for and eventually won the construction of a dam that would flood the valley to feed the water needs of nearby San Francisco. There were alternative water sources, but Pinchot, being the dick that he was, would not yield. The valley, its unfathomable Yosemite-worthy glory, was flooded and washed away. Destroyed forever.

  Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed—chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides.

  “Okay,” Sean said quietly. “I may need to rethink some things.”

  I checked the time on my phone. “I have two hours and fifteen minutes. Take your time.”

  He smiled at the sand.

  “What would happen if you were late?” he asked. “With Francine. Versus other people.”

  “Don’t know. Never been.”

  “Never? Your whole life?”

  “Not being perfect is for people who have families; you can screw up and they still keep you.”

  He moved so his shoulder was touching mine beside him on the rocks, warm and strong. “Perfect how?”

  “Just—I am never late. I have never been rude or disrespectful to a parent out loud, never been drunk, no bad grades. Like that.”

  “Your whole life?”

  I drew circles in the sand with my toes. “Soon as I figured it out, yeah.”

  “Did you want…I mean, were you being perfect for them so they would want you?”

  “No. It was for me. Muir couldn’t stop moving. He tried so hard to want to stay and be a guy living in a house tending a farm and be married and raising kids, but he just kept…leaving. He missed being in the world. I had to keep leaving houses because sometimes they wanted me to stay.”

  He moved my hair out of my eyes. “You left?” he asked.

  “I did.”

  “How many?”

  “In my life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t get freaked out.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And this is counting, like, five in the first year because hospitals and such.”

  “How many.”

  “Francine is twenty.”

  He moved my hair onto one shoulder, fingertips along my neck. I was getting dizzy. “Can you stay here?” he said. “For the year at least?”

  “I’m trying,” I said.

  “Try hard.”

  Skinny-legged plovers ran through the wet sand to a nook in the rocks and grass. The moon was rising fast in the darkening sky. He pressed the back of my hand into the cool sand and traced the lines of my palm. “Have you ever wanted to stay?”

  I wished I hadn’t given the gold chain to Kira. I wished I had it now. “Sometimes,” I whispered without thinking. I barely admitted that to myself; what was I doing saying it out loud to this person? To this person? Tears blurred my vision. “Sometimes.”

  He held my hand.

  “You must be exhausted,” he said.

  Oh, my heart.

  I rested my head on his shoulder until I turned to kiss him.

  The moon on the water was bright white and high when we moved to sit in the seagrass and he kissed me back, safe from the night wind, time flying.

  * * *

  —

  “I was half a minute from calling Joellen. Thirty seconds.” Francine stood in the blazing kitchen, every light on, so wrong at nearly midnight.

  “Francine,” Sean said, breathless from our sprint through the dark back to her house. “It was my fault, I told her to turn her phone off, I forgot mine was off, too. I didn’t set an alarm; we missed the movie; we were just at the beach—”

  “Okay, Sean. Go home now,” she said.

  “It wasn’t Muiriel’s fault, we were only talking, please don’t—”

  “Now.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder as he walked out the door. Terry Johnson barked. Once.

  I’ll be homeless or dead in a year.

  Francine dropped heavily into a kitchen chair, head in her hands. “Muiriel.”

  “I know.”

  “I called and called. This is why I got the phone in the first place, to avoid this exact moment we are currently in.”

  “I turned it off and forgot. Kira sent me an eggplant!” My voice was unnaturally high.

  “She sent you what?”

  “Joellen can pick me up tomorrow if you want—just, please, Francine, don’t tell her why; she’ll have to put it in my record. Please.” It had been years since I cried this hard. Seriously. Years.

  “Muiriel,” she said, loud. “Stop.”

  I turned and ran upstairs to the lonely bed in the attic room and couldn’t stop crying, so I did not notice when she sat on the bed.

  “Why won’t you tell me what kind of shampoo to buy?” she said.

  I tried to breathe. “What?”

  “None of your stuff is in the bathroom. Where do you keep your soap?”

  I pointed to my suitcase, as always packed and neatly closed, on the floor.

  The scratching came from the stairwell, Francine got up and brought Terry Johnson to the bed. “He’s worried about you,” she said. He climbed on me, found my face beneath my hair, and went to town licking my salty, tearstained cheeks.

  “Listen to me. I would have only called Joellen, not the police. And you know Joellen never would do anything to hurt you. We wouldn’t do that to you. I swear.”

  I held tight to Terry Johnson.

  “You’re not leaving,” she said. “This is not a tragedy.”

  Being homeless is a tragedy.

  “I’ve known Sean his whole life. I trust him, and I know I can trust you; I’ve just never had a kid age out. I’m figuring it out as I go, trying not to confine you so much you do something stupid, but you’re not like other kids I’ve had—you’re so rigid about behavior and rules, the first thing I thought when you missed curfew was Well, she’s dead. I lost one. I’m not angry at you. Do you understand?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “I was worried, not mad.”

  Interesting.

  “Well. Kind of mad, but only because you made me worry. Scared me to death for a minute there. What does an eggplant mean?”

  I sniffled and turned to face her. “I think probably a penis.”

  “Oh, Kira,” she sighed. “Listen to me. You’re so close. I’m here with you. Joellen is, too. You can do this. Use the phone.” She stood and went to the stairs.

  “Francine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Terry Johnson sleeps with me. Sometimes.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “I’m just glad you’re not sleeping on the sofa anymore. Terrible for your back.”

  Terry Johnson burrowed under my knees and curled up tight.

  “Muiriel, unpack. Stay. Let me help you.”

  It was the thought that it would be so nice to have help—her help—that made me cry harder. Because very soon, the second I aged out, I would have no help from anyone at all. Relying on her kindness now would make my life a million times harder than when I had only me.

  I pulled Terry Johnson up and let him rest his head beside me on the pillow. I could have stayed awake and called Joellen to get on a ferry and come pick me up, like I’d done ev
ery time, with every placement, year after year after year.

  But now I’d slipped. And Francine was not mad.

  Worried, but not mad.

  I was so tired.

  The phone lit up.

  Are you okay? I’m so sorry.

  I didn’t respond. Terry Johnson snored me to sleep.

  * * *

  I carry with me a brass key to a door I will never open.

  For a room to be legally used as a bedroom for foster placements, it must have a window and a closet. I lived once, when I was eleven, with two other girls in a bedroom that had a closet door, but it was locked. All the time. Because even though the mom pretended it was for us during inspections from CPS, really it was a Christmas closet. I knew this because one early morning I was the only kid awake, still in bed reading, and she came in, put her finger to her lips, and unlocked the door to toss in some rolls of wrapping paper. Inside was a life-sized light-up Santa, huge plastic bins of garland and greenery, and a fully assembled fake tree.

  We kept our clothes in our suitcases and in a small dresser, one drawer for each of us. Our shoes stayed beside the front door in wooden apple crates.

  The man and woman whose house it was seemed really wealthy; they had two grown children away attending colleges with one-word names, and we could never tell if they were fostering kids now because they were lonely for their own kids or bored or wanted attention or what. The dad was barely around, and when he was, he only ever said some variation of Hey, I know! How about you kids show some gratitude once in a while, see how that works out for you. He and the mom loved rhetorical sarcasm, and they both seemed to confuse foster care with juvenile detention. “Well,” the mom often said to the kids with a smile, “that kind of attitude isn’t going to get you back home with your parents anytime soon, now, is it?” But the house was very clean and fancy, warm on cold nights, with nice blankets on the beds. They had really good food delivered from delis and restaurants all over the city, and, best of all, they paid for school lunch accounts, as much as we wanted. I got two cartons of chocolate milk every day, just because I could.

  The two other girls in the house were only a little younger than me, not related, both on weekly visitation schedules with parents, and neither situation was going well. One was visiting her mom in county jail; the other had both parents at home. Every time either one returned from a visit, she would be angry or crying or exhausted, or all three. I felt horrible for them and wanted badly to know them, comfort and protect them, which I knew would be dangerous for my own psyche—so I learned to stay after school and take my long, long walks on days Bio Visit was written on the wall calendar in the kitchen.