What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

  “Hey,” she called up the stairs. “Your gentleman caller is here!”

  I raced down the steps and stopped. “Oh,” I said. “It’s just you.”

  “Hilarious.” Sean kissed me and then stepped back to take in my jeans and new blue sweater attire. “You look beautiful,” he said. “Wear a heavy coat.”

  “Back by midnight,” Francine said.

  “Back by—oooh, midnight?”

  She smiled. “Midnight.”

  * * *

  —

  It was a winter solstice miracle; Sean’s mom existed. And I met her.

  “Muiriel,” she said, “call me Sarah,” and she hugged me right there in the doorway. She wasn’t quite my height.

  She pulled me into the kitchen, where she poured us hot cider and apologized for having to leave in a few minutes for an avalanche-rescue-protocol class in Seattle, which, whatever that was, cemented the notion that she did indeed have my dream job. “Sean’s told me so much about you; Salishwood is counting their blessings you showed up.”

  “I’m counting mine,” I said. “I love it.”

  She beamed up at Sean, his same beautiful smile. Short dark hair, elfin features, jeans and a blue plaid flannel. Off-duty park ranger style.

  “Okay, so listen. Francine tells me you’re aging out in August, and—”

  “Mom,” Sean said. “Seriously?”

  Her face fell. “I’m sorry! Oh, Muiriel, I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay.” I laughed. “Sean, I am; we can say it.”

  “But—”

  “Dude. It’s cool.”

  He shook his head at Sarah. “Why is this the first thing you need to talk about? Can we ramp up a little slower; she’ll be back again. I hope.”

  My toes tingled.

  “It’s not the first thing, but it’s related, and I’m leaving in like five minutes, so I wanted to make sure I got to tell her—”

  “Sarah,” I said. “Tell me.”

  That warm smile. “Muiriel. There aren’t a lot of women park rangers.”

  “I know.”

  “Sean says you have the makings of an excellent one.”

  “Well, I mean—”

  “Rangering requires a bachelor’s degree; Sean says you don’t plan to go to college, and I wondered if it was because you’re aging out.”

  “Oh my God,” Sean whimpered, and held on to the kitchen sink.

  I turned around to look at him. “You’ve been talking a lot about me.”

  “He talks about you all the time,” Sarah said. “Listen, here’s the thing: extended foster care. Have you ever considered it? Or is it a totally stupid idea? Because you could go to school, and—”

  “Mom!”

  “It isn’t stupid,” I said. “Just not possible for me.”

  “Why?”

  “Mom, it’s five after, you’re going to miss your ferry, and we’ll be late to our thing.” Sean stood by the door with her coat and a backpack.

  “All right, I’m off,” she said, and went to pull her coat around her small frame. “It was wonderful to finally meet you, Muir—may I call you Muir?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Sorry if I overstepped. It’s just—life is too long to not spend it doing something you love. Also, I’m sick of the Park Service being such a sausagefest. We need you.” She took her pack from Sean and kissed his cheek. “See you Monday, love you, and I’m sorry I embarrassed you, but I did give you life, so let’s call it even. Good night!” And she was gone.

  He stood sheepishly, hands in his pockets. “I am so, so sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told her all of that; it’s your life and not my business, and definitely not hers….”

  I went to him and pulled his hands free. “I have no interest in ever being a mystery to anyone, ever,” I said. “If I said it to you it’s your business. Your mom is a ranger, so now my life details are official National Park Service business. Dream unlocked. Where are we going?”

  * * *

  —

  On the north end of the island was the Puget Sound Reserve. One hundred fifty acres of part-pristine, part-manicured forest and field and ponds. A family of logging moguls had produced a nature-loving, environmentalist son who bought the land, lived there in a manor house overlooking the water, then died and gave it all to the public to protect and wander at will. The sky was nearly black on this longest night of the year, and past the entrance gates, beneath a giant tulip tree dripping with white lights, people were assembling lanterns.

  We joined the group of maybe fifty people, mostly Francine-aged but also some little kids and a few old people, to pour rice into a jar, twist a wire handle around the top, and stick a candle in the rice, where it stayed still and upright.

  “Genius!” I said.

  We all gathered beneath the tree, and a guide said, “Welcome to the winter solstice walk, you lucky few who got tickets in September. Sorry it always sells out so fast, but a small group keeps the magic…magical. Stay on the path, please no talking, and if we’re lucky, we’ll hear some owls. Maybe even our resident foxes.”

  “September?” I said.

  “I had high hopes. Happy solstice,” Sean whispered.

  My knees went goosey.

  In a wobbly line in the cold dark, we followed the candlelight on paths through fields, into dense forests, and best of all, along the shore of a pond full of frogs and night birds floating sleepily. The bobbing line of tiny golden starlight in the jelly jars reflected in the black water.

  Past the pond we continued to a wooden bridge, voices of some school choir kids in the dark singing my very favorite winter song, even though it talks about Jesus and his insatiable need for gifts, “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

  “I can’t take it,” I whispered. “I think I might pass out.”

  “It’s too dark to faint, keep it together!” he whispered back.

  “Shhhhh!” The old people in front of us turned to scowl.

  “Hey,” he said, quieter, “what is extended care?”

  “It’s a super unromantic thing to talk about on a candlelit walk.”

  “Got it.”

  I took his hand and pulled him off the trail. “I’m nervous. I want to give you your present now,” I whispered.

  “You’re nervous? Is it a box of snakes?”

  “A box of…what mall are you shopping at?”

  “I don’t know! What kind of present makes someone nervous to give?”

  “And your first thought is snakes?” I pressed a small wrapped package into his hands.

  “Oh, Muir,” he said, holding his lantern over the brass compass I’d taken from my pillowcase bag that morning. “Are you sure?”

  “I am.”

  “Because I love it. So much.”

  “You do?”

  “It’s just like Muir’s. You honestly don’t need it?”

  “I’m getting better at finding my way. I thought, maybe, you could carry it for me.”

  He kissed me, and the golden lights passed by us in the dark. “God, I love winter. Pitch black and it’s only six o’clock. We really have till midnight?”

  “Midnight.”

  He looked up in the moonless sky, stars scattered like glitter. “My whole life on this island, and this is my first solstice walk.”

  “My whole life anywhere, and it’s my first. Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” he said, holding the compass in both his hands. “I promise if you get lost, I’ll come find you.”

  We stood and shivered, eyes on the sky. “Sean. Is your mom really gone until Monday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Really.”

  * * *

  I carry with me a brass compass I wish I did not need, but this, Joellen
says, is the rub of dependence born from fear; a snake eating its own tail.

  Joellen gave me Muir’s Wilderness World, so it was sort of her fault I started walking away from every house she put me in the moment I arrived, just to feel the familiar outside. But also there was a third-grade teacher who bears some of the responsibility.

  This teacher, as the seasons changed, was not really into holiday celebrations but was obsessed with examining axle tilt. She was psyched about every living thing experiencing light from our sun but in many different ways, depending on where we lived on Earth, and on the time of year. The stars we slept beneath in Seattle were not the stars over children in China or Australia. Our winter was not Brazil’s winter.

  I loved this. I loved it intensely.

  Winter holidays are different in every foster house, but axle tilt. That is magic we all live beneath, whether we feel like it or not. I could walk outside and see the light and stars of each season, every celebration, the same way each year. Tradition, no matter where I lived or with whom.

  In the very beginning, the calls to Joellen about moving me to a new house came from the parents, not me. Outside, searching the spring or autumn sky to find the constellations on the worksheet my teacher gave me, I accidentally walked far and for long stretches of time, never scared because outside was familiar; I couldn’t be very far from wherever I was supposed to be. By the time Joellen came to get me, I’d have been walking nearly two hours, past shops, through neighborhoods and into parks, up and down the hills of streets and homeless encampments, along the waterfront and the fish markets. I was never lost. I just wasn’t sure the way back to each house.

  “You have to ask first,” Joellen pleaded. “Tell them where you’re going.”

  Except I wasn’t going to a place. I was walking to be walking under the sky and the sun and the stars.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m always somewhere.”

  She found me, for the third time in as many weeks, at the ferry dock watching seagulls float in the circus colors of the black water reflecting the light of the giant Ferris wheel beside the city aquarium. Too much light to see many stars, but autumn was on its way.

  “Muir,” she said, sitting beside me. “We need to figure this out.”

  “Okay,” I said, beside her on the splintery dock wood.

  She put a thing, small and cold, into my hands. “You need to learn to use this. Keep track of the time, use a map, and you’ll never be late or lost. Can you promise?”

  Little brass compass. I held it to the sky, aligned with the dim stars that made Cygnus the Swan, tilting south.

  I did not take the compass from any house or from anyone. It was a gift, though gift status does not justify keeping a thing. Need can, if the need is true. I wish I didn’t need my compass. I wish I had a sense of true north anywhere in me. I can walk forward alone and never be scared; it’s going back to each house that gets me lost, every time. I can’t ever find my way home. That’s what I get for being born rootless.

  * * *

  At eleven-fifty-three I walked quietly into the house, relieved Francine was still up, so I didn’t wake her.

  “Was it wonderful?” she asked, Terry Johnson snoozing beside her, bathed in Christmas-tree light and, in a welcome break from Christmas music, the TV light from Antiques Roadshow.

  “It was,” I said, a little more obviously indicative than I’d intended, and sat beside her to pet the sleeping cinnamon roll.

  “I’m glad,” she said. Then she turned down the TV volume. “Do you have everything you need?”

  “For what?”

  “You know.” She nodded. “For dating.”

  “For…oh.”

  “Sorry, I know, but it’s my job, I have to—”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course—”

  “Because if there’s a particular brand or something—”

  “Francine!” I could not help it, I laughed, and Terry Johnson got up and left.

  “This is serious,” she said. “Just tell me and I’ll buy them.”

  “Oh my God, okay, thank you, moving on…”

  “Muiriel.”

  “Yes, I know.” I collected myself and coaxed Terry Johnson back up to my lap. “Believe me. I’m very detail-oriented and obsessed with securing my eminent exodus, and I’m not going to TMI you here, but trust me. I have what I need.”

  “And he’s also—”

  “Oh, Francine, I am not good with actual conversations or human emotions. Can we please use hand puppets to talk about this?”

  “You think it’s a picnic for me? Good Lord, the one thing you don’t act like a sixty-year-old woman about. Here, put this pillow on your face and just say yes or no. First, do not use off-brand condoms. Do you have good, expensive ones, and would you like me to go to Costco and just leave a box in the bathroom for you?”

  I could not believe this conversation was happening.

  But I was also kind of relieved it was happening.

  “Yes and yes,” I said, muffled, from behind the pillow stuffed in my face.

  She paused. “Wait, yes to what?”

  “Please go to Costco!”

  “Okay, great, good, see? This is progress! Now, are you on the pill, or do you want to be?”

  “No. Maybe? Is it expensive?”

  “Not necessarily, we can look at your insurance and what you might have on your own later, and we’ll figure it out. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. Right, like I’ll be able to afford health insurance. Good one.

  “Okay.”

  “Can we be done with this now?”

  “Yes, for now we can be done.” She took the pillow from me and tossed it on the armchair. “See why I only ever had little kids?” She turned the TV volume back up.

  “Francine.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You believed me today. At school. Without proof.”

  “Your word is proof.”

  Wow.

  “Between you and me,” she said, “Tiana’s and Katrina’s moms are both ‘bride at every wedding, corpse at every funeral’ type gals. If you know what I mean.”

  “Yikes.”

  “People make a whole lot of excuses for bad behavior when they’re related by blood, and that’s not love. That’s not family. That’s narcissism.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “That I got you in the principal’s office. I’m sorry that because of me, now Barb thinks you would bring someone bad into the school. We got them suspended. Will all the parents hate you now because of me?”

  She looked at me. “Never apologize for someone else’s ignorance. You are not responsible for that, ever. Understand? I told you, Barb is…let’s just say we’re not working with the top brass there. If anyone hates me because some spoiled brats finally got a well-deserved consequence, then great, hate away. I was humiliated when Barb said that nonsense about you, about your record. I wanted this to be a good school for you.”

  “It is good, I swear. I’m used to people saying what Barb said. But I don’t go around making trouble in school ever, you know that, right?”

  “You didn’t make trouble—you got something done. You know I’ve read your file; you’re a ghost with good grades.”

  “I’ve never…I don’t do that. Principals never even learn my name; I’m always gone before they know I’m in their school. But, Francine, those girls were vicious to Kira. No one was going to do anything about it.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’ve never had a friend for so long, in one place.”

  “I know.”

  “But I don’t want to be trouble for you.”

  “Trouble? Listen to me. I am so proud of you I can’t stand it. You are a good person. A brave person and a true friend to
Kira. Maybe now, for the first time, you’re having some battles. It’s because you’re living a life, with people who matter. Nothing causes trouble more than that.”

  Terry Johnson shifted in my lap.

  “I want to hug you now,” I said. “Okay?”

  She laughed. “I appreciate the warning.”

  I leaned over Terry Johnson and put my arms around Francine’s soft shoulders.

  “Muir, are you crying?”

  “No,” I said, wiping my tears on Terry Johnson’s blanket. “It was just a really nice night,” I said. “Thank you for letting me stay out late.”

  “Well, it’s good you enjoyed it, because after tonight you’ll probably develop an eye infection from rubbing that filthy dog blanket on your face and you’ll wake up blind.”

  “It’s not filthy,” I said. “It smells like Terry Johnson.”

  “Exactly.”

  “He’s a little bear. He smells like the great outdoors. John Muir had a dog like Terry.”

  “Did he really?”

  “Well. It was his friend’s dog, Stickeen.”

  “Stickeen? What kind of a dog name is that?”

  Terry Johnson and I exchanged a look. “Muir borrowed him to explore Alaska together. He had to make little leather booties for Stickeen’s paws to protect them from the ice and snow. He was a super-lazy dog; he wouldn’t help hunt, he was stubborn. Played by his own rules.”

  “You hear that, Terry Johnson? You’re probably related.”

  I yawned. “Well, I think I’ve hit my limit,” I said. I got up from the couch and headed toward the stairs.

  “Hey,” Francine said. I stopped and turned. “Kira brought a present for you. I put it in your room.”

  “Thanks.” I took the steps slowly. Tired. Happy.

  Upstairs, the room was glowing warm with even more Christmas lights Francine had strung on all the walls while I was gone. I stood and held my hands up in the colors. What a thoughtful thing for her to do.