Family (4 page)

i only had twenty-one dollars on me when i arrived at the ranch, lucky jeans having finally given out, a thin layer of dust coating one of my two favorite tops, the straps of my sandals loosening from their scuffed foot beds.

it was enough for leila.

she smiled at me. it was a different smile than the one Henry had flashed when He came upon me at the park bench, like the messiah ready to show me to the gates of ever after.

leila’s smile was closed and mysterious, like she’d read your diary or visited you in your dreams at night. like she knew your dirty secrets.

like she knew how best to make you bleed.

“i’ll need your wallet.” her lips parted. she wore her hair like mine, in a braid, but hers was tighter, her eyebrows creeping steadily toward her scalp.

i blinked, disoriented from the three-day trip spent in Henry’s van. leila’s face was expressionless, save for the parted lips. at first i didn’t realize that this was how she smiled. how she said hello.

how she asserted herself.

“go easy on a new sister,” Henry said.

even with His easy tone, it wasn’t a suggestion. with Henry, it was never a suggestion. never anything less than gospel.

“i’ll need your wallet.” leila didn’t flinch. i guessed that she was my age, but older. somehow.

there was a hidden language, a code shared between leila and Henry. i was jealous. i’d stumbled upon a lost world, an ancient language, and i’d misplaced my guidebook. their eyes were a sealed fort, unified. i was weaponless, guileless. adrift as ever.

i gave her my wallet.

“i don’t have much cash,” i said, handing the lump of weather-beaten leather to her.

she nodded, not looking at me, flipping the wallet open. she glanced at my ID: a driver’s license showing a snapshot of another girl, a mel from the before.

“melinda jensen. seventeen years old.”

i thought again:

she, leila—

she is my age. but older, somehow.

i shrugged. “that’s me.” i peered at the picture upside down in her smooth, pale palm.

even then, there had been cracks behind my eyes. a camera couldn’t hide those sorts of fissures, rivulets, fault lines. i could see them, now, from where i stood. Henry had seen them. leila could see them. they were permanent.

leila slipped the license out of the wallet, quickly dropping it into a tin box with a lock on the front, like a tool kit, or a tackle box. the box was heavy, permanent; something solid, sturdy enough to house the ghost of my former self.

something to capture and contain the hairline fractures of my past life. my half-life.

she wasn’t finished. she continued to riffle through the wallet, examining the contents. her fingers paused, danced against a thick square. photo paper.

like a magician coming to the end of a trick, she offered her palm to me again; from its center, half-life mel winked out, flanked by mother and uncle jack. the unholy trinity.

“cute,” she said. she deftly deposited the picture in the lockbox, letting it float until it settled, covering my driver’s license.

“i might have wanted that,” i said.

leila didn’t seem to care what i might have ever wanted. she leveled me, eyes storm-gray. she snapped the box shut and jiggled its combination, sealing its contents. severing my ties. cutting me off from my former self.

i
didn’t
want the picture. i didn’t need the license. wouldn’t need either, here at the ranch. not the money, either—Henry said that the family took care of each other. leila knew this, knew
me,
in an instant.

leila was my family, now. leila and i were bound.

leila was blood.

“it’ll be here,” she said coolly.

“everything stays here.”

i wanted a barbie.

when i was seven years old, i wanted a barbie doll for christmas.

i didn’t care which one—and there were so, so many: a doll for every fantasy, for every possible escape, for every alternative to real life. your barbie could be a nurse. she could drive a car (pink, and convertible, obviously, the better to offset her painted complexion, ideal for allowing the breeze to tousle the stiff, synthetic strands of her candy-floss, gold-spun hair). she could carry a briefcase, or a hatbox. she could sing in a cabaret, dance in a chorus line, ride in a rodeo.

barbie could do anything but wear flat-heeled shoes.

anything but speak, or move on her own. those were not prerequisites for the complete, full-flourish, barbie experience.

or so i imagined.

thus far, barbie was only a fantasy to me. a pastime for other girls. girls with real fathers, mothers,
families.
girls with gold-spun hair.

girls i’d never known. would never be.

i wanted a barbie for christmas.

but. christmas with mother and uncle jack was a time for disappointment.

i knew instantly that year, upon seeing my present under the tree, that it wouldn’t be a barbie. the box was too big, lumpish, unevenly wrapped, even for one of her endless accessories. barbie accessories are packaged smooth and slick, ripe for pristine presentation. so. it couldn’t be.

in a way, it was better to know like that: all at once, no time for false hope to marinate, to work its way under my fingernails and behind my ears before finally taking hold of the space inside my rib cage. the space i mostly kept tucked away, quiet, ironclad. it was better not to expect. better not to forget the true meaning of the constant hum, the tacit pressure of endless
almost.

better to know—swiftly, simply—what real life tended to hold in store.

i feigned enthusiasm (jack was always a stickler for enthusiasm, however false) and pulled at the wrapping. paper; ribbon; glossy, sticky tape gave way to a monstrosity:

a life-size baby doll, birthed into my bewildered arms.

“you can feed her. and change her diapers.” mother seemed pleased at the prospect.

i was baffled. not surprised, exactly, never quite surprised; i knew too much for surprise. had never let hope take hold. but feeding and changing a baby doll? my own mother had never shied away from sharing with me the idea that motherhood hadn’t been her first choice, but rather, a last resort.

my own mother hadn’t wanted a baby. hadn’t wanted
me.

my own mother’s fantasy, from what i understood of it, even then, was about as far away from motherhood as a person could possibly get. why, then, would she ever think that make-believe motherhood was a gift to be passed along?

christmas was a time for disappointments. and motherhood—make-believe or otherwise—was, perhaps, the biggest disappointment of them all. we were keeping on theme, at least.

i ignored my gift. crafted crude paper dolls from thick, dull construction paper instead. sketched outfits for them that were better suited for a pool party at the barbie dream house than christmas dinner in anywheresville.

i thought about fantasy: my own, my mother’s.

i discovered something else my mother had managed to pass along to me, after all:

the void, the vortex. the endless, empty chasm of never being satisfied.

her orbit was a black hole; she was antimatter. we couldn’t fill each other up, mother and i, couldn’t even fill ourselves up.

but i couldn’t bring myself to completely let go, either.

not that it did me much good.

i was skating, scraping at the edges of the confines of my life, fingers curled, toes flexed like the soles of a plastic plaything.

i was clinging.

while mother pulled endlessly further away.

Henry had told me about the campfires that He would hold at night, but it was different, being there.

being there was quiet. holy.

more
, even, than what i imagined, those three days there in the van. i couldn’t have imagined this much.

being there made me feel special, like a magnet tugged at all of the tiny ions in my body and tilted me toward Henry. and in that, i was connected to every other jagged shard that He had collected. connected to every member of our sea-glass circle of
family.

the fire threw off heat, baking the edges of our skin, drying our eyes, and coaxing our own fever outward. warming us at our collective core.

on my first night at the ranch, i don’t have to cook.

on my first night, i am treated like a guest, like a princess, like a treasured object.

i meet my sisters, and though i can’t yet recall each of their individual names, i know it is no matter. they understand. they feel my love, my wells of gratitude. and in response, their faces radiate light, protection, welcome.

i am a part of this group, instantly. folded in, enveloped.

i meet brothers, too. some brothers, a few. young boys with blooming cheeks and hair almost as long as my own. they wink and chuckle, appear pleased to meet me. happy to know me. to have me.

they
are.
the brothers.

they are here, shelly explains, to help Henry. to aid emmett. to assist with all of the infinite endlessness of life at the ranch.

“there are some things you need a boy for,” shelly says. the corners of her mouth turn up as she responds to the punch line of a joke i haven’t yet been let in on.

i nod as though i understand. as though i get it.

here, now, i want to get it.

i want to hold it, to have it all. to claw my way up the dank, slippery walls of my ink-black well and find my way to this bright, enlightened, newborn family forever.

i nod as though i understand. as though i get it.

and i know that soon enough, i will.

after shelly finishes my tour, and the sun begins to set, the rest of the girls set about fixing dinner for the group.

“we take turns,” shelly explains, though she obviously isn’t taking a turn tonight, and she doesn’t offer as to when her turn generally falls.

i suppose they have a system worked out.

they—this family—have worked it all out. and they work together. they
all work.
together.

the ones who are cooking don’t seem to miss her, don’t seem to mind; they move smoothly, their preparations a choreography that they’ve each committed to heart.

pots rattle and drawers clang and from somewhere, someplace that has somehow until now escaped my curiosity, several mangy dogs approach, sniffing eagerly, but managing not to be underfoot.

they, too, understand the system.

the rhythm here is metered, measured, tuned to a frequency that even the animals are aware of.

Henry’s influence, His orbit—it’s what does this. it’s what binds these people. it’s the opposite of my mother’s half-life, the black hole that nearly crushed me, pulverized my stony places into a fine dust of
no, not now.

never
.

Henry’s half-life fuses, fixes, folds people inward.

where my mother’s only ever pushed me away.

when dinner is ready, Henry gathers us around the campfire, a leaping, dancing bonfire out behind the barn. it is just as He described it to me when we were off in the van on our own: pixilated stars piercing the inky depths of the sky, girls and boys with scrubbed faces and long, flowing hair, crouched, happy, eating to their fill.

there is one hitch that i learn quickly, though.

bowls are passed out, and spoons. i peer into mine: some sort of soup, or stew. it smells of garlic and smoke, but even if it smelled like nothing but clear blue air, it’s fine; after three days of service-station snack food, i could eat just about anything. i dip my spoon into the bowl.

immediately, there is a sharp elbow poking into my ribs. shelly’s elbow.

i turn, confused.

she points to a spot just to the left of the campfire, to where the dogs have reappeared, eagerly devouring bowls of flood of their own.

“we have to wait until they’re finished,” she says.

it takes me a moment, as she jerks her head, until i get what she means:

they.

as in: the dogs.

we have to wait until the dogs are finished.

i glance at Henry, and at His side, junior, the tall cowboy type with the toothpaste smile. shelly told me earlier that he tends to emmett’s cattle.

right now, junior is eating.
scarfing,
in fact: scooping mounds of soup from his bowl and shoveling it straight into his mouth without even swallowing. a thin dribble of liquid runs down his chin, snaking an oily, pungent trail through the early-evening scruff of his sculpted jaw.

junior is not waiting. for anyone or anything.

“the
girls,
” shelly says, seeing the puzzlement on my face. “the girls have to wait.”

i glance around the circle and see that she is right; none of the girls are eating yet. several bounce babies from the corral on their laps; most are content to simply stare off into space. leila is stretched back on her elbows, the sleeves of her peasant blouse pushed up, sandals kicked off and bare feet pointed toward the fire. she wiggles her toes, sighs.

her face has relaxed, and i realize that though her features are sharp, cruel, she is pretty.

all of Henry’s girls are pretty.

does this mean
i
am pretty?

Henry finishes with His food, sets His bowl beside Him, grins. flames flicker, framing His face. His cheeks are tinged with a deep orange glow.

“aren’t you hungry, mel?” He asks.

i get it: this is how He tells me that it is time. for me, for the girls to feed. this is how He tells us.

i get it.

“aren’t you hungry?”

and i am.

i
am
hungry.

more than that, even.

i am
starving.

Henry indicates that it is time for me to eat. for me, and all of my sisters.

so i do.

we all do.

later, shelly explains it.

“it’s a sign of respect,” she says, “that the girls eat last.

“it’s a sign of His respect.”

last but not least,
i think.

or even:
saving the best for last.

it’s a sign of respect.
Henry’s
respect.

i can see in shelly’s eyes how much she wants me to understand, to
get it,
like the punch line from that nearforgotten joke.

her
want
is enough for me.

more
than enough. it’s everything.

and. well.

after all:
respect.

of course.

no wonder i didn’t recognize it.