23
THE BADLANDS
Gramps said, “How’s your snake leg, gooseberry?” He was worried about Gram, but less about her leg than her raspy breathing. “We’ll stop in the Badlands, okay?” Gram merely nodded.
The closer we got to the Badlands, the more wicked were the whispers in the air: Slow down, slow, slow, slow. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to the Badlands,” I suggested.
“What? Not go? Of course we should go,” Gramps said. “We’re almost there. It’s a national treasure.”
My mother must have traveled on this road. What was she thinking about when she saw that sign? Or that one? When she reached this spot in the road?
My mother did not drive. She was terrified of cars. “I don’t like all that speed,” she said. “I like to be in control of where I’m going and how fast I’m going.” When she said she was going all the way to Lewiston, Idaho, on a bus, my father and I were astonished.
I could not imagine why she had chosen Idaho. I thought perhaps she had opened an atlas and pointed a finger at any old spot, but later I learned that she had a cousin in Lewiston, Idaho. “I haven’t seen her for fifteen years,” my mother said, “and that’s good because she’ll tell me what I’m really like.”
“I could tell you that, Sugar,” my father said.
“No, I mean before I was a wife and a mother. I mean underneath, where I am Chanhassen.”
After driving for so long through the flat South Dakota prairie, it was a shock to come upon the Badlands. It was as if someone had ironed out all the rest of South Dakota and smooshed all the hills and valleys and rocks into this spot. Right smack in the middle of flat plains were jagged peaks and steep gorges. Above was the high blue sky and below were the pink and purple and black rocks. You can stand right on the edge of the gorges and see down, down into the most treacherous ravines, lined with sharp, rough outcroppings. You expect to see human skeletons dangling here and there.
Gram tried to say, “Huzza, huzza,” but she could not breathe well. “Huz—huz—” she rasped. Gramps placed a blanket on the ground so that she could sit and look.
My mother sent two postcards from the Badlands. One of them said, “Salamanca is my left arm. I miss my left arm.”
I told Gram and Gramps a story that my mother had told me about the high sky, which looked higher here than anywhere else I had been. Long ago, the sky was so low that you might bump your head on it if you were not careful, and so low that people sometimes disappeared right up into it. People got a little fed up with this, so they made long poles, and one day they all raised their poles and pushed. They pushed the sky as high as they could.
“And lookee there,” Gramps said. “They pushed so good, the sky stayed put.”
While I was telling this story, a pregnant woman stood nearby, dabbing at her face with a tissue. “That woman looks world-weary,” Gramps said. He asked her if she would like to rest on our blanket.
“I’ll go look around,” I said. Pregnant women frightened me.
When my mother first told me she was pregnant, she added, “At last! We really are going to fill this house up with children.” At first I didn’t like the idea. What was wrong with having just me? My mother, father, and I were our own little unit.
As the baby grew inside her, my mother let me listen to its heartbeat and feel it kicking against her, and I started looking forward to seeing this baby. I hoped it would be a girl, and I would have a sister. Together, my father, my mother, and I decorated the nursery. We painted it sparkling white and hung yellow curtains. My father stripped an old dresser and repainted it. People gave us the tiniest baby clothes. We washed and folded each shirt, each jumpsuit, each sleeper. We bought fresh new cloth diapers because my mother liked to see diapers hanging on the line outside.
The one thing we could not do was settle on a name. Nothing seemed quite right. Nothing was perfect enough for this baby. My father seemed more worried about this than my mother. “Something will come to us,” my mother said. “The perfect name will arrive in the air one day.”
Three weeks before the baby was due, I was out in the woods beyond the farthest field. My father was in town on errands; my mother was scrubbing the floors. She said that scrubbing the floors made her back feel better. My father didn’t like her to do this, but she insisted. My mother was not a fragile, sickly woman. It was normal for her to do this sort of thing.
In the woods, I climbed an oak, singing my mother’s song: Oh, don’t fall in love with a sailor boy, a sailor boy, a sailor boy—I climbed higher and higher. Don’t fall in love with a sailor boy—
Then the branch I stepped on snapped, and I grabbed out at another, but it was dead and came away in my hands. I fell down, down, as if I were in slow motion. I saw leaves. I knew I was falling.
When I came to, I was on the ground with my face pressed into the dirt. My right leg was twisted beneath me and when I tried to move, it felt as if sharp needles were shooting all up and down my leg. I tried to drag myself across the ground, but the needles shot up to my brain and made everything black. There was a walloping buzzing in my head.
I must have passed out again, because the next time I opened my eyes, the woods were darker and the air was cooler. I heard my mother calling. Her voice was distant and faint, coming, I thought, from near the barn. I answered, but my voice was caught in my chest.
My mother found me and carried me back through the woods, across the fields, and down the long hill to the house. She called my grandparents to come take us to the hospital. It took forever just to get a cast, and by the time we got home we were all exhausted. My father felt awful that he had been away and fussed over both of us constantly.
The baby came that night. I heard my father telephoning the doctor. “She won’t make it,” he said. “It’s happening now, right now.”
On my new crutches, I tottered down the hall. My mother was sunk into the pillow, sweating and groaning. “Something’s wrong,” she said to my father. She saw me standing there and said, “You shouldn’t watch. I don’t think I’m very good at this.”
In the hallway outside her room, I lowered myself to the floor. The doctor came. My mother screamed just once, one long, mournful wail, and then it was quiet.
When the doctor carried the baby out of the room, I asked to see it. It had a pale, bluish tinge and there were marks on its neck where the umbilical chord had strangled it. “It might have been dead for hours,” the doctor told my father. “I just can’t say exactly.”
“Was it a boy or a girl?” I asked.
The doctor whispered his answer, “A girl.”
I asked if I could touch her. She was still a little warm from being inside my mother. She looked so sweet and peaceful, all curled up, and I wanted to hold her, but the doctor said that was not a good idea. I thought maybe if I held her she would wake up.
My father looked shaken, but he didn’t seem concerned about the baby anymore. He kept going in and touching my mother. He said to me, “It wasn’t your fault, Sal—it wasn’t because she carried you. You mustn’t think that.”
I didn’t believe him. I hobbled into my mother’s room and crawled up on the bed beside her. She was staring at the ceiling.
“Let me hold it,” she said.
“Hold what?”
“The baby,” she said. Her voice was odd and silly.
My father came in and she asked him for the baby. He leaned down and said, “I wish—I wish—”
“The baby,” she said.
“It didn’t make it,” he said.
“I’ll hold the baby,” she said.
“It didn’t make it,” he repeated.
“It can’t be dead,” she said in that same singsong voice. “It was alive just a minute ago.”
I slept beside her until I heard her calling my father. When he turned on the light, I saw the blood spread out all across the bed. It had soaked the sheets and the blanket; it had soaked into the white plaster of my cast.
An amb
ulance came and took her and my father away. Gram and Gramps came to stay with me. Gram took all the sheets and boiled them. She scrubbed the blood from my cast as best she could, but a dark pink stain remained.
My father came home from the hospital briefly the next day. “We should name the baby anyway,” he said. “Do you have any suggestions?”
The name came to me from the air. “Tulip,” I said.
My father smiled. “Your mother will like that. We’ll bury the baby in the little cemetery near the aspen grove—where the tulips come up every spring.”
My mother had two operations in the next two days. She wouldn’t stop bleeding. Later, my mother said, “They took out all my equipment.” She would not have any more babies.
I sat on the edge of a gorge in the Badlands, looking back at Gram and Gramps and the pregnant woman on the blanket. I pretended that it was my mother sitting there and she would still have the baby and everything would be the way it was supposed to be. And then I tried to imagine my mother sitting here on her trip out to Lewiston, Idaho. Did all the people on the bus get out and walk around with her or did she sit by herself, like I was doing? Did she sit here in this spot and did she see that pink spire? Was she thinking about me?
I picked up a flat stone and sailed it across the gorge where it hit the far wall and plummeted down, down, careening off the jagged outcroppings. My mother once told me the Blackfoot story of Napi, the Old Man who created men and women. To decide if these new people should live forever or die, Napi selected a stone. “If the stone floats,” he said, “you will live forever. If it sinks, you will die.” Napi dropped the stone into the water. It sank. People die.
“Why did Napi use a stone?” I asked. “Why not a leaf?”
My mother shrugged. “If you had been there, you could have made the rock float,” she said. She was referring to my habit of skipping stones across the water.
I picked up another rock and sailed it across the gorge, and this one, too, hit the opposite wall and fell down and down and down. It was not a river. It was a hole. What did I expect?
24
BIRDS OF SADNESS
As we were leaving the Badlands, Gramps swore at a driver who cut us off. Usually when Gramps cussed like this, Gram threatened to go back to the egg man. I don’t know that whole story, just that one time when Gramps was cussing up a storm, Gram ran off with the man who regularly bought eggs from Gramps. Gram stayed with the egg man for three days and three nights until Gramps came to get her and promised he wouldn’t swear anymore.
I once asked Gram if she would really go back to the egg man if Gramps cussed too much. She said, “Don’t tell your grandfather, but I don’t mind a few hells and damns. Besides, that egg man snored to beat the band.”
“So you didn’t leave Gramps just because of the cussing?”
“Salamanca, I don’t even remember why I did that. Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.”
That night we stayed at a motel outside of Wall, South Dakota. They had one room left, with only one bed in it, but Gramps was tired, so he said it would do. The bed was a king-size water bed. “Gol-dang,” Gramps said. “Lookee there.” When he pressed his hand on it, it gurgled. “Looks like we’ll all have to float on this raft together tonight.”
Gram flopped down on the bed and giggled. “Huz-huz,” she said, in her raspy voice. She rolled into the middle. “Huz-huz.” I lay down next to her, and Gramps tentatively sat down on the other side. “Whoa,” he said. “I do believe this thing’s alive.” The three of us lay there sloshing around as Gramps turned this way and that. “Gol-darn,” he said. Tears were streaming down Gram’s face she was giggling so hard.
Gramps said, “Well, this ain’t our marriage bed—”
That night I dreamed that I was floating down a river on a raft with my mother. We were lying on our backs looking up at the high sky. The sky moved closer and closer to us. There was a sudden popping sound and then we were up in the sky. Momma looked all around and said, “We can’t be dead. We were alive just a minute ago.”
In the morning, we set out for the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore, hoping to be there by lunchtime. No sooner were we in the car than Gramps said, “So what happened to Peeby’s mother and did Peeby get any more of those messages?”
“I hope everything turned out all right,” Gram said. “I’m a little worried about Peeby.”
On the day after Phoebe showed her father the suspicious spots and the unidentifiable hair strands, another message appeared: You can’t keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair. Phoebe brought the message to school to show me. “The lunatic again,” she said.
“If he has already kidnapped your mother, why would he still be leaving messages?”
“They’re clues,” she said.
At school, people kept asking Phoebe about her mother’s business trip to London. She tried to ignore them, but it wasn’t always possible. She had to answer some of the time.
When Megan asked Phoebe what sights her mother had seen, Phoebe said, “Buckingham Palace—”
“Of course,” Megan nodded knowingly.
“And Big Ben, and—” Phoebe was struggling. “Shakespeare’s birthplace.”
“But that’s in Stratford-on-Avon,” Megan said. “I thought your mother was in London. Stratford is miles away. Did she go on a day trip or something?”
“Yes, that’s what she did. She went on a day trip.”
Phoebe couldn’t help it. She looked as if a whole family of the birds of sadness were nesting in her hair.
In English class, Ben had to give his mythology report. He was nervous. He explained that Prometheus stole fire from the sun and gave it to man. Zeus, the chief god, was angry at man and at Prometheus for taking some of his precious sun. As punishment, Zeus sent Pandora (a woman) to man. Then Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock and sent vultures down to eat Prometheus’s liver. In Ben’s nervousness, he mispronounced Prometheus, so what he actually said was that Zeus sent vultures down to eat porpoise’s liver.
Mary Lou invited both me and Phoebe to dinner that night. When I phoned my father, he did not seem to mind, and I knew he wouldn’t. All he said was, “That will be nice for you, Sal. Maybe I’ll go eat over at Margaret’s.”
25
CHOLESTEROL
Dinner at the Finneys’ was an experience. When we arrived, Mary Lou’s brothers were running around like crazed animals, jumping over the furniture and tossing footballs. Mary Lou’s older sister, Maggie, was talking on the telephone and plucking her eyebrows at the same time. Mr. Finney was cooking something in the kitchen, with the help of four-year-old Tommy. Phoebe whispered, “I am not too optimistic about the possibilities of this meal.”
When Mrs. Finney straggled in the door at six o’clock, Tommy and Dougie and Dennis tugged at various parts of her, all of them talking at once. “Look at this,” and “Mom, Mom, Mom,” and “Me first!” She made her way into the kitchen, trailing all three of them like a fishhook that has snagged a tangle of old tires and boots and other miscellaneous rubbish. She gave Mr. Finney a sloppy kiss on the lips, and he slipped a piece of cucumber into her mouth.
Mary Lou and I set the table, although I think it was largely a wasted effort. Everyone descended on the table in a chaotic flurry, knocking over glasses and sending forks onto the floor and picking up plates (which did not match, Phoebe pointed out to me) and saying, “That’s my plate. I want the daisy plate,” and “Give me the blue one! It’s my turn for the blue plate.”
Phoebe and I sat between Mary Lou and Ben. In the center of the table was a whomping platter of fried chicken. Phoebe said, “Chicken? Fried? I can’t eat fried foods. I have a sensitive stomach.” She glanced at the three pieces of chicken on Ben’s plate. “You really shouldn’t eat that, Ben. Fried foods aren’t good for you. First of all, there’s the cholesterol—”
Phoebe remo
ved two pieces of chicken from Ben’s plate and put them back on the serving platter. Mr. Finney coughed. Mrs. Finney said, “You’re not going to eat the chicken then, Phoebe?”
Phoebe smiled. “Oh no, Mrs. Finney. I couldn’t possibly. Actually, Mr. Finney shouldn’t be eating it either. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but men should really be careful about their cholesterol.”
Mr. Finney stared down at his chicken. Mrs. Finney was rolling her lips around peculiarly. By this time, the beans had been passed to Phoebe. “Did you put butter on these beans, Mrs. Finney?”
“Yes, I did. Is there something wrong with butter?”
“Cholesterol,” Phoebe said. “Cho-les-ter-ol. In the butter.”
“Ah,” Mrs. Finney said. “Cholesterol.” She looked at her husband. “Be careful, dear. There’s cholesterol on the beans.”
I stared at Phoebe. I am sure I was not the only one in the room who wanted to strangle her.
Ben pushed his beans to one side of his plate. Maggie picked up a bean and examined it. When the potatoes came around, Phoebe explained that she was on a diet and could not eat starch. The rest of us looked glumly down at our plates. There was nothing at all on Phoebe’s plate. Mrs. Finney said, “So what do you eat, Phoebe?”
“My mother makes special vegetarian meals. Low-calorie and no cholesterol. We eat a lot of salads and vegetables. My mother’s an excellent cook.”
She never mentioned the cholesterol in all those pies and brownies her mother made. I wanted to jump up and say, “Phoebe’s mother has disappeared and that is why Phoebe is acting like a complete donkey,” but I didn’t.
Phoebe repeated, “A truly excellent cook.”
“Marvelous,” Mrs. Finney said. “And what do you propose to eat tonight?”