Min had once put me in a body cast, for a school art project. I’d been so eager and excited when she’d asked me to help her out. Our parents were away for the weekend and Min really relished being in charge.
I wore my bathing suit, and she slathered two giant jars of Vaseline that she’d bought onto my body, and then she stuck layers and layers of plaster on me and told me I’d have to wait for two hours until it had hardened and then she’d cut it off and I’d be free. She told me she had to zip out for a few minutes to buy something, but she didn’t come back until the next day and I was left alone in the house in a body cast, unable to move. I stood in the middle of the living room for a long time, and then I tipped myself over onto the floor and lay there trying not to cry because I didn’t want the salt in my tears to make me thirstier than I already was.
Please don’t tell Mom and Dad, she said, when she finally returned. Or we’ll never be left alone again. I promised I wouldn’t but I didn’t agree with her reasoning. I didn’t think I wanted to be left alone with her again.
She cut the plaster off with a saw and several knives. It took hours and by the time she was finished I had tiny cuts all over my body and a bright red rash. It’s perfect, she said, of the life-sized cast. It looks more like you than you.
The van was making strange sounds. Logan asked me if I’d heard it and I said yeah, but I was going to ignore it.
Well, he said, but you should listen to it carefully, like to the type of sound it is, so you can tell someone if we break down. Articulate the problem, he said. You know?
No, I said, I don’t know. But you’re right.
Thebes made me a gift certificate. It entitled me to have her keep up to ten secrets for me. She drew ten squares at the bottom that we could punch out with the hole puncher she’d brought along. She also made one for herself that said This Certificate entitles Theodora Troutman to become an actress at any time she chooses.
Did you know that the original owners of our neighbours’ house are buried in the basement walls? she asked me.
What? I said. I was taking Logan’s advice and trying to listen to the aberrant sounds of the van and figure out a way of describing them.
That’s not true, said Logan.
Yeah, it is, said Thebes.
That guy was full of shit, he said. He was just trying to scare you.
Are you talking about that guy who stole your hatchets? I said.
Yeah, he’s a tool, said Logan. Nobody’s buried in his house.
They bickered about that for a few minutes and then talked about how an arm and a leg had been found in the Red River, and the newspapers had told people to be on the lookout for body parts, like, yeah, we’d see a leg on the way to school and dust it off and bring it right downtown to Police HQ…They went on like that for a while, and I put in one of my CDs and then took it out again because it reminded me of Marc.
Then Logan told Thebes he didn’t want to talk about that stuff any more. It was bringing him down and so was a lot of other stuff and he needed to think about something positive. Thebes agreed. She decided to pimp our ride with paper hearts and rainbows.
Logan told us about his latest dream. A thousand people were gathered in his school gymnasium and one of his teachers was giving a very mean and sad and negative speech about something and then slowly, as he talked, it became more and more joyous, like just incredibly beautiful and celebratory and Logan said he felt, in this dream, so unbelievably great that he did this amazing vertical and slam dunk and it was the most completely satisfying dream he’d ever had.
He looked at his cast. He banged it against the dash a couple of times. Then he looked at the map and said, Monticello, Blanding, Bluff, Mexican Hat, Tuba City, Flagstaff. He wished he had his knife so he could carve those names into the dash.
Do you use an IUD, Hattie? asked Thebes.
What? I said. Why are you asking me that? Min would have stayed calm and classy and answered honestly and respectfully and then maybe have used the occasion for an informative discussion on birth control.
No, I said. Do you? Stop reading that dictionary.
eleven
IN THE WORLD OF CHILDREN, Min was a genius, she could navigate it in her sleep. She could read book after book to them, sing song after song, soothe them for hours, tenderly and humorously cajole them out of their tantrums, build cities and empires with them in the sandbox for an entire day and answer a million questions in a row without ever losing her cool. She had conceived them, given birth to them and nursed them into life. But out there, in that other world, she was continually crashing into things.
I should give her permission to kill herself, I thought. No, not permission, that’s the wrong word. I should give her my blessing. No, not even blessing. I don’t know what it would be that I’d be giving her, necessarily, by telling her she could do whatever she wanted with her life.
One day this guy came to her door and asked her if she had any money, he said his wife and kids were freezing to death somewhere, and she said oh, you know what, no, I’m so sorry. So the guy asked her if she had money in the bank. Well, yeah, she said. A bit. And then the guy said well, I’ve got my car here, and I know where there’s an ATM, why don’t we go there right now and you can get some money out of your account. Well, said Min, yeah, okay. So off they go and Min takes out sixty bucks and gives it to him and he asks her if that’s all she has and she says yeah, I’m so sorry, and he takes off, and she walks home alone through the icy streets still worrying about the guy’s wife and kids. And then she tells Cherkis about this and he tells me and asks me what the hell is wrong with that woman? He didn’t say it spitefully or angrily. He said it quietly. He shook his head. He was stumped, genuinely. He wanted to know as badly as I did.
Once, after she’d deep-sixed another one of her art projects early in its infancy, Min decided that what she really needed was religion and she started going to some church in the north end, in some dilapidated neighbourhood off Main Street.
At first it was great but then the pastor of the church told the congregation that they were going to start locking the doors of the church during the Sunday sermon because prostitutes were coming in off the street to warm up in the lobby and kids in the hood were coming in off the street to steal coats from the cloakroom.
Min was enraged. Since when does a church lock its doors, and especially to the community’s most vulnerable individuals? The next Sunday she brought a lawn chair and plunked it down by the front door, which she’d propped open with a sign that said All Are Welcome, and then, clipboard in hand, counted the number of prostitutes and street kids and other disenfranchised folks entering the church.
None! Zero. She did this Sunday after Sunday, there was no thieving going on at all, and then, when her good work was finished, she stormed the pulpit in the middle of his sermon, grabbed the mike and presented her findings to the entire assembly and said if this was Christianity she didn’t want any part of it, she’d rather sell her ass for crack.
We were making good time now, barrelling through the bodacious curves of southeastern Utah and ignoring all impending signs of trouble with the van. At least I was.
You guys happy? I said.
The kids smiled at me like I was a dog chasing my tail, sweet but stupid, and looked away.
Thebes decided that she and Logan should have Art Class in the van. She would be the teacher and he would be her star pupil. She wanted Logan to attempt, somehow, in whatever medium he chose, to render the majestic beauty of our surroundings.