Girlchild (13 page)
Symbol:A window framed by curtains yellow and bright as flame
To earn this badge do four of these activities, the three starred are required.
1. Steal scraps of yarn from Grandma’s lowest basket. Intermediate: Act as if you didn’t notice the next knitted surprise she had hidden at the basket’s bottom. Advanced: Take yarn in all the colors of the Girl Scout Badges you plan on earning but will never officially receive.2. After the Ice Cream Man is gone, search the Calle for used popsicle sticks. Put pairs together in the shape of a cross. Do not wash them. Sugar is Mother Nature’s glue.3. Wrap the yarn over, under, and around the arms of your popsicle crosses, creating a diamond or “eye” pattern. Make one God’s Eye for each badge earned. Intermediate: Award the God’s Eyes to yourself in official ceremony. Advanced: Make a short but formal speech of gratitude as you accept your God’s-Eye badges.4. Be ashamed of having made God’s Eyes as you grow older and come to realize that they are considered kitsch. Advanced: Stay abreast of what is considered kitsch.
5. When you are older than that, be ashamed of having been ashamed. Intermediate: Begin saving popsicle sticks. Advanced: Award God’s Eyes to yourself and others in official ceremony before displaying them proudly in windows and from rearview mirrors.
I
nsects fall under Nature in the
Girl Scout Handbook
and I swallow my fear and try to earn points toward my Insect badge by learning the difference between butterfly and moth antennae, just what is a “true bug,” and the work behind collecting live ones to raise. For every one I remove from the dangers of the drain or the broom, there’s another putting down stakes behind the toaster, in the corner of the shower, and Mama, who’s afraid of everything now since Grandma left, everything but men, is screaming for me to come and kill it. I try to save them, but pushing them around with jars and newspapers only maims them, severs limbs, breaks wings, defeats the purpose, so I start letting them live where they are. I push the toaster closer to the wall, shout “Got it!” loud enough for Mama to hear, move the curtain just so to hide a carefully crafted home, and think of Grandma:
nsects fall under Nature in the
Girl Scout Handbook
and I swallow my fear and try to earn points toward my Insect badge by learning the difference between butterfly and moth antennae, just what is a “true bug,” and the work behind collecting live ones to raise. For every one I remove from the dangers of the drain or the broom, there’s another putting down stakes behind the toaster, in the corner of the shower, and Mama, who’s afraid of everything now since Grandma left, everything but men, is screaming for me to come and kill it. I try to save them, but pushing them around with jars and newspapers only maims them, severs limbs, breaks wings, defeats the purpose, so I start letting them live where they are. I push the toaster closer to the wall, shout “Got it!” loud enough for Mama to hear, move the curtain just so to hide a carefully crafted home, and think of Grandma:
Because it was my Bird-day, Pigeon sent a present. A most unusual gift—a new flyswatter. It is on my wall along with my picture of you. In one corner of this swatter’s business end a small hole has been cut & a logo on the handle explains, “Even
flies
deserve a chance.” Think about that!
flies
deserve a chance.” Think about that!
And think about it, I do. And about how hard it is to believe in chances, but how much harder it is to let that idea go, with Grandma’s words lining up so sure and strong in her slanting
felt-tip, letter after letter, another lesson in the strength of an old gambler’s faith. But if Grandma’s right, and there’s a chance of slipping through the swatter, if the great hand holding it lets me fly free, it’ll mean that I got the opening and everyone else got left behind. Mama already feels so alone here with Grandma gone that I can’t see leaving either of them, no matter how flat our future.
felt-tip, letter after letter, another lesson in the strength of an old gambler’s faith. But if Grandma’s right, and there’s a chance of slipping through the swatter, if the great hand holding it lets me fly free, it’ll mean that I got the opening and everyone else got left behind. Mama already feels so alone here with Grandma gone that I can’t see leaving either of them, no matter how flat our future.
A
fter I began my correspondence with Grandma, she begged me to stop addressing her as Grandma Gun, a name I’d held on to for its fierceness and fight and written boldly across the front of every envelope I sent her way. That is, until the letter came that called him, in capital letters and haggard underline, a Vile Memory. Grandma underlined her maiden name for me too, saying she’d rather be a Crumb than a Gun any day. So old Gun was retired, Grandma Crumb it was, and the real why of it all was never discussed. However many we send, letters don’t keep Grandma close enough for Mama, though, and the secrets they try to share long-distance spill out in her sleep, Vile Memories with them. They race up my arms as I tuck her in, surge under my skin, creep the way bugs do. Insects started out as Mama’s fear but like her wedding ring and the hope chest, it’s one of those things I’m inheriting. Her dyslexia saved her from what she couldn’t face straight on, but I don’t have any trouble reading Gun’s swarming of Mama at night.
fter I began my correspondence with Grandma, she begged me to stop addressing her as Grandma Gun, a name I’d held on to for its fierceness and fight and written boldly across the front of every envelope I sent her way. That is, until the letter came that called him, in capital letters and haggard underline, a Vile Memory. Grandma underlined her maiden name for me too, saying she’d rather be a Crumb than a Gun any day. So old Gun was retired, Grandma Crumb it was, and the real why of it all was never discussed. However many we send, letters don’t keep Grandma close enough for Mama, though, and the secrets they try to share long-distance spill out in her sleep, Vile Memories with them. They race up my arms as I tuck her in, surge under my skin, creep the way bugs do. Insects started out as Mama’s fear but like her wedding ring and the hope chest, it’s one of those things I’m inheriting. Her dyslexia saved her from what she couldn’t face straight on, but I don’t have any trouble reading Gun’s swarming of Mama at night.
Make as many words as you can using letters from the following word. Do not repeat a letter if it is not repeated in the original word. (You have one childhood to complete this portion of the test.)
INSECT
M
ama’s first car was a pretty blue Chevy Corvair bought for her by her first and only husband, Gene. Gene got it thinking to free himself from having to drive her on all the errands a family needs done, but in the end the Corvair freed him from a lot more than errand-running, and Mama too. The key to that freedom was hidden just under the front seat, close enough that Mama’s curious fingers brushed against it when she went to slide the seat forward on her first drive down from their cabin on a Santa Cruz mountain and into town. Tucked under the seat, forgotten by the car’s previous owner, was a library book, and for Mama it was long overdue.
ama’s first car was a pretty blue Chevy Corvair bought for her by her first and only husband, Gene. Gene got it thinking to free himself from having to drive her on all the errands a family needs done, but in the end the Corvair freed him from a lot more than errand-running, and Mama too. The key to that freedom was hidden just under the front seat, close enough that Mama’s curious fingers brushed against it when she went to slide the seat forward on her first drive down from their cabin on a Santa Cruz mountain and into town. Tucked under the seat, forgotten by the car’s previous owner, was a library book, and for Mama it was long overdue.
When everything you need to know to get through life is written on box tops, recipe cards, and collection notices, reading through a whole book seems like a mighty waste of time, especially if you have problems with letters, like Mama does. “They go ass-backwards,” she says, “and if I’m tired they don’t stay still at all.” But if you just got your first car and you’re feeling around for the seat lever and find
Desolation Angels
instead, the beautiful people on its cover so lazily entwined, well, that’s the type of experience that can turn your head around.
Desolation Angels
instead, the beautiful people on its cover so lazily entwined, well, that’s the type of experience that can turn your head around.
And when Mama finally drove her Corvair down the mountain again, to the library this time to return that book, she would’ve paid the fine too if they’d asked her, guilty as she was for all the
time she’d kept it, the days and nights spent while her boys ran wild and the ironing heaped high, each page a headache of squinting until the words clicked like the tumbler in a lock and the page could finally be turned with a surprised and secret hallelujah. After dropping that first book through the library’s return slot, she showed her new driver’s license, filled out a form, and left with two more Kerouac books under her arm, the orange card of the Santa Cruz Public Library in her wallet, her name having been misspelled by the librarian across the front, Mrs. Joann R. Hendrikx.
time she’d kept it, the days and nights spent while her boys ran wild and the ironing heaped high, each page a headache of squinting until the words clicked like the tumbler in a lock and the page could finally be turned with a surprised and secret hallelujah. After dropping that first book through the library’s return slot, she showed her new driver’s license, filled out a form, and left with two more Kerouac books under her arm, the orange card of the Santa Cruz Public Library in her wallet, her name having been misspelled by the librarian across the front, Mrs. Joann R. Hendrikx.
Before long, Mrs. Hendrikx’s library card number, No. 21431, was stamped on the inside of every Kerouac book on the Santa Cruz Library’s shelves. I don’t know how much credit old Jack deserves for the fire his writing lit in Mama’s life. There’s such a thing as the right book at the right time, and for Mama and many others, Kerouac’s was it. Whether he liked it or not there was something like a revolution going on as his books came out, especially in Santa Cruz where Tibetan prayer flags still wave more proudly than Old Glory. Every revolution needs a voice, and in 1969 Kerouac’s voice was loud enough to catch the ear of a recent divorcée who, though not well-bred, was getting well-read, and thinking about a revolution of her own.
Letters still refuse to behave for Mama but she doesn’t let that get in her way. There are books on our shelves to prove it, not dusty candles and dime-store glass won at Circus Circus, not pictures of family and plaques offering the same advice from one trailer to the next:
Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee. I’m not a slow cook / I’m not a fast cook / I’m a half-fast cook. God grant me patience and I want it right now
. When the men Mama brings home see the names lining our shelves, Kerouac and Kesey, Gilman and Ginsberg, the traveling Buddha tucked in a corner, they tend to catch their breath and quiet a bit, not sure whether they stumbled into a library somehow or drank themselves clear through to Sunday and
woke up at church. Santa Cruz couldn’t be further behind us and all our books come from the Salvation Army now, because Carson County, Nevada, officials haven’t yet seen fit to shuttle the bookmobile this far up the 395, but Mama’s old Santa Cruz Public Library card doesn’t leave her wallet. No. 21431 was her ticket out, once, and she needs the reminder.
Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee. I’m not a slow cook / I’m not a fast cook / I’m a half-fast cook. God grant me patience and I want it right now
. When the men Mama brings home see the names lining our shelves, Kerouac and Kesey, Gilman and Ginsberg, the traveling Buddha tucked in a corner, they tend to catch their breath and quiet a bit, not sure whether they stumbled into a library somehow or drank themselves clear through to Sunday and
woke up at church. Santa Cruz couldn’t be further behind us and all our books come from the Salvation Army now, because Carson County, Nevada, officials haven’t yet seen fit to shuttle the bookmobile this far up the 395, but Mama’s old Santa Cruz Public Library card doesn’t leave her wallet. No. 21431 was her ticket out, once, and she needs the reminder.
I
win a set of
Academic American Encyclopedias
and two wide-winged trophies. I win a trip to Kmart’s parking-lot sale to get a new dress to wear to the statewide competition and I win the weird, confused pride of my mama. Mama says she has no spelling smarts but she finds her way through all our books, fights her way through all the letters, so that only leaves her saying it to make it true, just like Grandma said. She says that I didn’t get it from her, couldn’t have, a mix-up at the hospital, she laughs, embarrassed. By me. It’s like I was never a part of her, like I hatched out of a spider egg instead, crawled out of somebody else’s anthill, like I flew out of a honeycomb with a dictionary under my arm. Mama acts like I don’t belong to her anymore. And her saying it is just making that true too. And that’s just fine. Because I never feel, I never ever feel, like Mama belongs to me. The only place I feel like myself and the only person who treats me normal is Mrs. Reddick, the librarian. In her library I can sit and let all the words leap and run and I don’t have to pretend it’s harder than it is to have them make sense, like I do at home. Mrs. Reddick doesn’t have a thing to say about how fast I read or where it comes from or why. I come in, she smiles and nods, I smile and nod, and then I open my book and read until the bell. That’s it. I’m no alien and nobody’s miracle, I’m just a reader right at home.
win a set of
Academic American Encyclopedias
and two wide-winged trophies. I win a trip to Kmart’s parking-lot sale to get a new dress to wear to the statewide competition and I win the weird, confused pride of my mama. Mama says she has no spelling smarts but she finds her way through all our books, fights her way through all the letters, so that only leaves her saying it to make it true, just like Grandma said. She says that I didn’t get it from her, couldn’t have, a mix-up at the hospital, she laughs, embarrassed. By me. It’s like I was never a part of her, like I hatched out of a spider egg instead, crawled out of somebody else’s anthill, like I flew out of a honeycomb with a dictionary under my arm. Mama acts like I don’t belong to her anymore. And her saying it is just making that true too. And that’s just fine. Because I never feel, I never ever feel, like Mama belongs to me. The only place I feel like myself and the only person who treats me normal is Mrs. Reddick, the librarian. In her library I can sit and let all the words leap and run and I don’t have to pretend it’s harder than it is to have them make sense, like I do at home. Mrs. Reddick doesn’t have a thing to say about how fast I read or where it comes from or why. I come in, she smiles and nods, I smile and nod, and then I open my book and read until the bell. That’s it. I’m no alien and nobody’s miracle, I’m just a reader right at home.
The only time it was ever different was right after the Hardware Man left, when I came back to school the first day after the snowstorm
that left Mama and me alone with my secrets, the first day after the fist-storm that followed. Mrs. Reddick’s smile that recess took longer in coming than usual. Her eyes held on to mine for such a long time, I felt like I was reading them too and what they said, about worry and being glad I was there, felt too loud for a library. The look was enough to make a librarian say “Shhhh!” and Mrs. Reddick must have scolded herself, because she bent her head politely to her stacks and I sat down.
that left Mama and me alone with my secrets, the first day after the fist-storm that followed. Mrs. Reddick’s smile that recess took longer in coming than usual. Her eyes held on to mine for such a long time, I felt like I was reading them too and what they said, about worry and being glad I was there, felt too loud for a library. The look was enough to make a librarian say “Shhhh!” and Mrs. Reddick must have scolded herself, because she bent her head politely to her stacks and I sat down.
Other books
Lawful Domination [Uniform Fetish 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Stacey Espino
Accord of Mars (Accord Series Book 2) by Kevin McLaughlin
Daughter of Ancients by Carol Berg
Ardor by Elena M. Reyes
After the Fall by Martinez, A.J.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner
Fatal Circle by Robertson, Linda
More Than Words: More Than, Book 3 by Jess Dee
Playing with Dynamite by Leanne Banks
