Family (10 page)

i am hanging laundry to dry on the line when Henry approaches me.

laundry is one of my favorite chores on the ranch; something about the casual baptism of fabrics, of the sensation of suds, filmy and slick, and the clouds of filth that collect in the wash basin.

something about scrubbing,

starting fresh.

each time.

i like to make things clean.

but Henry has another task in mind for me, one i wouldn’t have thought myself ready for. He has handpicked me,

sees something worthy,

deserving.

in
me
.

“we’ve got ourselves a newbie coming today,” He says. His voice is a crawl, a drawl that reaches for me, snakes around my shoulders and down my throat like honey, or cough syrup, like some type of heavy, heady medicine.

some kind of semitoxic magic.

a
newbie
. another member of our family. because Henry’s love is overflowing, and there is always room for someone new, for
more
.

because our family is a chain of paper dolls that stretches past the edge of the

horizon.

“once you finish hanging the wash, why don’t you come on down to the general store? emmett could use some company, anyway, while you wait.”

i ask:

“leila?”

what i mean is:

where is leila?

leila likes to be in charge
.

and also:

emmett belongs to leila
.

“leila’s taking care of her own stuff today.”

Henry sets a hand on my shoulder so that my edges blur.

i melt, ever so slightly.

“okay,” i say.

“okay.”

emmett is asleep.

when i arrive at the mouth of the ranch, at the general store, my fingers wrinkled, puckered, smelling of soap, emmett is pitched backward in his rocker on the porch, straw hat lowered over his eyes, mouth slack. a slight snore escapes from his chest at irregular beats.

Henry winks at me like we are co-conspirators.

“he’ll never even miss her.”

leila, He means.

emmett will never even know that leila was gone.

“perfect timing for your promotion.”

promotion.

there is a swell, a tidal wave that begins in my toes and quickly gathers force.

promotion
.

i want to swoon.

Henry glances at His watch. “she’ll be here soon enough.”

the
newbie
, that is.

He looks at me.

“time enough for a smoke.

what do you think?”

a
smoke
.

magic. tidal waves that swell,

that swoon.

i think:

i think:

a
smoke
is the one thing, the only thing,

that could possibly make this moment sharper, clearer. more crystallized.

a smoke is the one thing that could make me burn brighter,

make me pop

like a bottle rocket

or a supernova

lighting up the atmosphere,

throwing sparks.

that chemical undertow is the only sensation that could ever begin to approach the high that i feel here, on the ranch, swathed in ersatz-everything,

singled out by Henry as the one.

as
chosen
.

even if it is only temporary,

fleeting,

ephemeral—

even if it is only for today.

today,

i am chosen.

i nod, as He knew i would, and watch as He disappears two fingers into His back jeans pocket, a magician coming to the end of a trick, fishes out a wad of tissue-thin papers and a plastic baggie filled with fairy dust.

He pinches the fairy dust into a thick, plush line, rolls the paper tightly. twists the ends together, seals them between His lips.

lights the stick.

passes it to me.

i breathe.

in.

and out.

in.

and out.

i breathe.

in.

and out.

and float

away.

the new girl is an angel.

this is what i first think, when i scan her driver’s license:

angel.

my head is, by now, saturated,
smoky
; a nest of cotton batting, a pleasantly dull anti-atmosphere of negatively charged ions.

i watch as the girl, the
newbie
, lopes in slow, leggy strides toward the front steps of the general store, streaks of sunlight bouncing off of her shoulders as they shift in oiled ellipses.

i think:

angel.

i don’t realize that i’ve said the word aloud until she corrects me,

coughs, hides her rosebud lips behind a graceful fist.

“angel-
a
. rhodes.”

oh.

i flush.

of course
.

still. it was an honest

mistake.

angel-
a
rhodes has piles of sun-colored ringlets

arranged in a halo

that twists around the crown of her head.

her eyes shimmer. her skirt is diaphanous, white and gauzy

like the inside of my head.

it brushes the tips of her sandals

like a choirgirl’s robe.

it was an honest

mistake.

“angel-
a
rhodes.” i enunciate, clip my words sharply now. her driver’s license says that she is nineteen, and that she has come to us from the far east—new hampshire.

which only goes to show how expansive Henry’s orbit, His half-life—

how vast it truly is.

“i, uh—”

my mouth is suddenly filled with sand,

my head cloudier yet with

white noise,

interference. it is a play,

a performance,

and i have somehow forgotten

my lines.

i think back desperately to my own

arrival,

to leila and her lockbox.

to her angles and edges.

no.

even with a
promotion
, even having been
chosen,

that could never be me.

i am not leila.

i have no angles, no edges.

no teeth.

i am only hollowed-out spaces.

i am only the opposite of matter.

i may be chosen—

today, i may be Henry’s.

chosen
.

but i am not,

will never be

leila.

shelly comes to my rescue.

Henry must have told her, must have tipped her off,

warned her that i might need a hand here, flailing, that i might need some backup. support.

and who better to offer that than my shadow-self?

my
sister
?

she rushes up behind me, arms outstretched. skirts past me. squeezes angela so tightly that my own frame constricts in sympathy.

with a jolt, i recall when shelly first embraced me that way. can still trace the outline of her lungs against my own.

the memory, the image, is just the jump start that i need. it cuts through the cotton wool of Henry’s chemical undertow.

my sister, shelly, always knows just what it is that i need.

i stand up straighter, roll my shoulders back until my sight line is square with the supposition that radiates from angela’s steady, knowing gaze. i hold a hand out for the rest of her personal effects.

i imagine that i am leila:

dream myself sharp teeth, angles,

edges.

angela is still.

“you know?” she offers, eyeing me casually,

“i think i’ll hang on to this stuff. just for now.”

it is not a question. not even a challenge.

it is simply a fact.

i swallow.

i know what leila would say to that:

everything stays here
.

she’d rap her knuckles against the tinny frame of the lockbox, and angel-a would genuflect.

leila would bare her teeth, and angela would collapse in on herself like a dying star.

leila knows:

people’s dirty secrets.

how best to make them bleed.

leila
knows
.

but.

i am not

leila.

so.

i swallow.

i blink.

i speculate

inwardly

as to what Henry might say about this

exchange.

but.

i don’t say

anything

at all.

the campfire burns for angela.

she has just finished her first dinner with us, with our
family
; now, we loll, sated and content, bathed and backlit by the campfire’s glowing embers.

i watched angela while she ate—

couldn’t not-watch—

studied the twitches and quivers of her muscles,

the curves of her frame.

she isn’t like the other sisters.

unlike the rest of us, angela didn’t devour her meal, didn’t disappear into it. didn’t consume it with voracious need, with bottomless, infinite
want
. didn’t scrape her fork against her empty dish to capture every last drop of sustenance, or lick the tracks the fork tines left behind.

angela chewed thoughtfully. toyed with her silverware. pushed her bowl aside when she’d eaten to her fill.

said,
no, thank you
, when Henry dipped into His ever-present bag of family medicine, of fairy dust.

until angela arrived, i don’t think i’d realized that there was such a thing as one’s
fill
. hadn’t known there was such a thing as saying
no

to Henry.

i would never want to say
no

to Henry.

i am never

full.

i spied leila, across the leaping, dancing, dangerous flames. i saw that she, too, had taken note of the limits of angela’s

appetites.

leila clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth;

she all but
bared
her teeth.

angela may be

full.

but leila is

consumed.

there is a second part to my
promotion
.

i have a second, separate job—a task, a responsibility to oversee in order to fully welcome angela into the fold.

i have my orders.

Henry explained it all to me back when we waited on the porch of the general store, back when i was wrapped in a blanket of heady, smoke-driven dreams of consciousness and anticipation.

back when i basked in the beacon of being
chosen
.

chosen
. as i am:

still. now.

always
.

i have a task.

over the lapping fire, the snaking, creeping smoke, i catch shelly’s eye. she giggles, winks. squeezes at my shoulder with tight, warm fingers. presses her hands against the flesh of her thighs, pulls herself to her feet. tugs at my own clasped hands and pulls me up.

arms hooked around the hollow curves of each other’s waists, we slink in tandem along the circumference of the campfire, wander toward where angela is perched.

Henry sits cross-legged atop the nearby picnic table. catches our eye. nods.

shelly and i light down on either side of angela. shelly hooks a slender arm around the soft space between angela’s waistband and her top, rests her nimble fingers on a hip.

sighs.

angela glances up, her face a question mark.

tilts her halo at me, quizzical.

i breathe:

in.

out.

in.

this is my
now
, my moment to serve my family. this is the task for which i have been

chosen.

this is my chance. to fulfill my orders.

but.

i freeze.

shelly’s musical laugh echoes in my ears, and:

i freeze.

i cannot speak, cannot so much as shift where i sit.

i am cement-set.

and angela’s face is still a textbook

waiting,

wanting,

to be read.

i shut my eyes, reach inside, clutch desperately at the rule book that

<—please oh please—>

surely must reside at the base of my core.

i grapple helplessly for the lessons i have heard Henry preach, for the infinite catechism that has saturated my every cell.

but.

my splayed fingers come up empty:

words and gestures, directives, imperatives, all of Henry’s teachings—

they slither through my webbed spaces,

the open places of my self.

my splayed fingers come up empty.

i
am

empty.

i look up, shake my head in the hopes of clearing my thoughts.

i see shelly, my
sister
, gazing at me. her lips are pursed, unsure. i open my mouth to implore her—

to explain to her that i’ve somehow been
erased
, somehow robbed of language—

but the words are mesh, meaningless; they dribble down my throat, run silent, like hourglass sand.

i don’t. know.

anything.

after a moment, there is rescue:

hot breath on the back of my neck.

there is energy:

form, and matter.

there is solidity.

there is everything i am not.

Henry
.

He is everything.

He is a fever, throwing sparks.

He lowers Himself to the ground, His eyes refracting light so that the air before me seems to dazzle,

seems to shimmer.

seems to waver like a membrane.

like possibility.

i breathe:

in.

and out.

again.

“thing is,” He says, grinning easily at angela, “it’s your first night here. and newbies get the royal treatment.”

well.

could it be

that i am

jealous?

of my newfound

sister
?

it could.

it could be.

it could very well

be.

angela is silent for a breath.

she bites her lower lip, draining it momentarily of color. her eyes are narrow slits.

“um.”

Henry’s aura shines harder, telegraphs love and light.

“why don’t you head over to the barn with shelly and mel?” He suggests, undeterred.

“they’ll show you some familial love.”

He is so close to her that they share a shadow, a looming, shapeless, amalgamated figure

that creeps along the pebbled surface of the ground.

“our family can be real friendly, i promise.”

a promise. a
premise
.

and shelly and i are tasked with fulfilling it.

shelly and i are sworn to Henry.

to our
family
.

she is lucky, i venture. angela
is
. lucky.

i tickle the nape of her pale neck, twist an errant curl around the length of my index finger.

i think:

when i was a newbie, i had junior to contend with. junior and his cut-glass frame, his icy overcoating. his bottomless
wants
.

whereas angela has shelly and me and soft mouths and sisters and
always
.

she is new to our
family
.

and she is lucky.

i blink, feel the heat of the campfire along the fragile edges of my eyelids.

i breathe in.

and out.

angela’s face puckers. her eyes squint, and the freckles that dot her cheeks contract and expand again.

she shakes her head, setting my probing finger loose.

she breathes.

in.

and out.

she says:

“no, thank you.”

no.

thank you.

there is a hiccup in my ears, in my chest, through my spine. a ripple in the atmosphere that surrounds me.

there is no such thing as saying
no
to Henry.

no reason why anyone would want to.

i swoon. i sway.

shelly is rocked by the motion of my frame,

gathers me,

guides me away,

off to bed.

there is no collective familial embrace, no initiation for our newcomer.

there is only shelly.

she cocoons me, swathes me, consumes me.

doesn’t speak.

i don’t speak, either.

i sleep.

i dream.

i breathe:

in.

and out.

in my mind,

i say
yes
to Henry.

now.

always.

infinitely.

yes.