Read Family Online

Authors: Micol Ostow

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Themes, #Runaways, #Historical, #General, #Lifestyles, #Farm & Ranch Life

Family (6 page)

BOOK: Family
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trash

“you wouldn’t believe the sorts of things that some people throw away.”

this is what shelly says to me.

she tells me about the things that people, most people—many, many more than you might think—cast aside.

she explains that people are wasteful, careless, empty. human beings
are
. that they have no sense of the value of objects.

human beings waste all kinds of things.

specifically, human beings waste food.

and this is how the family, our family,
Henry’s
family, has learned to eat. has discovered the way to feed ourselves.

we eat what other people toss, what they reject. what other human beings waste.

and. we eat
well.
it is almost too much to believe, but we do. we eat
well.

it’s part of the system, part of the process, this hunter-gatherer method that the girls have, at Henry’s suggestion, devised.

once a week or so, a group of us, maybe two or three, are sent to the nearest town—about fifty miles away, at least an hour by car—where we park behind local restaurants.

“and you just…
beg
?”

i cannot fathom this, can’t imagine the outstretched palm, the plaintive face. the bald need, the raw, open request.

never mind what might have happened if i hadn’t been found, hadn’t been adopted, been
collected
by Henry on the park bench, that day, in the haight. never mind that i might very well have been reduced to begging to fill my porous membrane.

to plug the holes, to fill the
wants,
the needs.

i
might
very well have been. but He did. and so i wasn’t.

i wasn’t. because of Henry.

which means: now, i will fathom. i will imagine. i will do this.

for Him. for
us
. for our
family.

my first time.

i am nervous, but eager to participate. to contribute. to be an active member of the family, our family,
my
family.

shelly is going to show me the ropes.

this is reassuring to me. shelly and i have, after all, shared nearly everything that two people can share.

we are almost the same body, shelly and i. almost blood. we are true
sisters
. so i am relieved that she is the one to shelter me, to show me the ropes.

she nods at me. “remember to smile.”

she grins, part demonstration, part genuine emotion. she throws back her shoulders, reminding me of the soft goosefleshed skin that ripples beneath her thin top. reminding me of another reason why people want to give her things.

why people want to fill her up.

“the busboys. the runners. they can’t resist,” she says. “that’s why Henry sends the girls. and, i mean, they have so much left over, the restaurants. at the end of the day. they have so much
extra.

it is the end of the day. we are cloaked in dusk, dusted in the first sprinklings of starlight.

the idea, the notion that there could be extra? could be more? could be
infinite?

it is dizzying, dazzling. it makes me feel drunk with fullness, makes me feel fizzy, makes me feel like small sprinkles of starlight. makes me feel like dusk, taking hold.

shelly raps on the back-door exit of the restaurant. after a moment, a smooth, brown-skinned face appears.

small, round eyes drink shelly in as she keeps her shoulders pressing back, keeps her smile pasted to her face, keeps in mind the family. the
extra
. the
infinite
.

they exchange a few words, a meaningful glance, and then the brown-skinned boy disappears back into the restaurant.

i panic briefly. what would Henry do if we were to fail? if we were to come home empty-handed?

we can’t.
i
can’t. there is no letting Henry down.

there is no disappointing Henry.

the boy returns, this time with a paper grocery bag balanced in the crook of each elbow.

my entire body, my entire
being
, sighs. shudders with the relief of success.

outside of the car, shelly shows me our bounty: sacks of rice, day-old vegetables only beginning to turn, lettuce wrinkling weakly at the edges. meat that should freeze well.

so much.
extra
.

i ask what would have happened if no one had come to the door, if the brown-skinned boy hadn’t wanted to help us.

she points to the two tall metal dumpsters planted at the far end of the parking lot.

“there’s plenty in there,” she says. “you’d be surprised.”

but i wouldn’t. i wouldn’t be surprised. i can’t be surprised, anymore.

i
get
it now.

now, i know.

you wouldn’t believe the sorts of things that some people throw away.

you
wouldn’t.

but i would.

human beings waste all kinds of things.

back inside of the car, shelly clasps my hand under hers. we wrap our fingers over the worn gearshift of the pickup.

“Henry is going to be impressed,” she assures me. “Henry is going to be proud. of you.”

her fingers are warm, they hum with energy, and i cannot think of another time, of a
before
, of any other member of my
family


who knew what it was to be proud. of
me.

to
love. me.

but no matter.

that is why, as Henry explains, there
is
no
before
.

only
now
. only
infinity.

only the
undertow.

and me,

adrift.

legend

the story goes:

Henry’s mother once traded Him for a pitcher of beer.

i don’t learn this from Henry, of course; Henry never speaks of the
before
, any
before,
and certainly not His own.

if you ask Henry, He has no parents. He has shaken off His too-tight skin, shed His ego, rejected all but the
now.

but still:

the story.
goes
. it breathes. it gathers its own momentum. it weaves its way about the ranch, snakes through, wiggles underneath doorjambs, presses flat against windowsills, shimmies from ear to listening ear.

shelly is the one who finally shares it with me.

my listening ear may well be the last to be bent. some of the others here on the ranch still keep me at arm’s length, still seal themselves off from me, curl themselves tightly in their own cling-wrap casings. leila is too distrustful, too creased with anger. junior is too preoccupied with the gaping chasm of his cavernous
wants.

some of the others still see me as other. and i, them.

thank goodness Henry’s love is enough to make up the difference, to fill up the hollow, empty spaces.

enough.
more
than enough.
so much
more.

thank goodness Henry’s love is free.

some of the others still see me as other. and i, them.

but shelly? shelly will share
anything.
she will share anything with
me.

that is why we are sisters, shelly and i. that is why we are closer than paper dolls, tighter than stitches on a quilt.

that is why shelly and i are nearly blood.

shelly will share anything. with
me
. and she does.

and so, she does.

“a pitcher of
beer.
” she leans forward on sharp elbows, mouth puckered in a perfect o of disbelief.

we are shucking ears of corn for dinner, heaps, mountains, towers of corn. we work in quiet synchronicity, bent over a splintering wooden picnic table, peeling thick hunks of corn silk back from the grainy, raw pearls of butter-pale kernel.

we toss the empty husks into a large metal garbage bin pushed to the side of our table.

the trash quickly piles up.

i roll flosslike strands of corn silk between my thumb and forefinger, thoughtful.

beer.


beer,
” she repeats, though i have not spoken aloud.

(that is how close, how connected shelly and i are. she hears the things i have only said on the inside. she
is
my inside. that is how close we are. sisters. near-blood.)

“beer.”

she repeats it with shrill outrage, spits the word past her lips as though it were poison. as though it is
beer
that is the real issue here. as though there were something else, some other substance for which Henry could have been traded that might make more sense, that might be acceptable.

as though there were any excuse for voluntarily giving up Henry.

she doesn’t look at me, can’t see the fury that i feel molding, melting into my features. but she can feel it.

(because she is my insides, my secret spaces. because we are connected.)

“she was, um, a waitress,” she goes on. “and i guess she drank?”

i guess.

“and Henry was with her one day, at work? i think He was still pretty little back then. like maybe six or seven or something like that.”

i cannot reconcile the notion of a young-boy Henry. there is too much Henry, so much, a watershed of Henry, to think that there had ever been less.

no.

“she had some friend, some other waitress, a woman who couldn’t have kids no matter how hard she tried. it was real sad,” shelly says, like she knew this woman personally, was well acquainted with her sorrows, with her hollowed-out core, with her
wants
.

“so the story goes that they were drinking, you know, once they’d finished their shifts? and after a few too many, this friend, this woman? she offered Henry’s mom a pitcher of beer in exchange for taking Him home.

“and Henry’s mom agreed to it.”

she agreed to it.
agreed.

who could ever do that? who could ever give up Henry?

no.

i feel a small rumble, a tickle at the back of my throat. before i even realize that i am going to speak, the words are there:

“so how did He—?”

it is perfunctory, my question. shelly is deep, lost in the legend. she is reflecting inward, talking mainly with her own mirror-self. i can see this. all i need to do is sit silently, to open my listening ear. to
be
her mirror-self. the way that she is mine.

i can do that. that, i can do.

“an uncle. or something. came to pick Him up a few days later.”

a few days later.

days.

so.

assuming this story is true:

how many days?

how many days later?

when was the decision made to retrieve Henry? what changed people’s minds?

and what happened to Him, during that grayspace, that squishy, unspoken time that he was pent up, smothered, caged in with that woman and her wants?

assuming the story is true.

assuming that—that the story is true, that this is a sequence of events in which Henry was genuinely involved—assuming all of these things, i will still never know.

i will never, ever know for certain. because for all that Henry is an endless well of love, He is just as much a vault, airtight, snug with His own secrets of an unknown, never-to-be-known,
before.

still: saved by “an uncle.” this is what shelly says. she lays a small, tanned hand flat against the picnic table with the quiet, calm confidence of an insider’s knowledge.

i think of “uncle” jack, who was not, is not, will never be my uncle.

it is nice to know—comforting, like a glass of ice water at midafternoon, like the confidence of an insider—it is a relief, really to know:

to know that uncles can be good for something.

a pitcher of beer.

a pitcher. of
beer.

you wouldn’t believe the sorts of things that some people throw away.

human beings waste all kinds of things.

singer

the singer is a living doll, the human embodiment of barbie.

she possesses the sort of flawless, breathless, intricate beauty that pulls like a fist, sucks at you with wonder, leaves you mute with dazzlement.

she is ethereal.

she is perfection.

she is

doomed.

the singer is also alone.

it isn’t that she has no
family.
no, not quite.

but rather: her husband, someone blank and important, is away. he travels often, the burden of being blank and important.

while he is gone, she sets about preparing for everything that is to come. for their life together. for their sometime family.

her husband is a music manager. he fulfills other people’s fantasies. he makes his money by spreading other people’s messages, their love.

their house is new to them, a gift from husband to wife. a nest for her, for the singer—to feather, to fill with light and sun and warmth.

while her husband is away, the singer sets about preparing.

she has friends who look in on her. many friends: gentle, caring people, people who stop by for an afternoon, an evening, or a week yet. there is room for them, so much room in the house. so much love and space and everyone.

she isn’t lonely, feels connected and cared for even in the void of her husband’s absence. she spends late afternoons smiling, stretched out across overstuffed sofas, sipping at warm, comforting, innocuous things like herbal tea. communicating soundlessly with her houseguests, luxuriating in her exquisite
everything.
feeling secure, sound, safe.

i don’t know the singer—beyond what i’ve seen in magazines, that is—and i certainly don’t know her husband. her houseguests. i imagine if i’d thought about it, i would have recognized her life, her
orbit
, as something far-reaching. magnetic.

something like the
something
for which Henry searches.

for now, though—

in
the
now—

Henry’s spotlight still skates the boundaries of her universe.

for
now.

for now, her
infinity,
her
everything,
is light-years from my own, from any i’ve ever experienced. her house is sprawling, feathered and fluffed, stuffed to the brim with love and light and
so much.

so. much.

i don’t yet know, think i might never know, how Henry came upon this house, this woman, this parallel universe. this in-between space, where warmth is a welcoming bath rather than a raging fever, where gentle friends weave themselves to you just when you are feeling frayed. where wire gates block out the ugliness of the outside world.

where there are steel barriers to press up against the vortex, the orbit, the black hole.

where there are fences, systems, codes of security, and soundless safety. where there are endless, infinite, effortless means.

where there are countless ways to hold the undertow at bay.

Henry says: everything belongs to everyone.

Henry says: there is no
i.
no
ego.
no need for parents.

Henry says: there is only
family.
our family.

but:

Henry has a message, of love and light and music.

and He is searching for people, for open, yielding souls

to spread His word.

Henry is the one who found the singer.

BOOK: Family
8.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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