Set Me Free (35 page)

When Amelia decided to forgive her father about Benson, it was a matter of offering an apology. She’d decided to forgive him
because, honestly, she was sick of the flouncing drama of everyday life. That, and the fact that after her collisions with
Lydia and Victor, she couldn’t even imagine what might happen if Sadie and Wes popped up in her Ponderosa world. Her imagination
failed her, she knew, not because the confrontation would be huge but because Sadie and Wes hardly mattered to her now. She’d
deal with those two when she saw them, if she saw them. It helped that, even before the full apology had left her lips, Elliot
was eagerly apologetic
in return—“Sweetheart, how selfish of me not to have consulted you!”—but Amelia chalked that up to Helen’s influence. She
knew that things would never really get back to
normal
normal.

That had to do with Lydia. Never before had Amelia realized what Lydia meant to her. Lydia was still in her daily life, sure,
but she wasn’t really there. Things had changed. Naturally, there had been apologies and explanations. Naturally, Suzanne
and Louie Cinqchevaux had gathered Amelia up, had sided with her plight, had accused old Mrs. Littlefoot not of lying but
of craziness, which meant they needed no explanations from Amelia. Old women were crazy sometimes, what were you going to
do about it?

But Lydia was different. Lydia required stories, explanations. When Amelia told her the story of the baby at Wiggler’s Creek,
of Elliot’s anger at the time, of Victor’s desire to search for a real baby, and when Amelia swore that she knew nothing about
Victor and drugs, nothing about Chicago, it was clear that Lydia believed her. It was clear that Lydia would keep these secrets.
Lydia’s anger, her hurt, weren’t about who should know what. They were about too little, too late. They were about what she
and Amelia had said to each other after they’d been terrified by an old grandmother who’d unearthed blatant secrets that both
girls felt too young, too scared, to explore.

It was also about the other thing, the unspeakable thing; Amelia had crossed an invisible line. She had grown up mourning
her plight at Ponderosa Academy, trapped, lonely, in her father’s realm. Lydia had listened, all these years, as Amelia complained,
all the while probably thinking the white girl had no idea how good she had it. Amelia knew Lydia didn’t call her “the white
girl.” But she also knew that Lydia wouldn’t look her straight in the eye for a long time after they’d gone to visit Mrs.
Littlefoot. Because something serious had happened, something Neige Courante, something deep and strange and baffling. It
wasn’t about craziness, not really. And it wasn’t about poverty, although both girls had been trained—oh, man, had they been
trained—to be politically correct
about poverty. It was about a possibility that was true and wild. Neige Courante. Indian. That was what they couldn’t say.

For the same reason, Amelia didn’t know what to do or say to Victor. Normally, she would have sought advice from Lydia, but
not this time. This time Amelia knew she was on her own. She wished she could get up the guts to do something, to say something
right. She should apologize for going to visit Mrs. Littlefoot, but not because she’d defied Victor’s will; that was the wrong
reason. Maybe she should have gone sooner; maybe she should go again. What could she say? Everything felt unfinished, raw.
These were the circles of thought Amelia’s mind orbited in the three months between the time Victor stopped talking to her
and the day that he was cast as Prospero and she, his slave.

I
T WAS ABOUT
three weeks later when they got onstage together for the first time (“stage” being a loose term; it was a rectangular area
marked in electrical tape on the floor of the gym. Helen had high hopes that someone—read: me—would help by building a low
stage that could be assembled in pieces for rehearsals and the performance. I assured her we risked no such progress). Victor
and Amelia had read their scenes together a couple of times, but that was always with a big group of people, during what Helen
insisted on calling “a table read,” and they were always seated far apart and thus not required to make chitchat. This time
it was just Amelia and Victor. And Lydia. Who had been cast as Prospero’s daughter, Miranda. Which made things weirder.

“I have some ideas for blocking, but I want to see what you do naturally, okay? So just read the scene and try not to get
too caught up in the language, but remember to
move
where you want to move.” Helen gestured to stage right (which, I’ve “learned”—I already knew this, but everyone, including
her, was excited to be the first to explain it to me—is named from the point of view of the actors. Leave it to the audience
to be blamed for getting everything backward). “Prospero’s cave will be over here. But you do have the whole stage to work
with. So let’s just see what happens.”

Amelia stepped “onto” the stage and stole a glance at Victor. He was engrossed in his script. They’d been issued the same
bulky folders with three-hole-punched, one-sided, photocopied, and enlarged pages from an unannotated version of the play.
Helen had shown all the actors how they could open a script to any page and write down blocking or notes on the blank page
facing it. I know everything about those scripts. Guess who was roped into making them?

Back to the tale at hand. They read the scene once, standing there. Amelia knew they should be moving, but Victor wasn’t moving
and Lydia wasn’t moving, and she herself didn’t know how Caliban stood or how his voice sounded (or why she’d been cast as
him, for that matter), so she delivered her lines as best she could. It was the angry piece of Act One, Scene Two, when Prospero
and Miranda gang up on Caliban. He tells them:

This island’s mine by Sycorax my mother,

Which thou tak’st from me. When thou cam’st first,

Thou strok’st me and made much of me, wouldst give me

Water with berries in’t, and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night; and then I lov’d thee

And show’d thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile.

Curs’d be I that did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o’ th’ island.

Prospero recounts, as Miranda looks on, how Caliban once tried to rape Miranda. Cheery. And oddly reminiscent. But I am not
a revisionist. I do not believe Shakespeare was some kind of prophet presaging the abuse of Native Americans at the hand of
the white man. What I believe is much simpler: that what happened to us
brown people was so fucking predictable that Mr. Stock Scene himself wrote it down when our version of it was only beginning
in the world. That Shakespeare gave Prospero these words: “I pitied thee, / Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each
hour / One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage, / Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like / A thing most brutish,
I endow’d thy purposes / With words that made them known” was not because Shakespeare was a genius (perhaps he was a genius,
but not in this, and really, who’s sick of the genius debate? Let’s call them all geniuses and be done with it) but because
he was a storyteller. Centuries of genocide and rape and false promises do a great story make. It doesn’t take a genius to
think that up.

They were not good actors. Amelia knew this. Not just because Helen looked befuddled when they lowered their scripts but because
Amelia could sense mediocrity hovering above her like a swarm of gnats. But all Helen said was “Again, please. And Victor,
this time, remember, Caliban is your slave. He’s disobeyed you. You must put him back in line.”

Amelia had to start the scene by entering. She had to curse at them, but the curse was long and hard and tangled: “As wicked
dew as e’er my mother brush’d / With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen / Drop on you both!” She stumbled over the words
and tried to imagine how Caliban would stand, but all she could muster was a halfhearted hunch. So she was surprised when
Victor’s lines emerged from him bold, and loud, and angry.

“For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,” he began, and she blushed because he was looking right at her, and the
face he had on was the same face he’d worn that day when he found his grandmother holding Amelia’s hand. She wanted to shrink
from him. But since her next line was bold, she tried to be bold too. Because it began with “I must eat my dinner,” she thought,
“Well, maybe that means Caliban’s going somewhere,” so she walked in front of Victor and, out of the corner of her eye, caught
Helen nodding and smiling, so she knew she’d done something right.

She tried to be as dominant as Victor. His next line began “Thou most lying slave,” and he was in her face, and she felt afraid
but thrilled at the same time. She had felt this before when she was with him at the bonfire and on the brink of something
she had never expected. Being near him had felt good and terrible at the same time. Now they were face-to-face, and she felt
a challenge well up inside her.

“You taught me language,” she said, “and my profit on’t / Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you / For learning me
your language!”

He had another line, and as he was saying it, she looked at her next line, at what she was supposed to say, and she realized
he was going to win. Prospero threatens Caliban with magic, and Caliban pleads for mercy. We see this is not the first time
Prospero has punished him. We feel pity for the slave. But Amelia did not know how to back down to such a place. She felt
her heart thudding against its four walls, and she wanted to go on. She did not want to leave the stage. She did not want
to lose yet. But she delivered her lines and exited.

“So much better, you guys!” enthused Helen. “Why don’t you take a three-minute break and we can block it out?”

Victor left the stage. Lydia left her post on the stage and, as she passed by, whispered to Amelia, “He’s
good.
And by the way, Miranda is a fucking twit. I can’t believe I have to sit here with a straight face.”

Amelia watched Victor as he got a sandwich out of his bag. He was not going to speak to her. Even after this, even after the
way she felt and the way it felt to act together, trading lines,
pretending,
there was going to be nothing. Which was going to get stranger as the show progressed. It was up to her. She was going to
have to figure out exactly what to say.

C
AL

Stolen, Oregon
Wednesday, March 19, 1997

Amelia never came to my classroom unless she wanted something. I learned this about her when she was five, because I kept
lollipops
in my desk drawer and she had an uncanny ability to show up at the most opportune moments, licking her rosebud lips in anticipation.
But Amelia’s the kind of person who isn’t always aware of what she wants. Part of the trick is teasing her desire out of her.
When she slumped in under the weight of her backpack after my last class of the day, I knew with one look at her that she
had no idea what had brought her to me.

We shot the shit. We were masters at avoiding big topics. I asked her about the play. I knew we’d get to whatever was on her
mind eventually, but I didn’t know it’d happen so soon.

“I can’t do it,” she said.

“Let me guess: for moral reasons. You don’t believe women should be on the stage.”

“Very funny. No, Cal, I mean, I can’t do it. It’s too hard. All these lines to memorize—”

“You have a great memory. You’ve memorized all those violin pieces for years! You’re going to be fine.”

“No.” She was shaking her head. “Why did she cast me in the hardest part in the play? I’m the only girl who has to play a
boy. And he’s not even a boy. He’s a monster! You know? And then I have to be funny. And I’m not a funny person. You know
I’m not. I am absolutely not funny.”

“So you’re scared of being funny?”

“Never mind,” she said, gathering her things.

I got her to sit back down. “What’s so hard about it? And I don’t mean that the way it sounds. I mean, explain to me why it
feels so hard.”

She sighed. She was quiet for a good period of time, during which she looked out the window. I watched as her mind zigged
and zagged. Then she said, “Forget it.”

“No, tell me.”

“I can’t figure out a way to say it.”

“Yes, you can.”

“It sounds conceited. It sounds terrible.”

“So we’ll close the door.” I got up and pulled the plywood door closed, which in turn rattled the Sheetrock walls. Closing
the door for privacy’s sake was more of a gesture.

Amelia gripped her backpack with a stricken look. The first time she said it, it was impossible to hear her. I made her repeat
herself. She said: “I don’t know how he feels.”