The Fall of Alice K. (12 page)

“This telephone book is kind of weird,” he said. “It's really small but it's got all these V-names. How much Dutch is enough?”

He had Mai's humor too. Alice let out a little laugh but not as loud as Mai's. Mai took the directory from him and paged through it. “Hey, it really is full of V-names! Look, there must be hundreds of them. Vuh vuh vuh vuh vuh,” she said in a stuttering voice.

They were right about the Dutch Center directory. It had more than its fair share of names starting with V. All those Vans and Vandes and Vanders and Vandens. You had to know if you were looking for a Vande Griend or a Vanden Griend. Was it Vander Heide or Vande Heide? And did the family use the handle Vanden, one word, or did they use two capitalized words—Van Den?

“Let's see where our name will go,” said Mai.

She found the exact spot—Vang would come between Van Essen and Van Gaalen. With all the Van-somethings, it would be among the shortest names on the page, along with Vos and Vonk.

“Van Essen Vang Van Gaalen!” said Mia. “Shouldn't it be Vang, Vang Essen, Vang Gaalen?”

“We better cut the
g
off,” said Nickson. “Fit right in.”

They were both laughing now. “What a hoot!” said Alice and joined in.

“Don't you have any Smiths or Joneses in Dutch Center?” asked Mai.

“Not unless one slipped through the dyke while we weren't watching,” said Alice.

“Here's a Rodriguez,” said Nickson.

“Oh, yes,” said Alice, “you'll find some Martinezes and Gonzalezes. Lots of Mexicans have moved in.”

“What about this name? Moeldema?”

“That's Frisian,” said Alice. “The only thing that makes Frieslanders different is their names—their names all end in ‘a.' There are the Miedemas, the Osingas, the Hamstras, the Siebesmas, the Fritzmas, the Fiekemas, the Wiersmas, the Tammingas, the Plantingas, the Turbstras, the Boumas, the Bonnemas—on and on like that.”

“Oh, here's an Aardema in the A's. And Rev. Prunesma, would he be Frisian?”

“Yes, and if you go to the E's you'll find some Ennemas.”

“You're kidding.”

“Just look.”

“Oh, but it's spelled with two
n
's—E-n-n-e-m-a.”

“Right,” said Alice, “but when you say it, it sounds like ‘enema.' Most of the Ennemas changed their names to Brennema so people would stop making fun of them—like putting enema syringes in their mailboxes. Or telling jokes like the time this girl introduces herself as Emily Ennema and the other person says, ‘Tell me about your family,' and Emily Ennema says ‘Oh, we're pretty
regular.
'”

“Too much!” said Nickson and slapped the table.

“You people are really funny,” said Mai.

Mother Lia had been standing near the rice cooker, listening but not reacting.

“Now let my mom give you something to eat.”

“That's awfully nice of her,” said Alice, “but I really have to get home to the farm to do my chores. My parents are expecting me.”

Alice didn't want to be rude, but she saw a click in the expression on Mai's face at the mention of parents.

“I understand,” said Mai. “ We'll feed you some Hmong food another time.” She spoke to her mother, who nodded and smiled at Alice.

“Thanks again for that ride,” said Nickson as Mai led Alice out.

“Before you go,” Mai said, “let me show you what Mom planted out back. It really took off. A farm person will appreciate this.”

“Took off already? You've hardly been here for a month.”

“Mom's amazing,” said Mai. “Wait until you see her sewing. Plants and needles, that's Mom.”

A parking spot behind the house was simply two strips of concrete spaced the width of a car's tires. Most people would have been using this spot to park their car, but not the Vangs. Mai pointed at the area between the concrete strips. Small points of green plants sparked from the sandy soil.

“What are those?”

“Those are some of her herbs.”

“Amazing.” But then Alice saw a metal cage with metal flaps on each end. “What on earth is that?”

“That's a squirrel trap,” said Mai. “Put peanut butter on that little tray inside and when a squirrel goes in the trap, pop, the doors on each side flip shut and you've caught your squirrel.”

“Who's trapping them?”

“My mom,” she said.

“To keep them away from her herbs?”

“Squirrels don't like her herbs,” said Mai. “We eat the squirrels. Great soup. And Mom cuts up the hide into tiny pieces. If you mix the pieces of squirrel hide with lemon juice, you can get rid of gallstones. My mom thought she was getting gallstones. Not any more.”

As Alice drove home, she felt a thud of sadness about her first day of school. It had not been exactly what she had hoped for when she had set off that morning in the 150. The harangues from the coaches. The Barbie Doll thing. Lydia and her idiot horny boyfriend. The Vangs were hardly a substitute for her friendship with Lydia, but seeing them and their strange world gave some peace to the sadness. The farthest she'd ever been from home was Omaha, Nebraska, and now she had just had a touch of Laos, Thailand, and who knows where and what else. “Toto,” she said to herself as the 150 purred toward home, “I've a feeling we're not in Dutch Center anymore.”

She drove fast to get home and didn't avoid the war zone of the hailstorm. The white buildings of the Krayenbraak farm rose on the horizon like huge gravestones, and her sadness returned. The stripped fields
looked like a manicured cemetery. And the poor survivors: the feedlot of steers that were about to go on survival food. The big white house stood like a huge mausoleum in the center of it all. But she knew the shell of a house had innards that were far more distressed than the fields or livestock. The flickering bolts of menstrual pain were a distraction she could almost welcome.

13

As she drove on the yard, she saw that her father had rolled huge sheets of black plastic over the mounds of bad silage as if somehow to cover it would be to heal it. He was rolling old tractor tires onto the plastic to keep it from flapping around. They were into the stage of covering the truth with an airtight shield of black plastic. Everyone would know theirs was indeed a teetering farm.

Alice couldn't pull a sheet of black plastic over the events of the day as they replayed in her mind. Lydia was the hardest. Alice still didn't want to believe it. What was going on?

She shouldn't have asked. When she walked into the house, her mother was waiting with that telltale pinched grin on her face. She was going to punish her with something. Alice didn't know what—but something.

“Aldah's not going to Children's Care,” she said.

“Don't play with my mind,” said Alice.

“No, we're delaying it.”

“You're delaying it?”

Alice thought for a moment that her parents had decided to listen to the reasons they never gave her a chance to give. This could be the first good news of the day.

“Don't play with my mind,” she said again.

“I don't play with anybody's mind. We're not going to send Aldah to Children's Care just yet.”

“So state aid got turned down and we don't have the money?”

Her mother ignored that question.

“As you know, Aldah is becoming a woman. And she has the feelings of a woman. Some of those feelings are romantic.”

“What are you saying?”

“Aldah has a boyfriend at school. The special-ed people and the people at Children's Care agree that this is an important marker. They feel by having a boyfriend she is starting to define herself. It's her first move toward independence. Pulling her away from school and him right now would be a mistake. They say we should think of this as a transitional phase, a way of preparing her for the bigger step of becoming a resident at Children's Care.”

“I've never heard such a crock of bull in my life,” said Alice.

“You're not the expert.”

“Wait. Let me see if I have this straight. You're not keeping her in school so that she can have a home life. You're keeping her in school because she has a boyfriend there? Did I hear you right?”

“You heard me right.”

Alice broke away to go upstairs and change into her work clothes. When she came back down, her mother had more to say: “You should be ready,” she said. “Aldah will want to talk about him. Roger. He's like her, but he's more verbal.”

First Lydia and now Aldah. Not Aldah. Not her innocent one. The very idea of it was unreal. Only two years ago she had taught Aldah about the realities of becoming a woman. Aldah still didn't really understand that she was a woman. She could hardly remember from one month to the next about keeping herself clean.

Over dinner that night, Alice followed the family practice of talking about Aldah while she was sitting right there. “Is this normal?” she said. “Is this normal?”

“People at school say it is. Very normal, they say.”

“What on earth are you going to do about it?”

At this point her father mildly stepped into the conversation, looking at Alice. He had his instructive look. “The people at school said we should be supportive, just listen, and let her and Roger talk to each other on the phone. That's what was recommended by the special-ed teachers and that's what Aldah and Roger want to do.”

“Mother,” said Alice, “where is this going to lead?”

“We'll have to trust in the Lord,” she said.

Alice wanted to say, “What's going on, Mother—has your faith taken an optimistic turn?” She didn't. She looked at her mother, studying her.
Her mother didn't look depleted for a change. She looked strangely steady, like a strong woman surmounting a difficult and challenging situation. Her mother was the most together, the most deliberate and rational, when there was a problem bigger than the problems in her own head.

“All right,” said Alice. “I can handle this.”

Finally, her mother turned to Aldah. Alice had noticed Aldah's puckish little smile as they talked about her. She had enjoyed it.

“Aldah,” her mother said, “don't you have something you want to tell Alice? You can tell her.”

Alice was the only person that Aldah typically looked in the eyes when she spoke. She didn't look at her now. “I have a boyfriend,” she said. “Some things are private.”

“I know,” said Alice. “Some things are very private.”

Her teachers must have prompted that last comment about privacy. Over the years Aldah had accumulated a list of comments that could be applied to various situations—“This is very special,” “Friends are good,” or “We must be kind.” “Some things are private” was a new one.

Aldah leaned toward Alice and whispered, “He is a special friend.”

Alice whispered back, “That is very nice. It is good to have a special friend.”

“Some things are private,” she said to no one in particular.

“I won't tell anybody.”

Aldah folded her hands under her chin, tilted her head, and looked at Alice coyly. She was posing, giving Alice the look she would give her boyfriend. Her little sister was in love, and Alice didn't know how to be happy for her.

After supper, Alice tried to draw Aldah into their routine of reading, chatting, and tapping out a tune on the piano. “Come over here, my angel,” said Alice.

Aldah looked directly at Alice. “I'm not an angel,” she said, “I'm a person.”

Transformation. Was falling in love transforming her little sister? Or was this another phrase the teachers had programmed into her with constant repetition? But did the teachers even know she called Aldah “my angel”?

“Come to me, my special person.”

This pleased Aldah. She had won an argument, really. Maybe she
was
becoming a person. If love could do this, love was doing more than all the surgery and drugs in the world had done so far. They sat down on the couch together and opened a book. Alice pointed to the words as she read, but Aldah's eyes were elsewhere. She was staring off into space.

“You're thinking about Roger, aren't you?” Alice said gently.

“Yes.”

Alice closed the book and sang to her while rubbing her head:

She left Aldah sitting where she was, still staring off, but when Alice got to her room and tried to go online to research the year's debate topic, Aldah had tied up the phone line with a call to Roger.

Something didn't quite seem fair about what was going on. Alice went downstairs to talk to her parents. They were both watching TV, and Aldah had taken the phone into the screen porch. Alice's best eavesdropping spot would be from outside. Slipping out was easy, and it wasn't hard to find a shadowed spot behind the honeysuckle that protected her from the yard lights. The September evening was warm and the air was still. Alice heard the whispery love talk as she edged closer but couldn't make out what Aldah was saying. She was not facing in Alice's direction, so when she spoke, Alice moved closer. It was one of the few times that the hearing loss in Aldah's right ear worked to Alice's advantage. Aldah held the receiver to her left ear, her good ear. While Roger talked, Alice edged up closer from the direction of her sister's weak ear.

Then the words came clearly, though her mother was right: he was more verbal, so most of the time that Alice listened, she was listening to silence. When Aldah did speak, her words were not exactly earthshaking. “You are very special,” she said, a comment that must have prompted a long countercompliment from Roger. Alice could see Aldah's squinting eyes smile as Roger spoke. “You are my very favor,” she said a little later. Then she giggled. “Yes, you are,” she said. “You are my very very very very favor in the whole world.”