Still Life with Tornado (23 page)

The drive to the airport was fast. We got picked up by a man in a white Mercedes-Benz with an off-white leather interior and it was just us—not like the van we had to take to get to the resort. We were the quietest family in Mexico inside that car. None of us said one word. Not a word. Dad sat in the front seat. Bruce had another ice pack on his jaw. Mom had slathered me in enough aloe that it wouldn't dry and I had to sit forward in the leather backseat so I wouldn't stick to it. Mom sat in the middle. Bruce sat to her left. I sat to her right. We both stared out our windows and Mom looked straight ahead.

The driver started talking about ten minutes into the drive and he told us about things that happened in the news in Mexico and when we passed by a part of the road that had a lagoon to the left side, he told us stories about people who go fishing in the lagoon for small crabs. “It's so stupid!” he said. “These crabs are so small they are not worth being eaten by a crocodile.” The whole stretch of road where the lagoon was, there were white wooden crosses to mark the places where people got eaten by crocodiles—just like the way we mark places along the road in America where people died from car accidents. But there were so many. Maybe twenty. The driver told another story about a man who got drunk and fell asleep at the side of the lagoon. Crocodile ate him. Another white wooden cross on the side of the road. A tourist who stopped to take a picture of a crocodile in the lagoon. Eaten. Another cross. As we drove by a crocodile farm and zoo on the right—a tourist attraction —he told us how the workers there hold a live chicken above where the crocodiles are so the crocs jump and people can get pictures. He said twice a worker at the zoo lost his hand just so people can take a picture. He said that there was an American man suing a golf course because he played from the rough that was a swampy area near the lagoon and got his leg chewed off by a crocodile.

I was fascinated by this man's crocodile stories, but I didn't ask any questions. We were the quiet family. I watched the overgrown wilderness pass by me to the right. Then the entranceways with what looked like gates but with no gates—just the pillars, some crumbling and many only half standing and covered in aggressive vines—one after the other. The houses I saw were smaller than an American garden shed. There was a billboard for Coca-Cola. Stone walls around a small roadside kitchen. A cement truck. I loved the road signs. The signs for
bumpy road ahead
looked like boobs.

The driver said, “Do you see the windmill over there? This big, expensive windmill is not generating electricity. It's only for that small office building there. Do you see it?” None of us answered. He kept going. “That's what electricity it provides. Just for that building. That's it. Three years ago we had a global market meeting. There were people from all over the world. Dignitaries, diplomats, presidents, ex-presidents, et cetera. They all stayed at the nicest hotel over there in Cancún. The meeting lasted a couple of weeks. Then, the Mexican authorities decided to put up the windmill. To show to the world and to our visitors that we are, you know, using this kind of energy. But in this part of the country, we cannot use this type of energy because we are next to the Caribbean Sea and we have rainy season also called hurricane season.” This was when I fell in love with this man's accent. The way he said
hurricane
. The way he said
season
. The way he said
windmill
. “So this kind of windmill is very risky here. But in the meantime the Mexican government spent thirteen million pesos, or one million dollars. Which means that I have to work and pay taxes for a windmill that will never do me any good.”

When none of us responded to this story, the driver clammed up. He'd worked for his tip. He'd told his crocodile stories. He'd told us about the windmill. Now he shut up and moved into the fast lane and I could see the signs for the airport showing fewer and fewer kilometers and I could see planes in the air—taking off and landing. And I thought about how badly Bruce's jaw must hurt and how badly my sunburn hurt.

Stop signs in Mexico read ALTO. That's what I wanted to scream.
¡ALTO! ¡ALTO! ¡ALTO!
But I didn't scream anything. I went to the airport, stood in the security line with my quiet family, saw a girl wearing a T-shirt that said ALL MY FAVORITE RAPPERS ARE DEAD
.
Saw another girl in a T-shirt that said I
'
M IN CANCÚN
,
BITCHES
.

After security, Mom took Bruce and me to buy souvenirs from the trip. Bruce dug into the pocket of his shorts. He said, “I already have a souvenir.” He held up his tooth.

“I want this,” I said, holding up a toy cube that unfolds that said
¡Viva la Muerte!
on the package. The cube was magical—like a Mexican puzzle. It folded and unfolded in different directions and on each panel there was a different drawing by José Guadalupe Posada. The poster next to the display said that Posada lived from 1852 to 1913 and was well-known for his representations of Mexican life and people. It said he was prolific. It also said he lived in poverty his whole life and was buried in a grave that eventually was claimed by someone else, at which time his skeleton was removed and tossed into a mass grave alongside other poor skeletons.

The pictures on the cube game were all skeletons. Dancing skeletons. A skeleton playing a small Mexican guitar. Skeletons at war. Skeletons in love.

Mom said no at first. “Too morbid,” she said.

I begged and explained the artistic relevance. She bought it.

•   •   •

When we boarded the plane, Mom said I was supposed to sit with Dad and she would sit with Bruce.

“I want to sit with Bruce!” I said. “That way you and Dad can sit together.”

“I'm sitting with Bruce,” she said.

It didn't make any sense to me then.

It was the beginning of what I would eventually end.

The answers were never on the airplane. The answers were right there in Dad's fist. In Bruce's jaw. In Mom's eyes. The answer was there. I didn't see it because how do you even guess that kind of shit about your own family? How do you even guess that you will be the last to know about everything? How do you even guess that your parents were stupid enough to build a thirteen-million-peso windmill for people who would never be able to use it?

The flight home—Mexico Day Seven—was the last time I would see Bruce until I was sixteen years old. Dad didn't say a word the whole day. Not in the plane, not in baggage claim in Philly airport, not in the taxi on the way back to our house, not even when I showed him my magic José Guadalupe Posada Day of the Dead cube.

I didn't want to talk to him really. Not after what he did to Bruce.

I wished he would have been eaten by a crocodile in Mexico—a white cross on the side of the road.

I was ten. This was a reasonable wish.

Whatever is going on in the house sounds a little like Dad getting eaten by a crocodile. He's not fighting the police or anything, but there's a lot of noise. I think they're moving the furniture back into place.

“I don't think he can get arrested for wrecking his own house,” I say.

Bruce says, “I told them what's going on.”

“I can't believe you went in there,” Mom says.

I can't believe I went in there either. This is going to sound crazy, but I think I went in so Dad would finally hit me. So I wasn't left out. So I wasn't the last to know.

Bruce says, “Let's go in and talk. If we do it with them here, then it will go on record, they can arrest him, and we can get on with our day.” Mom sighs. Bruce hugs her lightly.

We find Dad and the two cops putting things back together. One cop is taking a picture of the broken kitchen window. The other one is talking to Dad about his temper. He asks him if he's ever hit Mom or us. Dad lies. Dad says no.

Bruce says, “He's lying.”

“What the fuck are you even here for?” Dad says. He almost growls. “I kicked you out six years ago for what you did to your sister.”

“Don't believe a thing that man says,” Mom says. She's ER-night-nurse calm—she knows the cops and the cops know her.

The adults move into the kitchen to talk. I sit on the couch and hear random words.
Pack. Paperwork. Divorce. Sarah. Safe.
Dad paces with his arms crossed, taking advice from the police officer to stay quiet and let his wife talk. I can see him only when he passes by the door. He doesn't notice that I'm sitting here. Mom stays in clear view of the doorway. I think she does it on purpose so I can see her. She is expressive and stands as if she were dealing with a hospital family who needs assurance.
Out. One day at a time. Pack. Safe. Sarah. Lies. Bruce. Lies.
This is the Mom Earl knew.

Dad sounds like a crocodile. “You can't kick me out of my own house!”

More muttering. More calm talking from the police, from Mom, and even from Bruce.
Ruined the house. We were outside. Sarah's owl. Safe. Sarah.

“I didn't hit her!” Dad says.

I pick up the pieces of my umbrella and my owl from the living room floor and walk into the kitchen.

“That's what he did to my umbrella,” I say, dropping the shards of evidence on the kitchen table. “And that's what he did to my art project.” I point to the pieces of the ceramic owl. I don't tell them he twisted my wrist because I still can't believe he twisted my wrist.

Maybe that's why I never said anything about Miss Smith and Vicky-the-grand-prizewinner. Maybe I still can't believe what I saw.

The police stand in the middle of the tiny kitchen. They are huge in every way. They are both over six feet tall. They're filled out with muscles and uniforms and guns. They wear hats and badges and shiny shoes.

“You made that stupid owl when you were a kid,” Dad says.

Mom tells me to go back outside. I sit on the stoop and watch the cars go by. I stand up and stare at the doorbell and think about ten-year-old Sarah and how she had to ring the doorbell to her own house last week. I feel like ringing it now—over and over again—until everyone inside goes crazy.

I still hear pieces of the conversation from inside because there's only a screen door between us. The cops tell Dad to stay somewhere else tonight. They tell him to be reasonable. To come back tomorrow when he's calmer. I don't think that's a good piece of advice, frankly. Dad resists it anyway. The cops say they can arrest him now, and Dad says he didn't make threats against anybody. And then I hear the recording of Dad saying what he said to me only a half hour ago.
You're just a kid. You can't make me hit you. Bring your mother in here. She's the one who did this. She's the one who wrecked all your stuff.
Bruce recorded it on his phone. I didn't ever want to hear that recording, but now that I have, it sends chills up my arms and I'm cold on a hot afternoon.

Dad yells at Bruce for a minute—mostly unintelligible stuff—and then the cops bring it back to the present. One tells him to go cool off for the night. Dad suddenly sounds panicky, like he knows this is really happening now—as if he didn't know when he smashed my umbrella and my owl and the house. As if he didn't know that he is a tornado. He says he has to fix the kitchen window that he broke. Mom says she can fix it. She says she's been fixing his broken windows for twenty-six years. I look inside.

Dad sighs and says, “Shoot me now.”

“Don't say that, sir.”

“Why not? I want to die.”

“Sir, really. You shouldn't say that.”

“My whole life was wasted on this family. On
her
,” he says, glaring at Mom. “Just shoot me now. You can say I tried to take your gun or any of that other shit. I'd be out of my misery.”

This is art.

The cops look at each other. Mom shakes her head and asks all of them to step outside again while Dad stays inside. I get up and they arrive in front of me and no one seems to notice that I'm there.

Mom says, “Either you arrest him now and take him for a psych eval, or skip the arrest and just take him straight to the ER so he doesn't do anything stupid. You know the rules.”

“He probably doesn't mean it,” a cop says.

“I
know
he doesn't mean it,” Mom says. “But he
said
it. If he does something dumb to himself tonight, you two are liable same as I am as an RN. But it probably isn't a good idea for me to be the one solving this problem right now if you get my drift.”

•   •   •

Fifteen minutes later, Dad is in the back of a squad car and being driven away. When we walk back into the house, three Sarahs are in the living room. Ten-year-old Sarah has collected all the pieces of the ceramic owl from the kitchen counter where I left them and from the living room floor. Twenty-three-year-old Sarah is trying to make sense of the disemboweled umbrella. Forty-year-old Sarah is putting the books back onto the bookshelf in some sort of order.

I have no idea what to say. Not to any of them.

Bruce is outside waiting for me to go to the school with him.

Mom says, “You girls must be hungry. How about lunch?”

Bruce doesn't know what I'm doing, but he follows me anyway. Three buses, a block of walking.

He says something about wishing he'd have dressed more for the weather.

He says, “It's good to face your demons. You can't throw away your future over this.”
Future, future, future.

He doesn't say anything about how we're not anywhere near the school he expected to visit today.

It's about sixth period so the art room should be full of my class. As we approach, I hear glass breaking from upstairs. Someone else must be here. Someone came in since last week and tagged the entire hallway in bright pink graffiti. Words that don't seem to fit together.
ATTENTION. DIGEST. EXPLODE.

“Can I help you?” Miss Smith says.

“Hi, Miss Smith,” I say. “This is my brother, Bruce.”

Bruce doesn't say anything. Bruce's eyes show he is worried. Probably rightfully. The floor could collapse under his feet. We could get shot.

I look into the art room and Carmen is there and she says, “What up, Sarah?” and I wave and she gives me the code for
call you later.

“Nice to meet you, Bruce!” Miss Smith says, smiling so wide bats could fly out of her mouth.

I decide Bruce says, “Sarah told me the whole story. I want an explanation. I'm about to become her guardian and plan to talk to the principal and the administration about what happened in your room. All of it. Not just the disappearance of her art project but the things you've said to students about her.”

Miss Smith doesn't say anything. I am still waiting for bats to fly out of her mouth.

I imagine Bruce says, “I think we should start with the art project, though. Did you steal it or did a student steal it?”

“I assure you I didn't take your sister's project.”

Bruce turns to me. “Do you have any idea who stole it?”

“I can only guess. Miss Smith is hooking up with Vicky. So it was probably Vicky.”

Bruce looks at me. “She's having sex with a student?”

“Is this even legal?” Miss Smith asks. “How did you get in here?” The bats have arrived. “You can't just come in here and accuse me of things.”

Bruce says he has to pee.

I walk him to the men's room and he asks me to come in with him. I'm not scared, but he is. There are four urinals. Each one has a letter painted in black on it. The letters spell D-U-M-B. He pees in the one with the
M
. Two rats skitter from the back corner of the stall with no door and past me into the hallway.

•   •   •

We walk through the halls and Bruce seems concerned. “So this is where you go instead of school?”

I say, “Don't worry. I come here all the time. It's my new school.”

“Um—I don't know what to say.”

I stop at another locker with a cool diorama. “Never saw anything like this in my old school.”

He doesn't say anything.

I take him to the room that says HEED on the wall. I point to the word.

“This place is art. My kind of art.”

“It's derelict,” he says. “And dangerous.”

“I feel at home here. Ruins. Lies. And look,” I say, running to the end of the hallway where there's a two-story-high spray-painted windmill. “There's even a windmill!”

Bruce kicks a can of spray paint by accident and startles himself. I lean down and pick it up. Half full. Gold. Seems right. I shake it so the ball inside makes that unmistakable noise.

I walk into the nearest classroom. I go to the front of the room where the chalkboard used to be, but someone has pried it off the wall and left a big rectangle of clear surface.

In gold spray paint, in all capital letters, I write, THIS IS ART
.

When I'm done, I find a desk and sit there and look at what I wrote.

There's the sound of footsteps in the hallway and before Bruce or I can move, forty-year-old Sarah comes into the room. She takes a deep breath and says, “God, I love the smell of spray paint.” I want to ask her how she got here because she was supposed to be eating lunch with Mom and the other Sarahs, but instead I study her. Still in her hiking shoes—but this time I notice the tiny spots of paint on them.

“Me too,” I say.

“You haven't told anyone about Miss Smith yet.” She turns to Bruce. “Hey, Bruce.”

“Hey,” he says, but you can tell from the look on his face he doesn't know who she is. He's standing there and his body is trying to walk toward the door. He's going to say “Let's get out of here” any minute now.

“You have to tell someone,” forty-year-old Sarah says.

“Bruce knows.”

I don't know what else to say. It's hard to be honest about this. I haven't told anyone because when I walked in on Miss Smith and Vicky, they looked so happy. They looked in love. They looked right for each other. Back when it happened, we were all still friends. Miss Smith was still nice to me. Vicky and the whole art club always said I was the one who would make it for real. They said I was weird enough. Miss Smith often talked about the pain in my work.

Ruin.

There was always ruin in my work. Whether it was color or feeling, or something surreal like an animal with no head. Something was ruined. Painful.

Only I didn't know why until the meat grinder.

But why hurt two people who're in love, you know? Why spread ruin?

Forty-year-old Sarah says, “I can take care of it my own way if you want. I can call the school.”

“They seemed so happy,” I say.

“You're mixed up. I understand. But a grown woman preying on a teenager isn't happy.”

“What's going on?” Bruce says. “Who is this?”

I pace, my shoes landing on broken pieces of everything, and I explain who forty-year-old Sarah is. Bruce looks at her and smiles.

Bruce says, “Let's get out of here.”

The two of them start to leave. I put the can of spray paint down and realize that ruin has done me a favor. Ruin is why I will be able to draw the pear. Ruin is why I'll be able to sculpt another owl. Ruin is why my work has
pain.

When we get back outside, forty-year-old Sarah says she's going to take the next bus and I ask Bruce if he'll walk with me instead.

On our walk back to home, I explain the Sarahs to Bruce.

“It's impossible to explain,” I say. “But they're real.”

He looks at me as if I'm some sort of mentally ill kid and maybe I am. I just had an existential crisis. Last week I ate other people's food out of trash cans. The week before that I was following around a homeless man because I thought he was Macedonia or Spain. The week before that, and all weeks before that, I was living inside of a giant, useless, windmill-shaped, bile-colored lie.

The walk home is nice. There's a breeze. It feels more like spring than summer. Bruce doesn't say much except for how he misses things he passes—which is nearly everything. I realize that he was exiled. More ruin. More pain.

I tell him, “You can always move back, you know.”

•   •   •

The Sarahs and Mom are all sitting around the big table in the study and they're having a conversation about me. I know this because when Bruce and I walk in the door, they stop talking.

I walk Bruce over to the windowsill where he sits in front of the last geranium Mom ever bought. I say, “Bruce, this is ten-year-old Sarah. You remember her, I'm sure.” Ten-year-old Sarah waves her circular wave and has tears in her eyes.

“That's twenty-three-year-old Sarah. She thinks she knows everything but she really doesn't. But she means well.” Twenty-three-year-old Sarah gives me the finger and I give it back to her.

“And that's forty-year-old Sarah. You've already met.”

Bruce leans against the windowsill and smiles. I don't know why he's smiling. On the table is a large bowl of tortilla chips—already half empty—and a little bowl of homemade white queso dip. “Sarah made that,” Mom says, pointing at forty-year-old Sarah.

I try some. “Wow. That's good,” I say.

“Nice to know I improve,” twenty-three-year-old Sarah says. “Last time I made this it was runny and tasted like plastic.”

“You used the wrong kind of cheese,” forty-year-old Sarah says.

“Okay, so this isn't a joke,” Bruce finally says. “You're all really . . . you.”

I say, “Yeah.” I look at my three other Sarahs and I don't feel as numb as I did yesterday. I feel like doing something with my hands.

Ten-year-old Sarah says, “I'm so glad you came back!” and gets up from the table and hugs Bruce. Of the four of us Sarahs, she is the most traumatized by what happened in Mexico. I am most traumatized by what happened before Mexico. Twenty-three-year-old Sarah is most traumatized by having once been me. I have no idea what forty-year-old Sarah is most traumatized by.

When I ask her, she says, “Traumatized? I don't know.”

I go to the kitchen and open the bottom drawer and retrieve the tinfoil. I return to the table with it and start ripping off pieces that are long enough to fit around my head.

Mom sits at the head of the table. She smiles—like maybe it's cool to have four daughters instead of just one truant sixteen-year-old. I start to scrunch the tinfoil into strong bands that will act as the base of my crown. I add shapes every few inches by molding the foil into itself.

Bruce says, “It's like I suddenly have four sisters.”

“We didn't want to freak you out,” twenty-three-year-old Sarah says. “We came to help Mom pack Dad's things.”

“He has to pack his stuff by himself,” Bruce says. “He'll probably be back tomorrow. We should all stay.”

“That would make me feel a lot better,” Mom says.

“I can make dinner,” forty-year-old Sarah says.

I say, “I'll help.”

All Sarahs head for the kitchen. Ten-year-old Sarah sits at the study table with my tinfoil pieces. She adds beads and foam stickers to what I'd started. Then she grabs a few pieces of paper and my box of colored pencils and comes into the kitchen at the table. She draws all of us making dinner.

Bruce and Mom talk about divorce in the living room. I'm glad to have a wall between me and divorce. I'm glad it's happening, but I'm glad the adults are taking care of it. I want to be sixteen. I want to be a human being. Or four human beings. Or whatever I am.

Twenty-three-year-old Sarah is surprisingly less judgmental around forty-year-old Sarah. Neither of them talk about art, which I find strange.

“So, did we become an artist?” I ask them.

“We can't tell you that,” they say. “We can't tell you what happens with you.”

I point to ten-year-old Sarah. “She knows that in six years her parents will get divorced.”

“And look at how well she draws!” they say. Ten-year-old Sarah looks up and grins. “She's so talented!”

“I'm having an existential crisis and you guys show up and you can't tell me how it's going to work out?” I think back to Tiffany and what she said.
With talent comes pain
or something like that.

“You live,” they say. “See? We're proof that you'll figure it out.”

“Doesn't help,” I say.

“But it's original,” they say. “Isn't that what you wanted? To be original?”

“You're original,” I say. “I'm still just me.”

“If you want to see it that way, that's up to you, Umbrella.”

The phone rings. Mom answers it. She takes the call upstairs and stays there for a while. Bruce comes into the kitchen and sits with ten-year-old Sarah as she draws. After half an hour, I decide to see if Mom's okay. Her bedroom door is open a crack. I can't hear any talking.

When I peek in, she's curled on her bed with a box of tissues in her arms. A thousand scenarios go through my head.

“Is everything okay?”

She looks up, nods, and beckons me inside while she blows her nose.

“I'm sorry, Sarah.”

“For what?”

“I'm sorry we're getting a divorce.”

“It's not like anybody died or anything,” I say.

She laugh-cries at that. A little bubble of snot forms and pops under her nose.

“Well, it's not,” I say. “Dad can move out. We can stay here. Everything will be fine. Plus, he won't ever hurt you again.”

At this, she cries a little because it must be hard living a lie for so long and having the person you were trying to save, save you instead. Not like I can take credit. I'm pretty sure it was ten-year-old Sarah who saved us both.

•   •   •

At dinner, I wear my tinfoil headpiece—seven sturdy rings intertwined with colorful additions from all the Sarahs. Twenty-three-year-old Sarah added a small rubber cupcake. Bruce used tape to secure a small pterodactyl toy. Forty-year-old Sarah went outside and found a feather from a pigeon and placed it long ways. Ten-year-old Sarah insisted on a unicorn sticker for the front. I am the queen of unicorns, cupcakes, pterodactyls, and feathers. I'm not sure over whom I rule, but I have a feeling it's me.