I also wondered how Travis’s version of “Fire and Rain” was going and what I would say the next time he played it for me. He’d picked me up on Main Street and told me I looked kind of like Federico Fellini’s wife and I said who’s that and he said I wouldn’t know her and I asked him oh, from Raiders of the Lost Ark? And he said that was funny and I asked him if he wanted to sign a suicide pact and he said that was insane and I said nothing but I did notice that he had some ketchup or something on his cheek which I thought I would try to ignore while focusing some more on things to say between songs.
I spent way too much time thinking about what I’d say in between songs. I could say trippy or choice or deadly or wordy or hey, nervy. I could say naked. But no more wow, crazy. I’d heard about a girl taking a boy’s hand and putting it on her heart so he could feel it racing. That’s not bad, I thought. But what would I say if Travis didn’t get it. That’s my heart? Beating? Fast?
It didn’t really matter because mostly he was interested in running around naked in fields. I could do that. All it required afterwards was lying on the ground and staring silently at the sky and I appreciated activities that in the end required silence. The one time I attempted to speak, out of politeness, Travis put his hand on my stomach and said don’t talk, let’s synchronize our breathing. In. Out. Easy, Nomi, there, yeah. I felt like I was being tested for pneumonia. I wondered if a boulder were to be dropped on us from a height of one hundred feet how many seconds we’d have to roll out of the way.
I must have fallen asleep thinking about it because when I woke up Travis was sitting in the truck and I was wet. I walked over to his window and tapped on it. He rolled it down a crack.
You left me lying naked out in the rain? I asked.
I couldn’t move you, he said.
Or wake me up? I asked. He said there was lightning and the truck was the safest place. I put my clothes on and climbed in next to him.
Oooh, you’re wet, he said, so I moved back over to stare out the window. I told him his version of “Fire and Rain” was destroying my soul. Except not out loud.
Do you know, I told him, that when it rains, or threatens to rain, even cows and horses bunch together to protect one another from the elements.
Really, he said.
Yes, I said. Look over there. We stared at a thick clump of horses in the field across the road.
When I got home my dad was on the roof. Feel safe up there, I asked. He shook his head. He was crouching and looking at something.
I put my fist around my mouth like a bullhorn and said please come down from the roof. I repeat, come down from the roof now. My dad stood up. Little lightning bolts seemed to radiate from his head. He looked like the less angry, less commanding brother of Moses coming down from Mount whatever. I asked him what he was doing and he pointed to the eavestrough and said cleaning this stuff out. I said okay, don’t fall. I went to my room and looked out the window. I wondered if my dad had intentionally waited for an electrical storm to strike before going up on the roof to do some cleaning. Giant chunks of crud were dropping to the ground. I could have stuck my hand out the window and caught them.
My sister’s leftover Valium from her wisdom teeth being removed were still in the cupboard above the stove. I took two and my Sweet Caps and left for Abe’s Hill to stare at the lights of the city.
The neighbour kid was playing in her yard as I walked by and I did what I always do. I spun her for a long time until we both fell over. I told her she should go inside because it was dark and she asked why, which I thought stood out nicely from all the questions I’d ever been asked. She had a green shiny purse hanging from her shoulder.
What’s in there, I asked. She opened it up and showed me the contents: a lipstick and a gun, a plastic one. You’re all set, I said. Then she asked me if I knew Jesus drank wine. I said no and she said see, nobody knows the bad side of Jesus. I walked across the yard with her hanging on my leg. The only way I could get her to let go was by agreeing to make my famous face. And then pretend my face wouldn’t go back to normal and get all panicky about it. It was a routine, I guess. An uninspired one but it cracked her up.
She had a carton of chocolate milk with her and she told me to watch as she drank the whole thing in one gulp. When she was finished she said listen to this and started jumping up and down and sure enough I could hear the chocolate milk sloshing around inside her stomach.
My life is an embarrassment of riches. On the way to Abe’s Hill I passed The Mouth and his wife going for a bike ride. Hello Nomi, said The Mouth. Vo est deet, he said in the non-romance language of our people. He had so many large grey teeth. Some were jagged, some pointy, like a mountain range. His wife mimed some kind of weak acknowledgment. I exhaled a little louder than usual. It was about all I could muster in terms of a greeting. That’s your mother tongue, he said, referring to the bit of unwritten language he’d just laid on me. He wanted people to speak it all the time. English pained him.
They had a daughter who was living in the Black Forest. She also enjoyed physical exercise. She used to be my Sunday-school teacher and she sometimes cried over us because she loved us and couldn’t bear to think of us in charred pieces. Our classroom window led onto the fire exit at the back of the church and we’d often escape when she left the room for felt-board supplies. She could really get a buzz on from arts and crafts, particularly the ancient art of gluing macaroni onto jars and spray-painting them gold. Isn’t it exciting, she told us, how many ways there are to serve Jesus? She once asked me and the other girls in our class if we were gymnasts, but really fat ones, would we think we could just go out and win an Olympic medal one day? No? Well, that’s what Christianity is all about, she said.
The Mouth’s wife never spoke. She was in charge of Brides of Christ so maybe she spoke then but what do you say to the Brides of Christ? I once liked one of their sons for a while and he and I would sit in the empty school buses when they were parked in a field for the summer and talk and sometimes hold hands or even kiss. We didn’t let the fact that we were cousins stop us from fooling around. We played Bus Driver and Lost Girl. He was the bus driver and I was the lost girl. I would have to let him kiss me if I wanted him to take me home.
After spring break he started liking another girl who stole STP motor-oil stickers for him to put on his banana seat, and he doubled her all over town until I gradually realized we were through.
The Mouth spoke. How’s your dad, Nomi, he asked. Why don’t you ask him, I said, and rode away.
I tried to ride my bike uphill but it didn’t work very well. I’d get about twenty feet up the hill and then roll backwards. Then I’d try again. It would have been a fun thing to do with someone else. It was very hard work. It made me think I should stop smoking. Instead, I left my bike at the bottom and trudged up the hill on foot.
It’s sad but I don’t know what I’d do without my cigarettes. I’ve tried to quit. I’ve tried to switch to cigarettes that have less tar, but I don’t think I’ll ever quite forget the feeling I get from a Sweet Cap. They’re my brand. It’s hard to explain but it feels good to own something, like a brand. When I go to the store to buy cigarettes I’ll think to myself oh there, I see my brand on the shelf, and it’s comforting. This your brand? the cashier will ask, and I’ll say yeah, those are mine. It’s like some people with their TV shows, the way they say I gotta get home for my show. Like it’s theirs. Like the way my dad owns Hymn Sing. I was always envious of people who had a show, something to do at the same time every day. Like my friend who got heck. Having a show, getting heck. What punctuation things like TV and punishment could bring to a disorderly life. That’s what my Sweet Caps do for me. They’re my commas and my periods, and they’ll probably be the end of me as well. I’ll try to quit when I’m forty. Who wants to smoke after that. Really, who wants to live after that? At forty, I’ll have worked for approximately twenty-three years chopping heads off chickens. It’ll be time.