3. Form opinions about news stories, possibly read world news section.
4. Become really funny.
5. Pin down current definition of existentialism.
6. Career options: School superintendent, city planner, stone breaker, freelance detective, underwater explorer.
7. Personality development: Read Jung, Adler, Freud. Listen to The Jam.
I went into the living room and stared at the piles of newspapers. I read: Summer, 1982, is the season of the nautical stripe.
I went back into my bedroom and knelt at my bed the way I did when I was a kid. I folded my hands and pressed the top knuckle joints of my thumbs hard into my forehead. Dear God. I don’t know what I want or who I am. Apparently you do. Um…that’s great. Never mind. You have a terrible reputation here. You should know that. Oh, but I guess you do know that. Save me now. Or when it’s convenient. We could run away together. This is stupid. What am I doing? I guess this is a prayer. I feel like an idiot, but I guess you knew that already, too. My sister said that god is music. Goodbye. Amen. I lay in my bed and waited for that thick, sweet feeling to wash over me, for that unreal semi-conscious state where the story begins and takes on a life of its own and all you have to do is close your eyes and give in and let go and give in and let go and go and go and go.
thirteen
Trudie lost her job in the crying room when the wife of Uncle Hands, my Aunt Gonad, snuck up on us one morning and caught us grooving to The Knack instead of to her husband.
For a while Uncle Hands made my mom take a bunch of girls, including me and Tash, to the foul-smelling Rest Haven, to sing hymns for The Oldest Mennonites in the World. They sat hunched over in wheelchairs with trays and gas tanks and as we filed past some of them would moan and reach out and try to grab us with spotted papery hands from another century. One man in particular would smack his wet lips together about forty times and wave his one good hand around until the nurse made us go over there and sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and he’d sing along but not with words or melody. The grip some of them had was amazing and terrifying. I wasn’t sure if they were trying to drag me along home to heaven with them or if they were desperate for me to pull them back to safety, to a life of running and playing and independent breathing. A nicely dressed woman who seemed functional and completely out of place there sometimes came out of her room to listen to us sing and one time when we were just about to leave I went up to her and said hello, my name is Nomi, and she told me to go to hell.
Tash and I begged Trudie not to take us there ever again and she knew what we were talking about. I guess that’ll be my life eventually. First about fifty years of killing chickens and then the Rest Haven. What a relief that will be. I’ll probably also be the type of old woman to tell friendly little girls to go to hell.
After the Rest Haven, Trudie got that job as the church librarian. She liked people a lot, anthropologically speaking, so it wasn’t too bad at first. She enjoyed helping them find just the book they were looking for. Would you like three weeks for that? she’d ask them. Two weeks was the standard time, but my mom wanted them to be able to finish the books without getting anxious about the due date.
Sometimes she’d let me and Tash skip out of church upstairs and hang out with her, putting books on shelves, sticking numbers on their spines, reading. We read every single Sugar Creek Gang book, stories about a group of mischievous Christian children. Bad things happen. They get into trouble. But always, always, they learn something about sin and forgiveness at the end. We read books by Billy Graham, and books about staying quiet and clean when your husband comes home from work, and books about punishing your children.
It was okay. I liked the way the library smelled and the way the rads would hiss and clank and scare the shit out of us. For some reason, when we were in the library, Tash and I often pretended that we were German spies and we called ourselves Platzy and Strassy. We’d hide bits of information in books and then give each other clues about how to find them. There are probably still little notes stuck in Billy Graham books that say things like: I was brutally tortured for several hours this afternoon but I am fine. Let’s meet for drinks at the Über-Swank at eight. Platzy.
Sometimes parents would bring their kids into the library to chew them out about misbehaving during the sermon. One time I heard a little three-year-old kid screaming: I didn’t bite him! I didn’t kick him! I didn’t pinch him! I’m a good Christian!
After church my dad would come downstairs to get us and we’d all go home. My mom worked at the library a lot, it seemed. My dad sometimes built new shelves for the books and she’d sit on her desk, legs swinging, and tell him where to put them. The Mouth told her it was nice to see her taking ownership of her job and being an obedient soldier of Christ. My dad was happy to help out whenever he could. He just wanted to be with her. It didn’t matter where.
Speaking of obedient soldiers, Tash wasn’t one. She secretly got her ears pierced with a needle and a potato. She kept her eyes half closed all the time when she talked to us which was hardly ever. She’d mumble stuff sometimes and if you asked her what she said she’d say nothing, forget it. She started bringing her radio and candles into the bathroom with her when she had a bath. My dad would gaffer-tape her radio to the counter so it wouldn’t fall in the tub and kill her. She wrote Patti Smith lyrics on her bedroom wall, and also the words: DON’T IMPOSE YOUR NOSTALGIA ON ME.
She started going out with Ian, who instead of Greb Kodiaks wore motorcycle boots with chains on them and put his hand on her ass when they walked around town which they didn’t do very often because obviously they wouldn’t walk. And they never ran either. Tash had warned me about running. It’s for idiots and children. Ian had a faded red Econoline van with no windows in the back, just a mattress and a cooler. They had matching home-made tattoos of small blue stars. Ian sometimes wore eyeliner. Tash had shown him how to put it on really thick so that it highlighted his pupils and made him look dead. He liked napes, which he compared to vaginas. He told me what mitosis was. I loved the way his voice sounded when he said: Two daughter cells. I loved the way he took my sister’s hand like he was sure she’d let him. He had wet brown eyes, really long arms, and a slight underbite like Keith Richards’. He once gave me five bucks to go away.
Tash just shot up one night. My mom said, Tash, you must have shot up in your sleep. Tash said she didn’t think it was possible to shoot up in your sleep and Trudie told her that of course it was possible and Tash was saying yeah? Really? Okay, how? She liked to pretend she was this wasted junkie girl but I think Trudie just played along to hear her laugh at something because Tash hardly ever laughed around us any more and derisive laughter was better than nothing, I guess.
In the morning when she came to breakfast we all stared at her. She really was about a foot taller than the day before. Are you standing on something, my mom asked. Do your joints ache? Oh my god, said Tash. Trudie put her arm around her and asked her how a girl who was still growing in her sleep could be so tough. Tash told her that made a lot of sense, meaning that it didn’t, but at least they were having a conversation. Tash had string bikini underwear and a light blue bra. I loved to watch her get dressed for school in the morning. She liked to use Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” as a soundtrack to getting dressed. Every morning was the same. We’d all get ready for school and work, my dad shaving, my mom making lunches, while a litany of bad things love can do blasted out of Tash’s stereo speakers. I loved the professional way she put on her bra, fastening it in the front and then whipping it around to the back and sticking both arms through the straps in one smooth motion. She could remove her bra while walking home from school by doing different things under her shirt and pulling it out of her sleeve. She wore orange men’s shirts, or sometimes white ones, low-riding Lee jeans with a leather belt that had a Wesson gun buckle on it, and a choker woven out of white leather, with a blue bead in the middle. Her hair was black and straight and parted in the middle. She had very pale skin and dark green eyes like Ray’s. She took excellent care of her teeth. She introduced the concept of flossing into our home. Her perfume was Love’s Baby Soft. She taught me how to spray it away from me and then walk through the misty cloud for a subtler scent. She understood the meaning of fascism. She had three small drops of white paint on one of her jean legs and tiny, minuscule, pink embroidered letters that spelled EAT SHIT AND DIE. She was in possession of real textbooks. Math, science…She was more than I could ever hope to be.