They hauled Jesse from the lake on a windless summer day. Nina leaned over him, put her mouth on his with the fervor of a lover; her hair brushed his face, and she wept and pleaded, but he was far beyond the cry of human voices, and his open eyes mocked her.
Years we spent learning not to fear that lake until the day one more boy heard the irresistible call of water and aimed his plane toward the blue surface. Looking for freedom, he found death. Bubbles poured from his lips as the plane plunged deeper and deeper along the rocky ledges of a trench. On his lover’s forehead, a purple bruise the size of an egg would tell her story to the men who dragged her body to shore and stood around her, each one praying that his own daughter might be spared the wrath of love.
In a dream my father had, the girl behind glass at the bottom of Moon Lake had my sister’s face. And this might be true because the girl who came home looked nothing like my Nina. But in my dreams I saw her in a burning building, her golden hair aflame. I stood mute, too scared to grab her hand or even call her name.
My father and I, for all our love, could not bring Nina back. Only my mother was brave enough to face a yapping yellow dog and a white woman with a gun; only she had enough faith to trust the big Indian my father hated. Daddy had to pretend Nina was unchanged, and I swore she’d never come home. But Mother allowed her to be who she was; Mother sat in the terrible light of the kitchen while Nina’s words fell across her neck and shoulders, hard as hailstones dropping from the summer sky.
“Will you do something for me?” I heard my sister’s voice but knew it was Gwen who spoke.
“Anything,” I answered.
“It’s hard for me to wash my hair,” she said. “I can’t lean over far enough in the tub to get my head under the faucet. Do you think …?”
“Of course.”
“I won’t repulse you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can close your eyes.”
“Yes, I can close my eyes.”
She waddled down the hall in front of me, her back arched, her bare feet slapping the wood, her hips swaying with the weight of her belly. I carried the towels.
When she stripped, I kept my eyes open and gazed at her full and drooping breasts, wondered at the suddenness of age, the white lines under the skin where flesh had stretched too fast; I touched her hard stomach and jumped back when the baby kicked my hand, then laid my hands on her again, amazed.
“Look at my arms,” she said. “I’ve grown all this extra hair — everywhere.” She lifted one leg to show me the dark hairs sprouting along her shins. “It’s weird. I feel like I’m living in someone else’s body. Dr. Ben says it will go away when the baby comes. I’m going to shed.” She smirked, disgusted and amused.
We ran the water till the tub nearly overflowed. I poured pitcher after pitcher over her head, scrubbed her hair three times with shampoo, soaped her back and between each toe, all the places she couldn’t reach. Then I dried her too, and wrapped her head in a towel so she stood, naked, like some great-bellied princess in a turban. I dried her thick ankles and her dimpled knees; the coltish legs of the girl were bloated beyond recognition — her limbs had filled like bags of water. I rubbed her thighs with the rough towel, patted her dry in the soft triangle where droplets beaded in dark curls. I followed the knotty joints of her spine, neck to buttocks; even her back was covered with an unfamiliar downy fuzz, the soft growth of hair that made her feel her body had bloomed in strange, unwelcome ways. I brushed the towel lightly along the high ridge of her stomach, making small circles, then bigger and bigger, until I traced the whole great globe of her yeasty, risen loaf. I rubbed her like a magic bottle till she shook, weak with laughter, wobbling on her watery knees.
She was clean and sweet-smelling despite the rage of hormones, sweet and grassy as she was when we stood at the crest of the gully where she kissed me, the first time.
She had a woman’s hands now; I told her so as I dried each finger. “Hands to tell stories,” I said.
Hands to hold a child if you change your mind, I thought, but I dared not whisper these words.
She said, “Will you come see me again?” And I said yes. The dirty housedress was the only thing she had that still fit, so I told her I’d bring something the next time I visited. “Tomorrow?” she said, and made me promise: Yes, tomorrow. “I’ll tell Zack. He’ll let you in.”
“He won’t be embarrassed?”
“He has to let someone look at him sooner or later. It might as well be you.”
Yes, I thought, it might as well be me. And if I could see the wonder of Gwen’s misshapen body, then surely Zack’s scarred hands and peeling face would not startle me or make me turn away. I knew now that this was how Jesus healed the lepers, by not being afraid to look at their ravaged flesh, by sitting down beside them. Yes, at last I understood one small thing in this world, that to look at people as they were, without fear or shame, was a kind of healing, sometimes the only kind that mattered.
But I wasn’t ready to face Zack tonight. Tomorrow was soon enough.
I don’t know why I changed my mind. It seemed I was always turning my back on someone. What had I learned from Red Elk? What had I learned from my mother? I was still running, leaving Nina in the truck with my drunken cousins, moving too slowly to stop Drew Grosswilder’s pals from yanking the pants off the Indian boy. I was afraid of Joshua Holler; I was afraid to look at Zack. But I wondered how Gwen could stand even one more night locked in her room.
So I turned around, knocked on her door again. I said, “Come on, we’re going to my house,” and she didn’t argue. She found a pair of heavy wool socks.
“Shoes,” she said, “I don’t have any shoes.”
“We’ll take your dad’s galoshes.”
Josh Holler tried to stop us at the door. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he said.
“Outside,” I told him. He barred the door with his thick body. “There’s more than one door to this house,” I said. “You’ll have to knock us both flat to keep us from leaving.” He lurched forward to threaten me, but I didn’t budge. Zack watched from the hallway, half hidden in shadow. I thought his loss of beauty would free me from desire; but no, scars or not, he was unchanged, and I longed to touch his face, to say: It doesn’t matter now, none of it matters. I felt a strange, exhilarating power, knowing I was strong enough to forgive. He grinned at me, glad to see someone stand up to his father, and I grinned back, trusting Zack Holler for the first time.
Joshua moved away from the door. He wasn’t going to hit a pregnant girl or another man’s daughter; he wasn’t going to chase us from the front of the house to the back. “I want you home at nine,” he said, and Gwen nodded, generous enough to let him still believe he had some hold on her.
I knew my parents would be surprised to see Gwen Holler this way, her body swollen, her skin dull. They were already in the kitchen. My father’s ears reddened when he looked at Gwen, but he said, “Have a seat,” and he tried to smile. Mother touched Gwen’s shoulder, lightly, just as a mother would touch her own child. Gwen said, “It smells good in here. It’s been so long since I smelled real food. Zack only knows how to cook scrambled eggs and chipped beef with creamed peas on toast.”
We laughed, though it wasn’t funny. I could see Daddy’s struggle as he looked at the pregnant girl. I imagined he was wishing he had let Nina stay all those years ago, let her sit at his table, let her pat her huge stomach in her distracted, absent way. But the best a man can do is to make the right choice when he gets a second chance. We sat down together and joined hands. My father bowed his head. “Father, we thank thee,” he said, “for these mercies.…”