My mother wore a wool lined long gray raincoat with a faux fur raccoon collar and gold metal fasteners. Pointy movie star sunglasses. Her hair in a bun wrapped and wrapped on her head. Red lipstick. My sister wore a light ski jacket and red pants and a white fake fur hat with snowball ties and cotton kid gloves and black rubber K-Mart boots. I wore red corduroy pants and a smaller brown version of my sister’s hat with the pom pom ties and red galoshes and black cotton gloves — I remember our red pants because they stood out so in the snow. Like blood and urine do. And my mother made them. My father wore jeans and a fleece lined suede jacket and blond leather gloves. He pulled a handsaw from the back of the station wagon. And a rope. And my sister’s hand.
My mother and I immediately got behind on the ascent up the snow-covered hill. Think about this — my mother’s misshapen steps hobbling up and up. Me only four years old. Within five minutes the snow was up to my hips. Within 20 minutes up to my chin. My mother, again and again, pulled me out of a snow hole until I sunk into the next. The only way I experienced how cold it was happened in my mother’s voice when she yelled up to the dots of my father and sister getting smaller and farther up the hill, “ Mike! Lidia is blue!” That and my teeth clattering.
I remember seeing him turn and look down at us. I remember his yelling something I couldn’t understand, then turning away from us. I remember him grabbing my sister’s arm, and though I couldn’t know this back then, I know now he wrenched her farther up with him.
“ Well, shit.” My mother’s drawl made me laugh. But I was shivering and I felt wet. All over.
Somehow my mother and I made it back down the hill to the car, though I remember nearly drowning a couple times in snow past my head and my mother yanking me back to air and sky. So much sun I could barely keep my little blue eyes open.
In the car, my mother said “ Belle, take all your clothes off.” But I just sat there numb like a kid Popsicle. So she took all my clothes off. They were drenched. She placed the red weighted garments over the seats. She turned the car on. She blasted the heater and made me get on the floor where your feet go. She took off that weird coat with the raccoon collar and wrapped it around me like a tent. When I looked up at her, she said something I never forgot the rest of my life. She said, “ Lidabelle. Pretend I am Becky Boone, and you are Israel Boone, and this is our adventure!”
I pretended immediately. Not only did I watch Daniel Boone all the time and love it, but I looked exactly like Israel. I laughed and smiled and forgot about how cold I was. I forgot my father was my father. Somewhere out there was Daniel Boone. A man. A big man.
My mother dug through her coat pocket and found butterscotch candies and we ate them. She made me drink coffee from the plaid thermos. It tasted like hot liquid dirt. But she said, “ Remember, you are Israel Boone! You can do anything! When we get home I’ll make you a buckskin shirt!”
It was a lie. A beautiful, stunningly creative, lifesaving lie.
When I felt better I looked out of the front car window to see if I could see my father and my sister. All I saw was the brilliant blue sky — all the sun and all the white made me have to squint. Plus the windows kept fogging up so I had to keep rubbing a see-through circle with my hand. My mother made me sing songs with her. I see the moon. You are my sunshine. The bear goes over the mountain.
I know what I felt at first. I felt ecstatic. To be alone with my mother. Singing. Wrapped inside her southern drawl, her raccoon coat, her story of us as Becky and Israel Boone. But even at age four my chest got tight after a while. I never lived a day without the squeeze of sister around my heart. Where. Was. She.
When my mother looked out of the car window and up the hill, her eye twitched.
Even at that age I knew how Christmas would be. My father would sit in a sofa recliner smoking and silent. Presiding. My sister would open presents looking like a girl doing chores. I would open presents with the know nothing glee of a kid and look around at them all. My mother would clap and laugh. Then something — nearly anything — would happen, and my father’s anger would crush even the faintest tenderness, and my sister and I would be left alone in the living room with piles of wrapping paper to clean up. The smell of a fresh cut fir tree and cigarettes.
By the time I saw the blurry figures of a big man and a girl coming down the mountain I was sleepy. So they looked like dream people to me. My mother said, “Oh thank god,” as they approached the car, but I could hear something else in her voice.
That’s the picture I would show you — the way my sister looked through the window of the Simca station wagon. Her cheeks like apples. Her eyes puffy. My father had a hold of her arm. She looked like her legs didn’t work right. My mother rolled the window down and I saw snot under my sister’s nose. Was she crying? She did not make any sound. But she shivered. Then my sister looked straight at me. I bit my lip. Her eyes more cold than snow. That’s the picture.
I remember the ride home. The long silence. To my knowledge, we did not bring home a tree. But we did bring home everything that was our family, laden. So laden.
Ash
DEAD INFANTS DON’T GET URNS UNLESS YOU PAY FOR them — and then they stuff crap in besides just ashes to cover the smallness. All those years ago? My daughter’s ashes were in a small pink box — pink for girls — a box the size of a hacky sack ball that fits in the palm of your hand
I took my box to Heceta Head. The coast at Heceta Head in December is epic. Me, my first husband, my sister, and weirdly, my parents. Near strangers.
Pretending to be a family, we stumble-walked down over the rocks to the water’s edge. The sound of ocean waves is large enough to stop your thinking. My mother closed her eyes and said a prayer in a southern drawl. Phillip sang I See the Moon — the lullaby my mother sang to me as a child — which made me feel a little like I might faint. My sister read “Ample Make This Bed” by Emily Dickinson, nearly killing us all. Then my father, the architect, pulled something out of his pocket. A folded up piece of paper. On it, he’d written a poem. Sort of. It rhymed. When he read it, his voice shook. The only time in my life I heard that.
It rained cold. Windy. Like Oregon is.
After that, Phillip and I took the little pink box which I had been clutching in my hand hard enough to nearly crush it and walked over to where the river joins the ocean. That’s why I’d picked that spot. I could see river rocks leading into the sea and sand, and I smelled and tasted saltwater. I don’t know if I was crying — my face was wet with ocean and rain. The lighthouse stood guard. All the waters of a life met at that tiny nexus.
Then I handed him the fragile little box. He took it in his hand. I said, throw it as far as you can. So he — there isn’t another way to say this. He chucked it.
Yeah, so the thing is, that little riverway that leads to the sea? Right there at Heceta head? It has a mean cross-current. So while Phillip and I stood there watching the little box float nearly out of eyesight, we also stood and watched it … come the fuck back. Pretty much to our very feet. Knocking itself against his shoe.
I looked back over my shoulder to where the posse of sadness that was my idiotic family stood — they were far away, almost dots. I looked at Phillip. Then I said, try kicking it out. No, I don’t know why I said that.
So he, um, kicked it.
This time it didn’t go very far at all, it simply launched soggily into the air and plunked back down and circled back to us, just slower this time. Without being able to stop, I started laughing. And he started laughing. I mean hard. I said go get it, goddamn it. So he did.