What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield.
UNCLE RAY was teaching me to play chess from a book, Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. He had taught himself in Vietnam. "I had a lot of time to kill there," he said, running his fingers over the peaked hat of the white pawn. He'd carved the set there, Vietnamese kings and Buddhas for bishops, horses with sculpted cheeks and combed manes. I couldn't imagine the months it must have taken him, patiently carving with a Swiss Army knife while all the bombs blasted around him.
I liked the order of chess, the coolness of reason, the joy of its patient steps. We played most nights when Starr was at AA or CA meetings or at Bible study, while the boys watched TV. Uncle Ray kept a little pipe of dope next to him on the arm of the chair to smoke while he waited for me to make my move.
That night the boys were watching a nature show. The littlest one, Owen, sucked his thumb, holding his stuffed giraffe, while Peter twined a bit of his hair around his finger, over and over again. Davey narrated the show for them, pointing to the screen.
"That's Smokey, he's the alpha male." The light from the screen reflected in his glasses.
Uncle Ray waited for my move, looking at me in a way that made my heart open like a moonflower — his eyes on my face, my throat, my hair over my shoulders, changing color in the TV lights. On TV I saw the white of snow, the wolves hunting in pairs, their strange yellow eyes. I felt like an undeveloped photograph that he was printing, my image rising to the surface under
his gaze.
"Oh, don't," Owen said, clutching his giraffe with the broken neck as the wolves leapt on their deer, pulling it down by the throat.
"It's the law of nature," Davey said.
"There, look at that." Ray pointed with the black bishop he was moving. "It's like, if God saved that deer, he'd starve the wolf. Why would he favor one person over another?" He had never quite resigned himself to my becoming a Christian. "The good don't get any better a break than anybody else. You could be a fucking saint, and still, you got the plague or stepped on a Bouncing Betty."
"At least you have something larger to fall back on," I said, touching the cross around my neck, zipping it back and forth along the chain. "You have a compass and a map." "And if there's no God?" "You act as if there is, and it's the same thing." He sucked at his pipe, filling the room with its skunky smell, while I examined the board. "What does your mother have to say about that?" he asked.
"She says, 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.'" "My kind of woman."
I didn't say that she called him Uncle Ernie. Through the screen door, the summer crickets sang. I flicked my hair behind my shoulders, moved my bishop to queen's knight 3, threatening his knight. I sensed how he looked at my bare arm, the shoulder, my lips. To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful. I had never been beautiful before. I didn't think it went against Christ. Everybody needed to feel love.
We heard the crunch of Starr's Torino turning into the yard, car tires in the gravel, earlier than she normally came home. I was disappointed. Ray paid attention to me when she was gone, but when she came home I went back to being just one of the kids. What was she doing home so early anyway? She usually stayed out until eleven, drinking coffee with the addicts, or discussing Matthew 20 verse 13 with the old ladies at the church.
"Shit." Uncle Ray quickly pocketed his stash and small pipe just as the screen door swung open and the bug zapper zapped a big one at the same time.
Starr stopped for a second at the door, seeing us, and the boys sitting on the couch, mesmerized by the TV. Then it was like she was confused to find herself home so soon. She dropped her keys and picked them up. Uncle Ray watched her, her breasts practically coming out of the scooped neck of her dress.
Then her smile came on, and she kicked off her shoes and sat on the arm of his chair, kissed him. I could see her sticking her tongue in his ear.
"Was it canceled?" he asked.
It was my move, but he wasn't paying attention.
She draped herself over his shoulder, her breast squashed into his neck. "Sometimes I just get so tired of hearing them complain. Taking everybody else's darn inventory." She picked up my remaining white knight. "I love this," she said. "Why don't you ever teach me, Ray baby?"
"I did once," he said in a murmuring, tender voice, turning his head and kissing her breast, right in front of me. "Don't you remember? You got so mad you turned the board over." He plucked the knight from her hand and put it back down on the board. King 5.
"That was in my drinking days," she said.
'"Can white mate in one move?'" he repeated out of the Bobby Fischer book.
"One move?" she said, tickling his nose with a strand of her hair. "That doesn't sound too exciting."
White knight to king's bishop 6. I rode the delicately carved knight into place. "Mate."
But they were kissing and then she told the boys to go to bed when they were done and led Uncle Ray back to her bedroom.
ALL NIGHT LONG as I lay in my sleeping bag with its bucking broncos and lariats, I heard their headboard smacking the wall, their laughter. And I wondered whether real daughters were jealous of their mothers and fathers, if it made them sick to see their fathers kiss their mothers, squeeze their breasts. I squeezed my own small breast, hot from the sleeping bag, and imagined how it might feel to another hand, imagined having a body like Starr's. She was almost a different species with her narrow waist, her breasts round as grapefruit, her bottom round like that too. I imagined taking off my clothes and having a man like Uncle Ray look at me the way he looked at her.
God, it was so hot. I opened the zipper of the sleeping bag, lay on top of the hot flannel.
And she didn't even hide it, she wasn't that Christian. Always the shortest of shorts, the tightest of tops. You could see where her jeans crept up inside her labia. I wanted someone to want me that way, touch me the way Uncle Ray did her, like Barry and my mother.
I wished Carolee were there. She would make funny comments about the headboard or joke about Uncle Ray having a heart attack — he was almost fifty, for Christ's sake, lucky if he didn't die with his boots on. He met Starr at the club when she was still waitressing, and what kind of sleazy guys went to places like that anyway. But Carolee was never home at night anymore. She climbed out the window as soon as Starr said good night and went to meet her friends in the wash. She never invited me to come with her. It hurt my feelings, but I didn't like her friends much — girls with mean laughter and boys with shaved heads, awkward and boasting.
I stroked my hands under my nightgown and felt the different skins against my fingertips — the hair on my legs, the smoothness between my thighs, and the slippery, fragrant skin of my private parts. I felt the folds, the peak, and thought of rough hands with missing fingers tracing all the secret places. On the other side of the pressboard wall, the headboard banged.