which she has described to me in disturbing detail. She’s never missed a Christmas or Thanksgiving or birthday. She even made it to my eighth-grade graduation. Sherman didn’t.
My father was joining Sugar Tits on her movie shoot in Portland instead of attending my grad night. I didn’t want him there, but I wanted him to want to be there. It’s not like I went, Oh, well, my dad’s a dick so there must not be a God. I’d been questioning my faith for a while, plus graduation day was the same day the story broke about that slave camp in West Africa and there were all these pics of bony babies covered in flies and all those chained human beings. Then at chapel, Pastor Hanson went on about how we should pray for those African people but remember that it’s all part of God’s glorious plan. God’s will be done.
No. Just. No. And that empty seat between my mother and Aunt Lilly at the graduation ceremony? I wanted a word for how I felt. How hard I wanted to reject my father, and God’s fucking will. Heathen was it.
I think the girls respected that I knew when to leave a toxic relationship. They didn’t care what I thought about God. Well, Zara did. She’s just more comfortable when people believe the things she believes, I guess. Mostly we played “don’t ask don’t tell.” Like with Santa, when you know your friend still believes and you don’t challenge, like, Dude, all those chimneys in one night? The truth is I don’t think any of the girls, except maybe Brooky, have ever really questioned their faith. They’re not evangelical types, obviously. Not Crusaders. They’re more down with the loving Jesus than the eye-for-an-eye Old Testament God. They support gay marriage and LGBTQ rights. And we’re, like, feminist. We all think equal pay for equal work. Not one of us ever talked about saving our virginity for our wedding night. Not even Zee. Jinny Hutsall’s cast a spell on them. She’s the witch, on a witch hunt. I’m living the fucking Crucible.
I wish Fee would wake up. Like, wake up, and sit up, and be well enough to talk me off the ledge. I have to figure out how to find her some fluids. I keep getting up to look out the window, wondering where I could get water. There’s a hose coiled up at the back of Javier’s cabin, but that’s not going to do us much good. When we were little kids, you could still legit drink from a hose in California, but now irrigation water’s reclaimed so not potable, and you can only drink bottled or tap, but only if the tap has a filtration system, which many poor people still don’t have. I can’t see any water bottles on the dashboard of Javier’s truck, but I wonder if he has one of those barrel-shaped water jugs strapped to the back of his flatbed. I should go look, but there are too many moving lights still up in the sky.
So I’m sitting here in this filthy shed, basically free-bleeding all over my gown because I soaked through the paper towel wad in a second. I feel disgusted with myself, and think of the blog I wrote challenging the logic in the Bible regarding women and their monthly shedding. The Bible shames menstruating women and uses words like untouchable and unclean, but I argued it’s an essential bodily function that ultimately makes conception possible. Why wouldn’t God tell His people to celebrate the bleeding woman, and, like, bring her some chocolate truffles and draw her a hot bath? In theory, I was so right, but I feel so wrong.
Does Shelley have a lawyer? I mean, she is a lawyer, but does she have a lawyer? I hope she has a sweater because she’s always chilly and needs layers. I hope she eats something, because when her blood sugar dips, she gets snippy. She’s thinking about me, I know, and feeling my pain and fear on top of her own, but I figure she’s also thinking about Sherman, and how none of this would have happened if he hadn’t left us. Maybe she’s right, but also, maybe it doesn’t matter.
The Santa Anas have arrived from the desert right on schedule. Must be gusting at thirty or forty miles an hour out there. The blue tarp on the Airstream next door is billowing like a sail. It’ll be still for ten minutes, then