saying goodnight to Grace.
We were on the porch and the light was broken. She hooked my fingers with hers and I felt the dark woods, filled with birthday trees, shudder. The whites of her eyes flickered like stars on the sea when she moved.
“Della…” she said and took my head in her hands, “Della.”
Her breath wet my cheek. She leaned in and said something to me in a sharp whisper. It must have been important because it seemed like she said it twice but her palms were over my ears and I couldn’t understand what it was. All I could hear was the ocean. And I thought, it’s only going to get worse. Leave. Down below this mountain the borders are tightening, the nations are shifting and through all the dangling black branches I see Grace and Cady dancing in circles. If I look down for a second, I will never go. Grace, my Broken Shield, will hold me forever. And Cady? My Clay Dog Master, my Torturer? My Brave Indian Chief? She will certainly kick me if I move and shoot me if I talk.
Tapping Jimmy’s windshield, I pointed to the rim of the valley.
“See that? Capricorn? That’s the tail of the Sea Goat.”
She didn’t raise her eyes.
“Over there,” I pointed, “Capricorn. By the towers.”
“I don’t want to talk about constellations. I don’t want to talk about anything.”
“But it’s Babylonian.”
“Della, that was the most fucked-up, masochistic fucking thing I have ever fucking witnessed. I felt like I was being asked to watch your mom slice herself to ribbons.”
She had a point. If you look at Grace too long everything turns into scary little splinters but I didn’t want to get into it and lose my own momentum.
“I thought it was really sweet of you to eat the Frito pie.”
“Fuck the Frito pie!” she screamed. “Fuck the fucking Frito pie!”
The spinning cell phone whizzed by on my left and parking lots on my right.
Jimmy rolled her window up. I started to say something and she turned on the radio. There wasn’t a clear station and several different ones came in and out of the static. A blast of Christianity, the stammering Mexican brass then nothing but free bandwidth. We turned off the freeway and eventually came to a barricade. There were packs of crickets everywhere and a large chirper sidled over.
“Where are you girls going?” he asked.
“Home,” Jimmy said,
“Where have you been?”
“At a family gathering.”
“Oh yeah, what kind?”
The kind where you celebrate the day a bus crash killed your thirteen-year-old sister because your mom believes that it is important to re-experience pain as a political construct. An anniversary?
“An anniversary,” I said.
“I’m not talking to you,” snapped the officer.
“At an anniversary,” Jimmy said.
“Look,” said Jimmy when we were through, “I need a few days.”
“Sure.”
I asked her to drop me off at an all-night Safeway. She pulled up to the curb by the sliding doors. I got out and started to say goodnight but she was already driving away. I didn’t really blame her. It just wasn’t what she thought it was going to be, being out there with them. I could have said, charisma is violence, but she wouldn’t have understood. I could have told her, there is no haven, but it’s hard to look those things in the eye. It’s hard to see Grace as she really is. She’s just too close to what you need her to be. Up until that moment I think Jimmy really believed that there was sanctuary somewhere. And not just driftwood shacks filled with sorrow, lit with oil lamps.
I stood in front of the Safeway for a few moments then went in. I have my own traditions. They have nothing to do with anyone else.
The store was empty. The meat glowed and a steel drum version of “Eleanor Rigby” echoed on the Congoleum. I went over to the customer service desk. A checker with fine brown hair, hoop earrings and tracheotomy scar walked up to me. She had a button pinned to her chest, big as a can lid, with a photo of a German shepherd puppy on it.
“Can I help you?”
“I want have my sister paged. We came in together and I can’t find her.”
“Have you looked around?”
“Yes, I’ve looked everywhere.”
I went back to the table and waited.
“Cady Elizabeth…”
The checker’s voice cracked shrill through the overhead PA.
A teenage boy unpacking a palette of potato chips looked up. That’s right, I thought, you should be looking for her, my scary Indian sister, it’s only