Like Mandarin (5 page)

In less than two hours, I was supposed to knock on Mandarin Ramey’s front door. So after dropping off Taffeta, I headed for the Tombs.

The Tombs was a granite jumble that looked like a graveyard stirred and stacked by the wildwinds. It ran along the edge of the Bighorn River, about a quarter mile outside the city limits. All sorts of legends surrounded it—about Indian sacrifices, burials, lynchings—the sort of stories common in small western towns. Enough to keep people away. Out in the badlands, I came across beer cans in the strangest places, but I never found them at the Tombs.

I had discovered the Tombs the past August, during one of my rock-hunting quests. I’d made the mistake of setting out at noon. Only half an hour in, I felt charbroiled. I sought shade among the piles of tomb-shaped rocks cooled by the river trees and meandering water.

I found the Virgin Mary on my third visit.

Each story described her differently: a head sculpted from stone, or a profile, or the whole holy likeness, holding baby Jesus. So-and-so’s cousin’s grandpa-in-law claimed she cried tears of holy water, or cured plantar warts, or sipped wine from a straw—all that mumbo jumbo typically attributed to magical Madonnas.

They would have been disappointed by my find: way up high, where the geometry of stone formed a sort of cave, a woman painted in a black and greasy substance, like wet charcoal or tar.

And she was extremely basic—not much more than an outline, though more complex than the cave paintings we’d seen on a field trip to the Medicine Lodge Archaeological Site. She wore a hood, or maybe a blanket, draped over her head. Because she was so obviously Native American, I knew she couldn’t be the Virgin Mary, unless she’d been painted after some Catholics had come and force-converted a local tribe.

But she was definitely a mother.

I liked to look at her. There was something comforting about her drowsy eyes, like those of a purring cat. Her almost smile. Her forearms, shaped like a cradle.

Now, as I sat in the cave, embracing my knees, pondering the unbelievable reality—that
I was going to Mandarin Ramey’s house
in ninety minutes, seventy minutes, less than an hour—I could have sworn that the Virgin Mary gazed at me sympathetically.

Of course, it would have been better if I could have found that comfort in Momma. But even the idea of that weirded me out. And she was preoccupied, anyway.

I ran my finger along a cleft in the stone floor, trying to appease my anxiety.

I’d imagined countless times the ways Mandarin and I might meet. During earthquakes. Tornadoes. Other natural disasters, like the storm that had created the Tombs. I imagined us holed up here together, sharing our innermost secrets while rain hissed into the river and thunder boomed outside. It was always a large-scale event that brought us together.

Never anything as ordinary as a community service project.

And I had never imagined—not in my most outlandish, plains fire–fueled, tornado-twirled fantasies—that Mandarin would come to me
herself
.

All because she thought I was, like, Washokey’s resident genius?

No girls ever went to Mandarin’s house. Not since Sophie Brawls—the only real friend Mandarin had ever had, or that anybody knew about.

Sophie was one of the ranch kids bused in from the south, like Becky Pepper. She wore dresses all year long. Even in the winter, with clunky snow boots, gravy-colored tights, and a hooded parka. I only ever noticed Sophie in town because she had the largest eyes I’d ever seen. Like soap bubbles, set in a pearly round face with pink cheeks.

When Sophie started running around with Mandarin, everybody noticed her. Their friendship was short and intense. Inseparable for two months and then came the fight. A
real
fight. Alexis swore she’d seen Sophie in the office afterward sobbing, with scratches like streaks of jelly on both sides of her neck.

Someone in my grade called it a dyke fight. A few people laughed, but the label didn’t stick. This was Mandarin Ramey, after all.

The fight was the reason Mandarin had spent the last three months of her sophomore year at the Wyoming Girls’ School. Sophie Brawls never came back. Since then, Mandarin had let no one into her life—well, other than her endless parade of men.

I listened to the wind whistling between the boulders, reaching inside my hideaway like an invisible hand. When I lifted my face, I smelled lilac blossoms. It really was spring. As if life couldn’t get any more stressful, pageant season was beginning.

Mandarin’s front door hurtled open before I had a chance to knock. I almost stumbled down the porch steps. Something about Mandarin made me back away each time we met, as if she were an explosion of heat or light. I felt like shielding my eyes.

“Hey,” she said.

She wore a white men’s undershirt over her low-slung jeans, and she’d tied her hair back with a scrap of thick yellow yarn. It made her look younger, her cheekbones more pronounced. We stood there for a second in uncomfortable silence. Maybe she was waiting for me to speak.

Finally, she held open the door. “Well, come on in.”

Her carpet was the sickly brown color of an old man’s den. A muted television made the dim room flicker and flash. In the intermittent light, I saw coffee-colored stains on the ceiling in menacing shapes and olive green furniture grinning at the seams. An oak dining table had been crammed into a corner, with one of the chairs overturned.

Mandarin followed my gaze to the table. She went over and righted the chair without saying anything. Then she led me down the hall, flipping on every light switch we passed.

She paused in front of her bedroom door, her hand on the knob.

“Before we go in, I feel like I need to give some sort of disclaimer, or whatever. Like a surgeon general’s warning. What you’re about to see has got absolutely nothing to do with me. If that makes any sense.”

“Okay …,” I said.

I wondered if her walls were quilted with pages torn from celebrity tabloids, like in Alexis’s room, or childish relics, like mine.

But the small space beyond the door revealed none of those things—just more of the same shabby brown carpet, pouring into her room like sewage. The same weird stains on the ceiling. The only furnishings were her bed, a tall dresser that leaned to one side, and a bookshelf with no books. Scuff marks patterned the lower third of her walls. There were no posters, no drawings, no photographs. No personality. As if the girl living there considered it a temporary apartment.

“It’s pretty shitty, yeah?” Mandarin asked, as if reading my mind. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I shrugged.

“Well, I’m glad you made it over here.”

“Really?”
I said before I could stop myself. I hugged my textbooks more tightly.

“Sure.” She grinned. “I mean, I thought you might not come. I’m not dumb, y’know. I get how weird this is.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“I said I’m not dumb, all right? Course it’s weird. I’m, what, three years older than you? And you’re here to help
me
. How is that not weird?”

I shrugged again.

“It’s bizarre,” Mandarin said. “But here’s the thing: I got no shame. I know you’re, like, some kind of child genius, yeah? So I’d rather have you help me out than one of the kids who’ve been going to school with me since fifth grade. They’re all assholes. Not even worth the butts in my ashtray. If I
used
an ashtray, that is.”

I didn’t know what to make of the cheerful tone of her voice, her grin. It was like she took pleasure in being a misfit. While I felt exactly the opposite.

“I really do need help, though,” she went on. “I just slacked off and nothing makes sense to me anymore. And I promised I’d graduate. I promised my dad, I mean. He’s a good guy, deep down. But I can’t stand it when teachers try to jam their faces in my business. I’d have asked another student for help, but, like I said, so many of the smart kids are assholes, and the passably decent ones are, like, terrified of me.…”

She glanced at me. I probably looked terrified.

Her grin appeared to have frozen to her face. “Well. Want anything to drink? Or a snack?”

I shrugged for the third time.

“You don’t say much, do you? It’s all right. Just make yourself at home. I’ll be right back. And don’t worry, I won’t bring you tap water.” Mandarin pulled the door shut behind her, leaving me alone.

Alone in Mandarin Ramey’s room
.

I hugged my books so tightly the corners bit into my stomach. It was surreal. What every boy and man in town—and most of the girls and women—wouldn’t give to take my place.

When I heard the phone ring on the other side of the house, and Mandarin answer, the temptation to explore became irresistible.

I didn’t know how long I had. So I started at the closest point: Mandarin’s dresser. Opening the drawers would be too invasive, so I settled for the Indian basket on top. I combed my fingers through the knickknacks inside: barrettes, bandages, tampons, a windup plastic puppy.

The top shelf of her bookcase held a dead cactus in a pot. It looked like old-man flesh, wrinkled and white-whiskered. A stereo stood on the shelf below. On the shelf below that, facedown, as if it had toppled forward, a picture frame.

I picked it up. It was a Polaroid of Mandarin as a little girl: scowling, the sun in her eyes, wearing jeans with an elastic waistband and a white T-shirt.

The photo reminded me of the way she’d looked the first time I’d seen her, eight years earlier. I wondered who had taken the picture. The person behind a camera told as much as who was in front of it. My pageant photos in Momma’s album were proof.

I set it back facedown on the shelf.

When I turned around, the first thing I saw was Mandarin’s bed. I stared at the balled-up comforter, the rumpled sheets, the pillow still indented from the curve of her head. And suddenly, I imagined her there: rolling across the mattress, her black hair sticking to her naked back, a male forearm curling around from underneath—

I blinked the image away as Mandarin burst through the door.

She thumped two glasses onto the dresser, shoving the Indian basket carelessly aside. “It’s ginger ale,” she said. “I considered lacing it with a shot or two of vodka, but then I thought, ‘Nah, she ain’t the vodka type. More of a Peach Schnapps kinda girl.’ Am I right?”

“Well, no … I’ve never—”

She laughed. “Just yanking your chain. Course you don’t drink. But seriously, what
do
you do?”

I hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“Like, what do you like to do? If we’re going to be working together, we’ve got to be pals too, right? So tell me: how do you fill your time, Grace Carpenter?”

I fumbled through my brain. I hated questions like that. I never knew what to say, what was babyish, and what wasn’t.

“I read a lot,” I admitted to Mandarin’s bare feet. Her toenails looked jagged, almost bitten. I wondered if the bottoms of her feet were scarred from all the stamped-out cigarettes. “And I spend a lot of time in the badlands. Looking for rocks and things.”

“No kidding?”

She sounded genuinely surprised. I risked a glance up.

“Like what kind of things? Like, arrowheads?”

“Sure. Or like, fossils and …”

Mandarin was on her hands and knees, reaching under her bed. She pulled out a jar filled with what looked like broken wedges of peanut brittle.

They were arrowheads. Maybe fifty of them, all jumbled together. Did she have any idea how ancient they were? She should have wrapped them separately in soft cloth and tucked them carefully into a shoe box, like I did my rocks.

Mandarin motioned me over. “What do you think?”

She unscrewed the top of the jar and dumped the arrowheads onto her bed. Involuntarily, my hand shot out and grabbed one.

“It’s perfect!” I exclaimed. “Look at it. Blue-white chalcedony, and not a single chip. Do you know how rare that is?”

“No clue.”

“It’s old, too. You can tell it’s old. Like ten thousand years. These aren’t even called arrowheads—they’re projectile points. They’re older than the bow and arrow.”

I knew how much of a nerd I was being, but I couldn’t help it. At least Mandarin seemed interested.

“Lemme see.” She stuck out her hand.

I set the arrowhead on the cushion of her palm. She examined it thoughtfully. “Huh,” she said. “What do y’know.”

“And this one! It’s tiger skin obsidian. My all-time favorite.” I held the amber-colored stone up to the light. “See the glow?”

Mandarin tipped her head to the side. Her eyes were the same color as the arrowhead.

“Where did you
get
all these?” I asked. I’d been hunting for years, and I’d only found seven. Only two unbroken, and even those were chipped.

“Oh,” she said dismissively. “Around.” She swept the arrowheads back into the jar. I hoped she’d offer me one, but she didn’t. She set the jar on the floor and then flopped onto her bed. “Have a seat,” she ordered.

“So, where do you want to start?” I asked, as if I hadn’t heard her. “The Pony Express?”

“Start at the beginning. I’ve forgotten everything. How about cave people? Start with them.” She smacked the bed beside her. “Sit!”

At last, like an obedient dog, I perched on the very edge of her bed. I thought I could feel the heat of her mattress through the fabric of my jeans. I shook my head and flipped open the history textbook in my lap.

“You know, I don’t think cave people are in here,” I said. “And we’ve got math to cover too. And I have to be home for dinner by seven. My mother takes it seriously.”

“What, dinner?”

“Well, yeah … She likes to cook.”

Mandarin sat up and peered at me, as if I were some strange specimen she’d collected in her arrowhead jar. “I bet you even sit around the table,” she said. “Wow. I ain’t had a family dinner like that—I don’t think ever, to tell you the truth. Then again, a well-meaning but drunk-ass dad and a shameful daughter ain’t much of a family. My mother killed herself before I moved to town.”

“She did?”

I recalled what I’d heard about Mandarin’s mother. Supposedly, they’d spent the first half of Mandarin’s life together, hopping from small town to small town in the southeastern corner of the state. Then, for reasons nobody knew, Mandarin moved in with her father in Washokey. About the mother herself, rumors were scarce.

I’d definitely never heard she was
dead
.

“Wanna know how she did it?” Mandarin asked.

“How she …”

“It was really gruesome—not for the faint of heart. You better sit down for this one.” She paused, as if I weren’t already sitting. “It happened in our old apartment. First, the cops found a noose made out of knotted-up dishrags, but my mother didn’t own enough to make a proper one. Then, in the hallway, they found a whole bunch of sleeping pills, but just over-the-counter ones, lying all over the ground. And then, in the bedroom, know what they found? My mom, dead on the ground, with duct tape wrapped around her mouth like ninety times. She’d suffocated herself.”

Suddenly, I found it hard to breathe. I wondered if Mandarin had been home when it happened. If she’d seen the body. “I—I’m so sorry.”

Mandarin shrugged. “I’m over it.”

I nodded. “Well, we don’t have much time,” I said. “Maybe we could come up with a list of community service ideas, and then we could—”

“Aw, screw community service.”

I shielded my chest with my textbook as Mandarin rolled off the bed, stomped across the room, and kicked the wall.
So that’s where the scuff marks came from
.

“But I thought you wanted—” I began.

“School is horseshit.”

I mouthed the words I’d seen on the door of the bathroom stall as Mandarin flounced over to her stereo and jammed it on to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.” It was kind of embarrassing, like a movie sound track that didn’t fit.

“I love this song,” Mandarin said, pacing around the room. “Do you? Probably not. Everyone around here likes that hokey country shit. Anyway, I know what I said. And I meant it at the time. I always got good intentions. I just hate it, all of it. I’m not stupid, even though people think I am. It’s just—there’s
got
to be a better way, y’know?”

I tucked my feet under the bed so they wouldn’t get trampled, trying to make myself as small as possible. “A better way to do what?”

“To get out.”

“Out of where?”

“Of where?” Mandarin laughed contemptuously. “Of Washokey! Of this little cow-shit town in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing here! We’re hundreds, thousands of miles away from anything worthwhile. The whole town’s falling apart, the people are rotting, but for some fucking reason it’s like nobody ever leaves!”