The Fall of Alice K. (4 page)

When Alice got into the car, neither of her parents asked about the Vangs, but Alice sensed an unease. Even if both of her parents would argue vehemently that they held no prejudices against foreigners, Alice knew better. The Mexicans who had moved in to work at the dairies and packing plants attended a Catholic church ten miles from Dutch Center, so no one had to experience the strangeness of seeing them in the next pew. Out of sight, out of mind. Occasionally a missionary convert from Africa would appear in their church, but their visits were always short; and there were a handful of foreign students attending Redemption College, but few of them attended Alice's church. The Vangs were a rarity, and seeing them no doubt stirred the calm waters of her parents' habitual church comforts.

Alice could feel the space around her compact with silence in the backseat of the car with Aldah. It wasn't the kind of silence that suggested her parents had quarreled about the way her mother stormed out of church. This was different—a pressured silence that was building up in the front seat. Alice suspected the silence had everything to do with the Vangs, but she wasn't about to open the conversation on that topic. Instead, she would meet their silence with her own and simply stare out the window.

Which she did: in a casual analytic mode, she categorized the farms as they passed by. Successful farms. Teetering farms. Abandoned farms. Successful farms were like people wearing expensive clothing—not showy, just that confident look of neatly buttoned doors and well-groomed roofs, the kind of farms that would appear on the covers of farm magazines. The teetering farms were like people wearing mismatched clothing—a shining tractor next to a gate that nobody bothered to repair. The abandoned farms had no pretense at all, disheveled but carefree with their tall grass and their splintered doors wagging in the breeze like shirttails that someone didn't bother tucking in. Abandoned farms were like homeless hitchhikers ready to take a ride from anybody who passed.

Alice knew that the Krayenbraak farm was a teetering farm but it didn't have any mismatched clothing. Its troubles were hidden behind a facade of order and tidiness: no loose hinges, no loose barbed wire, no loose shingles.

Three miles from the Krayenbraak farm her father stopped the car at a “cornfield corner,” an intersection where the cornfields obstructed the view in all four directions. Alice thought for a moment that he was simply being his cautious self or that he might be stopping to appreciate the beauty of the flourishing cornfields, but then she saw her mother's shoulders tighten and knew this was the moment they had chosen for the dam of silence to be broken.

4

As her father drove slowly through the intersection, the dam broke with her mother's sharp-edged voice from the front seat: “Do those people speak English?”

“Of course,” said Alice quickly. “Nickson will be at Midwest and Mai will be at Redemption. You know that. She has a scholarship.”

“The mother speaks English?”

“Not much,” said Alice. “Not yet.”

“What kind of name is Nickson?” asked her mother, and for the first time since they had started driving, she turned toward the backseat. Alice couldn't tell if her expression was genuinely curious or if she was mocking the name.

“Not sure,” said Alice.

“Nick-son, Nick-son,” repeated Aldah.

“Could they have named their son after President Nixon?” That was her father's voice.

“I could ask him,” said Alice. “It didn't seem strange to me.”

“They sure are small, aren't they?” said her mother.

“Compared to us, most people are small,” said Alice.

That made her father chuckle, but Alice figured he was probably chuckling to keep the conversation from getting into awkward territory where their daughter would turn on them and accuse them of who-knows-what. Alice was in no mood to accuse them of anything. So far the conversation had kept them away from the truly awkward matter of her mother storming out of church. Let me dwell in calm waters for the rest of the ride home, Alice thought.

Beside her, Aldah clenched her pink-stained handkerchief. Pink
peppermint stains marked the corners of her lips. Alice unwrapped the wadded-up bumper sticker, took Aldah's stained handkerchief, and rewrapped the bumper sticker around it.

“Stop,” said Aldah when they came to a corner that did have a stop sign.

“Very good,” said Alice “Now watch for the ‘Slow' sign on the next hill.”

“McDonald's.”

“No, that's not McDonald's. That mailbox says ‘Duh-Duh-Dykstra.'”

“Cheerios.”

“You're being silly.”

Aldah giggled, then laid her head against Alice. “Nap,” she said.

Aldah laid her head onto Alice's lap, but before she could sleep they were home to the Krayenbraak farm. Her mother had the oven set so that her one-dish meal was ready. Her father opened with prayer, and then the language of grim silence began. The stale kitchen air was filled with the gibberish of hogyard smells assailing the odors of a hotdish embellished with Hamburger Helper. The dry joints of the old oak table asked incoherent but shrill questions when Alice's father put his hand down firmly next to his plate. Her mother throttled the slim saltshaker when she picked it up, and then, in movements that were uncharacteristically quick for her, she shook the life out of it in a seeming effort to resuscitate the comatose hotdish.

Alice took small bites, wanting her mouth to be free to utter real words in case she would suddenly have to come to the defense of the Vangs, but it was Aldah's presence that spoke most clearly. She was the canary that went down into the dark well of their family's misery, into the mysteries of the turmoil they tried to deny with silence but which came out sideways, in murky or twisted distortions of what they really meant to say. Alice's parents probably knew their own feelings, but they had never practiced a language that would express them. Aldah didn't have the language either, but when she pulled her head down into her shoulders, her message of distress should have been clear to everyone. The corners of her mouth sagged, and her eyes grew dim. The voice of her whole body said, “Stop. Just stop.”

Alice's mother finally did break into actual speech with her usual
sense of bad timing: “We are worried about Aldah. She's shutting down more and more.”

The trouble with her mother and with the dreadful words that often did bubble out of her mouth was that she was often close to the truth. This may have been one of those moments. If Aldah was a canary measuring the toxins in the atmosphere around the table, she was, as her mother cruelly pointed out, shutting down. She could sit like a frozen icon of something no one could explain.

But after her mother's comment, Alice had to wonder: was Aldah absorbing their moods and showing them what they looked like, or was she developing a new problem? Alice was only two and a half when Aldah was born so she had missed Aldah's early health problems. Alice remembered that Aldah was taking digitalis as a child, and she had terrible ear infections. Alice remembered the screaming and how Aldah held her little hands over her ears. She was a wobbly kid and could hardly walk when Alice started school. By the time Alice was a teenager, her mother had given up on Aldah. Alice hadn't. She did some reading and knew that their family wasn't alone in this journey. Alice would crunch up zinc and selenium and pretend to put some in a glass for herself and some in a glass for Aldah. When Aldah saw her older sister drinking hers, she'd drink too. She'd do anything that she saw Alice doing, so long as Alice smiled at her first. She would have walked over a cliff behind Alice if Alice smiled at her first.

Her parents went on talking about Aldah as if she weren't there. Aldah gave no hints that she was listening or that she understood. Alice knew better: Aldah heard and understood every word. Even her father spoke as if Aldah weren't there.

“Maybe it's time,” he said.

“I think so,” said her mother.

“We're not specialists,” said her father.

“There's state money,” said her mother.

“I know,” said her father. “I checked that out.”

Aldah picked at her food, then reached for the sugar bowl and sprinkled two teaspoons of sugar over the Hamburger Helper. No one stopped her.

The discussion, such as it was, dropped off a cliff. Her father said a
quick closing prayer that asked for strength and for the forgiveness of their sins. It was one of his autopilot prayers, predictable and brief. He stood up. Her mother stood up too while Aldah went on eating. They evidently weren't going to talk about Aldah any more—they weren't going to talk about anything. Alice could hear the unspoken message that trickled down through the generations:
Zeg maar niks.
Don't say anything. It was away of dealing with problems by keeping your mouth shut.

When her mother walked outside to the screen porch after closing devotions, Alice followed her, leaving Aldah alone to digest the sugary hotdish and what had been said about her.

Alice stepped into the porch to find her mother sitting in a metal lawn chair. Alice stood off to the side, not close—but she was there. No matter how much her mother repulsed her much of the time, Alice took the first step in making amends. She had come to smooth things over, to find that little window of hope to connect with her mother, but she kept a good four feet distance.

“Are you still worried about Aldah?”

“Aldah is beyond worry.”

“Mother.”

“The farm is beyond worry. The world is beyond worry.”

Her mother looked relaxed and tense at the same time—like a petrified rag doll.

“Not everything is lost,” said Alice. “Dad said cattle and hog prices could go up. You have to believe that something good could happen.”

“For somebody who thinks she's so smart, you can't even see the elephant that's stepping on your toes.”

“Please stop. I came out here because I was worried about you.”

“The only person you worry about is yourself.”

“You just walked out of the kitchen. That's not like you.”

“How would you know?” said her mother. “Just how would you know what is like me?”

“Why can't you ever believe me?”

“Okay, you were worried about me.”

“I was. So what's going on?”

“I was just thinking.”

“Okay. About?”

“About you. About your father, about Aldah, about us, about the world. About the grand arcs of history, about the miniature dramas of family, about the futility of our will.”

Alice moved a little closer. “Good God, Mother.”

Now her mother looked at her. Alice noticed that she had jutted her own left hip out and had her right hand on her right hip. Her mother might see this as an arrogant stance and think that Alice was mocking her. Alice let her arms fall to her sides and leaned humbly forward. Her mother noticed, but her expression was puzzling. She wore an unfamiliar expression, almost an aggressive look, as if she was ready to take on something bigger than Alice or Aldah or anything Alice could understand.

“You okay?”

Her mother turned her eyes from Alice and leaned forward. She tried to turn the metal lawn chair into a rocker, which only made a rhythmic grating sound on the porch floor. “As okay as okay can be.” She lifted her head and stared out through the screens, not at Alice. “It's just life,” she said. “I don't think my faith can sustain me.”

Alice didn't know if her mother was pushing her away with that comment or inviting her in. Alice stepped in: “Sustain you through what? What are you going through?”

“You don't know? Intelligent as you think you are, are you really telling me that you don't know?” There was an edge to her mother's voice, almost disgust—as if she thought the answer was so obvious that only a fool would ask.

Alice paused and took a deep breath. “No, I
don't
know. What
are
you going through?”

A steer moaned mournfully from the feedlot, and Alice worried for a second that she might have missed some ailment when she fed them. Then another steer moaned in response. They were just talking to each other in a sweet eunuchs' conversation.

“What does any person go through when they realize there's no hope,” said her mother. “And that there should be no hope. Hope is not a way of honoring the Lord, it's a way of insulting Him. Selfish wishes. Hope is greed disguised.”

Never before had Alice imagined that her mother's scattered and so
often scathing thoughts could come together in such chilling generalizations. “Mother,” she said, and she paused and thought before going on. “How much time do you spend thinking like this? And how do I fit into your thinking?”

“You?” she said. “You. You'll find your way.” She paused even longer than Alice had paused. “If you can ever find it in your heart to learn humility,” she said in a voice of bitter finality.

“All right,” Alice said quickly. “Anything else?”

“If you ever stop thinking that the world revolves around you. Stop acting as if you can go your own way without thinking about other people. You think you're so clever. I can read that look on your face. I know you. I know you better than anyone knows you. I know you think everybody else is stupid.”

“Mother.” Alice's throat was tightening. “I know
you're
not stupid. Just confusing. But don't attack me. I don't deserve that.”

Alice was not going to show her mother any tears. In Alice's mind, her mother had lured her into a serious talk only to turn on her when her guard was down. Is this what they meant by sucker punch? How could she say Alice went her own way when most of her life was spent trying to help others? Aldah. Her father. The farm work. At school, she helped stupid, untalented singers who couldn't tell an E-flat from a pig's grunt. And, Lord knows, she had done more than her fair share of trying to help her mother by helping Aldah. Even helping her father was helping her mother. If Alice didn't do the chores, would her mother be doing them? Alice didn't
think
so. She pitied her pathetic mother at that moment, but she hated her mother for making her feel the way she was feeling. Whatever she was going through, it was not Alice's fault. Her mother put Alice in debate mode.