The View From Who I Was (3 page)

Four

From Oona's journal:

Birds do not fly, they are flown,
fish do not swim, they are swum.

—Viktor Schauberger

When Corpse asked what happened after Dad, Gabe, and the police found us snoozing under the moon, the doctor popped his stethoscope from his ears, stepped back, and handed his clipboard to his nurse. He looked at Corpse with stern gray eyes that matched his hair and told her she'd had no pulse.

Yet the paramedics had wrapped her in blankets, strapped her to a stretcher, and rushed her along that narrow trail to an ambulance. The hospital was five minutes away, and on the trip there, and after she arrived, her heart said
Nope
. So the ER doc and nurses performed “cardiopulmonary bypass for re-warming.” Basically, they'd cut slits in her groin and slid tubes into her that pumped warm saline every ninety seconds. For seven minutes, no heartbeat. Then they detected a pulse. Guess her heart wouldn't beat unless her body warmed up. He estimated she was dead for twenty minutes.

Gangrene had set in “uncannily fast,” he said, so they amputated her fingers and toes. Mom insisted they reconstruct her nose and cheek right away, which, from the doc's expression, was also unusual, but I guess since the hospital's largest financial donor was asking, they did it. All this lay in murky, painkiller memory.

He told Corpse she might feel uncoordinated for life. He told her she might have brain damage. He told her she'd probably get pneumonia. He said her temperature when she was rescued was 74 degrees. He said it was a miracle she'd lived. He didn't mention the crown.

Live? She wasn't sure how to do that, so she just endured each breath.

We finally rode home in Dad's Porsche, to our Tuscan villa filled with Native American artifacts on a golf course in the Colorado Rockies. Go figure. But I guess the White House was modeled after ancient Greece, so whatever. Except weren't they going for that democracy theme? What were our parents going for?
Look how rich we are
?
Look at our castle in the mountains
? All we knew was it felt like a swanky hotel. Home? No way.

Chateau Antunes was constructed of stucco and stone and had a turret on one end, an observatory with a copper roof on the other. Part of that roof rolled back to glass beneath. On that one night a week when Dad was home, we could usually find him in there, leather recliner stretched out, gazing at the sea of stars, a highball glass balanced on his stomach, its amber liquid rocking on his breaths. And always, drifting down from the speakers, this same CD of a woman singing mournful songs in a foreign language.

Star charts hung on the walls. A huge telescope stood in the room's center. But Dad usually just lay back and gazed up. I guess he was fascinated by the atmosphere and the universe. Once, as we built a sandcastle on the beach in the Bahamas, one of our few memories with Dad, he said the sky was actually one big ocean, the universe beyond, too. Ocean upon ocean upon ocean.

“What do you mean?” We were only nine but excited at this rare moment with him. We were the one building that sand castle, and Dad just knelt next to us. We squatted, gripping a red plastic shovel. Down the beach, three seagulls squawked to flight and hovered, wailing. Dad glanced at them and scanned the sky. We craned over our shoulder to look at the loud birds and tried to imagine them swimming through the air.

“It starts with the sun,” Dad said. “Its energy strikes the earth's atmosphere. That atmosphere moves and rushes in response. It becomes currents, which swell and thin, creating weather. This weather blows across the ocean, making waves. The waves roll onto the shore, finally depositing the sun's energy as ripples in the sand. It's a long, long journey.”

His eyes slid across our cheek to the sea and then to someplace far away. We imagined it was to himself as a kid in Portugal. He would have been only a year older. The grown-up kneeling next to us transformed to a boy. He nodded, kept nodding, so lost and sad. We looked at the sun, then back at him, and he was Dad again.

“Will you help me build my castle?” we said.

He smiled so sadly.

“Dad?”

He rose, brushed sand from his knees, and walked away.

A sort of shiver passed through us, a sensation like sound buckling air, and
I
was born. I watched him move away from us through her eyes, reasoning, doubting, judging what we'd done to make him leave.

Now, at eighteen, we'd wander soundlessly down the long, plank-floored hallway from our bedroom, unable to sleep, and yearn to crawl into that recliner beside Dad. But he was made of sharp edges, so we'd just hover in the doorway, silent, and watch him scan that abyss. We imagined him drifting on that singer's sad words, searching for an anchor.

Sometimes we'd picture Mom, snoozing like a rock in their turret bedroom at the house's other end, the fake fireplace that passes through to their bathroom blazing away. Usually, though, she'd be downstairs in the theater, curled in a recliner of her own, watching a movie, sleepless too.

Now Corpse lay propped up in pillows, me hovering at her shoulder. Against her leg leaned our bible: the Schauberger book. Open in her lap rested the leather journal Gabe gave us last September, for our eighteenth birthday. On its tooled-leather cover, a giant oak stretched across a hillside. For four months we'd been scrimping on homework and writing in that journal instead. Like I said, we'd been a whiz in school, especially science. Lately we'd been fascinated by water, so most of the pages were about that. We'd also copied our favorite Dickinson poems into it: first from an online reproduction of those socially acceptable versions her friends had published, then, beside each, line-for-line, their original archived versions. We'd even tried to mirror Dickinson's handwriting—her
narrow dashes, her forward slant, her round loop for capital letters. Corpse ran her finger down the margins between those first published poems and their real selves, wondering.

She turned to a blank page and scrawled
orbits
and
breathe
, below. Below that,
home.

Writing in our journal used to help, but now it hurt. Her pencil and the two fingers holding it were suspended over air. Her thumb tired fast. Typing would be nigh impossible.

I'd been trying to puzzle out what I was. I'd always been our thinker, reasoner, doubter, but now I was out here. A spirit? A soul? That didn't seem right. Was this permanent? She was nothing without me. I considered whether I was like Aladdin's genie, released from the lamp of our body. Yet I was tethered to Corpse's flesh, had found that when she slept, I could stay alert for only minutes after her. I wondered if I had the power to grant her wishes. What would those wishes be? Death was off-limits after her promise to Dad.

Sugeidi trod in, took the half-full glass of water from our nightstand, filled it at our bathroom sink, and set it back down.

“Drink,” she said.

“Sugeidi, I can't,” Corpse said. “It makes me pee, and my feet are killing me.”

“Drink.”

Arguing with Sugeidi was like telling a tree to step aside. But the slow, steady way she moved around the house had always comforted us. Corpse took the glass, and for a minute there was only the sound of liquid rolling down her throat. Sugeidi folded back the blanket, once, twice, and unwrapped the gauze covering Corpse's feet. Bloody blisters had formed on the soles, and the rest was patched purplish-blue. They, along with her hands, issued a monotonous ache. A croak caught in Sugeidi's throat.

Sugeidi had lived in Crystal Village for thirteen years. All four of her kids had moved to this tourist valley from Mexico for the high wages unavailable in Monterrey. She'd followed them. Her husband came too, but he was killed a year later in a hotel construction accident. I had a faint memory of finding her crying at the kitchen sink, our six-year-old self hugging her leg to comfort her.

When we were little, she'd been our nanny too. I supposed she still was. Mom gave Sugeidi weekends off, and she stayed with Jesus, her oldest, in their double-wide at the trailer park. She was never much of a talker, we could always feel what Sugeidi was thinking. When she did talk, it was worth listening. English came hard for her, and she selected her words like she selected apples at City Market. Sometimes she'd say a thing, and we'd think
That's not right,
but then we'd consider what the word really meant, see why she'd used it, and realize the many ways of moving through this world.

That one croak she'd just made at the sight of Corpse's feet was an entire lecture.

In our bathroom she ran the tap. Corpse studied the pink beaded purse on our dresser. The one we'd left at the winter formal. Who had delivered it here? In it was our dead cell phone. She blinked at all the texts it must harbor.

Sugeidi carried out the shallow plastic pan that the hospital had sent home with us, sudsy with baby shampoo. Corpse scooched up in the bed. Sugeidi set the pan next to her feet. Corpse lifted her feet, and Sugeidi laid flat a towel, then eased the pan on top. Corpse lowered her feet into the water, sucking air through her teeth. With a soft cloth, Sugeidi washed them while Corpse rocked back and forth, gnawing her lip. Then Corpse set her feet on the towel and Sugeidi dried them as gently as possible. Her gray-streaked hair was pulled into a ponytail at her neck's base, and sweat beaded her brow.

“Do we have to keep the house so hot?” Corpse said.

“You need stay warm.”

“But you're sweating.”

Sugeidi waved dismissal and set to rewrapping Corpse's feet, careful of the sutures where her pinkie toes had been. I remembered her saying
This little piggy go market
, remembered one of her rare smiles as she said
Wee, wee, wee, all way home
. Those missing toes just about killed her, and before I knew it, Corpse, head tilted with listening, had reached out and petted her hair.

Sugeidi froze. Corpse froze. Sugeidi brought the back of her hand to her mouth. After a minute, she resumed wrapping the gauze.

She put things away in the bathroom. She stood in its doorway, rested her big knuckles on her stern hips, and gave Corpse a look. “Drink.”

Corpse lay back. “Okay.”

Us giving in like that was rare, and Sugeidi almost smiled.

“Sugeidi,” Corpse said,“where's Dad?”

Early each morning he'd come in and watched Corpse sleep, or at least he thought she was asleep. But we'd wake the minute he entered the room and she'd lie frozen, eyes closed, to keep him there. Coffee cup in hand, he'd lean against the wall and stare at her for half an hour, those chocolate eyes from the hospital gone. I'd hover near his shoulders, close as I dared, feeling Corpse longing to make him stay while I dreaded it. After dinner he'd stop in for maybe five minutes. He'd start fidgeting, rise, and say good night.

“In he office,” Sugeidi said.

Corpse pictured Dad at his wide, shiny desk, working away, financial news murmuring from the TV mounted on the adjacent wall. He'd gaze at our photograph, maybe miss us when we were right here.

“Sugeidi, where's home to you?” Corpse said.

Sugeidi pressed her lips. She unfolded the blankets over Corpse's legs and smoothed them flat.

“Sugeidi?”

She straightened. “Mexico
es mi sangre, mi
blood. But home
es
mi
children.
Y
you.”

“Sugeidi.” That child's voice. I hated it. Corpse held out her arms, her one bandaged hand.

Sugeidi hugged Corpse in her slow way, a thing she hadn't done since we were in third grade. I drifted to the ceiling. Corpse smelled coffee and eggs in the gray cotton of Sugeidi's stupid maid dress. I thought how we all knew she'd wanted to come help us dress for the winter formal, a thing Mom would never allow. It had been a Saturday, after all. I realized how she would not even have known the horrible thing we'd done until she'd showed up to work Monday morning. Corpse squeezed shut her eyes against how awful that must have been.

“I'm sorry,” Corpse said. Sugeidi rocked her carefully.

She's our real mom
, she thought, and it came to me why Mom had insisted, all these years, that Sugeidi keep wearing that dress. Why it made us so mad.

Corpse whispered, “You're my real mom.”

Sugeidi held her at arm's length. She shook her head. “You have one mother, and she die inside.”

Corpse snorted. Mom was probably skiing with her girlfriends at that moment. No point asking where she was.

“Oona.” We loved how Sugeidi drew out the
Oo
part of our name, made it sound like it could roll across oceans. “You heal her.”

“What?”

“Oona.
Es
time. Promise. Heal her.
Y
him. For you.” Sugeidi's eyes darted to where I hovered.

Corpse scowled and looked at the lumps in the blanket
made by her feet. Weren't people supposed to be worrying about us?

“
Me lo prometes
,” Sugeidi said. “You are wise, strong.” She made a fist.

Corpse laughed. “
Promise you
? I'm not wise! I just tried to kill myself!”

“
Sí.
You know now.”

“Know what?”

Sugeidi looked out the tall window over our nightstand. “I watch birds … ” She seemed to search for words. “
Se vuelan
.”

“What?”

“Birds no fly. Birds adjust the air.”

But Corpse had understood the Spanish. We'd read this same idea in our water bible. Had recorded it in our journal, and considered it long and hard because it had brought back that day on the beach with Dad. Had Sugeidi snooped in our journal? Corpse studied Sugeidi, knew she always underestimated her. She pictured Sugeidi sitting in front of her son's trailer, rocking in a chair, head tilted back to study wings overhead. Maybe Sugeidi longed, just once, to soar.