The View From Who I Was (8 page)

Thirteen

From Oona's journal:

… running water attracts our consciousness like a magnet and draws a small part of it along in its wake. It is a force that can act so powerfully that one temporarily loses one's consciousness and involuntarily falls asleep.

—Viktor Schauberger

Corpse served herself tamales, beans, salad from the buffet and settled beside Mr. Handler at a round table in the school's dining hall. It had obviously once been a restaurant. Eight tables were spread across the half-moon-shaped room, and a bank of windows looked out on the panoramic southern view. A swinging kitchen door was on the back wall. On one side stretched a buffet table. On the other, a table with bins for dirty dishes and silverware.

“Oona,” Louise said, “this is Dr. Yazzie, our headmaster.” Dr. Yazzie was the guy in the gold T-shirt with the long braid we'd seen earlier. Now Corpse saw the symmetry of his forehead, cheeks, and chin; a movie-star face, smooth but for creases at his eyes.

“Dr. Benson, our flute master,” Louise continued. “Ms. Cole, who teaches history, and Mr. Gonzalez, who teaches science.”

“Hello,” Corpse said. First names applied only for the counseling office, it seemed. The flute master's face surprised her. It was light-skinned, and angled enough to cast shadows on itself, even in the dining hall's low light.

“Oona is here with Perry to help me out,” Louise said.

Corpse took a bite and paused. Mr. Handler wasn't joking about the food being good. While she ate, Mr. Handler asked about students he'd counseled last year. Corpse inventoried the room.

About forty students were sprinkled across the eight tables in groups of four or five. Several students were lighter-skinned than Corpse. At one table, a girl she'd have guessed was white talked fast, her face a storm, while the girl sitting with her nodded. At another, guys threw something small and silver, and the girls around them giggled and squealed. But for the shape of the tables and the quality of the food, it could have been Crystal High's cafeteria. I drifted toward the beamed ceiling, took stock of all those dark heads.

“You know the statistics, Perry. These kids are smart, but most need to feel they have a place within the school.” Dr. Yazzie's words drew Corpse back. She studied him but thought of Gabe, whose friends picked on him ceaselessly for being a good student.
Chingado
they'd call him: “Fucked.” It was good natured, sort of proud really, yet Gabe endured a constant current of banter. She thought of the Chicano students she knew who cared about grades and wondered why Gabe didn't hang with them instead. We'd avoided talking about it with him. Our being together was a similar thing. Except he'd been the farthest thing from
chingado
. Corpse snorted, and eyes around the table zinged to her.

Mr. Handler cleared his throat. “What about Susan?”

“She's doing great,” Louise said.

“She's a survivor, that one,” Mr. Gonzalez said. He resembled a young Albert Einstein: broom moustache, frizzy hair.

“You know her aunt is on the Navajo police force? That aunt's been a good role model,” Louise said.

“Cindy made it, didn't she?” Mr. Handler said.

Dr. Yazzie and Louise glanced at each other, then at Corpse, in the way adults do when they're trying to decide whether to divulge a thing in front of you.

“Her father died.” Louise's mouth, which arced down naturally, stretched down in a real frown. “Her mother had to get a job, so Cindy went home to help out with the kids.”

“She's so smart,” Mr. Handler said.

Louise nodded. “But her family needed her. Her father drove his truck in the ditch. Drunk. Tried to walk home on a frigid night. They found him sitting, frozen, at the entrance to their driveway. Apparently neighbors were driving past, waving.”

Ms. Cole shook her head. “I hadn't heard that last part.”

Mr. Handler cleared his throat.

Corpse focused on her tamales' texture, hoping to hide her flush. Did the teachers know she'd frozen to death? From the corners of her eyes, she could see students glancing at her and talking to each other. She imagined them saying
Why is she here?
Have you seen how she walks?
Look at her hand!

“What's Roberta done that she thinks I'll be disappointed in?” Mr. Handler said.

Louise laughed. “She skipped that summer internship you arranged at the hospital. Didn't even call to let them know.”

“Damn,” Mr. Handler said.

Louise looked at Corpse frankly. To Mr. Handler, she said, “You know, she's older than the rest. Turned eighteen last May.”

“Yes,” he said.

“She took a job as a stripper instead. Still goes back and works weekends. Calls herself ‘Destiny.'”

Corpse realized her tamale-laden fork was suspended in air. She moved it to her mouth.

Mr. Handler set down his fork and slumped back in his chair. He scanned the students in the room. Some of them had finished eating and were bussing their trays. Corpse followed his eyes to Roberta, who sat with her shapely back to us. I had an image of Roberta in a string bikini, slithering along a pole over an audience of salivating men, some hungrily waving dollar bills.

“Doesn't she have to be twenty-one?” Mr. Handler said.

Louise gave him a look.

We were eighteen too.

Angel sat across the table from Roberta, and I noticed how she watched Corpse. Corpse's eyes met hers. Angel's mouth turned down, but like Louise's, it was natural. Her eyebrows arched on the same path, a silky brow above. Then Angel pushed her tray forward, leaned on her elbows, and focused her attention on the guy next to her, the one who'd read about his grandmother at the conference.

Corpse forced herself to look out the windows at the stretch of dormant grass and sidewalk illuminated by footlights. It was trippy, being in a room with these people who'd settled in our mind as an ideal. Like peering through a dream. A dream you couldn't wake from. These weren't the people we'd imagined inhabiting that flute music. The ones who'd made us feel poor. Maybe the bullshit had been those conference readings. And then she thought,
Or maybe it was us
.

“You know,” Mr. Handler said, “I read the statistics. You even told them to me, but the reality is a lot harder to swallow.”

“Yes, it is,” Dr. Yazzie said. He studied Corpse's two fingers holding her fork, and his hand slipped into the pocket of his chinos.

After dinner, Corpse and Mr. Handler strolled along the road back to their rooms. The moon was new, and stars commanded the sky. Each step along the asphalt was like walking blind. Mr. Handler was quiet. I imagined I could see the students he'd discussed at dinner hovering in his thoughts as Corpse studied the inky gaps between the stars. We neared the dorm, which cast a frail light. A girl's playful shriek and then muffled voices reached into the night.

At Corpse's door, Mr. Handler said, “Why don't you take your time tomorrow morning. Get homework done, relax, whatever. Come by the office in the afternoon. We should have some work for you by then.”

“Okay,” Corpse said.

“I'm going to get an early start. They serve breakfast till nine. See you at lunch?”

“Okay.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. He swallowed, and his Adam's apple went up, down.

Corpse wanted to say
I'm sorry
about those kids, but I got in the way. She unlocked her door with the key. “Good night,” she said.

“Sleep well, Oona,” Mr. Handler said.

Before she closed the door, I saw Mr. Handler take three steps toward the mountain, cross his arms, rock back on his heels, and peer up. I supposed it couldn't have hurt, that kindness.

Fourteen

From Oona's journal:

Right in the middle of this rushing cold water … Schauberger pointed to the motionless stance of a so-called “stationary trout” … holding a stick over it, or even the shadow of the stick, was enough to make the trout dart upstream. The direction of escape was never downstream, but it always accelerated upstream. Very odd, because one would normally consider movement downstream to be the fastest avenue of escape …

—Coats, Living Energies

Corpse's noisy breaths rose white before her. She continued her long strides up the steep double-track, hoping to get warm. The valley, shaded from the morning sun by the mountain, trapped the cold. She pictured Gabe's breath clouds, hoped to reach them before he walked from his five-room, well-tended house along Crystal Creek, the one his family had owned since before the ski area arrived fifty years ago, to Manny's bass-thudding Blazer for his ride to school.

She worked to lessen the bob in her gait, willed her phantom pinkie toes to disappear. Halfway up she pulled her phone out of her fleece jacket pocket and found she had coverage. Five minutes till Manny arrived. She speed-dialed Gabe and, as his phone rang, scanned the landscape. She unzipped her fleece and fingered her heart necklace. I perched in the branches of a juniper.

She'd emailed with Gabe last night. Emailed with Mom too, and learned Dad had fled to Chicago for the week. Corpse had lain staring at the ceiling, unsettled by his leaving, then wrapped herself in a blanket, ambled onto the patio, settled into a plastic chair, and gazed at the night sky like she was reading Braille. She'd woken hours later, stiff and craving Gabe.

“Hey,” he said, surprised.

“Hey,” Corpse said. I imagined her sliding along that strip-club pole. She rubbed her forehead. “I needed to hear your voice.”

Gabe chuckled. “So you hiked up that mountain?”

“Partway.”

“I must rate.”

“You rate,” Corpse said.

In their silence, she sensed me sensing her. She glanced around at the arid forest and listened to Gabe's breaths, imagined inhaling his presence through the phone. Was his breath still breath when it reached her ear? She wanted to tell him that Dad had fled to Chicago. Yell it across the expanse. But she couldn't even whisper it.

Gabe said, “I heard back from Harvard yesterday.”

“And?” She pictured him standing in his entryway, wearing his letter jacket with the big
C
.

“I'm in!”

After visiting Yale last summer, Dad striding around like he owned the place, we'd ridden the two-hour train to Boston, near Harvard. We'd told Gabe about that train connecting the two schools, thinking he'd never get accepted.

“Wow, Gabe! That's amazing! Congratulations!”

“Yeah, thanks. I know soccer helped because they said I wasn't really supposed to hear yet, but they wanted to confirm I'd play. Offered a monster scholarship. Dad's flipped out. Even with the scholarship it costs a fortune. Well, a fortune to us. Anything's a fortune to us. But I tell you one thing—I'm not sticking around here to be a stone mason the rest of my life.”

Corpse traced her nose. She wondered how to be a new self. She hunched over, felt like she crumpled on the hollow space I'd left.

A hawk lit from the tree beside mine. I darted to Corpse as she flinched to the side.

“You okay?” Gabe said.

“Yes.” Her hand came to her heart. “Gabe, I got into Yale.”

Her keeping it from him stretched between them as silence.

“How long have you known?”

“A week.”

Silence again. The hawk soared out over the flat area at the mountain's base and began a giant spiral.

“I just … ”

“It's all right, Oona.” She could hear his hurt.

“You must be so excited. I mean, Harvard. Nobody gets into Harvard.”

“Nobody gets into Yale.”

“My dad made that happen.”

“Yes, well, being Chicano didn't hurt me either. You've got to take a break when it's there. Life is hard enough.”

The hawk hovered at eye-level a half-mile out, adjusting its wings in small movements to stay in place. Corpse imagined riding its back, felt herself right there in its feathers, the wind whipping her hair. It dove, so suddenly she felt suspended and stepped back. It disappeared into the sagebrush, only the tips of its stretched wings visible.

“You wouldn't chose your college just to be close to me, would you?” she said, and heard Manny's car honk.

“Look, I was never interested in anyone till you, Oona. I've never told you, but my dad has a saying:
No macho here. Hernandez men love big, and they love once.
”

A plane spewed a contrail across the sky. Corpse noticed contrails written by gone planes, fuzzy as they dispersed. She listened to Gabe's front door close and the bass of Manny's Blazer grow louder. The hawk's wings disappeared into the sage. I wondered at the evaporation rising off the desert panorama before us: Water, a ghost here.

“Will you call tomorrow?” Gabe said.

“
Chingado
,” Manny said. “Hang up, married.”

I pictured Gabe flipping Manny the bird.

“I'll let you go,” Corpse said. She slid her phone into her coat pocket. “I'm such bullshit,” she said to the air. After a minute, “
Rest of my li
fe.”

Graduating from high school was the end of being not-adult. Gabe, eighteen and hardly kissed. I pictured him beneath Roberta's stripper pole, looking up at Corpse. Corpse barked a laugh. Felt it tumble down the hollow space inside her as the hawk burst from the sage with something dangling from its beak. It climbed, crossing one contrail. Two. Three.

She turned away from the landscape, toward the school's valley, and pulled out her phone. She took a deep breath and pulled up her texts. Forty-two. Mostly from Ash. Corpse opened the most recent one. Two weeks ago, our first day back at school:
U r a user!!!
She opened the next, two weeks before that:
Where's my crown???!!!
The day we returned to Chateau Antunes:
Wat hav I dun?
The day we woke in the hospital:
Text me!!!!! Pleez!!!!!!

Corpse's hands fell to her sides. That tear trickling over Ash's cheekbone rose in her memory: Ash's pain laid bare by the moonlight. I pictured Ash on the stage at the winter formal, balancing that crown in front of her up-do. Saw that crown bobbing on Corpse's head as the paramedics hustled our stretcher along that suicide trail, their moonglow shadows cast long. That crown growing looser, looser, till it bounced off, the paramedic in back stepping on it. Mashing it into the soft snow without noticing.

Corpse blew out her breath and erased all the texts. No way could she go back to being best friends with Ash, but she could at least show some compassion and smooth things over when she got home.

The sun lit her shoulders, making them tingle. She thought how Gabe's handsome father had never remarried. Didn't even date.

She heard steps. Angel, wearing navy blue sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt, jogged down the double-track.

“Hey,” Corpse said.

“Hey,” Angel said.

They stared at each other.

Corpse held up her phone. “Making a call. You?”

“I was greeting the sun.” Angel's voice was just as we remembered it: slow yet soft, lilting.

“Oh,” slipped out of Corpse.

“I have to get going.” Angel grimaced and resumed descending, then paused. She looked at the ground. Kicked a rock. It sailed before gravity grabbed it. She didn't turn around, just said, “I dreamed of you three nights ago.”

“Me?” Corpse said, but there's no way Angel heard. She was hopping over rocks and rough spots, her braid swinging like a pendulum.

In the dining hall, two white women—one with a ponytail and one with gray hair like a scrub brush—sat talking, their trays pushed to the middle of their table. From the buffet Corpse noticed Angel, in jeans and an orange T-shirt now, sitting alone with a full plate. Angel saw Corpse, and her eyebrows pressed close.

Corpse spooned scrambled eggs and refried beans onto a plate, ladled chunky salsa down the side, and started toward a table near the windows. She stopped. Turned.

“May I join you?” Corpse said.

Angel nodded once.

Corpse sat two chairs away. “Why aren't you in class?” she said.

“I don't have first period. I have enough credits to graduate already.”

“Me too,” Corpse said. I wondered why she'd spend the morning ahead doing homework but knew she wouldn't be able to stop herself.

“Are you an urban Indian?” Angel said.

“A what?”

“An Indian from the city. One who maybe doesn't know traditions, Indian ways.”

“No. How could
I
be Indian?”

Angel shrugged. “There's a lot of mixed-blood or northern Indians here that don't look Indian.”

“My dad's Portuguese. I inherited this olive skin from him.”

Angel examined her. “When the newspapers or television or magazines come to report on the school, they always take photos of the kids who look Indian. They never take photos of the kids who don't. We get pretty sick of it.”

Corpse felt dumb again. “I just needed a change of scenery.”

Angel took in the red scars on Corpse's hand holding her fork.

“People visit here all the time,” she said. “Journalists, educational researchers, other teachers. Almost every week we have a visitor.” Angel pulled a face. “People like to visit Indians. It makes them feel like they've done a good deed or something.”

“Then why does everyone keep staring at me?”

“You're a legend: the girl who ran out during our presentation.”

Corpse set down her fork and put her hands in her lap.

“We tease William.”

“William?”

“The guy who'd just read when you left the room.
‘Beauty Repellent' is his nickname now.”

“It wasn't his fault.”

They analyzed one another. Angel's high, silky forehead and the forward tilt of her face made her seem honest. A pale line of scar meandered from her cheekbone to her chin. Corpse wondered at its history.

“You must be a senior then?” Angel said.

“Yes.”

“Going to college?”

“Not sure.”

Angel shot Corpse a questioning look.

Corpse shrugged. “I'm not sure if I want to go.” I heard her words' hollow ring. Away from home they'd lost their potency and sounded, well, spoiled.

“Where'd you get accepted?” Angel said.

Corpse told her.

Angel looked out the bank of windows. “I got accepted to Yale. It's a long way, Yale.”

“Yale's nice. Have you been there?”

“I've been to Harvard,” she said, seeming to watch something out the windows. Corpse couldn't see anything but the view.

Angel's eyes darted back to Corpse and then traveled directly to her shoulder. To me. I forced myself still.

“I need to get to class. See you around,” she said.

“See you.”

Angel walked to the table by the kitchen door and bussed her tray. Once in the common area, Angel didn't follow the sidewalk toward the dorms but a sidewalk leading right, past the empty swimming pool toward a big building. Probably meeting rooms converted to classrooms.

Corpse sliced me with a glance. “Bullshit,” she said, like
I thought so
.

That glance shoved me to the ceiling. I remembered Angel looking at me, and I dreaded her dream.

After lunch, Mr. Handler and Corpse strolled toward the office. The valley bottom was warmer now, so Corpse carried her fleece instead of wearing it. Mr. Handler's face was still drawn, but his shoulders sagged less beneath his white golf shirt. I wondered what he'd encountered that morning. Corpse tried to make out the logo on his shirt, but couldn't. She searched for something to say that might lift his spirits. I let her. She remembered the photo on his desk in his office back home.

“Your sons,” she said, “where did they go to college?”

Mr. Handler's shoulders straightened. “They're both at CU. Doing well. It's a good school.”

“What are their majors?”

“Phillip is a business major. Paul is a freshman, so he has no idea, but I suspect he'll go into teaching.”

“A teacher?” Corpse remembered Paul in the halls at Crystal High, could see him sucker-punching his buddies. How weird to consider him the opposite of student. Adulthood pressed close. I tried to shove it away, but Corpse drew it close and pictured herself in a white scientist's coat, hair drawn back.

Roberta sauntered toward them, and they turned to her.

“Okay, Lone Ranger,” she said. “Save me.”

Mr. Handler chuckled and we entered the office, the screen door clapping behind us. Louise was working at her desk and glanced up as Roberta sauntered to the back room.

“Louise has a project for you, Oona,” Mr. Handler said. He followed Roberta, leaving the door open a crack like he did when we were in his office back home. I felt sorry for Mr. Handler and Roberta. I pictured them sitting across from each other like opponents: Mr. Handler offering Roberta opportunities and her repelling them. I had an image of Roberta's swan body slithering along that pole with an angry glare. Blaming everything in life but herself.

“Oona,” Louise said.

Corpse blinked and turned to her.

“You all right?”

She nodded.

“Okay,” Louise said. “I have a project for you. Since you've just done this, and must have done it well because I heard you got into Yale, I'd like you to review the online application pages and procedures for the schools on this list.”

Louise handed Corpse a piece of lined paper with names as headings, short lists of colleges under each. “We'd like you to coach our juniors on filling out the Common Application and in looking at the requirements for the schools they're interested in. We'll save what we can and refer to it again in the fall. They may change their minds about schools, and that's okay. These applications can be daunting. Can you do that?”