In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [72]
There was little I felt then—not fear, or loathing, not a need to escape. I was still in that closet, my knees drawn tight, my chin tucked. It was dark and quiet. If I just sat still and breathed carefully in and out, no one would see me, know I was there. I might even forget myself.
Again, shame. I’m to undress. My mother searches the bends of my knees and elbows for needle tracks. She leaves me, goes to her room, closes the door. My father comes, raises the back of his hand, says through his teeth, “Don’t you ever do this to your mother again.” I stare out the window. I am solid, I feel nothing. I wait for my door to close, then pull back the clean blankets and place my body between the whitest sheets. After a while, pots clatter in the kitchen. The washing machine hums. I sleep for a long time.
The next day, it is explained that I have become impossible. I understand that I have a choice: juvenile detention at St. Anthony, or summer spent living with the Langs outside of Spokane. Tve heard what happens to new girls at the juvenile detention center—rape, broken broomsticks, razors. I choose the Langs. I have not seen them for over a year. I think I can keep my new self safe from them. I think they cannot hurt me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The hills of the Palouse Prairie rose and fell outside my window like the deep swells of an emerald ocean. The land, only twenty miles north of Lewiston, seemed yet another kind of foreign—no trees, no water, only wheat and peas stretching off into the horizon. I leaned my head back against the seat and thought of all I had left behind: Patti, the slough, my hidden stash of makeup. One pack of cigarettes was tucked in my sock. I’d have to ration them carefully, not knowing how or when I’d get money to buy more.
What I’d been allowed to take was little: a suitcase full of clothing, and the blue leather Bible the Langs had given me two years before on my twelfth birthday. Whatever else I might need, the Langs and the Lord would provide.
I closed my eyes and imagined what Luke must look like. Sixteen and taller, maybe different hair but the same eyes and smile. Still, he would be like them, shunning me for my sins. And I didn’t care. They could all rot in hell if they thought a few months were going to change anything.
The hills gave way to forest and I breathed in the familiar pine smell. Post Falls, where the Langs lived, spread out from the banks of the Spokane River, supported by a saw mill. We pulled to a stop in front of a modern split-level, so new the lawn had yet to sprout. I sat sullen until my father opened my door and motioned me out with a sideways nod.
Brother and Sister Lang greeted us with hoots, hugs for the women, hard back-claps between the men. Luke was at work—he had dropped out of school the year before and was doing home correspondence—but the others paid me the same attention they always had, as though nothing had changed. Their honest smiles and teasing coupled with the fact that no one mentioned our reason for being there gave the entire afternoon a feeling of unreality: I could find no opportunity to respond with disdain nor protest some remark critical of me or my friends. They ignored my hunched shoulders and tight-lipped scowl. Sister Lang offered me lemonade and cookies, which I refused. “Good,” she laughed. “More for me, then.”
My parents left that evening, just as the sun slipped its last light through the close branches of tamarack. I shivered a little, hands tucked against my sides. I watched their car find its way up the unpaved road and then onto the highway, where my mother leaned out her window and gave a final wave. I desperately wanted a cigarette and wiggled my foot up and down to feel the sweaty cellophane slide reassuringly between sock and skin. My Levi’s, split and frayed along the leg seams to fit