The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [25]
The Christmas I was four and my sister was 12 we drove and drove. From I-5 to Puyallup. Past Enumclaw. East on highway 7 to Elbe. Onto Highway 706 east through Ashford to Alexander’s. Then there is the entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park. I have driven it many times as an adult. That’s how I remember the path. Or so I tell myself.
But what I remember then is how bright the sun shone on the white - like an overexposed winter everywhere. How we got out of the car and made a snowman - my sister and my father and I. How we decorated the snowman with plastic Easter eggs that were in the car. How my mother laughed and wore her sunglasses and sat on the tailgate.
But too I remember my father’s voice when we drove fur - ther, and I fell asleep, and my sister began to read a book: “ What are you two doing, playing with yourselves? I bring you through the most beautiful scenery in the world and you are playing grab-ass? LOOK OUT THE GODDAMN WINDOW.” So we did. Silently. The side of my sister’s face looked as if it was made of stone. My ears burned.
We were dressed for our front yard - for maybe snowball fights with neighbor kids or going sledding. Running inside for new socks and hot chocolate. We had no food or water or blankets or radio or anything. Except a half finished plaid thermos of coffee. And matches. Both of my parents chain-smoked. My sister and I by this point were used to riding in the car like prisoners. Our father drove us to Mt. Rainier to get a tree. A goddamn tree. In the beautiful goddamn northwest.
The place we stopped to get the tree to me looked like the middle of nowhere. The “road” filled with more and more snow. The drive became steep - switchbacks and a permanent tilt to the Simca station wagon that kept my head pinned to the back seat. The heater in the car blew full blast. On the sides of the barely there road enormous evergreens and firs rose up like giant snow covered sentries. Beautiful but vaguely ominous. To me anyway. I couldn’t crane my neck hard enough to see the tops. Where he pulled over the trees were enormous. I remember wondering how we’d drag one back to our house … with a giant rope?
Where my father pulled over and stopped the car, my mother said, “ Mike?”
My father didn’t say anything. He simply made ready to get out of the car. So the little women followed him.
My mother wore a wool lined long gray raincoat with a faux fur raccoon collar and gold metal fasteners. Pointy movie star sunglasses. Her hair in a bun wrapped and wrapped on her head. Red lipstick. My sister wore a light ski jacket and red pants and a white fake fur hat with snowball ties and cotton kid gloves and black rubber K-Mart boots. I wore red corduroy pants and a smaller brown version of my sister’s hat with the pom pom ties and red galoshes and black cotton gloves - I remember our red pants because they stood out so in the snow. Like blood and urine do. And my mother made them. My father wore jeans and a fleece lined suede jacket and blond leather gloves. He pulled a handsaw from the back of the station wagon. And a rope. And my sister’s hand.
My mother and I immediately got behind on the ascent up the snow-covered hill. Think about this - my mother’s misshapen steps hobbling up and up. Me only four years old. Within five minutes the snow was up to my hips. Within 20 minutes up to my chin. My mother, again and again, pulled me out of a snow hole until I sunk into the next. The only way I experienced how cold it was happened in my mother’s voice when she yelled up to the dots of my father and sister getting smaller and farther up the hill, “ Mike! Lidia is blue!