Alicia lives in a garage with her Daddy. It’s big enough for one car, or two people if one of them is small. The garage belongs to a Christian family who are letting them stay there because they say it’s God’s Will. Alicia asked Daddy if God knew they needed a place to stay, and Daddy laughed and said God probably didn’t exist so she shouldn’t worry about it.
What Alicia’s Daddy believes in instead of God is the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who is the King of Transcendental Meditation. Alicia doesn’t believe in the Maharishi, or Transcendental Meditation, but she doesn’t say that. There’s a photo from a magazine of him that’s taped over the almost-made-of-wood dresser. If Alicia stands in the middle of the garage and turns in a circle she can see their whole lives, the mattress on the floor and the cardboard box with her toys, and the hotplate for making tofu stir-fry and the refrigerator that’s so small it’s even smaller than Alicia and she’s only seven.
There’s also a record player that Daddy is always wanting to throw away because he says it’s broken but Alicia loves how it makes everybody, even John Denver, sound like they are Alvin and the Chipmunks. She can sing “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” in two minutes, now, except Daddy says not in the car because it makes him have to take an Exedrin. There’s a phone with a cord that goes all the way into the Christian people’s house, and it is for calling anyone but Mama. And the wall, the whole wall lifts up like a giant door. Not even the Starship Enterprise has a door like that.
The garage is way nicer than the other places they stayed when they first got to California. They came here from the whole other side of America because Mama is unfit, which Daddy says means Bad Mother, but when Alicia thinks about Mama, she thinks about sitting in her warm lap. Leaning back, listening to stories about Princess Tapioca and her mother Queen Milk and how they defeated the Duke of Salt in their balsa wood airplane. Feeling Mama’s low voice vibrate through her whole body.
When Alicia and Daddy first got to California they stayed at a campground in a green tent. Then they stayed on the floor of Daddy’s friend’s apartment. And now they are at the garage because it is God’s Will, but not, Alicia notices, God’s Will to let them inside the house ever.
On Monday Daddy drops Alicia off at school. When they lived with Mama in Baltimore there were snow days all the time, but California never has snow days because there is only one kind of weather and it happens every single day. California also has way more rules than Baltimore did. One of them is that you have to live in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom ranch house. And yeah, you can have a Daddy, and maybe a sister, but you must have a Mama. A Mama is even more important than the two bathrooms. So at school she pretends she’s following the rules too. At school she calls the garage her house and only the teachers know that she only has a Daddy and nothing else.
She eats lunch with Ramona the Pest. Alicia wishes Ramona really did go to her school because Ramona never calls her ugly or runs away from her. Once Heather from the other first grade said she looked like Alice in Wonderland and then she said, “Except fat,” and it seemed like the other girls would never stop laughing, would be grandmothers still howling that Heather was the funniest girl in school, following Alicia around with their aluminum walkers and rinsed-blue hair.
But when Alicia reads she gets very still. So still that the group of kids on the other end of the cafeteria table forget she’s there and she’s able to listen to their conversation, try to piece together the rules of being a kid in California. One boy is saying that yesterday was a Wait Until Your Father Gets Home Day and the others groan. He says he got spanked for not cleaning his room. The other kids pat his back and talk about the times they’ve had those kinds of days. Alicia listens and is glad that she doesn’t have a Wait Until kind of Daddy. He gets mad and yells, but that’s all.
The other kids, their moms come to school all the time. They help in class and bring cupcakes for birthdays and come to field trips. The fathers only come for things like soccer games and dance recitals. The fathers wear dark blue suits and talk to other fathers. They exchange business cards. They check their watches when they think no one is looking. Alicia knows if Daddy were ever able to get time off from the mail room to come to a school recital, he would not check his watch. Not even once.
When the last bell rings the kids who have moms whose whole job is being a mom, they all get picked up. Some have babies or toddlers with them and those ones honk their wood-panelled station wagon horns so they don’t have to get out of the car. Miss Susan arrives and gathers up the other kids, the ones whose moms have non-mom jobs. Alicia goes too. In the after school room, she sits in her favourite beanbag chair and reads, and one by one those kids are picked up too, by their high-heel moms in skirts and lots of make-up.
When the last kid is gone, Miss Susan always asks Alicia if she’d like to play. It’s the best part of school, that last hour when it’s just her and Miss Susan, who is like an old lady version of Ramona Quimby with her short white hair and big grin. One time when her dad was very, very late, she fell asleep on the beanbag while Miss Susan sang her a song about a mockingbird and stroked her hair. Inside Alicia’s head, where no one can see, she wishes her dad would be late like that again.
Today Miss Susan shows Alicia how to heat up crayons until they’re like crayon paint, and they both make paintings. Alicia’s painting looks like fireworks. When Daddy rushes in he’s saying sorry, sorry, just like every day, and Miss Susan is saying it’s all right, and Alicia is pretty sure she’s the first kid Miss Susan ever met who only has a Daddy.
If it’s dark when they get home, they go to the vacant lot next to the garage. It’s like Alicia’s own secret garden except instead of flowers it has swaying weeds and they are so high they are taller than her. Alicia and Daddy lie on the ground and make pictures with the stars. They sing Alicia’s favourite song, the one with the math and the inchworms. Daddy sings the math part and Alicia sings the worm part and, even though they are singing different things with different notes, it is still one song they are singing together.
But, today, even though it’s already dark, they go to the Goodwill. Daddy needs a new tie because he’s going for a job interview at a place called Enterprise Data Center. While Daddy looks at ties, Alicia is in the toy section, but most of the toys are for little babies, like the pull-string duck that goes quack. Daddy comes over with a blue and brown striped tie and says, “Hey, look. They have Barbies too.” He picks up two dolls from the top shelf.
Alicia jumps up and down. Barbies! At the Goodwill! But when she sees the dolls her shoulders slump. She shakes her head. None of the girls at school would even look at a Barbie like this one. “They’re broken,” she says.
Daddy holds up the doll with the burned arm. “Oh wow,” he says. “I didn’t even know they were selling Pediatrician Barbies yet.”
Alicia looks up.
“I only just heard about these. They’re very special and rare. See? Her arm’s burned because she saved a bunch of kids at the hospital, it was on fire.”
Alicia reaches out and touches the burned arm. “Really?”
“Really. And this,” he holds out the headless doll, “This is Senator Barbie. She’s a Senator even though she doesn’t have a head.”
“A Senator?” Alicia breathes. She takes the headless Barbie and cradles her. “Could we buy her?”
Daddy checks his wallet. He hesitates but says, “We could buy both of them.”
At home Alicia puts both Barbies on the narrow windowsill where she can always see them. Then Daddy reads her to sleep.
The next day, Daddy is meditating, sitting cross-legged in front of her Tinkertoys container where he’s put a candle in a saucer. Alicia hates it when he meditates because the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is telling her Daddy lies.
The Maharishi says that if you just follow the Transcendental Meditation rules, which are to light a candle and chant a word called a mantra inside your own head for twenty minutes every day, you will find True Happiness. First of all, whenever Daddy meditates it’s like he sneaks out of the garage and leaves his body there. One time when he was meditating, she tiptoed over to the phone and took it all the way to the open garage door. She tried to call her Mama, but she didn’t know the phone number. So, she just dialed until the phone rang on the other end. Her Mama wasn’t there, even though she called lots of different numbers. Daddy yelled so loud when the phone bill came. But the point is that he didn’t even know because he was too busy meditating.
And, second of all, if meditating were the path to True Happiness, then Daddy would be happy. And he isn’t. If Daddy asked her — he will never ask her, but if he did — Alicia would say that happiness is when the swing goes so high there’s a bump at the top and you think it’s going to go all the way around, but it doesn’t. When it’s so hot and you drink icy water from the hose. When you go a whole day at school without anyone calling you a name. The Maharishi is a dumb liar and Alicia would like to rip his picture into a billion pieces.
On Saturday morning Daddy says they’re going to a house where there’s a party for people who believe in Transcendental Meditation. Alicia stomps her foot and cries that she wants to stay home and he can go, but he yells that he can’t afford a babysitter, goddamn it, and she can stay home by herself when she’s twelve and not before. So when they get there Alicia is already mad. Inside the house smells like someone was making broccoli millet stew and then said, “You know what this stew is missing? A hundred sticks of incense.” The floor is covered in people sitting cross-legged and saying Omm and Alicia wishes she were brave enough to shout, “That is ALSO not the path to True Happiness!” but she isn’t brave enough.
A lady with raven black hair and lips red as blood just like Snow White comes over to Daddy and says, “Hi. I’m Vanessa.”
Alicia looks up at Daddy and it’s just like when he meditates. Like he’s not there. And even if she pulled on his hand, he wouldn’t notice her. He and Vanessa just keep looking at each other until a little girl in a ponytail comes over and the woman says, “Oh! this is my daughter, Clover,” and Daddy introduces Alicia too.
Clover is taller than Alicia even though she’s not even seven yet and she’s missing two bottom teeth. When Clover does a cartwheel right there in the house, a bunch of people clap. Pretty soon Vanessa and Daddy are sitting on the couch eating gross broccoli millet stew and staring at each other some more. People are drifting through the room in caftans and Alicia is giggling inside her head because they’re all using the same voice. Like there’s a giant invisible baby in the room and they’re trying not to wake it up, and they are all saying things like feel the essence and my chakras and tomorrow I’m being rebirthed in Montecito.
Alicia and Clover are sitting at a small table with paper and crayons. They’re the only kids at the Transcendental Meditation party. Clover is drawing a really, really good picture of a girl on a swing. Way better than Alicia can draw. She circles her crayon over her paper, pretending she’s about to do the best picture ever but Clover isn’t even looking.
Alicia says, “Where do you live?” then adds, “I live in a three-bedroom, two bathroom ranch house with my Mama and Daddy.”
Clover says, “Oh. Me and my mom live in a mansion.” She colours the girl’s T-shirt green. “My dad let us live in it when they got divorced, ‘cause he had other houses.”
Alicia wonders if Clover is a millionaire, because isn’t it only millionaires who live in mansions? Like that Cootie Catcher game the other girls play at school, where you choose the boy and the number of kids and the kind of car and the house you want and for house you have to write mansion, or ranch house, or trailer or… or shack. Is a shack the same as a garage? One time Nicole got David Cassidy and seven children and a Ford truck and a shack and all the other girls squealed and pointed at her and chanted, “Shack! Shack! Shack!”
Alicia gets to see the mansion a week later, because she’s invited to Clover’s seventh birthday party. She gets out of the car and looks up. The mansion has three floors and a billion windows and balconies everywhere. The driveway in front of it is made of stones that are round and smooth, and everywhere there are moms zooming off in colorful convertible cars. Alicia thinks if you asked those moms what the garage is for they would say, “That’s where my Ferrari and Lamborghini live!” and Alicia imagines the Lamborghini making a tofu stir-fry at the hot plate and giggles. Vanessa and Daddy make googly eyes at each other. Before Daddy leaves, he and Vanessa kiss. On the mouth.
Before the party, Daddy took her to Goodwill to pick out a dress. When she found the pink dress covered in lace with the skirt that twirled out in a perfect circle, she knew it was the right one.
Alicia follows Vanessa inside. Their living room could fit her school cafeteria in it. The ceiling must be three stories high. Clover is in the middle of a circle of girls, which is when Alicia realizes everyone else is wearing shorts and T-shirts. She hugs herself.
“You can put your gift over there,” Vanessa says, pointing to a table laden with wrapped boxes, before running off to the kitchen. Alicia looks at the boxes, the fancy ribbon curls, and then sets down her own box, which is chocolates from the drugstore wrapped in the comic book page from the newspaper. She makes sure no one’s watching and then rips off the FROM: ALICIA tag. Alicia stands by the table in her stupid, ugly, too-fancy dress. She wishes she had a watch to check, to see how much longer she has to stay.
The new tie works. Daddy gets the Enterprise Data Center job and they celebrate by going to see The Rescuers at the dollar matinee. He does a thing called Data Entry now. When she’s looking through books at the library and sees a picture of a bunch of monks copying the Bible she thinks of Daddy in that quiet, sunlit room, copying names and addresses with a feather quill.
After the party, they’re at the mansion almost every single weekend. The first Saturday they stay over, Alicia is so excited to sleep on the top bunk, which is something she’s never done before. But, when she’s standing in her nightgown at the bottom of the small ladder, Clover turns to her mom and says, “She can’t sleep there!”
Alicia looks up at the top bunk and sees that it’s covered in stuffed animals, so many that it’s like Clover has her own Goodwill toy section. She looks again and thinks no, not Goodwill. These are Toys R Us stuffed animals. Some of them even have tags on them still.
Vanessa says, “Your stuffed animals can have an adventure, just for tonight, they can sleep in your toy box.”
Clover begins to sob. “No,” she says, “They would be too scared in the toy box!”
Vanessa looks at her watch and sighs. “Oh, all right. Alicia, we’ll make you a nice bed on the living room couch, okay? Just this once. Next time we’ll clear off the top bunk.” But no one ever does clear it off and Alicia isn’t sure if she’s allowed to say anything. So, on weekends she sleeps in the living room. There’s also a meditation room and a study where Vanessa does homework for her school which is called The University of California. Alicia snuck in once to see if she could understand the homework, but she didn’t even know what the first word in the textbook meant.
The grown-ups spend most of their time in Vanessa’s bedroom meditating with the door locked. They spend way more than twenty minutes, and they don’t even bring in candles. They are always saying, “Go on and play, girls,” But there are California rules, so when they’re in the car on the way home and Daddy says, “Did you have a nice time playing?” Alicia doesn’t tell him that the minute Vanessa’s bedroom door closed, Clover said, “I don’t play with fat girls.” Or that Clover’s voice was warm and that she smiled when she said it. “You can sit over there and watch TV,” she said, and pointed to the far side of the long couch.
“Sweetie?” says Daddy, and Alicia doesn’t tell him about the grim silence as they watched The Love Boat. That’s the rules. Daddy works hard to make sure everything is okay, and Alicia pretends she doesn’t mind Clover hating her. Or Vanessa ignoring her. Or the aching with every-breath anguish of being away from Mama.
So, “Yeah, it was nice,” is what she says instead.
When they’re at the mansion, it’s like they are four people playing 4-Square, except half the people won’t even hit the ball to each other. Daddy talks to Alicia, Vanessa talks to Clover, the grown-ups talk to each other, but that’s all. Alicia’s memories of Baltimore are patchy, but she does know there was a time when she was a part of a real family. Three people laughing together with nothing more than the joy of being in the same room.
She watches Vanessa braid Clover’s long hair, both of them giggling. She wonders if she lived with Mama instead of Daddy, would Mama braid her hair? Or would she be such a Bad Mama she’d be doing mean stuff instead? Would Alicia be by herself because Mama would rather be anywhere but with her? When Vanessa finishes braiding Clover’s hair, she kisses the top of her head. Alicia looks away.
By winter, she can tell that the grown-ups aren’t meditating anymore. From the living room couch, louder than Mr. Roarke welcoming people to Fantasy Island, Vanessa is yelling.
“I saw you smile at that waitress. You want to date her, you should date her,” and Daddy is saying, “What waitress?” and then the next week she’s shouting about how Daddy lied about going to Alicia’s doctor on Monday, even though Alicia was at the appointment because her dumb ear infections keep coming back and no one can figure out why. Then, a few weeks later, Vanessa is screaming about how Daddy wants to marry Miss Susan, who is a grandma.
Alicia quits watching TV with Clover. She reads in the kitchen, instead, which is farther away from Vanessa’s room. But, even though Clover turns the TV volume up as high as it can go, Alicia can still hear the yelling.
When she’s home, she doesn’t play records anymore. She lies on the ground in the vacant lot with her eyes closed and listens to cars, and crickets, and faint barking, and her whole body goes from being made of wires to being made of noodles. On Fridays, when all the other kids are happy it’s almost the weekend, Alicia can feel her stomach start to fill with small, angry wasps.
One Saturday, when Clover is at Michelle B.’s house for a sleep over and Daddy is in bed sneezing, Vanessa walks into the living room. Alicia looks up from her book. “Um, hi,” says Vanessa. Alicia tries to remember the last time it was just her and Vanessa in a room and can’t. “Your dad’s taken some cold medicine and I thought we could run errands and give him a chance to have a nap. Does that sound okay?”
Alicia wishes it was a real question she could answer with real words, like, “Why do I have to go anywhere with you? Why do I have to act like we know each other? Why do I have to call the four of us a family just because you’re girlfriend-boyfriend with Daddy?” But she knows it isn’t a real question. She says okay and goes and gets her shoes on.
In the car, Vanessa puts the Carpenters in the 8-track player and they listen to Karen Carpenter be on top of the world as they head to the store. Vanessa sings along in a high, pretty voice and Alicia tries to remember if she ever heard Mama sing, but she can’t. After a long silence, during which Karen Carpenter says goodbye to love, Vanessa clears her throat. “Um, want to play the alphabet game?”
Alicia thinks that maybe Vanessa feels as weird as she does. She thinks that maybe Vanessa didn’t want to ask her to come on errands but had to because of babysitting rules. “Okay,” she says. They find an avocado tree and a boat, a Carl’s Jr., and a dog, and they get all the way to L before Vanessa pulls into the grocery store parking lot. Inside, Vanessa shows Alicia the grocery list and she finds just the right kind of rice. The pears aren’t ripe but will be soon. Vanessa buys Alicia a carob Tiger’s Milk bar at the checkout.
When they get back, Vanessa disappears into her room with Daddy, and Alicia goes into the back yard and sits on the manicured grass. The sun is going down and the sky is pink and purple and blue all at once. She hugs the day to herself, but in her head, she replaces the grocery store with the library. Replaces avocado trees with oaks and the boat with sledding children. Replaces Vanessa with Mama.
On Alicia’s eighth birthday, the four of them go to the Good Earth Restaurant. Clover colours in the dancing vegetables on the children’s menu and Alicia blows bubbles with her straw into the water. Daddy and Vanessa yell at each other. Alicia focuses on making the biggest bubbles. She doesn’t want to look up and see the other people in the restaurant feeling sorry for her and Clover.
The grown-ups started fighting in the car. They’re always fighting in the car. Vanessa will say, “Can you turn up the air conditioner?” or Daddy will say, “I’ve got to go in to work on Sunday,” and the screaming will start, but it won’t be audible right away. It’ll be green slime seeping up from the floor mats, covering everyone’s feet. Rising and rising. Vanessa will drive too fast and Alicia will try to read her book, but she’ll just end up staring at the same words, thinking about the weekends she used to spend in the garage. Flying the Tinkertoy airplane from Dressertown to Vacant Lotville.
After dinner, the waitresses sing Happy Birthday To You and everyone has a slice of carrot cake, but Alicia’s has a candle on it. She blows out the candle and the waitresses say hooray and clap so hard that Alicia feels warmed, feels like maybe the waitresses are sad that this is how her birthday went and are trying to help. The carrot cake is very, very good.
And for a few months nothing changes very much. Alicia and Daddy are at the garage on the weekdays and at the mansion on the weekends. Daddy likes his Data Entry job. Alicia starts reading Beezus and Ramona and wonders if she’s kind of Clover’s big sister now, like how Beezus is Ramona’s big sister. One day on the way to the mansion they stop at a flower shop and Daddy buys twelve red roses. He says that it’s the one-year anniversary of the day he and Vanessa met.
The grown-ups decide that to celebrate everyone is going to a Transcendental Meditation Retreat. They say they need to get back to meditating, to get back on the path to True Happiness. Alicia wishes someone would ask her to say the path to True Happiness. She would tell them to never see each other again for the rest of their lives. But no one asks her.
At the retreat, there are lectures where soft ladies in soft robes play Tibetan singing bowls and say things like just as there cannot be a green forest without green trees there cannot be a peaceful world without peaceful individuals, and Alicia watches Daddy nod along with everyone else. Like they’d all eaten breakfast that morning instead of skipping it so Daddy could yell at Vanessa about using all the hot water for the shower. Alicia thinks if Wonder Woman came and lassoed them with the Lasso of Truth, and said “Do you like yelling?” they would say, “We love yelling! It is our favourite thing in the whole world!”
The grown-ups fight for six of the seven days. They don’t fight on the seventh day because they’ve stopped talking to each other. On the way home from the retreat they say things like, “Alicia, don’t you wish you had something other than tofu for dinner?” and “Clover, wouldn’t you rather take a faster way home?” until Alicia leans her head against the window and pretends to be asleep.
When they get back to the mansion, Alicia waits until Clover’s in the bathroom and then climbs up to the forbidden top bunk. She takes a small stuffed hippo and goes fast out the back door. Outside, sitting in the dark, she rips off all its legs and buries the evidence.
The next Saturday when they get to the mansion, Vanessa calls a family meeting at the giant dining room table. Everyone sits on the same end so they can hear each other. She says that first of all she and Daddy are going to be meditating twice a day, so the girls need to be very quiet when that happens. Then she says they’re all moving into a three-bedroom ranch house, so they can be together all the time instead of just the weekends. Vanessa and Daddy have big smiles. Alicia stares at them.
“Girls, you’ll have your own rooms and everything.” Vanessa leans forward. “It’ll be our own house, just for our family.”
“We have a house,” says Clover, “a perfect house for you and me.”
Alicia wishes the grown-ups would quit saying family. It’s not a family, it’s just a boyfriend-girlfriend who happen to have daughters.
Vanessa laughs. “We’re not asking you for permission.”
“Maybe you should!” says Clover, “Because it’s a stupid idea!”
When the grown-ups ask what Clover means, she just shrugs and won’t say anything more. Alicia knows why, it’s the rules. No one talks about the yelling or the green slime. At first Alicia never talked about it because she was always hoping it would stop. And by the time it was happening every day the rules were clear. Say the word family a lot. Ignore everything that makes it a lie.
When Clover won’t answer, the grown-ups say things like, you girls are so lucky and don’t worry and you’ll be like real sisters now, which makes Alicia want to throw something.
That Sunday night when Alicia and Daddy are back at the garage, Daddy lights the candle on the saucer for the first time in a long time and meditates in front of Alicia’s Tinkertoy container. Alicia plays with Pediatrician Barbie in whispers. When he’s done, he blows out the candle and says, “One of the best parts about moving is you’ll be able to invite your friends over.”
Alicia looks up. “What?”
“When we move, silly. You won’t feel ashamed of where we live anymore.”
Alicia can’t think of anything to say that follows the rules. Without rules she would say, “What makes you think I feel ashamed?” Without rules she would say, “I would live in this garage for the rest of my life if I could.” Without rules she would say, “Are you so dumb you think I have friends?” But she looks at his big smile and can’t bear to make it go away. Besides, what if she did tell him what it’s like at school? What could he do? Come with her on Monday and demand that Amy and Heather sit with her at lunch? So she pretends he didn’t say anything and helps Pediatrician Barbie go back to school to learn how to be a fireman.
Two weeks later, Alicia and Daddy go to the grocery store and ask for extra cardboard boxes so they can pack up the garage. Alicia likes that their whole life fits in seven boxes. She goes to the windowsill to pack the Barbies but they aren’t there. Daddy reaches into a dresser drawer and pulls out a brand new Pretty in Pink Barbie. It’s still in the box and everything.
“I threw the broken ones away,” he says. “See? It’s a moving day present.”
Alicia says thank you, but that night as he talks and talks to Vanessa on the phone, she wonders how Daddy could have thought a Barbie who only knows how to wear dresses could replace one who did a heart transplant on a Troll Baby. Or passed a bill making Gloria Steinem president.
In the morning, with all their boxes packed in the car and the mattress waiting for the garbage men on the curb, the garage is just a garage again. Cement floor, dust bunnies. The phone sitting in the corner. It looks like it’s never been anything but a place for cars. When they get to the new house, it smells of beige paint. There’s a new beige couch and a beige table and the carpet is beige too. Cardboard boxes are everywhere. Everyone spends the day unpacking, and they share three large cheese pizzas for dinner. Alicia falls asleep fast in her new bed in her new room.
The next day is Mother’s Day. Alicia wakes up in the dark and sits on the couch in the living room. The new house is smaller than the mansion, but it still feels like a place that Alicia and Daddy are visiting. As the sky gets lighter, she tries to remember things about Mama. She thinks she can remember touching her corn silk hair, but then isn’t sure if she’s just making it up. Like how people on In Search Of are always remembering how their pick-up trucks got sucked up by UFOs. She wonders if Mama knows it’s Mother’s Day.
When everyone else wakes up, Daddy shoos Vanessa back into the bedroom and then whispers to the girls that they’re going to make a special breakfast for Mother’s Day. Daddy mixes up pancake batter, and Clover makes toast and puts strawberry jam on it. Just like at the Good Earth Restaurant. When the first pancake is raw in the middle, Daddy puts it in the garbage and sighs and starts again. Alicia thinks that he looks like he’s making pancakes because that’s what people do in Mother’s Day commercials, not like he actually wants to make pancakes. She pours orange juice into a tall glass and only spills a little bit.
The three of them carry breakfast into the bedroom, where Vanessa sits up against the pillows and claps her hands. “Oh, this is beautiful,” she says. “Thank you.” And Alicia thinks again about how it feels like everyone’s just doing a Mother’s Day commercial. She half-expects a blonde lady to pop into the room and say, “Breakfast in bed is nice, but what’s even nicer is a Hallmark Card that Mommy can treasure forever. Hallmark Cards are available at a fine drugstore near you.”
Clover climbs into the bed and Vanessa puts her arm around her and kisses her forehead. Daddy climbs onto the bed on the other side.
Alicia blurts, “I have to pee,” and in the bathroom she sits on the edge of the bathtub and hugs herself. She whispers, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” She imagines walking back into the bedroom, except Daddy would be sitting next to Mama. And they would say, “Silly rabbit, where were you?” She imagines that for a long time. And then she goes into the living room and turns on the TV, low volume, and tries to find cartoons. But it’s just a lot of preachers waving their arms around and saying things like, “I know God’s Power just shot out of your teleVISion and healed a WOMAN, and the Good Lord says, is saying to me right now, in my ear, He is saying to send money, every cent you can spare —”
From the bedroom, Daddy says he’s going to call Grandma. There’s a long silence. Clover comes out of the room, walking fast, then runs into the back yard. Alicia thinks of how after there’s an earthquake people are always talking about how their dogs acted funny right before. She looks at the bedroom door and there’s green slime seeping into the living room carpet. She gets off the couch fast and follows Clover outside, but even there she can hear Vanessa hollering that it’s her phone, that it’s too expensive, that it’s her day today, and Daddy says, okay, fine, he’ll just call from the garage. That the phone won’t be disconnected until tomorrow.
Clover is pulling up handfuls of grass and throwing them in the air. Alicia is turning in circles pretending she’s Wonder Woman. After a few minutes, Vanessa opens the sliding door to the back yard and says, “Girls, we’re all going to the garage. Get dressed.” In the silent car, Alicia leans her head against the window and wonders what would happen if she asked to call Mama. To say, I miss you. To say, tell me a story. To say, being here wasn’t my idea.
While Daddy’s on the phone, Clover announces that they’re going to play hide-and-seek in the vacant lot. Alicia stares at her and then nods.
Alicia counts while Clover hides. They’ve switched twice before Vanessa calls to Alicia that her Grandma wants to say hello. Alicia runs to the garage and stops just inside. It’s worse than it was when they left. There’s a brown car parked in the middle and the garage smells like oil and mildew. Like no one ever sang songs about silly spiders or learned to read there at all. She takes the receiver but turns so she’s facing the vacant lot. She doesn’t want to look inside anymore.
On the way back to the new house, Daddy is talking and talking about Grandma and his sisters. From the back seat, Alicia can see Vanessa’s hands on the steering wheel, gripping so hard her hands are turning white. The green slime has followed them from the house, the green slime is already over her sneakers and rising. By the time Daddy’s voice falters and fades away it’s up to everyone’s knees.
At the house, Vanessa brakes so hard the green slime turns into a wave and gets in everyone’s hair. She opens the car door, pulls the keys out of the ignition, runs into the house and slams the door. Daddy turns and looks at Alicia like he’s going to ask what’s going on, but then he gets out of the car instead. She watches him trudge to the house and turn the doorknob, but it’s locked.
He knocks. “Babe? The door’s locked.”
On the other side of the door, Vanessa wails, “You talked to your mother on the phone for forty-three minutes. The girls wanted to go to brunch!” Alicia has no idea what she’s talking about. “But now we can’t and it’s Mother’s Day!”
Alicia thinks that if she knew how to drive, she would climb into the driver’s seat and drive to Antarctica, and she would get adopted by some nice penguins. Penguins seem like they are very good at being parents. She gets out of the car, closes her door, and then the door Vanessa left open. She sits on the very edge of the front lawn, as far as she can get from the grown-ups without leaving the property. After a moment, Clover follows her.
Daddy bangs on the door with his whole fist. Bam! Bam! Bam! Every time he bangs, Alicia’s whole body winces. He never did that before. He’s not the Wait Until Your Father Gets Home kind of Daddy. He just yells and that’s all. Bam! Bam! Bam! “Vanessa! Open the goddamn door!”
Alicia sees Clover getting smaller and smaller and wants to help but doesn’t know how.
Vanessa screams, “You don’t love me,” and Alicia’s stomach fills with wasps. She tries to hold Clover’s hand, but Clover shakes her head and moves three feet away and buries her face in her knees. So, Alicia holds her own hand instead. Across the street a woman in a pink cardigan is at her window and Alicia wills her to be thinking, “Oh look at those nice girls who just happened to sit on that lawn and do not live with those crazy yelling grown-ups at all.”
Bam bam BAM. Scream scream SCREAM. Let me in / You don’t love me / let me in / you don’t / let / you / BAM BAM BAM —
The wasps are building a nest inside of her, scratching and crackling, and Alicia is crying now. She runs over to Daddy, pulls on his shirt, breaking the rules of pretending everything is okay.
“Daddy? Stop, okay? Daddy?” — and then, like he thinks he’s on Charlie’s Angels all of a sudden, Daddy smashes his fist into the narrow window by the front door. The wasp nest inside of her explodes and they are stinging her throat now and she wonders in that slow-motion moment if he thought he could open the door that way. But this isn’t Charlie’s Angels, and he makes a broken howl as he pulls his arm back. There’s jagged glass everywhere and his arm is cut down to the bone. Right down to the bone.
On the lawn Clover is running in circles and wailing like a fire engine. Vanessa is shouting, “What happened? What’s going on?” Alicia is sobbing but — inside. Inside her own head where no one else can see. She is so happy. Because now the grown-ups have to stop pretending, right? Now they have to admit the true thing, which is that they hate each other. She hugs the knowledge to herself and when she carefully opens her mouth no wasps come out.
Vanessa unlocks the door. When she sees the blood everywhere and Daddy leaning against the house so he doesn’t fall down, she runs and gets a towel from the bathroom and wraps it tight around his arm. She shouts for Alicia to get in the car, then helps Daddy get in, then runs after Clover, who’s still going in circles on the lawn, puts her in the back seat, then gets in and revs the car.
The Carpenters start up on the 8-track and sing a song about jambalaya as Vanessa drives too fast to the emergency room and Clover wails and when there’s a bump in the road Daddy makes a terrible whimpering sound. Alicia puts her hands over her ears and inside her head thinks the word home over and over.
Daddy is with the doctor for a long time. Vanessa keeps saying Daddy will be okay in a high, fast voice. Alicia plans to ask the doctor how to take care of Daddy, since when they go back to the garage she’ll have to be the grown-up, kind of. She hopes no one threw away the hotplate.
Clover curls up in Vanessa’s lap and falls asleep. Vanessa gives Alicia a quarter for the vending machine. She buys a bag of Fritos and eats it watching Battlestar Galactica. The word home is so loud in her head that she can’t figure out what’s happening on the show, every time she blinks it seems like there’s a new spaceship with new people on it.
She must’ve fallen asleep because she wakes up in the waiting room chair. Daddy is touching her arm and saying in a low voice, “Hey, silly rabbit. Time to head home.” She is so happy her hands and feet are tingling.
“To the garage!” she says, and Vanessa, holding the still sleeping Clover, shushes her.
Daddy says, “No, we’re going home.” He puts his uninjured arm around Vanessa.
The wasps start to swarm again. “But — but you —” Alicia wills herself not to cry.
“All families have arguments,” says Daddy. His face is so pale, and his arm is in a sling, bandaged in layers and layers of white gauze. Even though his shirt is stiff with dried blood, he and Vanessa smile at each other.
“No!” Alicia shouts. “NO!”
“Shush,” says Vanessa, looking over at the nurse’s station.
“You got HURT!” says Alicia, “You got hurt and the two of you fight ALL THE TIME and you HATE each other!”
Daddy grabs Alicia’s arm, something else he’s never done before, and he and Vanessa walk fast to the exit. Alicia stumbles after Daddy but she can’t stop the wasp words now.
“None of us like each other! I want it back how it was, I want it back how it was —”
Daddy says in a low, terrible voice, “Alicia. You will be quiet,” and there is so much threat in his voice that all the wasps die, boom, all at once. She coughs on their bodies in her throat.
In the car, Clover sleeps, her head lolling forward. Vanessa and Daddy coo words to each other in the front seat, but none of them are I’m sorry. Alicia makes herself small, and quiet, and cries. She watches the dark stores and empty parking lots going by. The palm trees move a little in the breeze.
She is thinking about the rules of California. Live in a three-bedroom, two bathroom, ranch house, with a mama and a daddy and maybe a sister. Pretend it’s all right, no matter what happens. She wonders how many of the kids at school have taken a trip like this home from the hospital. Love words and bandages and silence in the back seat.
Alicia and Daddy live in Vanessa’s house. This is the room where Alicia sleeps. The far wall is covered in windows. The bed is white, hand-painted tulips on the headboard. There’s a framed portrait of the King of Transcendental Meditation over the mahogany dresser. Alicia’s toys are in the green toy box and her name is painted on the top in swirling script.
Everyone but Alicia is asleep. She is looking at the stick-on glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. She is thinking that when she grows up, she’s going to live far away from California. She’s going to live in a tent or a high rise or a garage, she doesn’t care as long as her Mama is there too. She will marry somebody who makes her laugh so hard she gets breathless. She will let the weeds grow taller than her in the yard, and anyone who wants to can come and watch the clouds.
About the Author:
Sage Tyrtle’s work is available in New Delta Review, The Offing, Lunch Ticket, and Apex among others. She is the author of the novella The King of Elkport. Her words have been featured on NPR, CBC, and PBS and have been taught in schools. She’s been nominated for Pushcart and Best American Short Stories. Read more at www.tyrtle.com. Insta @ sagetyrtlestoryteller https://www.facebook.com/StorytellerSageTyrtle/
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