At Didi’s house, Mrs. Steinberg quickly burned through the small savings Mr. Steinberg had left, then turned to eBay. She was using it to sell off all of Mr. Steinberg’s jazz albums and memorabilia.
Didi had taken to calling her mother Catwoman since Mrs. Steinberg now barely spoke, slept most of the day, worked on her eBay sales during the night, lapped all her nutrition out of a bowl, and never showed any outward signs of affection toward human beings. Catwoman had turned the living room into eBay Central with two computers going all the time, tracking the progress of whatever auctions she had under way. She had economy rolls of clear tape on big gun-type dispensers and stacks of sturdy boxes scrounged from the liquor store for shipping out items that had been sold. Teetering piles of old albums, autographed publicity stills, yellowed copies of DownBeat magazine, and odd things like cuff links and bar napkins, all carefully labeled and stuck in ziplock bags sat around waiting to be sold or shipped.
We were looking through Mr. Steinberg’s stuff one day a month after Daddy’s funeral when a loud chiming came from one of the computers.
“Hey, Catwoman made a sale,” Didi said, and went over to study the screen. “Shit! One thousand, two hundred and eighty-five dollars for a—” Didi read off the “Description of Item” that she had copied for her mother from the detailed labels Mr. Steinberg had affixed to the hundreds of archival sleeves he’d stored his jazz memorabilia in. “ ‘One 1941 cover of DownBeat magazine signed by Duke Ellington, two mint condition B&W, 8 Yen 10s signed by Billie Holiday, one 1944 photo signed by Dizzy Gillespie with Juan Tizol on valve trombone.’ ” As she read, the nimbus of manic energy that always surrounded Didi like a cloud of bees sagged. Finally, she sucked in a deep breath. “Wonder what he’d think if he knew that all the stuff he loved most in life was getting turned into frozen margaritas?” She attempted a laugh, then decided to scoop us out a couple in his honor.
We locked ourselves in Didi’s room and ate the margs out of bowls. Even though Didi’s bedroom door was closed, we could still hear Mrs. Steinberg snoring in the next room. Didi rolled her eyes at the sound. “You know what we need?” she asked.
“What?”
“A lair!”
“A lair?”
“Yes, a lair! God, why didn’t I think of this before?”
She grabbed her marg and rushed out. I followed her into the garage where Mr. Steinberg had had his studio. We hadn’t been in it since he’d died. Mrs. Steinberg had cleared out most of his stuff. Didi stood at the door for a long time. What hit you first was Mr. Steinberg’s smell, how strong it was, how much it seemed as if he should still be there. Before I even really had a chance to miss him, though, I was missing Daddy.
“Don’t you fucking cry,” Didi warned me. The muscles in her jaw tightened and she stepped into the empty studio like someone was behind her jabbing her in the back with a bayonet. Acoustic tiles covered all the walls and several layers of carpet had been laid on the concrete floor to absorb noise so that the garage was not only soundproof but had a cozy, hobbity feel to it. The old turntables and microphones were gone. Probably sold on eBay. Mr. Steinberg’s battered headphones had been left lying on the floor. Didi picked them up and pressed them to her nose. When she turned around, she had the same expression on her face that I knew I’d had when I realized I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and if I fell, I would fall forever because there was no one to stop me. My face started squirming around. The tears she’d forbidden me to cry stung like vinegar under my skin.
Didi abruptly hurled the headphones down, stood in the middle of the old garage, and twirled around. “This is perfect! Can’t you see how perfect this is? Are you going to be a total goober and not see how perfect this is?” Her voice started off wobbly, but got stronger as she got mad at me. I was glad to hear it. I didn’t know what I would have done if Didi had started crying.
“We can be out here screaming our heads off and no one will ever know!” she yelled, twirling faster.
I threw my arms out and started spinning with her. “We can commit ax murders!”
“We can have giant parties with live bands!”
“And circus animals!”
Didi stopped, picked up her bowl of ’rita, handed me mine, and we clinked. “To the Lair.”
“To the Lair.”
I loved the Lair; it was our clubhouse. Didi moved all the best stuff from her bedroom into the Lair, including her twin beds. I stripped the primo items from my room and brought them over. We bought a pair of really cute fifties lamps at the Disabled Veterans, some great madras bedspreads with lines of elephants marching across them, threw up some posters, and the Lair was ready. Pretty soon, I was spending more time at Didi’s house than I was at my own, which suited Mom fine.
My mother, who had barely left the house at all while Daddy was sick, hardly came home once he was gone. Every morning, one of the sistern would stop by and pick her up, then she’d spend the day at the Compound stitching quilts and dipping candles or praying and testifying. I couldn’t remember her ever being happier. She was always singing old-time hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross” when she came home but would stop when she saw me. Neither one of us was who the other wanted to see. So I spent more and more time at the Lair and she spent more and more time at the Compound.
I was home, though, getting foam board and my X-Acto knives for our world cultures class project, a scale model of the Temple of Dionysus we were constructing in the Lair, when my mom came home early. That day, she was so happy she didn’t stop singing when she saw me, just looked my way and beamed. It had been so long since she’d smiled in my direction that it didn’t bother me that her smile was for her goofy church, not me.
“What?” I asked, after she’d stood there grinning for so long I started smiling too. “What is it?”
“Oh, I don’t know how to tell you. I don’t know how to make you truly understand.”
“Understand what?” I was still smiling but had started to worry.
“Understand what a glorious day this is for me. For us.”
“Us?”
“Oh Cyndi Rae, we’ve been approved to move to HomeTown.”
“You mean Houdek?”
“No, silly. Our real, true hometown. The home of our heart and spirit.”
“You mean that place in Mississippi.”
“Georgia. HomeTown is in Georgia and we’re going to move there. I’ve already made all the arrangements. We could move right now, but you’ll probably want to finish high school.”
I wanted to say something snippy like Yeah, finishing high school, that little detail. But I knew I had to control myself. My mom’s eyes were glittering. She was high, high on Heartland, high on group approval, high on sanctimoniousness, high on subjecting herself to a higher will, high on goopy pieties, high on a dream of a simpler life, in a simpler time that never existed. All those things had given her a strength she’d never had before, a strength that made her dangerous. I had to be very careful.
“So, we’ll move after you finish high school.”
“We? We’ll move?”
“Of course. You’re my daughter. A mother would never think of abandoning her child unless the mother’s very soul was under mortal threat of eternal damnation. We’ll go together as soon as I make the rest of the arrangements.”
As calmly as I could, I asked, “ ‘The rest’? What, uh, ‘arrangements’ have you already made?”
“The usual. Finances, assets, shedding all the unnecessary complications of the modern world.”
I felt sick but had to go on, had to get the answers. “So what happened to all these unnecessary complications?”
“The brethren are handling all of that. All of my finances and such.”
“Your finances?” Panic crept into my voice. “You turned our money over to those people?”
My mother clicked back into full android mode as she parroted Scripture at me. “ ‘For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.’ ”
“What are you saying? Those men, those brethren, aren’t your husband. You don’t have a—” I stopped myself.
“They are my brothers in Christ. You have never understood that. Never even tried. I put up with your willfulness, your lack of respect while your father was alive.” The pink fragility that had encased my mother for as long as I could remember was gone. Self-righteousness pumped through her like steroids, giving her new muscles of determination and will. “I endured your abuse for his sake.”
“Abuse? You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re joking.”
She wasn’t listening to me. “For his sake, I allowed a friendship that has corrupted you to continue.”
“Didi? Didi corrupted me? Didi saved me.”
“This is my fault. I blame myself. You are lost. Unruly and spoiled children are among the most miserable of children. They are not the blessings that the Bible says they should be to parents. ‘Withhold not discipline from the child, for if you strike and punish him with the rod, he will not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.’ It was your father’s decision to raise you without boundaries and I was subject to him in everything.”
“This is insane. ‘Subject?’ You were ‘subject’ to Daddy? Daddy and I spent our entire lives tiptoeing around you and living in fear of your nervous fits and depressions and migraines—”
“It’s true. I was lost. Lost without the light of Christ’s love in my life just as you are lost. Just as you will always be lost unless you are consecrated. You can’t understand now. Your heart is closed. You will never live a Christ-filled life until we get you away from bad influences. Until we are living in HomeTown.”
“I can’t talk about this anymore. I have to go.”
“You’re going to her, aren’t you?”
Something in my mother’s tone gave me the creeps. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You people, so smart and witty. We’ll see how smart and witty you are on Judgment Day.”
“ ‘You people’? I’m your daughter.”
“Then honor thy mother!” She was starting to lose her HeartLand android cool. She’d balled her hands into tiny fists and was drawing them up toward her ears where they would vibrate in one of the nervous fits that had controlled Daddy and me for my whole life. For a second I was lost, ready to collapse in a sobbing blob. But Didi’s voice spoke in my head telling me that if I caved in, I’d end up in Hookworm, Georgia, with a doily on my head.
“You want me to honor you as a mother? Then start acting like one!” For one second, she was so stunned by the sound of my raised voice that her fists dropped and she fell silent. “Start acting like you care about me! About my life, my future. You want to abandon me for that cult, just say it. Say it!”
All the toughness that lurked behind her baby-doll prettiness gathered itself up. “I have made provisions for you to come with me provided you accept the discipline of the brethren.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you will renounce Satan and live a good Christian life.”
“I don’t have to renounce Satan. I do live a good Christian life and I am going to leave now because there is no point in talking to you.” I slammed out of the house because I hated her so much at that moment I wanted to squash her puffy, bratty face in. Worse, the X-Acto knife in my hand had started to tingle. I ran all the way to Didi’s house.
When I got there, she was in a pissy mood, PMSing wildly. Even though our cycles were synched up, she was the only one ever allowed to have PMS. She was playing the Strokes so loud it made my bones ache. I knew she wanted me to tell her to turn it down so she could bitch me out, but I’d had enough of being screamed at by crazy women for one day. Of course, she hadn’t done anything on our group project, the scale model of the Temple of Dionysus and Altar of Zeus. So I just got out the foam board and graph paper and started making a pattern. Even though Mith Myth would never know the difference, I did a long series of calculations to translate the altar’s original dimensions into a perfect scale rendering. I did it to keep the fidgety numbers synapses in my brain occupied. To block out Didi, my mother, HeartLand, everything.
After about an hour, Didi turned down the Strokes and started sniffing around the temple like a curious woodland creature. She decided we needed to cover the temple in a mosaic and started smashing up Catwoman’s old liquor bottles. She sorted through the green, blue, and brown shards to find the perfect chips and slivers.
Didi liked ancient civ since she took all the doings on Mount Olympus as a sort of template for what life at the top was going to be like for her when she arrived. Zeus, Jupiter, Steven Tyler, Julian Casablancas. They were all the same in her book. Gods were gods as far as she was concerned.
Didi got so into the project that after we finished the temple and altar, she made tiny Sculpey sculptures of Apollo, Zeus, Athena, and Callisto, along with some satyrs and centaurs. We baked them in the oven and the house filled with the smell of burning plastic. It was four in the morning when we finally finished and went to bed.
I’d forgotten it was Easter until Didi woke me up and sent me to the backyard where she’d hidden speckled eggs and malted milk balls. It was more fun than you would have thought finding candy tucked into chinks in the patio wall, under the toe of the garden gnome, balanced on the limb of a desert willow. But that was Didi’s gift. When she wanted to, she could turn anything into a party.
After we finished gluing the last pieces of glass onto the temple, Didi drove me home. The desert willow tree that had been a twig when we’d moved in had grown into a taller twig that had sprouted a fluff of lilac blossoms. A few lilac petals were scattered across the brick red lava rocks. Random stuff was strewn on top of the petals: my CD player, a couple of spaghetti-strap tops, the Swollen Members CD Didi had burned for me, my makeup kit, all the old copies of Raw, Spin, and Crud that Didi had passed along. Even a package of Summer’s Eve douche and my Lady Epilator.
Didi surveyed the scene and figured out what it meant before I could. “Wow, an official wig snap.” She nodded at the church van parked on the street. “Obviously, she needed her brethren and sistern around to do something like this.”
I tried to open the front door, but it was locked. “Mom? Mom! Mom, are you in there! Could you open the door, please?”
Finally, the door opened. Mom stood there, not saying a word, backed up by half a dozen sisters and brothers, all in their best pioneer Easter finery. Even the pastor was there, his broad shoulders blocking the doorway.
The sight of them all there arrayed against me rattled me so much that my thoughts zoomed immediately to what I’d feared the most for so long that I almost asked, “What’s wrong? Is something wrong with Daddy?” Then I remembered.
No one spoke. No one budged. They had obviously rehearsed this whole thing. It was a sort of intervention on my mother’s behalf. She finally spoke. “In case you hadn’t noticed, today is Easter. The day we celebrate the resurrection of the living Christ.”
The pastor put his hand on my mother’s shoulder and she touched it in a way that made me aware that she was the prettiest of the sistern. There was no wedding ring on the pastor’s hand. He gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze and she went on. “As your mother, I have to love you enough to save you. God did not bless me with a child to”—she glanced at the pastor, who nodded for her to go on with the approved message—“populate hell!”
The others nodded and muttered, “Amen.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. Go on, sister,” the pastor prodded.
My mother gathered herself up like a child in a Christmas pageant about to recite her piece. “ ‘A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.’ I have left you too long to yourself and you have brought me to shame.”
“Don’t blame yourself, sister,” the pastor said in his ultra manly rumbling voice. “God had two children in Eden and they both made wrong choices.”
The others chuckled with nervous relief, then stiffened their spines again.
“Thank you, brother, but this is my fault and my responsibility to change.” My mother turned to me. “My brothers and sisters have helped me to cast out those things that are abhorrent in the sight of the Lord and they stand beside me today as I fight to reclaim the soul of my child.”
“Mom, my soul isn’t lost so it doesn’t need to be reclaimed.”
“We knew you would say that, for Satan is a powerful deceiver.” She glared at Didi and added, “And his agents are even more devious.”
Didi’s head started weaving from side to side like the black girls at school when they fought. That’s how she sounded when she got up into my mother’s face. “Uh-uh, bitch, I did not just hear you call me an agent of Satan!”
The sistern gasped as if they lived in a world where every other word wasn’t bitch. My mom’s eyes glittered with self-righteous vindication since Didi had just demonstrated for all the other androids how impossibly hard her life as a parent was.
The pastor’s voice boomed out. “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”
Didi snorted, “Oh, that’s a big fucking tragedy. Like Rae and I would even want to spend eternity with a bunch of hypocritical, self-righteous, intolerant assholes like you. Give me the fornicators and idolators any day.”
The pastor took his arm from my mother’s shoulder, stepped in front, and squared off with Didi, glaring at her until the tendons in his neck jumped out as he thundered, “ ‘If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them!’ ”
Didi squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, laughing as if the pastor had just made a joke. “Did you just call me gay?” She looked at me. “He thinks I’m gay. God, that’s funny. Probably projecting, right? You got a secret boyfriend, pastor? Is that it? Little boys maybe? You guys do altar boys? Is that your deal? You like little boys?”
The pastor turned solid in front of my eyes, filling up with bottled rage until he was a slab of marble who intoned, “ ‘And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.’ ”
He scared me. Didi just shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.” She turned from him and, already crunching across the rocks, asked me, “Rae, you coming?”
I glanced at my mother, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze. She wailed and pretended to be heartbroken when I walked away with Didi. “Come back! Do not choose the path of iniquity for I will do anything for you but abandon my lord and Christ, Jesus. You are giving me no choice.”
We both knew that what I was giving her was a way to do exactly what she wanted: run off to HeartLand without looking like a bad mother in front of her cult friends. It was my Easter present to her and it showed how endlessly ridiculous the human heart is because, even after everything, I was still crushed that she took it. That she chose those strangers over me.
While the sisters and brothers prayed and the pastor boomed out another Bible quote, “ ‘Then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations,’ ” Didi and I crammed as much of my stuff as we could grab into her trunk. Didi flipped the HeartLanders a giant bird and cackled wildly as we drove away. I was laughing with her when the glee caught in my throat and turned into sobs.
“Rae-rae, baby, don’t stress. You lost her a long time ago.”
“But why does she hate me? What did I ever do to make her hate me?”
“It’s not you. She’s, you know, troubled. Some people just weren’t meant to be mothers and you and I got two prime candidates.”
I tried to stop crying, but my life seemed ruined and meaningless and utterly ridiculous. I felt arbitrary and unnecessary. Someone a mother could leave with only some Bible verses and a few fake tears.
“ ‘Children are for the motherly,’ that’s what Brecht says. Anyway, nothing we can do about it. I know you think we’re friends because of our dads, but it’s all about the moms. Face it, at this point neither one of us, technically, has ’rents. We have each other.”
When Didi said, “We have each other,” my heart filled my chest in a way that convinced me the pastor was probably right, I was a total lez. I slid a glance at Didi. She had on a white angora top that looked like cottonwood fluff floating on a pool of syrup against her dark skin. Did mom see something that I was hiding from myself? Is that why I had zero interest in the few guys who’d asked me out? Rodney Tatum, who occasionally worked the late shift at the Pup, had asked me to the state fair rodeo to see his sister ride in the barrel-racing finals and I’d turned him down flat. No, lesbian, straight, extraterrestrial, whatever I was, I don’t think Rodney and I would have hooked up. Michael Debont? He’d asked me to Homecoming. But everyone except Michael knew he was gay. Was that a sign? Was I broadcasting my essence while being too blind to see it myself?
It was true, I wasn’t attracted to the handful of loser guys who’d asked me out. I couldn’t imagine choosing to be with any of the boys I knew over being anywhere with Didi. Didi dug a roach out of the ashtray and tried to light it and drive with the palms of her hands while I wondered if I was a lesbian. It was better than thinking about Mom. I was doing what Didi ordered; I was staying distracted.
Didi sucked in a lungful, then squinted at me while she held the smoke in, and said, “What?” inhaling the word so she sounded like a robot.
“What what?”
Didi exhaled, coughing. “That is some harsh bammer.”
I patted her back until she stopped coughing, judging with every whack what effect touching her was having on me. Did I want to do more? I remembered the crush I’d had on Scooter, my counselor back at Camp Lajitas. But I’d read enough Judy Blume to know that such infatuations were common among prepube girls.
“You’ve got that look,” Didi said, pinching the roach out between her fingers, then putting it into the pocket of her jeans. “You know, storm cloud brows.”
I touched the space between my eyebrows where they were bunching up, trying to come together.
“I’ve got it! I know exactly what we need to do. I read this account of an actual Lakota Sioux ceremony for taking a blood sister. Blood sisters, what do you think? You wanna be my blood sister?”
Sister. The word shone in my mind pure as light from a full moon. I nodded.
“Okay then, let’s do it!”
It was late afternoon as we cruised back down Nine Mile Hill. The sun had slipped below the horizon and the last slanting rays were turning the phone lines into sagging, golden spiderwebs as they looped along Central Avenue.
Didi sang/shouted along with AC/DC about all manner of dirty deeds involving cyanide and concrete shoes as we passed Old Town. She finished with a rousing accolade to all deeds dirty at the same moment that she screeched into the lot of Las Palmas Trading Post, where she parked and announced, “Of course, we have to have an exchange of ceremonial offerings. Wait here.”
“Deeds, hold on, I don’t know if—”
But Didi was already out of the car and sauntering into Las Palmas, which was not a trading post but a really good Indian jewelry store. The thought of all the valuables inside made me nervous, but Didi wasn’t wearing the puffy parka or carrying the diaper bag she usually took along on her “five-finger discount” shopping expeditions. In fact, in her lace-up hip-huggers and skimpy top, she didn’t have any place to stash items. Still, I didn’t relax until she sauntered back out with nothing in her notoriously sticky hands.
My relief disappeared the instant she jumped in the car, reached between her breasts, fished around in her bra, and hauled up a silver chain with a turquoise cross dangling from it. “Sorry about the cross. It was only supposed to be my cover while I was trying on this really cool screaming eagle pendant, but the clerk turned around too quick and I unhooked the wrong one, so the cross dropped down instead of the eagle. Sorry. Thought that counts, right? I’ll hang on to this until you get your offering.” She hung the turquoise cross around her neck. “Okay, your turn, sister.”
Sister. I repeated the word to myself as I crossed the parking lot and pushed open the door. There was no one in the store except a couple of women, tourists in shorts that showed more than most would care to see of their varicosed legs. A high school girl, Native American from the look of her apple-shaped body and sleek black hair, wearing matching glitter nail polish and eye shadow, was waiting on the tourist women. Two other clerks, hard-eyed, older women, gossiped by the far register. I was certain they all knew what I planned to do.
Harsh afternoon light sliced in the front windows and glinted off the silver and turquoise jewelry tucked into the black velvet trays filling the glass cases. One of the older women glared at me. “Can I help you with something?”
She knew. There was no question, she knew. I shook my head too quickly, answered, “No, just browsing,” and tacked off into a side room filled with baskets and kachina dolls. I hid out there while I came up with a plan: I would ask Didi if we could postpone the ceremony. I’d tell her that it would be better to come back on a Saturday when the store was jammed and clerks were trying to wait on three customers at a time. But I caught a glimpse of her, sitting in her father’s old Mustang, her elbow resting on the edge of the open window. She was singing along to the AC/DC tape. I thought about her driving away, just leaving me there in the store to find my way home by myself.
Home? What did that mean anymore? I turned back toward the glass cases filled with jewelry. Through the feathers hanging down from a row of ceremonial drums, I watched the young clerk with sparkly nail polish pull black velvet trays out of the case so that the tourist women could try on squash blossom necklaces. The women left without buying anything. While the young clerk was bent over, putting the trays back, I stepped out of the side room.
“Oh,” she said, surprised when she stood back up and I was standing there. “I didn’t see you come in. Can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m looking for a present for my mom. I want to get her something really special. My dad’s sick.”
“What were you looking for?” She pointed down at the cases and named what was in them. “Bracelet? Ring? Pendant?”
“I don’t know. Just something really special. My father’s not doing real well.” I hadn’t planned to say that, to have to look away because tears filled my eyes.
“Oh. Wow. Sorry, that sucks.”
“Yeah.” The look of sympathy made her baby face seem even younger and my courage returned.
“Bracelets are good,” I said.
She swiveled over to the right section and pulled out a tray humped with rows of bracelets. With a glance at me to gauge what my taste would be, she plucked several delicate pieces set with pink mother-of-pearl in butterfly designs off the tray. “These are real popular.”
She’d nailed me because I loved them, but Didi? Didi sneered at both pink and butterflies.
I searched the trays still behind the case until I spotted the perfect bracelet, Didi’s bracelet. It was a band of beaten silver with a design that appeared abstract at first, but gradually revealed itself to be two stylized panthers coiled about each other, either fighting or mating. I asked the clerk if I could see the tray with the panther bracelet on it, then requested half a dozen others. She slid the trays onto the counter in front of me, before turning her attention to chipping the polish off her nails.
She had her middle finger in her mouth, gnawing at the nail, when one of the older clerks asked her, “Where did you put those small gift boxes?” Her peevish tone accused the younger clerk of putting the boxes in the wrong place.
“Right where they’re supposed to be.” The younger clerk pointed at a stack of boxes.
“Small, as in ring box small,” the woman said, pretending to be patient but actually almost sneering.
“Like she couldn’t have said that in the first place?” the clerk whispered to me.
“Really,” I said, adding a snort of sympathy as the girl pivoted away from her post to locate the ring boxes. I probably wouldn’t have done anything if she hadn’t turned away. I probably would have walked out of the store empty-handed, but she did, she turned away. I plucked out the panther bracelet, clamped it onto my wrist, and slid it up under my sleeve.
By the time the girl turned back around, I had returned all the bracelets to the tray. Maybe she would have counted them if the older clerk hadn’t been mean to her or if I hadn’t told her my father was sick.
“Thanks,” I said, backing away from the counter. “I’ll think about it.”
“Cool,” the clerk chirped, bending over to put the tray back in the counter. “Come again.”
The older clerks eyed me suspiciously and didn’t say “Come again” as I rushed out the door.
Didi was all over me the instant I opened the car door. “What did you get? What did you get?”
“Just drive!” I screamed. Thank God, Didi was at the wheel. Because she calmly backed out and pulled away. I would have been squealing rubber so bad, every shop owner for blocks would have taken down the license number.
Mrs. Steinberg was just waking up when we walked into Didi’s house. Curled up in her husband’s old recliner spooning frozen margarita out of a cereal bowl, she shot a question at Didi in staccato Spanish. I’d taken Spanish for all three years of my high school language requirement and, if I could have seen Mrs. Steinberg’s question written down, I would have been able to conjugate every verb in the sentence, but as far as understanding the spoken language, that was Didi’s department. Didi answered in even more rapid-fire Spanish but never made eye contact with her mother once as we both hurried through the living room.
Back in the Lair, Didi assembled everything she needed for our blood sister ritual. She got out the pricker thing from the kit her father used to use to test his blood sugar, lighted some patchouli incense, and read a passage from Black Elk Speaks, which didn’t appear to have anything to do with sisterhood.
“This is going to hurt like hell,” Didi promised when we got to the blood part of the blood sister ceremony. She jabbed my finger with the pricker and blood materialized in a perfect ruby bubble.
Didi turned her back to me and grunted when she stuck herself, then turned around, holding her finger hidden in the closed tunnel of her hand and captured my bleeding finger in it. We pressed our fingers together while she chanted her very own translation of the Lakota vow. “I take you as my sister. My heart now knows your heart. Your tears will flow if my blood ever falls. Your enemies’ tears will flow if your blood ever falls.”
Didi lifted the turquoise cross up from between her breasts, kissed it, and hung it around my neck. When I removed the bracelet from under my blouse, Didi squealed with delight, snatched it out of my hand, and put it on her wrist herself in a way that made me think of Napoleon crowning himself.
I didn’t notice until she held my finger under the bathroom faucet that all the blood flowing had been mine; her skin wasn’t broken. I didn’t say anything when she put a Band-Aid printed with stars and smelling of rubber on my finger, then one on her own. I didn’t even feel cheated. I accepted that that was the way the ceremony was supposed to go. That the price of having Didi for my sister was that I would be the one who bled.