God's Country

Miranda woke the next morning, stiff in the muscles and crusty in the eyes, the light hitting her from an unaccustomed angle. For a moment she thought she must be back in Boo Radley’s clean suburban bedroom, but a quick glance let her know she was on her mother’s bed.

Nadine was already up and about, the smell of bacon frying emanating from the kitchen. Miranda groaned and sat up. Her eyes felt like poached eggs: hot, round and puffy. She stumbled down the hall to her own neat bathroom, blue and purple fish streaming across one wall. Grandma Lupe had painted them for her years ago and she’d never had the heart to paint over them.

"Gee, I look like I’ve been crying my eyes out all night," she said out loud, poking at her face.

She washed in the coldest water she could coax from the pipes. Lukewarm, in other words. Once, when she was nine, they had gone to visit some of Nadine’s friends who lived in Chicago. It was winter time, and the whole world was miraculously white and crispy. Miranda still remembered the water that had streamed out of the Larsen’s bathroom tap, so cold it numbed her fingers, woke small icy fires in her face. It had tasted delicious, she’d turned her head sideways and swallowed mouthful after mouthful until her lips lost all feeling. That was the kind of cold she wanted now – liquid ice to help ease the hot swelling under her eyes.

The phone rang and she shouted out, "I’ll get it," and ran into her room to pick up the extension. It was probably Rick. But it was Boo.

"You said you’d call back."

"It’s only 7:00 a.m., that’s not giving me much of a chance."

"I hoped you’d call back last night. I was worried."

"I’m sorry." She paused, sitting down on her bed, still in yesterday’s slept-in crumpled clothes. "Look, I don’t
mean to be rude, there’s just a lot going on with me right now, and I don’t really have time to…see…anyone."

"You said something about your mother?" he said gently.

"Yes. She’s…very ill. I’m afraid I’ll have to be spending a lot more time taking care of her." A long silence. "I think I may have given you the wrong impression. The other night…"

"Didn’t you have a good time?"

"Well, yes. Yes, of course I did. But it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me at all, it wasn’t anything even vaguely resembling me. It was just…what it was. Can’t that be enough?"

"What’s wrong with your mother?"

Miranda sighed. "She’s got lung cancer. Now, I’m sorry to be this way, but I have to get ready for work."

"Miranda."

"What?"

"What’s my name?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"You heard me. What’s my name?"

"You’re going to make me say it?"

"Yes. You never call me by name. Say it."

"Fine. Boo."

"Give me your address."

"What? No."

"Miranda, give me your address."

"Why on earth?"

"Because I’m coming to Sunday dinner at your house tomorrow night and I have to know where you live."

"You are completely crazy. You are not coming to dinner. We don’t even have Sunday dinners."

"You don’t eat dinner on Sundays? What are you, in some kind of cult?"

"Of course we eat dinner…we just don’t….Look, Boo," she said, emphasizing the name heavily, "I don’t know what you think you’re doing."

"Coming to dinner, don’t you listen? Now give me your address."

"Not until you tell me why."

"Because I want to meet your mother before she dies," he said, his accent somehow softening the bald words. Miranda pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it.

"You have got to be the strangest one night stand in the history of the world," she finally replied. And gave him her address.

"You been crying or something?" asked Rick as soon as she walked in the door.

"My old man beat me up," she said, and went to get hot water while he stared after her.

"You ain’t really married?" he said when she returned, eyes narrowed.

"No, not really," she said, rolling up her sleeves. One hour here and she could go back home and take care of some things around her own house. Maybe she'd even call Sherry. She pushed the hair back out of her eyes. The heat was particularly oppressive today, even at this early hour. "Where’s the fan?"

"I don’t know, I think Tootie took it," he said carelessly.

"They shouldn’t take your things. You need that fan. It’s bad for you to be overheated." She stormed out of the room in search of the fan. She opened bedroom doors heedlessly, without knocking. Donny was in one, fucking a girl Miranda hadn’t seen before on an uncovered mattress. He smiled and she slammed the door shut again. The next door showed her Michael, sound asleep on a narrow twin bed, a history book lying open across his chest and a 16 oz. beer can on his bed stand. She backed out and shut the door more quietly. That was the first book she’d ever seen in this house, aside from Rick’s mother’s Bible. She opened a third door and found Tootie with two other boys, teenagers, probably, though both of them were well over six feet and heavy. They were smoking pot, Rick’s fan cutting through the cloud of reeking vapor. Miranda yanked the cord out of the wall and took the fan without a word, leaving the door open as she left, their protests following her back across the hall.

"Jesus, lady, you’re on a rampage today," said Rick, half-admiringly. "They’re all scared of you anyway."

"Is Michael in school?" she said, plugging in the fan and adjusting it so she and Rick would both feel it as she
worked. The flat blue walls seemed to concentrate the heat, the dry Santa Ana wind swirling in through the glassless window, dueling with the fan and mostly winning. She really didn’t want to be here today.

"Yeah, I think he’s trying to go to community college again."

"What is he studying?"

"I don’t know. Just general stuff, I guess."

"Don’t you ever talk to each other in this house?"

"I guess so, sometimes. What the fuck? Who cares?"

She stopped moving and looked at him, so young and handsome, so filled with the potential for vibrant life. Wasted. Stuck here in this dead-end dump. America didn’t give a shit about him, or California. If he hadn’t been injured at the county’s hands, San Diego would have never have noticed his existence. Even his family barely noticed him, except for the money he brought in. Miranda stared into Rick’s deep brown eyes and saw that he was already dead.

"No one, Rick. No one cares. Not one single person." It came out more bitter than she’d intended. Tears welled, but she throttled them. She was on the job. She finished rapidly, a model of efficiency.

"Who’s taking care of you tomorrow?" she demanded.

"Mom, I guess."

"She can’t lift you," Miranda said.

"My brothers can help."

"Why don’t you just ask Michael to do it? I’m sure I could teach him the minimal routine very quickly and he can handle you physically."

"No." Miranda folded her arms but he stared her down this time. "They don’t get to see me weak."

She gave in. She couldn’t change hundreds of years of ingrained machismo. "All right, I’ll talk to your mom. What’s her name, anyway?"

"Carmen."

She left Rick and searched out Carmen, who was collapsed on the sofa, staring vacantly at the television set, which was playing MTV. She sat down next to her and gave her a few clear, simple instructions. The woman nodded at her blankly and turned her eyes back to the program. Miranda got up and began to leave, certain she hadn’t heard a word, then she hesitated and went back down the hall. She knocked on the door to Michael’s room.

"Come in," he said. She opened the door. He was awake, sitting at a card table he apparently used for a desk, bent over his book. He stood as she entered, then seemed to realize he was only wearing boxers and sat again abruptly.

"Hi Michael. Sorry to bother you." She put on her best nurse’s manner to put him at ease. "I’m not going to be coming on Sundays and I just want to be sure that Rick is taken care of. Your mom knows the basics, but she’s going to need some help lifting and turning him. I’d like to make sure that at least one other person here knows exactly what needs to be done to keep your brother healthy. Can I count on you?" He nodded.

"Thanks, I really appreciate your help." She smiled at him warmly and he looked away. She sat on the bed and went over the routine with him in much greater detail than she’d given Carmen. Michael listened attentively and asked her a few clarifying questions. She rose, feeling much better.

"What are you studying?" she asked, waving her hand at his books. He wrinkled his nose.

"This is for a history class, but I want to major in engineering," he said, somewhat shyly.

"That’s wonderful, Michael. Do you like math?"

"I guess," he said. "Rick’s making me go."

"Is he?" she asked, remembering his offhand treatment of her questions about Michael’s schooling. "How does he make you?" He frowned.

"I don’t know. He’s like the dad now. He keeps all of us in line."

"It wasn’t always that way?" She knew it was none of her business, but she couldn’t help being curious.

He laughed, the first unguarded response she’d ever seen from him. "Shit, no. He used to be the worst partier of all of us, ‘cept maybe Donny. But since he got cripped, he’s…I don’t know. Just different."

Miranda filed away "cripped" as the new technical term for Rick’s paralysis. "Well, anyway, thanks again."

He shrugged it off and stood to open the door for her, shaking his long hair carelessly over one shoulder, one bare foot wound around the other like a little kid. She had to pass very close to him to leave the room, clenching her fists to keep her traitorous fingers from trailing across his bare ribs, tangling in those black locks. She made a conscious effort not to look up and meet his eyes.

One of the dogs growled at her on her way out. She crouched down a little and growled back. It slunk away, but kept staring back at her over its skinny shoulder. Bring it on, she thought to herself, ready for a good fight. Anger was less confusing than all the other feelings she was having today. She got in her car and turned over the engine, realizing she had the whole day ahead and no plans.

She drove down the nameless road, but instead of turning back down the main road towards town, she turned the other way, taking the reservation road all the way through and out the other side. No harm in doing a little exploring.

She soon found herself in unfamiliar winding hills, lush stands of deep green oak following creek beds through sharp-angled canyons, interspersed with broad dusty plains dotted with yellow mustard plants. It was pretty country, and Miranda soon realized that the Paquito reservation must have once looked like this as well. Maybe once it hadn’t been quite so desolate, so horribly isolated. On the other hand, the country looked like this because no one lived here. If the Paquitos had just been passing through their valley, like their forebears, it wouldn’t look the way it did now, pocked and raddled by the concentration of too many people in a place with not enough resources.

It seemed so merciless, suddenly, to pin these people into one location. She had always known it, of course, she’d taken American history in school. She knew the basic facts of the near extermination of the Native Americans as well as anyone. But seeing it was different. A flock of gorgeous, exotic birds, wings clipped to halt their migration, the urge to move on that was born into their blood. What else could they do, but turn neurotic, destructive, angry? Who could blame them for plucking out each other’s feathers, turning each other into bloody symbols of frustrated being? She shivered. Okay, this was both melodramatic and overly romantic. The Paquitos a flock of exotic birds? Her science-trained mind tried to refute it, but her heart knew there was a core of truth there that wasn’t melodramatic, just sad.

She pulled over and wandered down a creek bank, sitting on a low, shady branch almost overhanging the water. She kicked off her sneakers and dangled her bare toes in the cool water. What is evil? She thought. Is it the cancer eating my mother’s lungs, or the tobacco companies who have encouraged her addiction? Is it the men who parceled up the land and shoved the remaining Indian tribes onto those neat little squares? Or the ones who were now suggesting putting casinos, known attractants of gangs and violence, onto the reservations, ostensibly to bring more money to that marginal population? A casino in itself was perhaps not an evil thing, but she shuddered to think how it might affect the Paquitos, already embroiled in blood feuds and desperate for the infusion of cash. How many more feathers were they about to lose?

An ant ran over her hand. She looked at it, letting it tickle the small hairs on the back of her hand. Nothing is evil, she thought, but everything is dangerous.

"It’s so good of you to take on the weight of the entire world, Miranda. I’m sure that will help. Making decisions about the nature of evil will cure your mother, make Rick walk again, give him a future." She stood up on the branch, carefully, holding onto another branch over her head for stability. "As though you can figure out the first thing about life, in your own stupid world, the size of a friggin’ goldfish bowl." She laughed suddenly and leaped to the ground, landing on a twig and hobbling about until the pain wore off.

She shouted, straight down into the creek, as though all the little bugs and proto-fish could hear and understand her. "I am your goddess! Obey me!"

She searched the random skitterings for patterns, for response. She leaned a little too far, lost her footing and slid into the creek. She sat there, muddy and wet, the water barely covering her hips. She looked around, but she was clearly all alone, a crazy woman in the middle of nowhere. She slid off her sweatpants and her underwear, then her shirt and bra, tossing them onto the bank. She slid down as flat as she could, the rocks scraping at her butt and thighs, the brownish water quite chilly. She laid her head back, letting her hair loose to flow around her. She managed to submerge her ears, and the whole world changed, the sounds turning alien and eternal, the echoes of moving water. She opened her eyes, staring up through the thick, covering branches, only the smallest pieces of blue sky visible overhead through their heavy lattice.

"I always wanted a pool," she said aloud, hearing only the deep thrumming of her voice coming from her chest, moving through the water differently than it did through the air. She liked it and began to hum a little tune, an interesting sensation. Her breasts and belly were still warm, protruding above the little creek. She trailed her cold wet hands across them, raising goose bumps, her nipples tautening. She dipped her hands in the water again and then brought them up to cover her eyes, still a little puffy, a little too warm. The cold was soothing. Miranda imagined the water was refilling her tear ducts.

She rolled over onto her stomach, her wet hair whacking against her back with the suddenness of the movement. She pressed herself into the slippery rocks, the gravel. Holding her breath, she plunged her face in the creek until she scraped her nose on the bottom.

This must be one of those strange grief reactions, she thought. She came up for air and saw Rick, in full Indian regalia, at least, what she thought of as Indian regalia – buckskin pants, soft beaded moccasins, an exotic necklace, face paint, even a full feathered chieftain headdress, sitting on the bank, watching her, his legs strong and perfect.

"That’s exactly how you should look," she said to him in satisfaction. An Indian brave. The description had never seemed more apt. What must his people have done to have earned that title? But he disappeared.

She knew she should get out and dry off, but she lay in the water awhile longer, just staying still. Eventually, she got up and used her shirt to help clean off the moss and mud streaks. She sat back down on the branch to finish drying out, feeling a little funny about the rough bark against her private skin.

She gathered her things together and crept up the bank, checking the road carefully before darting to the back of her car and opening the trunk. She kept a spare set of medical scrubs in there. One time she had gotten blood on her pants and her next patient had been very upset by it. She dressed quickly, right by the side of the road, just tying the drawstring on the pants when another car went whizzing by from the other direction.

She waved at it, still feeling a little silly, a little not-Miranda. She turned the car around and slowly drove home, not turning her head to look at Rick’s house when she passed it. This dirty valley was not God’s country, not the country of the oak tree and the loud birds and the mossy creek. She’d seen the real thing, and while she may not know much about anything, she knew that this wasn’t it.