A NOVEL IN PROGRESS

Jane is working on her debut novel. More information will be revealed closer to publication, but for now, here’s a sneak peek!

***

We were in a drought. San Diego was always in a drought. A Mediterranean climate, disguising a desert on the Pacific, but that July a heatwave had settled in on us. Hard yellow grass like tiny spears dug into our calloused bare feet, and the sun’s rays burned our noses, ears, and shoulders, tearing our skin to exposed layers, red, white, and peeling. The humid air held the stench of eucalyptus trees and rotting earth from the canyon behind our house, the birds of paradise stared down at the earth, like a row of remorseful children awaiting punishment, and the shadows beneath the palm trees didn’t provide relief from the heat and neither did our home. We didn’t have air conditioning and the tired blinds couldn’t keep the sun out. Our mother was inside sleeping. Waking her was more dangerous than the heat.

There were rules. They left flyers on our screen door and we talked about it in school. Do not water the grass. Do not take long showers. Do not flush the toilet for yellow, only for brown. No water gun fights, no hose fights, no water balloons, no relief. But we didn’t follow rules. It was too hot for rules. We were too free, unsupervised, and wild.

The Spanish fountain in the center of our bungalow courtyard was dry. Its ornate hexagonal concrete exterior, lined with brightly painted tile, was our jungle gym. We walked along its edge like a tight rope. When we played tag, it was our base. The fountain didn’t flow, and if you looked closely, the concrete was cracked and crumbling.

We unspun the garden hose off the side of Mr. Moreno’s house. We unspun it like thieves, quickly and with eyes darting, even though we knew no one was home, no one was watching. The green rubber was hot in our hands as we draped it into the base of the fountain. We ran back to the spigot on the side of the house. I had to use my body, dig my feet into the earth, to turn the neglected hose tap. It finally gave in. I turned it all the way on and we ran back to the fountain, our bare feet slapping the concrete, and waited for the water to travel the length of the hose. Its mouth came alive and moved from side to side like a snake along the dusty tiles. The water rushed out hot and violent, pushing the settled dirt to the edges of the empty pool in dark waves, but as the water level rose the water cooled and the dirt disappeared into its depths.

I pulled the hose out, put it to my mouth, and drank from the clear cold stream. Bea leaned in and she took a drink. Water ran down her chin and stained the front of her navy-blue tank top black. When the water rose above the tile line, I closed the spigot and spun the hose back on to its wheel. We sat on the hot concrete edge and plunged our feet into the cool water, rubbing our feet along the slick tiles on the bottom freeing the dirt from our soles as soft brown clouds rose up and then dissipated into the clear water. The sun reflected off the tiny waves and burned our eyes in bright bursts, as we swung our feet, causing chaos on the surface.

Bea squatted to get her knees in the water, then she sat down, the strings of her cut off jean shorts rising around her, water up to her chest, the ends of her long black hair floating at the surface. She smiled up at me, eyes closed against the brutal sun. 

I dealt the Uno cards. We filled those long summer days with hyper-competitive games of Uno and war, hours of MTV and Nintendo, horror movies from Blockbuster Video, death defying bike rides down steep hills, trips to the corner store for popsicles to dull the heat, but mostly we hung out in the canyon behind our house, in our secret hideout on a narrow mesa hidden by a cluster of oak trees. We felt safe, at home in the polka-dot light and shadows that moved through the spiny waxy leaves of the old oak trees as the sun rose and set in the pale sky. We called it Happy House. Bea painted a rainbow sign on an old cigar box lid and we hung it from a low branch with a wire hanger. Happy House was carpets in a clearing, an orange Mexican hammock that was already there, hung between two scrub oak swinging on the edge of the earth, an army tent we’d found in an alley, its thick canvass walls smelled of pine tar and shoe polish, four wood crates that served as both tables and chairs, and a set of singing wind chimes that I took from the porch of a house overlooking the Morley Field golf course because we needed a doorbell.

The canyon was our very own Eden of web-like sandy paths carved by foot and runoff, some leading all the way down to the narrow canyon floor where the skeleton of an old rusted out Volkswagen Beatle lay to rest in deeply riveted sand, others dead-ending into grassy plateaus and steep drop offs. On the red dirt path to the Happy House, there was gold grass and sticky burrs that clung to our shoelaces and the hems of our denim, overgrown chaparral, manzanitas and sprawling oaks, bright sunny clearings, and darkly shadowed patches of thick overgrowth. We’d lay in the hammock and dream aloud about the future, a future somewhere else, somewhere safe like a castle in France, a beach in Italy, or a treehouse in Costa Rica, as the chimpanzees, macaques, and macaws, screamed and screeched for their dinner from behind the bars of their zoo cages on the other side of the canyon. But that day it was too hot for Happy House, and I was sick. I felt weak and my stomach was like switchblades in a dryer. Miss Caroline was away visiting her sister in Savannah and Carly was camping with her family in Yosemite. I was in pain and I was scared and I didn’t know who to tell.

“You ok?” asked Bea, squinting up at me and into the white hot sun.

“You go first. My stomach hurts,” I said, leaning over and into the pain.

“You hungry? I’m hungry,” she said, laying down a green seven.

“Yeah, but it’s not that kind of pain. It feels like shards of glass, cutting me from the inside. Draw two.”

“Oh yeah? Draw four! Red!”

We hadn’t shuffled the deck very well, and I was picking up everything but red. Bea laughed as my hand swelled, but I didn’t think it was funny. I reached in and pulled water up and onto my thighs to cool them as they browned in the sun. My bony knees exposed beneath my ruffled denim mini skirt, my favorite skirt, a hand-me-down from Sara across the street. On the outside of my right thigh I discovered a black and purple bruise. I ran my fingers over it. A dull but deep pain when I touched the knot at the center of it. I pushed on it. It hurt, but the pain from the bruise distracted from the pain in my stomach. New hurt eclipses old hurt, but not always and never completely.

“Tell me something to distract me from the pain,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Anything.”

Bea stood and half the water went with her, soaked into her clothes and rushing down her body. I raised my knees and leaned away as droplets fell from her and on to my legs like rain. She sat on the edge of the fountain next to me, a concerned look on her face.

“Do you know the difference between a coffin and a casket?” she asked.

“Aren’t they the same?” I said, suspecting a trick question.

“No. A casket’s a rectangular box, and a coffin has six or eight sides and is skinnier at the feet, like what Dracula sleeps in. Reverse. Reverse. Draw two.”

I grabbed two cards from the shrinking deck.

“And do you know what embalming is?”

“I think so. It’s where they drain all the blood and fluids and gunk and replace it with chemicals.”

”I just found out, we started embalming bodies during the Civil War. That’s when it became a popular funeral tradition in our country. You know why?”

”Why?”
“Because they needed the dead bodies to stay fresh looking so they could make it all the way back home for viewings and burial.”

“I’ll make sure you’re embalmed. We’ll keep you on the couch in the living room for a couple a months. I’ll leave the TV on for you and I’ll make sure the mice don’t eat your face, or nibble your toes. Can’t guarantee I’ll keep the roaches out of you though. Those things get everywhere. And draw four! I choose green.”

“Fine with me, I’m still gonna win. And no way. I don’t wanna be embalmed. I want to be dressed in a long white dress, wrapped in a shroud and buried in a seaside cemetery, so I can decompose back into the earth. I want to be worm food. You can plant trees and flowers on me.”

I started to sing, “Don’t ever laugh as the hearse goes by, for you may be the next to die, they wrap you up in a big white sheet, from your head down to your feet.”

Bea grinned. She joined in and we sang the old folksong together, “they put you in a big black box, and cover you up with dirt and rocks, and all goes well for about a week, and then your coffin begins to leak, the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout, they eat your eyes, they eat your nose, they eat the jelly between your toes.”

Bea was probably one of those child geniuses. If she had been born into another family she’d have been a world-renowned pianist or have found the cure for cancer or something equally impressive, instead she was a death encyclopedia and a ruthless Uno savant. That summer she was planning her own elaborate funeral. She had a notebook where she sketched in pencil what she wanted. There were several pages with portraits of me weeping in the front row, because I never cry. It was important to her that I cry when she dies. She said she’d haunt me until I do.

“You know what?” she asked.

“What?”

“I woke up this morning with a bad feeling, like something bad is gonna happen.”

“I hate when you do that,” I said.

“Do what?”

“Predict the future. It’s creepy. You’re like a creepy kid from a horror movie.”

“Shut up! I can’t help it. I just feel like something bad is gonna happen.”

“Bad how? Like, stub your toe, burn your breakfast, fail a quiz bad, or like atomic bomb, famines and plagues bad?” I asked. A sharp pain cut in my gut and I doubled over.

“Like someone’s gonna die bad. Maybe you’re dying,” said Bea, her eyes glassy, her face contorted in genuine concern.

“You always think I’m dying. It’s just a tummy ache.”

Bea sunk down into the water. Her hair like black snakes skimming the surface.

“Get in, it feels good in here. Maybe it’ll make you feel better,” she said.

“No. You’re getting the cards wet. You’re gonna ruin them.”

“So? Everything’s ruined eventually,” said Bea and she laid down her last card, a red seven. “I win.”