An accessory to her mother’s latest escape, Marie is on her way to a new school. She plods down a road that is choked with tropical growth. As she straightens her new plaid uniform, Marie pictures a tapestry of unknown girls mocking her, when her senses are overtaken by a stench carried in the muggy air. Neither the plumerias nor the gardenias can mask the smell. Just before her heel touches down, Marie sees the strange ground underfoot and jumps aside. Her stomach leaps as she sees the large moss-brown colored disk, surrounded by a crimson pool. She examines slight ridges and golden spots before seeing two caving eye sockets gaping upward at the unclouded sky. With a catch in her breath, she identifies the tire-flattened frog, as big as a dinner plate. She has never seen or smelled anything like it, yet she feels a visceral familiarity with the scene.
Marie quickens her pace to get past the dead frog. She is unable to exhale the smell of decay that has taken up residence in her nostrils. Her legs now stable, she recalls a dead armadillo that was cracked in two, lying on the Texas roadside as she stared out of the passenger window of her mother’s hot car. Austin had been one of their previous landings where her mother spent many late nights in the bars with a few musicians. One night, her mother tipped into her room telling her to pack up by morning because “the time has come for all good women to go see their country.” Her mother always joked that she would “just keep hopping to hotter places until the flames are leaping at my heels in Hell.”
Marie’s thoughts again focus on what lies ahead on the tropical road; she must survive the second day at another school where she has just landed. She tries to picture herself carrying a full lunch tray through the narrow aisles between tables crowded with laughing girls. On her first day there, she avoided the crowd by nibbling a candy bar in the school’s courtyard after getting lost in the surrounding conversation conducted in all new pidgin words. As she approaches the final bend in the road to school, beads of sweat dapple her polyester uniform shirt.
She picks her way through the crowded open air corridor at school as if wading across a stream. She checks her watch and ducks into the bathroom where she lingers in front of the mirror. In spite of all her brushing, patting and fussing, her cowlick defies her. She looks like an impostor in the strange uniform, like a “tartan Martian,” as her mother joked that morning. She consults her watch again to count down to the last minute. She jumps into her first class just before the bell. She pictures what would have been had she been there any earlier; a clatter of conversations while she would sit silently, eyes straight ahead.
During her slog through the day, Marie thinks of a million clever things to say, but the words never travel from her mind to her mouth.
“You’re from Seattle?” the girls ask, “and Arizona? How many places you been?”
“Melody there went to San Francisco,” one girls says with a nod across the room.
“We went there too. For about a month,” Marie replies in a flush of red.
At the age of 13, Marie has lived in Seattle, Ashland, Reno, Austin, Albuquerque, Phoenix and finally Hawaii, connecting the dots with visits to every town in between. She lived in Seattle until she was 8 and has averaged a town a year since. For this last jump, her mother sold their rusted-out car to buy plane tickets to Hawaii. “The Arizona desert was making me look old before my time,” her mother proclaimed as they boarded the plane.
Marie wades through the crowded path to her next class, second-year French. She keeps her eyes on her notes to look busy until the bell finally rings. Madame Francine asks the girls to describe a scene in French using their new household vocabulary. Marie slumps down in her seat with her light brown hair falling across her eyes and recalls her life in Seattle five years ago. She remembers walking into their old kitchen for breakfast where her parents were. Their eyes jumped to the doorway. Marie felt a jolt. Her father was usually long gone by that time in the morning, he mother still in bed, yet on that day her mother sat at the table, while her father loomed on his feet ready to pounce. Her mother had already made pancakes, cold on the counter, even though Marie did not care for pancakes; they were Anthony’s favorites and he had died a year ago.
“Marie, we need to talk,” they started. Her father would be moving out that day.
“You are not to blame,” they said, implanting the idea in her head for the first time.
“We will all be better off in the end,” they said.
Madame Francine calls on Marie, as Marie figured she would since most teachers try to draw out the new kid. With a shallow breath, Marie squeaks, “la mère fait des crêpes avec la confiture,” the mother makes crepes with jam.
“Très bien, Marie. Pour le petit dejeuner?” Madame Francine says.
“Non, pour le diner,” Marie replies.
The teacher nods and Marie exhales with a rush of relief to be out of the spotlight. With her flushed cheeks cooling, she thinks back on the time that her mother had let her and her little brother, Anthony, eat donuts for dinner years ago at Pike Place Market. Anthony, who was about 3 at the time, had blops of red jelly filling down his chin and shirt. Encouraged by their mother’s laughter, Anthony bit into the middle of another donut to squish more blops of filling down his front. His eyes flashed with glee. When they returned home sick and sticky, Marie overheard her father scold her mother.
“You have got to be more responsible. You are their mother, Libby,” he said.
“Oh, lighten up, will you? Carpe diem and all that,” her mother replied.
“Libby, it’s time we act like adults. We have a family. Kids need structure, discipline,” her father said.
“What do you know about kids? About your kids? You barely see them; besides a little fun never hurt anyone,” her mother said.
Marie realizes now how many variations on that theme she had overheard when they were still together, although during their last year together, after Anthony died, they barely bothered to speak, let alone argue.
Upon the “au revoir,” Marie grabs her books and skitters out of the French classroom. She swings in and out of her remaining classes, as if swinging from vine to vine to get through the day. At last, she finishes her second day and begins to walk home. Marie notices the snug houses that compete to stand out with their bright colors of lime green, pink, light blue or lavender, yet the tropical vegetation dwarfs the houses and subdues the bright colors. She peeks into each open window at the living room. Family photos crowd the end tables and floral pillows bookend the sofas. A few toddlers squeal around in one front yard with their arms waving while their mothers talk on the Astroturf-covered front step. The toddlers shout “hi” and Marie waves with her eyes cast on the root-buckled pavement. As she approaches the flattened frog that she had seen that morning, she holds her breath. She walks along the far edge of the road. Her throat tightens, as she glances at the russet smear surrounding the frog. She tries to suppress the images that hover in her mind.
Marie cannot help but think of her walk home in Seattle when she was just 7. From across the street, she could see the olive green weathered shingles of her house in the University district. The light drizzle made the fuchsia azaleas glow in the flat gray light. She stopped at the curb to wait for a car to pass so she could cross the street. In the speeding car, she noticed two teenage boys, slumped down in the seats with baseball caps pulled low on their brows. A quick movement at the curb caught her eye. Anthony bounded out from behind a parked car. Before Marie could muster a peep, she heard the screeching brakes, the muffled crack followed by a painful silence. The car drove out of sight. She tripped off the curb with buckling knees. Bright red pools radiated from underneath her brother’s head. A rivulet of blood ran from his mouth down his pale cheek. The dispersion of blood on the wet street was all that moved. She looked from her brother to her house, to her brother to her house, but did not see her mother. All of the air collapsed out of her lungs as if she had landed flat on her back.
She ran into her house and found her mother in the kitchen laughing on the phone. Her mother was wound up in the long phone cord like a spring. Her mother’s long auburn ponytail was tangled against her neck. Marie could not speak, but her light green pallor alarmed her mother. Libby followed Marie out to the street, where Mrs. Stewart stood guarding the 4-year-old boy, who looked like a baby bird fallen from its nest. Mrs. Stewart had called an ambulance, she informed them. Marie’s mother stood on the edge of the curb unable to go any farther into the street. As the ambulance came into sight, her mother pitched forward with her hands on her knees. She wailed in a haunting echo of the siren.
After the paramedics loaded her brother into the ambulance in a whirlwind, they lifted her mother by the elbow into the back. They wailed down the street out of sight. Mrs. Stewart took Marie to her house next door where they waited for Marie’s father in the living room. A loud clock on the mantle acted as a metronome for Mrs. Stewart’s fiddling. At last, her father came to the door in a burst with his car idling in the driveway. As soon as Marie saw him, she collapsed in tears.
On their race to University Hospital, her father fired questions at the windshield.
“How could this happen? Where was Libby? What did you see? How could this have happened?”
Marie sobbed and could not answer. At the hospital, they learned that Anthony had died. They all drove home suffocated by guilt and grief. The silence was broken only by the squeak of the windshield wipers. The silence of the following year was broken only by the clank of forks at the dinner table that should have been set for four. A year later, her father moved out.
Marie continues to walk to her new Hawaiian home with thoughts as tangled as the tropical vegetation she passes. She arrives at the apartment building, adorned in front with a shirtless man with two large rolls drooping over his waistband. Marie passes to get the mail and lets herself into her apartment. She leafs through the envelopes that appear to be bills and starts her homework. When she realizes that her mother will be home soon, she begins to make dinner. A half hour later, her mother’s key clicks through the door.
“How was your day?” Marie asks her mother.
“Okay. I accidentally spilled a glass of water down a customer’s back. Good thing it was just water. How was yours?” her mother says, smoothing back some stray hairs.
“Okay, I guess,” Marie responds. “Don’t worry about the water. I am sure everything will work out. Dinner is almost ready.”
“Thanks. What’s on the menu tonight? PB and J soufflé? Oatmeal Wellington? Lobster-shaped meatloaf?” Libby asks.
After dinner, they sit on the steps in front of their apartment with their knees under their chins. A warm breeze blows in a red spray of sunset and the scent of gardenias. Libby nods hello to the shirtless man and faces Marie.
“Tell me more about your new school,” she says.
“Not much to tell,” Marie replies.
“How are your classes? Did you meet some of the girls?” Libby asks.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine, at least the classes. Understand the pidgin? No can. Dis haole is so lolo,” Marie says of herself with a smile. Marie looks away and says, “But seriously, questions sound like sentences, words are strange and I just stare back like a dummy.”
“I am sure you will catch on in no time,” Libby says. “You just have to jump in.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Marie says. “Not sure why, but I thought a lot about Anthony today. It was over six years ago and it still makes me sad. I just wish I could have done something.”
“You know, they say that ‘time heals all wounds,’ but it’s not really like that. It’s more like you are hit by a stone in a still lake. At first you are immersed at impact, but then you just keep doggy paddling away until the waves hit you with dampened impact and frequency. It will never go away, but you will keep getting more time in between the sadness.”
“I guess,” Marie says. “Well, I am off to bed.”
“Okay, ’night, love you,” Libby says, leaning her elbows back on the top step to stretch out.
Marie wakes up early to the hushed sound of her mother talking on the phone in the other room.
“It will be just this once. I promise,” Libby says.
“That was different,” she continues after a pause.
“It’s expensive here. We need a little help to get by,” she continues.
“I know,” she says. “Okay, okay, thank you.”
“It would be the last thing I would ever want, but, well, would Marie be better off, well, with you?” Libby asks. Marie’s heart pounds.
After a long pause, Libby says at last, “No, no, you’re right. It would be hard with your new family.”
To her surprise, Marie exhales with relief.
Marie puts on the tartan-Martian uniform and finds her mother in the kitchen staring into her coffee cup. Libby looks up at Marie with a shy look in her eyes that Marie has never seen before. Marie heads to the door and says, “We will make it work, Mom. We always do.” As she passes the shirtless man, he says, “St. Francis School? You can take that path at the corner. It’s a shortcut.” Marie thanks him and heads down the dirt path. Marie pictures the school ahead, full of laughing girls, confusing words and muggy air, and resolves to have lunch in the lunchroom. Near the door.
—Meredith Aitken, '93
