Homesick

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  • “No matter how hard she tries to only look at her notebook, the dying children’s parents always start to talk with Amy. Sometimes she’s even doing Kumon. But the parents of the dying children interrupt her and tell her she looks just like a little doll. Everyone says the same thing, that she looks like a doll. Amy feels funny when they say it, a little sick to her stomach. She doesn’t really know what they mean. Why would she look like a doll when she’s a person? Or do they just mean she doesn’t have any scratches on her skin like the dying kids do? She doesn’t ask their mom because their mom seems annoyed when people say it when she’s there. From this she deduces that she is right to feel uncomfortable.Their mom takes her to see the babies and tells her about when she was born. Amy was born early because their mom stepped on a snake in the garage and got scared, and that induced the labor. Because of the snake Amy had to stay in the hospital a little bit longer, in a cradle just like these ones. Amy asks if the snake got away, hoping the answer is yes. The answer is no. Amy, liberated by a snake that died, feels guilty and important. Their mom takes her to the cafeteria for lunch but gets mad at her in the middle and goes back down to the pediatric ward without her. She doesn’t give Amy any instructions on what to do next, so Amy decides to find the maternity ward by herself. She remembers never eat soggy waffles, and anyway, she remembers where it is. She stands at the window for a long time, watching the babies sleep. She fogs the glass up with her breath. She draws a tiny heart in the mist with her fingertip, and she loves the squeaking sound this makes, so she moves a little to the left and fogs up the glass again, on purpose, and draws a slightly bigger heart. Then she gets in trouble for disappearing, but it is worth it.”
  • “It seems impossible that Zoe got a tumor while Amy did not. The girls almost always get sick at the same time: chicken pox, strep throat, colds. Then it’s fun because their dad reads them stories like the one about the duck that turns into a swan and their mom brings them glasses of Tang. Unless Amy does have a brain tumor but no one knows yet. In that case her personality might already be changing. In that case she might already be becoming a completely different person, but nobody has noticed, and Amy can’t notice because it’s her brain that’s getting switched.”
  • “Amy and Zoe both know that the surgery is coming up soon. But they watch TV and read their Dr. Seuss books and ride their bikes with their dad. Amy makes Zoe keep practicing their address. Zoe laughs when she remembers and cries when she can’t. Zoe never knows the zip code. Their parents tell Zoe that she can have any present she wants after her surgery in exchange for being brave. For several days the girls make lists. Zoe paces up and down their bedroom like she might explode. Finally she decides on a pair of cowgirl boots. Amy says she should ask for something better than cowgirl boots, like moccasins, but there is no reasoning with Zoe, she wants the boots.”
  • “On the day before the surgery they all go to their grandparents’ house and have root beer floats and watch TV and Sleeping Beauty Amy and Zoe huddle very close together as though the air conditioning is making them cold. After the movie’s over Zoe and their parents get up and start to walk out to the car. Their grandparents stay where they are, sitting on either side of the entertainment center. Amy sits with them until she hears the car doors. She runs to the shut front door and stands on her tiptoes and watches them through the bottom blue square in the stained-glass window while they pull out of the driveway and into the street, the glass fogging up except where her nose is pressed against it. Slowly her fingertips slide down the slick groove of the wood.”
  • “When the phone rings the ground drops out and Zoe is gone It rings like a drill, insistent. Amy hears their grandma take a drag off her cigarette, and then she picks it up. Amy is lying on the sofa, back to the TV like she is taking a nap, although she isn’t sleeping. A gash opens up in her head, and she brings her hands up to her skull as though to keep it all from falling out. Their grandpa says not to mess up her pretty hair. Their grandma shushes him. Then she hangs up and comes over and puts her hand on Amy’s shoulder. Amy curls up. Their grandma says very quietly in almost a whisper that her sister has just been wheeled into surgery. She does not say that everything will be all right. For one second, Amy reaches around and grasps her grandma’s hand. Then she jumps up and runs into the bathroom and vomits. You can’t eat anything before surgery, so all she throws up is fluids from her own body, which taste like poison.”
  • “While her sister’s in the hospital, Amy is in charge of the dog She tries to teach it different tricks like fetch to surprise Zoe when she gets out, but the dog won’t learn. After a few days, Amy is allowed to visit. She is so scared her sister might have changed personality from the surgery that her hands won’t stop shaking on the way. When she walks into the room she sees an alien lying in a little bed with all kinds of different tubes and wires coming out of its body. It takes her a second to understand what is happening. Her sister’s long streaked hair is all gone, and all across her bare little skull is a jagged dark red wound. Without wanting to Amy bursts into tears. Her hands fly to her face to cover it up, but it is too late because their mother is already angry. Before she is dragged back out of the room she gets a look at her sister’s eyes. They are dull, and hollow. Amy lies on her grandparents’ couch all day with her face in the cushion, curled up like a seashell.”
  • “Zoe is released from the hospital on Amy’s tenth birthday It is September 24, 1991. Amy’s party, held at their grandparents’ house, is attended by all the relatives and extended relatives from all over Oklahoma. Even their cousins who live in Oklahoma City come. At first Amy and Zoe hold hands because Zoe is very weak and not used to walking, but then people come and crowd around Zoe, and Amy is jostled away. Gradually Amy drifts over to the doorway and keeps an eye on Zoe, silent. Now when they go anywhere everyone stares at Zoe. They try putting different types of hats on her, but she hates them all. She insists on wearing her cowgirl boots regardless of whether or not they are appropriate. They are slightly too big for her, but if she wears two or three pairs of socks, they are fine. Sometimes now the girls go and hide in the hall closet not because there might be a tornado but just because. Their parents say that they will homeschool them from now on because their dad is a college teacher anyway, and their mom knows a lot about a lot of things because she was the salutatorian of her high school class and would have been the valedictorian except for one of her teachers who was a jerk, so it will actually be better than school. This is fine with them. The only people they want to see are each other anyway. Amy starts taking pictures again, but only occasionally, and almost always of Zoe. When they go in for Zoe’s checkups they get to go to LaFortune Park afterwards and look at the ducks. One time they see one of the ducklings get snapped up by a snapping turtle, leaving only bubbles on the surface of the pond. They stand there looking for a little while, finding it hard to believe. Their mom says that’s the way the world works, but they don’t care: they don’t want to go anymore. So then their mom says fine, pretend, and they go straight to their grandparents’ house after checkups instead. Amy sits very quiet beside her sister almost like she is her sister and her own body’s just an empty ghost. A lot of times their grandparents play Scrabble while they watch TV. Their grandparents always get into arguments over whether words are words or not, but their grandma is always the scorekeeper, so she always wins. They argue fondly, and the girls enjoy it, although their grandpa claims that sometimes their grandma stabs him with her pencil, and he does have big blue marks on the backs of his hands, but they have never seen her do it in all their time there, so they’re not sure. Their grandpa also told them one time when they went to Camp Waluhili that he would fax them some cookies, but then they found out you couldn’t fax cookies, and they began to view him as a jokester, an unreliable source.”
  • “Their dad loses his job and at first the girls are thrilled. Their mom goes and works in an office, and the girls spend days on end poring over their dad’s atlas sitting on either side of him, asking questions over every picture on every page. They learn all the animals on Madagascar and make mazes they refer to as Black Forests, with coded maps that Amy hides around the house for Zoe. Their dad lets them use his big old T-shirts as saris. They check out cassette tapes from the library with Japanese flute music and salsa from a forbidden island kingdom the girls assume has treasure in the coves. Zoe points out that no one’s proven there aren’t fairies living there. They would likely fit inside your pocket and you’d just have to be careful not to squish them when you’re sitting down, but otherwise they’d take you to the treasure probably. Amy informs Zoe that fairies don’t exist. But she says what there could be is species considered erroneously by the scientists to be extinct. Then their dad starts interfering in things and covering Zoe’s eyes when kissing comes on TV or when one person shoots another person and there’s blood”
  • “The girls like to dance together when their parents aren’t home Their mom still works half-time but now with meetings in the afternoons and sometimes little trips to places like Owasso, and their dad has started taking teaching gigs. One day the girls see an ice-skating routine on TV set to swing dance music, and the next time they know it’s going to be on they tape it so they can watch it again and practice. Zoe likes the part where Amy picks her up and swings her around. Zoe picks the dog up and swings it around, too. The ice skaters they like all come from the former Soviet Union. In Europe the countries can change sometimes depending on the politics—they already know this from their dad. Now the girls learn that some of the people from the former Soviet Union use a different kind of alphabet, and they ask their mom to take them to the library so they can learn it. They find out that the Russian alphabet has five letters more than the English alphabet. Amy practices writing out the new shapes. Amy, having invented numerous alphabets that her sister has consistently failed to learn, thereby precluding the exchange of private communications, now gets hopeful that a real foreign language may turn out to be the way to go. The only downside is the Soviets have jumbled up their many letters, and Z is in the middle, not at the end. Alphabetical order has always been Amy’s favorite, better than chronological and a vast improvement over order of importance. Zoe, on the other hand, has long complained at the injustice of an alphabet that always puts her last. She considers this new system at least a partial vengeance of the Z’s upon the A’s: now Z is seventh, as though it’s catching up. Zoe wants to learn a language, too, but isn’t sure if what she wants to learn is Russian because by now the girls have learned that Zoe’s favorite ice skaters are from Ukraine which has recently turned into a separate place from Russia. Their parents are astonished to discover a true feud arising between their daughters; more astonishing still is that the source of the feud is a question of sovereignty in Eastern Europe. The girls build separate forts in the living room now with their octopi posted as sentries at the entry flaps and reproductions in crayon of their respective nations’ flags, Russia meticulous red and navy stripes, Ukraine some yellow ovals floating over light blue zigzags. Although their father is a geographer, no one in the family has a passport; it has never occurred to anyone to learn another language. But their parents are pleased to find them motivated to learn, and so they try to broker a truce between them by finding someone who can tutor them in both languages. This only intensifies the fighting.”
  • “Amy and Zoe fall in love for the first time, at the same time, with the same boy Sasha is a former student of their father’s at the Tulsa Junior College, from the eastern part of Ukraine where they speak both languages. He is tall and thin, with pale skin and smooth features. His nose is slightly crooked, which the girls find charming. Everything about Sasha is charming to the girls. He has curly black hair and long eyelashes and scruffy black eyebrows. The girls like the way he laughs and the way he walks and the things he talks about. He teaches Zoe Ukrainian for half an hour and Amy Russian for an hour every Thursday from 3:30 to 4:00 and from 4:00 to 5:00 respectively. Sasha is an energetic boy who always has something new to report to them about the outside world. Sasha stars in plays and plays in a band. To Amy and Zoe, Sasha might as well be Michael Jackson, or the President. The girls compete for his attention, but there is no competition. Amy is almost thirteen years old now. She is almost all grown up. She can feel him watching her sometimes, and in these moments, she feels both thrill and panic, neither first, and she understands that she is in love. Sasha’s eyes are kind, and soft, and one time she gets lost in them and loses her train of thought and can’t finish her sentence and turns bright red. The whole week between that class and the next class she spends blushing each time it comes back to her, which is all the time. She doesn’t tell Zoe. This is the second secret that exists between them.”
  • “The girls get their periods within a day of each other By now Zoe is ten and Amy is thirteen. Amy gets hers first, on a Sunday. She knows what it is and is proud of herself for knowing, but what she does not know is what to do about it, so she goes and finds their mom, who because it is Sunday is playing Dr. Mario on Zoe’s Game Boy. Dr. Mario is like Tetris only with pills and viruses instead of blocks. Zoe doesn’t play her Game Boy much because she’s been so busy. Amy clears her throat and whispers as loud as she can that she has her period and that she needs to know what to do. Their mom jumps up and leaves the Game Boy on top of the washing machine. This makes Amy feel important, and for an afternoon, Amy and her mom have something in common. But then Zoe gets her period the next day while their mom’s at work, and Amy has to show her about pads and split the stack their mom had given her and listen to her whine and cry about her stupid cramps. It is typical of Zoe to have to do things at the same time as Amy, in spite of their respective ages. Now she acts as though getting your period is worse than having your skull split open and your brain rearranged. Amy shudders to think what will be next.”
  • “One day it occurs to them that they could go by themselves while their parents are out. It is like when they learned how to read and worlds opened up before them: now they can’t imagine why they never went before, although they can’t remember what it was like before they went, either. On this aisle they find pads for their periods and tampons, which is what they came to look at, but they also find things they’d never dreamed of, like intimate feminine wash, intimate waxing kits, and personal lubricant pumps. They widen their purview. They find condoms, pills for sexual fitness, pregnancy tests you pee on to see if you have a baby or not. Speechlessly they agree to spend their savings on a box of tampons, a box of condoms, and a set of two pregnancy tests, one for each. Amy has more money because Zoe always spends hers, and anyway she gets three dollars less per month because she’s younger, despite her protests. Amy makes Zoe make the actual purchase, too embarrassed, standing by the door like their parents might walk in at any moment. Too excited to resent her sister, Zoe is effervescent on the short walk home, swinging the sack of contraband wantonly around. At home they rip apart the boxes and take turns examining the instruction sheets inside. They take turns peeing on the pregnancy tests. They discuss if they will ever really use the tampons. Ever since their mom explained what being raped was they have worried what will happen to them when they grow up.”
  • “Amy wears perfume to Sasha’s play She retrieves a vial named Sunflowers from the shoebox in her fossil drawer and sprays it gingerly on her wrist, in the bathroom, with the door locked even though they’re not allowed to lock the door in case what if they get electrocuted. She half expects everyone to make fun of her, but maybe she doesn’t put enough on because nobody says anything on the car ride there. Amy doesn’t really watch the play. She waits for Sasha. When Sasha comes onstage the audience claps as though they’ve been waiting, too, and a bolt of jealousy shoots through Amy’s core. It is fine for Sasha to have other friends, she thinks, but some of these people are girls. But now Sasha is talking, and his firm male voice, all-encompassing, eradicates everything else, even the words, which Amy’s brain can’t process. She simply listens to his voice, appreciating his thick eastern accent, but treating it all as music, not talk. Amy watches Sasha’s face. Sasha’s face is taut, but open. Amy watches Sasha’s hands. Sasha’s hands are big, but delicate. She tries to think what their first kiss might be like. She would shut her eyes. Past this she can’t imagine. She worries she will not be good at kissing. She watches closely when people kiss on TV, and she practices sometimes on her octopus in the bathroom with the door locked, but still. Maybe Sasha can teach her the way he teaches her Russian. She hopes he will not make fun of her. Although maybe she won’t be so bad. She hopes in fact that she will be a natural like she is at other things. That’s what their grandmother says, anyway. Despite the diagrams that came with the condoms they bought, Amy can’t quite really believe that Sasha would have a penis. The idea of their whole bodies touching from head to toe appeals to her, but she can’t even see herself naked when she attempts to envision it, let alone him.”

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