Excerpt from WHEN SHE WAS GOOD
by Norma Fox Mazer
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At the Corners, when I get off the bus, I'm thirsty. I buy a soda in the store, drink it there, and then start walking. I stay to the side of the road and don't look at the cars passing. Sometimes a head turns clear around to stare at me. Am I being recognized? Oh, that's the Thurkill girl, the younger one, the one who ran away with her crazy sister. We never came back after we left. It's been a long time, four years, and I'm different now, aren't I?
But when I turn onto Killenhorn Road, I see that even if I have changed, nothing else has. The road is still not a real road, only two sandy tire tracks. The same weeds press in on both sides. The same gray aspens and skinny pines straggle away into the distance, and the same scrubby bushes push stubbornly up from their bit of soil. Even the sounds are the same, red squirrel clattering at me as I pass, and then a squad of blue jays squawking overhead. For a moment it's as if I had never left, as if I'm still twelve or thirteen and walking home after school.
I walk slowly, and the closer I get to the trailer, the slower I walk. The sun is dropping behind the trees. I keep looking at my watch, wondering if Father will be home. It's a workday, but what if this morning he woke up with a feeling that he should stay home? Just a feeling, he'd say to Sally. She'd go to work, though; she wouldn't want to lose the money. So when I knock on the door, it's going to be Father who'll answer. When he sees me, what will he say? Will he shout out my name? Em! Will he be amazed at how much I've grown, how I changed? I'll remind him of the years that have passed. I'll say, Father, I've done so many things since I saw you last.
One day when I was a tiny girl, I looked up at Father and noted in astonishment how big he was. Huge! I was sure he was the tallest man with the smoothest, barest, shiniest head in the whole world. "My daddy," I thought, and I knew this feeling in me was love. His name was Ray Thurkill. My name was Em Thurkill. Our family was me, and Mother, whose name was Veronica Thurkill, and Father, and my sister, Pamela Thurkill. She went to school. Mother and Father went to work. Mother worked in a paper-box factory. Farher worked in the gravel pits and sometimes on construction. I drew a picture of my big tall father, and another of our trailer, which was even bigger than father.
Now I see the trailer again, and it's silly, I suppose, but I'm surprised by how small it is. Did it always list to one side that way? Looks like a pile of shit, Pamela used to say, but I never thought so. It perches on the edge of a deep ravine, like a boat waiting to sail away. Years before, the land below had been a dump, and every spring when the snow melted, ancient garbage would rise from the earth, tin cans, shards of glass, and rusted hunks of metal. I used to play down there and find pretty little pieces of pottery and try to put them together.
I walk down to the front door and knock. The air is still and warm. "Hello?" I call. "Hello? Father?" I knock again, then push the door. It swings open. And right away I see that nobody lives here anymore.
I stand in the doorway, my legs shaking, then I go in. Wads of dried leaves rustle in the corners. Porcupine pellets roll under my feet. In the room I'd shared with Pamela, mice have chewed holes in the mattress. I used to wake up bruised from Pamela's arms and legs trashing and kicking all night long. I learned to sleep in a tiny space. Like Mother, I think.
A backless chair lies on the floor. I pick it up and open a window and poke my head out. I had made up such a nice little scene — Father at the door, crying out my name. Em! Maybe even hugging me. Then the two of us, talking about all the things that had happened in these four years. But when had we ever talked together that way?
I'd lived here for fourteen years. Here, I began to become whatever it is that makes me the person called Em. I stare down the familiar road. I'd walked that road every day for those fourteen years. I think of Mother, sad and always chilled, even in summer, and Father with his shining head, his distant eyes, and I think of Pamela, and my head begins to ache, and I lean my face against the cool window.
When I leave, the ravine is in shadow, and the sun is gone.
From When She Was Good, copyright © by Norma Fox Mazer
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