Future Home of the Living God(5)
I cross a bridge with a trickle of water underneath—qualifies just barely as a river, I think. But no turn for a while. The left turn I do take leads past six houses. Five are neat and tidy, trimmed out and gardened, birdhoused, decorated with black plywood bears and moose or bent-over-lady-butts with dotted bloomers. One yard is filled with amazing junk—three kid swimming pools of brilliant blue and pink plastic, a trampoline, dead cars, stove-in boats getting patched I guess, heaped-up lawn mowers and little rusted-out lawn tractors and barbecue grills. Dogs pop from the ditches here and there, at random, and chase after the car, snapping at the wheels. The last house isn’t yellow. I stop the car, pull over. A frowzy tan terrier mix springs up and down outside the passenger window, tireless. I turn back. Maybe there’s another river. She did say big. The dogs pop out in reverse all the way back to the highway.
There are two other false-alarm rivers, and left-hand turnoffs, all of which lead back into the same first road with the yard full of kid swimming pools. One pool is filled with a couple inches of water and there is a big woman in it, wearing a long T-shirt, letting a little naked baby play in front of her. Aw, cute. Fuckit! Where’s my birth home? Where’s my family? Once again, a false turnoff, a winding road, the dogs newly thrilled each time by me and my car, the woman in the swimming pool now watching me like I am from the FBI. I decide that I will ask directions of her, and turn into the driveway. The dogs go crazy now, foaming with righteousness. I’ve invaded their territory and don’t dare get out of my car. I roll the window down. The woman looks up at me—she has a flat, beautiful, closed-up, suspicious face. She says nothing.
“Could you tell me where the Potts live?”
The dogs throw themselves at the car now, thumping their bodies on the doors, hysterically excited by my voice. The woman puts her hand to her ear. I’m not afraid of dogs, generally, but one is chewing on my tire.
“Looking for Mary Potts!”
“Dunno!”
“How about . . . Sweetie?”
The woman slowly raises one arm, keeping the baby safe with the other, and points back down the same road. Tears sting my eyes. So it’s no use, I think, shoving the car into reverse, pulling out of the driveway. Bitterness rises in me. I’ll probably take every left turn off this road and cross every bridge and river—how many can there be? Is it all one river, maybe, bigger and smaller in places, winding through like a snake? Is there some kind of settlement besides the casino? A water tower? Maybe a food store? Some place that people can visit for the education and health care I have read is guaranteed to us by nation-to-nation treaty? I get back on the highway and drive, sorrow welling up, lost self-pity, that awful feeling of loneliness. I’m also getting very hungry, a serious kind of pregnancy hunger, ravening hunger, and now I just want to stop the car and cry. I drink some water. Eat a little bag of peanuts from my glove compartment. Compose myself. Back on the road, it occurs to me that I could turn around and go back to the Superpumper and get junk food, then introduce myself to Eddy. I’m about to do just that when I come to a bridge and a big river. A real river. At last, one with moving water. And a left-hand turnoff right after with a promising road I know will end in a yellow house.
And there it is. I turn into the gravel drive that leads to my birth family’s yellow house—fairly new, three or four bedrooms. There is the wheelchair ramp and birdhouses out front, the broken-down black van with purple detailing, the well-kept BVM bathtub shrine, and the bent wooden—willow, I think—frame that must be the sweat lodge. And there, about the appropriate age, Mary Potts Almost Senior. She wields a garden hose, an unattached garden hose, and she is beating the crap out of a dusty couch cushion. She grins a sly, lopsided smile as I drive up, and gives the cushion a few finishing whacks.
Here is the woman who gave me life.
“Holeee.” She puts her arms out and comes over to the car. She is sweating lightly in a tight black muscle shirt that shows pink bra straps, and a pair of flared black capris. Her shapely, bearlike body is all muscular fat, and she has a pretty face with neat features. She’s young. She has gleaming white teeth and shifty little merry black eyes. Her dark brown hair with red highlights is fastened on top of her head in one of those plastic claw clips, a blue one, and she wears pearl earrings. They look like real pearls. I exit the car into the stifling hot air.
We stand facing each other, completely awkward. This is not a hugging moment for me, and I don’t know what to do about the tears filling the eyes of my birth mom.
“Pretty,” I say, touching my ears. “Pretty earrings.”
“Yeah, Eddy got’m for me.”
She sniffs and looks away, blinking.
“I think I saw him in the Superpumper, reading.”
“That was him. Always got his head in a book.”
“What’s he like to read?”
“Him? Everything. Everything but the sex manuals.” She sighs. “Ha! Just kidding. Aaaaay.”
My birth mom stands beside the car with her hands on her hips. I notice that she is chewing on a shoelace. She notices that I notice and says that she does that when she’s trying to quit smoking. Then she starts smiling at me, a little, but with the shoelace in her mouth this is strange.
“So, what do you think? How are people taking the news up here?”
I don’t know what to do. She’s not inviting me in, not giving me any of the usual signs of welcome. I try to make conversation.