The Marsh King's Daughter(16)
When we came to the end of the long table, I spotted another off to the side full of pies and cookies and cakes. On it was a cake with thick brown frosting and rainbow sprinkles, and not just a few. Twelve tiny candles arching over the words Welcome Home, Helena written in yellow frosting meant this cake was for me. I dropped my macaroni-potato-ambrosia-casserole in the metal can, picked up an empty plate, and slid the entire cake onto it. The People reporter smiled while the photographer took pictures, so I knew I’d done the right thing. Since I’d left the marsh, I’d been doing a lot of things wrong. To this day I can taste that first mouthful: so light and fluffy, it was like biting into a chocolate-flavored cloud.
While I ate, the reporter asked questions. How did I learn to read? What did I like best about living in the marsh? Did it hurt when I got my tattoos? Did my father touch me in ways I didn’t like? I know now this last question meant did my father touch me in a sexual way, which he absolutely did not. I only answered yes because my father used to whack me on my head or backside when I needed punishing the same as he did to my mother, and of course I didn’t like that.
After I finished eating, the reporter and the photographer and I went upstairs to the bathroom so I could wash off the makeup my grandparents put on my face to hide my tattoos. (Why was it called a bathroom, I remember thinking, when there was no place to take a bath? And why were there doors labeled MEN and WOMEN, but no door for children? And why did men and women need their own bathrooms in the first place?) The reporter said that people would like to see my tattoos, and I agreed.
When I finished, through the open doors to the parking lot I saw a group of boys playing with a ball. I knew that’s what it was called because my mother had named it for me from the Geographics. But I hadn’t yet seen a ball in real life. I was particularly fascinated by the way the ball jumped back into the boys’ hands after they smacked it against the pavement, like it was alive, like it was inhabited by a spirit being.
“Want to play?” one of the boys asked.
I did. And I’m sure I could have caught the ball if I had known he was going to throw it at me. But I didn’t, so the ball whacked me in the stomach hard enough to make me go oof—though it didn’t really hurt—and then it rolled away. The boys laughed, and not in a good way.
What happened next has gotten blown all out of proportion. I only took off my sweater because my grandparents warned me the sweater needed to be “dry-cleaned,” and that cost a lot of money, so I shouldn’t get the sweater dirty. And I only pulled my knife because I wanted to throw it from behind my back and stick it in the wooden post that held their basketball hoop to show the boys that I was as skilled with my knife as they were with their ball. I can’t help that one of the boys tried to grab my knife away from me, or that he sliced his palm open in the process. What kind of idiot grabs a knife by its blade, anyway?
The rest of “The Incident,” as my grandparents forever after referred to it, was a blur of boys screaming and grown-ups shouting and my grandmother crying that ended with my sitting in the back of a police car in handcuffs with no idea why or what went wrong. Later I found out the boys thought I was going to hurt them, which was as ridiculous as it sounds. If I had wanted to slit someone’s throat, I would have.
Naturally People magazine published the most sensational pictures. The photograph of me with my bare chest and facial tattoos and the sun glinting off my knife blade like a Yanomami warrior graced the cover. I’m told mine was one of their best-selling issues (number three, after the one about the World Trade Center and the Princess Diana tribute), so I guess they got what they paid for.
In hindsight I can see where we were all more than a little naive. My grandparents, for thinking they could cash in on what had happened to their daughter without repercussions; my mother, for thinking she could step back into her old life as if she’d never left; me, for thinking I could fit in. After that, the kids I went to school with fell into two camps: those who feared me and those who admired and feared me.
I stand up and stretch. Carry my glass to the kitchen and rinse it in the sink, then go into the bedroom and set my phone alarm and lie down fully dressed on top of the covers so I can head out as soon as it gets light in the morning.
This won’t be the first time I’ve hunted my father, but I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure it will be the last.
7
The alarm goes off at five. I roll over and grab my phone off the nightstand and check my messages. Nothing from Stephen.
I thread my knife onto my belt and go to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Growing up, the only hot drink we had besides my father’s foul-tasting medicinal teas was chicory. Digging the taproots, then washing, drying, and grinding them was a lot of work to make what I now know is essentially a second-class substitute for coffee. I’ve noticed you can buy ground chicory in grocery stores. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to.
Outside it’s just starting to get light. I fill a thermos and grab my truck keys from the hook by the door. I’m torn about leaving Stephen a note. Normally I would. Stephen likes to know where I am and how long I’ll be gone, and I’m okay with that as long as he also understands that my plans could change and I might not be able to let him know when they do, since cell reception is spotty to nonexistent over much of the U.P. I always think it’s ironic that in an area where you might conceivably truly need to use a cell phone, you so often can’t. But in the end, I decide not to. I’ll be home long before Stephen gets back. If he comes back.