Bad to the Bones(8)

Eventually, our father got sick of it and left when I was thirteen. The pain was unendurable. Thinking that my beloved father didn’t love me anymore psychically damaged me. He could’ve stayed in town like so many divorced fathers did, but he was a banker, so he moved to Los Angeles. I started spending more and more nights sleeping out at Coyote Buttes with my friend Maddy. I hardened my heart. I “acted out.” We made out with boys, smoked weed, and drank. I felt bad about leaving little Virginia behind to deal with Carol’s wrath, but at least I escaped for a while.

I learned that to be cool you had to literally be cool. Unemotional, blasé, too hip to respond to anything. Maddy and I became so hip that nothing could affect us, you know? We were such juvenile delinquents we laughed with glee when the local Cottonwood paper mentioned us as “frolicking” on the buttes, setting off fireworks, and leaving beer cans and “marijuana butts” lying around. As if we’d leave a weed roach on the ground.

So I’m sure it was this indifferent, callous condition of mine that led me to sleep soundly in a stranger’s bed.

I must have slept one whole night through because when I awoke, this definite morning light poured in through the slats of the blinds. You know that “morning light” feeling? It’s a sort of sunny, yellow, bird chirping feeling that reminds me of childhood, before everything got f*cked. I’m too smart to know everything could ever be that good again, though, so I was instantly skeptical. I remember sitting up in the strange bed, clutching the blanket to my chest, glancing around suspiciously. My Master used to always be on my back to trust people, situations. “Not trusting means you can never live fully, never experience life in all its glorious multicolored hues.”

He was probably right. But who wouldn’t be suspicious waking up in a strange apartment that smelled of stale bong water? There wasn’t much on the walls to tell me who lived there, only I knew it wasn’t an ashram apartment because black T-shirts were draped from furniture. I heard noise, traffic outside, so I wasn’t out in Merry-go-Round Canyon anymore. I tried to piece together what had happened. The minivans, the daimyo shooting at us, the sterno bum screaming about mashed potatoes and knockout drops, it all seemed like a distant dream to me now.

Incredible as it sounds, I shrugged it off. I shrugged off many experiences. It had taken me many painful years to learn to stuff down my emotions. I wasn’t about to let any of them out of the hat now. I felt my thighs. I was still wearing the leggings I’d worn while working on that carburetor, but my purple knit skirt was gone. Dropping my hands to my lap, I saw that I was still wearing my violet tank top. So whoever had taken me hadn’t penetrated me. Or, if they had, they were meticulous about replacing my clothes.

I had to pee, so I clambered out of bed and staggered to the can. While peeing a giant stream, I stared at an AC/DC poster on the wall. A lightning bolt replaced the slash in the band name, and the tagline “Lock Up Your Daughters” blared out. That didn’t give me a secure, cozy feeling. I also noted men’s shaving materials littering the vanity. These things, and the fact that no one had washed the sink in approximately nineteen months, let me know a man lived there. A man who wouldn’t be fussy about replacing clothes on a woman he’d just bonded with, so I knew nothing had happened.

Had some deprogramming zealot run me out of Bihari? The Master had warned us that might happen. “The Arizonans don’t like us because we represent freedom. They are threatened by us, and will wish to change us to be like them. They are not happy with anyone who is different from them.” Were the minivan drivers on the payroll for a zealot who wished to make us more like him? Was Bulsara in cahoots with some Pure and Easy fanatic, a hater of all that was free and uncomplicated, like us?

I peered beyond the bathroom door frame. The muffled voices of TV actors came from behind the next wall. A sort of excitement crept into my lungs as my breathing quickened. You’d understand this if you knew I hadn’t seen a TV in years, aside from the ones playing in bars as I walked by during town runs. The list of things we weren’t allowed to own or do out at Bihari had been getting longer. The more the townspeople and local authorities hated us, the stricter the Master became. It was his way of saying we needed to focus only on him, to learn to funnel out negative distractions.

So actually, I was paying more attention to the activity on the little television than I was to the man…at first. I crept past the bedroom door, almost tiptoeing up to the screen that seemed to be playing a hunting show. Yes, there were guys in safety orange and camo walking around with crossbows. And whispering. “There’s a nice six-pointer.” I stood for a few moments with my hands folded in front of me, obediently watching. I know it sounds unbelievable to most people. But I was enthralled with the men’s whispered discussion about how to approach the deer for the best shot.

“That’s a damned big buck for Nebraska.”

“Look at that rack.”

“The wind’s in our favor.”

“It’s so cold there’s ice on my bow case.”

I was aware someone was on a couch, shuffling around, clinking a coffee cup. I know I often have inappropriate reactions to things, and it’s something I’m working on. But it took me several minutes to turn and look at the guy. For all I knew, the guy could’ve been a whacked-out captor, one of those serial killers the Master is always telling us about. Well, either way, he was a captor, because he’d somehow captured me from that mesa, and was now holding me in a little apartment.