Authors: Kelly Milner Halls
There was hardly anything left of my ear lobe when she realized that “the core” was not just deep; it went all the way through. I was afraid she and Dad were going to deport me for sure that time.
Dad and I wish Dadi sweet dreams, and I rub my ear. Mom sits down.
I tell Dad that Kerry heard Smithville Pork was building a huge new hog operation just down the road from Hank and Dave Thompson’s farm. I hate lying, and yet I lie all the time. I say I thought the zoning commission voted to keep hog factories out of Story County. Dad goes to all those meetings, and he knows Gordon Smith.
“No,” Dad says, “the commission tabled that resolution pending an environmental study.”
“Nothing to study in that location,” I say. “A zillion gallons of hog waste into Ballard Creek and on into the Skunk River. Game over for the aquifer.”
“Where did Kerry hear this?” Dad asks.
I tell him, “I don’t know. She probably heard it from Hank and Dave, who are conspiracy psychos when it comes to agribusiness. I’m headed out to sleep with Muttski. Good night.”
Muttski is so big now that we can’t fit together on the chaise. I made a plywood platform that I toss his dog bed on, and I scoot it up so we’re side-by-side. I bought two sleeping bags; I sleep in one, and I open the other and throw it over both of us. We’re snug as bugs in a rug.
I confess that the touch of his long soft hair on the skin of my arm makes me think of Kerry. It’s not only that Muttski’s hair is the same color as Kerry’s; it’s the same ethereal texture. He doesn’t smell nearly as good, though.
I fall asleep happy—I think I’m happy, that is, but I must not be, because I dream of the Mouths of the Ganges. It’s monsoon season. The rains have been torrential, and the flooding is catastrophic. My two uncles, who are in charge of flood relief, have taken me out in their government boat. They believe I should see the devastation. The boat is big and safe. My father is glad for me to go so I can observe another aspect of government service. In time, he contends, when I return from university, I will serve our country. I am ten years old. The dream is just as it was when I lived it.
We are many kilometers south of Dhaka in the tidal forest swamp that covers the entire southern coast of Bangladesh even in the dry season. We started the day on the river, but as we came south, the river and the flood waters merged into an ocean of debris. Take a filthy flooded street, add more garbage and bodies of all living creatures from babies to the aged, then make it the size of a country. I saw a five-meter crocodile stuck in a culvert pipe; I saw a cobra swim over the back of a cow. I couldn’t tell a dead baby from a rubber doll. Survivors clung to trees, telephone poles, and the roofs of submerged cars, and huddled in the scattered houses built on pilings. The back of the boat was full of these people, a number of whom died there of snakebite. All afternoon I helped a young seaman knock the snakes off the boat’s gunnel with an aluminum pole. When night fell, my fear got the best of me and I climbed up and sat on a stool next to the helmsman.
I dream this nightmare often. I’ve dreamed it—off and on—for almost eight years. It’s a mix of memory and dream, and the dream part is always set in the deep of night. Our boat’s searchlights sweep the darkness, and their beams intersect with the lights of other boats. I know the bodies and the snakes and the crocodiles are out there, but only the seamen along the gunnels see anything.
Tonight, though—for the first time—I’m at the gunnel, and what I see in the black water below are Kerry and Muttski, floating … like beautiful drowned things. I try, but I cannot make them lost articles of clothing.
I had heard the term
Mouths of the Ganges,
and I had been there and—supposedly—seen them for myself. But all I’d really seen was water. So when my uncles took me back home, I looked in the
World Book
at a map. And then I saw why the region is called by that name: From southwestern India all along our coast with the Bay of Bengal are inlets that look like mouths. Some are narrow and come inland just a short way; others are wider and cut deeper into the land. But every one of them looks like a mouth, and from that day forward, I have been afraid that eventually these Mouths of the Ganges would devour me.
I’ve been spooked all day. The dream has never scared me this bad. I gave Muttski extra portions of love while I fixed a cargo net to the back of the Jeep so he could ride there without reaching Mom and Dadi in the rear seats to give them kisses with his big purple tongue. It turns out that giant Muttsker Bear is part Chow. And something really big and with the possibility of being light colored, maybe Great Pyrenees.
I’ve e-mailed Kerry that we are coming. I included a poem I’d sent her before, in my first note to her. I felt like saying it again,
and I wanted something from my own culture. I signed it as I’d signed it before. She told me one night after a cross country meet that I ran like silk.
Like a silkworm weaving
his house with love from his marrow,
and dying in his body’s threads
winding tight, round and round,
I burn desiring what the heart desires.
—The Silky Worm Guy
I know what moved me to dream: It was the lights of the earthmovers Kerry and I saw. They must have clicked with my memory of the searchlights on the boats. What I’m going to be devoured by is this freaking dream.
I drive slowly through the light afternoon traffic. We must look a sight to our Iowa neighbors: two women covered in black burkas; a Bengali man with a little Apu mustache riding shotgun; me at the wheel in my Iowa State cap; and Muttski in back wearing his Cyclones kerchief, looking like a fat cinnamon bear pleased to have been abducted from the circus in a bright yellow Jeep, top down.
It’s a big deal for Mom and Dadi to come to the fair. I chose the fair because it’s the most conservative get-together I can think of with families—besides church. There’s no midway, just the 4-H projects, so it’ll just be farm kids. Few bare bellies, not many piercings or T-shirts that will shock women who live in a tradition of immense public modesty. And not many public displays of affection, I hope.
I think of Mom, who after two years finally comes to my meets. Mom doesn’t drive, so she has to call someone for a ride. Sometimes Kamilla brings her, but sometimes she calls one of the other mothers. It wouldn’t be a big deal for a lot of women, but it’s a big deal for my mom. She stands along the course, or in the bleachers, surrounded by chants of “Dood, Dood, Dood, M’Dooooood!” as her son runs by wearing an earring and a hemp necklace.
I hate lying to a woman who does this for me. After two years I’m still telling them that Kerry and I go to the library to study. Can they possibly believe me?
And the things unsaid—which are lies, too—are building up. It is understood that I’ll attend university in England next year and study agronomy, as Dad did, or business like my uncles. But the truth is that I want to study literature in the States, and I want to run. And running means a smaller, less prestigious school, Division II or maybe Division III.
I’m sick to death of lying. It’s the lies that are going to devour me.
Mars looked like I could pluck it from the black ceiling over our heads.
“Look, Rafi,” I said.
“I’m looking,” he mumbled into my chest.
“I meant at the stars, you goof. At Mars.” I was hoping to distract him from burrowing further under my clothes, from his hands on my breasts, but it wasn’t working. I didn’t really want him to stop. I loved every inch of him, and I wanted to get lost in this sea of touch and ride the waves on and on. Everything else, Mars included, fell away.
I pulled his head against my chest. My bra, unhooked, was up around my neck with my tank top, and I stroked the curly dark
hair he kept cropped close to his skull. I felt myself shiver in spite of the sultry night when he moved his fingers, tracing where my bra had been fifteen minutes ago. My body arched against him, even though some place in my brain was screaming for me to be careful.
So I turned my brain off at these moments. If I didn’t, I could hear my grandma’s voice, like ice water dumped from one of her heirloom crystal goblets, spilling all over my half-naked body. Sometimes I forced myself to remember Grandma, hoping the ice water would stop me cold, give me the strength to say no.
“You give a boy what he wants, it’s fornication. I don’t care if he is the student body president and track star, tennis star, if his daddy is the most respected dean at Iowa State. And if you marry that boy, you marry his family. That’s when you’ll know he’s a Muslim, even if you say it doesn’t matter. He might want you now, but those Muslims don’t respect their wives. You mark my words, and you don’t get too involved with that boy. I don’t care how handsome he is. There’s no end but a bad one if you fall in love with that boy.”
“We’re just friends, Grandma,” I had protested.
“Friends, my foot,” Grandma said. “I see how you look at each other. It’s downright sinful.”
I memorized the lecture because Grandma spouted variations of it every time Rafi’s name came up, every time he came over when Grandma was around.
“Your grandma doesn’t like me much,” Rafi had said.
I felt myself shudder again. Sometimes, when Rafi touched me, his toffee-colored fingers on my skin, only my guilt was bigger than my desire to pull all of Rafi’s beautiful body inside
my own. Then guilt and Grandma jolted me back to reality and I panicked. Terror of going too far and getting caught. I sat up. I tried to pull Rafi’s head up to kiss him, to distract him from my boobs and everything below.
He was a magnetic force, and pulling away physically didn’t work. I leaned my head back to try talking. “Look at Mars, Rafi. It’s amazing. It’s like a pearl on velvet, and the stars are spread out around it like tiny diamonds.”
Rafi mumbled something else into my chest.
“What?” I said, trying to scoot out of reach.
He looked up at me. “These are the pearls I’m interested in.”
“Oh, you goof!” I said. “You’re the one who got us out here so late, Mr. ‘Let’s Go Observe Mars.’” I smacked him on the shoulder, but not hard.
He sat up.
“Rafi, look at Mars.”
“Oohh,” he groaned, flopping back against the driver’s seat. He reached down to rearrange the overstrained crotch of his jeans. “Mars is the god of war, you know.”
“Great,” I said. “Just great. War looks like a pearl when it’s far enough away.”
I tried to lean against him, but he pulled sideways, away from me.
I bit my lip. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He made a fist on his own knee, then made himself relax. “You make me crazy.” He reached toward me and ran a shaking hand down my thigh below the hem of my skirt, the other hand still on his crotch. “You just drive me nuts, you’re so beautiful. You make me ache.”
“I just feel so guilty. Rafi, I can’t—”
“I know, I know.” He huffed, leaning back and looking at the stars, too. “They’re so bright, it makes me understand why van Gogh painted them the way he did.”
“Hmmmm.” I nuzzled back onto his shoulder. “That’s a romantic thing to say.”
“Must have been a woman driving him crazy,” Rafi said. “I never thought of that before. That’s probably why he went insane.”
He sat up so suddenly that my head slipped off his shoulder, a whiplash withdrawal. “Well, let’s get going. I can’t stand to sit here with you and not touch you.”
He stepped on the clutch and turned the Jeep’s ignition key. I flopped my head back on the seat, hating the stars, the war god for being desirable from a distance.
The Jeep engine ground to life and our night ground to a stop. As if the stars had come crashing down. I leaned forward and hooked my bra, tugged at my skirt. Next Rafi wouldn’t be able to get me home soon enough. He’d shut down and left me with an emptiness as big as a sky devoid of stars.
There was no end to this guilt. Guilt for going so far. Guilt for not going all the way, for driving Rafi nuts. Guilt for not being able to tell Grandma and Mom and Dad the truth. A sea of guilt where I had to tread water to breathe.
Tonight still hung muggy after last night’s thunder, lightning, and torrential rain. The Skunk River and Ballard Creek had flash-flooded, there’d been so much rain—four inches in four hours. But the air hadn’t lost any of its heaviness, in spite of the storm.
Mosquitoes were torrential, too. I swatted, glad to have something to smack, and glad we would be moving soon.
I pushed the damp hair from my forehead and leaned farther back, aching, wondering how it would feel to be driving home if we’d had sex after all. I couldn’t feel much worse.
Rafi didn’t seem eager to have my head on his shoulder. I was glad that he had a Jeep convertible so at least I could watch the stars—the stars that hadn’t come crashing down after all, but made a sort of net to suspend me here. I waited for him to buckle his seat belt, to ride home through the summer night air and cool our bodies from our own heat and the heat of this beastly July day. Not speaking.
He put the car into first and stepped on the accelerator. The Jeep spun and lurched forward less than an inch, spinning on the slick dirt road, muddy from yesterday’s downpour. I lurched in the seat.
“What the … ,” Rafi muttered.
He slipped it into reverse. Same thing. First gear again. More spinning. I could feel the Jeep grinding itself further into the muddy ground. I sat, silent, staring straight ahead. I wished he hadn’t already been mad at me when this happened. I wanted to touch him, but I felt like he’d slammed that door shut. He tried rocking back and forth six more times before he put the car in neutral.
“Oh, oh.” He touched his forehead to the steering wheel. “Just the perfect way to end the night.” He muttered something else I couldn’t hear. I didn’t ask him to repeat it.
I bit my lip. “I didn’t realize it was that muddy when we drove in here.”
“Man,” Rafi exploded, and turned the ignition off. “I was not even thinking about the terrain while I was trying to drive in
here and keep my hands on you. Shoot. You’re the farm girl. You should have thought of this.”
“Rafi! This is
not
my fault. I was a little distracted, too.”
“I know, I know. Sorry. Okay, I’ll go get somebody to pull us out of this mess.”
“Thompsons,” we said in unison.
“You want to sit here and be mosquito bait, or do you want to walk to Thompsons’ with me?” He was getting out while he asked, not making eye contact with me.
To answer, I jumped out of the car. I was wearing only a tank top, skirt, and sandals, so walking out of here on the deserted muddy road, then down the gravel road wouldn’t be much fun. But I wasn’t about to just sit here alone until the mosquito hordes dive-bombed me into a mass of welts.
Harvey Thompson and his wife and sons, David and Hank, lived half a mile away, the only near neighbors on the gravel road. They had a huge dairy farm and raised one of the largest crops of pigs around. They farmed the whole section on the opposite side of the gravel road and used the pasture bordering Ballard Creek to keep the cattle satisfied.
Hank and David were both in high school with us and in my 4-H club. I felt my face blush in the dark, anticipating them coming to the door, grinning at us while they hooked chains from their John Deere 3020 to the Jeep to pull us out.
And even if the Thompson boys didn’t meet us at the door, they would know the story by tomorrow morning. Tomorrow happened to be the day the whole county was scheduled to bring 4-H livestock projects to the county fair. Even if I could escape them tonight, I
would
have to face both David and Hank Thompson tomorrow. Knowing them, they’d settle their show
heifers into the dairy building and make tracks over to the hog barn, where I would have my pigs, just to smirk at me and taunt. All in all, they would be good-natured about it, as long as I didn’t die of embarrassment. And better them teasing me than my own parents finding out, and, heaven forbid, my grandmother.
This was a primo secluded parking spot, since there were twenty uncultivated acres here, bordering a runoff ditch and stream that usually trickled but now roared through a culvert under the gravel road, joined Ballard Creek on the Thompsons’ property, and flowed in it, now brimming its banks, all the way to the Skunk River five miles away. Here the grass was wild, since it went uncultivated and ungrazed, and after spring rains, the ground was so spongy nobody had tried to grow anything here for as long as I remembered.
It was the first time I had ever gotten stuck parking.
Rafi was striding, fast, on his long, lean eight-hundred-meter-champion legs, but I managed to keep up.
“Look,” I said finally, grabbing his hand, “I know you’re mad at me. I’m sorry, but I feel so blasted guilty that it’s just gonna take me a while, okay? I hear my grandmother in my head when … you know. I’m sorry.”
We kept walking. Rafi didn’t say anything, but at least he didn’t pull his hand away.
“I want it too, you know,” I said. “I just can’t quite go … all … the way.”
We walked a little more, and I could feel the rigidity slip away from his hand. “I’m sorry I was a dick,” he said finally.
I squeezed his hand.
“I feel guilty too, you know. It’s just … “ He finally looked at me, for the first time since we put the brakes on our steamy skin,
and said, “you turn me on so much. You drive me nuts, and I guess I can’t stop—”
“Well, try, okay? I hate it when you’re like this. It’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry.” He squeezed back. We reached the gravel road and turned toward Thompsons’. The yard light was on, but no house lights that I could see. It was, Rafi checked, eleven forty.
“Oh, yum,” said Rafi. “Smell.”
I breathed in through my nose. Hog and dairy cattle smells. “Smells like home. Some people would say it smells like money.”
“Yuck. I couldn’t get used to that smelling like home. Makes me glad I don’t eat pork.”
We had only walked about fifty yards on the gravel road when an army of bright headlights turned from the highway onto this gravel road, over a mile away. It’s so flat in this part of Iowa, we could see three or four miles most any given time, any given direction. We kept watching as one, two, three, four, five, six big machines of some unidentifiable shape in the darkness turned from the highway onto the gravel road and lumbered straight toward us, lights flooding the road and ditches. The unmistakable diesel engines throbbed louder by the second.
“What the heck?” My throat felt like it was closing up. Whatever was coming at us filled the road, and it seemed we’d have to take the ditch just to avoid being plowed over. By the time the front headlights flooded us, my feet stopped. I pulled Rafi with me over to the side of the road, almost into the ditch. This was like a creepy science fiction movie. It was unheard of in the middle of the summer, in the middle of the cornfields, in the middle of the night, to bring six giant machines to the fields. For one thing, corn was too tall to drive through, but after plowing, planting,
cultivating, and spraying, farmers could take a breather while they watched their crops grow ready for harvest. July and August were when farmers could take a few days off—the only time they could take summer vacations—and that’s why county fairs and state fairs, too, had been scheduled in late summer since time began.
We stood there frozen as the headlights bore down on us. The light beams lit us up like we were on stage. In spite of the damp roads, the machines kicked up enough gravel dust to make us cough. We covered our mouths against the dust and squinted against the blinding light of this monstrous midnight parade.
The headlights slowed as they pulled even with us, and we turned like weather vanes, to see the first machine as it passed. Then we could finally make out a huge orange Caterpillar earthmoving machine. At midnight? I shaded my eyes from the second set of headlights to try to see the first driver. The parade slowed to a crawl, and the first behemoth ground to a stop. Right beside us.
“You kids okay?” The voice was friendly enough, not demonic as I had started to fear, feeling like Rafi and I had gone parking inside a Stephen King novel. When I could make out the guy’s face, I could see a dirty Twins baseball cap over leathery skin and brown eyes that twinkled. “You okay?”
“Freaked out,” I finally said. “What are you
doing?
”
“Just getting equipment ready for morning. Boss wanted it here before six a.m., so we decided to move it now instead of getting up at four.”
“What for?” Rafi asked. He slipped his arm around my shoulder. It made me feel a tiny bit safer, but only a tiny bit.
“Building a foundation.”
“For what?” I asked.
The guy shrugged. “We just do what we’re told,” the guy said, looking in a rearview mirror to check his convoy. “So, why you kids walking?”
“We’re stuck,” Rafi said. “Just at the end of that dirt road. See?” He pointed.
The guy squinted in the direction of the Jeep, smirked, and nodded. Its chrome roll bars reflected the machine’s headlights. “Ah. Well, you’re in luck, kid. That’s where we’re headed. That’s the dirt road where we start clearing for a foundation in the morning. So I reckon this little thing can pull your car out of the muck.”