I’ w m o r t k ry s i . n T g h t e o p u a n t d h e i r s s o ta p n e d n t t h o e m p e o i l f i t I i c w s a o n f t b t e o a t u a t k y e , h i t o , w m i y t m o th e r ’s in s t ru c t io n s in th e pow er of po s it iv e th in k in g is a g re a t adv an tag e , b u t I ’m in ex c ru c ia t in g p a in for my ug liness , my ug lin e ss g re a te r th a n my f a i th—ugly, ugly as an old w itch . ■ beautiful, can’t you see that?” But the opposite is always the truth. Ramon has to talk to me. “ It’s important.” We hide in the dusty arroyo where the seventh grader raped the first grader. I’mwearing my baby blue sweater I worked weeks at the drive-in for. “ It’s hard to tell you this,” he says, looking down the rocky cut where it goes under the road. “ Let’s go down there.” We can hear the cars rumble over us. I’m afraid of the rattlesnakes. But his hands are on my breasts, his penis against me. At first I resist. At night I pray to resist. I know this is wrong. But then the tide starts deep and back inside, wildly building waves that make life worth all the pain, that have to crash on the shore. Even so I don’t let Ramon enter me. He’s helping me to hook my bra when he says, “ It’s Eddie who says I have to tell you this. For your own good.” He sighs, then angrily grabs me by the shoulders. "Why, when you wear sweaters, do you stick your tits out so far? Don’t you know everyone laughs at you? The guys can’t stand you for it. They say you’ re cheap, teasing them.” I want to die, lie down in the gutter, let the rattlesnakes have me. I can’t even let Ramon know, my pride is so devastated, I have to hang onto something. The waves of shame, of public humiliation wash through me for months. I will never wear a sweater again. Though they are my best clothes, though they are the wonderful fashion. addy teaches me to drive. Swimming, learning to drive. I can’t get a license until I’m sixteen, but because they’ re always working at the drive-in they let me take the car home and back for errands. As long as I take the back roads. I love being in the car alone. Now the waves are of freedom, of exploration. I take two-wheel-rutted dirt paths off the back roads, back into the hills among the giant boulders, onto the reservations, into places of Ramona I never knew before, rock ‘n’ roll blaring from San Diego. I come to flash streams running right across the road. I plunge in and pull out the other side. When the water stops me, my parents’ Ford stuck midstream, I wade out and walk home all night in the dark. I’m afraid but too curious about the land, the canyons and valleys, the mountains and rocks and dams. The night. I feel the coyotes, the mountain lions, the jack rabbits watching me. I’m afraid of the oak trees because tarantulas nest under them. But then when I touch the gnarly trunk I know every person who has passed here through all time. Sometimes I know I am the first to place her foot on this rock. When I finally get home Daddy screams and screams. He grounds me for weeks. o graduate from eighth grade in California, to get into high school, every student must pass a history test with emphasis on the Constitution of the United States. I’m terrified of another public humiliation. For the whole year I study. I buy No- Doz pills and stay up nights studying under the blanket so my parents won’t see the light. My class is noted for its high number of intelligent students. At the end of the year, when the scores come back from the state, I’m told I passed. Everyone is raving about Neal Hopkins, one of the three boys in my class with genius I.Q.s, how high his score is, one of the highest in the state. His picture is in the El Sol. On the day of graduation, I see the scores. Mine is a half point beneath his. I was a close second. I don’t understand why no one said anything about it. My speech for graduation is called “ Freedom.” write my first stories in the eighth grade. I write science fiction. I write a story about a beauty contest called “ Universe,” an outer-space competition of creatures from all the galaxies, creatures of bizarre and spectacular shapes and sizes. I don’t call it Miss Universe, because in the universe such a competition would not be limited to one or even several genders and of course it wouldn’t be limited to the unmarried. It’s clear to me that these are provincial ideas of the little part of Earth I live on. Miss Earth this year is a deer. She competes with enormous star-shaped flower creatures, flaring mole shapes, a beast from Revelations, kings like strange fungi I’ve seen in the oak groves, glowing white. The winner is from Venus, a being shaped a little like an earthling, except for the green iridescent husk that robes its body and its noseless face. Everyone has an ugly nose. If you came from a world without noses you’d think we were deformed with our knotty protrusions. I write another story about the last couple on earth after the Bomb. They drive from town to town across the United States in the cars they find strewn everywhere. In their lifetime they will never run out of gas, which seems like heaven. But they worry about the future. Who will know how to make gasoline? Though there is no one to marry them, their obligation to have sexual intercourse is very clear. Clinton St. Quarterly—Summer, 1988 9
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