Jane
On the thin blanket I’ve spread out, I roll over on my back.
A heavy cloud the shape of cotton drags through the sky, blotting out the sun, so I gaze up at it, my fingers threaded over my eyes. When Luke comes to visit, I’ll bring him to this very spot, deep into the night.
He’s already eighteen. I’m seventeen, but my birthday’s in two weeks. June 13. I’m hoping he’ll come see me then. Now that it’s warm out, he could sleep out here at night, and no one would be the wiser.
I’ll wrap up chores out here soon so I can call him. Do it under the guise of needing to get Indy, the baby lamb named after Indiana Jones, some more socks.
Luke and I talk at least twice a week. I’ll usually call around noon when I know he’ll be home on his lunch break from working at his father’s body shop, his long, lean body stretched out on thesofa while he flips through a book. Usually poetry.
Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, Sylvia Plath. Like I said, broody. But he’s who got me into more modern poetry and also music, the alternative stuff, the good stuff that woulda never seeped through the local stations in the cowpoke towns where I’ve lived.
When we get to New York, he’d promise,we can focus on our art.
Luke loves to draw, to sketch, and is amazing at it. My art is more nebulous. That’s the word Luke used to describe it, a new word to me but one I like rolling around in my mouth.
I love words, and every time I come across a new one—especially something exotic likenebulous—I jot it down in my little black leather notebook. The definition, how to use it in a sentence. Dad gave it to me on my fifth birthday for this very purpose. He’d made a trade, building a workbench for a leathersmith in exchange for a new saddle, reins, and my notebook.
“Words are knowledge, and knowledge is power,” Pa said that evening as he pressed it into my hands, a grave look shadowing his handsome face.
Now the book is lined with hundreds of words, my handwriting changing over the years from simple print letters to the more elaborate cursive I’ve been able to master.
Because we’ve moved so much, Pa and Mom weren’t always able to keep us in school. So Pa homeschooled us. Mom did, too, but I swear to God, no pun intended, she’s only ever read one book: the King James Bible. Her teaching thus far has been life skills: Churning butter, making candles, sewing clothes. Being agood wife. Being a good Christian lady.
But my mind is thirstier than that, something Pa has always seen in me. So he’s done his best to expand my library all these years, picking up used books in junk shops and estate sales, and now I have a trunkful at the foot of my bed.
He’s had me stick to the classics: Shakespeare, Faulkner, Hemingway, etc. For poetry, the Romantics: Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge.
I love the poetry most, the way the words lock together, the way a whole story can be told in a single stanza. I lie in bed at night and read by my gas lantern, memorizing and reciting the words until Mom has enough and shushes me, orders me to sleep.
When we were still little, Julia and I put on little plays for Mom and Pa. We’ve never had a television. First off, we can’t afford one, but also, Pa has forbidden them. He thinks they’re the stuff of mind control, and anytime Julia or I protested and begged, desperate to be like the other kids, he’d shoot back with a quote from one of his favorite thinkers, Marshall McLuhan:The medium is the message.
So we’ve had to make our own entertainment. Julia used to like stories, just like I do. But once we hit puberty, all that became childish to her. Anything artsy. The stuff of useless daydreams. And in her defense, sheismore book smart than me. She aces math, science, history—all the things that are outside my grasp and bore me to tears.
You better start thinking about what you’re gonna do with yourselfwhen you grow up. If you ever grow up, she’d warn me with a bitter shake of her head.
But I don’t want to grow up. Not in that responsible, dead-inside way she’s talking about. And Julia herself doesn’t exactly share whatherplans are. She may act all stern and religious like Mom (though I can’t tell if sheactuallybuys into the religious stuff or just pretends to), but I know her well enough to know she damn sure doesn’t want to wind up barefoot and pregnant like Mom. She’s too independent to rely on some man. Even still, I know she’d love to finally fall in love. But, like the talk of cute guys at the swimming hole, that topic is off-limits, which is why she tore my head off for daring to mention it.
The little I’ve been able to pry out of her is that she’s gunning for community college next fall now that she’s out of high school. Somewhere local. Maybe get on her way to earning a biology degree, become a teacher. I’m sure it’s the money that’s the barrier. Finances have always been a stressor for us, which is why we’ve learned to not bring it up to Mom and Pa very often.
But one day before Christmas last year, I heard her arguing with Mom, telling her that since she’s the beekeeper, she should be able to keep all the profits from the sale of honey. Guess what happened next? Mom had to dig bills out of the register after our open houses and days at the farmers markets to pay her, while all my labor goes unpaid—gets funneled back into the family, as Pa says.
Hitting puberty tore us apart in another way, too. I personally think my sister is so beautiful, with her straw-blond hair andclear blue eyes, but as soon as we hit adolescence, the boys flocked to me while all but ignoring her. Doesn’t help that she insists on wearing Coke-bottle glasses when she could have contacts. And that she doesn’t seem to want to even try with fashion. So boys taking notice of me and not her makes Julia downright hate me. She’s hostile to me every chance she gets.
And I’m not gonna lie, it breaks my heart. Because we moved so much, she was my only true, constant friend, and I’ve lost her.
Which is probably why I’m clinging to Luke so hard. And that dream of his to get us away from our sad little nothing lives.
You’re still forming; it’s the most important time for an artist, Luke says to me. And he’s right. I know I like to sing backup for Pa when we sit around the campfire. I know my voice is good. And lately—maybe because of the poetry—I’ve started to think about songwriting. Snatches of melody with words will come to me, usually when I’m out here working. But I’m still finding my voice.
I can see myself fronting my own all-girl band, something neo-punk and edgy that would drive Mom completely out of her skull. A smile tugs across my face just thinking about it, the way she would run shrieking from the room if she saw me up there, my eyes streaked with heavy black eyeliner, my lanky legs in fishnets, snaking out of a leather miniskirt. Luke standing in the front row, cheering me on.
Luke turned me on to a whole world I didn’t know was out there. He feeds not only my body but my mind.
A warm breeze thrashes through the orchard, rattling the vines. I screw open my canteen, take a long pull. It’s thefreshest-tasting water I’ve ever had, another advantage of living here.
When Pa bought this land, it came with everything we could lay eyes on: a pair of tawny mustangs, a rust-red tractor, and the well, built from limestone, which is where I got the water.
