Part 12 (1/2)
”You're just the right person, Vangie.”
I went, ”Yeah, think of it. First waiting tables and now this. Who knows how far I could go?”
I thought Joe would lay into me for being a smarta.s.s, but he just looked at me for a moment.
”Is there something else you'd rather be doing?” he said.
From the way he said it, I knew the question was nothing more and nothing less than what it seemed.
”There isn't anything else I'd rather be doing,” I said, and meant it.
I was to be at the stand from eight to six every day the market was open-Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sat.u.r.days-which meant leaving the orchard with my truck loaded no later than seven in the morning. Since I would be running the stand by myself, when I had to go to the toilet during the day, I'd put up a sign that said ”Back in 5 minutes,” take my money pouch, and leave the stand. Customers who wanted to buy fruit would either wait, circle back on their second pa.s.s through the market, or buy from some other stand.
”Don't you worry about someone taking something?” I asked Joe when he told me the setup.
”No one walks off with a bushel or a peck of fruit,” he said. ”Don't worry.”
I remembered the farmers market from times my mom and dad dragged me along with them, and the first day I walked in, I saw the place had not changed at all. The whole of it was a series of old barns with concrete floors, with doors here and there opening to the outside. What a joint it was! The whole place had a funny, rank smell, which was in part from the fruits and vegetables, in part from the blood at the butcher counter, and in part from the hot people working the stands or shopping in the aisles.
Still, I liked the place. I liked to be in the bustle of things. I liked to watch the country people who came in for their weekly shopping trips, and I liked watching the people who ran the stands. There were produce stands, pie and baked goods stands, a funnel cake stand, a stand selling the homeliest kind of farm-wife blouses and dresses, and a jewelry stand selling bracelets, necklaces, and bolo ties made of a metal that lasted a wearing or two before turning sour and gray.
My favorite stands were the ones the Mennonites ran, but that was because I liked to watch the Mennonite boys work. Unlike the girls, who were mainly chunky and homely, the Mennonite boys were almost all good-lookers. I didn't like the young married men-I thought the fringe of beard they wore made them look silly-but the teenage boys and the unmarried ones my age caught my eye. They had slim hips and thick shoulders from the work they did, and their soft blue or green s.h.i.+rts looked pretty against their tanned skins. Something about seeing all those strong waists rising up out of pants that weren't cinched around by a belt-well, it did it for me.
So even though it had made me laugh to hear Joe Span-cake talk about how I was good with the public, or to have him say that I had the best attendance of any picker he ever knew, I was glad he got me the job. I liked talking with people who stopped by the stand, I liked making the bushel and peck baskets look nice, and I liked the change ap.r.o.n I wore. I knew I would not have been picked to run the stand if I was a f.u.c.k-up, so the whole experience was like getting an award at school, which I never got, or like pulling in some half-decent tips at Dreisbach's. Plus, the job was about a hundred times easier than picking pears, and I knew I was lucky to be out of the orchard rows.
Still, I missed seeing the trees of the orchard, and crazily, I even missed wearing the picking sack around my neck and waist. When I had the sack on, I felt strong, and when I took it off at the end of the day, I felt like I put my burden aside. It was a powerful combination of feelings, and I knew I couldn't explain to anyone what it meant to me. But those first steps without the sack after wearing it all day-well, I could have sworn I was airborne.
NOT LONG after I started running the stand at the farmers market, Del took to giving me a baby talk every night as I stood in front of the bathroom sink and punched a Lo/Ovral pill from its plastic cap into my hand.
”No one's ever ready for kids,” he was saying this particular night. ”And you know I love you. I want to knock you up.”
”What you should do is knock it off. I do not want a baby.”
”When are you going to believe I'm serious?”
”Oh, I know you're serious,” I said. ”But I'm serious, too. I'm not ready for a baby.”
”When do you think you will be ready?”
”I don't know. But a long time from now.”
I waited awhile there at the sink, putting cream on my face, and then I went, ”Maybe some people shouldn't ever be ready. Take my old man. He probably never should have had kids. When my mom got pregnant with me, you know what he did? He didn't take a shower for three weeks. He was mad at her for getting pregnant. As if she did it herself.”
”Well, your dad's crazy.”
”What about your dad? You said yourself he never wanted any of you.”
”You can't judge us by them,” Del said. ”Besides, I'll do a d.a.m.n sight better than my dad did. He never stopped drinking. I'm already a step ahead.”
Then, because I could not stand the thought of getting preached at some more, and because I didn't even know how to talk to Del these days, I said, ”I had a funny dream last night.”
I told Del my dream of the owl, the dream I had after I f.u.c.ked Kevin Keel, which I hadn't told anyone, but which I still hadn't forgotten. I was lying by saying I had the dream the night before, but everything else I said about the dream was true: how I'd heard the beating of wings and saw the striped markings, how the bird flew close to me and brushed my hair back with one wing.
At the end I said, ”When the owl brushed its wing over my face, the whole thing felt real. I mean, I could really feel feathers against my face. It made me happy. Comforted, you know? And that was the dream. It was something.”
Del looked at me a long time after I finished, and I couldn't read his face. He looked half surprised and half mad, but when he started to talk, I realized it wasn't anger at all that I was seeing.
”The Holy Spirit comes in different forms, Vangie. It's the sign you've been waiting for.”
He said it in that calm Christ-voice that made me crazy.
”How do you know it's the Holy Spirit?” I said.
”It had wings, it came down upon your head. What else could it be?”
”A bird. Maybe the dream was just about a bird,” I said. I wanted to go on and tell him the truth about when I had the dream and how it had nothing at all to do with church or being born again, but if I confessed to one lie, it might make my other lies harder to uphold. So I said nothing, not about when I really had my dream, not about my scar, and not about Kevin Keel.
”Why are you rejecting Him, Vangie? Isn't this the sign you've been waiting for?”
”The only sign I'm waiting for is when you're going to get tired of the whole thing.”
”What whole thing?”
”This whole G.o.d thing. The going to church, the testifying, all that Bible study stuff.”
”I can't believe you,” Del said, shaking his head.
”Well believe me. My dream was about a bird.”
”Anyone else would be happy to get a sign from the Holy Spirit.”
”I'm happy I dreamed about a bird. How's that?”
”f.u.c.king-A, Vangie. Why can't you just accept it?”
He hadn't gotten mad about all the Sundays I b.i.t.c.hed about having to get up early, and he hadn't gotten mad about me refusing to testify, but me dreaming about an owl and calling it a bird instead of the Holy Spirit made him angry.
”You accept it for me,” I said. ”You're the religious expert around here.”
”You don't understand what I went through.”
I said, ”You never told me what you went through. All I know is what I went through.”
And that comment was enough to end the fight, because in treatment they'd worked Del over good about how he had to make amends to those he'd harmed. But the only thing I needed anyone to make any amends for was something I did. I was the one who f.u.c.ked Kevin Keel. Me. I might have gone to Kevin Keel because I was hurt and angry about Del, but it was still my choosing and my action. I had to make amends to myself for that.
”I go to church because I love you,” 1 said. ”Isn't that enough?”