Mary Miller - The Last Days of California

“You ran out of gas once,” our mother said.

Elise and I didn’t remember him running out of gas, but he didn’t deny it. And then we were at seven miles and the car dinged again— ding, ding, ding! Elise raised her eyebrows at me and elbowed me for good measure.

At the top of the hill, we looked left and right and saw no sign of a gas station, no sign of anything in either direction.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Left or right?”

“Why didn’t we get gas when we stopped for lunch?” my mother asked.

“That question isn’t relevant or helpful, Barbara,” he said. He never called her Barbara. It was funny hearing her name.

“It might not be helpful but it’s certainly relevant, John ,” she said.

“Take a right,” I said.

“That means left,” Elise said. “Jess has a one hundred percent inaccuracy rate.”

“That’s true,” I said. “I do.”

He took a left and drove a ways and then a ways farther. He was searching for a place to turn around when we saw it. The gas station sat by itself, weeds growing up through chunks of concrete. There were bars on the windows and the advertisements were all in Spanish. It was hard to believe that there was any need for a gas station out here.

“I bet the bathroom’s on the outside,” Elise said. “I hate when it’s on the outside.”

“I like those enormous keys,” I said.

Our father went inside to pay—the pumps didn’t take credit cards—and the three of us followed him. Two men stood in front of a fireplace, smoking and drinking coffee. It was like we’d walked into their living room. They stopped talking and one of them pointed to the right back corner.

Elise tried the knob and it opened, felt around for the light. She shut the door, but then she opened it and pulled me inside with her.

“I think it’s a front,” she said. “There wasn’t much for sale.”

“Gas is for sale,” I said.

“It’s a front,” she said, “trust me. I know one when I see one.”

The bottle of soap had been diluted to a thin pink liquid. I pumped some into my hands and held them under the water while Elise squatted over the toilet. There wasn’t a mirror. There wasn’t even the outline of a place a mirror had been.

“I hate traveling,” she said. “People think it’s so fun to be uncomfortable but it’s not fun. I’m not feeling challenged . I’m not learning anything.”

“Who thinks it’s fun to be uncomfortable?”

“Oh you know, traveler types. On the upside, at least my period won’t be making a surprise appearance.”

“That’s not funny.”

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not funny. It’s not funny at all. Hand me a paper towel, this toilet paper is wet.”

Our mother and father were waiting when we opened the door.

“Use the paper towels,” I said.

Elise told the men that the bathroom needed toilet paper and they nodded slowly. We debated over popsicles, deciding coconut would make us feel like we were on vacation. We opened the wrappers and placed them on the counter, ate them while checking out the bricks of beige candy, bags of chips with crazy fonts. I picked up a thick bar with almonds on top and Elise took it out of my hand and put it back.

“Mexican candy isn’t any good,” she said. “It just tastes like sugar.”

“I like sugar.”

“It tastes like stale old sugar. Let’s look at the shirts.”

We flipped through a rack of oversized t-shirts in thick, scratchy cotton until Elise noticed a stack of cowboy boots in a corner.

“Dude,” she said. “I can feel it. It’s my lucky day.”

She sorted through the boxes until she found a pair of bright blue boots in her size. She held her popsicle between her teeth as she slipped one on. “A little big,” she said, turning her foot this way and that. She put her hands on her hips. “What do you think?”

“They make your legs look good.”

“They do, don’t they?” she said, kicking a Styrofoam cooler.

Our father came out of the bathroom and I waved. When I saw him in public, even at an empty gas station in the middle of nowhere, I liked him better. I thought about these men treating him unkindly or laughing at him and it hurt my feelings.

Elise put her flip-flops in the box and placed it next to our popsicle wrappers, and our father paid without comment. Once we were in the car, I wished I’d gotten a pair so we would be wearing the same thing, but I hadn’t even checked to see if they’d had my size.

Our mother wanted to stop at a flea market in a dusty town full of cactuses and oversized aloe vera plants. “It’s one of the top-ten flea markets in the country,” she said. “And it’s on the highway we’re already on so we won’t even have to go out of our way.”

“We could pass out tracts,” Elise said.

“Like you would ever pass out tracts,” I said.

“I’ve passed out tracts before.”

“When?”

“You know, that time,” she said. “At that thing.”

From the highway, it didn’t look like much—a wide gravel lot and some makeshift buildings attached to other makeshift buildings, a few tents scattered around the edges. Our father parked and we all got out, our eyes adjusting to the brightness.

“Take some tracts,” he said, and I put a few in my purse.

At home the flea market our mother frequented was full of old people selling junk from their attics: stamps and clothes and Christmas decorations, porcelain dolls in yellowed dresses—the same things week after week that nobody seemed to buy, or else they had an unlimited supply. But this was a Mexican flea market, full of Mexicans, my father pointed out, but he got excited when we passed the first concession stand selling turkey legs and funnel cakes for two dollars apiece.

He bought a huge Coke and a funnel cake and we strolled the aisles, looking back and forth between the booths of refurbished washing machines, VHS tapes and serving dishes, cowboy boots and cowboy hats, and so many baby things: baby clothes and baby toys and baby strollers and baby bassinets. I watched Elise to see if her eyes lingered on any of it. Maybe she would pick up a tiny pale pink dress and it would change everything.

I stopped in front of a big-butted mannequin wearing an off-the-shoulder dress. They waited as I sorted through the rack and chose a shirt with Our Lady of Guadalupe on the front. It was gaudy, something I’d never wear at home. I paid for it and put it on over my King Jesus t-shirt, and we continued walking, pulling pieces off of our father’s funnel cake until he passed me the plate and bought himself a turkey leg. He was so happy with his turkey leg, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

I watched an older woman in a tight black jumpsuit put on mascara, her mouth an O and her eyes wide. She was looking in a mirror and didn’t care who stopped, mid-aisle, to gape at her. Her booth was selling miscellaneous electronics, VCRs and cassette players, things that had become obsolete.

Our mother detoured into a pottery booth and our father stopped. Elise and I kept walking, men forming a loose circle around us, talking to each other in rapid Spanish. A teenager swept the pavement in front of us while we pretended not to notice. I dared her to say something to him, thought it would scare him if she actually spoke.

“I wonder if they’ll sell us a margarita,” she said, digging around in her purse. “Give me some money.”

“You have money.”

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“You can’t drink here, anyway.”

“The drinking age is eighteen in Mexico.”

“We’re in Texas.”

“I know we’re in Texas but do you see any white people?” she asked, but then she became distracted by a man drawing a caricature of two teenage girls. Next to the man, a sad woman in full-on tiger face sat at a card table. Her sign said, SMALL DESIGN $4 WHOLE FACE $9. She had a boy haircut and was wearing regular clothes. I wondered why someone would paint her face like a tiger and drive all the way out here to sit at a card table, looking so miserable that no one would ever go near her.