Lydia Kiesling - The Golden State

“Hi everyone,” the Cunt says, looking around the room like a beauty queen, flicking her braid from her front to her back. Her skin is flawless ivory. “I know a lot of you in the room already, and I’m so honored for this opportunity to address the Board of Supervisors. I’ve been working with the North State counties now for, let’s see, my whole life.” She laughs. “Five generations of my family have ranched and lived off and enjoyed and stewarded the land,” she says. She looks like she would be cool to the touch, with languid veins peeking through thin skin. “I don’t need to tell you all that the state of California has lost touch, and that the Federal Government is imposing policies on us that are actively harmful to our way of life. This is the same government that wants to tell you how to educate and take care of your children, who are your property.” I have never thought about Honey being my property, it’s such an odd way to put it. Do I feel like Honey is my property? I ask myself, and the answer comes back yes and no. The Cunt continues. “You want to talk specifics and facts and figures I’ll tell you that the Federal Government is currently in the process of taking away four good dams that are providing water for our agricultural lands in the North State by the border. These are good, clean, renewable energy dams, folks, and they’re replacing them to ‘steward Coho salmon’”—this with her long fingers forming air quotes—“that you can, this very day, buy in Whole Foods for eight ninety-five a pound. An allegedly endangered fish that the government needs to save by taking away the sources of water for families and farms. I know I’ve only got a little time here, but I want to encourage you all to watch one of my presentations on the UN Agenda 21, which is so tied up with the future of our state and our country. Not if, but when, these reforms take place, we are going to wish we took action, if we don’t take action now, while we can. And that means supporting that State of Jefferson.” She looks around again. Something is crackling in the room. “In conclusion I want to leave you with one of my favorite passages from the Bible” which, what the fuck happened to Church and State I wonder. “‘If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.’” I roll my eyes all the way back into my head. “This is our land, that we love , folks,” she says. “We’ve got to do what it takes to protect it. Thank you.” Mad applause and she waves at everyone and swishes her braid again and sits down with Cindy’s group, who put hands on her shoulders and she puts her hands on top of their hands and whispers things I can’t hear.

A last guy gets up, probably in his fifties, camouflage baseball hat, tucked-in polo shirt in a nice currant color. “I’m Larry Elkins,” he says, “and that’s a tough act to follow.” Everyone laughs. I wonder if there is anyone in this room who felt the crazy emanating off the Cunt besides me and apparently Cindy. This is California , I think, feeling a little hysterical. “I’ve got a quote that I wanted to read too, from our greatest president. And that’s President Lincoln. ‘You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred… You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money…’” What a fucking pedant I think but the room collapses into whoops. Honey wakes with a cry and furiously struggles against the restraints keeping her in the stroller. The noise in the rotunda is tremendous. I bend to free her and put her on her feet, where she is immediately charmed by the novel sound of her small shoes slapping unctuously on the marble floor and starts running in ragged little circles.

I peer back into the room, where a small, soft, be-sweatered woman gets up to speak. “I’m Cathy Lindstrom and I just want to say in my opinion any elected official in Paiute County who publicly supports the State of Jefferson is violating the oath of office he or she took to uphold the Constitution of the state of California and the Constitution of the United States of America.” There are some boos here and a man’s voice calls out “The Federal Government is violating the Constitution of the United States of America” and a supervisor intervenes. “Everyone gets their three minutes, Bert.” I want to whoop for the woman but I’m too anxious to draw attention to myself and while I’m standing there equivocating Honey falls flat onto her face and unleashes a ghastly howl. I run to her and pick her up and cradle her and I see that everyone in the room has turned their face toward the door. I see Cindy’s eyebrows arch and I wave at the room and with one hand steer the stroller out the door into the afternoon, doomed not to hear the rest of rebellious Cathy’s three minutes or the vote itself.

We maneuver down the ramp and by the time we are at the sidewalk Honey has recovered her equilibrium and I see that it is nearly five o’clock so time for dinner bath milk book brush teeth bed since we need to preserve the sanctity of our routine. I think it would be so nice to go somewhere else to eat, but not the Golden Spike obviously, where I never want to go again, just somewhere where I don’t have to try and make the most of whatever pitiful shit we have on hand. I have the same or better tools as my grandmother but for some reason I can’t re-create any of her efforts. “Fix,” she would say, instead of “make,” as in, “I’ll fix us some tuna fish sandwiches,” and the sandwiches were tidy little squares on white bread I would never buy, with a lot of mayonnaise I would never buy, and a piece of iceberg lettuce I would never buy, but I loved them loved them loved them, with chips on the side and a glass of sun tea, everything so tidy and symmetrical on the plate. At night she would make tuna noodle casserole, or side-of-the-box lasagna, or steaks she would do in the frying pan with lard, and afterward a bowl of yellow vanilla ice cream from the box, with Hershey’s sauce on top.

We get to Main Street and look up the road in the slanting sun. I think well we could go to the Frosty but Honey shouldn’t eat burgers and fries and besides last time we were here I learned the new owner is an evangelical with a stack of unsettling magazines about the Holy Land. There’s a Chinese place in a big drafty room that was once a Curves gym which closed after two months, and there’s a diner past the Holiday Market that as far as I can tell is never open, and a pizza place that for some reason I just feel too sad to go into. Last, and I mean literally, it’s the only other place, there’s Reynaldo’s which is actually just about fine, and which my grandmother liked, “Mexikun,” she pronounced it, and I’m thinking about her tonight so that’s where we go. It is five minutes up Main Street in what I think was once a Black Bear diner and has the advantage of being sort of warmly lit and the slightest bit cozy and sometimes has real live groups of people eating there and I say, “That’s what we’ll do, Honey, we’ll have tacos and rice and beans and guacamole and Mama will have one beer.” And I push the stroller and Honey seems soothed by the cooling night air and the sound of the bugs which have started up sometime without my noticing.

We arrive at Reynaldo’s and I’m disappointed to see it’s almost empty and only one car in the parking lot. But I wheel in the stroller, which catches in the door since there’s no one to hold it and Honey says “Uh-oh” which she has just this month started to say, adorably, when something isn’t right. A young woman with piteous acne, who is not white, maybe a daughter of the eponymous Reynaldo, slouches over a podium looking at her phone and she rallies and shows us to a table. Before I get Honey out of her stroller I see the crone, no, must call her Alice, in a booth in the corner of the empty restaurant. I’m so desperate to sit at a table with someone that I wheel over. “Hi there!” I say. “Well hi,” she says, like she’s not surprised to see us. She’s tucking into a giant trough of rice and beans. “You can join me if you like,” she says. And I say “We’ll do that, thanks!” And I take the high chair from the hostess and I say “We’ll sit right here” and lug it over and arrange Honey in it. Alice reaches over to my surprise and chucks her under the chin with a gnarled finger and Honey looks shy and moves her chin into her shoulder and looks up at Alice through lashes, and then smiles her coy little ray-of-light smile and I want to die with pride again.