Ruth Galm - Into the Valley

“Excuse me?”

He flicked his chin at the girl. “No shirt, no service. We’re not over the bridge here.”

“I’m paying,” B. said.

He scrutinized B. for a moment. “Alright. But I don’t want her in my store.”

The girl was revolving a rack of support hose in the corner. The firm white sides of her breasts visible through the vest. B. whispered to her that it might be better if she waited outside, and the girl leered at the pharmacist. “Fucking pig,” she said but walked out.

The man watched the door after the girl was gone. B. shoved some roadhouse money onto the counter and took the calamine lotion and cotton balls.

“Asshole bourgeois capitalist pig.” The girl spat at the sidewalk.

B. did not think the girl knew what the words meant.

“Apple pie bullshit.”

B. handed the girl the bottle and bag. The girl stood with them, unmoving.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know how to do it.”

“You’ve never put on calamine lotion? For a mosquito bite?”

“I dunno.”

The girl looked at her expressionlessly. The druggist was right to be wary of such a foreign, feckless creature, B. thought. B. pulled a cotton ball out of the bag and kneeled to the girl’s legs. Over each red patch she dabbed the milk and blew gently. “Just let it dry. It will help the itching. If you scratch, you’ll spread it.”

The girl stared down at her plastered legs.

They walked to the car in silence and the girl slouched in her seat, the white-splotched shins up against her. B. felt an unexpected lift. As if something had passed between them, small but important. Her head felt momentarily still, her body free from nausea.

“I can drive, you know,” the girl said. “If you want a break.”

“I like to drive.”

The girl began chattering, as if she’d felt the lift too. “Jed wants to get a motorcycle, to ride around Spain. . I’m gonna learn the guitar and how to sing. We’ll ride around and earn bread playing on the streets, you know, and we’ll see the country — see, go, see.”

B. was trying to get inside the statements now. “But where will you stay?”

“We’ll bring a tent,” the girl said. “We’ll live like gypsies. Be in nature and be with the people.”

B. pictured the girl in a bright flamenco dress with the tiers of ruffles, a large flower in her hair. She felt a pang of envy. But it was ridiculous, wasn’t it? For anyone to live that way.

“A chick I met near Fresno lived on the land with her old man. They were on a real reservation, you know, camped with the Indians. The Indians just dug what these two were getting at, they didn’t even charge them. Anyway, the chick learned all kinds of prayers and dances. She taught me some.” The girl ran her fingers over the braids. Her eyes narrowed as if she was deep in thought. “I think we should do one of the Indian prayers.”

B. laughed. Then she saw the girl was serious.

“I thought you’d be hip to it. Being out on the road and all,” the girl said.

Blood rose to B.’s cheeks. “Well, I guess so.” She did not believe the girl knew a true Indian prayer. “I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

The girl smiled for the first time since B. had picked her up. “Pull over here,” the girl directed.

They were next to a pear orchard. The trees were larger than in the other orchards and B. was secretly relieved they’d be hidden at least. The girl disappeared into one of the rows. B. followed. Halfway in, the girl picked up a stick and started carving a large circle in the dirt. “Take your shoes off,” she commanded. B. removed the bone-colored heels. She did not know why she was following along.

With the same stick, the girl began drawing a sun and a moon inside the circle, very seriously, standing back at points to check her work. She added stars. The dirt was grainy between B.’s toes; she forgot the still-open cut. The pears gave off no scent, only the smell of dirt and leaves. When the girl finished the drawings, she began to orbit the circle. She put her palms up and out and began: “Dear moon, we are your children. Show us the way. Dear sun, we are your children. Show us the way.” The girl’s voice was loud and solemn; B. suppressed another urge to laugh. “Mother Earth, we are far away from you, we are lost. Show us the way. Show us in the stars. Sun and moon, we give ourselves to you, show us the way.” The girl began to ululate. “Heya heya heya!” She sped up and began to spin and hop around the circle. The movements fascinated B.; she had not imagined the girl to have any energy at all. “Heya heya heya! Oh!. .We don’t give to the government man or the business man or the police man. . Heya heya heya! We don’t give them a goddamn thing. . Oh! Heya heya heya! We give to the people, the people, the people.” Dancing and moaning, the girl grabbed B.’s hand and pulled her along. “We give ourselves to the sun and the moon and the earth and the stars cuz we need your protection, man! We need you to show us the way! We’re ready to take back the way!” B. felt ridiculous, going around in the circle, until the girl released her abruptly and she was left to watch her twirling fast in the center of the circle, arms wide, braids whipping out, utterly free.

Are you funny about women, is that it? Don’t you want to be normal? Her mother’s voice sharp and panicked into the phone. And B. had wanted to ask her, plead with her, “Is that all there is? Isn’t there anything else?” But she’d told her mother everything would be fine.

B. watched the girl chanting and dancing around her. Then she stepped into the circle. She turned around slowly. Slowly, slowly the pear trees went by. The carsickness felt remote; her body empty. She began to sob.

The girl stopped. She stared with the same blank stare from Sambo’s. Without a word, she turned and walked through the dirt drawings back to the Mustang. After a few moments B. followed.

They did not speak of the Indian prayer again.

Their motel room that night had a single queen bed with lumpy mattress, dripping faucet, cracked plaster walls. The girl fell asleep immediately while B. lay next to her aware of every breath, of the heat radiating off her brown arms and legs. She tried to count the cracks in the ceiling. The carsickness still remote; the banks abstract and unsubstantial in her thoughts.

She took the girl’s hand and held it. The girl inhaling and exhaling so easily.

They woke late again. They stopped for lunch and the girl devoured a meatloaf sandwich, two scoops of chocolate ice cream and an orange soda. (B. had coffee and bits of Danish.) Afterward they drove aimlessly on the small roads. It seemed easier now for B. to drive without speaking, to follow wherever the road took them, the girl’s feet up on the dashboard, hot wind through the windows. (The heat itself now a welcome stupor.) The carsickness was still subdued. Maybe if she could stay this way with the girl. Maybe, she thought, something with her had cured it.

When the sun was just above the western hills, they intersected the freeway again and came on a small carnival by the side of it. The girl perked up.

“Can we stop?”

The rides were old and ramshackle. But B.’s lower back ached from driving and the girl was too excited.

“Okay,” B. said.

The girl bounced in her seat until they parked. She asked B. for money and went to the entrance without waiting. It was all seedy: the half-dozen rickety rides with rusting metal and flaking paint, the faded concession stands, the operators’ road-weary faces. The music oomped-oomped and the dingy bulbs winked. There was a whirling tilted octopus ride, bumper cars, an airplane merry-go-round for small children, a spinning column of swings. But no Ferris wheel. B. would have liked to go above the valley again; she would have liked to compare it with the buttes. The girl made her ride the bumper cars, the clanging and crashing and sparks of which B. hated, and then the octopus, which made her neck ache. When the girl insisted on riding the spinning column of swings, B. refused and she watched the girl go around, long braids and feathers sailing, face indecipherable. B. bought her a caramel apple and an ice cream cone. (The girl had not refused anything since the doughnuts.) She bought herself a bag of popcorn and they walked along the midway as the last blue in the sky blackened.