Lori Ostlund - The Bigness of the World

“Mennonites!” Sarah mouthed excitedly.

“Yes, but now what do we do? We can’t very well tell them that we’re on our way to see them.”

The Mennonites did not ask where they were going, however. Instead, the large, blond man drove and the two teenagers rocked gently in the seat next to him. They had driven several miles when, coming over a hill, the women found the landscape startlingly different. Scattered at intervals were farm houses, large and white and sturdy, with barns off to the side and a silo, sometimes even two, attached to the barns. And everywhere they looked there was corn, rows and rows of it. Best of all, the smell of worked soil hung thickly in the air.

“It just feels so weird,” said Sara after they had both studied the scenery for a moment. “It’s just like Minnesota. It even smells like Minnesota.”

“Or Iowa,” said Sarah without a hint of annoyance. Rather, she sounded relieved, and Sara, hearing this in her voice, looked over at her quickly. They smiled, and Sara began to sing then, giddily, a song rushing to her from her childhood: “Ho, ho, ho. Happy are we. Anderson and Henderson and Lundstrom and me.”

The truck turned into a driveway and continued for several yards toward the house before the driver pressed gently on the brakes, put the truck in reverse, and backed toward the road, stopping at the point where the driveway and the road met. Still, nobody in the cab spoke to them or even turned around to acknowledge them, and the women stood up uncertainly, clutching the sides of the truck lest it begin to move again. When they had dropped to the ground, they waved thank you, and the truck crept forward again toward the house.

Now that they were at the Mennonites, they did not know what to do. The day was warm, and the swaying of the truck had left them both drowsy, their legs rubbery. They stood for a time in the road, taking in the corn, and then they turned and began to walk back in the direction from which they had just come. They had not gone far when they heard behind them the whir of bicycles approaching, and so they moved to the side of the road, out of the way. The first bicycle passed quickly, astride it a boy of perhaps twelve pedaling furiously, one leg of his overalls bunched up around his white thigh to keep it from being sucked into the bicycle chain. As he went by, he turned and smiled at them, but it was not a friendly smile; in fact, it was decidedly unfriendly, as though the boy knew why they had come, and they felt ashamed of themselves then for thinking of the Mennonites as a destination.

As Sara looked down, the second bicycle slowly passed on her right, and she felt a hand on her breast, squeezing hard. It took her a second to understand what had happened, as though she were translating from a language that she had just begun to make sense of. Sarah, who was a half step behind her, saw the boy’s hand come out and knew instinctively what he was about to do, and she kicked at him, too late. Next, she screamed at the boy, at both boys, who stood on the pedals of their bicycles, heads turned back toward the women to witness their response. Finally, she picked up rocks and began hurling them at the boys, but they were too far away for the rocks to do anything but provoke laughter. The boys pedaled furiously up a hill, and when they crested it, they stopped briefly to wave at the women, and then they were gone.

“Bastards,” Sarah screamed, and then, because there was nothing more that she could do, she turned back toward Sara, who was hiccuping sobs, and they stood awkwardly together by the side of the road, all around them the dark earth that had made them think of home. Sarah studied the handprint, thinking how young the boy had looked to have such large hands and how dark, like the soil, the mark was, emblazoned across the white of the shirt. The hand was directly over Sara’s breast, appeared to be cupping it, in fact, rising and falling with it as she breathed.

My girlfriend returned from Hong Kong bald, thoroughly bald, the bumps and veins of her skull rising up in relief, as neat and stark as the stitching on a baseball. When we embraced, I noted that her scalp had a sickly yellowish cast to it, the influence of the airport’s fluorescent lights apparently, for once we were home, the yellowness had vanished, leaving nothing but white. It may surprise you to know that I did not address her baldness immediately, right there in the airport, but I did not. Rather, we stepped free of our embrace and then rode the escalator down a level to retrieve her suitcase, though I will admit to standing a step above her as we descended in order to survey the very top of her head, the crown, which appeared freer of veins than the rest of her head and brought to mind a bird’s belly.

“How was Hong Kong?” I asked as we waited for the conveyor belt to start up and produce her suitcase.

“Tiring,” she said with a small, exhausted smile meant to confirm her reply.

Then we stood in silence for several minutes, waiting for her bag to appear, which it did, bright orange and easy to spot. The closest I come to experiencing a sense of wonder in regard to the world and its workings is at the moment that I catch sight of a familiar piece of luggage, last seen thousands of miles away, chugging up the conveyor belt from the bowels of the airport. I simply do not expect it. Perhaps this seems overly pessimistic, for something must be done with those scores of bags so carefully collected and tagged on the other end. They cannot all simply disappear into nothingness. True. However, I fully expect the other travelers’ bags to arrive; it is only the appearance of my own that provokes awe. Furthermore, for the sake of full disclosure, I will reveal that only once has my luggage actually gone astray, and not during one of my more complicated international flights but after the shortest hop imaginable — fifty minutes, Denver to Albuquerque, Albuquerque being home.

When we walked from the car to the house, the chilly desert air seemed to startle her as though, in that moment, she realized that there was a price to be paid for having no hair, and while I still said nothing, I was happy to see her suffer just a bit. She unpacked immediately, unusual for her, while I sat on the bed and watched, focusing on her hands, which dipped in and out of the suitcase, bearing all of the familiar clothing with which she had departed just a week ago, several pairs of black dress pants and lots of orange — blouses, sweaters, a scarf. Somehow she can combine black and orange and not come off looking as though she’s dressed for Halloween, but with her nude head bobbing atop her shoulders like a pumpkin, it occurred to me that things might be different now. And still I said nothing, for I hadn’t decided yet what it was that I felt — anger, sorrow, embarrassment, perhaps all three.

“Here,” she said, handing me a plastic bag containing what appeared to be individually wrapped squares of candy, but when I unwrapped a cube and set it on my tongue, it was definitely not candy. I sucked on it a moment and then bit down.

“Bouillon?” I inquired politely. She laughed, and it sounded the same, rich and frothy, but when I glanced up, her head was bald, and she stopped.

“Dried tuna with wasabi,” she said, and we fell silent.

We brushed our teeth together, both of us vying for the sink, a common occurrence, but when the mint of the toothpaste mixed with the residual taste of dried tuna and wasabi, I nudged her quickly out of the way and leaned over the bowl, gagging. When I glanced up in the mirror, she was there behind me, perhaps looking concerned, though I cannot be sure of that. I do know that with the toothbrush protruding from her mouth, her baldness seemed almost mechanical, as though her head were nothing more than a giant socket, a home for various parts. Later, when we were in bed, I opened my eyes, expecting to see her head illuminated, a full moon rising over her pillow, but there was nothing, only the faint throttle of her breathing.