\u201cYou\u2019re my stars,\u201d she used to say. \u201cMy Indiana and Tennessee.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She named us after the places we were born. Once, I asked her why she didn\u2019t name us after more exotic places, like California, Kenya. I would have liked to be named California\u2014then when people said my name they\u2019d think of hot sand between their toes and palm trees shimmering in the heat. They could call me Cali for short. But my mom said she named us the way she did because she wanted us to remember our roots.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re a mountain girl, Indi,\u201d she said, \u201cAnd don\u2019t you forget it.\u201d As far as I knew, there were no mountains in Indiana, but I didn\u2019t bother to mention it. It\u2019s not like I remember Indiana. We moved to California soon after I was born, because my mom wanted to \u201ctry her hand in the music biz out West.\u201d But I don\u2019t really remember California, either, at least not the parts I want to remember, like the beach. I remember this blue couch we had in our apartment that had bed bugs. They covered me with so many bites that my mom thought I had chicken pox. I got chicken pox, too, but that was later.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I was still small, some music producer told my mom her voice would be perfect for country music, so we hightailed it back in the direction we\u2019d come from, but we stopped in Texas for a few weeks that turned into a few years. Some of my first real memories are of Texas, of the high electric whine of the cicadas and the way our porch sloped down to the right.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In Texas, it was just the two of us. Mom had a gig performing at this little bar every night except Friday and Saturday. Because there was no one else to look after me, I went along. Some nights I slept in the car, but some nights I sat on a stool just behind the stage, smelling the old cigarette smoke that had gotten trapped in the curtains and watching Mom. I remember her wearing a red sequined dress and sandals that had bows on the straps. I\u2019m sure she didn\u2019t always wear this outfit, but in my memory it\u2019s the only one she ever wears. She\u2019s singing \u201cRing of Fire,\u201d my favorite song, making her voice go all deep like Johnny Cash\u2019s because she knows that, behind the curtains, I\u2019m laughing quietly into my small fist.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We left Texas after Mom got into a fight with the manager of the bar. He said she was late to work too much, and she said she didn\u2019t know why the hell she was wasting her time in that Podunk town anyways when she should be making it big in Nashville. I loved that word, Podunk. I said it all the way to Nashville, every time we hit a pothole in the road. \u201cPo<\/em>-dunk, Po<\/em>-dunk, Po-dunk<\/em>,\u201d I said, and Mom laughed and laughed. I later learned from a library book that the word \u201cPodunk\u201d was originally the name of an Algonquin tribe that lived in Connecticut. Like just about everything else, we took it from the Native Americans and made it our own. Typical. I told Mom this fact when I read it, and she said \u201cHmm, interesting,\u201d in a way that told me she wasn\u2019t listening.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When we got to Nashville, two things happened: one, I got really good at telling time, and I set our kitchen clock an hour early so Mom wouldn\u2019t be late to work. Two\u2014well, you guessed it. Tennessee was born. I was six by that point. Mom complained a lot when she was pregnant with him that he was preventing her singer-songwriter career getting off the ground, but when he was born, we were both equally enthralled with him. When Ten was awake, he was red-faced and squalling most of the time, but when he slept, he looked like an angel. Mom and I used to both stand over his crib and watch him sleep, saying things like \u201cLook at his tiny nails\u201d (me) and \u201cDo you think he has dreams yet?\u201d (Mom).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ten\u2019s dad was around for a while, before he wound up in jail for the first time. Mom later told me incredulously that she really did, yes, she really had, believed that he made all his money selling handmade ukuleles, but I\u2019m sure she must have known he was selling drugs. After he went to prison, Mom stopped using his given name and started calling him Sonofabitch Lee. At least Sonofabitch was a real person, though, a person I had met and known for a short while before Ten was born. I remember his mustache and the snake tattoo coiled around his lower right arm. That was more than I could say of my own father. But on the other hand, at least I knew that my own father didn\u2019t come looking for me because he didn\u2019t know I existed. That was better than Sonofabitch, who didn\u2019t seem to care at all about Ten because he never came to visit even when he wasn\u2019t in prison, and he never paid his child support payments on time, and even when he did pay them it was probably with the money from stolen car radios or something.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Nashville, Mom got another job at a bar because she said it would help her connect with music business types. She also got to sing at the open mic nights every Friday, which she said was \u201ca good way to get exposure.\u201d Mostly, Mom\u2019s job meant that she stayed out late at night and slept most of the day while we were at school. This in turn meant that I was in charge of getting us up and fed and out the door in the mornings, which meant we were almost always late to school. We brought home stacks of pink slips, piled them on the kitchen counter. Mom didn\u2019t care, though. She sat on the couch in her pajamas, strumming a ukulele. She said, \u201cListen, you two. School is just a way to brainwash you and keep you out of trouble during the day. The public school system wrings the creativity right out of kids like you! If I didn\u2019t have to work so blasted much, I\u2019d homeschool you and y\u2019all could finally learn three-part harmony.\u201d We lamented this right along with her. Like a lot of Mom\u2019s plans, it seemed really great and also far out of reach.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This one time when I was ten or twelve, Mom came home late from her shift at the bar and wedged herself next to me in bed, waking me up. I rolled over and mumbled, \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She leaned in and kissed me on the forehead and I said, \u201cYou smell like beer,\u201d and she said, \u201cThat\u2019s what happens when you work in a bar,\u201d and I said, \u201cNo, your breath smells like beer.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cScrunch over, Indi,\u201d she said. \u201cMy bed is lonely tonight.\u201d I moved over, but I rolled to face the wall. After she fell asleep with one arm draped over my back, I stayed awake glaring at the wall. I have to remind myself, now, that she didn\u2019t always come home with beer on her breath, because that one memory stuck so insistently.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The year he was six, Ten decided he really wanted a dog. I mean, really<\/em> wanted one. Of course, we weren\u2019t allowed to have pets in our apartment. He kept checking out this book on dog breeds from the public library, and he\u2019d lie on the dirt-colored carpet in the living room and study the big color pictures, debating aloud the advantages and disadvantages of various breeds, as if the only reason we couldn\u2019t get a dog was because he couldn\u2019t decide which breed he wanted. He\u2019d spend hours sketching, mostly Briards, the breed he loved best. They\u2019re these enormous French dogs that look like a cross between a German shepherd and an Afghan hound.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mom would lean over the table, curlers still in her hair, and say, \u201cWow, Ten<\/em>-nes-see! Amazing!\u201d She didn\u2019t ask if he had any homework. Not like she could have helped him with it. She was a terrible speller, and anytime she spelled his name she had to say aloud, \u201cTwo n\u2019s, two s\u2019s, one-two-three-four e\u2019s. Tennessee.\u201d I was the one who helped with spelling and fractions and the state capitals of Louisiana and Arkansas. I was the one who made mac and cheese or tuna salad for dinner, because Mom left for work right around dinnertime.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway, instead of a dog, Ten had this red rubber frog that he treated like a real, alive pet. He called her Strawberry, because we figured out from another library book that she was probably a strawberry dart frog. She had black spots on her back, and in order to make her look more realistic, Ten colored her legs with black Sharpie. We read in the book that some of these frogs have what\u2019s called a \u201cblue jean color morph,\u201d which means that their legs are blue instead of black. But we didn\u2019t have a blue Sharpie, so Strawberry wore black pants always, like Johnny Cash. Strawberry fit perfectly in Ten\u2019s palm or in the pocket of his jeans. She went to school with him every day, and no one knew about it. In the evenings, he fed her baby carrots, because Mom had banned him from bringing ants into the apartment. Strawberry swam in the tub when he took a bath. She slept on his pillow next to his head, although she usually fell off during the night, and then we had to frantically search the sheets for her in the mornings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I worried that what Ten needed was not a dog, or a frog, but a friend. Neither of us hung out much with kids from school. Parents weren\u2019t too keen on letting their children come over when there were no adults in the apartment, which was often the case. Sometimes Ten went to play at other kids\u2019 houses, but I didn\u2019t hang out with people my age because I was always watching Ten. I didn\u2019t really mind. Most of the time it felt like a relief to be able to say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I can\u2019t. I have to watch my brother.\u201d Watching Ten meant playing hours of Monopoly with our own made-up rules (Strawberry guarded the jail, and you had to pay her to get past, and we added liberally to the pile of free parking money, like whenever anyone rolled a six or a three). It meant reading aloud Peter Pan<\/em>, doing a voice for Hook that always made Ten laugh. It meant dragging the sandbag weight of his body off the couch and into his room when he fell asleep, so he wouldn\u2019t be woken up when Mom stumbled in late and turned all the lights on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Of course, we fought sometimes, and of course sometimes I resented him. Sometimes he got in the way, like the summer I was fourteen, when this girl in my class, Maggie, got a job at a retro drive-in movie theater. I desperately wanted to work there with her, to carry the trays of popcorn and wear roller skates and these cute short dresses with frilly aprons attached. But Mom said I couldn\u2019t. I had to watch Ten.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ten also got in the way the year I turned sixteen, when I fell in love with a boy named Dallas Leland. The infatuation began, of course, with the fact that he, too, was named after a place, and a place I\u2019d actually been, at that. But I wasn\u2019t the only one fascinated with him. Dallas Leland was one of those people who got popular in high school not by any particular effort or because he had any particular charm. People were drawn to him for two reasons: first, his spectacular hair, and second, the fact that he didn\u2019t talk. I mean never<\/em> talked. He sat right in the front row of our U.S. history class and never once raised his hand. None of the rest of us could imagine being that bold, so we spent more time watching him than watching the teacher, Mr. Francis. We wanted to see what Dallas Leland would do if Mr. Francis got the guts to call on him. That, and we loved looking at Dallas\u2019s hair, the red-gold color of it, and the way it swooped out from a point toward the middle of his skull, just a little left of dead center. His hair was the color of sunlight, and if Dallas\u2019s head had been the sun, I would have willingly blinded myself to look at it every fifth period. Luckily, I didn\u2019t have to pay much attention in that class. Ten was learning a lot of the same things in fourth-grade history, so I knew everything I needed to know from studying with him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our final project that spring was to be done in pairs. We were to write the story of an American tragedy from two perspectives. The project instructions didn\u2019t really say \u201ctragedy.\u201d I added that part. The instructions said \u201csignificant and controversial event.\u201d But events that are controversial are always a tragedy for somebody, I think.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the interest of fairness, Mr. Francis had us write our names on slips of paper and drop them into Eric Poleski\u2019s cowboy hat. Then Eric, who in cowboy boots was a solid five-foot-five, swaggered around the classroom and let us pluck the pieces of paper out of his hat. While I waited for my turn, I sat with my hands wedged between my legs, all eight of my non-thumb fingers twisted around each other in pairs for luck. Apparently, it worked. When Eric held that hat out to me, I snatched up the piece of paper with a D on it scratched in blue ink. Dallas<\/em> in messy boy handwriting shone up at me from the crumpled sheet. I looked across at him in triumph. He was looking out the window, apparently uninterested in the project proceedings. He probably had more important things to think about. I thought he must be writing a novel in his head or coming up with the next equivalent of the Theory of Relativity. He was glorious. He was going to be mine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After school, Dallas stood at the center of a group of people, all of whom were always talking. Dallas didn\u2019t talk. He smoked. The chances of getting him alone were slim to none, so I approached this group, clinging to the straps of my backpack. I can see myself now, my hair falling out of my braid, my shins spattered with bruises in shades from purple to green from playing with Ten, not realizing I was breaking every social rule there was to break by approaching him in this way. What did I know of social rules? My life took place outside of them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The group parted as I approached, standing aside to look at me. A couple of the boys hid smirks behind their hands, and in my presence the girls grew interested in pulling at the ends of their hair or adjusting the pleats of their cheerleading skirts. I saw all this. I realized what it meant. But it was too late to let it deter me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHi, Dallas,\u201d I said. He looked at me through a cloud of smoke.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe should talk about a time to work on our history project,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYeah, Dallas<\/em>,\u201d said one of the boys. \u201cOur history <\/em>project.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I held my ground; I didn\u2019t blush. My heart was clattering around, ricocheting off my ribs like a bowling ball off bumpers, but they couldn\u2019t see that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dallas nodded. He let his cigarette fall to the ground and smashed it with the toe of his shoe. He walked a little way away from the rest of the group. I was so surprised by this that it took me a moment to follow. I could hear their murmurings behind me, not the words themselves, but the hostile, jealous tone of them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We stood facing each other under a tree. I realized I\u2019d never faced Dallas before. He had a tall, reedy body that drooped forward a little. His eyes were brown with flecks of gold in them. They were a little unnerving in their intensity. I dropped my gaze to the ground.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSo,\u201d I said to the grass, \u201cMaybe we should go to the library after school one day?\u201d I thought of the library, sadly, because I knew that Ten would have to come along, and the library was a place he could stay occupied for hours. Dallas might not even know Ten was there with me. Dallas and I could work side by side, leaning over the same book, reading about the Cherokees and the Trail of Tears, breathing the same air, until Dallas had fallen in love with me (it seemed to me that simple). Then I could retrieve Ten.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I waited for Dallas to say something. What would his voice sound like? For a moment I thought, Is he actually mute?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHate the library,\u201d he said finally. His voice sounded like any other voice, like a regular boy\u2019s voice. \u201cHow \u2019bout by the river? Over by the bridge? Saturday afternoon?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOh, umm, okay,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll check some books out.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I wanted him to say, \u201cDon\u2019t bring the books. It\u2019s a date.\u201d But he didn\u2019t say anything. Just nodded.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll bring some sandwiches, too,\u201d I said. Food meant it was a date, didn\u2019t it? I just had to find a way to get Mom to watch Ten.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That afternoon when I got home, Ten was sitting on the kitchen counter eating ice cream out of the container, and Mom was dancing around the kitchen in her underwear. The silk kimono that she wore as a bathrobe was fluttering around her as she spun in circles, though there was no music on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d I said, dropping my backpack on top of the jumble of shoes by the front door.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIndi!\u201d cried Mom, rushing over and grabbing my hands, dragging me into her frenzied dance. \u201cGreat news! I\u2019m headlining!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhere?\u201d I gasped. I saw it all changing, finally, all of it actually happening, everything she\u2019d always talked about. We\u2019d go on the road with her; we\u2019d have private tutors instead of school. We could travel all over, go all the way to California again. We\u2019d sit in the front row at her shows. We could afford a real house, out in the country. We could grow sunflowers and have a vegetable garden, and Ten could get a dog.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOpen mi nigh,\u201d Ten said, around a mouthful of ice cream. I pulled away from Mom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOpen mic night?\u201d I said. \u201cHow do you headline<\/em> at open mic night?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not headlining at<\/em> open mic night,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m headlining before <\/em>open mic night. I get to do my own show\u2014well, with Frankie.\u201d Frankie was Mom\u2019s music partner of the moment, a guy with a thinning ponytail and a perpetually doleful look.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mom was still talking. \u201c\u2026Amazing! You guys are going to come! Get dressed, everybody, because we\u2019re going shopping!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re the only one who\u2019s not dressed, Mom,\u201d I said. This made her laugh, and she disappeared into the bedroom, still chattering.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou have homework?\u201d I asked Ten.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cDid it in class,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cCan I have a bite?\u201d I asked. He proffered his spoon, but I dug in the silverware drawer for one that was less spitty. I felt suddenly tired, not like I wanted to take a nap, but like I needed to lie in a dark, quiet room for about ten years and not move. I didn\u2019t realize at the time that that feeling was sadness. All I knew was how it would go at the shops, how Mom would flirt with all the shopkeepers, men and women alike, how she\u2019d tell everyone she met to come to her show, how she\u2019d pull armfuls of things off the racks and shove them at us through the curtains of the dressing rooms, how she\u2019d make us come out and turn around in circles for everyone in the store to see, how she\u2019d buy more than we needed and more than we could afford, and that when I tried to draw her aside at the checkout and tell her not to do this, she\u2019d laugh loudly and say, \u201cThat\u2019s my Indiana!\u201d and she\u2019d strangle me in a hug and buy everything anyway.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Friday night came, and I found myself wearing a black dress, the first one I\u2019d ever owned, and a pair of new boots that pinched at the ankles. My skin was a sleek golden tan, my hair about four shades darker, and Mom had carefully lined my eyes for me. I looked good and I knew it, and I wished that Dallas Leland were there to see it. I imagined him sitting there, looking at me across the table, his eyes flicking up and down with a question to which the answer was YES. But even imagining it was spoiled by the thought of my mom up on the stage. Even if we did date, I could never invite him to watch my mom perform. I had at least enough concept of social etiquette to know it would be humiliating for everyone involved. Except, of course, my mom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first thing she did when she got on stage was wave to us and point us out to the audience and say that she was dedicating her performance to us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThose are my stars,\u201d she said, \u201cMy Indiana and Tennessee.\u201d People who didn\u2019t know her probably thought that was some kind of strange metaphor, not our actual names. Those are my stars, my Indiana and Tennessee.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We weren\u2019t really supposed to be in the bar, of course, so the owner, Larry, put us at a little table in the corner where he could keep an eye on us and keep us well supplied with Shirley Temples. I didn\u2019t like maraschino cherries, but Ten did, so every time Larry brought me a new drink I pulled them out and gave them to Ten. He left one sitting on a napkin for Strawberry, who he\u2019d placed on the table. He wanted her to be able to see the show. Just that afternoon he\u2019d carefully recolored her legs, which had begun to wear off after all their baths together, despite the supposed permanence of Sharpie. She was all spiffed up for the occasion. Ten was wearing a short-sleeved button-up shirt with small green cacti on it, and a blue bow tie that Mom had insisted on even though he said he felt like it was choking him. He kept tugging at the tie, but whenever I looked over at him he gave me a big smile, showing the quarter-sized gap in his front teeth that would never be fixed because we couldn\u2019t afford braces.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mom was up there on stage with Frankie, who was the real headliner, because the sign out front said \u201cFrankie Ray with <\/em>Lilah Archer.\u201d Mom\u2019s real name was Debra Moore. It was lucky for Mom that Frankie was a pretty laconic guy, because she liked to talk a lot in between songs. After they did a few songs of Frankie\u2019s, dragging ballads about lost loves, she looked over at us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNow we\u2019re going to speed it up a little,\u201d she said, winking at me, \u201cAnd play an old favorite by Mr. Johnny Cash.<\/em>\u201d She said Cash with an affected drawl. Mom didn\u2019t naturally have a drawl. She was from Idaho. (Thank goodness she didn\u2019t name one of us that.<\/em>) They played \u201cRing of Fire,\u201d of course. Mom\u2019s voice sounded okay. Sometimes she tried too hard to make it sound twangy and it went flat. The muscles in the back of my neck tightened when she leaned in too close to the microphone and it made a staticky humming sound. She looked at Frankie a lot when they were singing and went over to sing into his mic with him. It occurred to me that there was something going on between them. Did he come over to our apartment while we were gone during the day? Was he the source of the cigarette smell that I\u2019d noticed a couple of weeks before, the time Mom said she didn\u2019t know what I was talking about? She could have lied better than that. She could have just said Frankie came over to work on some music.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mom\u2019s hair glowed in the stage lights. It was long and red and curly, like Reba\u2019s. It wasn\u2019t naturally like that. Naturally it was straight and light brown, like mine. But Mom\u2019s hair was part of what she called her \u201cpresence.\u201d That and her sparkly eye shadow and the big gold earrings she wore. When I was a kid, I\u2019d thought she was the most beautiful thing I\u2019d ever seen, like a real fairy. That night, I saw that the sparkles over her eyes did nothing to conceal the bags beneath them. When she bent her head down to lean into the mic, you could see her brown and grey roots like a sad river down the center of her scalp. In her rhinestone cowboy boots and her long lavender dress, in the haze of cigarette smoke and the glare of the stage lights, Mom looked like something not quite real. She wasn\u2019t quite real. She was something of her own creation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That night, I saw through her caked-on makeup. She looked old. I realize now that she wasn\u2019t that old. She was only thirty-seven the year I was sixteen. Not that old at all. But too old to start a singing career. Too old to be wearing sparkly eye makeup on a stage when her half-grown kids were in the audience. I looked at the people around us. Most of the audience was middle-aged, too, a mix of married couples trying to rekindle their dying love, divorc\u00e9es on first dates trying to kindle new love, and alcoholics who were there not for the performance, but because they were there every other night of the week, too. This wasn\u2019t where the music business people came to scout for talent on Friday nights. I looked at Ten, at his bright round face. He saw me looking and smiled. He still thought she was beautiful. He still believed in the magic. I tried to smile back at him, but my face felt like silly putty, all rubbery and stretched-out. It was ten o\u2019clock when they\u2019d started their set, already past the time he should be in bed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The next morning (by which I mean noon) found Mom and me whisper-yelling in the kitchen, trying not to wake Ten up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cDo you even know this boy at all?\u201d she hissed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a school project, Mom!\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s worth twenty percent of my grade!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIf you get pregnant,\u201d she said, \u201cYour life will be over.\u201d She made a sweeping gesture in the air that I thought perhaps referred to her own life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cMOM!\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a date!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWell, I can\u2019t watch Ten,\u201d she said. \u201cFrankie and I are re-recording some tracks over at Wild Oats.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cReschedule it!\u201d I said. \u201cTake Ten with you! He\u2019ll be quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhy don\u2019t you<\/em> reschedule, Indiana?\u201d she said, in a scarily quiet voice. \u201cYou can do your project<\/em> after school one day. This is my career<\/em> we\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOh, Jesus Christ, your career!\u201d I yelled. \u201cWhat number demo is this, Mom?\u201d I didn\u2019t even get a chance to say anything about how I knew she was sleeping with Frankie. Ten came in with sleep-mussed hair and round eyes and said, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d and we both said, \u201cNothing.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mom went back to her bedroom and I could tell she was starting to cry, which made me even angrier, so I pulled five dollars out of her wallet and said to Ten, \u201cWanna go get ice cream and then go down by the river?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Dallas arrived, Ten was playing with Strawberry in the reeds on the edge of the river. He\u2019d been delighted to go. He wanted to look for real frogs to be her friends.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cDo you think the river frogs will like her even though she\u2019s a tree frog?\u201d he\u2019d asked. She\u2019s not even a real frog<\/em>, I thought, but my mouth was full of ice cream, so I had a good excuse not to say anything. I\u2019d watched him kneeling there for some time, paddling her around in the ripples of the shallow water. The river was wide and green and fast. It was a warm day and people were out kayaking and the tourist cruise boats were full.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But then Dallas\u2019s stoop-shouldered form appeared, and I was suddenly only aware of the way my sweaty palms were sticking to the plastic cover of the library book on my lap. I\u2019d completely forgotten about sandwiches. I hoped he wouldn\u2019t be mad.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dallas raised a hand in greeting as he approached. He sat down on the opposite end of the bench I was sitting on. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes and shook one out, held it out to me. I shook my head.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI forgot the sandwiches,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. We could go get some\u2014after.\u201d Dallas lit his cigarette and nodded once.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s my brother down there,\u201d I said, gesturing toward Ten, who was peering into the reeds a little way down the bank. \u201cI couldn\u2019t get out of watching him.\u201d Dallas nodded again, leaned back on the bench, and blew smoke toward the sky. I suddenly realized that I couldn\u2019t think of a single other thing to say to him. It was as if my mind had been wiped blank. If you\u2019d asked me my name at that moment, I don\u2019t know if I could have told you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSo,\u201d I said, after a long moment. \u201cThe Trail of Tears. You wanna do the side of the Native Americans or the side of the Jackson administration?\u201d We were supposed to each pick a side.<\/p>\n Dallas had been looking out at the river. He looked at me with his gold-flecked eyes. \u201cTrail of Tears, I guess,\u201d he said. \u201cSounds cool.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I stared at him, waiting to see if he was joking. He stared right back at me. Apparently not. The sunlight reflecting off his hair sure was beautiful, though.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all<\/em> the Trail of Tears,\u201d I said, trying not to sound impatient. \u201cYou have to pick a perspective to tell the story from. Andrew Jackson or the Cherokees.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cJackson,\u201d said Dallas dreamily. \u201cStonewallllllll Jackson.\u201d I stared at him. Was it possible that he\u2019d paid no<\/em> attention in history all year? Still, Albert Einstein hadn\u2019t done well in school. I decided to take a different tack.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSo, Dallas,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat are you into, outside of school?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNintendo. Basketball. Def Leppard.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I glanced over at Ten, leaning over the reeds, looking for frogs. I was going to tell him to come a little closer, but then Dallas said, \u201cSo, are we gonna make out, or what are we doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d I said. I think I was as shocked hearing that many words from him as I was by the content of them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIsn\u2019t that what you wanted?\u201d he asked. I thought the vein in my neck might explode, my pulse was suddenly pumping so hard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2014\u201d I started to say.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSTRAWBERRY!\u201d Ten\u2019s shriek is something I cannot forget. The pitch of it, the raw, searing terror and grief. Before I could scream NO<\/em>, before I even really had time to think it, my brother had thrown his small body into the river after his plastic frog.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He didn\u2019t think; I know that. He thought only of the thing he loved most, the thing he couldn\u2019t bear to lose. He did what he felt he had to do not to lose her.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I saw Ten\u2019s head, an arm; I thought I saw his eyes looking wildly toward the sky, but who knows if that\u2019s something real or something I imagined. The current was swift; his head, bobbing, was dark like a log drifting downriver.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cTEN!\u201d I screamed. \u201cTEN!\u201d If you didn\u2019t know, you\u2019d think I was yelling out a score, a perfect score for diving, not for drowning in the river. People in boats looked at me at first like I was crazy, then they followed the line of my arm as I pointed at the water, at where I\u2019d last seen his head, though I couldn\u2019t see it anymore. I leaned out over the edge, my feet slipping and scrambling on the muddy bank. I wasn\u2019t as sure as he was; I didn\u2019t immediately fling myself into the water for the one I loved.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dallas interpreted my flailing as preparation for a jump. He jumped in front of me and heaved me backward with a push of my shoulders, and I yelped as I felt my feet leave the ground. I thought I was falling in. We landed hard on the grass, Dallas on top of me, pinning me down. It knocked the wind out of me, so for a second all I could do was lie there, breathing frantically up at him. We were as close as we\u2019d ever been and would ever be, but I barely even saw him. His hair, glowing in the sun, blinded me, and his dense odor of cigarette smoke burned my throat. As soon as I was able to get a breath, I shoved him off me and was back on my feet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I searched the river for Ten, but I couldn\u2019t see his head. There was a tourist boat in the process of trying to turn around to go after him, but it was too slow, clumsy in its bulk. On the deck, people were shouting, waving at me, but I just stood there and stared at them, my body rigid and motionless. What good did they think they could do? For those people, this was a story they\u2019d be able to tell about their vacation, about that one day, oh, what a calamity, that poor little boy. For me, it was\u2014\u201cOh, god, I see him!\u201d I slapped at Dallas\u2019s arm as I saw my brother\u2019s round, pale face struggling to stay above water.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was a crew team that got him. I watched them strain against the current, pulling hard on their paddles just to hold the boat in one place. The coxswain made an elegant little dive off the front of the boat, barely making a splash. He didn\u2019t surface, and for a moment I thought he\u2019d drowned, too. I couldn\u2019t see that he\u2019d come up on the other side of the boat, that he held my brother tight in his arms against the pull of the river. When the crew team leaned in and dragged a person into the boat, I thought it was the coxswain. He was small, too, though not as small as Ten. It was only when they heaved a second person into the boat that I realized the first body had been my brother\u2019s. It wasn\u2019t until I saw the oarsmen propping him up against their knees, his small body shaking and alive, that I began to cry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When the crew team came to shore with Ten, when the ambulance came, I couldn\u2019t even look at Dallas. I should have thanked him for anchoring me on the shore, so someone didn\u2019t have to rescue me, too. But I felt that by wanting him, I had caused this to happen. If I hadn\u2019t wanted him so badly, we would have stayed home; I would have kept my brother safe, far from the water. I watched two paramedics hold Ten upright while he coughed and coughed. I saw his small body heaving, his lips the deep blue-purple of a fresh bruise. I thought, If he lives I will never want anything again that is not for him. I will never ask for anything for myself. When I turn eighteen I will buy us a trailer out in the country. I will buy him a dog.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dallas didn\u2019t come in the ambulance. We left him there on the riverbank. When we met up the following week (for the second and last time), all he said about the incident was, \u201cThat was wild, huh? Hope the little guy\u2019s okay.\u201d The day of the presentation, I spoke for the Cherokees while he held up the poster I\u2019d made, and then he said a few sentences (which I\u2019d written for him) from Andrew Jackson\u2019s point of view. We got a collective grade, a B minus, which dragged down my average for the whole year, but I didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before that, we sat in the blue light of the hospital, Mom and me, on either side of Ten, holding his hands while he slept. I moved my arm, and it rustled the papery sheets. I looked at him in apprehension to see if it would wake him, but it didn\u2019t. They\u2019d drugged him pretty good. The half-moons of his eyes, fringed by lashes, stayed closed. I looked across at Mom. Slow tears were sliding down her face, creating muddy mascara tracks on her cheeks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou have to give it up, Mom,\u201d I whispered. \u201cWe need you at home. You\u2019re supposed to take care of us.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou know what I mean,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d she said. She shook her head vigorously, her red curls bouncing. They seemed so garish, so out of place, in that otherworldly light.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cMom,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re my stars,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted it all for you.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou didn\u2019t want it all for us,\u201d I whispered. \u201cYou wanted it all for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cYou\u2019re my stars,\u201d she used to say. \u201cMy Indiana and Tennessee.\u201d She named us after the places we were born. Once, I asked her why she didn\u2019t name us after more exotic places, like California, Kenya. I would have liked to be named California\u2014then when people said my name they\u2019d think of hot sand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2593,"template":"","categories":[9,48,49],"tags":[204,515,516,489,517],"class_list":["post-2591","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-fiction","category-literary-features","tag-childhood","tag-e-m-paulsen","tag-indiana","tag-parenting","tag-tennessee"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n