EVERGREEN

The summer I am eight we go to visit Babi and Grandpa in Los Angeles. Dad drives the beige panel truck he’s named the Fleshmobile, Mom next to him in front. The four of us kids in the row of brown vinyl seats or sprawled in the back on the wooden platform, a foam pad covered in Indian print bedspread Dad has put in. We sing songs as we go, “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” with verses with everyone’s names. We play 20 questions and look for license plates from different states. At a rest area Dad folds open his swiss army knife, slices bread Mom baked before we left, opens a can of sardines to make us sandwiches. Smushes them down with the flat of the blade. Wipes the knife clean on his jeans and folds the sharp steel in on itself. When we're done with our sandwiches, the tiny bones crunched down and the apples from a fruit stand stop nibbled to the center he reaches out his square hand for the cores and pops the seeds and bits of fruit flesh into his mouth, chews, and swallows amazing us every time.

We pass oil pumps that bob up and down like drinking birds, rows of fruit trees, leafed out green, the space between their even lines making patterns that shift as we pass. When we finally get off the freeway, onto the streets of Los Angeles the four of us take turns brushing our hair so we will look nice when we see Babi and Grandpa. Mom licks her thumb, cranes around to the back seat and wipes the smudges off our cheeks.

Their street has a liquor store on the corner with red neon arrows going around the letters LIQUOR and that’s where we turn left. At their house with its green bushes, white stucco, rounded front window, square rooms, we unload the car and unfold our stiff legs. Babi hugs us hard. She has a big bosom but her arms are strong and her hugs are tight, forceful, not pillowy. Grandpa has large, soft hands that tremble and are covered in dark spots. He holds mine gently and speaks softly, in his Polish accent, are you hungry? They have food we never have. Store bought cereal in small boxes, Apple Jacks, Fruit Loops, Lucky Charms. The Frigidaire hisses open holds Seven-Up and chicken. Vanilla ice cream in the freezer and candy in cut glass candy dishes on side tables. For lunch Babi serves us cottage cheese with sour cream and chives, rye bread with caraway seeds, and pickled herring. Grandpa says he’ll have a glass tea, skipping the word of, and drinks it from a delicate clear cup, a lump of sugar melting in his mouth as he sips.

The walls are covered in the paintings Grandpa makes in the garage. A blue cityscape, a snow scene with a child pulling a sled to a red barn, flowers in vases, and others growing. I know his job is being a diamond dealer and I imagine the tiny sparkling stones he must touch with his shaking hands when he takes the bus downtown.

That night we take turns bathing in Babi’s tub. I scrape my nails along my ankle and I show Gabi how my skin comes off in satisfying dark rolls, wash my hair with Babi’s shampoo until it squeaks, rinse out gray suds. At home we take a bath once a week in the winter, less than that in the summer, and there is not this endless hot water, this warm room, this strong soap. I unwrap out of my towel into my nightgown, glowing. Sleep between tucked tight sheets.

Babi takes us shopping for socks and underwear. Wraps the sock around our fists toe to heel to check the size. Gets us the things we need, not toys, not pretty clothes.

Babi and Grandpa try to convince Mom and Dad to send us to school. I am reading chapter books on my own and they say, you see how smart she is, it’s a shame she doesn’t go to school. Then turn to each other, speak in fast, harsh Polish. When Mom and Dad aren’t around they say to me, Don’t you want to go to school like other children, learn new things? Babi shakes her head and clucks her tongue, It’s a shame. Grandpa looks sad. To Gabi, they say, don’t you want to learn to read, like your sister? I realize that Karen is gone from the claim by now. Who will teach Gabi to read?

A few weeks after we get back to Sunnyridge from this trip I tell everyone I want to go to school. I am half worried about not learning and half bored of being home all the time. Gabi agrees with me and we tell the grown-ups that school is where we want to be. I want to go to school, I say.

Why?

I’m bored.

School is boring, sitting in desks, doing what you’re told, boring.

I don’t care. I want to go. I want to learn.

They don’t teach you anything in school. Look at all these books. You can learn everything you need to know here.

Eventually, they give in. I was sure they would.

It is late September and school has already started by the time we are signed up. Every morning Dad has to drive us over the gravel bumps of Browntown Road to sit on the porch of the long-closed Holland store. The shut down gas pumps hunch like frozen figures and inside the dark windows you can see piles of discarded furniture and empty shelves. There Gabi and I wait for the school bus to Evergreen Elementary. Some days we arrive just as the bus is pulling out and Dad chases it in the truck, flashing the lights until the bus stops, the door hisses open, and we climb on, past the blank-faced driver, to the hoots and jeers of the kids already on the bus. The thing to do is not sit too near the back where most of the kids sit but too near the front is not great either because then you are so visible. The side, near the middle, but closer to the front is a good spot. The tormentors might get distracted by a friend before they see you and forget to say anything. Usually, they don’t forget and say, dirty hippy, are you wearing the same clothes again? Hey hippy girl, when’s the last time you took a bath? During the ride I pretend to be invisible, somewhere else. I suck on my two middle fingers and cover that hand with my other hand so no one will notice. GILLIG is written above the bus windshield with two small red lights that alternate flashing when the bus stops. I say the word GILLIG over and over in rhythm with the lights. I focus on this mantra, GILLIG, GILLIG, GILLIG, reads the same front to back back to front. Hey hippy are you a baby sucking on your fingers? GILLIG, GILLIG, GILLIG,  Press my face against the window and look out at the misty fields and silent dark trees.  

There are four classes in a big room called a quad. There are four entrances each with a door with windows and hooks in a small hallway that opens into the giant space, bright with fluorescent lights reflecting off linoleum floors and no windows. Each class has one corner of the big room. First thing in the morning we all face the center, where the flag stands, say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing songs. I learn the words to the songs America the Beautiful, My Country Tis of Thee, A Grand Old Flag. The words are stirring and strong as stomping. Emblem of the land I love, home of the free and the brave.

When Dad first brings me to school to sign up, the teacher has me read for her and right away puts me in the highest reading group. But I don’t know math and I have to go in the lowest group until I learn how to add and subtract. Then I must memorize my times tables. I whisper them to myself on the bus three times three is nine three times four is twelve. By December I am in the highest math group and learning long division. It makes my head hurt to do it, shoving the small number into the big one.

One day walking to the bus, in the crowd of kids leaving school, someone pushes past me, saying something I don’t hear. Dirty hippy? A hand claps my head hard. When I get on the bus I poke my fingers and there is a chewed up clump of gum stuck inside my hair.  I pull my jacket hood over my head. Whisper to Gabi on the seat beside me, there’s gum in my hair. Reach my fingers back under my hood to feel the shape. Can I pull it out? I can’t.  When we get home Gabi helps me cut the gum out with scissors. I hold the almost alive looking off-white gum, brown haired lump in my hand for a moment before throwing it away.

Every day going home as the road turns from paved to gravel we pass the split tree. There it is a Gemini like me. Geminis are twins, one person made of two parts. One part is the Sunnyridge kid, who runs around naked and says fuck and the other is the quiet kid at school, who follows every rule. I wonder, what if, like in Alice In Wonderland, Sunnyridge turns out to be a dream? What if I wake up and I am back in Newport Beach?  Rub my eyes, stretch out and find I am under my sheets and blankets in my twin bed in my old bedroom with the car lot spotlight curving into the night sky. Will I still know how to read?

Grown-ups are sitting around after dinner smoking pot. I take the joint that Mom passes to me and stub it out in an ashtray among the cigarette butts. You need to stop smoking that, I say to her. All of you stop it. I stomp around chanting, No more smoking pot, no more smoking pot! The grown-ups laugh and tell me not to be so uptight.

We are never moving back to a neighborhood with sidewalks and going over to kids’ houses to play, learning to ride a bike, eating dinner around a table with just our family. We are here in the dim kerosene light, wood stove heat, eating brown rice, as the rain clatters on the tin roof.

 Christmas comes and all the kids in my class have to bring in a gift for a girl if you are a girl and for a boy if you are a boy. We should not spend more than five dollars. I know a homemade gift of a god’s eye or a beaded necklace is not right. No one mentions Hanukkah and neither do I. We are learning Christmas carols, Away in a Manger, Silent Night, We Three Kings. I memorize every word field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star. Kids are excused from school during the day to go to religion class at a local church. One of my classmates asks me why I don’t go and I explain that I’m Jewish. The Jews killed Jesus, she says as if it is something everyone knows. Is this true? I’m not sure but I insist no, no they didn’t. She tells me I should come to the religion class and I get a note from my dad, his signature scrawled on lined paper, that says I can go. They sing Jesus loves me this I know, cuz the bible tells me so and the teacher puts a yellow felt cross and a white felt dove on a felt-covered easel while telling a story. It is babyish and most of the kids are goofing around through the story. At the end of the class they give everyone a dry cookie. I won’t go back but I know that I better not mention being Jewish again.

I tell my mom about the Christmas gift exchange. She says we can make something but I beg her it needs to be a store-bought present. When the weekend comes I remind her to take me on the town run so we can go to the drugstore to buy something. Together we pick out a silvery plastic hairbrush, comb, and mirror all packaged as if it’s for a princess. When I get home I carefully wrap it in yellow and purple construction paper and multi-colored yarn bows and we put the package in a brown paper bag as the teacher requested. The next day I hand in the bag along with everyone else. I have gotten it in on time and in their bags, all the presents look the same, lined up in two rows, one for boys and one for girls. Later in the day, the teacher motions me into the doorway of her glass-enclosed office and secretly shows me that she has rewrapped my present in red and green Christmas paper. We don’t want one of them looking so…different, she says. I look down, say nothing. I know she is right and has done me a kindness, protected me, but something still aches like a yellow, purple bruise. I had not thought about wrapping paper.

The teacher collects kids’ coins and punches a hole in the pale blue cardboard lunch ticket, one hole per day. Some of us don’t pay. We get the free lunch. Lunch handed to us on heavy beige plastic trays. One section for sloppy joe’s one for square green jello topped with a dollop of cool whip one for sweet cooked carrots one for the house shaped milk carton. I eat every bite of every delicious lunch every day. At recess there is extra milk, which costs a nickel, so I don’t get the milk. Dad says milk is for baby cows, not people.

At recess most girls play on the monkey bars. Your hand holds the first bar and then you push your body into empty air, reach out and grab the next one, flinging yourself from one shiny bar to another all the way across. If you do it often enough you get blisters on your palms that turn to hard yellow calluses. I always drop, my arms pulled taut, not even halfway, my sneakers hit the asphalt. One day as I start to try to go across the bars I realize I don’t have on any underwear under my tights. I let my hands loosen and drop to the ground and go to the swings before anyone looks up my dress. Anyway, my favorite is the swings. I sing to myself and see the world tilt away, the hills behind the school appear, the voices of the kids fade, the rhythm of pumping my legs, back, back, and forth.

A girl in my class asks me to come over. She says, come over to my house today after school. When Dad picks me up at the bus stop I say, we need to go to Laura’s house. She invited me. Today!

Are you sure? he asks.

Yes, we have to go now!

He drives back along the bus route and I point out the house. We turn down the driveway. Park the truck. My legs feel shaky as I knock on the door and her dad comes out. He’s short haired, clean shaven. Laura peeks out from behind him and says hi but doesn’t invite me in to play. The four of us step off the porch and our dads discuss their trucks and my dad admires the new fence hers has built, while Laura and I stay silent. Then we get back in our truck and drive home. I don’t understand what happened. I blur it in my mind. Years later, when I return to Evergreen in 7th grade Laura will say to me remember that time you just showed up at my house?

No, I will lie. I don’t.

Leah Korican is a writer, visual artist, and teacher who lives and works in Oakland, CA. Her poetry has been published in "Canary- a literary journal of the Environmental Crisis" and "Literary Mama" among others. Her visual art has been shown nationally. She is working on a memoir about growing up on a hippie commune in rural Oregon.