Lines Read online

  So I tell her, “If you don’t stop smoking cigarettes, you are going to die,” and she goes all quiet.

  Trent says, “I’m sitting next to you. Scoot over, dummy!” Then yet another pimply teen comes over and lowers the safety bar over our laps.

  “Ma’am,” he says, addressing “Mom,” “You’re gonna have to take off your glasses. You can’t ride with them on.”

  Brook says, “But she can’t see without them!”

  Then Dad says, “What’s to see? Give them to me, I’ll put them in my pocket.”

  The ride turns out to be pretty boring. Our boat mostly just bobs around this dark little river. There are no dips or exciting turns. Once in a while, Captain Hook or Tigerlily will jump out of the darkness, and say something like, “Prepare to meet thy doom!” or “You have to be careful who you meet, you can’t unmeet them!”

  Trent manages to wriggle free of the safety bar, then he puts his arm around me. “Don’t,” I say.

  “Don’t what?” asks Trent.

  “Don’t put your arm around me,” I say. “You don’t like me anymore?” asks Trent.

  “I don’t even know who you are!” I say, then Trent laughs and calls me “too much.”

  When we get to the end of the ride, everybody gets off, including “Mom,” but then she collapses onto the ground.

  Brook says, “Ew! Do you know how dirty that ground is?” and Dad says, “Mica! Jesus!” but “Auntie” kneels next to “Mom” and asks, “What’s going on? Are you ok?”

  “Mom” doesn’t do anything but close her eyes and groan. People are staring at us, and one of the park employees comes over and says, “You know, she can’t just lie on the ground like that.”

  Then “Mom,” her eyes still closed, mumbles something, and Dad yells, “What! We can’t hear you!”

  “Mom” says, “I’m dying! Please! I’m going to die!”

  The park employee asks, “Should I call the paramedics?” Everyone shakes their heads: no. Then “Mom” yells, “Call the paramedics!” So the park employee does, and five minutes later, three guys wearing matching cartoon frog ties arrive, wheeling a stretcher behind them.

  The tallest of the three bends down to talk to “Mom.” He asks if she can stand, and she says no, not a chance. Then he asks if she can sit and drink some water. She says she can’t sit or drink or even move. So one of paramedics grabs “Mom” by the feet, while the other takes her hands, and they lift her onto a stretcher. The tall one says, “Your mother will be ok,” and then they wheel “Mom” around the corner, and she’s gone.

  “Well,” says Dad. “To the next ride!”

  When we get to the front of Mega Wedgie, there’s no arguing over who will sit where. Trent sits between Brook and me, while Dad and Auntie sit behind, hanging their arms over our seats. “Well, that was exciting!” says Trent, ruffling my hair some.

  “Do you think she’ll be ok?” asks Brook.

  Dad says, “Of course she’ll be fine. Your mother can endure anything.”

  Then Auntie says, “I’m sure she’d want the five us to go on having fun without her.” So we ride Bonzai Pipelines and Banshee Plunge twice, and nobody argues about where to sit or what to ride next. We stay at the park until the sun goes down and Dad lets us do everything we want. We even pile into a photo booth and the pictures turn out so good, Dad says we’ll use them for next year’s Christmas card. As we’re leaving the park, Auntie yells, “Your mother!” so we all go collect Mom from the medic’s office. Trent has to help Mom walk to the car. On the drive home, Auntie sits up front with Dad, while Mom sleeps in the very back.

  Dad says, “Well, I think this has been the family’s best trip yet!” and everybody agrees, except Mom, who sleeps on.

  When Mom asks Dahlia and me if we want to go with her to the Nasty Women’s First Annual Camp and Rant, I tell Mom I’d rather die, but good for her. Dahlia says she wouldn’t miss it for the world. She says that no matter what, she is going, and if I don’t go, I’m being complicit to Trump’s administration. “You’re, like, a sexist,” says Dahlia.

  “I can’t be a sexist,” I say, “I’m a female.”

  “You can be sexist against women and be a woman yourself,” says Dahlia. “It could be really interesting,” says Mom.

  Dahlia rolls her eyes. She says, “We are all going to get together and figure out how to get Trump out of office, but if that isn’t something that interests you, you can stay home.”

  “Dahlia, I hate you right now,” I say, then wanting to prove that I am not a sexist, I add, “I’ll come with you guys.”

  “You women!” says Dahlia, pumping her hand in the air.

  Dad isn’t coming with us to the Camp and Rant because he isn’t interested in his balls being chopped off and served up in some kind of stew. Mom told Dad there would be other guys there, but Dad said all the guys would be gay, and he didn’t want to tease them with his rugged looks and charming demeanor.

  Camp and Rant is being held at the Live Oak Open Space. I’ve been there on a field trip before, when my science class learned about the reproductive cycles of frogs. Before we left, Dad told me to be safe. Then he told Mom to make sure she kept an eye on me. “Why an eye on me and not on Dahlia?” I asked and Dad shrugged.

  Mom started driving to the campsite early this morning. Dahlia is in the front seat, supposedly navigating us to Live Oak. Pinning a bandanna in her hair, she asks, “Do I look like that woman?”

  “What woman?” I ask.

  “You mean Rosie the Riveter?” asks Mom. “Wasn’t her bandanna red?” I ask.

  “Dahlia the Riveter,” says Dahlia, flexing her arms. “You don’t even know what a riveter is,” I say. “Neither do you,” says Dahlia. She isn’t wrong. “So are we supposed to stay the night there?” I ask.

  “That’s the camp part of Camp and Rant,” says Dahlia. “Didn’t you bring a sleeping bag?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Way to be an independent woman,” she replies.

  Camp and Rant is divided into four smaller campgrounds of twenty or so people. Mom, Dahlia and I are staying at Chiomara. Dahlia sucks at reading maps, so we end up parking half a mile from our assigned tent. On the hike in, Dahlia reads from the Fun Facts section of So Your Heart, Mind and Body Have Chosen the Fourth Annual Camp & Rant, Now What? We pass the Healing Sanctuary and Freyja’s Hall of Fertility. I learn that Chiomara was a woman who cut off the head of a Roman after he raped her. “I’d have loved to see that,” says Dahlia.

  After we check in with Independent-Ingrid (that’s what her name tag says) we dump our bags in our assigned tent, then we pick a morning workshop. I want to go to Freyja’s Hall for Self-Defense, and Dahlia wants to stay at Chiomara to learn how to make tea from indigenous plants. Mom says she doesn’t care what we do, but we all have to stay together. “You’re both too young,” she says. “What’s the point of us being here if we’re all going off in different directions?”

  I’d rather cut off my own arm than learn to make tea, so as a compromise, Dahlia, Mom and I are all going to something called Stitch and Bitch.

  I don’t really see what is feminist about embroidery, but when I say this, Dahlia threatens to stab me with her needle. The woman leading the workshop is called Marcy, but she says we can call her Marc if we want. I ask, “Why would we want to call her Marc?” Dahlia rolls her eyes. For some reason, we are all sitting on tree stumps instead of proper chairs. Above us, several colorful scarfs are woven between trees, protecting us from neither sun or wind. Mom chooses a pattern that says: Girls Just Want to Have Fun-damental Rights, and Dahlia one that says: Ovary Squad. I chose one that says: I Am Stitching the Word ‘Cunt’ to Gauge Your Reaction. I wanted to stitch: Go Fuck Yourself, but by the time I got to choose my patterns, that one was taken.

  While we are stitching, we are supposed to bitch about the patriarchy, etc. etc. So far, we have heard from a finance lady who was replaced by her own male
intern. “They fired me, and paid Henry twice my salary!” she says. In response, we all shout things like, “For shame!” and “Enough is enough!”

  Mom is happier than I’ve seen her in a while. “I almost feel young,” she says. Dahlia puts her arm around Mom and says, “But Mom, you are young!”

  Then I make a noose out of my embroidery thread and Mom calls it a “very creative necklace.”

  It’s been ten minutes, and already my ass is sore from sitting on this stump. I keep pricking my fingers with the needle. I say, “I’m not having any fun,” and Mom tells me to just relax. While everybody is busy stitching and bitching, etc. etc., I watch the way the trees move. Mom told me there are deer around here, but the only animals I have seen are a couple of blue jays. There is a boy about my age carrying logs back and forth across the campground. He’s dressed like the Brawny Man. It might just be because he is the only guy around, but he’s sort of cute in a I’ll-take-ya’-out-campin’-and-keep-you-safe-from-bears kind of way. I look at him until he looks at me and then I look at my shit embroidery. I wonder if he is the kind of guy who cares about whether or not you are good at embroidery. When I look back up, he has disappeared.

  Next on the agenda is a nature walk and something called “wild we.” We are with a dozen other women, all much older than Dahlia and me. All of the women exclaim about how wonderful it is that Dahlia and I are here with our mother. “This is what it is all about!” they say in between grunts and heavy exhales.

  After about a half hour of hiking up the mountain, we learn that our instructor is called Mac. Mac reminds us to drink water. She asks if any of us need to use the restroom. When she asks this, she stares directly into my eyes, so I raise my hand and say I have to go. “There is a restroom up here?” I ask, feeling that this is a particularly stupid question.

  “Wild we,” turns out to be “wild wee,” as in, pick a bush and piss yourself silly. Mac goes on a bit about how enjoyable and intimate it can be to expose one’s pussy (her word, not mine) to the elements of nature. She claims there is something visceral, sexy in the act. She encourages us all to pop a squat, not to force anything, but to enjoy this simple freedom. As she speaks, she continues to look into my eyes. It’s uncomfortable. When she asks why I haven’t made any attempts to experience my wild wee, I tell her my pee is all dried up. “I don’t know what happened,” I say.

  Mom goes behind a bush, either to experience her wild wee, or to hide from Mac. Dahlia slips out of her shorts and squats in the middle of everyone. I don’t know whether she is trying to show off, or prove a point, but Mac has to take several quick steps to avoid the river of Dahlia’s urine. Even if Dahlia isn’t ashamed, I am ashamed for her.

  We keep on hiking and Dahlia skips to the front to walk with Mac. Mom and I are at the rear of the pack.

  “I hate this,” I say.

  “Have an open mind,” says Mom. “Did you wild wee?” I ask.

  Mom doesn’t answer…

  After our hike, we have a choice between Acro Yoga or a talk on how Jesus was actually an important feminist. I say that I’m tired of hearing about Jesus all of the time. “Me too,” says Dahlia, “Why isn’t this talk about Mary?”

  “Mary the mother?” I ask.

  “Mary the slut!” Dahlia says, her fist back in the air.

  I tell Dahlia, “You have got to stop punching the air like that.” She rolls her eyes.

  Acro Yoga is being held back near Chiomara, but even so, Mom won’t let me change out of my hiking clothes. We are told to divide into pairs according to height and weight, but everyone knows this just means divide into the people you came here with, or partner with the people you like best. Before I can say or do anything, Dahlia has grabbed a hold of Mom. “Mom’s my partner,” she says.

  “Why can’t Mom decide whose partner she wants to be?” I ask. “Girls, please don’t fight,” says Mom.

  I end up having to partner with Mac, who, it seems, is not only the hiking instructor, but a participant of the conference as well.

  Acro Yoga turns out to be mostly a struggle to minimize your partner’s exposure to your sweaty armpits and/or an exercise in avoiding contact with your partner’s sweaty vag/boobs/the sweat that drips from the end of their nose. I hate it almost as much as I hated cross-stitching.

  While I struggle to avoid Mac’s vag/boobs/sweat, I notice that Brawny-boy is watching from Freyja’s Hall.

  Mac and I are doing something called Prepare for Take Off which basically involves me balancing on her knees while teetering between falling forward onto my face or backwards onto Mac’s face. Then we are told to do some stretching on our own. I can almost touch my toes with my fingertips. Mom says this is impressive. I ignore her. Mac says I am doing really well at all this Acro-Yoga-ing. I nod towards Brawny-boy and ask, “Who’s that guy?”

  Mac frowns. Following my gaze, she says, “Oh,” then she laughs, relieved. “That’s just Bane, he’s the groundskeeper’s son: totally harmless.”

  For lunch, we are all served some sort of quinoa, a polenta dish, and salad. There’s no meat. Dad says a meal isn’t a meal without meat. We’ve all got to stand in a line at this grimy counter that’s just a wooden plank balanced on a couple of overturned buckets. After we eat, we are supposed to wash our own dishes. There aren’t any tables or chairs to sit on. I notice that all of the people serving us are men, and I wonder if this is a coincidence. There’s a weird energy about, and when I say thank you to the guy serving polenta, he doesn’t even acknowledge me.

  Mom makes Dahlia and me sit with her, even though I wanted to sit by myself, and Dahlia wanted to sit with Mac.

  A couple of older women join our table, and Mom finds out that one of them is also in her Thursday night drawing class. The woman to my right introduces herself as Petunia; she’s young, beautiful and a veterinarian. Dahlia says, “I’m studying to be a vet!” and I say, “I thought you were going to be the first woman president of the United States.”

  Dahlia asks, “Why can’t I be both?”

  Petunia laughs, then says, “You can be both!” It is sickening.

  Petunia starts talking to Dahlia about her training, and how she was one of the only women in her class. Dahlia is throwing around words like “glass ceiling,” and “gender pay gap.”

  Dahlia asks what kind of animals Petunia treats, and then suddenly Petunia’s got a whole medical kit on the table. “This is for small cuts and wounds,” she says, holding up some ointment. “This is for cutting animals open,” she says, waving a scalpel in her hand.

  I look at Mom, testing our telepathic power, I think Why the fuck is this woman waving a scalpel around? But Mom isn’t receptive.

  Mom is frowning off into the distance. “Who’s that staring at you?” she asks. I look over to where she is pointing. Bane is packing up lunch.

  “No one is staring at me,” I say.

  “I saw him looking too,” says Dahlia, the scalpel in her hand. “The boy serving food.” Petunia isn’t interested in Bane. She is instructing Dahlia on how to hold the scalpel:

  index finger on top, middle finger supporting the bottom. Petunia tells Dahlia that she looks good with the scalpel; someone to be reckoned with. Then Dahlia jabs the scalpel towards me. “Watch out world!” she cries.

  Someone brings up Hilary Clinton and from there on there’s only yelling and very severe looks. The truth is, I think that Dahlia is secretly glad that Hilary didn’t win so that she could be the first female president. When I was telling people that I wanted to be an astronaut, or a horse trainer, Dahlia was telling people that she was going to be the first female ever elected to be president of the United States.

  While everyone is busy yelling and throwing their arms in the air, I look over at Bane. He waves when he sees me, motioning for me to come over to where he is. Dahlia sees and says, “Somebody told me that he works here as, like, an alternative to being in jail. Apparently, he’s some wack job murderer who killed
one sister and convinced the other sister to testify that it had been a suicide.”

  “That is definitely not true,” I say. “That sounds like just a dumb rumor. No way anybody would let a murderer work at this campground.”

  Dahlia tells me not to be naïve. She says, “You know, Mom and I won’t always be around to protect you.” Then she turns back to the group.

  When nobody is looking, I return Bane’s wave. Then I point to Dahlia, let my tongue hang out the side of my mouth, and mime hanging myself with a noose.

  After lunch, we are ushered into a big tent to hear a poet. The poet has an African- sounding name even though she isn’t from Africa. Her talents seem to be rhyming pussy with hussy and fussy. Then she reads a poem where we are supposed to yell “Wax and Wane!” after lines like, “Women have vaginas that can speak to one another!” It feels good to yell. It feels good to pump my fist in the air, and for the first time since being here, I feel this sort of electric woman power. Our poet recites, “Women are healers, we recover!” Dahlia is beaming, and Mom has tears in her eyes.

  “Wax and wane!” we yell.

  Mom puts her arm around me and says, “I know this isn’t your… scene, but I can’t tell how much it means to share this with you.”

  Then Dahlia yells at us to pump our fists, and the moment is ruined.

  Outside of the tent, we are invited to sit on small rugs that form a circle. The men from lunch serve us some sort of dandelion tea, but I think it might actually be dirt water (mud). I look around for Bane, but he isn’t around. After we finish our tea, a very pretty blonde woman steps into the middle of our circle. She introduces herself as Thordis. She is here to share with us her story of “rape, revenge and resurrection.”