Disclaimer: It has only just hit me now that I don't own any of them- damn
you Bohem! I don't want to talk about it.
"Daughters, in the slant light on the porch, Are bickering. The eldest has come home With new truths she can hardly wait to teach." -Marilyn Nelson
Its probably better for all concerned if you don't ask what I did on my teenage rampage, but I managed to fill in the time quite nicely. When I finally sauntered my way back to the parked camper van, silently wondering why no one had yet complained about the damn thing taking up half the diner's parking lot, the moon was parading high above the quiet rooftops and the diner's large, dust swathed windows were just dark holes in the surrounding cement.
I took a moment to glare at the world's ceiling, sending heated, hate- filled rays of thought to the stars and beyond. I tried to change it- make it like it was in my dreams, to wilfully erase the whole, immaterial, home- wrecking thing. I wasn't able to, though, never have been. The stars smirked at me and twinkled in a triumphant display of infallibility. I narrowed my eyes, refusing to admit defeat and yanked hard on the van door to vent the anger a little.
My mother, evidently so overcome with the worry of possible dangers that her only daughter might be facing in the innumerable alleys and side streets of central Idaho, was snoring peacefully on her weighed-down, feebly held bunk. I sat tentatively on my own cot, opposite my sleeping mom's, and took in her blank, untroubled face. I contemplated, not for the first time, what she was doing, what she was following and, above all else, why she saw fit to drag me along on her one way trip to insanity.
I sighed, pulled off my shoes and stretched out on the cot. I stared into that sleeping face until I couldn't focus on it any longer, then turned onto my other side, closing the curtains without looking out the windowpane, where I sweated in and out of feverish half-dreams until morning.
My night of alternate hissy-fits and hectic, restless sleeping meant that when I finally woke up, still dazed and bleary, it was on the upper side of noon, which disorientated me entirely. That, and the fact that my father's green eyes were scanning me from across the van floor.
He barely had time to blurt out a good morning before I lounged at him in a flying hug and wrapped my arms around him. I'm no daddy's girl, o.k? I just hadn't seen him in ages! Mom smiled at me from over his shoulder and offered me a cup of coffee. I took the steaming, chipped mug and sat next to my dad, thinking of a hundred things to say at once, and a million reasons why it was great to see him again.
So maybe I'm a little bit of a daddy's girl.
After finding out the most recent developments on the home gossip mill, and the latest adventures of our pet dog, Mary, my dad turned serious for the first time since he arrived.
"Reagan, honey, your mother and I have been talking and we have something we need to tell you."
He moved himself over to my cot and sat beside my mom, who took his hand in her own and entwined their fingers. The display of affection was not lost on me, but I was too anxiously awaiting the next snippets of conversation to give the gesture the normal mental cross-examination. A thousand equally hideous ideas give chase to each other in my head- dad is gay, mom is gay, I'm inheriting a genetic disease or, my personal favourite and bookmaker's choice, I'm adopted. My shoulders tense and I begin to feel a little nauseous trying to decide which parent to look in the eye- if they are even my parents at all. My "mom" spoke first.
"We, um, we have wondered, when, if ever, to tell you. we decided, when you were born, because you were normal, healthy, we decided to wait, until you were old enough to understand, or, until we had to."
I would commend her on her frank and direct approach, if she wasn't dancing in circles round the subject matter and making a whole load of non-sense.
"Mom- what the hell?"
She glances at my dad for some support or something, and he takes the reins.
"Sweetheart, I realise you've been an only child your whole life, but the truth is.you have never been an only child."
He smiles and lets out a breath that sounds as though it's been held in for a decade and grips my mom's hand tighter. They both peer at me like I'm in a test-tube, expectant and hopeful.
" That makes - no sense dad, what, what are you saying? You guys had another kid? I'm adopted, aren't I?"
There's another excessively long breath, my mom this time, inhaling.
"No-no! We had another child, before you were born- a girl-your sister.Allie"
Her face adopts a look of complete bliss and my dad raises his hand to caress her cheek. If I weren't caught up in the middle of my own identity catastrophe- I would be very unsettled by their emotional demonstrations. Oh, and a sister? I'm going to share my parents and their separation- fuelled guilt? Like hell. Wait, maybe.
"Is she. did she. die?"
My mother looks shocked and confused, but understanding at the same time.
"No, but, she, ah, she had to go away."
" You gave her up for adoption?"
My dad coughs awkwardly and they share another of those knowing glances and if this doesn't unravel itself soon I'm giving myself up for adoption. Then my mother begins to speak, in a rush, and I'm not sure if I hear her properly at all, because what I did hear couldn't possibly be what she really said.
"Allie. Allie was born about ten years before you were. She was a beautiful girl, beautiful and special. She could do things. It came from her grandfather- your grandfather. She was special like him, it skipped a generation with me."
"Hold on, mom. Pronounciate, ok? And ten years before me? What? You and dad met like a year before I was born, Aunt Nina told me- you've told me yourself."
Another knowing glance, then my parents both look at me with this slice of thick pity in the corner of their eyes, like I'm about to learn something that'll make me less of a person.
"We did meet a year before you were born. You know your mother's search, her work as a UFOligist, she has a reason for why she believes in those things, when other people mock them, other people laugh."
My dad pauses and takes in my unhinged jaw before deciding that, having flown the damn plane overhead, he might as well let the bombs away.
"When she was young, your mother was abducted. I was too. Allie- was conceived aboard an alien craft."
He finishes and looks at me in entire serenity, in all seriousness. I gulp down as much of the ridiculousness as I can buy and run a dry tongue over drier lips. I pause, take a steadying breath then burst into the loudest laugh I'm sure I've ever given. My dad looks hurt and reaches out a hand to put on my knee.
"Sweetie, look, I know it's a lot to take in.
I stop laughing immediately and when I meet my parent's eyes they seem a little bit afraid of me, of what I'll do next.
"A lot to take in! Reckon? I thought it was just your average PARENTAL exchange!"
"Honey, we know, it's o.k."
"O.K? What specific part of this is o.k? This is- this is like something outta Uncle Tom's books, this is crazy dad! O.k! O.K! Lets say, for the sake of argument, aliens exist, they abducted you. What the hell does that have to do with this adopted sister? That is, assuming I believe in this sister, after the second revelation."
My parents adopted an air of innocence, as though I was being utterly unreasonable and acting irrationally for such a situation. What-ever.
"Sweetie, we're telling you the truth. My grandfather was an alien. He landed here in the fifties, in the Roswell crash. He and my grandmother had a child that was a hybrid, my father, allie's-and your, grandfather. I'm part alien, she was part alien, and you are too."
I jumped up somewhere in the middle of this, and, without realising it began to pace the RV's floorboards while fidgeting wildly with my hands. My mother and father just stared on dumbly.
"Well fabulous. FABULOUS! I always knew you were whacked mom, but dad, I never expected this from you, came WAY out of left field!"
"Sweetie, you're shouting."
"YOU ARE GODDAMN RIGHT I'M SHOUTING. And I have a RIGHT to be! Jesus CHRIST."
I knelt on the floor next to the tiny oven, swatting my mother's arm away when she tried to console me. I tried to think logically, to piece together these things so that they couldn't possibly be true. The most appalling thing of all was that, in some way, it made a sickening sort of sense in my head. It answered a good deal of the questions I'd been asking all my life, it filled me with a bad tasting desire to know more. I fingered the lone star around my neck and turned soberly to my mother and father.
"You never answered me. You never told me what this had to do with the sister. You've done the grunt work, you may as well finish me off."
I was suddenly very tired and had to fight the urge to fall asleep with my head propped back against the kitchen fridge. I half gave in to myself, and my skull let out a small thud as it collided with the wooden panelling. At least, from this vantage point, I could not meet their gaze.
"Honey, Allie, she was special, like I said, there were parts of her that were them, parts that could do.. extraordinary things. She was wanted, because she was special. The government, they knew about Charlie and me, they tried to take us, to find out what it was the aliens were using us for. They couldn't- your father ran, and the aliens protected me. The year before you were born, we met. We remembered. Allie began to demonstrate the powers she had, the things that made her special. They took her, and we got her back, but they came again. We had nowhere to hide, so we did they only thing we could. We let them, the aliens, take her, to protect her."
My mother's voice broke in the middle and when I looked, she wiped at the edges of her lids. I bobbed my head in an effort to understand. When I spoke, it was slow and deliberate, the speech of a drunken man.
"Let me see if I have this, I have an older sister, who is, currently, drifting around somewhere in the cosmos?"
A lot of eager head nodding told me that I did hear correctly.
"So why, why aren't I special, why can't I do things?"
They had no answer to that, other than a sympathetic gaze.
"This is why I have a mother who chases lights for a living. You're trying to find her again. You think there are aliens out there who have your daughter. I don't believe that. I can't. This trip to Texas, this is just a front to scare me the hell out, right? You're gonna take me down there with tales of aliens and stuff and then there'll be a party or something. I'll be sixteen in two weeks. That's gotta be it."
I let out a small, faker than silicon laugh and raised my head expectantly.
"No sweetie, no. We're not joking or lying or messing with your head. The lights your mom's been looking at, they're leading up to something. We're going to Texas because that's where they took her from us. We're going to Texas because that's where we think she's coming back to."
I just stare with my eyebrows raised, because it's all I have the energy to do. After a moment, I don't even have the energy to do that. I let my head drop backwards again and feel my breathing begin to get short and quick. The tears that had been looming since the conversation began spill over my cheeks in torrents. Before I know what's happening, I pass out, during what I'm told later was a panic attack. The last thing I remember thinking was that I was in the middle of nowhere, without a social services office in sight and- god, I wished I had been adopted.
"Daughters, in the slant light on the porch, Are bickering. The eldest has come home With new truths she can hardly wait to teach." -Marilyn Nelson
Its probably better for all concerned if you don't ask what I did on my teenage rampage, but I managed to fill in the time quite nicely. When I finally sauntered my way back to the parked camper van, silently wondering why no one had yet complained about the damn thing taking up half the diner's parking lot, the moon was parading high above the quiet rooftops and the diner's large, dust swathed windows were just dark holes in the surrounding cement.
I took a moment to glare at the world's ceiling, sending heated, hate- filled rays of thought to the stars and beyond. I tried to change it- make it like it was in my dreams, to wilfully erase the whole, immaterial, home- wrecking thing. I wasn't able to, though, never have been. The stars smirked at me and twinkled in a triumphant display of infallibility. I narrowed my eyes, refusing to admit defeat and yanked hard on the van door to vent the anger a little.
My mother, evidently so overcome with the worry of possible dangers that her only daughter might be facing in the innumerable alleys and side streets of central Idaho, was snoring peacefully on her weighed-down, feebly held bunk. I sat tentatively on my own cot, opposite my sleeping mom's, and took in her blank, untroubled face. I contemplated, not for the first time, what she was doing, what she was following and, above all else, why she saw fit to drag me along on her one way trip to insanity.
I sighed, pulled off my shoes and stretched out on the cot. I stared into that sleeping face until I couldn't focus on it any longer, then turned onto my other side, closing the curtains without looking out the windowpane, where I sweated in and out of feverish half-dreams until morning.
My night of alternate hissy-fits and hectic, restless sleeping meant that when I finally woke up, still dazed and bleary, it was on the upper side of noon, which disorientated me entirely. That, and the fact that my father's green eyes were scanning me from across the van floor.
He barely had time to blurt out a good morning before I lounged at him in a flying hug and wrapped my arms around him. I'm no daddy's girl, o.k? I just hadn't seen him in ages! Mom smiled at me from over his shoulder and offered me a cup of coffee. I took the steaming, chipped mug and sat next to my dad, thinking of a hundred things to say at once, and a million reasons why it was great to see him again.
So maybe I'm a little bit of a daddy's girl.
After finding out the most recent developments on the home gossip mill, and the latest adventures of our pet dog, Mary, my dad turned serious for the first time since he arrived.
"Reagan, honey, your mother and I have been talking and we have something we need to tell you."
He moved himself over to my cot and sat beside my mom, who took his hand in her own and entwined their fingers. The display of affection was not lost on me, but I was too anxiously awaiting the next snippets of conversation to give the gesture the normal mental cross-examination. A thousand equally hideous ideas give chase to each other in my head- dad is gay, mom is gay, I'm inheriting a genetic disease or, my personal favourite and bookmaker's choice, I'm adopted. My shoulders tense and I begin to feel a little nauseous trying to decide which parent to look in the eye- if they are even my parents at all. My "mom" spoke first.
"We, um, we have wondered, when, if ever, to tell you. we decided, when you were born, because you were normal, healthy, we decided to wait, until you were old enough to understand, or, until we had to."
I would commend her on her frank and direct approach, if she wasn't dancing in circles round the subject matter and making a whole load of non-sense.
"Mom- what the hell?"
She glances at my dad for some support or something, and he takes the reins.
"Sweetheart, I realise you've been an only child your whole life, but the truth is.you have never been an only child."
He smiles and lets out a breath that sounds as though it's been held in for a decade and grips my mom's hand tighter. They both peer at me like I'm in a test-tube, expectant and hopeful.
" That makes - no sense dad, what, what are you saying? You guys had another kid? I'm adopted, aren't I?"
There's another excessively long breath, my mom this time, inhaling.
"No-no! We had another child, before you were born- a girl-your sister.Allie"
Her face adopts a look of complete bliss and my dad raises his hand to caress her cheek. If I weren't caught up in the middle of my own identity catastrophe- I would be very unsettled by their emotional demonstrations. Oh, and a sister? I'm going to share my parents and their separation- fuelled guilt? Like hell. Wait, maybe.
"Is she. did she. die?"
My mother looks shocked and confused, but understanding at the same time.
"No, but, she, ah, she had to go away."
" You gave her up for adoption?"
My dad coughs awkwardly and they share another of those knowing glances and if this doesn't unravel itself soon I'm giving myself up for adoption. Then my mother begins to speak, in a rush, and I'm not sure if I hear her properly at all, because what I did hear couldn't possibly be what she really said.
"Allie. Allie was born about ten years before you were. She was a beautiful girl, beautiful and special. She could do things. It came from her grandfather- your grandfather. She was special like him, it skipped a generation with me."
"Hold on, mom. Pronounciate, ok? And ten years before me? What? You and dad met like a year before I was born, Aunt Nina told me- you've told me yourself."
Another knowing glance, then my parents both look at me with this slice of thick pity in the corner of their eyes, like I'm about to learn something that'll make me less of a person.
"We did meet a year before you were born. You know your mother's search, her work as a UFOligist, she has a reason for why she believes in those things, when other people mock them, other people laugh."
My dad pauses and takes in my unhinged jaw before deciding that, having flown the damn plane overhead, he might as well let the bombs away.
"When she was young, your mother was abducted. I was too. Allie- was conceived aboard an alien craft."
He finishes and looks at me in entire serenity, in all seriousness. I gulp down as much of the ridiculousness as I can buy and run a dry tongue over drier lips. I pause, take a steadying breath then burst into the loudest laugh I'm sure I've ever given. My dad looks hurt and reaches out a hand to put on my knee.
"Sweetie, look, I know it's a lot to take in.
I stop laughing immediately and when I meet my parent's eyes they seem a little bit afraid of me, of what I'll do next.
"A lot to take in! Reckon? I thought it was just your average PARENTAL exchange!"
"Honey, we know, it's o.k."
"O.K? What specific part of this is o.k? This is- this is like something outta Uncle Tom's books, this is crazy dad! O.k! O.K! Lets say, for the sake of argument, aliens exist, they abducted you. What the hell does that have to do with this adopted sister? That is, assuming I believe in this sister, after the second revelation."
My parents adopted an air of innocence, as though I was being utterly unreasonable and acting irrationally for such a situation. What-ever.
"Sweetie, we're telling you the truth. My grandfather was an alien. He landed here in the fifties, in the Roswell crash. He and my grandmother had a child that was a hybrid, my father, allie's-and your, grandfather. I'm part alien, she was part alien, and you are too."
I jumped up somewhere in the middle of this, and, without realising it began to pace the RV's floorboards while fidgeting wildly with my hands. My mother and father just stared on dumbly.
"Well fabulous. FABULOUS! I always knew you were whacked mom, but dad, I never expected this from you, came WAY out of left field!"
"Sweetie, you're shouting."
"YOU ARE GODDAMN RIGHT I'M SHOUTING. And I have a RIGHT to be! Jesus CHRIST."
I knelt on the floor next to the tiny oven, swatting my mother's arm away when she tried to console me. I tried to think logically, to piece together these things so that they couldn't possibly be true. The most appalling thing of all was that, in some way, it made a sickening sort of sense in my head. It answered a good deal of the questions I'd been asking all my life, it filled me with a bad tasting desire to know more. I fingered the lone star around my neck and turned soberly to my mother and father.
"You never answered me. You never told me what this had to do with the sister. You've done the grunt work, you may as well finish me off."
I was suddenly very tired and had to fight the urge to fall asleep with my head propped back against the kitchen fridge. I half gave in to myself, and my skull let out a small thud as it collided with the wooden panelling. At least, from this vantage point, I could not meet their gaze.
"Honey, Allie, she was special, like I said, there were parts of her that were them, parts that could do.. extraordinary things. She was wanted, because she was special. The government, they knew about Charlie and me, they tried to take us, to find out what it was the aliens were using us for. They couldn't- your father ran, and the aliens protected me. The year before you were born, we met. We remembered. Allie began to demonstrate the powers she had, the things that made her special. They took her, and we got her back, but they came again. We had nowhere to hide, so we did they only thing we could. We let them, the aliens, take her, to protect her."
My mother's voice broke in the middle and when I looked, she wiped at the edges of her lids. I bobbed my head in an effort to understand. When I spoke, it was slow and deliberate, the speech of a drunken man.
"Let me see if I have this, I have an older sister, who is, currently, drifting around somewhere in the cosmos?"
A lot of eager head nodding told me that I did hear correctly.
"So why, why aren't I special, why can't I do things?"
They had no answer to that, other than a sympathetic gaze.
"This is why I have a mother who chases lights for a living. You're trying to find her again. You think there are aliens out there who have your daughter. I don't believe that. I can't. This trip to Texas, this is just a front to scare me the hell out, right? You're gonna take me down there with tales of aliens and stuff and then there'll be a party or something. I'll be sixteen in two weeks. That's gotta be it."
I let out a small, faker than silicon laugh and raised my head expectantly.
"No sweetie, no. We're not joking or lying or messing with your head. The lights your mom's been looking at, they're leading up to something. We're going to Texas because that's where they took her from us. We're going to Texas because that's where we think she's coming back to."
I just stare with my eyebrows raised, because it's all I have the energy to do. After a moment, I don't even have the energy to do that. I let my head drop backwards again and feel my breathing begin to get short and quick. The tears that had been looming since the conversation began spill over my cheeks in torrents. Before I know what's happening, I pass out, during what I'm told later was a panic attack. The last thing I remember thinking was that I was in the middle of nowhere, without a social services office in sight and- god, I wished I had been adopted.