White Oleander

"Such a wonderful girl." My mother stroked the side of my face with her work-roughened finger, deliberately scraping my skin. I was a traitor. I had betrayed my master. She knew why I'd kept Claire in the background. Because I loved her, and she loved me. Because I had the family I should have had all this time, the family my mother never thought was important, could never give me. "Astrid, do you mind letting us talk for a moment alone? Some grown-up things."

 

I looked from her to my foster mother. Claire smiled. "Go ahead. Just for a minute." Like I was a kid who had to be encouraged to get into the sandbox. She didn't know how long a minute could be, what might happen in a minute.

 

I got up reluctantly and went over to the fence closest to the road, ran my fingertips over the bark of a tree. Overhead, a crow stared down at me with its soulless gaze, squawked in a voice that was almost human, as if it was trying to tell me something. "Piss off," I said. I was getting as bad as Claire, listening to birds.

 

I watched them, leaning toward each other over the table. My mother tanned and towheaded, in blue, Claire pale and dark, in brown. It was surreal, Claire here with my mother, at an orange picnic table at Frontera. Like a dream where I was naked and standing in line at the student store. I just forgot to get dressed. I was dreaming this, I told myself, and I could wake up.

 

Claire pressed her palm to her forehead, like she was taking her temperature. My mother took Claire's other thin hand between her large ones. My mother was talking without stopping, low, reasonable, I'd seen her hypnotize a cat this way. Claire was upset. What was she telling her? I didn't care what my mother's game was. Her time was up. We were leaving, she was staying. She couldn't screw this up for me, no matter what she said.

 

They both looked up as I rejoined them. My mother glared at me, then veiled it with a smile, patted Claire's hand. "You just remember what I told you."

 

Claire said nothing. Serious now. All her giggles had vanished, her pleasure at finding another person who quoted Shakespeare. She stood up, pale fingernails propped on the table-top. "I'll meet you at the car," she said.

 

My mother and I watched her go, her long legs in their matte brown, the quietness of her movements. My mother had taken all the electricity away, the liveliness, the charm. She scooped her out, the way the Chinese used to cut open the skull of a living monkey and eat its brains with a spoon.

 

"What did you tell her?"

 

My mother leaned back on the bench, folding her arms behind her head. Yawned luxuriously, like a cat. "I hear she's having trouble with her husband." She smiled, sensually, rubbing the blond down on her forearms. "It's not you, is it? I know you have an attraction to older men."

 

"No, it's not me." She couldn't play with me the way she played with Claire. "You stay out of it."

 

I'd never dared speak to her that way before. If she were not stuck here at Frontera, I would never have had the nerve. But I would be leaving and she would be staying, and in that fact there was a strength I would never have found if she were out.

 

I could see it startled her to have me oppose her. It angered her that I felt I could, but she was controlled, I could see her switch gears. She gave me a smile of slow irony. "Your mommy just wants to help, precious," she said, licking her words like a cat lapping cream. "I have to do what I can for my new friend."

 

We both watched Claire out past the cyclone fencing, as she walked to the Saab, distracted. She bumped into the fender of a station wagon. "Just leave her alone."

 

"Oh, but it's fun," my mother said, bored with the pretense. She always preferred to bring me behind the scenes. "Easy, but fun. Like drowning kittens. And in my current situation, I have to take my fun where I can. What I want to know is, how could you stand to live with Poor Claire? Did you know there was an entire order, the Poor Claires? I would imagine it's a terrible bore. Keeping up the old grade point average and whatnot. Pathetic."

 

"She's a genuinely nice person," I said, turning away from her. "You wouldn't know about that."

 

My mother snorted. "God forbid, the nice disease. I would have thought you'd outgrown fairy tales."

 

I kept my back to her. "Don't screw it up for me."

 

"Who, me?" My mother was laughing at me. "What could I do? I'm a poor prisoner. A little bird with a broken wing."

 

I turned around. "You don't know what it's been like." I bent over her, one knee on the bench beside her. "If you love me, you'll help me."