Maybe I didn’t even have something to tell you yet, since communication is contingent on division, and we were one
**
They put the house up for sale
The girls learn the square footage and that the name of its style is ranch-style, like the beans their dad heats up to serve with grilled cheese sandwiches, which is the only thing he knows how to make.
Strangers come and wander up and down the hallways. Amy looks up from studying for finals and looks at Zoe, but Zoe is always too busy watching the strangers to look back.
Amy spends more time with her family, always returning to the dorm in the evenings, for parties or TV. Since Amy’s had her license for a while now their dad lets her borrow his car. Once backing out down their long driveway she crashed into their mom’s car because she was listening to the radio loud and didn’t hear their mom when she pulled in and started honking. Their grandparents found it funny and said it just goes to show what they mean when they say that most accidents happen close to home and that most murders are committed by friends and family. Their mom did not find it funny and said she shouldn’t get to drive anymore if she was going to drive like such a lunatic, but then with all the stuff about the move, she seemed to just forget.
Whenever they go anywhere now they notice their house when they come back, low to the ground, brick, with all its greenery and sidewalks. The cool cement of the porch hidden from the street by the bushes with the tiny, waxy leaves.
The people they sell to make only one demand, which is that they cut down the big tree in the backyard, since inspection has shown it to be what they refer to as a structural threat. In spite of the girls’ protests, their parents assent. So the day they load everything they’re taking with them into the rental van some men come and climb the tree and start hacking off its limbs, limb by limb, bolts of thunder when they hit the ground.
A lot of their stuff they’re getting rid of, whatever they no longer need
Most of their old toys and clothes they take in their dad’s car to the Salvation Army. Their My Little Ponies, most of their stuffed animals, the little red suitcase, the dingy fake metal frame with the picture from The Wizard of Oz. All but a few smaller fossils Amy returns to the ground. The arrowheads she keeps.
They excavate from beneath the pile of abandoned sweaters the doll case that contains the condoms they bought some three years before. Zoe starts to open it. But to Amy, the spirit of the contraband has been transformed. Once fascinating, funny and disgusting, now the contents of the case are like a distant horizon abruptly thrust forward, like something irrelevant that suddenly makes claims.
As they evacuate the home that carried them through childhood, lead lines on the walls like little cracks made by how tall they were on every birthday, Amy becomes aware for the first time of having had a family. Now the sense of slip has shifted, placing strain upon the family fault and casting Amy out, unleashing elements against which she will not have time to take precautions.
Amy thinks of their mother’s story about the girlfriend who got raped by a rifle. Amy thinks of Sasha in his glossy coffin, his ghost-white face made up by the morticians, no longer his, already rotting.
She snatches the box away from Zoe.
Zoe whines. Zoe won’t stop whining.
In comes their mother. And Zoe stops. She looks from face to face like she doesn’t know who to be more scared of.
Their dad drops Amy off at the dorm and drives away to Rochester in the rental van with all the stuff from the house that they’re keeping
Their dad drops Amy off at the dorm and drives away to Rochester in the rental van with all the stuff from the house that they’re keeping. Zoe and their mother have already left. Amy tries to cry but finds she is too tired.
In the spring semester, Amy takes Russian Conversation, Russian Poetry, English Literature Prior to 1800, The French Revolution, and Photography II, which is her favorite
In the spring semester, Amy takes Russian Conversation, Russian Poetry, English Literature Prior to 1800, The French Revolution, and Photography II, which is her favorite. Even though Russian Poetry is taught by a famous poet named Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Photography II is her favorite. Poetry makes her think about Sasha.
Amy likes taking pictures. But what she really loves is the lab. She goes at night when no one’s there. You have to arrange it all before you start, anticipate all the steps, because then it’s dark, and you can’t turn the lights back on. Amy is good at anticipating the steps. You have to lay out the film canister, a bottle opener, scissors, the reel, and the developing tank, in that order. You have to space them evenly so you don’t accidentally knock anything over and lose it on the ground somewhere. Then you turn all the lights off and use the bottle opener to pop the bottom off the canister, and then, carefully, you pull out the film.
You pour water in for one minute (Amy counts to sixty), and then you drain it and pour in the developer all at once. If the developer is too hot or too cold, it will mess up everything. Knowing this exhilarates her, makes her heart race. Once you have poured the developer in, you shake the tank gently for thirty seconds and then for five seconds every thirty seconds until it’s done. Then you drain the tank and rinse four times with stop bath. Then you put the fixer in, and then the hypo-clearing agent.
Then the film is negatives, and delicately then you hang them up to dry.
The next day you make the prints, and the best part of everything is when you slide the white paper into the tray and gently make the waves of solution wash over it, back, forth, back, forth, and slowly, slowly, the image unfolds
The next day you make the prints, and the best part of everything is when you slide the white paper into the tray and gently make the waves of solution wash over it, back, forth, back, forth, and slowly, slowly, the image unfolds.
You do have to be careful because photographic paper is expensive, and you can’t waste it.
Being in the lab reminds Amy of being in the cave at the Tulsa Zoo with her sister. The cave was fake but still a little slimy, and they would chase each other through it, squealing at the slime and the bats and snakes they pretended they could sense, lurking in the clammy dark. Which was almost as fun as the earthquake machine, which was as fun as the rides at the State Fair. When there wasn’t anyone waiting they would ride it over and over again, one hand on the padded railing, Amy’s other hand over Zoe, just in case.
Then you have to cut the mats to the right size and frame the pictures. Amy gets frustrated cutting the mats. She sits on the floor of her dorm room trying to get everything perfect. One night her hand slips, and the box knife slices into the base of her other hand, eliciting a steady stream of blood. Amy looks at her hand, motionless. As she watches the mat turn red, her disgust blooms into something else.
This gives her a new idea.