Chapter 11: Ashes and Snow

It was the last day of my first-grade year and I had Miss Barbara drop me off at the library. “Don’t worry, I’m getting a ride,” I assured, her knowing it was a little white lie. Later that day, when I got home, both of my sisters were sitting down in the living room. I knew that something was terribly wrong.

“Pam, you had better sit down.” Marie insisted. “Our father has something he wants to tell us.”

“Am I grounded?” I asked, knowing that I had been coming home late every day.

“Just sit down!” she commanded. “Ronnie will be here any minute, then dad said that he wants to talk to us all as a family.”

When I looked in her eyes, I could see that she had been crying. Every now and then she’d rub her fingers against them then look straight ahead at the door. In the kitchen, I could hear my father pacing back and forth and the sound of papers shuffling together, then the shuffling stopped, and he’d sit down and let out a sigh.

“Hey guys,” Ron said, as he walked through the door.

“How was school today, Pammy? Hey look there’s a booger!” he said, pointing at the mole on my face as I lifted my hand to wipe it away. “Ha, you fall for it every time!”

No one said anything, except for Marie who told him to shut up and sit down. Just then, my father walked in and pulled a letter from out of his pocket. He held it up inches from his face then squinted an eye to the cursive ink trying to figure out the parts he could share.

“I found this on the table when I got home from work,” he began. “It’s from your mother.” He let out a long deep breath then lifted his head. “She said that she’s going to be leaving. She told me that it’s nobody’s fault and that she just wants to start a new life.”

“So, where the hell is she?” Marie interrupted.

“She said she’s moving to Alaska with her boyfriend,” my father continued.

“Boyfriend?” Veronica said with a dumbfounded stare. “What boyfriend? You’re not supposed to have boyfriends when you’re married!”

“Well, that’s pretty fucked up!” Marie interjected. “She’s leaving us to move to Alaska?”

“Is that all she said?” I wondered aloud as I looked at my dad, his face still frozen in disbelief.

“Just one final thing,” my dad, said as he turned over the second page of the letter. “P.S. I’ll send for the baby.”

“Over my dead body!” Marie objected. “There’s no way that Pam is going to Alaska with mom and her fucking new boyfriend!”

“I may have not have any choice,” my father bemoaned. “She’s still her mother. But I promise, I’m going to get a real good lawyer. She’s not taking my family from me!”

I could see his eyes beginning to water, but then he forced a smile and folded the letter back into his pocket.

“Well,” he said, “it looks like it’s only the five of us now.”

He smiled again, then turned and walked into his room. All of us just sat there in shock. There were so many things that we wanted to say, but we knew that it wasn’t a good time to ask.

That Fourth of July, my father took us to see the fireworks at Bradford Stadium a few miles from our house. The lemon-yellow summer sun slid behind rows of bleachers as wispy high feathers of clouds dusted the edges along the horizon. Soon, the sky was exploding all around as flashes of red, white, and yellow splattered against a deep blue canvas of stars. Then there came one final eruption as the Star-Spangled Banner rang out through the night.

The next day it was nearly a hundred degrees when my father took me to Brea Mall to buy sweaters and gloves. “It’s not that bad during the day, but I hear it gets pretty cold at night,” he reminded me.

“But Daddy, I don’t want to go!” I protested.

“It will only be for a while,” he assured. “You’ll be back in time for the start of your classes.

That morning, I carried a suitcase, as my dad pulled another larger one behind him—our two free hands locking together as we walked through the airport. We held each other by the tall bright window as the plane with the Eskimo face on the front stood waiting outside to take me away.

I took a seat by the window and leaned my head against the glass crying softly to myself. As the engine revved and wheels began to turn toward the runway, I could see my father waving good-bye. “I love you,” I whispered, pushing my head back into the seat. Soon we were out over the ocean and everything soon faded to blue. The next thing I knew, there were towering mountains dressed all in green and white at the top and somewhere below them what looked like a city nestled somewhere between the mountains and water. “Flight 914, from L.A. to Anchorage all clear for landing,” The pilot announced. “At this time, I will ask everyone to remain in their seats.”

“Pammy!” My mom ran up to greet me as the passengers got off the plane and spilled out into the lobby. Standing next to her was a man I had never seen before who my mom introduced to me as her “friend.”

“Pammy, this is Larry. Larry, this is my daughter, Pammy.”

I held out my hand but said nothing. “You’re going to love it here,” she finally said. “We have a farm and lots of animals. Give it a chance.”

My mother and he both grabbed a suitcase and soon we got into his truck and left the city for a dairy farm in the small town of Palmer—wherever that was. All around was a sea of green with Christmas trees here and there poking out from the ground. Within minutes, there were no other houses and only an occasional car passing us by on the other side of the road. Every now and again I’d see a few cows and fluffy white clouds like bales of cotton playing tag with the sun. I felt really small as if swallowed up in another world—a place I only read of in books. There were castles and dragons, crumbling walls of feudal estates, knights dashing through lush green fields riding atop their trusty old steeds, gleaming swords in the noonday sun, damsels locked inside of a tower helplessly waving a handout the window.

I drifted in and out of a dream as the truck pulled onto a small narrow street that led us between two iron gates. In the distance there were other houses, each with long and pointed roofs that prayed like hands against the sky. On one of the corners was a small grocery store and on the other side was a gas station. The man in front of one of the pumps waved over to us as we passed. We took another right at the light, one of only three I recall, then pulled up into an asphalt driveway and parked the truck in a wooden garage.

“Here we are!” My mom reached over and grabbed a suitcase, while her boyfriend got the other from out of the trunk. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

I said nothing.

“Look it’s so peaceful up here. And look at the size of this farm! You won’t see anything like this in Orange County.”

“It’s the middle of nowhere.” I shrugged. “There’s nothing but cows.”

“It’s a dairy farm, honey.” The man spoke up. “Those cows over there, each one of them belongs to me.”

“Larry and I will be staying out here until his family can sell it.” My mother informed me. “Then we’ll probably be moving back down. Honey, why don’t you take Pammy inside to her bedroom? I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she sees what you got her.”

At the end of the hall, a door opened into a cerulean kingdom of high blue ceilings and endless green fields reaching out into towering snow-covered peaks. Now and then a cloud passed over, like a dimmer switch, and merged them together in shades of gray. At one side of the room was a color TV, and at the other was some sort of contraption that looked like a typewriter with some kind of screen. Unfolding out from beneath the window, a large white headboard and a mattress adorned with Disney princesses, magic wands, and glittering wings. The closet was filled with bright colored outfits and stuff for me to wear when it was cold. But it wasn’t cold—at least not today. It was still about seventy when we walked outside after dinner and the man introduced me to all of his cows.

“That one’s so sweet!” I said, pointing to the one with black and white mottles who stood against a white picket fence swishing its tail.

“Go ahead, you can pet her,” he said. “She’s very gentle. We call her Cecilia.”

“That’s my mom’s middle name.” I told him. The man said nothing, just nodded his head.

“But she’s getting up there. We’re no longer able to use her for milk.”

Each morning, I walked outside to the fence and she greeted me there. “Hi, baby girl,” I’d whisper, her deep brown eyes staring back into mine. Then we would just stand there together, and I’d sing her the songs I remembered from The World of Disney. At night, I would sometimes stare out my window and see her standing outside by the fence. One night, around midnight, my mother came in and pulled down the shades as the twilight strained along the horizon.

“You better get to sleep now, Pammy, Larry and I are taking you into town to go shopping tomorrow. And when we get home, Larry’s going to teach you how to use your computer.”

“My what?” I asked her.

“Go to sleep, Pammy,” she said, as she gave me a kiss on the cheek and tucked me in bed.

When the door closed, I sat up and looked at the window. “Good night, baby girl.” I murmured. “I’m sorry I won’t see you tomorrow.”

The next morning, my mom got me ready to go down to Anchorage, while her friend talked with some of the guys who worked on the farm. “Be there in a minute,” he said when he saw us walking out of the house, then got into his truck next to my mom and turned the ignition.

“Who were you talking to?” I asked him.

“Ah, just some guys who need to take care of a few things while we’re gone,” he told me. “Don’t forget to buckle your seatbelt.”

Soon, we were out on the Old Glenn Highway, as we drove with the sun at our back. Before too long, we could see the city unfolding against the roadside glaciers and deep endless sea.

“Where are we going?” I asked my mom.

“The Great Alaska Mall,” she told me.

“Is it like the Brea Mall?”

“It’s different, but nice,” she answered. “Honey, we’re not in Orange County.”

When we got there, we went into all of the stores and my mother’s friend told me that he would buy me whatever I wanted, pulling out a little gold card that he kept in his wallet. When I spent the next hour or so looking bored and not saying anything, she finally started making suggestions.

“Look at that dress over there, Pammy,” she exclaimed, waving over the lady who stood at the counter. “This would look so good on you!”

“I don’t know mom,” I said. “I’m getting hungry.”

“Well, you must want something,” my mother’s friend said. “I have two teenage girls of my own and I can’t seem to buy them enough.”

“Well, I’m not for sale!” I told him. “I want to go back and talk to my cow.”

“Pammy, that’s no way to talk to your new daddy!” my mother scolded.

“That’s not my daddy!” I objected. “My daddy’s back home in Orange County!”

“I give up,” my mother said to her friend. “Let’s just go get something to eat. Maybe she’ll change her mind later on.”

“I’m not so sure of that, Ginny,” he said. “Maybe it was too soon to bring her up here.”

We sat down in a little café and I drank hot chocolate and picked at my lunch of halibut tacos and “reindeer fries”—whatever that was. After that, we shopped a little more and my mom finally talked me into letting him buy me a shirt and a little Eskimo doll. When we finally got home, I went straight to my room and collapsed on my bed. It was something like three in the morning when the sun woke me up through the window. I put on my robe and walked out to the kitchen to get some milk. There was an empty bottle of wine on the table and two half-empty glasses standing beside it. There was also an ashtray filled with crushed out cigarette butts, most with lipstick stains on the filter. My mom and her friend were still in bed, so I opened the door and walked outside. “Baby girl,” I whispered. “Baby girl? Where are you?” They must have moved her inside of the barn, because she wasn’t where she usually slept. Just then, I heard movement then the light flickered on inside of the kitchen.

“Pammy, what are you doing out there?”

“Nothing, Mom.”

“Well get back in here and get back to bed!”

“Sorry.”

The whole next week I couldn’t find her, and I mostly just stayed in my room reading some of the books that I’d brought. One morning, when I got up, my mother’s friend was out in the field while she was in the kitchen making us breakfast. Neither of us said a word to each other. When he came in, we sat, and we ate, then she got up and collected our plates.

“Pammy, Larry is going to show you how to use your computer,” she told me.

“It should be fun,” the man broke in. “I can teach you how to play lots of new games.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Your mom said that she’s going to be cooking something special for us tonight, right Ginny?”

“Sure, honey,” she said, as he walked with me into my room.

We spent the next few hours shooting at aliens and protecting the earth from falling asteroids. I did really good, or maybe he was just letting me win. In the kitchen, I could tell that my mother was drinking as she always started to smoke when she drank. One time, I could hear a glass break on the floor and the sound of her swearing. Then, after a while, she finally walked into my room.

“Pammy, go get cleaned up. Dinner will be ready in less than an hour.”

“Smells great, Ginny!” the man told her, as he got up and walked out of my room.

I went into the bathroom and took a shower then got dressed in one of my new outfits. Then I went over and looked out the window again before I went out into the kitchen. There were candles and glasses and a bottle of wine that her friend had uncorked. My mom had him pour some into a glass and set it before me.

“What’s this?” I asked her.

“Larry and I decided you can have some tonight,” she paused for a moment then finished her glass. “My, don’t you look pretty!”

“Thanks,” I answered.

We started off with a salad, then my mom brought in some vegetables and au gratin potatoes, while her friend carried in what looked like a roast. We sat and ate, as the sun sank behind the mountains and slowly covered our bodies in shadows. My mom kept pouring glasses of wine and took a long drink with each bite of her meal. Every now and then, I took a sip from my glass and pushed the food around on my plate. After a while, my mom stood up, turned on the light, and stared straight at me.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” She said, only inches away from my face.

“What do you mean?”

“The whole night, you’ve sat there and said nothing, and you hardly even touched your food.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I’m worried.”

“Worried about what?” She asked me. “Your father and sisters are doing just fine. So is your brother. Besides, Larry and I have done everything here to make you feel at home.”

“It’s just,” I lifted my head and struggled to speak. “It’s just that I’m worried about my cow.”

My mom sat down, threw up her hands, and poured herself another drink. “You tell her, Larry.”

“Honey,” he turned around and looked into my eyes. “Do you know what happens when dairy cows can no longer give milk?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know what happens.”

“Well, what happens is…” He started to answer but my mom cut him off.

“I’ll tell you what happens,” she glared at me from across the table. “What happens is that we just ate your damn cow!”

I got up from the table, my face awash in a flood of tears, then ran straight into my bedroom.

“Just let her go,” my mom insisted, when her friend got up and tried to follow me.

I stayed there for the next few days, sometimes reading, but mostly crying. Every once in a while, the man would come in and ask if I wanted to go for a walk or play a few games, but I just told him that I wanted to leave. Then a few days later I got my wish as my mom told me to start packing my bags.

Back home, I spent the next few weeks trying to leave everything beneath those midnight suns and white glacial peaks. When school started that year, Carl would pick me up around three and take me down to his studio where we’d dance together for hours. Pretty soon, he started talking about me someday becoming a professional dancer. With my mother gone, my sister Veronica did all of the cooking, and Marie’s friend Roger came over and helped my dad in the yard.

About a week before Halloween, it got really hot, then the winds started coming down from the canyons. That day when I got home from school, there were herds of coyotes racing against the blowing dust, their eyes aglow with the instinctual knowledge of a fire raging not too far away. Pretty soon, we could all smell the smoke. At first, it was a warm glow of musk like the first breath of autumn blowing the summer back out to sea, then the smoke became darker and covered the sky. When my father got home, he told my siblings to start packing and bring the dogs inside and that we may need to leave if things got much worse.

We were all watching the news, as my father went up on the roof with a hose. Carbon Canyon State Park was fully ablaze, and thirty homes were already lost in Sleepy Hollow. Our city was under a voluntary evacuation, and cars were beginning to line the street as fire engines raced in the other direction. From our window, I could see a ring of fire slowly creping down from the hills. Outside was an oddly warm breeze fueled by the malevolent flames. I could not look away, like Icarus scorching his wings on the sun’s gallant beams, or Fabius peering up into the Alps as Hannibal’s army of elephants thundered down on his legions, death and destruction never looked so amazing.

That morning when we woke up, our entire street was covered in ash. I walked through our front yard, thinking about how each small flake could have been somebody’s home, like tiny whispers of ruin and loss picked up by the wind and dropped by my window. Or they may have been the remnants of trees that had stood for decades against fires and floods until the day that their time had finally come. I thought of the birds that twisted nests inside of their branches to one day raise their small young family now flying for their lives to escape through the smoke. I bent down and raked the grass with my hands, grabbing a small fistful of memories before releasing them back into the wind.

Later that year, it got really cold and dark. One day it started to hail, pellets of ice piling up like snow outside my third-grade classroom window. All of the kids ran outside, scooping up snowballs into their hands and sliding across pools of slush. When I got home, I grabbed one of my coats, put on some gloves, and tried making a snowman in our front yard from the pellets that hadn’t already melted. Later that evening, my dad made me hot cocoa and I tried not to think of Alaska as I took long sips from out of my cup. He made a fire and we all watched TV. That was when he told us that my mother was moving back in before Christmas.