The Fall of Alice K. (42 page)

“Stop describing yourself.”

“Why do we sometimes say such cruel things to each other?”

“We're still birds of a feather.”

“‘We're still birds of a feather,' Nancy chirped.” That was Alice, and the cleverness of it made her feel happier than she had all day.

“I'll babysit for you if it comes to that,” said Lydia. “You know that, don't you? I really will.”

“I know. Until you leave for college.”

“Until
we
leave for college?”

“Whatever.”

“We can handle anything.”

“I know.”

Miss Den Harmsel's praise of them did boost Lydia and Alice's opinions of their intellectual superiority, but they knew they were big fish in a little pond. If they were in a big urban setting, they doubted that they would stand out the way they did in Dutch Center.

“One way or another, I'm going to be part of the Vang family,” said Alice.

“Are you ready for that?”

“I'm ready for anything. Are you?”

“I mean, can you accept them as part of my family? It would mean Mai too.”

“Of course,” said Lydia. “What I've heard about Mai, she's burning a hole at Redemption. I hear she's a straight-A student there. My mom told me she comes to the library to read poetry and literary magazines. I guess she's the editor of Redemption's annual literary publication.”

“That girl moves fast,” said Alice. “Want to get to know her better?”

“I'd love to. How does she feel about your being pregnant?”

“I'm not sure she knows yet. Nickson is working through the whole family thing.”

Lydia telephoned her mother at the library to learn that Mai was there at that very moment. A twenty-second conversation between Mai and Lydia and the arrangement was made—and it was immediate, right after school that very day. Alice would have one precious half hour before she'd have to go home for chores.

“Maybe we should talk politics,” said Lydia as they headed off for their meeting with Mai at the Redemption coffee shop. “We could ask her if she knows why President Clinton put the Oval Office mistletoe under his desk.”

“Stop it,” said Alice. “We promised we weren't going to tell any Monica jokes. And what does President Clinton have to do with those books that Miss Den Harmsel gave you for the summer,
The Federalist Papers?
”

“That's right,” said Lydia, “and Jefferson's book on Virginia. Now Jefferson and Clinton, those two had a few things in common in the woman department.”

When they met Mai, they immediately started talking literature.

“When I first learned how to read English,” said Mai, “I told my mom that I wanted to read every book that was ever published in English.”

“How are you doing?” asked Lydia.

“I have three to go,” she said.

That was the icebreaker. They all laughed so loudly that other students turned to stare at them. Mai really was a bird of the same feather, and Alice was almost ready to introduce her to Nancy Swifties.

Mai had sat down beside Alice, and Lydia across from her. When they set their coffees down, Mai said, “I need the bathroom first.”

“I'll go with you,” said Lydia.

Alice stayed behind to guard their purses.

Mai had left her purse open, and it was easy to look inside. Alice wasn't going to steal from her, but she did wonder how much cash she carried around. Mai's purse was as organized as Alice's father's filing cabinets. Alice quickly shuffled through it, and in the bottom of the smallest compartment she saw them, those little wrapped packets with the words “For prevention of disease only.” Mai carried the same brand of condoms as Nickson used. They must have been a family favorite.

Lydia's purse was in reach of Alice's foot, so she pulled it over to her chair, picked it up and opened it. It was a mess. Alice started scratching through the bits of paper scraps and came upon a note that looked like something she had been writing to Alice. No, it was a poem for Alice, written in the manner of Emily Dickinson. She was rhyming words like
confusion
and
delusion
—and then, out of nowhere, there they were, back from the restroom after what must have been the fastest pee on record. Alice had Lydia's purse open on her lap.

“Why are you looking in my purse?” said Lydia.

“I don't know, I don't know,” said Alice.

“What on earth are you looking for?”

“I don't know, I don't know.”

“You two stop it,” said Mai in her familiar cheerful way. “We're here to talk about literature, remember? Not about the secrets of our purses.”

“You're weird,” said Lydia.

“As if you didn't know,” said Alice. “Want to see mine?”

“Here's mine,” said Mai. “Maybe we should all switch purses!”

Mai had saved them—or at least she had saved Alice, and now they really were ready to be three serious young women talking about literature. Alice and Lydia didn't tell Mai that they already knew she was acing all of her classes at Redemption, but they quizzed her on her love of literature.

Mai's favorite teacher at Redemption College was a published writer by the name of James Schaapsma. Mai had read a collection of his short stories and said she thought he was one of the best Christian writers she had ever read. “He doesn't try to make things easy,” she said. “He isn't one of these phony, easy-answer writers.”

Lydia and Alice were in luck: Mr. Vic was only interested in teaching contemporary authors, especially the Dutch American ones—people like Peter De Vries and Feike Feikema who for some reason had changed his publishing name to Frederick Manfred, but most of those Dutch American authors had fallen away from the faith. Like Mai, Mr. Vic liked James Schaapsma because, he said, he showed that you didn't have to be a sheep going “Baaa, that's nice, baaa, that's wholesome, baaa, isn't that pretty?” You could actually tell the truth and still be a believer.

Mr. Vic also had them read stories by an older guy who grew up around Dutch Center and wrote stories about farm boys. Little tiny stories that were about as long as a sneeze and that some people thought were funny. Mr. Vic said he was the “Hemingway of farm life.” Ho hum. Alice didn't have much use for this guy's work. Too much animal cruelty. In one of his stories, his farm boys threw live cats from the top of a windmill with homemade parachutes on them.

“Cats died in that story!” Alice proclaimed. “That was supposed to be funny? What redeeming value could anyone find in a story that kills cats!”

“You never eat cats or dogs in America, do you?” asked Mai. She didn't sound like she was teasing.

“Hey, I'm a farm girl,” said Alice. “I've seen lots of dead animals. I once held the head of a steer as it died. It's not as if I was freaked out by animal deaths. But why on earth would anyone kill cats in fiction?”

“How about tigers?” said Mai.

“That's different,” said Alice. “But if I wanted something gruesome, I'd read
The Godfather.
”

“You ought to eat more cats in America,” said Mai. “You people spend more money on cat food than on baby food.”

“And cats kill millions of birds a year in this country,” said Lydia. “Millions and millions.”

“That's still no reason to throw them off a windmill in parachutes,” said Alice.

“My mom prefers parachutes to cats,” said Mai. “There's more money in parachute material than cat hide, I'll tell you that.”

“How about Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson?” Lydia broke in.

“Shakespeare, of course,” Mai said. “I love Shakespeare's Histories. Falstaff is my favorite character.”

Miss Den Harmsel had not assigned any of the Histories. Mai had one-upped them there, so they pressed on to Emily Dickinson.

“She's great,” said Mai, “but have you read William Butler Yeats?”

They hadn't.

“My favorite, though, is William Blake,” said Mai.

Once they'd gotten off the subject of dead cats, their first session of talking literature with Mai was more a session of listening to her tell about authors they had not read—and in most cases, not even heard of. Miss Den Harmsel's two-person repertoire was starting to look pretty limited.

“ Would Shakespeare ever kill a cat ?” asked Lydia. She had that smart-aleck smirk. “Would Emily Dickinson?”

“William Blake would see a whole world in a dead cat,” said Mai. “You guys have got to read Blake.”

They promised they would.

42

When Alice offered to drive Mai to the Vangs' house, Mai said, “I've got something to tell you.”

“Should I be afraid?”

“Not of me,” said Mai. “Nickson told me that you're pregnant.”

Alice watched Mai's face. She watched for the anger, the disappointment, the disgust. Instead, she got open arms and Mai's infectiously happy face, and all of the pains and fears of the day were, for a wonderful moment, taken away.

“We need more talk time,” said Alice. “Hop in.”

When Mai got into the 150 Alice whipped it around and headed toward the farm.

“I want time with you before I see Nickson again. Talk to me. Tell me everything I should know.”

Mai did tell her everything, or as much as could be told in a ten-minute ride. Nickson had spilled the big news to Mai first and then their mother. Mai had gone with Nickson to tell Lia.

“She took it the way I thought she would,” said Mai. “She's a little bit like Nickson, you know. Nickson's a bamboo man: hard on the outside and soft in the middle. She doesn't drip her feelings over everybody, but she's harder on the inside than Nickson is. She thinks America does strange things to people. Makes them act like this. Kids getting pregnant. If she had known that you and Nickson were seeing each other by yourselves, she wouldn't have been surprised at all about what has happened.”

“Nickson told me that's what you people thought. But does she know how much we love each other?”

That question was tougher. Mai said the Hmong distrusted teenage
romance even more than Rev. Prunesma did. Romantic feelings between any male and female, no matter what their age, were just the silliness of the heart.

Eros unbridled and on the rampage, Alice thought.

Lia's concern was not whether Nickson and Alice loved each other. She was worried about the bigger marriage, the marriage of their families.

“I know about the bride-price thing,” said Alice.

“You're white folks, Mom knows that. The whole family in Saint Paul would know that too, but still. . . .”

“I can't believe you and Nickson would ever live by those rules.”

“That doesn't mean we don't know them.”

Alice drove Mai to the silo. Together they went into the switchboard room and Mai watched as Alice set the augers in motion. This drew most of the steers from across the feedlot and out of the barn.

“I want you to see the barn.”

When Alice opened the door, a few steers were still lounging around and showing little interest in the feed that was being augered into the bunks outside. “Haii-ee! Haii-ee!” Alice yelled and waved her arms. One trudged toward her as if expecting a free handout.

“Go eat,” said Alice, and shoved its wet nose away from her.

“They're not scared of you,” said Mai, though she looked scared of them.

“They're just fat and content,” said Alice. “Come on, come on, move along.” She moved past them, slapping rumps. “Out of here. Out of here.”

With the barn cleared, they walked toward the ladder leading up the haymow. “Follow me.” Mai fidgeted uneasily, but when Alice reached back and took her hand, Mai trusted her and followed her up the wooden ladder that consisted of one-by-four slats nailed to parallel two-by-fours that extended up the back of the barn and through the floor opening into the haymow.

Mai looked around at the grand expanse of baled hay and open space. She stared in the same way Nickson had stared at the angled rafters and at the long metal rail running the length of the barn just under the peak, and the draped barn rope that hung like a one-braid hammock beneath the rail. A few sparrows startled at their presence, flew around, then
landed and watched them to see if they were a threat. Mai pulled her sweatshirt hood over her head.

“I don't want any birds pooping on my head,” she said. “That's really bad luck.”

“So I've learned. Of course, it all depends on what you mean by ‘luck.'”

Mai looked around. “This is beautiful,” she said. “It smells so good, and it's so big.” Her voice sounded warm and melodic in the cushioned world of hay. “And private,” she said. “It's so peaceful and quiet. I've never been upstairs in a barn before.”

“It's called the haymow.”

“I love it. I just love it up here.” Then a terrible seriousness swept over her face. “Let's sit,” she said. “I have something important to tell you. I've been putting it off.”

Alice sat down. Mai told Alice that Nickson was the one who worried about the whole bride-price thing, and that he was going to appeal to their relatives. “You have to help me stop him. All right?”

“All right,” said Alice. “I am Nickson's free of charge.”

“Bride price isn't really about buying a woman, it's about connecting two families.”

“I get that,” said Alice. “I'm starting to get a lot of things.”

When Alice returned to the farm after dropping Mai off, her mother was home. She looked sad but not angry. She had either given up on Alice or given in to the weight of the world. As soon as she went to bed, Alice walked out of the unguarded front door of their house and drove off to see Nickson.