Abruptly he turned away. Tugged at his mustache and sent you home, but even though you had to walk for miles because you missed the bus, you were brimming with such a wild joy it felt like flying. You’d sensed his struggle, the sudden gruffness in his voice, the violence in the muscles of his back as he attacked the blackboard with his eraser. The back of a grown man. The fall sky turned steely, then darkened to dusk. You did a skippy little jig in the gravel. The stars were out by the time you sauntered into the kitchen.
Momoko looked at Lloyd. Lloyd cleared his throat, wiped pie from the corner of his mouth. “You’re late.”
“I stayed after school.” Surfing the edge of a long-suffering sigh.
“You in some kinda trouble?” Momoko asked, bringing a plate of franks and beans that she had kept hot in the oven.
“No.” Pricking the rubbery pink lozenges with your tines. “I had to help Mr. Rhodes.”
Lloyd hemmed and hawed, and you could feel the slow ache of his thinking. He took a toothpick from his shirt pocket and started excavating his back molars. When he got to the front incisors, he snapped the toothpick in half and placed it on the edge of his plate. Finally he wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I don’t trust that man. He has dubious morals.”
“He does not! He’s an activist. A man of conscience! Just because he won’t go fight a war in Asia. That’s more than you can say!”
Lloyd drew in his breath like he’d been sucker-punched. Put down his fork and napkin and pushed to his feet. His eyes were as cold and bright as the sun on snow in winter. It was as if he could see into the corners of your mind, know thoughts before you had a chance to think them, track the rebel contents of your heart. As a child you were secure in his omniscience, knowing that everything occurring on this earth did so with his blessing, according to his will. Now you looked away.
“What’s happened to your morals, Yumi?” His voice sounded dead.
You couldn’t raise your eyes from your dinner plate. “I believe anything is okay as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.”
Cassie’s dad would have whipped her for talking back. You got sent to your room, which was where you wanted to be in the first place.
At the Thanksgiving pageant, Mr. Rhodes slumped in the front row, and standing center stage, you felt him watching. The play seemed silly, and you’d long outgrown your role, but even so, the words were never as rich in all the years you’d said them.
“Noble Pilgrims,” you recited, voice trembling, “my people and I welcome you to our land. We know that your journey has been a hard one, and we will help you. Pray, take our seeds and plant them. . . .”
You wanted him to know that you welcomed him, understood him, even though there was a petition circulating at church to have him transferred out of the school district. You knew that Lloyd had signed it. Shoot, he’d probably started it.
When you returned for your curtain call, his seat was empty. Your heart sank.
The following day he asked you to stay after school. He paced back and forth in the empty classroom, ranting about historical accuracy. “It’s revisionist bullshit! It was genocide—we stole their land, and then we exterminated them. And now we call it Thanksgiving?”
He seemed very angry, like he was yelling at you. “Don’t you know anything about the Shoshone and the Bannock who’ve lived on this land for thousands of years, before there even was an Idaho?” Staring at him, your eyes burned, and you wanted to cry. Then he stopped and stood in front of you, and before you knew it, he had pinned you in his arms against the desk, and he was kissing you, hard. It was not at all what you’d imagined, involving a lot more bristle, more teeth and tongue than romance, but he whispered, “So lovely . . .” and ran his fingers through your long hair, and that was enough. It was plenty. This is it, you thought, shivering uncontrollably. It’s happening, and you tried to pay attention so that you could remember how his hands felt against the skin of your heart and tell it all to Cass.
He had a baby blue Volkswagen Beetle in a town of Fords and Chevys. On Saturday you skipped 4-H and he picked you up behind the school. He was wearing jeans and an old fisherman’s sweater. He took you to a tiny clapboard house on the outskirts of town, which he was renting for the school year. He made a big pot of split-pea soup on top of a woodstove. You helped him peel the carrots, and afterward you ate the soup with big hunks torn from a loaf of French bread. The crust was burned. He had no chairs, so you sat on a mattress in the corner of the living room. You put the empty bowls on the floor when you were done. The room filled with steam from the simmering soup, clouding the windows. The sheets were speckled with grit, and the flattened pillow smelled like the scalp of his head. It was the best smell in the world, and you buried your face in it, hugging it, wanting to take it home with you. There was no toilet paper in the bathroom, only a stack of dusty newspapers, and afterward you found yourself wiping his semen from your aching adolescent pussy with the headlines of an old New York Times: NIXON RESIGNS.
You phoned Cass right after dinner.
“I did it!” you whispered, and she cried, “No way!” and you could almost hear the screen door slam as she came rocketing out of her house, down the road, and up your driveway. You grabbed her wrist, hauled her panting through the kitchen and up the stairs, slipping past Lloyd, who was headed toward the bathroom. Barricading your bedroom door, the two of you sat, legs crossed Indian style, head touching head.
“I can’t believe it!” squealed Cass, “You really—!”
You reached over to clamp your hand across her mouth. Lloyd gargled in the bathroom on the other side of the wall. When you could trust her to be quiet, you let your hand drop.
“All the way?” she whispered.
You nodded.
“What was it like?” Her eyes were glistening.
You savored her awe, lay back on the pillows.
“It was . . . unbelievably romantic,” you said. “He made split-pea soup.” You smiled dreamily, staring up past a constellation of phosphorescent stars. When you were little, Lloyd had pasted them onto the ceiling for you, following the diagram from a book that he had bought—Orion, Andromeda, and the Dippers. It had been years since you’d really noticed them.
“Split-pea soup?” Cass sounded unimpressed.
“Mmm. I peeled potatoes while he washed peas. He chopped up carrots and—”
“Yummy, I know what’s in split-pea soup!” she cried, bouncing up and down on the bed. “What happened after?”
“I’m getting to that. The room was hot, so we took off our sweaters.”
“And he was driven wild with desire?”
“No. He played his guitar.”
“Ooooh, how romantic! What did he play?”
“Jefferson Airplane. Some Dylan. ‘Lay Lady Lay.’ ”
“I love that! And then did you do it?”
“No. Afterward. First we ate the soup.”
“Did it hurt?” she asked.
“Just a little. The first time.”
“The first time! Oh, my goodness, Yummy! How many . . . ?” Her face