Page 52 of I'm Not Yours
“Yes, he did. My poor mom. No drugs at all during childbirth. She wanted it natural. All of us were natural. My father grabbed two tartans out of the back of the van for her to lie on.”
“Tartans?”
“From Scotland. Our ancestors are from Scotland, and our family takes our love of Scotland seriously. Afterward, my father’s face was whiter than my mom’s. I remember my sisters and I had to stay in the van and there were a bunch of men in uniform helping my mom, and all of a sudden one of those men was holding our brother, March, who was screaming his head off, but, I’m sure, delighted to have been born in America.” He laughed again.
My, what a seductive and deep and gravelly laugh.My!
“And after he was born?”
“A doctor had been passing through customs and one of the guards ran him over to our mom, so he was able to do some sewing up, so to speak. A couple of hours later, after the border guards fed us, we were back in the van, March squawking in my mom’s arms where she lay on the floor. Within two hours we were in a fancy hotel. It was strange. Our childhoods were so nomadic, we worked on farms and communes, and the basics, electricity and plumbing, often weren’t there, but once or twice a year we’d go stay in a hotel with pools, hot tubs, and free breakfasts where we stuffed ourselves silly with pancakes andwaffles. After March was born we had seven nights of complete luxury.”
“Then back on the road? You didn’t go to school?”
“Not traditional school. We weren’t homeschooled, we were bus-schooled.”
“What does ‘bus-schooled’ mean?”
He smiled. I melted further. For a moment I faltered again, couldn’t speak, lost my train of thought. I coughed. “We learned all about geography, geology, and the history of the earth from our travels. We’re all fluent in Spanish. Our father loved math, so in fourth grade we were doing basic algebra. He thought it was fun, so there we’d be, up at two in the morning, doing algebraic equations after learning about the constellations. My mom had us write in journals every night and we read the classics.”
“A family of readers, then?”
“We ate books. It was required. We would visit other MacKenzie relatives often, and read their books, too. Books are your friends, my mom told us.”
“How did your parents make a living?”
“My father is a talented painter so he would set up a stand at open markets, or in small towns we were passing through, and people would hire him to paint pictures of themselves, their homes, their pets. Once word got out, there were long lines. Sometimes he would paint murals at schools, churches, even civic buildings. He’d go in with a design, they’d love it, and all of a sudden they had a mural in their hallway and we had a check.”
I laughed despite the cold that seemed to be living in my body from the inside out. Could blood turn to icicles? “My mom is an incredibly talented seamstress. She made all of our clothes and called it Hippie Chick. One time she took yards of beige material bought at a garage sale for fifty cents and sewed my sisters and me dresses with six inches of lace at the hem. People loved them,they stopped us on the street. My mom sold a lot of clothes when we were in that bus. Her flowered shirts, flowy and bright, sold well. She’d buy used jeans for twenty-five cents, cut out patches from colorful material, and sew them on. She added beads and feathers to plain blue shirts. She could turn anything into a fashion statement, and she did.”
“She was a clothing artist, then.”
“Yes, and she taught us. We would all spend hours together sewing into the night. There wasn’t a formal bedtime. We’d use a lantern and she showed us how to make a boring dress unique, how to make a normal skirt something special. Ruffles, sequins, embroidery, shortening, lengthening. And lace. Oh, the lace was always in abundance. Our favorite. We used it all over everything. Satin was our second favorite. Sewing was a fun game for us.”
“And you learned a lifelong skill.”
“That I did.” I sewed until I decided, insanely, that I should let that part of my life fly off into the wind and disappear over the mountains. Part of me flew off then, too, and I was soon a miserable cog in a legal machine. I went back to sewing to refind my lost self. How strange to say sewing recently saved me, but it had.
I was so curious about his family, but we started climbing the staircase and all I could think of was that I didn’t want to go first because I didn’t want my rear in his face, but I didn’t have a choice. A gentleman, he had me go first.
I wanted to grab my bottom and hide it. It is notoverlylarge, but let’s simply say that I enjoy eating, have never desired to be model slim, and believe my curves, instead of the skinny, intense thing I used to be, signal a healthier eating life. Besides, I could die tomorrow. Why deny myself the finer pleasures of life like chocolate, fresh lobster with garlic butter, and clam chowder?
I tripped up a step, started to tumble forward, my freezing feet and legs not responding, and that strong arm whipped around my middle and pulled me back up. Again.
But this time my back was tight against his chest. The chariot chest. Hard and tight, a thigh partly between mine.
Oh, mercy.
His face was so near to mine. Inches. Oh, inches.
He smelled delicious . . . a combination of the beach and sunshine and musk.
Mercy, mercy,mercyme.
“Boil me dry, and hang me out on a laundry line like a dead possum,” Estelle said, shaking her white curls. “It is a miracle. You have brought a man to this house. Who is he and what does he want and do you even know how to talk to a man without telling him off?”
“He is a tall drink of water,” Leoni whispered, as if Reece could hear her talking through the window as she spied on him from my second-story studio. “And he’s getting back in his truck and driving away! Oh, no! Run after him, June! Get him, get him!” She whirled around and started pushing at my back. “Go, go!”
I wanted to sneak into my light blue bedroom and take a hot shower, but if I did that, my two employees, Estelle, who is seventy-eight and blunt because, “Why waste time at my age?” and Leoni, blond, twenty-seven, and a single mom, would simply trail after me, probably right into the shower. Yes, they arethatnosy.
