Dig.

by A.S. King

A man who prides himself on his ancestry is like the potato plant, the best part of which is underground. —Spanish proverb

Control the brain and the rest is easy. I think about this as I walk home from Mike’s. He probably wasn’t talking to me, directly. He probably doesn’t know about my brain. Mom doesn’t even know about my brain. How would I tell her? When would I tell her? Is there a certain time of day that she can actually stop thinking about herself? My brain is none of her business. Even if it’s trying to drive me crazy.

I consider shoveling things for the rest of my life. Shovel snow, shovel dirt, shovel Mom, shovel myself. Eventually I might get to the answer. Sounds stupid, right? A sixteen-year-old kid looking for the answer when he doesn’t even know the question. But we all know the question. The question is: What am I even doing here?

Only a week ago I was sweating my ass off in jeans in the South Texas sun. I just moved into a blizzard. I’m sixteen years old and the only constant in my life other than my mother is our potato pot. The answer has something to do with potatoes. It has to.

She says, “My mom told me that my dad was an ass man when I was five years old. I didn’t know what it meant. She told me later that some men are ass men, some are breast men, and some are leg men. I’m looking for a brain man. Haven’t found one yet.” I don’t know what to say to her. I never thought about it this way. Also: hell of a way to start a conversation. “It’s like they have us carved up before we’re even in middle school. Fuck men. No offense, but y’all are a bunch of assholes . . . fathers included.” I don’t know what to say to that, either. I want to tell her I’m a brain man, but I’m not one. I’ve looked at breasts. I’ve looked at legs. I’ve looked at asses. “Maybe it’s because no one can actually see the brain,” I say. “Like, you have to get to know someone before you know their brain.” “No shit.”

“The world we live in—this dominion of Northern Europeans—is the way it is because of Solanum tuberosum. If you ask me, it’s ironic that our ancestors were able to avoid poisoning themselves on the plants, and yet rose to poison the whole world with themselves.”

What chance does a girl have when her dad won’t shell out for a bra and tampons? What chance does a girl have when she can’t learn about sex at school but can learn how to douche with turpentine on her phone? When her parents are arguing machines? When her father is a yo-yo and her mother can only think in oil paints? When she’s moved all the way across the country because her family can’t locate its owner’s manual? “Fucked if I do, fucked if I don’t.” That’s The Freak motto.

This is always the question that gets me. After the looks I got in homeroom, I decide to pick the least controversial state I can. You think this is crazy. You think states can’t be controversial. You’re reading this in your own state thinking that your state is great, right? But everyone sees the world different from everybody else. If you’re in the South, some people don’t like the North because it’s full of elites. If you’re in the North, some people think if you’re from the South, you’re stupid or a racist if you’re white. If you’re from the East Coast, some people on the West Coast think you’re too uptight. If you’re from the West Coast, some people on the East Coast think you’re a weirdo whose parents probably smoke weed. You’d be surprised at the assumptions people make based on the answer to this question.

Air travel turns normally sane people into animals. They block the small walkway outside the gate and won’t let the American Airlines staff move wheelchairs to the jet bridge. They elbow one another. From my view, perched on a barstool only five feet from them, they look afraid, as if the flight were being piloted by kidnappers, and yet eager to get it over with.

He wants to find out the point of all of it. He’s trying to comprehend the meaning of life. He’s trying to finish the puzzle before it finishes him.

Judging from our last fifteen flights, I can tell you that poverty is not a popular conversation choice in first class. Or any class. In any plane. Going anywhere. Which is really handy for the people on the plane, I guess.

Most of Dad’s friends don’t live around here. Or if they do, they’re the ones who can’t handle that he’s dying so they’ve distanced themselves. That’s how it works. Have no problems? Plenty of friends. Have problems? Friends suddenly have a lot to do.

I don’t think I can survive four more days with my grandparents. I’ve tried so many times to get Marla to see things from a twenty-first-century point of view, but she doesn’t want to see anything. She just keeps the perks—her smartphone, her remote-start BMW, cable TV, and those plastic bags that steam vegetables in the microwave—that’s all this century is to her. She will never wake up.

I don’t know if it was hanging out in Negril or with Eleanor or being raised by my dad, but I’ve never understood white people who can’t admit they’re white. I mean, white isn’t just a color. And maybe that’s the problem for them. White is a passport. It’s a ticket. The world is a white amusement park and your white skin buys you into it. A woman in economy argued with me about this once. She said, “I’ve heard this idea and it makes me uncomfortable.” “It probably should,” I said.

You don’t have to be racist to not know you’re white. But sometimes you do. And Marla has no idea she’s white or that the whole world was made for people like her.

We could all be shot dead by a crazy asshole with a gun because nobody really cares about dead schoolkids. We could all be kidnapped and no one would look for us. The chances of me getting raped before I graduate college are ridiculously high. The chances of me being abused by a future partner are about 40 percent. And there’s no class about that at school. I ask you: What’s the fucking point?

High school isn’t about graduating or getting out but learning. Learning a lot of stuff. Preparing for college. Being involved and doing the musical because it’s fun. But you’re the same one who argues with me about coffee and curly fries, eyes wide and angry. What did your hard work and memorizing lines and songs do for you? This? Ian is the only one who gets it. We’re not negative. We have a lot of fun. But we already know that adults are mostly assholes who think we’re mostly assholes.

You probably think I’m some cliché kid who hates her parents. I don’t. I have reasons I don’t like to spend time with them. For one thing, they hate gay people. And Jewish people. And black people. And Mexicans. And Muslims. My mom doesn’t even know a Muslim from a Sikh. She just talks about how great it is that their god makes them wear “turbans” so she can pick them out in a crowd. She thinks this is funny. Shocked? I bet you aren’t. All you gimme-gimme people have met someone like my parents. It’s not just a passing comment or a racist quip in the hallway. My whole house is wallpapered with hate. My dinner is made with hate. My Christmas gifts are bought with hate. I started doing my own wash when I was ten just so my clothes can feel clean when everything else feels dirty. It’s not like they burn crosses, no. And people still do that around here. But they wouldn’t go out of their way to put the fire out. I’ve never known what to do about it. I can’t argue with them because they don’t listen. I can’t reason with them because you can’t reason with people like that. I wish there was a healthy bacteria—like in acidophilus milk—I could put in their food that would change them.

I think about how my grandmother once told me that black people have different blood than ours. How it’s got disease in it. I was nine years old. “They’re not like us,” she said. It was my birthday party. I’d invited eight friends from school to the local roller rink and two of them were black—it was the year I met Ian, and I’d already known Talia since first grade. I watched them skate in circles, and I looked over at my grandmother and my parents, who were eating half-burned pizza and french fries. I skated toward the opening into the rink and then stepped out to join my friends going in circles. When I looked at Talia and Ian, I saw them differently. I didn’t think what my grandmother said was true. They weren’t like us, no. They were better/stronger/smarter because they had to live in the same world with people like my grandmother.

“Your ancestors arrived in the New World, strong and ready,” she says, “to wipe out whatever and whomever stood in their way.” The Freak raises her hand. “We didn’t do it on purpose, though, right?” The professor smiles. “All depends on your definition of purpose.” The Freak waits for an easier answer. “I mean, accidents are usually fast, right? Can’t say the last four hundred years counts as fast. Can you?”

“Wanna know what I think?” she asks. “I think when we die we all become part of a larger thing—a place where everyone who ever died lives. Not like Heaven. Not like Hell. Nothing really exists there. There’s no beer or anything. Or swing sets or shovels. It’s just thoughts. Ideas. Like a big bubble of ideas.”

Politics. Dad is happy about politics. His guy won. We don’t talk about it because he’s a condescending jerk about the whole thing and thinks I believe he voted with his wallet. “Economics” are the source of his anxiety. Bullshit.

Tradition gets away with lots of shit around here. Like, we had a racist incident at our high school a few years ago. By incident, I mean a large group of people celebrated the “tradition” of being assholes to the kids who aren’t white. Yelled stuff at them. Waited outside school every day—morning and afternoon—and threw things at them from their trucks adorned with Confederate flags. They didn’t throw rocks, no. Balled-up pieces of paper. Snot loogies. Paper clips. Things that don’t count as dangerous. Safe things. Safe hate. Tradition. You can say what you want so long as you’re not throwing anvils, I guess. They call it freedom of speech or traditional family values. The louder ones call it heritage—as if it were in our blood to be assholes to other people, as if we’d inherited it.

She has no idea how her shit affects what she’s planted above it. No idea that her grown children, my dad and his siblings, resent her for good reason—that each flush douses them in the knowledge that they’re failing at mere survival while she marinates top-cut lamb chops.

There’s always a moment before calling 911 when you think you’re the one in trouble. You think you’re doing something wrong. Your life is wrong if you have to call 911. Your thinking must be faulty.

I never told Gottfried about the blood. He’ll never know unless I tell him. He has no idea what he married.

The Freak does what she can. She puts newspapers in mailboxes. She delivers food to cars with boys sleeping inside. She delivers flour and teaches swimming lessons. She puts the right dress on the right rack at the right time. She is the Easter Bunny. Magical. Impossible to believe.

The guys I’ve known would cut her up like The Freak said the first night I met her—ass, chest, legs, face, hair. They’d notice her big front teeth and how she doesn’t wear makeup. They’d laugh at the bites on her arms—when I want to apply salve to them. Boys are fucked up, man. Whether you’re a typical one who talks about girls like they’re here only to suck your dick, or whether you’re me, looking for a soul mate, you’re weird. I’m weird. This is all weird.

American History is bullshit. Andrew Jackson for three whole days? And no mention of the Removal Act.” Dad cringed. “Same when I went to school. Wish I could have raised you in a place where the history books don’t lie, but pretty much all history books lie.”

You wonder why I’m so uptight about entitled white culture? It’s not just that I live here half the time and see real poverty. It’s not just the snack baskets in first class. It’s because entitled white culture encourages those inside it to never look outside their own fucking worlds. We blow everything off because we’re so concerned with looking good we can’t just feel.

A sister is a special thing. Magical. More magical than flickering. More magical than sand. More magical than sea.

Bodies are machines and machines need love.

say. “I can’t wait to get out of here.” “Thing is,” he says, “we can run around the planet a hundred times and we’re still who we are.”

Truth isn’t so bad once you look at it. It’s like throwing up after drinking a whole fifth of bourbon. It’s a purging that makes you feel better, not worse.

Fact: If Marla and Gottfried would have loaned Matt a few thousand measly bucks, The Freak would not be wrapped in a dirt tortilla. There would be no dirt burrito. None of this would have happened. The Freak is angry about this, but she’s also not angry about this. It’s not Marla and Gottfried’s fault that she met that boy at the mall. It’s not their fault that his brother was waiting in his car. It’s not their fault that no one was listening when she yelled. It’s not their fault that the people who did hear dismissed it as teenage drama. But would they pay a few thousand bucks to have Matt there at Easter dinner? Would they pay a few thousand bucks to bring her back from the dirt? They say they would. Odds are, they’d call it a loan and collect interest. Odds are, they’d still treat her mom like shit even though it’s not her fault that her dad is a giant asshole. Fact is, they can be bummed out about Matt all they want, but he’s the biggest reason she’s a dirt burrito. If he’d have grown up and known how to treat his wife and kid, then her mom would have never had to take the job in Pennsylvania, and The Freak would still be safe in her bed in California. In case that’s confusing, The Freak wants you to know the basic blame order: Blame the murderous brother-boys first, then her dad, then the half-wit high school bitches next, then her grandparents. And probably Aunt Jean. Because for all her talking about missing The Freak’s dad, she’s loaded and didn’t loan him the few ...

Greed trickles down in many forms. It made Harry a humanitarian who forgets the human he’s personally responsible for from time to time. It made Amber and Missy happy with what they have, especially if their kids don’t have any more. It made Jean a judgmental twat. But it just made The Freak disappear.

I try to imagine Ian at this Easter dinner. He’d be so funny and so great and he’d ignore the weird shit everyone is saying and he’d treat it like some kind of anthropology project. That’s how he has to get through life here. Because every single person he meets is racist in some way and they have no fucking idea they are.

It’s a family-that-isn’t-a-family. My mother hates all of them. Says so as often as she can. Uncle Harry is going to die and I barely know him. I essentially just met my two aunts and they seem cool—and maybe not nightmare racists like my mother, so that’s good. But there’s more than one missing part here. More than one missing cousin, or one missing uncle who lives on the West Coast. The hole in this family-not-a-family is big. It’s bigger than a six-hundred-acre potato farm. It’s bigger than this county that we all live in.

It’s as if those children are all trying to do better with us—their children—but they don’t know how.

The crowd goes wild, and Loretta feels as if she’s distracted them enough. It was her part of the plan. They need dinner to move quickly, and nothing moves adults more quickly than teenagers acknowledging the existence of sex.

The Freak knows the living have differing views about the dead—about what happens after you die. The Freak can’t talk details. She just wishes the living paid more attention.

I don’t say it, but there’s something about these three people in my car that feels familiar. As if my DNA had known all along what was going on. As if genes know more than we do as fully formed human beings.

Marla doesn’t want to know what they’re talking about; she knows they’re talking about her. She’s as sure of it as she’s sure Matt’s daughter is never coming home. As sure of it as she’s sure of how her body made defective children because of the blood. The damn blood. I know it makes no sense. I know it’s ridiculous. I know it’s stupid and the longer I keep it, the worse it gets. I don’t have anyone to tell. Thought I’d be able to tell Jean one day, but I gave her the same disease.

It’s not the blood. It’s you. It’s the way you are. Can’t change. Can’t just be nice. Tunnel never closes.

All Marla did once the house was empty was complain about the mess. There was no mess. And that’s the thing. Marla always saw a mess when there wasn’t one. Always clung to her ideas as if something were holding her back from growing.

I wanted a family, not another mystery. But maybe all families are mysteries. Maybe all families have secrets. Maybe none of us is perfect, ever.

Alive. Almost every one of the living takes this for granted. Taking things for granted is the privilege of existence. The living don’t even think about it, same as boys aren’t scared to go missing at the mall. Same as her white cousins can drive over the speed limit across state lines to New Jersey.

“Some stuff runs in our family. In our genes. Like depression and anxiety. Marla has it. Gottfried, too. You all have it in your own ways. It’s a real thing, but people don’t really talk about it. It’s why you have your tunnels. Talk about it with one another. Look it up on the Internet. Don’t go through life like this just because your parents don’t believe there’s anything wrong with them. How do you think you got it?” All this time you thought the tunnel was a lie. You thought I was running from my bad decisions. From racist parents. You thought I was being dramatic. Turns out you were wrong. Did you ever think of that? That maybe you were wrong?

The Freak looks at us. “The best part of all of you is underground if you keep thinking those people define you. “Our grandparents were rotten seed. Kept secrets. Worshipped money. Pitted their kids against one another. But we aren’t them. We can break free.” She shakes her head. “Or you can, at least.” “And you’re just . . . dead,” Loretta says. “Yes.” “Do you know who killed you?” I ask. “Yes.” “Will they go to jail?” “I’m taking care of that,” The Freak says.

He’ll die a lot happier knowing that the Consciousness is real. Or whatever you want to call it. Belief systems are all pretty much the same if you peel back the layers.