Aurora

by Vernie Lynn DeMille

 

Dawn arrived at 3:45pm with her mother in a 1967 Chevy Impala with wide, white-wall tires. Her hair, the color of wheat straw, was blowing out of the open passenger window as she leaned out smiling and waving with both arms as they pulled down the steep driveway into the Browning’s yard. Jocelyn Browning, my friend and neighbor, had been talking about her visit for over a month. Every school day in May we walked home from the bus stop, Jocelyn chattering about her cousin Dawn, her Aunt Traci, and how they were coming to stay for the whole summer, or at least until the end of July which was pretty much the same thing.

 

Jocelyn’s dad, Trent Browning, had a food truck where he sold Pepsi and baked potatoes at large and small county fairs up and down California. He was gone every year from the first of May to the end of September. Sending home money and stuffed animals from exotic places like Pasadena and Anaheim while he worked the carny scene. Jocelyn’s mom, Bobbi, didn’t want to raise her kids in crowded Southern California. So, she and Trent had bought the green, two-story house on Ponderosa Drive in Lakehead, settled down with their two kids, and it only cost them an arm and a leg and 5 months of every year away from each other. Bobbi didn’t seem to mind this arrangement until Trent took the opportunity to get himself a girlfriend to keep him company over those long summers away.

 

Jocelyn wasn’t one to keep family secrets secret, and Bobbi cried so often over her perpetually half-full glass of whiskey, so it wasn’t long before pretty much everyone in Lakehead knew that Trent was shacking up with some bleached blonde bimbo from Bakersfield and Bobbi was going to kick him out and sue his ass for everything he had in divorce court. But the divorce hadn’t happened yet, Trent was still calling home every other day, and Bobbi was either on the phone sweet-talking him or crying after he hung up, half drunk in her bedroom.

 

Jocelyn and I spent a lot of time at the lake or my house that summer.

 

We were standing on the blacktop at the bottom of the deck stairs when Traci flew into the yard, music blaring, and Dawn hanging out the window. We had our towels around our necks, flip flops on, and were just getting ready to head down to the docks. Jocelyn yelled and ran to the car, Bobbi came sprinting down the stairs from where she’d been sunbathing on the deck, still wearing the tan-through swimsuit that was supposed to be a miracle of fabric science. Supposedly it allowed sunlight to penetrate while keeping the body covered so you could get an all-over tan without getting naked. I figured it was so see-through that it didn’t really make a difference whether she was naked or not.

 

“Traci!” Bobbi yelled and wrapped her sister up in a hug as she got out of the car. Her smile turned into sobbing and Traci held onto Bobbi, swaying back and forth with her. “Traci. He’s leaving me Traci, he’s leaving me.” Bobbi’s voice was watery and weak.

 

“Hang on honey, you just hang onto me.” Traci looked over at us girls standing on the other side of the car. “Dawn, go ahead and get your swim things sweetie. Head down to the lake with Jocelyn and her friend.”

 

Unfazed by the weeping woman in the driveway, Dawn and Jocelyn opened the backdoor and rummaged through luggage until they had a swimsuit and flip flops located. Dawn changed while Traci took Bobbi into the house, poured her more whiskey, and got her covered up with a robe. We left them sitting at the basement bar, Bobbi crying and wiping her eyes while Traci patted her hand and turned on some old Beatles songs on the jukebox.

 

The water was still a little cool at the beginning of June, but we didn’t care. My brothers, Jocelyn’s brother Travis, and several other neighborhood boys were already at the docks swimming, jumping in and out of empty boat slips, ducking under the docks themselves and hiding from each other in the air spaces created by the placement of the Styrofoam beneath the wooden planks. I kept my orange life vest on and jumped in alongside them.

 

“You know, my dad says that rattlesnakes hide under the docks in those air spaces.” Carey said as he toweled off. “He says I’ll come up in one of those air pockets someday and get it right between the eyes.” He tapped himself on the forehead to indicate where the fangs would sink in. “You get hit in the head and dude, it’s all over.”

 

My brother Keith wound up his towel and snapped it at Carey, “Oh yeah? Well maybe you’d better practice moving quick.”

 

Carey laughed and snapped his own towel back. Soon they were running back and forth along the length of the dock, snapping their towels and leaving welts on each other’s backs and legs. Dawn, Jocelyn and I stayed in the water where it was safe, laughing and racing each other to the shore and back. Dawn was a good swimmer. They had had a pool at their house in Chico, Dawn told us.

 

“But my dad walked out on us last year before Christmas, so Mom and I had to move from the big house to an apartment. But we’re getting another house, an even bigger house, next year. Mom says we’ll have a pool and a playhouse and get Poozle, that’s my dog, back from Granny Grunt.”

 

Granny Grunt was Bobbi and Traci’s mother. According to Jocelyn and Dawn she lived in a small house in Reseda with five cats, Dawn’s Shih Tzu, and a couple of lovebirds in a cage that took up almost all of her sunroom. She earned her name when Travis was little, and she was trying to help potty train him. She had told him it was easier to go in the toilet if you grunted while doing it. She’d been Granny Grunt ever since.

 

“I want a horse when we get our house. A palomino with a mane that I can put braids in. I went riding with my friend last week and she has a palomino named Comet. He was so beautiful.” Dawn lay back in the water, sighed and closed her eyes, arms out to her sides, floating as she smiled. “I’ll change my name to Aurora.” She lifted her head up and asked, “You know that means ‘dawn,’ right?” We both nodded and she laid her head back down. “I’ll be Aurora and I’ll have a golden Palomino with hair that matches mine and I’ll name him Apollo. We’ll ride so fast that even the cars won’t catch us. We’ll pretend that we can pull the sun across the sky.”

 

Jocelyn laid back and closed her eyes too. I laid back but kept my eyes open, watching as the sun set behind the hills to the west of Lake Shasta.

 

“Hey, Miss Priss! Get your butt out of the water, we’ve got to go home!” Keith yelled from the dock. I hated that name, but I straightened up and started to swim back. Just then we heard Bobbi Browning’s big cast iron dinner bell ringing out. That was how she called Travis and Jocelyn home for the evening.

 

“Race you!” Dawn called and struck out for the docks. I couldn’t swim as fast as she could with my bulky life vest, and she won easily. We laughed and talked as we climbed out, toweled off our hair and walked home up the narrow, red dirt trail that wound through the pine trees, manzanita, poison oak and blackberry brambles.

 

“See you tomorrow!” I called as I walked them to the sliding glass door that led into the Browning’s downstairs game room. I peered in and saw Bobbi sitting in one of the tall leather bar chairs, slumped over the lacquered wood that hid the extensive liquor collection, and Traci sat in the chair next to her sipping something brown from a small glass and staring off into nothing. I waved goodbye and walked on with my brothers up the hill to Pine Court.

 

We played every day that summer. The Barbie doll collection was turned into a royal court of queens and ladies in waiting time and time again. We formed a braiding chain on Jocelyn’s pink, canopied bed. Dawn braiding Jocelyn’s dark brown hair that fell to her waist and I braiding Dawn’s fine-spun, golden hair. My mom had decided that it was easier for me to have short hair that school year, so she had taken me to get it cut off the previous fall. It was still no longer than my ears, which I thought made me look like a boy, so I didn’t get to have my hair braided. Which was just as well because Trent had called as I tied the last purple ribbon into Dawn’s hair and the screaming had gotten loud enough that we escaped the house by walking down to the Lakeshore market and emptied our pockets of pennies to buy strawberry flavored Charleston Chews. We shared the treat as we headed down to the train bridge where the big boys dared each other to jump from its base into the deep water of the lake.

 

“How far is that from the water do you think?” Dawn asked.

 

“Too far,” I said trying to pick taffy out of my teeth. “I bet it’s 100 feet from the top of the bridge. Maybe 20 from where the boys jump from.”

 

Dawn nodded as we sat on the rocks next to the bridge.

 

“Why are boys so stupid?” Jocelyn asked, watching as one kid belly flopped into the lake and surfaced to show his bright red stomach, groaning and earning the jeers and taunts of his friends.

 

“Because they’re boys,” I replied. We all grinned and laughed. Then sat in the sun and watched the boys in their cutoff jeans try to outdo each other with the craziness of their jumps.

 

“My dad called last night,” Dawn said. She picked at her strawberry chew and threw little bits of it onto an anthill next to the rock she sat on. “The divorce was final last week.” She sat quiet for a few seconds. “I heard mom ask him about visitation.” She looked up from her candy, staring out over the lake then stood up quickly on her rock. She pulled her arm back and tossed the odd shaped Charleston Chew out over the water. It didn’t fly clean, the wrapper coming off in midair, the trajectory of its arc altered, and fell just where the lake met the shore, in the red mud that stained every beach towel we owned. She kept her back to us. “I heard mom ask if he wanted me to come visit for a little while.” She looked down at her shoes and scuffed them on the rock, knocking bits of lichen off onto the dirt. “He said no.”

 

She jumped down off the rock and started walking back towards Jocelyn’s house. We looked at each other then followed along behind her. We walked until we came to the long wooden path that connected the Browning’s deck to Ponderosa Drive.

 

She turned around to look at us, her face red, her eyes dry and fierce. “I’m never getting married. Stupid boys grow up to be stupid men. I’m never going to be like my mom. I’m never going to care more about some man than myself.” One tear leaked out and she brushed it away angrily. Her voice was shaking when she whispered “she says she’ll get me a new daddy that will buy me a golden palomino. But I’m going to get my own horse. I’m going to be Aurora. I’m going to pull the sun across the sky.”

 

Jocelyn hugged her cousin and I nodded, stroking her arm. We snuck into the house that smelled of stale cigarette smoke, old liquor, and acrylic nail polish, and went back to pretending we could turn plastic into princesses.

 

The summer was passing quickly. Bobbi and Traci drove us down to Redding, bought us matching dresses and took us to Chuck E. Cheese’s where we ate bad pizza and played great games. Traci said when her ship came in, she’d build a game room in her mansion as big as Chuck E. Cheese’s. Granny Grunt’s husband, who just had the boring name of “Grandpa” took us to Heavenly Donuts and bought us apple filled Bear Claws. We nibbled at the sweet toes of our claws until our faces were sticky with glaze.

 

Traci and Dawn left the last week of July. Bobbi and Traci held onto each other for a long time. Jocelyn, Dawn and I stood by the old Impala and looked at each other.

 

“I hope you get your horse,” I said.

 

“Thanks,” Dawn smiled at me. “I hope you learn to swim.” We both laughed. She knew I liked my life vest.

 

Finally, they climbed into the car and Dawn hung out the window, waving, smiling, and blowing kisses until we couldn’t see her anymore. Jocelyn and I stood in the driveway. Bobbi stood by us, her long, bright red fingernails on the hands that held our shoulders gripping tight.

 

“They’ll be okay,” she said. “Traci’s the strongest woman I know. They’ll be okay.” She let us go and headed into the bar.

 

Jocelyn looked over at me. “They can’t stay at the apartment in Chico anymore. They’re moving in with Uncle David down in Red Bluff. Just until they can get on their feet.”

 

I nodded and we walked up to my house to get my swimming gear.

 

August slipped away like water down a slide. Four weeks of July last forever, but four weeks in August are no more than a finger snap. Dawn had barely left when Mom was taking me school shopping at Montgomery Ward’s and JCPenney’s. I got the serviceable but ugly brown shoes for school, and a new pair of patent leather Sunday shoes too. Mom liked frilly shirts and dresses, so I liked them also. My hair grew a little bit, so Mom took me to have it trimmed again and I was stuck with a pixie cut for another year. I don’t think Mom knew that I’d learned how to braid.

 

Days on the lake dwindled down to our last Saturday in the summer sunshine. Dawn sent us pictures of her with Poozle and Granny Grunt by the Lovebirds. Jocelyn said Dawn had been with Granny all of August while Aunt Traci looked for work. We talked all the way to the dock about how we would visit her when she got her horse. Maybe play Barbies in the playhouse.

 

I was in 4th grade that year. I had moved up from the little kid side of the school building to the big kid side and ended up in Mrs. Goodwin’s combined 4th and 5th grade classroom with my brother Brian and Jocelyn’s brother Travis. Jocelyn was still stuck in 3rd grade, which meant she had different recesses and lunchtime. She waved at me every day from the 3rd grade table when I marched into the cafeteria in line behind my classmates. I smiled and waved back and felt infinitely older and wiser with my new status as an upperclassman.

 

In late September, the school secretary paged Mrs. Goodwin over the intercom and requested that she send Travis to the office. He never came back to class and he and Jocelyn weren’t on the bus when we rode home.

 

We walked down Pine Street from the bus stop and knocked on the Browning’s door to see where they had gone, but the house was quiet and empty. Keith and Brian shrugged at each other, and we went home. I called later that evening, but they still weren’t back by the time I went to bed.

 

It was two days before I saw Jocelyn, I called her as soon as I got home from school on the second day and she answered the phone.

 

“We have to leave again tomorrow morning early, let me ask mom if you can come over right now.” I heard her muffle the phone and shout a question at her mom then she said, “it’s okay, come down quick.”

 

I pulled on my windbreaker and ran all the way to Ponderosa Drive, rushing breathless into the kitchen door. Grandpa and Granny Grunt were both sitting at the table sipping coffee. Trent Browning was sitting at the table, Bobbi beside him holding a coffee mug instead of a glass of whiskey. Grandpa got up and met me at the door.

 

“Come on in, sunshine,” he said, his voice rough as he hugged me. “Jocelyn is in her room sweetie. She could use a friend right now.”

 

Jocelyn was sitting cross-legged on the bed, fiddling with the pink lace of her comforter. I walked in and sat on the edge. “What’s up?” I asked.

 

“Aunt Traci is dead.”

 

“Oh no!” I reached over and touched her hand. “What happened?”

 

“Dawn’s dead too.” She said and looked up at me. “Dawn’s dead.”

 

I didn’t quite comprehend what she was saying. Something about the combination of words didn’t fit in my brain.

 

“What?” I asked.

 

“Dawn’s dead. Aunt Traci killed her.”

 

I let go of Jocelyn’s hand and stood up. “What?” I couldn’t do anything but whisper. “What? How?”

 

Jocelyn looked at me, then looked back at her bedspread and kept picking at the lace. “Aunt Traci killed Dawn then killed herself. She left a note. She said she loved Dawn too much to let her suffer anymore. She shot her in the head while she was sleeping. The policemen came and told mom that he was positive she was sleeping when Aunt Traci killed her.”

 

I shook my head and sat down hard on the floor. “No,” I said. “No, she was going to get a palomino.”

 

“She said she loved her,” Jocelyn said. She picked at the lace, shredding the pretty part of her comforter, and tears started rolling down her face. “She said she loved her.” Her breath started to catch in her chest, and she scrubbed her eyes with her fists. “She wrote that she loved her then she shot her in the head. They won’t let me see her. I don’t get to see her again.”

 

I stood up from the floor and sat on the bed. Jocelyn cried and I stared at my ugly brown shoes. I remembered Dawn floating in the lake under a blue, blue sky. Her hair a bright halo in the water around her head. I remembered Dawn dreaming of a golden horse pulling the sun across the sky. I thought of her swearing that she would never be like her mother. And now she never would be like her mother. She would never be like herself either.

 

I looked at the Barbies scattered all over the floor. Some still dressed as the princesses Dawn, Jocelyn, and I had imagined them to be months ago. We’d moved on to other games.

 

“I need to go home,” I said. “It’s getting late.”

 

Jocelyn nodded and I got up to leave.

 

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t try to hug my friend. It seemed like the wrong thing to do.

 

She looked up at me. “How could she say she loved her then kill her?”

 

I just shook my head. I didn’t know.

 

I said goodbye to the adults sitting together at the table. No one talking, just stirring and sipping.

 

I walked away from their lonely house. The tall pine trees were dark silhouettes against the orange and pink of the sky. The golden sun had set.

 

I walked into the backdoor of my house and through the sunroom to the kitchen.

 

“How was Jocelyn?” Mom asked. She was washing the dinner dishes.

 

“She’s doing okay. Her cousin died. That’s why they were gone.”

 

“Oh!” Mom turned around from the sink and looked at me. “That’s so sad. Are they doing all right?”

 

I didn’t tell Mom that Dawn died because her own mother had killed her. I couldn’t say that her own mom had killed her while she was sleeping. I didn’t tell her about the note she’d left. It was too much to say out loud. “They’re pretty sad,” was all I could say.

 

Mom kept looking at me. She dried her hands off on her apron and walked around the counter. She wrapped her arms around me and stroked my hair. She rocked me and held onto me tight. I felt her kiss the top of my head.

 

“I love you sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

 

I let the words soak in. I let the comfort wrap around me. My mother loved me. She bought me ugly shoes and she loved me. She never wrote me notes and she loved me. She never promised me a horse, but I knew she loved me. I looked down at my dirt brown shoes, felt my mother’s fingers run through my too short hair that I hated, and I squeezed my eyes shut to stop the tears. I wrapped my arms around her tight and we both held on.