Read Online Either the Beginning or the End of the World by Terry Farish - Free Book Online Page B

must be a great cook,” Luke says. “You’re cooking for a banquet.”
    I don’t say yes, I don’t say no. I don’t say it’s illegal what I’m planning to do with these shrimp. I say, “I don’t know what it is about you, but when I’m with you, I wonder what it would be like to be a Cambodian girl. Things about my mother’s culture. Maybe because you’re so different from my life. I’ve always been my father’s girl.”
    â€œYou’re an enigmatic girl.” He studies me. “Your mother who’s coming. She’s Cambodian?”
    â€œShe’s crazy.” I shrug. “She’s not anything to me.”
    Pilot catches a shrimp and runs with a pink tail hanging from her mouth.
    â€œOut,” I yell at her. “Out.”
    I want to talk about the gun. Where’s the gun? I hope you have gotten rid of the gun.
    I remember a story. My grandmother and her friend sit together in the dusk. They talk in Khmer. When I was little I must have understood some Khmer. It’s a story tucked deep inside me; it’s hard to find and let into my head. I don’t remember the story now, but I smell the hot peppers my grandmother was pressing with a mortar at dusk. Her story scared me so much-—or maybe it was her own grief as she told the story—the smell of the peppers reminds me: be very afraid.
    â€œOne trip,” Luke says, “I was banged up from an incident the night before. Had two black eyes. Reeked the hell of beer. Your dad must have thought he was taking on bad luck. Found a new guy.”
    I look over at the circle around his eye, close to the maroon color of his car. I want to touch his check. Suddenly a deep sadness takes me over, and I want to tell him to quit drinking his life away. And I barely know him. I can’t stop this wave of sorrow that wants to take me over and I’m so scared it’s not about him but it’s about my mother ’cause I just met him. How can it be about him? I just want . . . I don’t even know what I want. I want to go back to being my father and me.
    â€œLook,” I say. “Thanks. Thanks for helping.” I wipe my hands on the checkered towel around my waist.
    He pauses. I’m flaking on him, as Rosa would say. He knows it. My face must have closed down to him. “You want me to tell my father to give you a call?”
    He looks at me like I kicked him in the gut. Shakes his head. “Keep him out of it,” he says.
    He’s at the door, shoving his arms in his jacket sleeves.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I say. “My father told me you were the only crew he’d had on board he trusted enough for him to get some sleep.”
    He nods, his face stony.
    I think of my father and Luke as both soldiers and being there for each other. But Luke is down the front steps.
    I say, “He runs a tight boat.” I don’t say my father told me I’d never see him again.
    My dog is blocking Luke’s escape. She leaps and dances in his path as he tries to get to his car. She bows down in play between him and the car’s door.
    Already I’m second-guessing and plotting how I could see him again, even while he’s trying to tell Pilot to get in, go home, to me. We won’t see each other at school. We’re not going to my spring dance in my high school gym with Daniel and the cross-country team. I’m not going to invite him here for my father’s fried chicken and potatoes. I say finally, “Which cottage is yours?”
    â€œFive,” he says almost under his breath. Then looks at me one last time, shaking his head, like what the hell was he thinking? Like, what do you expect meeting some high school girl under a bridge?
    I sing Rosa’s melody to myself slow as the setting sun, just the way I take in the last few drops of gin I find in the cupboard. My father never said don’t drink. He should have. I simply