Hayward - The Hypocrisy of Disco

Slap bang goes the screen door three or four times, fast, because the seven of us kids are all leaving the house at once. Me and Andrew have an elbow fight, going, Ow you dick and Shut up, turd. Haud and Matt jump off the porch saying Shazam, both their butt cracks showing whitely against the dusk of the night since they never, either one of them, pull up their pants right. Melena picks her way down the three steps carefully like a doe about to lose her balance. Scott and Cindy, who always wants to be called Cynthia, follow last.

Were going out to the school bus parked in the driveway to have a slumber party. Its early in the night and the air smells so good because its just starting to rain. Northern California, where we live right now, smells this one way when it rains, the deepest green piney cool from the forest mixed with the muddy smell coming from the river, which talks to itself a little way off. I can smell pennyroyal too, and I take big gulps of the air. The azaleas under the trees bloom pale blurs.

Together we make a sound of slapping tennies on dirt, of jeans and corduroys whistling, of gravel skipping ahead of our hurrying feet. Were all hushed and excited, whispering for no reason, fumbling at the door of the school bus, which gives a squeaky groan when Andrew opens it. Im carrying extra blankets, Melena has candles and matches. Matt and Haud are shoving to get ahead of each other, and Scott runs down the aisle of the bus to flop on the big bed in the back. Cynthia has the flashlight and she keeps it on while we light candles and pile the blankets on the big bed and on the smaller bunk beds. I throw one of the blankets over Scott. I hit or kick or pinch him any time I can. Last week at his house we played spin the bottle. I really really really want to kiss him again.

The school bus is Matt and Melena and Andrews moms school bus and its parked at my house for now. It has tables that unfold where there used to be seats, and cupboards and the bunk beds and a propane stove. Curtains go the length of the bus, strung on wires top and bottom, and theres a carpet in the aisle. The bus rocks a little when we run down the center of it and Andrew says, Dont, the candles will fall over. Matt makes an extra jump to show that Andrew cant boss him and then he tackles Haud and they wrestle clumsily. Haud and Matt, theyre the squirmy puppy ones, always ratty and sleeping where they fall. Melena is scowly and picked on, and she always looks like shes just been pinched. Andrews the bossy one with a big nose. Scott and Cynthia are always squabbling. I dont know for sure what I am because Im in me and cant see me.

In age it goes Andrew, whos thirteen, and then Matt and Melena, who are twins, theyre fraternal twins and theyre ten. Not identical twins, Matt will sometimes say adamantly, and Ill say, No doy, otherwise you would look exactly alike. Scott and Cynthia are twelve and eleven, respectively. Im Clane and Haud is my brother. Im eleven and hes nine.

Ive got Spanish fly, Scott says. Were all smushed together on the big bed and hes sitting on the edge and banging his feet on the cupboard underneath. Whats Spanish fly? Melena and Cynthia ask, looking at each other and at me. Andrew looks up from the book hes trying to read in a pool of candlelight and says, Itll make you horny. It makes you want to hump. Melena scowls and Cynthia says, That just looks like rolled-up bread to me. I know its just bread but I tell her no, really, its Spanish fly, and she eats some even though she pretends she doesnt want to and starts rolling around on the bed. She bonks into me and I bonk into Andrew and he says quit it and then he grabs my hand and he hits me with my hand and goes, Why are you hitting yourself, huh? Why are you hitting yourself? He always hits me and I know why, and I use this like my secret weapon against him. Its because if he likes me, and I know this, and he doesnt know I know this, then that makes me smarter than him.

Andrew and Matt and Melena and their little brother, Jude, and their mom, Susan, they live in a house near us, near me and Haud and our mom and our little sister, Ki. We live near the river in a vacation cabin even though were not on vacation. Because its cheaper, our mom says, even if it is a little chilly and dark. Scott and Cynthia live with their mom across town. We havent lived here that long, we never live anywhere long, we move all of the time. We come and go with no explaining, and all the people I know come and go with no explaining either. Maybe the only thing I can explain in my life for sure is my name. When people ask how we got our funny names, and they always do, I say, with extra patience, Our dad is Claude and our mother is Hlane and it goes Haud and Claude and Clane and Hlane, get it? Then I say I also have a sister named Ki and a brother named Random, and theyll ask, Key like in lock and key? and I say no. Ki means life force, its Japanese. Random like, by chance? No, duh, Random like Random House.

Today was Passover and earlier we had a seder, all us kids and our moms and Susans sister Serena and her little kid Shiva. There were bitter herbs and there was supposed to be a lamb bone but we didnt use one because we are all of us super-vegetarians, even though I wish we werent. There was an argument about using the egg, too, and we used it but didnt eat it. The little kids got grape juice and we got grape juice mixed with wine. Id never been to a seder before. I know that were Jewish but I dont know what thats supposed to mean if we dont have passovers and Hanukkah or go to temple or say prayers at sundown. So Jewish is this religion but were not religious like that. God is all one, Hlane says, and so does the label on Dr. Bronners peppermint soap. God is nowhere, God is now here, Hlane says. Jesus was righteous and so was Mohammed and so was Buddha, and Bob Marley is a prophet. Hlane is always saying, The forest is God, listen to the forest and listen to the mountain.

She will say this with her eyes closed and her hands clasped together, palms flat, after taking a big bong hit. She will breathe the smoke out in a big cloud and raise her arms up slow over her head and then shell bring her palms together in front of her again.

She did this in the kitchen tonight when we had the seder, my mom all baked out on pot while we all scurried around holding bowls and plates and looking for spoons and chopsticks. Susan said, Who wants rice and who wants groats? and I picked groats and dove for the pot before Matt could. There was miso soup and tofu and vegetables too. Jude sat on the floor crying in his weird voice because he is deaf and dumb, holding a plate and tilting rice off it onto the floor, and Melena helped him stand up with his plate steadied. Hes deaf and dumb but hes not retarded. We all ate at the table in the living room, which is low to the floor and has cushions around it instead of chairs. The smaller kids kneeled, wobbly, clutching spoons in their fists and picking dropped bits off the table. Ki sat on a cushion holding a bowl in her lap, eating very seriously with all her attention divided between one chubby grubby hand keeping the bowl from tipping over and the other hand getting a spoon too big for her into her mouth.

I liked the ceremony of seder, all of us there together. Susan made the blessings, one in Hebrew and one to Buddha and one to the goddess. Hlane doesnt celebrate any holidays usually. She says Christmas is bourgeois and Thanksgiving is just dead turkey day. She says, Thanksgiving is a day when a large portion of the human planet will gather to celebrate the slaughtering, killing, cooking, and eating of the earths creatures. Is that any way to honor the goddess? she asks. It is a strange reality some of us create and live in, she says merrily, eyes all glazed and dopey.