Prologue: Campground

Daddy and The Girls, as he referred to Momma, Vi and Char, set up the hippie camper in the dark while Gabe, Gram and I held flashlights for illumination. First came the pop-up top, then the pull out beds on either end. Finally, the three circled the canvas top, snapping it into place to keep out the weather.

After we figured out who would sleep where, we took turns with the flashlights going to the bathroom in the center of the campground, to wash up. Daddy, Gabe and I played word games while the ladies all went to the bathroom together.

“Who knows what a turbinate is?” Daddy asked.

“I do! It's in your head. A --it's in your head,” I said as Gabe laughed at my inability to remember the exact definition.

“Hey. I'm just a little kid you know. You guess if you're so smart,” I told him.

“I dunno. He's your dad not mine.”

“Correct Flower, it's in your head. But what is it?” I could see Daddy's straight teeth glowing under the lantern light.

“It's a bone, a bone in your head!” I shouted when I remembered from one of the many study sessions Daddy enlisted me to help him remember his anatomy.
Daddy laughed and Gabe teased me too.

“A bone in your head, phone in your bed, alone in the—“

“--Stop it!” I laughed with them.

“See how far ahead you'll be when you get to medical school?” Daddy said.

“I'm going to be a photographer, Daddy.”

“Oh, you can do that too. But don't you want to be a doctor like me?”

“But you're not one yet,” I teased,”you're in school just like me and Gabe.”

“Don't let your momma hear you talkin' like that.”

Charlotte, Vi and Gram came back from the bathroom together and handed over the flashlights to us. Momma hadn't come back yet, she was probably not feeling well again, so Daddy took Gabe and me and we walked across the gravel in the night. Someone was playing guitar and a group of people were singing in the distance.

Daddy led me to the entrance of the bathroom and I went in, expecting to see Momma at the sink, wrapping her hair in a towel, washing her face. The place smelled musty and water had been splashed all over the floor. Cobwebs hung in every corner and I shivered.

“Momma? You in here?” I called out feebly.

“Zin?” He voice was weak, but I heard her in a stall near the far end of the bathroom. “I'm down here, down here honey.” I heard the toilet flush and then she moaned, “Get your Daddy---Christian...”

There was the crack of bone against porcelain. I screamed for her, and ran to open the stall door, but couldn't. Momma was kneeling forward, hunched over like she had been trying to crawl away, an animal dragging itself to shelter. She was bleeding and I backed up. Momma's feet and legs were white as paper and a wide stream of blood moved across the tile toward me. The blood was coming from between her legs, covering her. It was bright and made rivulets in the crevices of the dirty tile floor, like fingers reaching for me. I screamed louder than I knew, so that my father and another man who'd been in the men's bathroom came running in to discover us.

I backed into a corner, hunched over and cradling myself. I was rocking back and forth with my eyes closed, humming a minor tuneless sound to keep out the other sounds. Those of my father crying out Ivy Ivy, oh my God Ivy and those of the people from the campground who descended on the bathroom.

My eyes opened wide and I could not close or cover them. I stared with dead eyes at my mother who was bleeding to death in front of me. Vi and Gram were there, Daddy was shaking momma by the shoulders calling her name, the stranger man yelled out instructions to the crowd that had pushed itself into the bathroom. Gabe. Where was Gabriel? I crawled across the wet tiles to the open door and ran, without knowing where I was going, across the dirt path around the bathroom.

It might have been minutes or an hour before Gabriel found me huddled in the woods on the outskirts of the camp area. I sat in the mud without crying, rocking back and forth. I was sure that if I just waited long enough that I would walk back to camp and find that momma was really okay. I'd be in trouble for wandering off and momma would throw her arms around me, swearing, Dammit Zinedine, don't you ever go off like that again, hear? I would cry and she would too. We'd be okay again. I waited and she did not find me. A chill wrapped itself around me and refused to leave. The ground beneath me was damp and covered with sharp pine needles. Then Gabe's voice cut through the layer of dream that surrounded me.

“Zinna. Zinna.” I heard the crunching of needles. “I don't see her, mom. She's not here.”

“Momma?” I called out shyly. He said mom. Maybe she was okay after all and that woman in the bathroom wasn't a woman after all. Maybe it was an animal hit by a car that'd crawled in there to die. They did that sometimes, Daddy said. To die with dignity, he said.

Prologue: Arrival at the Canyon

Vi made a thin headpiece of bluebonnets and wrapped it into her thick hair, while Momma slept, wrote in her journal, and slept some more. Char and Grandma Bonnard chatted in a cryptic way about Gabe's dad while Daddy quizzed Gabe and I about medical terms and anatomy, which had been a favorite way for him to study. Gabe and I daydreamed aloud about the Apollo mission and what if there were monsters on the moon and would we be able to see the astronauts actually walking there from down here? After all, we could see the man on the moon couldn't we? The trip was pleasant and uneventful. It was just before sunset that we reached the Canyon, and then the real journey began.

We were hot and tired as we drove through Kaibab Forest on route 64, heading for the South rim of the Canyon. Daddy had made reservations for us to set up our daisy trailer in Grand Canyon Village. He announced we were only several miles away when the sky began to fall into twilight. The forest trickled into scrub and brush covering flat fields of red earth. A brilliant star flickered on the horizon. The moon appeared again, the same shape as before, but lower and brighter than any morning mirage.

“How come that star never gets any closer to us?” I asked no one in particular. We had stopped having regular conversation hours before, and most of the last hours of the trip were spent listening to blue grass and some new guitar player that Daddy liked. Stevie Ray something. Vi, Charlotte and Gabe sang along, all three of them musicians. Vi played the cello and piano, Char the piano and Gabe had just started clarinet.

“It's not a star, Flower. It's a planet.” Daddy replied. “Want a photo?” he said and turned to face me, which caused him to veer across the middle of the road.

“Chris! Watch out!” Momma said and sat straight up again, after having slept most of the way. She stretched her arms in front of her and tucked some hair behind her right ear. I loved the color of her hair, wishing that my pale, almost white hair, had grown the color of hers. She moaned abruptly and bent over as Daddy pulled onto the gravel shoulder.

“You okay, Honeydew?” he said and wrapped an arm around her, his cheek next to hers. “You need a bathroom?”

Momma shook her head and straightened up again. Charlotte leaned in closer to her, her bright green eyes wide and staring at Momma.

We'd stopped almost every hour or so, at least one of the seven of us always needing to pee. Daddy got out of the car, stretched with a groan and walked to the edge of the dusty soil. Gabe jumped out and followed Daddy. The faint sound of water streaming against dirt wafted through the open windows. Then we were all out of the car and Daddy and I walked into the field with his camera and tripod.

“Think it'd be Jupiter. I'd guess anyway,” Daddy said as he screwed his camera to the tall tripod. “You wanna see?” He'd attached a telephoto lens and I peered into the cool cavity of the camera. I entered another world, all sight focused in one spot, the rest of the world blocked out. I forgot my family and best friend and stared at the horizon. The dissipating sunlight transformed the clear sky into an opaque blue scrim. The planet shimmered like a single lost earring. Daddy stood behind me and placed his hand over mine. We pressed the shutter together and I shivered. I could smell the remnants of garlic on his breath from our earlier roadside dinner.

“Can you see any Jupiterians?” He teased me.

“Any what? Daddy!” I moved away from the camera, laughing, “stop it!”

“The Jupiterians. They drive cars that fly around in the sky, much faster than ours and they have purple skin and four eyes. Two in the back and two—“ His lips were drawn into a serious frown.

“-- They do not! Mr. Bonnard, there's no such thing.” Gabe said from behind us both. He had thick red hair, matted down on one side from the long ride. That hair was a gift from his Irish great-grandma. Gabriel stood with both hands in his front pockets, grinning.

“Don't worry, Zin's not afraid of aliens. She can handle it alright. We don't have t'keep her in the dark anymore,” Daddy said and reached over to tousle my hair. Gabe flamed in the sunset, his hair blending into the horizon.

“We'd better get going before it gets too late to see the trailer. Your momma won't like it if we sleep in the car tonight.”

We walked back to the car, Daddy holding my hand and Gabe clomping ahead of us, kicking at stones and red dirt. By the time we got back his white sneakers were covered in earth. Momma sat cross-legged on the trunk of the car, between the two sharp fins, and wrote in her journal. This was the best she looked all day, the red sunset coloring her face and arms.

Grandma Bonn and Vi were finishing cigarettes. Vi tossed hers into the middle of the semi-deserted road and Gram twisted hers out under her foot. Gram was Daddy's only family save for Momma and me, though they didn't resemble one another. Her hair was black ringlets, streaked heavily with gray, and she had smoky doe eyes. Daddy was thin-faced, despite his stocky build, and he had icy aquamarine eyes with thin blond hair. His hair was my hair. Daddy and I both looked like the grandfather I never knew, but who had taken photos of me as an infant, only months before he died.

“We should get moving, Christian,” Grandma said, “Allons-y!”

“Sorry maman. Let's go everyone.” Daddy waved us like cattle into the car. We were silent for the few miles until we reached the south rim. Gabe and I played Paper, Scissors, Rock as quietly as we could, but when he'd win I couldn't help but screech and push him. He'd push back and we ended up being reprimanded more times in that four miles than the rest of the trip.

“Here we are...” Daddy's voice trailed off as we drove into a crowded lot of cars. Through a thin grove of pinyon pine trees the horizon blurred a deep orange and crimson. Cicadas trilled along the edge of the woods behind us as we walked from the parking lot to the edge where silhouettes of people stood still, staring.

“Ahh. C'est bonn, non?” Grandma reverted to French when she forget herself. The view here was enough to forget all else. We followed Daddy, his tripod and camera in hand, out to Hermit's Trail. The rock jutted into the canyon, where fences kept people from tumbling down the cliffs. Wide, low clouds hugged the far edge of the canyon and the moon was higher above the horizon. Daddy set up and began clicking against the descent of the sun. It fizzled quickly, revealing a kaleidoscope of shadowed rock and sediment layers, millions of years old.

“Do you think it's going to be like this on the moon?” Gabe whispered to me. It seemed everyone whispered here, or maybe our voices were carried over that infinite ledge.

“Look at that guy over there!” I pointed to our left, where a man with waist length black hair stood at the very edge of a cliff. He was smiling and waving for someone who was taking his photo. I heard Charlotte gasp next to me.

“Oh my God. He's going to fall. That man is going to fall,” Char cried. She huddled Gabe and I into her arms and tried to shield our faces from what she obviously thought was an inevitable tragedy. Char was the mother who sent an umbrella to school with Gabe on the sunniest days, wouldn't let us swim for an hour after eating, checked every piece of candy at Halloween before we could eat it, yelled if she caught us riding our bikes into the street. I called her a scaredy cat once and Momma slapped my hand, telling me I should never talk about Char that way. She just loves Gabriel is all, Momma said. She was always defending someone, from the hippies having pot parties down the street, to Aunt Vi and her scruffy choice of boyfriends, to Charlotte.

“He's walking back,” Momma said, “he's okay Char. Just a little bit stupid.” She got up from the bench where she was writing and walked over to join us at the rail. Char took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she stood up.

“What're you writing about?” I asked Momma, reaching for the leather book she carried under one arm. She clenched it protectively and shushed me away.

“Mmmm, 'ts nothing. I just like to write things down, like your Daddy. My book is like a book of photos, but in words.” Momma ran her hand through my hair and I shivered. I loved that feeling, like the extended warm shiver of her brushing my hair before bed, or scratching my back when I was sick with a cold.

“But can I see it? I can read you know.” My teacher said I was at an eighth grade reading level, she'd written it on my last report card. Daddy was so proud, telling everyone I was sure to follow in his footsteps. I didn't know what he all meant by that then.

“Of course you can, but it's private Zinna. You know what that means.” Momma's face was losing the blush painted there by the sunset. She was tall and thin, like her Daddy. I'd seen photos of them together holding fish up at the rim of a mysterious lake. That was before the tornado. Momma and Vi were at school when it happened, and the narrow storm completely passed over the building. But my grandparents weren't so fortunate. Momma said maybe they'd been trying to get to their storm cellar and her mother maybe ran back to get the family cat, it was hard to know. But they were both gone in that few minutes. Only the photos on the mantle, Vi and Momma, attested to their lives.

“Like when you say I can't sit on the stairs and listen to you and your friends?” She'd caught me being nosy more than once. I especially liked to listen in on Momma and Vi's when their braless women friends from Book People and UT came over for meetings. I didn't know what they were meeting about but the words drifting around the house like clouds were particularly electric. Underground network Friday afternoon flights illegal rights oppression.

“Mmmm, something like that I suppose.” She turned to stare again at the expanse in front of us. I dreamed that we were at the moon. The cliffs were the perimeters of craters and the sounds of car engines starting and subsiding behind us was the rhythm of the spacecraft engines breathing. Gabe was bent over and picking at the rocks along the trail. His pockets were bulging and I thought were probably full of red, dusty rocks.

“C'mon over here now,” Daddy called to the group of us, “I want to get some shots of you all.”

“Chris, there's not enough light is there?” Momma protested. She started fidgeting with her hair, twisting it and asking Vi to help her fix it.

“C'est beau, mon petite ami. D'accord. Je promesse.” Daddy used his French when he was sweet-talking Momma and me. The French that Grandma Bonn taught him on the sly because Grandpa Bonnard forbid her to speak it, insisting that since they were in America, they should speak English. The sweet talk always worked and Momma stood up to join the rest of us at the edge.

After shots of different groups of us, Daddy had Momma pose for the last photos by herself. He stood her next to a large tree that looked as though it had been struck by lightning and had her face toward the horizon first. The last shot she faced the camera, holding her hair back away from her forehead, her journal clutched to her breast, and she was smiling. Click and the last photo was taken. She whispered something to Daddy and he leaned into her. He spoke low so that his voice drifted into the echo of the canyon. They embraced while Gram motioned for the rest of us to walk back to the car. I glanced back to see Daddy run his fingers over momma's cheek and into the curve below her right eye. He kissed her then and I knew she must be crying.

Prologue: Part Two: The Trip Begins

We drove along residential streets that seemed quiet for a Monday morning, the shadows of buildings purple and lurking with dogs and cats that rummaged through the garbage cans that had been set out the night before. Momma laid her head on Daddy's shoulder while the whoosh of our open windows whipped her straight strawberry hair into whirlwinds. She tucked it behind her ears but strands continued to wind themselves out like waving grass over her freckled shoulders. Her right shoulder made small movements as she wrote in her journal. We'd only started out and already Momma found a thing to write about.

My mother had been ill. She was tired all the time, sleeping past noon on the weekends and sometimes even sleeping straight through school mornings when Gram woke me and made my breakfast. She'd missed some days working her job as a bookstore clerk because she'd been throwing up. It's the flu, nothing to worry your head about, she'd say and go back to bed, her hair ragged and her baby doll pajamas stained with fresh sweat along the neckline. Rien. C'est rien, Gram would chime in to reassure as she made me oatmeal and toast before school.

Gabriel and his mom Charlotte were waiting on the sidewalk in front of their apartment building when we drove up. Gabe grasped a small instrument case that contained his clarinet and binoculars hung from his neck. He ran toward the car when he saw us and Char reached out to grab his shoulder.

“Zin! Look at this!” Gabe held the binoculars up to his eyes as I yelled Hi back to him. We'd been best friends for the two years since Kindergarten. I met him during a duck and cover drill. It was the siren that scared me, not the vague knowledge of potential bombs. I cried on my knees under the metal desk and Gabriel held out his hand to me. We were inseparable after that. And now that Gabe's mom and dad were separated, Charlotte had become Momma's best friend too. Momma had the ability to soothe anyone's pain. She fed stray cats, gave her change to street people, and listened to her friend's problems without end.

Daddy got out and opened the trunk while Gabe got in the car next to me.

“Zinna, sit in the front with us,” Momma called back to me as Charlotte handed a pink valise to Daddy's waiting hands. He placed the case in the trunk and slammed it down, rattling the hitch again.

“But Mom,” I slumped back into the seat next to Gabriel, “I want to sit next to Gabe.”

“Okay darlin'. But you two better behave yourselves back there. You hear?” She glanced back at us and smiled. It was a real smile, not the sickish smile she'd had lately, as though it took every ounce of energy she had to move her lips. I usually liked to ride between my parents, my mom fingering my hair and me hers, with Daddy's arm stretching across the seat behind us both. But today Gabe and I had plans for the trip.

“Cool! Can I look through them?” I asked Gabe as I ran a finger over the eyepiece of his binoculars. He leaned in close to me, without removing them from his neck, and held them up to my eyes. He smelled like fresh soap and I could feel the sweep of hair at his nape was still damp.

“Look at Daddy's hat! He's got a giant's hat!” I pointed the lens at him and saw the mountain of his Stetson rise up before us. Dad started the car and pulled into traffic, which had become heavier now that it was approaching seven o'clock.

“Dad's roommate gave 'em to me,” Gabe said. He grabbed the binoculars back from me and pointed them out the rear window, facing the clouds overhead. I sighed and gazed backward too, my neck strained and my head resting on the rear dash. The curved glass blurred the image at its edges, but mainly there was the open expanse of sky I'd been staring at all morning. The news and school was full of talk about the Apollo Mission to the moon in a couple of weeks, and I hadn't been able to stop thinking about it.

“You keep doing that and your neck will get stuck like that Mademoiselle Zinedine,” Gram said. Her chubby arms moved in a steady motion as she began working on a knitting project that none of us would ever use. Not much use for wool in Texas, she'd say and keep right on knitting. Our small rented house was filled with afghans and scarves covering the beds and tables; all things she had created.

“Me and Gabe are astronauts Gram. We've gotta keep an eye out for stars and stuff.”

“You mean asteroids don't you?” Daddy asked and turned down the radio. “You two make sure we don't run into any trouble, y' hear?”

“Gabriel and I, Zinna. That's the proper construction,” Momma said. She never failed to offer a comment about poor grammar. She loved words, sometimes reciting poems that she liked, or ones she'd written.

Momma tipped her head slightly, so that I could see her pale face, and a wan smile as she closed her eyes again. She rested like that as we traveled on to Aunt Violet's apartment near Barton Springs, my favorite place to swim when it was hot. Daddy honked his horn for Vi, who was standing on the sidewalk in the arms of her long-haired hippie (Gram's words) boyfriend, kissing him. Momma downed some of the aspirin with the water from the plastic cup and fell back against Daddy's shoulder.

“Will you just look at that? And in front of the children,” Gram announced and set her knitting back in the bag at her feet. The piece, whatever it would turn out to be, came from a skein of multi-colored yarn that wove itself into an almost tie-dye configuration as she progressed.

“They're just making out is all,” Gabe said and turned the binoculars toward Aunt Vi and Carlos.

“Making out? Where did you hear that?” Charlotte asked as she reached out to take the binoculars from Gabe, “Put those down.”

He twisted away from Charlotte and stretched his hands out to me, the binoculars looped around both wrists. I looked through the lenses and focused again on Vi. She had darker hair than my mother, and it was much longer, down to her rear end. The Madras print skirt she had on was clinging to her legs and I could see that her boyfriend Carlos had both his hands on her rear.

“Look at this.” I said and Gabe peeked through the eye piece again.

“Oh she's just missing him after being away all weekend, and now going away for another full week,” Momma offered in Vi's defense. Aunt Violet was Momma's little sister by four years. They'd had a hard time when they were teenagers, both their parents dying in a tornado that whipped through their home, and Momma treated Vi like she was her daughter sometimes. At least that's what Vi used to say.

“How did her audition go this weekend?” Charlotte asked.

“Vi's? Good I guess.” Momma shifted from her lounging position and faced Char. “She's hoping to get into Indiana, but it's tough.” She seemed to be staring out the window behind us, not really part of the conversation but somewhere else.

“D'you girls have any trouble with the weather on your trip up there?”

“Not'all. She was really pleased with her playing. I guess we'll just have to see,” Momma said.

Daddy beeped the horn a second time and Vi finally disentangled herself from Carlos. She ran across the lawn with what looked like a pillowcase full of clothes swinging in one hand. Gabe and I took turns staring through the magnified lens.

“Put those away you two,” Charlotte said. “Honestly. Making out!” She clicked her tongue against her teeth and tried again to grab the binoculars.

“Mom!” Gabe leaned in closer to me as Violet approached. He whispered something about his mother just being jealous and we both began to giggle.

“I heard that,” Charlotte said.

“What's going on back there?” Momma asked in a papery thin voice. She was suddenly drained of color.

She'd was a bit better before she went away with Vi to her audition over the weekend, but now she seemed to have the flu worse than ever.

“I am not jealous Gabriel, and I don't know where you'd got that idea.” Charlotte stared out the window toward the street as she spoke, never looking at Gabriel or me. Gabe's dad Richard left them only two months earlier. He was living down off Fourth Street now with a roommate named Roberto, in a huge loft in an old warehouse. Roberto was always buying stuff for Gabe, candy and toys and now these binoculars.

“Up here?” Aunt Vi opened the front passenger door and looked in at her sister and Daddy. “Whew, are we all gonna be packed tight.” She slid onto the seat next to Momma and turned to talk to the rest of us crammed into the back.

“You all comfortable back there? Want to come on up here anyone?” Vi asked. She was always like that, polite and willing to give up whatever she had. The hippie way, she'd laugh and say.

So began our family trip, seven of us in a black car with fins, towing a flower-bedecked camp trailer, and Gabe and me pretending that we were Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. The sun stayed out through that first day, as we drove through Texas Hill Country. There were broad fields of bluebonnets waving for miles and the pink granite of Enchanted Rock, where we hiked and picnicked early that afternoon. Daddy let me take a few more photos with his camera. His own father had taught him to take photos, and he said he guessed that I'd be the next one to learn.

Prologue: Part One: Austin 1969

A cupped half moon hung like a mirage in a violet sky. It was the end of June and rain that had hovered for a week moved farther East of the city, leaving us with a clear day to travel. Daddy struggled to secure our borrowed camp trailer to the car hitch on his 1962 Dodge Lancer and swore quietly as he tried and failed several times. The trailer belonged to our hippie commune neighbors that lived two houses down and it was covered with bright pink and blue flower decals. I thought we were the coolest family around besides the hippies. I secretly hoped that my school friends would ride by on their banana seat bikes and ask where we were going. Maybe I'd say we were on our way to Florida to watch the Apollo spaceship blast off, or that we were going to follow that Dead band; a trip our borrowed trailer had made many times. Maybe I'd just tell the truth since that was pretty neat too. We were going to the Grand Canyon. It was Daddy's graduation present to himself and likely the last big vacation we'd be taking after he started medical school in July.

We were moving two weeks after our camping trip. The city was far away, somewhere up north, that sounded like it should be west but it wasn't. I tried not to think about leaving my best friend Gabriel. When Momma first told me I'd have to go to a new school I cried and ran to my room. I wouldn't eat the french fries and gravy she made for dinner and I refused a kiss before bed. Before I fell asleep that night I heard the murmur of my parents' voices rising and falling in their bedroom. I crept into the hall and listened. Something I did more frequently in the days just before our trip, the trip that would change our direction more than I could know then. Momma was crying and saying I can't do it Chris, I don't know. Daddy's low voice countered with something else. The rumble of his speech lulled me into sleep but somehow I woke up the next day in my bed.

As Daddy continued to wrestle with the camper, I stared at the moon that was fading against the light blue atmosphere. Wisps of clouds floated along. I pretended they were tiny waves in the air and tipped my head as far back as it would go to block out the view of any earthly thing. I was flying through space. Those stringy clouds meant I was getting farther and farther from earth. I was an astronaut sent on a mission to photograph the earth, that was until Daddy broke my concentration.

“You wanna take a picture, Flower?” He opened the passenger door of the car where I had seen his heavy black camera bag lying on the seat. My father was not a tall man, but rather he had wide shoulders and short legs. Momma was actually taller than him and more than once I heard Grandma Bonn, tell Momma He's not grande, non, but he's good. Bien.

“Daddy, I'm not a flower!” I stopped my game of space travel and ran over the lawn to where Daddy held out his precious camera to me.

“You sure are. You're a Zinnia. That's a flower alrighty.” His grin spread the thin scar across the middle of his upper lip into the shape of a diamond. Momma told me Daddy'd been born with that scar. She said it made him different; special. Momma said she loved that little mark.

I took the camera from his hand and secured the strap around my neck. It was heavy and the metal felt cold against my flat chest. Daddy tugged once on the strap and placed his thick fingers over my own, twisting the focus and the aperture. I stared into the lens, swinging the camera around toward the sky. I could hear Momma calling to Grandma Bonn, asking her to grab an extra pillow and the bottle of aspirin on the kitchen counter.

“My name's Zinedine,” I feigned indignance and steadied the camera to focus on the spot where the moon was almost a memory, “Momma said you named me for a movie star.” I clicked the shutter and watched the lens go dark for a split second as the light poured in to the camera. This was only the second time I had held Daddy's camera all by myself.

“She was a star? Are you sure? I thought she was the cat in that movie!” Daddy laughed and rattled the trailer hitch one more time. “C'mon y'all. We'd better get a move on or we'll never get there.” He liked to exaggerate his accent, and wear a big black Stetson on top of that. My honey, the French cowboy, Momma would sometimes say.

“Hon,” Momma tugged at Daddy's short sleeve, “don't you make her pout. We don't need to be starting out that way.” She sat up and glanced to the back seat where I was already sulking, as she suspected. “Zinna,” she reached to the back seat with an open hand, “Daddy's just kidding. You know you're a star. C'mon, shake.”

I grunted and crossed my arms to my shoulders. I liked to play the pouty game, and Momma liked to rescue me from my pretend hurt. Her white gauze blouse fluttered in the wind of the open windows.

“Mmm, Zinna-pie? Kitties are nice you know.” She was smiling and holding out one slim hand, her fingernails painted a pale pink. Momma's long hair was parted in the center and hung straight on either side. She looked like a doll herself, being only seventeen years older than me.

I slipped my small hand into hers and she squeezed and held onto my hand. We sat like that, awkwardly holding hands for a few miles. Momma recited lines from a favorite poem as we drove.

If you were going to get a pet, what kind of animal would you get...you were hoping for something soft and loyal and clean...Died. Will die. Want...I asked you...

She released my hand as firmly as she'd grasped it, and leaned again against Daddy's shoulder. “Oh, I guess that's not such a nice thought...” her voice trailed to extinction. No one spoke and I leaned my head back to stare out the window again. A cloud shaped like an elephant floated overhead, following us.

We still had to pick up Aunt Violet, Gabe and his mom Charlotte. Daddy could be impatient if we delayed his schedule. The sun had risen fully by the time we got into the winged black car that was Daddy's baby. A gift to him from his father the year before my grandfather died of a heart attack while working in the oil fields outside of Austin. Momma sat in front with her pillow, a leather-bound journal she carried everywhere, and a plastic glass full of water. I slid onto the back seat with Grandma Bonn and my stuffed animals, Freddie the Frog and Snoopy.

My novel in increments...

I'll be posting the last draft of my novel here. Along the way I expect to do A LOT of revising. Please feel free to leave constructive criticism...just be polite is all I ask. Thanks!

:)