64 RIKKA: When I was young, I didn’t remember Momma at all—it was weird. I don’t remember the cult—just images and something like I was being smothered by a man or someone on top of me. VIEKO: I don’t remember her, either, because I was a baby when she ran off. MINA: More like she got run out of town by Daddy and his friends. RIKKA: Suvi remembers a lot. She doesn’t like to talk about it do you Suv? (Suvi says nothing.) (Mina laughs.) SUVI: I remember being kidnapped, when Momma tried to steal us from Daddy. I remember what the bushes smelled like. I remember my feet hurt in my boots. I remember the van that John and Momma shoved us in and how scared I was. MINA: I remember that van too. The smell. I still can’t stand rusty tools. RIKKA: I can’t stand small dark places. Reminds me of the van. SUVI: It’s a good thing the airline agent was a friend of Daddy’s and didn’t sell Momma the tickets. MINA: What do you think would have happened if we’d gone with her? You know, with the cult to Oregon? RIKKA: We’d be begging in the airports. SUVI: We’d be dead like the hail bop cult. MINA: Heaven’s Gate? SUVI: Yeah. They all killed themselves. MINA: They thought they were aliens from outer space just like Momma and her friends. RIKKA: Yeah, do you think we would have done that? SUVI: Well, Momma’s spaceship never came to save them from this planet, did it? RIKKA: No. SUVI: So how were they going to get to their planet then? RIKKA: True. VIEKO: I don’t remember it anyway. And I don’t want to think about it. MINA: Well, I stopped some little girls my age from playing with your penis. Momma said it was okay and I got mad. You were a baby. She said they were just curious. I stopped them. I was only about five years old then but I knew enough not to trust her or Maggie’s kids either. SUVI: I think Momma left because she was in love with
CIRQUE Maggie, her best friend. I don’t think it was about the men in the group at all. RIKKA: (shrugs) Could be. MINA: When I was little, I thought Momma was a devil worshiper, then, when I was an adolescent, I thought she was following Charles Manson. We used the word “cult” but no one, not even Daddy or Liv, explained what one was. I figured Momma had crazy eyes like Charles Manson because I didn’t even have a photograph of her; but I had the book cover of Manson on Helter Skelter. RIKKA: Yeah, I was afraid of everything under my bed, in the closet. Everything. MINA: I remember there was a children’s book called “Are You My Mother?” It was about a little bird that fell out of a nest and kept looking for his mother. I remember there was a monster, but I think it was a big heavy equipment or something that picked up the bird. Maybe a front-end loader. I couldn’t read that damn book without getting upset. One time, I think when I was a teenager, I read that book again and I actually cried. I hate that book.
Janet Levin
Men’s Stories
Landra stood on a stool at the kitchen sink, her hands in soapy water. She cocked her ear slightly towards men who were telling tales in the living room. She looked out the kitchen window towards Elephant’s Nose silhouetted in the sky. The moon cast a path from the strait to the harbor, but the only bright light she saw was the Christmas star high above the island—her dad