cheer squad. She was invited to sleepovers, where every girl in school wanted to brush her hair and try on clothes with her in the bathroom. She caught them watching her in the mirror after PE. People noticed her. Her grades improved, but only in some courses. English with Mr. Mayberry and history with Mr. Thomson, where she wrote in cursive and got large red A-pluses. In math with Mrs. Pickens, where she wrote in numbers, her grades got a little worse. At school dances, the boys lined up for her, giggling, while the same girls who brushed her hair looked on, unsmiling. Life was as good as it would ever get for Montana, for every curse begins with a blessing. This is a truth the Tralfamadorians know, for they see what follows right from the start. Montana had to learn the hard way. Gradually, the way a fire moves.
Her uncle Chip won $60,000 from a scratch-off once. Montana was in eighth grade and remembers the party he threw. Uncle Chip became suddenly popular. Even Montana’s dad, who hated his brother Chip, liked him just fine all of a sudden. And at the party, Uncle Chip took Montana for a ride in his new truck. He gave her a pair of earrings and told her not to lose them, that they weren’t fakes. Then he asked her to thank him with a kiss. Montana remembers his breath tasting like beer and his hand accidentally brushing against her breast. Back at the party, she looked everywhere for her grandma, but Granny had passed away the year before. Uncle Chip would be dead a year later, as any Tralfamadorian could plainly see. Shot himself with his brand-new gun in his brand-new truck, a year’s worth of scratch-offs under the seat and stuck to the mud of his brand-new boots. So it goes.
Breasts were a lottery ticket, Montana saw. One random girl in every school wins that first pair, and at pool parties, the boys laugh and tug at those knotted bows on sunburnt backs, like ribbons on Christmas presents. She can see it now like a Tralfamadorian, how each thing leads to the other. Dating. Obsessed with the boys who are obsessed with her. Ninth grade and not a male teacher on her schedule. Ninth grade a second time with the same results. Dropping out. But life was good. A boy who graduated the year before wanted to see her steady. He showed her the college campus and said they’d get married one day. She drank too much and danced at a party, and someone offered her money to take her shirt off. There was laughter, which eventually vanished, but the money stayed real. The air was cool in that house—so cold her nipples hurt like tiny fists. The money, though, was warm from sweaty palms. This was a thing, getting paid to dance. Montana never knew before.
4
----
Everything happens twice in your life. Often, it’s quite more than that. This is a thing Tralfamadorians know and humans ignore. It’s rarely enough to suffer a thing once, the Tralfamadorians like to say. Not when you can suffer it again and again.
I ran away to Charleston, South Carolina, more than once. The first time was to elope. I was nineteen. A girl I loved was leaving to take a job on a boat, and getting married would make sure that we stayed together even while we were apart. On Tralfamadore, they would laugh, knowing what happens next.
Less than a year later, I quit my career as a computer technician, packed what I could into a car, and fled to Charleston, an emotional wreck. A chessboard there saves my life. Fleeing to Charleston saves my life. I am twenty years old and will soon divorce. So it goes.
There is a café on King Street where chess players sit on coffee-bean sacks and move around six-inch wooden soldiers, soldiers we slam down with happy violence. My hurts disappear when I move those soldiers. A stranger is sitting across from me, as strangers do in that place. Names are exchanged. “Scott,” a man says, not looking up from the board. He must be a decade older than me. The woman beside him glances up from her magazine to smile piteously at
Her uncle Chip won $60,000 from a scratch-off once. Montana was in eighth grade and remembers the party he threw. Uncle Chip became suddenly popular. Even Montana’s dad, who hated his brother Chip, liked him just fine all of a sudden. And at the party, Uncle Chip took Montana for a ride in his new truck. He gave her a pair of earrings and told her not to lose them, that they weren’t fakes. Then he asked her to thank him with a kiss. Montana remembers his breath tasting like beer and his hand accidentally brushing against her breast. Back at the party, she looked everywhere for her grandma, but Granny had passed away the year before. Uncle Chip would be dead a year later, as any Tralfamadorian could plainly see. Shot himself with his brand-new gun in his brand-new truck, a year’s worth of scratch-offs under the seat and stuck to the mud of his brand-new boots. So it goes.
Breasts were a lottery ticket, Montana saw. One random girl in every school wins that first pair, and at pool parties, the boys laugh and tug at those knotted bows on sunburnt backs, like ribbons on Christmas presents. She can see it now like a Tralfamadorian, how each thing leads to the other. Dating. Obsessed with the boys who are obsessed with her. Ninth grade and not a male teacher on her schedule. Ninth grade a second time with the same results. Dropping out. But life was good. A boy who graduated the year before wanted to see her steady. He showed her the college campus and said they’d get married one day. She drank too much and danced at a party, and someone offered her money to take her shirt off. There was laughter, which eventually vanished, but the money stayed real. The air was cool in that house—so cold her nipples hurt like tiny fists. The money, though, was warm from sweaty palms. This was a thing, getting paid to dance. Montana never knew before.
4
----
Everything happens twice in your life. Often, it’s quite more than that. This is a thing Tralfamadorians know and humans ignore. It’s rarely enough to suffer a thing once, the Tralfamadorians like to say. Not when you can suffer it again and again.
I ran away to Charleston, South Carolina, more than once. The first time was to elope. I was nineteen. A girl I loved was leaving to take a job on a boat, and getting married would make sure that we stayed together even while we were apart. On Tralfamadore, they would laugh, knowing what happens next.
Less than a year later, I quit my career as a computer technician, packed what I could into a car, and fled to Charleston, an emotional wreck. A chessboard there saves my life. Fleeing to Charleston saves my life. I am twenty years old and will soon divorce. So it goes.
There is a café on King Street where chess players sit on coffee-bean sacks and move around six-inch wooden soldiers, soldiers we slam down with happy violence. My hurts disappear when I move those soldiers. A stranger is sitting across from me, as strangers do in that place. Names are exchanged. “Scott,” a man says, not looking up from the board. He must be a decade older than me. The woman beside him glances up from her magazine to smile piteously at
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