Tripping and Squatting
by Tatyana Gershkovich

Kate's bracelets sang their familiar wind chime aria as she took up my duffle bag, dragging it across the gravel driveway to the soggy wooden threshold of the garage that she called a barn. My trunk was half empty. I assumed the space would be enough for Kate's things even if it was a little snug. The rest of my belongings would find their own skyway to Stanford sometime after my arrival. I tried not to think of the things that were fragile, hoping some heavenly carrier would use his kid gloves when moving the things that could break.

Kate called it “squatting,” a word that was hard for me to assimilate into my vocabulary due to its physicality. I asked if they still went “dumpster diving,” a concept that I'd finally learned to accept and let thrill me. Kate said that she didn't anymore, she wouldn't risk getting arrested anymore, but maybe Frank or someone still did. According to Kate, the house they lived in as a collective was built in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Members had been squatting there since the seventies, the mythical time of beginnings. They would stay for a while and move on but the commune itself was enough of a presence that the owner of the house made the members a present of the house.

“And now it's home!” She told me.

“It's more a colonial mansion than a farm, huh. I wonder who would give this up out of the goodness of his heart.”

“I guess he was a nice guy.” Kate's voice trailed off. To the untrained eye, she could seem absentminded but those who knew better understood that it was quite willful.

“We don't necessarily like people who are nice.” I borrowed her phrase directly and it sounded affected just like “yea man” and “squatting” and “Frisco.” She never minded my plagiarism. It only burned my own tongue.

Kate showed me the first floor of the barn, which they used as a tool shed. She pointed out the various digging tools strewn clumsily in a damp corner. She did this to alert me to her keen understanding of the nuances of organic farming. Battered bicycles lay near the tools and the tiny opaque window was flanked by sagging shelves. Clumsy, oversized containers of seeds anxiously clung to the shelves to avoid cascading down to the floor. The floor of the driveway was concrete but enough dirt had been dragged into the room filling the cracks in the cement. It looked as if the earth was breaking through, as if you could grow a few zucchini plants right in the house.

“Your mom told me you were drinking Kool-Aid and chaining yourself to trees. She said you were planning to come back in a few weeks. You've been here a really long time huh?” I wanted to speak casually about her family and my plans for the future. I wanted her to ask if I was driving all the way across the country so I could tell her “Yes I feel like I'm living out a cliché!” She would naturally need a ride somewhere because she'd stayed here too long.

“Nope no Kool-Aid, my mom is still spreading crazy lies about me?”

“Well Kate, not long ago they were all true. You know with the running away and the drugs and stuff.”

“Whatever, she loves having a wild daughter! I'm so sick of her living vicariously through me.” Kate was suddenly stern and dismissive.

“Come on, Kate, not everyone is jealous of your lifestyle!” I bit my lip.

We climbed up the narrow stairs behind the back wall of the barn. I tentatively held the banister, hoping to avoid splinters and spider webs.

“This is my room,” she instantaneously abandoned our conversation and she was eager to show me her life here. “It's nice because I get a little more privacy,” she said climbing onto the mattress that lay on the floor to give me a little room to move and to put my luggage in a corner. There were two twin mattresses a foot apart so you could walk from one end of the room to the other. Kate pulled blankets from her own mattress to cover the bare twin bed.

“I really am glad you came to see me!” She lightly reassured me but I could never lick my wounds fast enough. I was still biting my lip and decided to wait to ask her to come with me on the road to California or maybe even to stay out there.

We met in high school gym class before she stopped washing her hair and wearing a bra, just corduroys and t-shirts. No loose fitting peasant shirts and gypsies skits bought at thrift stores. She had already started wearing those cheap beaded bracelets that covered her arms from wrist to elbow and fueled gossip that she cut her wrists. I know for a fact that she never cut herself because if she did she would have told me.

Kate and I sat on the bench during softball trying to ease the shame of six strike outs (the gym teacher called balls until the sixth time I swung and missed the ball and Eric Carter yelled “C'mon coach” and spit on the ground) by torturing Claire Munroe the preacher's daughter insisting that evolution did in fact happen. We were both fighting against close-mindedness and didn't have sufficient opposition. There were no real Jesus freaks in high school but Claire was close enough. I exercised my rhetoric and made Kate laugh.

“Claire, how can you say it didn't happen? We share 99% of our genes with monkeys.” I provided the facts.

“It just didn't.” Claire was firm in her belief, but eventually you could wear her down, especially when her friends were all in the outfield.

“Claire, I swear I was at the zoo the other day and I saw a monkey with blue eyes and freckles!” Kate's laughed anticipated her joke and she choked on her own words. She was laughing hysterically, her mouth gaping open, tears running down her cheeks. “She looked just like you I swear!”

I couldn't keep from giggling though I knew that we would both pay for it at lunch when rumors started circulating that we were lovers. Claire was on the fringes of the popular clique so we took our chances with her. We didn't dare attack any of the others to their faces until we were a bit older.

“I think Claire Munroe married a lobsterman,” I told Kate as we made our way down the stairs and into the house to meet everyone.

“Holy shit. I guess that's god's will for ya.” Kate said. I basked in her sacrilege, having restored the affinity between us with this minute gesture toward the past.

We walked into the kitchen and Kate introduced me as an old friend. The house was spacious and large. Kate introduced me to Dave and Karen who waved hello from the green velvet sofa. I followed Kate into the kitchen which she, I assumed ironically, referred to as “the heart of the house.” There were no partitions between the kitchen and dining room and the floor was covered with checkered tile which seemed out of place in a house that otherwise proudly displayed its age. A cast iron stove with its cylinder limbs and stolid trunk presided over the room.

“This is Frank,” she pointed to a balding young man with thin framed glasses and a goatee who was seated at the dinning room table fixing a bicycle. He smiled warmly and said hello. “And Kevin is at the market.”

“This is Marta and John and their baby Dusty,” Marta packed Dusty into a maroon cloth baby sling.

“It's so nice to meet a childhood friend!” said Marta, “Kate tells us so little of where she grew up. It was around here somewhere right Kate?” Marta's freckles covered her face like a rash, she was obviously someone who was not predisposed to spend time digging away in the sun. Her bright red hair clashed with the pink of her sari.

“Yea a half-hour north of here,” Kate told her. She hadn't come home in over five years. Each break I would call her and ask if she was coming home but she would be in Tucson or Portland or up in Vancouver . Following bands, following men, writing, tripping, saving something, teaching English.

“The woodchuck's back you know!” said John excitedly as he put away bowls full of sea-weed colored porridge. “Would you like anything to eat?” he asked me. “You just missed Marta's dinner.”

“Oh I forgot to tell you; the best part is that we take turns making dinner for everyone. You can help me tomorrow,” Kate said plucking of a bit of zucchini bread with her green thumb and grimy index finger. She must have been working in the garden before I arrived. Kate had grown heavier over the last few years. She had grown breasts that seemed too heavy for her childlike frame. Her cheeks, which had been slightly gaunt in high-school arousing suspicion of drug use and delinquency, were now rosy in a way they had never been in childhood. Her arms and her bare feet were covered with a film of fine dust.

“The woodchuck's back? What's the damage?” she asked John. It killed me how serious she could get about these things, but this time it was over the top.

“He got into the tomatoes and ruined at least four plants. We have to do something,” John said.

“The only thing we can try to do is catch him, what's our other option?” asked Frank, decisively adjusting his glasses. He smiled at me self-consciously, the way people do when you intrude on a familial argument.

“Frank, I don't even want to hear it,” said Marta crumpling her shy smile into a more resolute pose.

“We can't kill an animal, we can't compromise ourselves.” said John loudly enough to lure Karen and Dave into the kitchen. Karen and Dave reluctantly took their posts. Karen leaned wearily against the doorframe and Dave massaged her lower back, occasionally taking advantage of the opportunity to let his hands explore Karen's behind.

“We aren't if we eat him!” Frank answered, “There is nothing else to do, he's ruining the crops and if we can't eat we can't stay here.” Karen nodded in agreement. Not looking at Dave she readjusted her posture and he tentatively drew his hands away.

“I'm not eating an animal! I can't talk about this any more. I've been up all night because this one can't sleep.” said Marta who was already close to tears and clutched her inexplicably well behaved infant as if to keep him out of this argument. I bit my lip with enough affect that Kate nudged her chin toward the door and I followed her out into the front yard.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I chuckled as Kate and I started to walk uphill on the two lane road that ran past their patch of land.

“No, I mean it matters to them. I mean to me too, to us. If that woodchuck ruins the crops we don't eat. We grow our own food, we cook it, we live by our own standards … you know, out of the rat race. Whatever it sounds dumb like everything else when you say it out loud.” The sun was setting over their communal mansion and crickets had already started their gyrating harmonies. The windows gleamed pink and purple, lit up from the outside. The only light from the house came from the kitchen.

“Kate I get it ok, I'm not here to convince you to go to college or whatever,” and this is when I should have asked her. “But I mean you're an intelligent person this is some bogus faith. What are you doing here though? Nothing. ” Kate and I settled on the side of a small hill overlooking the road and the house and garden where I imagined a mischievous woodchuck shaking the foundation. The light was fading quickly and I couldn't see Kate's face when she predictably asked me why I had come in the first place, knowing full well that I had come because she wanted me to come and say just that, who are you helping come home. Not your home but a new one in California . I should have asked her right then also.

“Nat I don't think you're allowed to lecture me anymore.” Her voice trailed off but I knew it wasn't for lack of attention. This is her fighting me.

“You have to play their game. Kate, you can make a difference from the top, you know. That's what I want to do. I'm not just like going to school so I can buy myself a hummer.” I could hear the distorted echoes of my words reverberating through the compressed plot of our friendship. Come home. Go to school. I know it's hard. We have to do it. Not just for us.

“I'm living by example” and “I don't want to play their game,” her words resonated with hollow manipulations of the crickets. I felt the moisture of the ground seep into my jeans and scratched at a newly formed mosquito bite on my wrist.

I woke up shivering. I had not brought my own sleeping bag, thinking that I would have a bed to sleep in. I lay awake between two flannel blankets wearing all the socks I'd brought on the trip. I wore sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt not only to fight off the cold but to avoid all contact with the festering mattress. I thought about crawling into bed with Kate but it had been a while since we could do something like that. We hadn't spoken since I left for school until just a few months before this trip when we decided to reconnect, mostly out of curiosity. I also came because I hadn't had a decent conversation in a while, one where you didn't know what you'd end up talking about. We hadn't done it yet but I was determined to get there by the end of the weekend and then I would ask her to come. There was nothing to keep her here really especially after the woodchuck destroyed all their plants.

The next day was the cooking day. Kate and I spent the morning digging in the garden. Kate absentmindedly picked at the weeds while I read out loud from one of the books on Marxism I found in the barn. Kate said that someone who had lived in the commune had once run a Communist library and when it went out of business he packed all the books in the tiny closet in her loft.

“This one is a Communist picture book,” I flipped the moist yellow pages, “Timmy's adventures with Trotsky!” I laughed, “You know your friend Frank, the one who wants to eat the woodchuck, sort of looks like Trotsky.” Kate laughed but not as heartily as I'd imagined, she was preoccupied, maybe with picking out the ripest tomatoes.

“He has Trotsky's philosophy too, what's the blood of a woodchuck in the face of the revolution,” I triumphantly shut the book waiting in vain for Kate's response.

“Nat you don't even know him! Anyway he liked you. He thought you were ‘sigh! Beautiful!'” Kate chuckled, “I'm sorry I mean you are beautiful it's just Frank doesn't usually have crushes.”

“Really? Well I mean I'm not interested in romancing a Marxist.”

“You're never interested in romancing anyone.”

“Especially not a Marxist. Neither are you!”

“Yea love is sort of stupid huh? Look at old Claire she fell in love and now she's marrying a lobsterman and having lots of babies.” Kate faked a warm smile but it felt awkward to talk about Claire again. There was no reason to bring her in unless we'd exhausted everything else.

“There he is!” her dirty fingernail pointing to a distant corner of the lawn, “The woodchuck,” I followed her glance and there was in fact a stump of fur, basking in the sunshine.

“If you look closely enough you can probably see him rubbing his capitalist belly,” I said. The woodchuck noticed us and scurried off into the raspberry bushes. Kate finally chuckled at something I said but I didn't quite believe her.

I helped her by snapping off peapods into one of the wicker baskets she's brought outside.

The house looked dirtier in daytime. The counters were covered in crumbs and I counted four cobwebs around the kitchen windows alone. Apparently Marta didn't want to kill the spiders either. I insisted on washing all of the vegetables and Kate's hands before she started preparing the meal. As I had predicted, Kate mostly made salads and various dips. Marta helped her bake bread.

“Did Karen go out to get the hummus?” Kate asked Marta.

“I'm not sure. You could call Kelly to get it. She's coming over tonight isn't she? I'm sure Natalie is excited to meet her.” Marta grinned at Kate who started to fidget with her bracelets.

“Who's Kelly?” I asked and then thought of a better question. More to the point.“So you don't make your own hummus? Where do you get it then?”

“From Whole Foods,” Marta said, prying open the whining jaws of the stove to check on her bread, “it's the closest store where we can get organic products.” Marta's flapping red eyelashes scorched me, unintentionally I imagine.

“You hate nuts!” I said, “And, also, isn't Whole Foods owned by the Man? How the hell do you have money for Whole Foods?” Kate had always hated nuts, especially almonds or maybe peanuts. She said she was allergic.

“Why are you so angry?!” she said, suddenly furious. “Chill out, I like almond nut paste and so what if we don't get everything we need from the garden; we're doing our best. Some people in the house have jobs.”

Marta glanced away at her spiders.

“Yea maybe but you don't have a job!” I said lowering my voice.

“Whatever, Natalie.” The argument was over.

Kate and I had grown up, or maybe just tired of this fight. Back in high school I would have finished with “Your parents are wealthy art collectors! If they weren't so wealthy you couldn't afford to play a holier -than-though high school drop out collective farmer” and she would have certainly retaliated with “tell me again about your impoverished immigrant background and then run along and get your law degree.” Sometimes it would be quiet and tense between us for days and we would talk around each other. We talked to people who cared about us less. Kate would disappear to Rachel's house, feeding addictions and piercing ears and bellybuttons with unclean safety pins. I would get myself a boyfriend and let him pull me into the backseat of his car and tell me that it was amazing how I came from so far away to be with him. I didn't tell him this basic premise would hold true for anyone I'm with.

We would avoid each other for days and Mr. Myers, our English teacher would have to try a bit harder because we would not speak in class. A hush and then snide remark about the dimwit Caitlin, who thought that Emma Bovary should just get over it, just loud enough for her to hear. She'd laugh and walk right up to me after class.

“Take a look at this. It's Mr. Myer's copy of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He lent it to me,” she burst out laughing, “He circled all the dirty words!” We were in tears laughing, stumbling down the hallway fighting over the chance to find a four letter word or a reference to the female body that had captivated the attention of our teacher.

Kate had dropped out of high-school our senior year and had gone on the road by herself, calling me every few weeks to tell me about it. There was always a hit of acid, or people gathering for rainbows, or meth-labs she's stumbled upon while taking a ride from a stranger who would have become a rapist had she not jumped out of the car. Once I think she said she saw a man die as he fell from a tree he was trying to save out in the Berkshires. I started interrupting more often and when she called and she started calling less frequently. I took exams and went to college. I made college friends who didn't dumpster dive or grow their own veggies. The beatniks are no longer my role models, their games are cheap and easy. That's not why I came here to her. I didn't just want an on the road adventure, I wanted her to come and stay because that final hush between us was coincidental. We left, I moved, and it expanded into silence. I wasn't sure how to recover from the silence.

Marta left us alone and Kate didn't look at me as she diced tomatoes, and I watched her tiny hand, the part of her that had remained childlike clumsily wielding a butcher knife to cut something so already fragile. Her bracelets tinkling, their cheap plastic beads ashimmer in the aging sunlight.

Kelly arrived before dinner with two paper bags full of hummus, soy milk, pasta, and gingerbread cookies. She started unpacking them onto the island in the kitchen.

“Hello, it's so nice to finally meet you. This one doesn't tell me anything about her life before we got together so I'll have to probe you about it a bit.” She put her arm around Kate and bent down to give her a kiss on the cheek.

“You're together? I mean how long?” I addressed the question to Kate.

“Three months now,” Kelly answered.

“No probing!” Kate laughed and opened the bag of gingerbread cookies. “Everything is so god damn wholesome!” she said.

Kate puttered around in the kitchen while Kelly and I sat in the living room. I traced and erased and redrew my name in the green velvet couch while Kelly told me things. Kelly was a bit taller than me and her face looked kind, a quality Kate and I didn't necessarily find attractive. She looked more like me than Kate. No glass jewelry or loose beaded tops. She wore pale blue jeans and a black cardigan. She worked at a coffee shop and went to school. She had been out since middle school and everyone understood. She was so happy to have found Kate. Did I know what a great friend I had? Of course I knew. She knew I knew. Did I write poetry? She asked. I seemed like I would write poetry. No I'm going to law school. Could I tell her some funny stories? She hoped to meet Kate's mother some day and see pictures. What was my favorite childhood memory of Kate? I shrugged. It wasn't appropriate for the occasion.

The memory was Kate unwrapping a roll of tin foil while I sobbed on the coach, holding my hand over my tender cheek bone.

“I'll make you a hat,” she was crying a little now too. “Here look we can make hats.” She tore the foil and worked her finger around the edges.

“See,” she smiled at me and I started to cry harder, “Don't worry about it no one will notice your eye if you just wear this around all the time!” She wrapped the tin foil around my forehead.

“C'mon I know you want everyone to see you as a hero.” She pulled my hands away and kissed the cheek he'd bruised. “I'm sorry. He's a terrible guy. Why did you pick a fight with him in the first place. I knew him in kindergarten and I should have told you he used to beat people up just to make them give up their chocolate milk.” She made me laugh so she went on. “Just know that you're not the only one.”

“He was just saying really dumb things. Like calling Ryan a fag.”

“You were defending Ryan? That guy's a tool.”

“I know, he's a nerd and everything but still no one should use the word fag or say things are gay when they mean stupid. I never expected anyone to hit me!” I sobbed at the injustice of it.

“Nat, I love you but you have to pick your battles.” Kate kissed my hand, “Or,” she said brushing the hair from my eyes, “you'll just have to get used to wearing this hat. I'll make you a cape to go with it if you're really lucky!”

After dinner Kate, Kelly, Frank and I went up to Kate's loft to look at the Communist Zine library. Kate lay on her stomach on one of the mattresses reading aloud. Kelly tried to stroke her tangled hair but ended up getting lost in the knots.

“Nat you should get some sleep you have a long drive in the morning,” Kelly said not without caring.

“Oh yea definitely,” said Kate. “Well, you can sleep here and Kelly and I will crash on the couch in the house.” I wasn't going to get a chance to ask her tonight and I had to leave in the morning.

“Fine but can we talk tomorrow?” I asked Kate trying to stifle my anger.

“Yea are you ok?” She finally noticed me.

“I'm fine I just had something to talk to you about.”

“You can take my bed,” Frank offered, “If Nat doesn't mind I'll just crash here.”

“That'd be great actually,” said Kate, “Nat is that ok?” I felt a great sob leap through my stomach and just as it aimed upwards I stifled it and gave a jerky half-hearted nod.

Frank moved closer to me after they left. He wanted to talk through the night. He told me he didn't plan to be here at the commune forever. He was getting bored really. He wanted to go back to school and maybe become a teacher. I turned off the light and told him not to worry that I was still listening. I faced the wall on my own mattress and let Frank's dreams lull me sleep. I feared that they would be replaced by the nightmarish tenderness I imagined was happening inside the house.

“Frank I don't know why you gave up your bed. You know they're doing it in there.” I interrupted his train of thought.

“Oh, uh… well its fine.” He misinterpreted my remark and moved onto my own mattress, “they really like each other. We're doing a good deed.” He touched my hair with the tips of his fingers.

“Frank do you think I'm pretty?” I asked him.

“Yes. I think you're incredibly beautiful. You better be careful driving out to California all on your own.”

“Yea I was hoping that Kate may come with me. I'll ask her tomorrow.” Frank bent down and kissed my neck running his hand down my arm. I appreciated his shyness.

“Well I guess she could go with you for the trip but how would she get back?” I didn't discourage him yet. I liked the way he wrapped his hand around my waist.

“Well maybe she'd stay there with me for a while.” He breathed into my ear.

“What do you mean? She can't leave she's got a life out here.”

“You call this a life?!” I pushed him off me.

“I'm sorry did I do something. I didn't mean to push things. You're just very attractive and I thought that this was ok.” He looked bewildered, even in the dark.

“Yea. I'm sorry I'm actually not that into it. Sorry. I didn't mean to send mixed messages.” It was a speech I'd rehearsed all through college. “Sorry.” I repeated. “We should get some sleep.”

In the morning Kelly wore a T-shirt of Kate's and it was too tight on her. I slathered my toast with almond paste and drank dandelion tea. Eventually everyone assembled in the kitchen. Marta asked me about my route to California and I told her the various highways I wan planning to take.

“Well be careful,” she told me, “It is a beautiful country though.” Her saccharine smile and practical chatter distracted me from the domestic scene at the kitchen sink. Kate peeled some carrots. Kelly distracted her, turned her face and kissed her abashedly on the lips.

“We saw the woodchuck yesterday!” I interrupted Marta. “He was bathing in the sun like he owned the place!”

“Nat!” Kate shot back but I could hardly hear her over my polyphonic masterpiece.

“We have to eat him!” Karen was crying hysterically, “He'll kill all the plants! Marta, I am not a bad person! I am looking us and our commune!”

Marta's sticky wet eyelashes batted away tears as she rocked her child who was also on the brink of righteous tears, repeating to herself, “I will not kill an innocent animal!”

Frank stood up throwing back his chair, “I can't take this anymore! We have to do something; we have to catch the woodchuck.”

“I'm not even sure how you would catch a woodchuck,” thoughtful John articulated a surprisingly practical concern.

“John!” Marta wept harder at the betrayal and now baby Dusty was whimpering too. Kelly looked frightened and whispered something in Kate's ear and Kate smiled, bearing her teeth.

“Are you even gay?” I leaned in and hissed at Kate pretending that no one would hear me, “or is this part of your shtick?”

“Oh my god…” she said rolling her eyes as I got out of my seat and walked out into the yard to compose myself. I walked out to the garden and not wanting to get my jeans soggy I crouched on the grass by the hyacinth bushes. I tore off their fingerlike leaves and listened to the crickets drone on until I saw Kate walking out of the house.

She sat down on the grass next to me and pulled my hectic fingers out of the bushes. She held my wrists and asked me to sit down and nodded toward the kitchen windows, those extraordinarily wide slits between the ribcage of the house, where Frank held Dusty, and John and Kelly laughed at some private joke, and Marta's serenely wiped down dishes.

“I know,” I said, “but I thought you and I were different, that we didn't need all this ideological sickly sentimental nonsense,” and she told me she was happy. It was strange to set off on the road by my self, right after breakfast.

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