FICTION
'The Candidate's Daughter'
/ Elizabeth Searle
02.19.09
Cristal, the candidate's daughter, sits on the bus with the baby. I love you I have to love you, Cristal whispers into Baby Troy's ear, with its pointy fold. Baby Troy's black-haired head, sloped and bullet-like, even more wobbly than a regular baby head, rests between Cristal's achy mommy-to-be boobies. I love you I have to love you, Denny her boyfriend had whispered in Cristal's own ear when they'd hugged goodbye––the real time, the alone time in the hotel elevator. Not the crazy-big crazy-loud everyone-hugging lights-and-balloons onstage time.
Onscreen, on CSPAN, on the bus's giant plasma TV, Cristal's mother's face––all pinky orangey dots but still beautiful, still Mommy––speaks to the crowd outside. The crowd's applause is muffled in the sealed air-conditioned bus, Mommy's words MUTEd. Mommy is wearing Cristal's favorite glasses, the ones with the coppery squarish rims that Cristal herself helped Mommy pick. Mommy's hair (richly reddish brown like Cristal's but piled high on her head while Cristal's hangs down low and long) shines in September sun. How Cristal longs, suddenly, to feel that sun on her pale air-conditioned skin. Her arms are stiff from holding Troy in one position for way too long.
But Cristal stays sunk in her seat. Wondering where, if she did somehow manage to step off this bus with no one noticing, she'd go. "I love you I have to love you," Cristal whispers again into deeply sleeping Baby Troy's sweet deformed ear.
What––Cristal has had endless numb bus hours to ponder––did her Denny mean by 'I have to' love you? Have to because she's 17 and he's 18 and the whole world knows their secret now. Or have to because Denny has decided––like Cristal'd finally done––to follow God's plan.
Cristal's new cell hasn't buzzed all day. Shiny cell with the new number she's only given out to her best friend back in Anchorage and to Denny. Denim, the damn dumb newspapers and web reports have called him: Denny's given name, Denim Jensom; the name the whole USA can now make fun of like the the whole Wannada High used to do, till Denny started knocking heads together on the hockey field.
Something she and Denny had in common besides just the way, since 10th grade, they couldn't stop watching––later couldn't stop kissing––each other; yes, Denny hates 'Denim' like Cristal used to hate her own oddball name till Mommy explained to her that she'd named Cristal after Christ himself, only she'd spelled it a special way, a Girl way.
Onscreen Mommy is waving: her mid-speech mini-wave, not her wide-armed end-of-speech Victory wave. Mommy's lipstick red today and her suit navy blue, one of so many new suits Cristal's lost track. The day of Mommy's big Convention speech, an Aide took Cristal and her Dad shopping for their own onstage clothes, sneaking them in the back doors of the Minneapolis Macy's.
It's possible, if you're smart enough, to give the press what the Aide called The Slip.
Onscreen, on CSPAN, on the bus's giant plasma TV, Cristal's mother's face––all pinky orangey dots but still beautiful, still Mommy––speaks to the crowd outside. The crowd's applause is muffled in the sealed air-conditioned bus, Mommy's words MUTEd. Mommy is wearing Cristal's favorite glasses, the ones with the coppery squarish rims that Cristal herself helped Mommy pick. Mommy's hair (richly reddish brown like Cristal's but piled high on her head while Cristal's hangs down low and long) shines in September sun. How Cristal longs, suddenly, to feel that sun on her pale air-conditioned skin. Her arms are stiff from holding Troy in one position for way too long.
But Cristal stays sunk in her seat. Wondering where, if she did somehow manage to step off this bus with no one noticing, she'd go. "I love you I have to love you," Cristal whispers again into deeply sleeping Baby Troy's sweet deformed ear.
What––Cristal has had endless numb bus hours to ponder––did her Denny mean by 'I have to' love you? Have to because she's 17 and he's 18 and the whole world knows their secret now. Or have to because Denny has decided––like Cristal'd finally done––to follow God's plan.
Cristal's new cell hasn't buzzed all day. Shiny cell with the new number she's only given out to her best friend back in Anchorage and to Denny. Denim, the damn dumb newspapers and web reports have called him: Denny's given name, Denim Jensom; the name the whole USA can now make fun of like the the whole Wannada High used to do, till Denny started knocking heads together on the hockey field.
Something she and Denny had in common besides just the way, since 10th grade, they couldn't stop watching––later couldn't stop kissing––each other; yes, Denny hates 'Denim' like Cristal used to hate her own oddball name till Mommy explained to her that she'd named Cristal after Christ himself, only she'd spelled it a special way, a Girl way.
Onscreen Mommy is waving: her mid-speech mini-wave, not her wide-armed end-of-speech Victory wave. Mommy's lipstick red today and her suit navy blue, one of so many new suits Cristal's lost track. The day of Mommy's big Convention speech, an Aide took Cristal and her Dad shopping for their own onstage clothes, sneaking them in the back doors of the Minneapolis Macy's.
It's possible, if you're smart enough, to give the press what the Aide called The Slip.