The Sunset Route: Freight Trains, Forgiveness, and Freedom on the Rails in the American West by Carrot Quinn

Author:Carrot Quinn [Quinn, Carrot]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, women, Personal Memoirs, Environmentalists & Naturalists
ISBN: 9780593133286
Google: BwQyEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2021-11-15T00:18:00.538523+00:00

* * *

—

“You’ve got to take the sacrament.” The bedroom feels small and close and yet too large, too bright. I’m under a hundred blankets but I can’t get warm. Am I dreaming? Time has ceased to be linear, the hours of the day irreparably tangled. The curtains over the window billow, and the sun dances on the bed in bright patches. “You’ve got to take the sacrament.” It’s Grandma, standing over the bed, holding something in a paper napkin. The Communion wafer, from church. It must be Sunday.

“I can’t really eat anything right now.” My voice is hoarse. All I’ve kept down in the last few days is some chicken broth and a few chunks of sugar-free green Jell-O.

“You have to eat this, though,” says Grandma. I can smell her breath mint.

“No.”

“Yes.” Her lips are a tight pink line.

“Fuck off, Grandma!” I roll onto my side and pull the pillow over my head. The bed shifts as she stands, and I hear the door of my bedroom shut. How did she get that Communion wafer? Did she let the priest put it on her tongue, and then take it out and save it for me? Grandma tries every week to get me to go to mass with her, but I hate mass. The boring sermons, the sitting and the standing. Riding in Grandma’s Oldsmobile with the Freon smell of the air conditioner. Donuts in the church basement afterward, which I can’t even eat.

I know that Grandma is sitting in the kitchen now, at the Formica table, staring at the damp Communion wafer on its white paper napkin. Clutching her hands together. Wondering what to do about the matter of my soul. I don’t care, though. I just don’t fucking care. Last week she found my birth control, which I’d gotten from Planned Parenthood. I’ve been sleeping with Tristan, the stoner who lives in the trailer with his hoarder mom, every room full of old magazines and the carpet reeking of cat piss. Tristan smells like socks, and I don’t enjoy the sex, but it feels good to be worth something to someone. I’m not stupid, though, and no matter how many times Grandpa tells me that I’m going to end up like my mother, a single mom on welfare, I know that isn’t true. I’m not ever fucking getting pregnant. Ever. And if I do by accident, I’ll have an abortion stat. Because fuck that shit, I think. And then Grandma found my birth control—she went through all my things, actually, and found my birth control and my journals of dark poetry about wanting to die—and was more upset about the birth control than any of it, including the fact that I was having sex. Because birth control is abortion, according to the Catholic Church. So now I have the flu and she’s sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the Communion wafer, clutching her hands together and trying to figure out how to get me to swallow it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.