At night the trees with their branches look like nets that hold leaves and air and stars. Last night I saw them outside of the window by my bed. It's late morning. Mom and me and Larry are still driving through wheat fields. Outside the car window you can see puddles and mud. It probably smells like new spring outside but I don't know for sure because the windows are closed. I am warm and a little tired. We've left Michigan and are in Ohio. Eventually we'll be in Kentucky. Larry stares out the window but I can't tell if he sees the wheat fields or not because his face has no expression. He's sucking on his fingers. I am twelve. I haven't had my period yet.

We ate breakfast at Johny's Biscuit Barn which is down the road from our trailer. I had pancakes and sausages that were greasy and probably had gravel in them. My cousin Larry had biscuits and syrup. My mom had coffee. Our waitress gave her three refills. She had the biggest chest I had ever seen and called mom honey when she poured the coffee. She said we were just darling and asked mom if she had any pictures of us when we were babies. Mom said, "as a matter of fact, no, but could you tell me something?" Then mom pulled the picture out of her purse. "What does this look like to you?"

The waitress held it up to the light and squinted. "Can't tell. Looks like it got too much light or something." The picture was glossy and all I could see was it flashing light. But I had seen the picture before. I knew it had waves of gold over a muddy background. I knew mom had been staring at the gold and mud for two days before she decided to take us to Kentucky.

She asked, "Do the things at the bottom look like wings to you?"

The waitress squinted some more. "Maybe---yeah I guess--a little."

Mom put the picture back in the purse and had another cup of coffee. She paid and we left.

Mom is thirty three. She's driving without the radio on because the music gives her a headache. She's pretending not to notice how funny the car smells. We're in a car that smells like pee because my cousin Larry can't really control himself. His pants are stuffed with paper towels. Mom gets the expensive ones for him--the soft ones that feel more like cloth than paper. He sits on a towel and stares out the window. I am tired of the pee smell so I open my window to smell the wet air. I stick my head out the window and the sudden whoosh of air pushes against my face and flaps my hair against my ears and neck so I don't think about anything and forget that I breathe and smell things and only hear the rush of air and my banging hair and then I close my eyes and see the stars that rush under your eyelids when you get dizzy.

I think about the wind. Then I think about the thin gold of before dusk light that stays in the trees even when its windy. I'd be outside on the steps behind out trailer and a little scared of the moaning sound the wind makes against itself. The wind would howl and make everything duck out of its way. Our trailer would stoop. The trees would rattle and shake but the light would stay in the branches because the branches could hold it. And the light between the branches would be all still the way water in a glass before you drink it is still. The branches could hold out the wind and hold in the stillness.

So even though I'm dizzy and seeing stars crash into my eyelids I think about stillness. Then I hear my mom. She yells "Shit, Lou put your head back in the car. I didn't raise a goddamn dog." I put my head back in and bark at her. She swats at my knees but misses. She's probably in a bad mood because of all that coffee. She's probably jumpy and the caffeine and pee smell probably make her want to pull off the side of the road and relieve herself. The inside of the car used to be tan but now is sort of yellow. There are candy wrappers and gray socks on the floor in front of me. I have to sit in back because mom's bowling ball broke the front seat. I smell rushing air and Larry pee. I close the window so the car will be quiet and not give mom a headache. I slouch into the seat and look at Larry. He's looking at the window. His fingers are in his mouth but he's not chewing on them.

Larry is eight. Even though he's not pottytrained anymore he's not retarded. Mom said she thinks he was pottytrained at a normal age but she can't remember exactly when. I believe her. He might have been a pottytraining genius for all we know. He used to talk all the time about boats and the navy.

My Aunt Lucy --Larry's mom-- died six months ago and he stopped being able to control his pee right afterwards. He hardly ever talks and soon he's going to have to go to a special school for retards. I feel bad for him because those retards probably never shut up and can get on your nerves. Mom's going to have to break down and get him some diapers. Looking at him staring out the window, I worry that he'll never try to make himself dizzy so he can see crashing stars behind his eyes. I don't think he sees much. But I don't know because of how he never talks unless he really has to.

Mrs. Donner from the trailer across the street heard about Aunt Lucy and felt so bad for Larry that she made five tins worth of those butter cookies with m&ms in them for me and Larry but not for mom because Mrs. Donner wants her to watch her figure. The cookies tasted like shit but Larry ate a whole tin in one sitting. He didn't throw up so all of the ingredients must have been fresh, Mom said, which surprised her. Mrs. Donner is always cutting out fitness tips for Mom. She calls if there's anything interesting on Inside Edition. She calls at least every other day and won't get off the phone until Mom says, "I gotta go --some one's on the other line." I would do that, too, except that I'm betting on a big disaster when Mrs. Donner finds out that we don't have call waiting. One of our phone bills stuck in her mailbox instead of ours and boom---nuclear bombs. I don't want to get caught in the fall out.

Aunt Lucy was burned to death. Actually she died from smoke but then her body was burned. I don't know if it was burned all the way or not. She had a big black casket. It was closed and had daffodils on top. My name is Louise because it's a compromise between my grandfather on my father's side, Maurice, and Aunt Lucy. But after my father left for good my mom started calling me Lou to sound more like Lucy. Aunt Lucy thought this was a really good idea. She said Maurice is the name of a Oprah's hairdresser and he seems like a big French asshole.

Mrs. Donner likes Oprah and Oprah's hair and says Louise is a fine name and she doesn't approve of girls having boy's names and only gangsters and plumbers should be called Lou. She gave mom the picture taken in Falmouth, Kentucky and said it had angel wings on the bottom. Actually it is a picture taken of the TV screen which was frozen to the part which showed the picture. Mrs. Donner taped the whole thing. The picture looks like sand at the bottom of gold water. Inside the sand you can see the shadows of a curve of a tree and somebody's arm. Inside Edition did a story about the woods in Falmouth where people go to see visions of Mary. A youth group from Louiville took the actual picture and talked to Inside Edition about the gold light as the camera zoomed in. Mrs. Donner rewatched the camera zooming in a couple of times before she decided to photograph it. An expert photographer on the show said that someone pinched the base of the picture and screwed up the developing and made the gold waves that look like angel wings. But Mrs. Donner said that was crap and that anyone who can see can see the angel wings. She said at first she didn't believe all those Catholics but a picture is a picture.

Aunt Lucy's house burned down at night because an exposed wire touched the insulation. I've never seen house sized fires except on TV. I don't know what it's like to run away from a house of smoke. The couch Larry sleeps on is right next to the door in case he gets scared. Larry's face doesn't show if he's scared or not. But he always bites the skin around his fingernails so you know that he must spend a lot of time tasting his own blood. He makes crying noises at night. He moved in right after the fire and didn't say anything for three weeks even though we kept asking him what kind of food he liked or if he wanted to go to the lake and look at the boats.

Finally one night in October when Mrs. Donner's next door neighbor was illegally burning leaves, before she had called the police on him, he said something. Mom is a cook and had been working since early. I had an OK day at school. I had only been twelve for a couple of weeks so my not having my period didn't bother me then. I was clearing the dishes and Larry was moving the salt and pepper shakers back and forth and Mom was rubbing her head because work was hard. She was smoking and noticed Larry look at the ashtray and move the salt and pepper shakers around faster. The shakers started to clank together so I put the plates in the sink and looked at Larry. Mom asked, "Does smoking bother you?"

Larry stopped clanking the salt and pepper shakers, looked at Mom and said, "Yeah, it smells bad."

Mom stubbed out her cigarette and stopped smoking that day. I know that she doesn't want Larry to ever have to smell smoke again and she doesn't want to keep seeing ashes all over the place. Even though the casket was closed we all know that Lucy is ashes.

Even without the Larry pee smell the car wouldn't smell like smoke because I scrubbed the carpeting and yellow upholstery and the windows. I don't want Larry to have to smell smoke again either. We had to air the car for two days because you could get sick from the smell of ammonia after I was through with it.

Before Larry came to live with us the smoke was everywhere in her hair and armpits and hands. But now her hands mostly smell like the onions she cuts for the restaurant and her armpits smell like armpits and her hair smells like her. In the pee colored car, I look at Larry and know that he doesn't notice anyone's smell except maybe to be glad it's not smoke and I feel like crying. I don't know any Larry smell that's not pee. I bend toward Larry to smell his hair. The car swerves and my face crashes into the side of Larry's head. Larry takes his fingers out of his mouth but is totally silent. I scream, "Shit mom--."

She looks back and says, "sorry." Mom and I both know we've been in the car for too long. It's after lunch time.

"Can we stop?" I ask.

"Yeah, Jesus, I've got to take a piss." We pull off at Pirate Pete's Seafood. It smells like rain but the sky is clear. Mom takes Larry into the bathroom with us and changes his paper towels. He only shits once a week. Somehow Mrs. Donner knows this and says it's because he doesn't get enough fiber. Mom puts vaseline on the chewed up skin around his fingernails. I go the bathroom. Still no period. I've been twelve for six months.

Mom eats a potato and french fries. I eat some cod. It's the first time I've ever eaten cod before but it's not that exciting. Larry eats the fish coating and folds the rest of the fish into his napkin. "Do you still want to be a pirate?" I ask him. I know right away that this is a stupid question.

"No." he says.

"You feeling alright?" Mom asks.

"Yup." he says. Mom looks drained. She kisses his head and drinks some water. We get back in the car. I really want Larry to talk to me and I would probably kick him or say something mean but I'm afraid he would just stare out the window. Aunt Lucy called him Larry the Canary.

"Larry Larry the Canary, do you know where we're going?" I ask.

"Nope," he says. I feel stupid because I don't know what to say and I want him to talk to me. Larry looks out the window. The sky is still clear. I stare at the side of his neck and think talktalktalktalk as hard as I can. He stays quiet. I think about my period and stare between my legs and think bleedbleedbleed but it doesn't work. The sound of me saying talktalktalk echoes underneath my forehead.

"Well, Canary boy, we're going to Falmouth, Kentucky." I don't look at Larry. I'm looking at my mom. I can't tell if she's hearing me. Larry doesn't say anything. I want him to ask why we're going there because mom only halfway explained it to me. She said I didn't have to go but my best friend Georgia is visiting her dad in Canada this weekend so I wouldn't have anything to do. Besides I don't want mom to be lonely in Larry's silence. It's a nine hour drive.

We have a tent in the trunk. I packed a clean tee shirt and jeans and some pads just in case. Mom packed the soft paper towels, a change of clothes for her and Larry, and some shampoo. If it rains we're going to either stay in a motel or in the car. Mom and I hope that the Larry pee smell stays out of the tent. Mrs. Donner lent us the tent and I don't know what she's going to do if she finds out that Larry can't control his pee on top of everything else.

The picture in Mom's purse is a photograph of a television screen showing a polaroid that a Youth Group took when they were in Falmouth. I've only looked at it a couple of times. Mrs. Donner brought it over two days ago. This was kind of a surprise because usually she just calls after good Inside Edition stories. Then I think of reasons to get off the phone or Mom fakes call waiting. This time she taped most of the story and took a picture of the miracle and rushed out to the hour photo lab. Then she called but I guess that it was busy because I'd been talking to Georgia. So she just came right over and asked to talk to my mom who wasn't home from work. "Your mama works to hard," she said. Mrs. Donner was wearing a pink house dress and red rubber boots. She circled around our front walk way and then walked across the street home. You could tell how excited she was because she was hopping and walking at the same time.

Mom stole a bunch of chicken fingers from the restaurant so that's what we were eating when Mrs. Donner came back. Mom let her in and Mrs. Donner stared at the plates. I was waiting for her to say something about cholesterol under her breath but loud enough for all of us to hear. But she looked quickly at mom and smiled.

"I heard you stopped by," Mom said.

"Yeah--sorry about not calling first but the line was busy and lord wait till you see this--I just couldn't wait."

Mom opened and closed her mouth like the wind had been knocked out of her. She blushed a little. She hates it when I talk to Georgia on the phone for too long. Mrs. Donner showed her the picture. "What does that look like to you?" She asked.

Mom, still blushing, said, "I can't really make too much out."

"Oh, honey," Mrs. Donner said, "You've got to come over---I've got it on tape."

Mom scratched her neck and I could tell she was trying to figure out what to say. She looked at Mrs. Donner and said "OK." Then she turned to me and said, "Lou--watch your cousin for about twenty minutes."

Mrs. Donner was smiling so much I was a little nervous. She was also trying to hop while keeping her feet on the ground. "Lord no---Lord no," she said, "Bring the children along." Mrs. Donner was making mom a little edgy too. Mom made us leave so fast we left the kitchen light on and forgot to lock the door.

The car smells like Larry and the sky outside is clear. We just crossed the line into Kentucky. My stomach hurts so I think for a minute that I have cramps but then I realize how hungry I am. Right now, Georgia is eleven and a half and two months ago she started her period. She brought the underpants to school and showed them to me and Monica and Carol. It looked like someone smeared a little dark mud in the front part. We all smelled it but it didn't smell any different than our own crotch. Georgia says that before it dries it's red like real blood even though her mom says its not real blood. What's the difference between real blood and fake blood? I look at Larry.

"You hungry?" I ask him. He doesn't say anything. "Mom, I think we should eat." Mom looks at me through the rear vision mirror and nods. We just passed a sign but I couldn't read the name fast enough. I don't know how far away we are from Falmouth. I don't know where we are except twenty minutes from the border. Mom pulls in to a place that says Five O'clock Chili. We all go in and go to the bathroom. This time I change Larry's paper towels. Mom and me pee. Still no period. Then we find a booth and sit down. The waitress is behind the counter. She has a long gray braid and blue shiny eyelids. She's talking to a man who's trying to read his newspaper.

Mom and Larry both look tired. Mom looks at Larry and her eyebrows push in and up because she's worried. Her face turns to me and I know how she sleeps on the easy chair because she thinks her breathing will stop Larry from crying in his sleep. When Mom halfway explained why we're going to Kentucky she said that maybe something could happen that would make Larry feel better.

I ask to see the picture so she pulls it out. "Mrs. Donner has a nice camera." I say. I look at the elbow and the tree. You can't see much more underneath the light ripples.

"Yeah." I can tell she's not listening to me. "She got a busy signal."

"What?" I'm listening to her and staring at the angel wings. They look like broken leaves of light growing out of the bottom of the picture.

"Mrs. Donner knows we don't have call waiting," she says.

I look up at her and see her looking at the menu. Then I look at Larry. He's asleep but he isn't crying. His head's on Mom's thigh. The vinyl booth smells like fish and cigarettes. I bend down to smell his hair. It smells like the couch he sleeps on. I've been sitting and watching television in this smell--in this Larry smell-- for six months and didn't know it. I feel like crying again. "Where the hell's our waitress?" I ask.

I must have asked loudly because she runs over to our table. Mom doesn't yell at me or even look mad. I wake up Larry. Me and Mom get chili. Larry gets grilled cheese. Outside you can tell it's not afternoon anymore. Outside the window you can see a SuperX Drugstore and a brick house with columns which must be the courthouse. Next to that is a clump of trees and a park. I pick out the tomatoes in my chili and give them to Mom. Larry eats his grilled cheese. Mom crumbles crackers. Me and Larry are done before Mom so she tells us to go and walk around. She says we'll get there in two hours and then we can get a motel.

We walk outside and I turn to Larry and say, "Larry Canary you don't smell bad." He looks at me and wrinkles his nose. I don't cry but am surprised to see him look at me like he sees me. It's early in spring and cool enough to make his face red. We walk toward the trees.

Even from the road you can tell that the trees are all shot up with gold. Then, the closer we get, the more we can see that the gold isn't gold but light that makes the branches blur. I stop walking and feel like my heart is heaving itself out of my neck. I blink and see the stars crackle under my eye lids. I look at Larry who's looking at the trees. I have to squint to see him and I think about how his hair smells. The smell's been all around our trailer for a long time and I never knew. I can't tell where the branches end and the light begins. I keep trying to see through it like it's water and like it's not hurting me to look. But I start crying. It still seems like my heart is crawling out of my throat but I open my mouth and say, "It's something, huh?"

"Yeah," Larry says, "I see it."