My Family's Name

We are going hiking at Mount Lahana tomorrow morning to find a name for the baby, "six o'clock, no make it five!" That is the drill sergeant my sister. And if you think it is nuts for a nine month pregnant person to climb a mountain before the sun is even up then do us a favor- keep it to yourself, cuz I'm the one who has to live with her.

"Why so earlyyy?" That's Kyle, I think. He's under a blanket and doesn’t really sound like Kyle but who else would it be.

"It's not early, it's 6:17," My sister hisses which wakes me up good and fast but not Kyle. Ana is pissed because we have slept so late. She does not notice that the sun has slept late too, that that is normal.

"How did you get over here?" I ask.

"I didn't, I slept on your porch. I slept walked, I don’t know!" Kyle retreats back under his blanket.

"Get up!" If I was naming my sister I would call her wacka, I suggest that.

"Maybe I will wacka you!"

"C'mon, let's get up," I tell Kyle.

The drive is not long enough when you want to sleep but I don't get to sleep anyway, Ana says she cannot drive because she is pregnant. I know better than to argue with her now. I drive even though I am fourteen and have never driven the truck beyond the driveway before. Driving is not that hard. There are names everywhere, like- pothole, speed bump, deathtrap, cliff's edge, yi-yikes! that last one Kyle came up with, the all go on the notebook but Ana doesn’t think any of them are very good.

"How about Sun Rising?" At last it is doing so. It is red down here, not the way you think the sun normally looks, the way it looks in paintings sometimes and you think- the sun never looks like that! It does at 6:45 in the morning- who knew, who knew?

"Red Eye." Ana looks at it.

"That sounds horrible," I say.

"Isn't that like a disease or something," Kyle says.

"No, like the eye of God."

"I don’t think God would have red eye."

"Yeah, I think they're blue."

"No, they're made out of gold, or marbles."

"You guys are both wrong, the sun is God's eye."

"Where's his other eye?"

"He only needs one."

"The moon," Kyle says at the same time.

"The moon is his eye at night."

"Moon eyes." I say.

"Nothing sounds right," and Ana does not talk for the rest of the trip, even when I ran over the tree stump that Kyle said was a raccoon.

"I'm not a raccoon killer!"

"Raccoon Killer." Raccoon Killer goes into the notebook, I wrote Treestump Killer and Stumpy for Kyle. "You're going to drive home!" I yell at Kyle.

I cannot stand the thought that I have killed someone. I want to close my eyes and see a tree stump with my tire marks on it, that's what we will see when we go back, no blood on the tire, or scrap of fur, no raccoon carcass on the side of the road. I want to close my eyes and miss the turn to the mountain, to head into town instead- to get a drink, to forget my sorrow, to swerve,

"Don't close your eyes!" Kyle screams. "Jesus!"

"Jesus," I inform him, "is a name Latin people name their children, not us."

Okay I made it to the park, "no raccoon family swarming us and demanding justice yet," Kyle says.

"That's because I hit a stump!"

"Stumps don't cry, this one cried."

"Crying Stump, Crying tree, Weeping Willow, Willow."

I want to hit Kyle and my sister. "It was a stump! Sometimes they cry! It was cut down! Wouldn't you cry if you were a stump?"

Kyle so makes me want to cry.

We are at the mountain, my sister is looking up at the top and probably just now realizing that she can't see it. "You guys, let's go, it's already 7:39," she snaps.