by Ursula Hegi
And Annie says fuck off. Said it to Mason.
Did that off him?
“Scoot over, you.” She squeezes in. Next to me in the little bed. Snuggles up so her toes won’t hang over the edge. Her face white in the dark. Lopsided where it dents my pillow.
Annie, smelling of driving.
And of sweating.
And of M&M’s.
Smelling of carrying me.
And of toes no longer hurting.
Smelling of sleep.
SUN ON THE lids of the clouds. I climb across Annie. She’s curled and little. By the bathroom sink, the floor is like a sponge. I brush my teeth. Hop up and down. Make the tiles jiggle.
The tub has dragon’s feet. Dragon’s claws.
Treetops swish against the windows. Like being in a tree house.
“Aunt Stormy?” I yell down.
She’s working in her garden. No shoes. In winter she’ll wear shoes. But never socks. Beyond her, the boardwalk and wetlands. Mason says wetlands is a fancy name for swamp. Beyond the wetlands tall beach grasses. Then sand. Then Little Peconic Bay. Which is not little but big with lots of water.
My pond house has water too.
But that water is round and little and stays in one place.
Aunt Stormy’s bay has snaky water. Water that doesn’t stay in one place. Snakes away with the tide.
“Aunt Stormy?”
“Opal! Good morning.”
“What happens if I fall through the bathroom floor?”
“You’ll land on my bed.”
“And squash you.”
She’s moving a huge rock. A pink and white rock. Lifting it. Walking with it. Heavy. Setting it down nearby. “If you fall, you’ll land on the other side of my bed, Opal, the empty side.”
“Oh.”
“It’ll be like one big trampoline.”
I RUN downstairs. “Are you growing rocks, Aunt Stormy?”
She kneels down. Now she’s smaller than the rock. “How did you know?”
“Because I don’t remember this rock.” I touch the rock. Its edges are soft. “And I don’t remember the gray rock over there. Do you look like my real mother, Aunt Stormy?”
“Sometimes. In a certain light.”
An old mother. Much older than Annie. An old mother I have not seen in my real father’s photo books. Six books with photos and his notes. Photos of my real parents. And Aunt Stormy. And my real parents’ friends. Pictures of traveling. And of Annie. Annie being a baby. Annie in first grade. Annie every year. Every year with my real parents. But I’m not in the photo books. They stop, the photos. Stop before I’m born. And I didn’t get to go anywhere. The last photo is of my mother. Pregnant. “With you, Opal,” Annie says. But how do I know it’s not a pillow?
“I talk the way your mother did,” Aunt Stormy says. “But she looked like you and like Annie. The shape of your faces. Strong shoulders and long necks. That same quick smile. Lots of thick red curls. Her hands were so smooth, Opal. Not like mine.” Aunt Stormy spreads her palms for me. “Rough skin. From gardening.”
“What was her favorite color?”
“She loved purple. And tie-dyed. That day I met her—we were just eighteen—she was wearing a tie-dyed shirt, purple and yellow and orange and red. And then her red hair, of course, with a ton of hair spray. And I still remember thinking: This girl looks like one big sunset.”
“One big sunset.” I like that.
“Your mother, she had the stiffest hair of anyone I knew.”
“Do you think she loved me?”
“I know she loved you.”
“Even if she didn’t know what I was going to be like?”
“She loved you from the moment she knew she was pregnant. She felt so lucky.”
“How about my real father?”
“He was so excited about you. Looking forward to you.”
“How about his favorite color?”
“Phillip liked to wear blue.” Aunt Stormy plucks some weeds. “A deep blue, like his eyes. He was a fast walker. Most days, he walked six miles before breakfast.”
“You knew my real parents before Annie knew them.”
“Yes. And I knew your mother before your father met her. This sun is too strong for you.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I know how quickly you sunburn. You can either stand in the shadow or we’ll put on some lotion.”
I step away from her till leaves keep the sun from my face. “How long is for the time being?”
Her eyes. Reading me.
“You said we’re going to live with you for the time being.”
“That means for as long as you want, Opal.”
“Your bathroom floor squeaks.”
“It’s how this cottage talks. A groan here, a squeak there. It’s over a hundred years old.”
I tilt my head toward her house. The blue door stands open. Far away, a dog is barking, then two. I wish I had a dog. “What happened to your dog, Aunt Stormy?”
“Agnes? She…she got spooked by fireworks one Fourth of July.”
I wait for her to tell me more, but she doesn’t. That’s how I figure Agnes is dead. Because people get squirmy saying dead around me. Dead or kill or hang.
After a while, Aunt Stormy adds, “Agnes ran under the wheels of a car.”
“Where did you bury her?”
“Where I grow squash.”
“Gross. I’m not eating Agnes squash.”
Aunt Stormy smiles. “St. Agnes squash, please.”
“Annie won’t let Mason get a dog.”
“Oh.”
“Annie won’t let Mason get a baby.”
AFTER LUNCH, Aunt Stormy takes Annie and me hunting. Hunting for catbriers.
“Touch these pine needles.” She stops by a small pine. All tangled in prickly vines. “Feel how fine and long they are. That’s how you can tell a white pine.” She crouches. Reaches with her clippers.
“They’ll scratch you, Aunt Stormy,” I warn her.
She chops off vines close to the ground. But their green stems are still around the tree.
“Like a cat. They’ll scratch you.”
“That’s why they’re called catbriers.” Annie’s eyes are red.
I ask her, “Do you want to take a nap, Annie?”
“If I do, I won’t sleep tonight.”
“You can sleep in my bed again.”
“Thank you. I may do that.” She sits on her heels, her back against a tupelo. Pulls me close.
I lean into her. Peer into the thicket behind the white pine. Catbriers.
Aunt Stormy is yanking at the catbriers. Scratches on her wrists.
“Be careful.” Annie’s voice is too loud.
“Sshhh…” I press my index finger on her lips.
“What is it, Opal?”
“How about the bones?” I whisper.
Annie flinches. It goes through her body, like lightning.
“Bones?” Aunt Stormy’s clippers are still opened.
“The bones in the catbriers. Duh.”
Annie bites on her lip, hard.
Aunt Stormy says, “I’ve never found any bones here, Opal.”
“There is such a thing like bones stuck in catbriers.”
Aunt Stormy waits. “From birds and squirrels?”
“No!”
Annie takes my hands into hers. “Don’t be scared.”
I yank my hands free. “Bones of princes.”
Annie’s teeth. Deeper into her lip. Red and white.
“Because of Sleeping Beauty. In my fairy-tale book. The picture of her. Remember? With those catbriers all around her?”
Annie laughs. Laughs a quick, high laugh. Pretends it’s a hiccup.
“You’re being nutty, Annie.”
“But the prince rescued Sleeping Beauty. So why would his bones be stuck in the catbriers?”
“Duh. Not his bones. The bones of other princes. Who tried to wake her up. But got stuck.”
“Ah
…,” Aunt Stormy says. “Then we’ll have to clear this carefully, Opal, so we don’t cover up those bones.”
“If we find some prince bits,” Annie says, “we can put them back together.”
I can see us collecting those prince bits. Maybe not enough to put all the princes back together. But enough for one really excellent prince.
“I’ll be very careful.” Aunt Stormy keeps chopping off briers where they start at the ground. Still, they hold on to trees and bushes. Until she chops them into little pieces. So there.
I follow her, looking for bones.
AUNT STORMY takes us into BigC’s pool room, where she tests the chlorine. On the walls a painting wraps itself around the corners. Cliffs and sea and meadows. The painting has no beginning or end.
“Gross.” I point to a cut-off head that wasn’t there before. It lies on the ground. On the ground in the painting next to a pillar.
“BigC just added that head,” Aunt Stormy says. “A strong resemblance to her husband.”
A tiny, tiny woman peeks from behind a jar. A tiny BigC. Her body is smaller than the man’s cut-off head.
“A self-portrait,” Aunt Stormy says. “Over there, those nymphs…they’re new too. BigC and her three daughters.”
“All the same age,” Annie says.
“No more than seventeen years old…frolicking in the flowers.”
“I didn’t know anyone said frolicking anymore.” Annie takes towels from the dryer.
“It’s the only word that fits.” Aunt Stormy helps folding the towels. Hangs them over a golden rack.
I walk along the mural, touching. “What does frolicking mean?”
“Dancing and hopping and skipping and twirling,” Annie says.
“Frolicking…,”I sing, touching moss and flowers and jars. Touching the tiny, tiny BigC.
Yesterday Aunt Stormy pulled me out into the rain, frolicked with me.
“There are other people hidden in BigC’s mural,” Aunt Stormy tells me. “See, over there? Her parents as marble statues.”
Annie turns on the hose, sprays the floor tiles.
“Don’t you get me wet, Annie,” I yell, wanting her to squirt me.
She squirts close to my feet. Almost smiles when I jump. Mason would squirt right at me. He squirts right at me. Wraps me into a towel. Throws me over his shoulder. All wet. Wetlands. Mason says BigC did away with the wetlands. Doing away with wetlands means doing away with little owls. Mason says lots of little owls used to live on Aunt Stormy’s land before she sold it to BigC.
Annie and I follow Aunt Stormy through the house, and we check each room, read the Post-it notes BigC has on every mirror. Each has the same message: “PLEASE, DO NOT BRING SAND INTO THIS HOUSE.”
Annie laughs. “That’s asking the impossible.”
Aunt Stormy nods. “Still, she gets pissed when renters drag sand in on their shoes.”
“Then why did she build her McMansion by the beach?”
I think BigC has the most beautiful furniture in the world. All gold and white. The floors too. Gold and white. When I’m grown up—
“My bad-taste neighbor,” Aunt Stormy says.
“It’s the most beautiful furniture in the world,” I tell her.
“Tomorrow we’ll have dinner with my good-taste neighbor.”
“Pete,” I say.
“Right. He’ll come to the Sunday vigil with us, and afterwards we’ll have dinner. I shouldn’t have said that about BigC. She’s been good to Pete. Helps with driving him to his counselor, to physical therapy and speech therapy and—”
“I can help too,” Annie says.
“Good.”
“Pete is a bit slower than you remember him,” Annie tells me.
“Pete can run faster than Mason. Marathons, Pete runs.”
“Not anymore. He had something called a stroke.”
“What’s a stroke?”
“For a little while, Pete’s blood couldn’t get to his brain,” Aunt Stormy explains. “It does now. But the right half of his body has to learn how to move again.”
“Can he still bake?”
“Not quite yet.”
“Lemon meringue pie…I can help him bake. And walk.”
“He’ll appreciate that. He gets tired so quickly. Sometimes he cries.”
EVERY NIGHT while we sleep, rooms that were there yesterday become other rooms. Shrink or stretch. Three steps up become three steps down. Leading to rooms beyond where the house used to end. A house hatching a house.
Sunday I don’t recognize Pete. I’m upstairs, busy watching an old man on our boardwalk, walking with stiff little steps, both hands on the railings.
I frolic down the steps into the kitchen, where Aunt Stormy is frying fish. “There’s this old man outside. He’s limping, and he’s wearing a girl-color T-shirt.”
“Must be Pete.”
“No. Pete is tall. Pete has black hair. Pete runs marathons and—”
“My God—” Annie has opened the door. “His hair is all white.”
“It turned white after the stroke,” Aunt Stormy says.
“It’s not Pete,” I explain in my most patient voice. “It’s someone else.”
“He usually takes his boardwalk down to the bay and then comes up on mine.” Aunt Stormy turns down the burner. Jiggles the pan. “He’s getting better every day.”
How can she think this old man is Pete?
The old man kicks one of Aunt Stormy’s new rocks.
I run outside.
Again, he kicks the rock. It makes a hollow noise.
“Now you…kick it…Opal.” His voice a tape at the wrong speed. But it belongs to Pete. Who is inside this old man with the girl-color shirt and droopy face.
I kick the rock. It budges.
“Now pick…it up.” Stubbles in his ears. But not in his nose.
“I’m not that strong.”
“Same…here.” But he lifts the rock like a laundry basket. Shuffles his feet in a slow, funny dance.
I lift it, then, above my head, the rock. It is hollow—that’s why it sounds hollow. Gray inside and out, with white lines. Like veins.
Pete claps his hands. Even his clapping is slow-speed.
“Why do you have bruises on your arms, Pete?”
“Because…my skin is…getting thin.”
I squat and pull the rock over myself. All dark inside. It smells of raincoat and of earth.
Pete laughs. His laugh is regular speed. Now I know for sure it’s Pete. Maybe he plucked his nose hairs but forgot the ears.
Aunt Stormy’s voice. “They weigh just a few pounds, Annie.”
The rock crawls away from her voice.
Aunt Stormy. Closer yet. “You can hose them off.”
Not me. The rock crawls faster.
“Fake rocks are so…not you.” Annie’s voice. Above me.
Bet you don’t know where I am…
“They’re a gift from Pete.” Aunt Stormy’s voice. “He makes them from stuff they use on space capsules.”
Now you’re in trouble, Annie.
“I’m sorry.” Annie’s voice.
“Don’t…be. They…are…fake.”
“Where’s Opal?”
“Opal…who?”
Aunt Stormy’s voice. “You can turn those rocks upside down for weeds. Pete started me off with the rock that’s moving—see, Annie?—to cover a pipe coming from the ground. Then he made me another to hide the compost.”
“And…to hide…weeds.”
Annie’s voice. “Like a lunar landscape.”
Aunt Stormy’s voice. “Yes, of those first images we had of the moon. You and Opal weren’t alive yet.”
“Opal who?” the rock asks.
Pete’s slow-speed voice. “Opal…the…rock.”
The rock giggles.
“There she is,” Annie says.
I cast off my rock and spread my arms and do Pete’s shuffle dance.
He is trying to sit down on the porch steps
, bending his knees and lowering his butt inch by inch by inch.
“Don’t fall, Pete.” I run over to him, slip his arm around my shoulders. Glare at Aunt Stormy and Annie, who don’t help him.
“Are you sure that’s comfortable, Pete?” Annie asks when he’s finally sitting.
“Considering…that I…usually sleep…on a…”
My lips are moving. I want him to be done with what he’s saying.
“…bed of…nails.”
“Really?” I ask.
“I wonder if…it is…possible to…sleep—”
“—on a bed of nails,” I finish for him. “Sure.”
He leans forward till his elbows touch his knees. “But…how…Opal?”
“I saw it on TV.”
“I guess…you’d have to…tighten…all your—”
“Muscles.”
Aunt Stormy winks at me. Shakes her head.
“—muscles…so that…”
I press my lips shut.
“…each…nail gets the same…pressure.”
“That’ll work,” I tell him.
ON THE DRIVE to the vigil, Pete gets to sit in front. I sit in back with Annie. The vigil is in Sag Harbor. It’s called Women in Black. But there are men and kids too. And not everyone is wearing black.
We stand on the wharf by the windmill. Some of the Women in Black people have signs. Even the ones who are not women. And who don’t wear black.
Peace. Now.
No Blood for Oil.
BigC is there too, holding up a sign: PATRIOTISM = DISSENT. She puts it down to give me a hug. Her coat has golden buttons.
“Maybe if enough of us speak out,” she says, “we can still prevent a war in Iraq.”
“It’s a silent vigil,” says a man behind her.
I stand between Pete and Annie. Cars and trucks drive past us. Some drivers stick up their thumbs. But one truck with huge tires and loud music races toward us. People cry out.
BigC swings her sign at the truck.
Annie yanks me behind her. “Fuck off,” she yells after the truck.
I bet he’ll off himself now.
“Sshhh…” From behind us.
I shiver. Lean into Annie. From the bay comes a breeze. Prickly and salty.
Annie rubs my face. My shoulders.
Pete says, “Shrub has…bad…”
“That’s what he calls Bush,” Aunt Stormy says. “Shrub.”
“Shrub,” I say.