Strange Children

by Sadie Hoagland

  But I am here to tell you about your sadness and I am here to tell you where you are wrong about it. And I will dream about you and not know you. And you will dream of me someday. Nothing will ever happen now, you think, no true love. But something will happen. No love, no, but redemption, maybe. And it will make you forget whether or not he is dead by eating, or dead by bullet.

  And if you want to be sad, try leaving your own body.

  II

  Jeremiah

  It was almost morning. Though he had been in bed for a while, an hour at least, Jeremiah was still awake. It was hot. This house had a way of staying hot at night. So did the city, even though it should have been cooler by now, late fall. The desert could scald your bones in the day but at night it always let you breathe. He missed it. He was hot and lay on top of the thin covers of his twin bed and could hear the other boys talking and his brain kept listening and so he didn’t sleep. He heard them tell their stories. Abuse, asshole stepfathers, mothers that were too drunk to do any mothering. It was like this a lot in the Home and he wanted to go tell them to shut up. They weren’t all any longer in the times, in the places, they were talking about, so who cared? They were instead in this modular home, with cheap thin walls and sticky floors and rooms for boys with nowhere else to go. Jimmy’s Home. Jimmy loved all the boys, he took care of them. He bought big boxes of pasta and bags of cereal and bulk wrapped T-shirts and boxers and brought them over and held meetings. Jimmy had let Jeremiah stay here and maybe he should be grateful but just then, as the night became a shade lighter, he wanted to burn the whole place down. Jeremiah didn’t talk anymore about where he came from. It was not bad. It was not bad at all.

  It was red and beautiful.

  The boys stayed up late like this when Jimmy brought over beer. Jeremiah sometimes stayed up too, but never said much. He went to bed before Jimmy disappeared with anyone, into another room, but he knew it happened. If Jimmy ever tried that with him, he told himself, he would kill him. He had imagined it so perfectly, how he would say sure Jimmy, and follow him into some room and wait until Jimmy, a thin man in his late forties with graying hair and ruddy skin, turned around and smiled, maybe unbuttoning his nice collared shirt, or sliding out the tongue of his belt and then Jeremiah would reach into his pocket where he kept his folding knife he’d found on the bus, and flick it open, thrusting the curved blade right below Jimmy’s heart before he even knew. Then, out the window.

  Jeremiah turned over again on his sheetless bed. But what if Jimmy surprised him in the hallway? Could he run or would the other boys catch him? How loyal were they?

  And if he did get away where would he go? It didn’t matter. It would be like when he came here. He was trying to sleep on a metal bench at the downtown bus station when Flynn walked by. Flynn, maybe two years younger than him. Skinny with jeans sitting just above his “junk,” as Duke called it. A noticeable kid. Big green eyes. Dark hair cut short and spiked on top, he walked by again. Then he stopped and stood over Jeremiah.

  Yo man? You sleeping here? His words were soft on the edges and he talked like his tongue was swollen but it wasn’t until another night that Jeremiah noticed his hearing aid and asked what it was. Right then, all he thought was this kid wasn’t so bad, so two hours later he was sitting at the wobbly kitchen table of this place, eating a microwaved hot dog, telling Jimmy his story. The lights in the kitchen were bright fluorescent. The other boys listened at a distance, like wolves waiting for Jeremiah to finish eating. They wanted to ask questions. About the wives. About the sisters. About the rules. But Jimmy told them no, showed him a bed, told him to sleep.

  It took a few weeks before it became clear that nothing was free in this world, just like Cadence, his father’s third wife, said. But Jeremiah hadn’t paid; he’d quit drinking with Jimmy. He quit talking to the other boys. He wondered what Flynn had been doing at the bus station that late anyway, instead of being here, with the boys, ordering late night pizza. He stayed in this room he shared with another boy, Duke, most of the time.

  It wouldn’t last long.

  Even earlier that night, right after he went to bed, he had heard the boys talking about him. How he must have been fucked up. How he was fucked up. So fucked up even those cultish fucked up freaks won’t have him. Maybe he did something worse than he says, something worse than that girl he fucked, Flynn’s felted voice chimed in. Maybe it was a boy. Or an animal. Or something so super fucked up we can’t even imagine it. Then they had started talking about some movie and Jeremiah had turned his thoughts to the red earth of home, the pale green sheath around the crick, the sounds of morning there. Birds. Roosters. Water in a bucket.

  Jeremiah heard Duke open the door. The crack of light in his eyes. Duke flipped on the overhead.

  Fucking turn it off, dumbshit. He could talk like them, now. Did talk like them, and his words were a new skin he’d grown around himself.

  Duke flipped it off. Burped.

  Sorry, forgot you were in here. He swayed. Forgot you even fucking lived here. Duke was drunk and breathed through his mouth. Jeremiah could see his outline approach and stand over his bed. He could feel Duke sway toward him and he sat up.

  Are you a fucking fag?

  Jeremiah didn’t hesitate. His mind had been running itself wild around nothing, and now this was something. He jumped up and grabbed Duke by the throat. Duke was a year older, a half a foot shorter and had a mostly shaved head. Jeremiah squeezed his hand and picked him up by his throat. He heard Duke try to speak and choke. He waited a minute, feeling Duke’s apple and pipe under the thin skin of his throat. He could smell the inside of his mouth. Like bad pear juice.

  No, not now.

  He dropped him. Duke gasped and stumbled backwards. He turned to go to the door. Jeremiah got there first.

  Go the fuck to bed. He didn’t want the other boys hearing this now. He didn’t want to leave tonight. It was dark out. He wanted to sleep first. At least a little.

  Fucking . . . He pushed Duke lightly on the chest. Go to bed.

  Duke slunk back and curled up on his bed.

  Psycho.

  Jeremiah rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger, and went back to his own bed. He lay down on top of the thin quilt and waited for his heart to beat slower but it just kept right on. Part of him felt like he could do it all again, that if Duke said one more word, he’d be on him. And it was a feeling that made him feel strange in his body. Like a flu.

  He hadn’t ever hurt anyone back home. Not really. He’d never been a fighter like Levi. But now, it was different. Now he had it inside him all the time, a badness. The wickedness of this world he now lived in, maybe. It was inside him. But maybe it was home, too, that had done this.

  Pa did not stand up for me.

  His mother had not cried after him, either. But even first wife as she was, he didn’t expect her to. She was still like a finger puppet worn over his father’s thumb. She never spoke against her husband, not even for her son. The worst belt whipping his father ever gave him was for something he hadn’t done. The old Ford had been left in drive and rolled into the side of the pasture fence, splintering it apart. His mother knew the little ones had been playing in it earlier, well after Jeremiah drove it over to the mercantile to get flour for her. They had been playing, four of them, crawling from front to back seat and turning the wheel like they were driving. One of them must have kicked the gearstick. They had jumped out and landed in a pile when the car started its slow roll down the hill to the fence. His father thought he’d forgot to put it in park.

  He got four extra lashes for being a liar.

  Later on his pillow he found a package wrapped in a clean dishtowel and tied with poultry string. He lifted it and could feel the warm moisture through the cloth. He knew the smell, too. Gingersnaps. His favorite.

  He didn’t open the package but set it on the floor and pressed his boot heel into it. Grinding it down so that grease marked up the towel and when he picked it up the shit-colore
d crumbs spilled out. He cupped it and carried it to his mother’s room.

  She stood up when he opened the door, her hands wringing for forgiveness. He undid the towel and let the crumbs fall on her floor. Then he dropped the towel and string and looked at her in the eyes. He silently mouthed, Bitch, and walked back to his room before she could say anything.

  So why did he expect her to protest when Pa repeated the Prophet’s order that he was banished? Why did he expect her to scream and beg him to let me stay?

  Duke began to snore. Something he only did when he drank. Jeremiah thought about throwing a shoe at him but didn’t.

  His father had said, It’s time, and his mother had just stood there with her mouth open, not moving. Not even coming to him for one final hug. Just watching her son go from her and he looked at her and she looked away. His father held his arm tight all the way to the car. Like he’d try to run.

  He wondered where they thought he was now. He’d been gone almost two months. He wondered if they could imagine him in the city. If the Prophet could see him, somehow, fighting the wickedness all the time.

  He wondered if Duke would tell the other boys in the morning, and what they would do. Maybe Duke wouldn’t even remember. He’d noticed that about Duke, if you talked to him about something real late, he’d never say anything about it, and if you made a reference to a conversation that happened when he was drunk, he seemed not to get it.

  His father had pulled over not even on the outskirts of Pine Mesa, but in the middle of nowhere. He’d asked what was wrong. Get out, his father had said, and Jeremiah had protested. At least drive me to town, Pa. Get out, his father said again, his hands on the wheel and his gaze so straight ahead Jeremiah thought he wouldn’t look at him in the eye either. But then he turned, and looked at him straight, and said, Time to get out now. And so Jeremiah did, and could hear those last words of his Pa’s all the way to Pine Mesa.

  Even if Duke remembered, and told the other boys and they kicked him out, it didn’t matter. He’d be gone soon anyway. After he left there he’d go somewhere else. Jimmy’s wasn’t the only place, it wasn’t any place. He’d left the only place. He left, was made to leave, and now he’d burn in hell for eternity. So it didn’t matter.

  None of it did.

  Mercy Ann

  My life is a before and after picture. The before picture a black and white memory of Redfield that’s ugly to everyone else, and the after my shiny new life now that’s supposed to be better but doesn’t look like me. Now, after they took me and my mama and my sisters and all the rest of the Brown clan away from Redfield and split us all up into different homes. Mama with the youngest. The rest of us pulled off her like petals. Now, it’s like this: There’s me in the kitchen heating up TV dinners. There’s “Grandma” in her den watching old TV like Remington Steele, saying how she’s sweating over Pierce Brosnan but really she’s too old to sweat. There’s a green shag carpet ’neath us both and the smell of her little Boston Terrier Rosie that hangs round even though the little yapper’s been dead six months. Smells more even than all the barn cats from home ever did and they are still maybe alive. Alive and being chased by Levi, while Emma and Annalue leave out empty pie tins of cold milk for the one that just had kittens though now her kittens are like to be grown enough to be chased by Levi.

  There’s Stan asleep in the other room and Stan is Grandma’s husband who says I should just call him Stan and not Grandpa. I like this about Stan. In fact, I think I like Stan over Estelle, which is Grandma’s real name and what I’d want to call her, since she is not really my Grandma at all.

  Estelle also likes to watch The Golden Girls but for different reasons. She likes it so she can go on about how the actors are much younger than the women they are supposed to be playing. Sofia, she says, now she’s supposed to be about ninety, but that actress, seventy, tops. Hell, I looked better at seventy, she says to me as she peels the plastic off the top of the Chicken Alfredo-Lite box like it was layer of dead skin on a sunburn. She asks me why I am not eating and I shrug and edge into the big recliner chair that’ll only be mine until Stan wakes up from the front room couch, fixes himself a drink, comes in and says Okay, kiddo. Which is when I know to get back down to the shag. Now that I’ve almost a year though, Grandma says, It’s about time we got this young lady a chair of her own, Stan. You know, for TV time? And Stan nods like he agrees, squints his eyes under his wire gray brows and takes a drink. That’s right Estelle, he says, when he lowers the glass. Then he flicks his lip out with his tongue like he’s checking for the front of his teeth, like he wants to know for certain they’re all there.

  There’s the three of us, sitting in the glow of the television well after the eating is done, watching show after show until one of them makes a small rustling with the head or hand, some swatting flick to the direction of the kitchen. Sometimes we sit there until nine. Sometimes until midnight.

  It’s this time of the day, in front of the shows and the commercials, that I think about home and I watch the light from the TV on the green shag and try to see my Mama somewhere in it. I used to watch eyes glued because I liked seeing into the living rooms of the TV families, but then Estelle told me that they were sets, not real rooms like I thought and her telling me this made them seem somehow different, like it was more of a show than I even thought, so now I only part-time watch and listen or don’t listen. Estelle nor Stan ever tell me to do anything else, not any sewing or laundry or my homework or anything so I just sit there and do not ask them about anything. I just think of my Mama and the things I will tell her when I see her. The first thing being is that these people watch TV, a Devil’s tool according to my Mama, and that they have lived to a ripe old age. Not either one of them has been struck down by any mighty hand. This is just one of the things, though.

  When one of them gets to rustling I know now how to stand, how to take the TV dinner cartons to the trash compressor, to fold the stand-up dinner trays made of plastic that looks like wood. To nudge whoever is asleep, to help them both out of their chairs. If Estelle’s been asleep sometimes she’ll mumble for me to be sure and let Rosie out and then I have to say Rosie’s gone, Grandma, Rosie’s gone, and watch her eyes get big and awake until she realizes it’s me and it’s true and then I watch her paw over the shag on two slow feet and I turn off the TV and stand for a minute in the dark afterglow and think of the way the light stays in the screen like it couldn’t really be changed that quick from on to off.

  This is how it all is and I am not complaining. It’s fine. Sometimes it’s even good. Like when it was Valentine’s Day and Stan brought home a dozen red roses for Estelle and a dozen pink roses for me. That was really nice; it was my first Valentine’s Day and I’d been feeling really nervous because of the ads in the drug store windows about Being Someone’s or someone being Yours and I didn’t really know any of the kids at my new school at all, and they all knew who I was and also what I was so I knew I couldn’t really count on any of them and then Stan came through and Estelle said she was happy to share her Valentine with me. Though I will say that when she said this, I felt unsure about whether Valentines are normally shared and then I felt nervous again, like I was missing something.

  I feel that way a lot. Maybe most of the time. There is a lot of this kind of secret talk at school, and I feel I am coming about sixteen years too late for it all. And the other kids, I know they think I’m strange too, because I’ve never been to a dance and because I don’t know how to play any of the sports in PE and have to learn all the time about myself what they already know about themselves, like that I hate dodgeball, but I like capture the flag. And I know this now, but there’s always other new games and even though I try there’s still always something else to learn. But some of the kids are nice, and explain things like the earthquake drills and other kids try to talk to me, like they ask me is it true that I was married. And do I have any kids. And is it true I have nine moms. And I answer them as best as I can but they always get t
hese looks on their faces like the answer was not what they meant by the question at all. And then I feel sick, like I’ll never be hungry again, and I go to the girl’s bathroom and sit with the pink tile and I think how this shade of hard cold pink like a dead tongue did not even exist to me before the FBI came and took my father away and put us children in homes that were not our homes, but they told us they would be at least for a while.

  Stan and Estelle do not ever ask me about my real life like the kids at school. I think this might make them good people so I guess I don’t mind when I hear Estelle talking on the phone or to the mailman at the door and she says something so quiet I can’t help but listen, like She’s a polygamy survivor, you know, one of the Holden clan they brought down last summer in Redfield. Very tragic.

  There was last summer. There was the orchard where it had always been, smelling and buzzing, there was the big cottonwood in the south field, and the sow pen and the smaller children working until mud was up past their boots. There was heat and my Mama and my sisters Ziona and Bess. All close-by. There was a day when three men and one woman all in suits came up the road and looked at me and asked me where my father was.

  There was the day I pointed at the horse barn and the woman in the suit leaned over and fingered a bit of my hair like she was checking to see if I was real.

  I watched the four dark-suited figures walk away down the road, getting smaller, and thought maybe they were people that were going to make us go to school in Pine Mesa again, which had happened one year and I had gone for three weeks and I had cried everyday but now I am glad because I can talk a little more like the other kids because I had that time been marked on the board every time I said a word from the Book or “ain’t.” And also I had found Nancy Drew books in that school library, which are unholy but not so bad, and even Josiah’s third wife, Cadence—who has skin and hair as light as snow and is not from Redfield—read them as a girl. So did Estelle, it turns out.