by Lisa Howorth
Dimma said cheerfully, “Of course you will be, darling.”
But I wanted her home for good right now. My mother ran into the house and up the stairs, calling my sister’s name. I couldn’t help myself and yelled after her, “Liz cut her hair! She has an ugly orange pinhead now!”
* * *
—
Brickie was in a great mood, for a change. He had always doted on my mother, his baby girl. I helped him clean the spider junk off the screened porch and we sat down to a long-awaited family dinner. Estelle had made her spectacular crab cakes—jumbo lumps of meat, one egg, a little mayo, a sleeve of crushed saltines, a pinch of Old Bay—along with corn fritters, green beans, and deviled eggs. The adults had cocktails and beer, and Liz and I were allowed to have a little beer served in Dimma’s champagne coupes. Even my sister seemed happy, and my mother said she loved her hair, and that they would do their nails together tomorrow, and that Liz could help her touch up her roots. To me she promised a trip to Rock Creek Park to find some crayfish, and she wanted to see all my new spiders, and we could all go to the Moon Palace, my favorite Chinese restaurant, for dinner. Everything was so nice, heartwarming, actually, like we were on Father Knows Best. I was sad for a second, thinking about fathers knowing best, and mine being gone, but I’d see him soon enough for our annual beach trip, and I wasn’t going to let that ruin the lovely moment. We ate and drank, engaging in pleasant small talk.
I told her about our plans for the Fiesta. “Please can you stay for it, Mama? It’s going to be right here at our house!”
Liz smiled slyly at Dimma. “How’d that happen?”
“It’s for a good cause,” Dimma replied. “And I hope it might keep some people occupied, and out of trouble for a while. It’s important to encourage children to have good causes—doesn’t everybody think?”
“I think it sounds like a wonderful idea, John!” my mother said. “I’d love to come, but…” She patted her heart softly, or maybe she was indicating her lungs. “Dr. Overholser doesn’t think I’m well enough to come home just yet.” My own heart sank, even though I’d known better than to get my hopes up.
“You boys can always plan another Fiesta next summer,” Brickie said. “If this party goes well,” he added, a little pointedly.
“Or maybe at Christmas!” I said, hope springing eternal.
Liz said, “Well, I’m here now. I can help with the party.” She scooped up a deviled egg.
“Umm…okay,” I said, surprised, and not sure I wanted to share the glory for what I believed would be an epic success. So that Liz would know she couldn’t be the boss, I added, “Elena has been helping us, too. And Beatriz.” I took a sip of my beer, spirits buoyed.
“How is Elena?” my mother asked, touching Brickie’s velvety roses on the table. “She sent me a sweet note at the hospital, saying she was going to look out for you while I was gone.”
I was not going to spoil the mood by mentioning anything about Josef’s increasingly disturbing behavior, so I concentrated on submerging my crab cake in the tartar sauce dish.
“Elena is a kind person,” Dimma said.
“Kind, yes,” Brickie said, passing the green beans around.
We chatted about the neighborhood, Liz’s new school, spiders, Brickie’s flowers. I was content. We were like a normal family.
Then the warm scenario was suddenly interrupted by a deep melodic voice calling from the street:
My knives, my knives, my knives are very sharp!
But my heart, my heart, my heart is so tender
Please bring me your knives,
I’ll make them cut well!
Pretty ladies, here comes your tenderhearted vendor!
Brickie, in the midst of passing the platter of crab cakes, froze. Then he snorted, “Harry Belafonte needs to tally his bananas somewhere else.” No one else said anything. “Another scrumptious crab cake, my dear?” he said pleasantly to my mother, who was looking down into her lap. Her roots stood out like a black scar on her scalp. She didn’t answer Brickie, and he set the platter down. He reached over to my mother’s lap and squeezed her hand. “It’s important that you eat, sweetheart.”
“The crab cakes are especially good tonight, aren’t they?” Dimma said evenly. “Estelle was very happy that you girls would be coming home to enjoy them.”
The singing continued. I knew it was James, the Jamaican knife-sharpener, coming around in his truck and summoning customers with his siren song. Max and Ivan and I liked James; he let us get in the truck and look at his knives, scissors, and tools while he sharpened them for Maria, Mrs. Friedmann, or my mother. All the ladies in the neighborhood liked him. He was handsome and cheerful, with a boisterous, musical laugh. Hearing his song now, I knew that something at our table had changed, but I had no idea what. My mother looked up at Brickie with a weak smile. “I think I would like more crab,” she said.
Brickie placed a crusty cake on her plate. “You need to put some meat on your bones.”
“Thank you, Daddy,” my mother said. “Mama.” She turned to Dimma. “Please be sure to tell Estelle how delicious everything is. I’m sorry I won’t see her.”
Not knowing what else to do, I reached across the table, grabbed a corn fritter, and stuffed it into my mouth. “Wow—that’s four, Piggy,” Liz said, her normal crankiness restored.
“That’s enough of that,” Brickie said in his most severe voice. James’s singing faded away into the evening. For a few minutes there was nothing but the clatter of porcelain and silver.
“Have you met any new people at the hospital, darling?” Dimma asked breezily.
“There are some nice people,” my mother said. “But not many interesting ones.” She pushed some food around on her plate. “Not anyone as interesting as Mr. Pound was, anyway.” She looked profoundly saddened.
“Oh, I’ll bet he was interesting,” said Brickie, his voice brittle. “I’m sure he had a lot of interesting things to say about his buddy Mussolini.”
Dimma said, “John.”
I yelped, “Mussolini got shot and they hung him upside down in a gas station!” I was proud to have something to contribute to the conversation, but nobody seemed interested and everybody was either sad or mad.
“How come nobody wants to know if I met any nice people at camp?” Liz said.
My mother smiled. “Well, did you, sweetie?”
“No,” she said sourly. “They’re all square and stupid and smell like mildew.”
My mother turned back to Brickie. “Daddy, that political mess is over now. Mr. Pound was just a harmless old man. He only talked about Italy and poetry with me. Dr. Overholser thought a lot of him, and didn’t think he was…sick.”
“Well, maybe they’ll take a look at his brain like they did Mussolini’s and they can figure out what the hell was wrong with him, then.”
Dimma slapped the table hard and gave my grandfather a fierce look.
“Do people collect brains?” I said.
“Don’t worry—nobody will be interested in yours, Scabby,” Liz said, sneering. “They probably won’t even be able to find it.”
“John, will you get us a couple more beers?” Brickie asked.
I brought the beers, glad for a job. I bowed as I presented a bottle to my mother—“Your wish is my command, madame”—and the grown-ups laughed more than they needed to. My mother hadn’t touched the crab cake but drank her beer thirstily. Then she said, quietly and as if she were far away, to no one but to everybody:
What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
She smiled faintly. Dimma said, “That’s lovely, dear. You remember that my mother knew Mr. Pound’s mother in Philadelphi
a, don’t you?”
I asked, “What’s ‘dross’?” Nobody answered.
* * *
—
After dinner, my mother said she was tired. She went around the table, kissing everybody good night, and went to bed. I went outside to find the boys and discuss what I’d heard, particularly about Mussolini and brains.
“Yeah,” Max said. “They have his brain in a jar.”
“But how can you tell if somebody is bad by looking at his brain?” I wondered aloud. “What does your brain have to do with TB?”
Max gave me a long look.
Ivan spoke up. “Maybe Mussolini got an earwig in there. That’s what Maria says will happen if you don’t wash your ears. They’re called tijeretas in Mexico.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I heard one of Dimma’s bridge ladies say that Italians and French people don’t take baths.”
Max asked, “Are earwigs the same as screwworms?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But Brickie told me that we should look out for screwworms. The government once dropped a planeload of something called Smear 62 in Florida or somewhere to get rid of them. Brickie said they eat flesh from open wounds.”
“Gah!” said Max.
“Maybe he was just trying to scare you,” Ivan said. “To make you quit fooling with spiders.”
We thought about these things for a minute, since we weren’t particular fans of baths, either, and we certainly had plenty of open wounds all the time. I changed the subject. “Did you see James?” I asked.
“He sharpened my knife,” Ivan said, showing us. “For free!”
“He never comes around at dinnertime.” Max paused for a second before adding, “Maybe he came to see your mom.”
I was shocked by this remark, but I also felt a prick of recognition. If it was true, it made sense of what had happened at dinner. I could only say, “My mom’s TB is better and she’s coming home for good soon.”
“Maybe your mom had to go away because she liked James too much,” Max said, nonchalantly poking a stick at a spider. “Not because of TB.”
“Your mom likes James, too.” I didn’t want to continue the conversation. I was numb with the sudden realization that ever since my mother had left, I’d had suspicions about the sanatorium story, which had been the easiest thing to tell me and Liz, but I’d bought it willingly, not wanting to think otherwise. Since James was colored, I knew my mother couldn’t like him too much, like a boyfriend. Could she? Maybe it was just one of the outrageous things Max often told us, like when he said that my sister was being sent to Holton-Arms because she was trying to “mate with boys,” or that he thought he’d seen Elena making out with Dawn Allgood’s boyfriend. Max wasn’t trying to be mean; it was his way of cluing Ivan and me in to adult things, even if he didn’t know if they were true. It couldn’t be! I felt like a chump. Needing to change the subject, I said, “Let’s get a jar for lightning bugs.”
“Okay,” Max said, punching my arm affectionately.
“I wish you guys wouldn’t mash them,” Ivan said with a sigh.
The sun was just about down, the very last of it dimming in the trees. The cooling air and descending dark flushed the lightning bugs from the lawns, and they rose, becoming blinking stars against the early-night sky. Unfortunately for some of them, Max and I would crush them on our bike tires so their iridescence would look cool as we rode up and down Connors Lane, a bat or two swooping overhead, until we were called in for the evening. Ivan would keep his lightning bugs in the jar by his bed, like a lantern, and let them go in the morning.
6
“We’ve done all the poster stuff,” said Max, “Maria’s going to make the cake, and Beatriz is doing the decorations, so we don’t really have anything to do until the day of the party but look for spiders, right?”
“But we haven’t figured out what the entertainment is going to be,” Ivan said.
“I know what it’s not going to be,” Max said. “That’s for sure.”
“Beatriz will figure it out,” I said.
We were outside, hunting and investigating—throwing worms and roly-polies into webs and watching the spiders scurry out to mummify and eat them. With Ivan’s knife we dissected some egg sacs—lots of them were starting to appear. Max found an orange-and-black calico spider that looked like a ballerina in its web, and I snapped a picture with my Brownie camera. We had worked our way down to the Allgoods’ house, where a yew was so covered with webs that, with its puffy red berries, it looked like a Christmas tree sprayed with canned flocking. We were so completely absorbed we didn’t notice a bike approaching until it screeched to a halt in front of us, startling us.
“What do you morons think you’re doing?” Slutcheon said.
“Nothing,” Max said, covering the Big Chief tablet listing our spider inventory.
Holding my camera behind my back, I said, “We’re just looking at spiders.” Ivan scooched over behind me.
“Oh, yeah?” he said. “What kind? Oooh, daddy longlegs? How ’bout this spider?” He reached out and snapped his middle finger at my arm, delivering a powerful sting.
“Ow,” I said, afraid to say anything else.
“I saw you guys are having a party,” Slutcheon said with a smirk.
Max said, “It’s just for people on our street.”
“But we’re buddies, right? I just might have to come.” He laughed, his mouth reminding me of Foggy, the Andersens’ dog.
Then Slutcheon pulled a cellophane cigarette-pack wrapper from his pocket. “I bet you don’t have one of these spiders,” he said. “I just caught it down at the park.” In the wrapper we could see a black spider with a red marking on its stomach.
“A black widow!” Max cried. “How did you catch it?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” He thrust the thing at us and we jumped back. Ivan let out a squeak.
“What are you gonna do with it?” I asked.
“Oh, let it bite somebody I don’t like.” He grinned threateningly and put the black widow back in his pocket. “Maybe I’ll bring it to your party. Hey, bend your arm,” he said to Max. “I got a new trick for you.” Slutcheon licked his palm, coating it with his disgusting saliva, and grabbed Max’s arm, knocking the Big Chief tablet to the ground. Max bent his arm obediently, knowing it was better to submit and get it over with. Slutcheon began rubbing the crook of Max’s elbow round and round, really fast, with his slobbery hand. After a minute, he stopped. The hairs on Max’s elbow were knotted into tiny balls. “Now stretch out your arm.”
“Yikes!” said Max, as the knots tugged painfully at his skin.
Slutcheon laughed. Having successfully tortured two of us, he turned his attention to Ivan. “Where’s your sex-bomb aunt, Rusky?” He leered. “Isn’t she usually babysitting you? You ever see her naked?” He sucked in some drool.
We said nothing.
“Her tits are huge, right?” he said. “She better stop bringing Commie refugees into my neighborhood, like that idiot Gellert. My dad’s going to get rid of them. He’s a big shot in the Immigration Service.” He reached out to me. “Let me see that camera.”
What could I do? I handed over my Brownie.
Slutcheon popped open my camera and yanked out the film, exposing every photo. Then he chucked the ruined film into the bushes. “This thing is a piece of shit. I just got a Polaroid.” He handed the Brownie back, fumbling like he was going to drop it on the street. Which he did.
I couldn’t speak. I could tell Brickie, who would call Slutcheon’s parents, but then the next time we saw him, he would just do something worse to us.
* * *
—
Just then a ’53 black Oldsmobile 88 convertible came down the street and pulled up at the Allgoods’, its radio blasting “Ooby Dooby.” Leonardo, Dawn Allgood’s older hood b
oyfriend, didn’t usually have much to do with us, but he hopped out of his car without even opening the door and strode over. “What’s going on here, squirts?” he said, really addressing Slutcheon. Leonardo picked up my Brownie and the Big Chief pad and gave them back to us.
“We’re…uh…talking about spiders,” Slutcheon mumbled.
“Really?” said Leonardo. “This doesn’t look like a cheerful conversation to me.” He stepped closer to Slutcheon and grabbed a fist full of his T-shirt. “Just in case you’re messing with these guys,” Leonardo growled, “don’t do it again, punk.” He let Slutcheon go with a shove, and our nemesis pedaled off furiously on his fancy Schwinn. At a safe distance, he yelled, his voice higher, like a girl’s, “You’ll all be sorry!”
“That kid’s a loser,” Leonardo said, and spit into the street. We agreed enthusiastically, and thanked him. “Where’s your aunt?” he asked Ivan. Naturally he had a crush on Elena; they sometimes talked when Dawn wasn’t around, and then there was Max’s report that he’d seen them making out one night. We were shocked and skeptical when he’d described what sounded to us as if Elena had been nursing Leonardo, like Mary and baby Jesus, but Max had retorted, “That’s not nursing, you dopes. Gah!” Maybe Dawn had gotten wind of it, and that might be why she hated Elena, and why I’d heard her yell at Leonardo, “That spy slut needs to go back to Russia, where she belongs.” I didn’t know what a slut was, but Max asked his older sister, who told him it was a “bad girl.” But we were intrigued with Leonardo, “our local rebel without a cause,” as Brickie referred to him, and we admired his cool car, dungarees, and greased-back ducktail with sideburns. He had a rockabilly band, Terry and the Pirates, who’d recently had a hit record.
Ivan told Leonardo he didn’t know where Elena was, so Leonardo sauntered off, saying, “Yeah, well, tell her how I saved you guys, okay?” In the Allgoods’ window, we could see Dawn and her blond combination ponytail-beehive peering out, and then she rapped on the glass impatiently, even though Leonardo was nearly to her door. We’d heard the story about the girl who had roaches in her beehive, and the Shreve boys swore they’d seen one crawl out of Dawn’s hair.