by Phoebe Stone
I look at her bedroom door. I do not want to open that door. No, I don’t want to remember my mom lying there. I was screaming. I screamed and screamed, and a neighbor heard me and came to see what was wrong. I ran outside and I climbed that big tree. I went up there into the top branches. I climbed so high I could see all the world from there. There was a dark red sunset all smeared across the sky. I hid up there in the tree when the ambulance came. I saw them go into the house. I saw them take my mom away on a stretcher. She didn’t move when they carried her out of the house.
I hid up there until night, when I saw all the stars and lights of the city and it was cold and my arms ached. I held on to the tree, but I was shivering and shaking and people were calling for me. They called Louise, Louise, Louise. I heard them but I didn’t answer.
Finally, Grandpa got there and he heard me crying. He climbed up into the tree. They had ladders and lights and sirens, but Grandpa climbed up on his own for me and when he saw me, he said, “Oh, Louise, let me hold you. Let me hold you.” And I let him hold me way high up in that big dark gnarled tree. I never knew grandpas cried. I never saw a grandpa cry before. He cried like a kindergartner.
And then he carried me down out of the tree. He carried me past all the men in firemen’s hats, past flashing lights and lines of people. My grandpa carried me to his car and we drove away. And as we were driving, I fell asleep, and while I was sleeping, I was kind of forgetting everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. But not really. No, not really.
I stand up now and turn around the room. The light from the streetlamps comes through the curtains as I move toward the shut bedroom door. I take the door handle and turn it and walk in. The bedroom is empty. There is nothing in there at all. The streetlight falls through the window. I go to sit on the floor where the edge of the bed used to be.
The cars on the street swish by. Their lights run up the walls and drop away, making strange patterns on the floor and on my arms in the darkness. I am never leaving this house. I’m not going back to that art opening. Mrs. Elliot is not my mother. Mr. Elliot is not my father. This is my mother. This. Here. She wanted freedom from her life. This is what she wanted. I sit on the floor and cry until I have cried more tears than the rain falling outside.
After a while, I hear a noise in the house. Footsteps brush across the floor. And I look up and see a large shadow in the doorway. I look up, but I cannot tell who is there, and then another car swishes by outside and lights up the walls and I see it’s Henderson. He sits down on the floor beside me and he puts his arm around me and I lean on his flannel shoulder. For a long time we don’t speak at all.
Finally I say, “My mother killed herself. She died in this room here. Benny McCartney’s mother was walking by outside. She heard me screaming. She came to help. She called the ambulance.” Henderson lets me sob against his shoulder, all the while cars flash by outside and their lights ride up and down the lace curtains at the windows. The lights slide across the room and then retreat. They roll over our faces as we sit on the dark floor on Cinnamon Street.
“Everybody hates me. Annais hates me. Benny hates me. And Merit Madson and Janie Brevette hate me. They hate me because I’m small. Because I look like a grade school kid. Because I won’t grow and I’m just not cool and grown-up-looking and because I don’t have a mother and a father. That’s why they hate me. That’s why they wanted me off the gymnastics team. Because I’m so small and stupid-looking and because I have no parents,” I say.
“No, Thumb. That’s not why,” says Henderson. “Don’t you know why?”
“No,” I say.
“They wanted you off the team because they are jealous of you. You’re too good at gymnastics. When I first saw you, I couldn’t believe how graceful and quick you were. And you’re beautiful. You are beautiful, Thumb.”
“No,” I say. “I’m not.”
“Yes,” says Henderson. “You are beautiful. Don’t you think I would know?”
“I am?” I say and I look back at Henderson, and his face in the light from the streetlamp is softly pale and glowing. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he says.
I push my head into his shoulder. “Oh, Henderson, you’re such a good friend. The best friend I have ever had.” Henderson leans his head on top of my head and keeps his arms around me.
I can’t remember how long we stay there, but finally we walk back to the party in the darkness, the trees above us full of wind and blowing rain. The streets and sidewalks are strewn with shattered twigs and leaves and tiny pieces of broken things that somehow got pulled apart by the rain and wind.
The opening is mostly over when we get there. Thank goodness. My grandma is sitting in the car, waiting for me, and she beeps the horn from the parking lot across the way and waves. I button up my jacket and head across the shiny wet street. “Henderson, thank you,” I call.
And he calls back, “Thumbelina?”
And I go, “What?” And he just stands there and doesn’t say anything.
My grandma drives the car to South Pottsboro in silence. She doesn’t try to impress me with any loud rock music. She doesn’t try to ask me about what happened. She seems somehow to know. How does my grandma know everything? It’s weird. I just sit there quietly beside her and we put the heater on high to help dry out my soaking shoes and my ice-cold dress.
When I get home, my grandpa says, “How’s our party girl?” And then his face falls, collapses into millions of pieces, the way everything seemed to crumble and disintegrate in that movie Thelma and Louise. I go in my room and close the door.
I am still shivering and I feel like I have a sore throat. My forehead feels hot. I unbutton my wet jacket. I am feeling very feverish. I have chills and I lie down and pull a cover over me, still wearing my wet dress. Next to me on the pillow is my favorite book in the whole world. I have read it every night since I got it. Thumbelina: A Fairy Tale. I pick it up and look at the beautiful cover. And then I remember Henderson holding me in the shadowy room on Cinnamon Street, the soft brush of his flannel shirt, his sad steady eyes. In a haze of fever, I say out loud, “Benny didn’t send me this book. Henderson sent it.”
Chapter
Twenty-two
Sometime in the middle of the night, I become aware that I am sick. My throat is burning and my ears are ringing. I get up to go to the bathroom and I start shaking with chills. Grandma sees me from her bedroom and calls out, “Louise, are you all right?” I stumble and fall on the floor and Grandma gets out of bed and comes over to me.
The room feels like a wobbling spaceship lost somewhere in the dark sky. “Louise, Louise,” she says, “drink this water and take this Tylenol. Lift your head up.”
Somehow I am back in my bed and there is light coming through my penguin curtains. For some reason the bills on the penguins are the brightest yellow I’ve ever seen. One of the penguins seems to be waddling as the curtain quivers in the draft. Has it stopped raining? I have a glass of water right near my face. I don’t think I can sit up to drink it.
Then it’s night again and my pillow is damp and when I open my eyes, my grandma is leaning over my bed. She has a tray of food in her arms. “Louise,” she says, “you haven’t eaten anything for two days. I have some soup for you. Do you want to try eating some?”
“No. No. I can’t.”
Now the penguins are in shadows. Their faces are dark and gloomy-looking. The baby penguin has fallen over. Grandma turns on a light and it hurts my eyes. She fluffs a pillow behind my head, I think, and she offers me a sip of soup on a spoon. I tilt my head and take it. “What time is it?” I ask, and Grandma says it’s afternoon. “Which afternoon?” I ask.
I sleep and sleep and sleep and my dreams are confusing. I am moving through layers of penguin curtains. I get lost in the blowing light fabric. My mother takes my hand and leads me through them. She tells me something very important. She whispers it in my ear. It rolls over me like a breeze from the open window. When I wake up, I rem
ember that she told me something important that day in the rowboat. I remember what she said.
When I open my eyes, I see a bouquet of lilacs by my bed. Grandpa is sitting near me, reading. The window is open a crack and the curtains are breathing in and out in the air. Then I fall back asleep and days go by, or weeks, I don’t really know. I keep sleeping and sleeping.
Sometime, somewhere, I wake up again and Grandma sits on the edge of my bed. I think it is afternoon. I keep my head on the pillow and I tell her what happened at the opening and what happened after. I tell her how I went to Cinnamon Street and broke in. “Grandma, we need to fix the back door window now. Tell Grandpa,” I say. Then I tell her what I remember. All of it. I even tell her about my mom and the way I had found her that day lying in her bed. I tell her about the tree and me way high up in the arms of it screaming. I tell her everything, and then Grandma and I fall against each other, our foreheads touching. My grandma’s tears fall on my cheeks and my tears fall on hers. “Isn’t it strange that it was Benny’s mother who came in the house? She called the ambulance,” I say.
“It was Benny who touched off your memory, honey. Yes, it was. He helped you remember,” says my grandma.
“I miss her,” I say. “It hurts so much.”
“Me too, honey. Me too. But it’s a terrible thing to bury something inside you and never let it out. It’s better to face it, to yell and to scream and to cry and let it out. For both of us. Good not to keep things bottled up, because when you bottle things up, they can go off like a volcano.”
“I think I did go off like a volcano, Grandma, just like the one in the state of Washington,” I say. “And now it hurts because I miss her and I remember her. I didn’t want to remember her.”
“Oh, honey. Honey. Honey,” Grandma says, hugging me. “Oh, honey, honey, honey, honey, honey, honey, honey.”
My grandma draws back the penguin curtains for the first time in maybe a week. A week and a half? She opens the window and I can see that outside, it is spring finally. There are little green leaves on the trees and there is the sound of tiny unseen birds singing. There is a thick warmth to the air and a sort of pale yellow cast to everything. The lilacs in the vase by my bed fill the room with a delicate spring smell. “Your grandpa picked these for you,” says Grandma.
“Tell him thanks,” I say. “They’re beautiful.” And I close my eyes again and drift away into sleep, but it isn’t a confusing, terrible, dark sleep anymore, it’s a gentle resting kind of sleep.
Chapter
Twenty-three
When you are sick, you think of all kinds of very dumb things. One of the things that floats into my mind is that new T-shirt shop that opened up in the South Pottsboro shopping mall a while ago. The owner has been offering to make T-shirts with anything you want written on them for only five dollars a shirt. Suddenly, everyone in South Pottsboro has been wearing shirts with things written on them, things that are hard to say out loud and easier to put in writing. Grandma and I saw this guy and girl in a restaurant, and the guy’s T-shirt said, DARLA, WILL YOU MARRY ME?
“Isn’t that a hoot!” my grandma said. “Now, how did he do that?”
I explained it to my grandma and she went, “Aha, I get it. Maybe I should have a T-shirt printed that says, ‘Phil, it’s time to turn off the TV, put it in its suitcase, and go to sleep.’ ”
“Oh, Grandma,” I say.
I get out of bed and I go to the window. There is a pink magnolia tree in bloom right in front of our building. It’s so beautiful and I never even noticed it before. “Oh, that tree,” says my grandpa when he brings me some more soup, “that tree is why we bought this place. I mean it’s the most beautiful tree in the whole world.” Grandpa sets the tray down. I look up at him, and his face is framed by an explosion of pink and red magnolia flowers behind him out the window. In my mind I have a T-shirt made. It says, “Love you, Grandpa. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.”
The veggie noodle soup is like magic. It’s my grandma’s secret Wizard of Oz potion. I eat it all and then I lean back on my pillow and check my cell phone. I see that Reni has been leaving messages, worrying about me, wondering where I am. But there’s nothing from Henderson.
I walk around my room, and it feels seriously good to be out of bed and on my feet again. I think I’ve been sick for more than a week. It feels like forever.
When I try to call Henderson, a message comes on immediately that says, “Hey, the robots from planet Zing Zong have zapped Henderson Elliot to a distant galaxy. Please leave a message.”
Later in the afternoon, when I’m lying on top of my covers, basically better but not all better, Grandma taps on my door. “Sweetie,” she calls, “you have a visitor. Reni is here. Reni. Reni. Reni.” Grandma has her arms around Reni when she opens the door. My grandma is so glad to see Reni, it’s as if saying her name once isn’t enough. She has to repeat the name three times because once doesn’t say it all. My grandma knows that Reni is huggable and lovable, but Reni doesn’t know it and there’s no way to make her know something like that. She has to find out for herself.
“Reni Reni Reni!” I go.
And Reni says, “Thumbelina. Thumbelina. Thumbelina.”
And Grandma goes, “Oh, you gals don’t miss a beat, do you?”
Reni’s carrying a bouquet of roses. “A lady at a flower shop gave me these. They were free,” she says, “because they’re on their last legs.”
“Oh, like me,” I go. “Ha ha.”
Reni sits on my bed with the fading roses in her arms. She looks at me. Then she squeezes her eyes real tight and frowns. Finally she says, “I’m a jerk for mixing you up with Benny M. No, it was my fault. I led you astray. It wasn’t you. Are you okay?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” I say. “I’m okay. But I remembered everything about my mom. You know? You know what I mean. So be careful. I might start crying. Do you think you can be friends with a true Kleenex hound?”
“It was my fault. I’m the serious jerk,” goes Reni. “I went wild and ate two tubs of ice cream and a whole box of cookies and four ham sandwiches. I’ve gained five pounds this week. I’m sooo bummed. It’s too late now. I’ll never get to go to the Spring Fling Dance.”
“Me neither, Reni. But it’s only one dance, and there will be others coming along. My grandma says there will be lots more dances. And we’re gonna change things. Soon, everybody in the world will be begging to be our friends. Come on, Reni, put ’em up. Put ’em up.” I make two small fists and I hold them in front of my face.
Reni looks down at the roses. “Even if I had lost twenty pounds, Justin Bieber wouldn’t show up from Hollywood to take me to the Spring Fling Dance. He never even answered my letters.”
“No,” I say, “probably not. Hey, letters only cause trouble.”
“Yeah,” goes Reni, “maybe. Still, if Henderson hadn’t been gone, I wouldn’t have eaten that whole tub of macaroni and cheese at midnight. Henderson guards over the fridge. He would have stopped me.”
“He would have?” I say. “Henderson stops you from eating stuff?”
“Yeah,” she goes.
“Where is Henderson anyway? He doesn’t answer his cell.”
“He got accepted at the writer’s camp in Idaho. He’ll be there for a few more weeks. He can’t have a cell phone there. It’s against camp rules. But he can call home once a week from their office,” says Reni. “This is a big deal, you know.”
“Has he called home yet?” I say.
“Yeah,” goes Reni, “he’s having a pretty good time. They have an indoor pool there. He’s written fifteen more pages on his novel. He’s changed the title and there’s some girl who’s in love with him. She’s been following him around, calling him a genius.”
“She’s stalking him!” I say “He should notify the authorities immediately.”
“No,” says Reni. “He didn’t say she was stalking him.”
“Oh,” I say and look down at my fingernails that I pain
ted with silver nail polish the night of the party. When I’d finished painting them, Grandpa said, “Looks like you just slammed your fingers in a car door, pal.” Maybe so. Maybe so. (I am chairman of the board of idiots who don’t know until it’s too late what they feel.) I need to talk to Henderson. Who is this creep following him everywhere, throwing around words writers love to hear? I mean, tell a writer he’s a genius and of course he’ll start liking you. But that’s cheating. I have to talk to Henderson. It can’t wait.
“When are you going back to school?” says Reni. One of the roses on her lap is dropping its petals. They fall on the floor around her feet.
“Soon,” I say.
“Good, I’m glad you’re going back. I was worried about you.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Thumbelina?” says Reni. “If Benny didn’t write the note and if Benny didn’t send you the book, then who did?”‘
I look at Reni and I get tears in my eyes again. I remember Henderson holding me in the darkness of Cinnamon Street. I remember his long arms around me. I remember his voice softly in my ear. “Frosty the snowman was alive as you and me.” I take Reni’s hand and I squeeze it and I don’t say anything. I keep looking at Reni and tears keep rolling and pouring out of my eyes.
Then Reni’s cell phone rings and it’s her mom. She wants Reni to go to Tall Girl with Annais while she buys her some spring clothes. “My mom says I have to go along to show support and give my opinion.”
“Reni, tell me something. Does Annais ever have to show support to you?” I say.
“Oh, wow, look at the tree outside your window. It looks like a big bouquet from heaven,” says Reni.
“Yeah,” I say. “Anyway, I hate going to Tall Girl. I always feel like such a small girl. But do they have a shop called Small Girl? No.”
“Duh,” goes Reni, and she stands up to leave. “These roses need to be in water.” She smiles. She looks five pounds fatter and five pounds sadder.