“I’ll be so mad if he threw out my toys.”
Phil ignored me and continued his story. “When it was time to go, she didn’t want to get in the car.”
“You didn’t leave Momma at the old house, did you?”
“I wanted to. I was that mad. So was Dad. He had to beg her to leave her room and get in the car. And once she was in her seat, she just put her face against the window, and didn’t move.”
“But you brought her here, right?”
“Yeah. I didn’t actually see her get out of the car because Dad took me up to this room and told me to stay here. But I could hear them fighting downstairs. The whole house echoed because there was no furniture in it.”
“What did they fight about?”
“I could only hear Dad. He said, ‘Get in the house. What’s wrong with you?’ And other stuff. Stuff you’ve heard him say before.”
“So they didn’t fight. You mean Dad yelled at her.”
“Never mind. You’re not listening.”
“I want to know where she is. Dad says she’s away for a while, but where?”
“Maybe she’s in the hospital. I don’t know.”
“Is she sick?”
“I said, ‘I don’t know.’”
I expected him to say something about the smell of my sleeping bag. I hated when he teased me, but it would mean things were normal and we’d be all right in our new home. Instead he lay back down and didn’t speak again that night, though it was a long time before either of us shut our eyes. I stared at the silhouette of my brother in the bare room and tucked my knees to my chest. When I opened my mouth to cry, there was no sound.
8
Sassafras
FROM THE OUTSIDE, OUR house was grand, like the others on our street: red brick, white columns, and a long walkway lined with flowers. The houses were not identical as they were when we lived on base, but instead had colorful shutters, sun porches, bay windows, gardens full of roses and fruit trees, and the smell of chlorine coming from the backyard pools. During those first weeks, we’d traded in our station wagon for a Volvo, and soon we looked more like we belonged on our street.
But it was the inside of our house that showed what Dad had made of our lives. To walk through our front door gave the feeling of stepping inside a military bunker. The rooms remained barren and impersonal, only containing furniture that was absolutely necessary. Nothing on the walls, nothing so extravagant as a side table full of scented candles. Dad had painted each room a gray-white he said would be easier to keep clean, but it made our house dingy and cold. It was essentials-only living, with unused rooms locked and vents closed to save on energy bills.
Momma had filled our old house with wonderfully useless things: fruits and vegetables made of painted plaster, vases filled with felt flowers on wire stems. Sometimes she stuffed those flowers inside a drawer and replaced them with real ones—purple sage, red Indian paintbrushes, tall grasses—everything bending and lovely. These decorations were not a part of our new world.
When I was alone, I scoured every bit of the house for the items that had mysteriously disappeared in the move. I opened drawers, cupboards, closets, hoping to find Momma’s sewing kit, her clothes. Where were these things? I stood outside the locked doors, frustrated and jiggling the handles.
I was so desperate to find anything at all that had belonged to her I even opened the basement door and stood at the top of the long flight of wooden stairs with no backs to them. We were not allowed to play there. Dad had warned us that the unfinished floor was full of nails and possibly rats. What frightened me most was the rickety staircase I feared would send me on a long drop to my death. Still, while Dad and Phil were laying down new carpet in our bedrooms, I put one trembling foot on the first step.
There was a strange, ticking quiet. Maybe the rats, I thought, and took another step. Or maybe the sound of the stairs starting to give way. I continued down, looking out on both sides of the staircase to see nothing more than cinder block walls. It was colder and darker the lower I went, and my footsteps echoed. When I reached the landing, where the staircase turned to the right, I patted the wall for a light switch, but felt so nervous letting go of the rail, I decided I would brave the dark.
As my eyes adjusted, I scanned the enormous, empty space on the right-hand side of the staircase. Nothing but a single door, painted, it seemed, with only one coat of white, the knot holes showing through. To the left of the staircase, more empty space except for a curious door about three feet above the floor line with a string tied through the hole where there was no handle. I started to take another step when I heard a terrifying rumble, and believing the staircase would collapse and trap me in the basement with no way out, I sprinted back to the top. Only when I was sure I was safe and my panting slowed enough to listen closely, did I recognize the sound of the dehumidifier.
After days and days of searching, one thing was very clear. Momma was not a part of this new house in any way. This was my father’s world, lean and orderly. And he modeled for us his strict routine: He shined his shoes every Monday, shopped for groceries every Thursday, had his hair trimmed at the Pentagon barbershop every other Friday. He might have replaced the metal comb and ballpoint pens in his shirt pocket from time to time, but no one ever noticed the change. Every evening at ten he emptied his coins onto the bedside table before clicking the turn switch on the lamp and going to sleep.
He tried to instill in us this same kind of order, giving us lists of chores to do—not that Dad couldn’t do them quicker and better by himself, but hard work, he promised, would make us responsible, sturdy, and productive. He oversaw our work like a commanding officer: Pull that sheet tighter. Put more muscle into it. Be proud of your work. This was fine for Phil, who was quick to say yes to anything Dad ordered, and took great satisfaction in doing things before he was asked.
While you could bounce a quarter off of Phil’s bed, I refused to make that extra effort. When there was something heavy to carry, I whined that I couldn’t lift it without his help. In the kitchen, I hid dirty silverware under sponges, in the garbage disposal, in a box of cereal—anything to get the chore crossed off my list. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—keep track of the rules, or agree to something I didn’t want to do.
All that summer, we made the trip to work with him, driving along the Potomac—the suburbs on one side, D.C. on the other—learning the names of the bridges and landmarks, and finally reaching the Pentagon. The beige building with its huge parking lot was nothing like the marvelous five-sided donut Dad had drawn because you never saw it from the air.
Inside, we’d walk through the cement hallways, as men in uniform nodded and saluted and checked ID cards. Everyone there walked so tall, as if they had poles running through the backs of their jackets. They seemed amused to see a girl in the building, though Phil assured me they were laughing at my hair, which was so knotted I could only brush the top layer.
I’d slouch beside Dad as he and his colleagues talked of atomic clocks and spread spectrum radio signals, geostationary orbits and satellites. Listening to these conversations made me itch—first inside my sock, then behind my knee, my nose, under the sock again.
“Tillie, stand still,” he would tell me.
Phil, of course, stood perfectly still, eyes on whoever was speaking.
Sometimes I interrupted these men to tell them that I missed our old house, making Dad and Phil nervous, as if I might mention Momma at any moment. I never did. This was a habit as ingrained in me as brushing my teeth in the morning. I had not even considered telling them about Momma. What I wanted, what I needed, was sympathy. Instead, these men, with all their colored bars and fancy pins, recited the many places they’d lived and how it made them more worldly and made their lives more exciting. It is a military brat’s life to uproot and readjust, they told me. It would build my character. And while I did not appreciate all of this at eight years old, I would later.
Dad’s way of keeping me quiet was to rea
ch into his pocket and give us two quarters. Phil and I would wander the hallways and eventually end up at the snack bar, where we bought powdered donuts.
Toward the end of the summer, Dad led us past the soldier who guarded the room containing the giant computers. The whole room rumbled as the machines pumped out pale yellow cards punched with small squares and reams of paper covered in numbers. He said we could watch how the machines worked as long as we didn’t touch.
Sitting with our backs against the wall, Phil passed me a donut, and I licked off the powder, setting the rest down on the wrapper. We weren’t supposed to eat in the computer room, but the door was closed and there was no way to hear the crinkling of the package over the noise of the machines.
“Do you think she’s coming back?” I asked.
“Don’t keep asking me about Mom.”
“I miss her.”
“I don’t.”
Phil was sturdy in ways I never tried to be. When Momma disappeared, he did not ask for her, did not search for her or cry under his covers at night. He took in the facts—that there were new chores to divide between us, there would be no one home after school, and we were old enough to tuck ourselves in at night.
“You’re saying you’re happy?”
He crinkled his nose, as if to say, What’s that got to do with anything?
I licked the powder off another donut and Phil mouthed, Quit that, but he wouldn’t fight with me. Dad said the Pentagon was not a place to act like children.
“Tillie?” The door opened slowly, and I recognized her before she was sure she’d recognized me. It was Anne, wearing her fitted blue air force blazer with a short matching skirt. “Well, look at you two here, doing important work like your father,” she said.
When she approached, I felt my face flush and strained to keep my lower lip from quivering. She reached out to hug me, and I collapsed in her arms, needy and ashamed. I didn’t even like Anne, but seeing her was a crushing reminder of how certain I’d been on the airplane that I was on my way to see Momma.
“I know. I know,” she said.
What could she possibly know? I pulled away and stood, shaking with grief and rage, amid the rumbling machines.
“That’s right. Wipe the tears.”
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“I still work for your father, dear,” she said. “It’s just taken some time to make the move.”
Anne picked up the donuts and wrappers, sliding straight down because her skirt was too short for bending over.
Turning to Phil, she said, “It’s good to see you, soldier.”
I could see what it was in Phil that made people say these kinds of things. There was something about his face and his posture, despite the chubby cheeks and being one of the shortest in his grade, that made you forget he was a child.
“Well,” she said, “I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other. And I know I won’t find you eating in this room again.”
I thought of violins, Walter’s cigarette, her dumb dancing. I thought of how much my life had changed during that time, while I didn’t even know it was happening.
MY FATHER TRIED HIS best to distract us from Momma’s absence. There were evenings with board games like Clue and Pop-O-Matic Trouble, hikes into the woods, and picnics with his well-decorated colleagues, who carefully neglected to ask about our mother. Once we even camped out in our backyard, which was crowded with oaks, deep ivy, and a swimming pool—drained long before we moved in—with its blue-painted cement and a large crack running along the bottom. The only time there was water in it was after a storm.
We pitched the tent with the zippered door facing away from the pool so we wouldn’t accidentally fall in if we had to pee in the dark. And in a small pit of dirt surrounded by rocks, Dad built a fire where we roasted hot dogs and then used the same sticks to roast marshmallows. I helped Dad dig up sassafras roots, which we handed to Phil, who shaved the tough outer skin off the root with his pocketknife. A pot of water was already heating up over the fire, and we’d take those roots and cook them down into tea.
“Anyone have a Band-Aid?” Phil asked. He’d nicked his thumb and held it up to show off the blood.
“How badly does it hurt?” Dad asked, and I knew Phil had been caught being a sissy. “Do you think you cut into a vein or an artery?”
Phil shook his head no and wiped the blood on his jeans.
“Okay,” Dad said. “If you do need a Band-Aid, you’re welcome to go inside and get yourself one.”
Phil went back to work at another root, stripping off the leaves, and I asked what seemed to be the obvious question. “When can I get a pocketknife?”
Over a fire surrounded by stones, we made the most fragrant red tea, drinking even the bits of mud that had come off the roots and sunk to the bottom of our cups.
At bedtime, Dad lit the two-mantle gas lantern, the sound like a low and steady gust of wind that filled the tent. He checked my hair for ticks, combing his fingers along my scalp, while I giggled and covered my head with my hands to stop him from tickling. Dad pulled my hands back down to my sides, inspecting again, slowing down whenever he found a scab or debris from our day under the trees. In the end, he did find one tick. He used the tweezers from his pocketknife to remove it, before burning its body with a match.
“Time for bed,” he said. “Off you go.”
I crawled into my sleeping bag and lay there in the humid, buggy air, thinking of pearl-handled pocketknives and other wants that might fill me. Dad, glowing beside the lantern, took out his work papers.
“You have to work now?” I asked, lifting my head off the pillow.
“Go to sleep.”
“What are you working on?”
“I’m looking at some test results from one of our Timation satellites. Checking for errors.”
“You don’t like mistakes,” I laughed.
“There can’t be any,” he said, perfectly serious. “We’re making something that has to operate all by itself, and for a very long time. There’s no room for error.”
I put my head back on the pillow and listened to the scratch of his pen, and then beyond it, into the quiet. When I was still, sometimes I heard it: the sound of Momma singing, and her bracelets clacking against the edge of the pan.
Where is she? Is she okay? When is she coming back? Can we visit her? These were the questions I learned to keep to myself. Though I stopped speaking about Momma, some corner of my mind was always full of these thoughts. I often stood on the lawn, trying to think of the questions that would lead to the right answers.
Up and down the street, neighborhood kids loaded into cars with colorful towels and goggles—off to their last days of summer camp. I walked past them, invisible, until one Sunday I met a girl about my age jumping rope at the end of the cul-de-sac. She was not pretty, but she was extremely tidy in her white button-up and plaid miniskirt, her hair shiny and so short in back that most of her neck showed. She looked like Velma from Phil’s old Scooby Doo lunch box. As she jumped, she chanted a rhyme about Cinderella, and when she tripped on the rope, she stared at me as if I’d tripped her.
“What?” she demanded.
“I’m just standing here.”
“Be nice, Hope.” Her father had come outside, and he put his hand out to shake. “You’re the girl who just moved in.”
“We’ve been here a while.”
“Well, then,” he said, “I’m sure you and Hope can play together.”
“But Dad!”
“I’m sure you’ll have a fine time playing with …”
“Tillie,” I said.
“With Tillie,” her dad said. “And you need to change out of that uniform. You’re not allowed to wear it until school starts.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, glaring at him. Then turning to me with a shrug, she asked, “Do you like pickles?”
“If they’re sour.”
I picked up her rope and let it drag behind me as I followed her inside, where w
e ate an entire jar of pickles, then drank the juice. “What grade are you going into?” she asked.
“Third.”
“I’m fourth.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“A brother.”
“I’m an only. Which branch is your dad in?”
“Air force.”
“Army. What does your mom do?”
I learned from Dad that the easiest way to avoid a question was not to speak at all.
“Uh-oh. Something you can’t say? Is that why you’re looking so strange?”
There was a lot of shrugging.
I also learned from Dad that if you must speak, you could say true and interesting things that didn’t actually answer the question. For instance, someone would ask, “Where’s your wife?” and he’d describe her hobby of making dolls.
“My mother has orange hair,” I finally said. “And a crooked lip on one side where a kitten scratched her. And she’s very skinny if she turns sideways but not as skinny if you see her from the front. She’s a good singer. She’s a good dancer, too, and always wanted my dad to dance with her, but he never would.”
“Are you ever going to let go of my jump rope?”
I didn’t notice I was still holding it, and I let it drop. She laughed a little and then I did. I laughed much louder and longer than I wanted to. It had been a long time since I thought anything was funny.
“Can I come tomorrow?” I asked.
“I’m only here on weekends.”
“Why?”
“My parents are divorced. What do you think?”
And she filled me in on the shouting, the silent treatments, and the one-handed lady who drank with her father all afternoon in the living room and stood behind him with her hands (one being only a wrist, really) in his front pockets. She told me about having to sit on the couch for the announcement and how her parents remained standing, and the weird smile on her father’s face as he packed, like he’d been released from jail. The worst, she said, was how her mother now stared into the mirror, saying she was too old and too fat for anyone to love her again, and after dinners she vomited up her food because somehow that would make her beautiful.
Up from the Blue Page 8