The Center of Winter

by Marya Hornbacher

  I peered at her. “You been crying?”

  “None of your fat business,” she yelled.

  “Just asking.”

  “Well, don’t.” She rolled onto her other side. She was so short. Her whole self only went halfway down the bed.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “What’m I supposed to tell Mom?”

  “Tell her,” Kate said, sounding mad, “to go straight to hell!”

  She kicked the wall, but not very hard, because she wasn’t wearing any shoes. Besides, she didn’t mean it. I went out of the room and out the back door, the screen slamming behind me. I sat down in a chair on the porch. My mother was crouched in a patch of hostas that were starting to send up shoots. She was clearing out dead leaves so the hostas could breathe. She turned her head and fell back on her heels.

  “Where is she?”

  “In her room. She’s got the sads.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” my mother sighed. “If it’s not one thing. That is the moodiest child I ever met in my life.”

  Through the screened window came Kate’s voice. “I am not moody!” she yelled.

  My mother looked startled and began to giggle.

  “Quit laughing!”

  My mother started laughing so hard she fell on her butt in the dirt. She straightened up and brushed herself off. “Poor little thing,” she said. “Esau, come here and help me.”

  I helped all afternoon. “What are we planting?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Whatever looks good to us at the time.”

  “We don’t have a plan?”

  “Nope. We go up to Kittie’s farm in a few weeks and buy what’s pretty, and then we plant it.”

  I fretted. “We should have a plan,” I said. “We should map it.”

  “A garden map?”

  “Well, how are we supposed to know what’s where? What if something’s already buried and we dig it up by accident?”

  “Then we replant it.”

  “It doesn’t like that. I bet. I bet plants don’t like getting dug up, once they’re all nice and planted.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, make a map.”

  “How come he gets to make the map?” came Kate’s voice.

  “Did you hear something?” my mother asked.

  “No.”

  “I said, how come he gets to make the map?” bellowed Kate.

  “On the other hand,” said my mother, “if your sister ever came out of her room, she’d get to help with this whole garden business.”

  “I want to make the map,” I said, feeling stubborn.

  “I want to help!”

  “Well, sweetheart,” said my mother in exasperation, “you can’t very well help from there, can you?”

  There was a thump from the corner of the house, a pause, and then the sound of the screen door. We turned around to see Kate, who was standing on the porch in her socks.

  “Kate, shoes.”

  She turned around, ran back in, and came out wearing her shoes. “Help tying!” she yelped.

  “For heaven’s sake, doesn’t she know how to tie her shoes yet?” my mother sighed.

  I set down my clippers and stepped through the mud to help. She did know how, she just liked me to tie them. I’d seen her tie them just fine by herself, but who cares?

  Kate dashed off in front of me, grabbed the clippers, and said wildly, “What? What?”

  “Clip the hedge,” my mother said. “Don’t make any holes.”

  Kate clipped the hedge one leaf at a time. “Okay,” she said, as if she’d planned the whole thing herself from the beginning. “Esau gets to make the map. But I get to pick what.”

  “You can pick what we plant.”

  “Right. Whatever’s pretty.”

  “Within reason,” my mother said. “No roses.”

  “Roses,” Kate said.

  “No roses.”

  “Yes roses. Specially roses.”

  “Honey, roses are really hard to grow.”

  “So what.”

  “So we don’t know how to grow them.”

  “We can figure it out,” I said. “We’ll get a book.” I liked this plan.

  “No, we won’t,” my mother snapped. “We won’t get a book. We won’t get roses. I am done with this conversation.”

  Kate clipped and clipped. She couldn’t even reach the top of the hedge, which was growing wild all over the place. Meanwhile the side of the hedge was getting kind of choppy. “Orange roses,” she muttered.

  “Dammit!” my mother yelled. She was yanking weeds and flinging them into a pile. She stopped, stood up, and put her hands on her hips. “Now tell me,” she said quietly. “Just what would make me buy you a goddamn rosebush when you’re sitting here acting like a couple of brats about it. Hmm? Tell me that.”

  We didn’t answer for a minute.

  “I want a rose,” Kate said, narrowing her eyes, “for my birthday.”

  My mother tossed a handful of weeds in a garbage bag and went into the house.

  Kate looked at me, guilty and triumphant.

  I smoothed a patch of dirt with both hands until it was completely level. “We should maybe say sorry,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Why are you being so rotten?” I asked.

  She snipped what was left of the hedge and sat down with a thump in the dirt. “I don’t know.” She sighed. “I just wanted her to be happy.”

  I snorted. “You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

  “She likes roses. They’re her favorite.”

  “They are?”

  She nodded. “They had roses at their wedding. She told me.”

  I scratched my name in the dirt with a pointed rock. “Maybe she doesn’t like roses anymore.”

  “She has to. They remind her of Dad.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be reminded of Dad. Did you ever think of that?” I asked.

  Kate looked confused, and her chin started to wrinkle. She shook her head.

  I grabbed her hand. “Come on,” I said. We went inside.

  Mom was lying facedown on her bed. She turned her head to the side when she heard us knock.

  “We’re sorry,” Kate said.

  “That’s okay,” my mom said, flipping over onto her back. “I’m sorry I shouted at you.”

  Kate took a running start and dove onto the bed. “Are we done being mad?”

  “All done.”

  I climbed on next to my mom. The three of us snuggled up.

  “I think a rosebush would be lovely,” my mother said.

  Mom was going out that night.

  This was a new development. It made me nervous. Kate liked it. She knocked on my door and found me drawing in my closet.

  “Come on out,” she said. “Let’s make dinner.”

  “No.” I was busy. I was drawing up plans. It was important that I complete my plans. I was designing a house full of hiding places.

  “You have to. I’m hungry, and you’re in charge.”

  “Where’s she going?” I was trying to figure out if there was room in the wall I’d drawn to make a trapdoor.

  Kate shrugged. “Dunno. Let’s have pancakes.”

  “Is she going to Frank’s?” I scowled and drew the trapdoor in. I lifted my hand and studied my work, trying to figure out where the dumbwaiter should go.

  She sighed. “Fine. I’ll make the pancakes. You can just sit there while I do it. But either way, you have to come out. To make sure I don’t burn the house down.”

  I followed her into the kitchen and hopped up onto the counter. We could hear Mom in the bedroom.

  “Who’s she talking to?” I asked.

  “Herself.” Kate pulled the Bisquick from the cupboard and the milk and an egg from the fridge. “She’s crazy. Like the whole rest of the world.” She snorted.

  “I’m not too crazy lately,” I said, affronted.

  “No. You’re all right,” she agreed.


  Mom came out of her room. “Does this look okay?” she asked. She wore a green dress.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she went on, ignoring me. “Maybe I shouldn’t go out.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Oh, Donna and I are just going for a drink.”

  “Why can’t you have a drink here?” I asked.

  “Because they want to have grown-up talk,” Kate said.

  “Oh.”

  My mother looked at me apologetically.

  “You’re wearing an awful lot of makeup,” I said just to be mean.

  “Too much?”

  I shrugged and watched Kate stir the batter furiously.

  “Are you getting married?” Kate asked.

  “What?” my mother asked, startled. “Kate, for heaven’s sake. No, I’m just going to Frank’s to have a drink with Donna and that’s it. That’s that.”

  Kate looked at me pointedly. The screen door slammed in the front hall and here came Donna’s voice. “Claire? You ready?” Donna appeared in the kitchen.

  “Where’s Davey?” Kate demanded.

  “I don’t know. He’s around here somewhere,” Donna said.

  “Here,” said Davey, coming in through the back door, carrying a toad.

  “Oh, what in the hell have you got?” his mother groaned.

  “Frog.”

  “That’s a toad,” I said.

  “Is it?” Davey asked. “It’s a toad,” he said to Donna.

  “Yeah, I heard him. Where’d you get it?”

  “Puddle.”

  “For pity’s sake,” Donna said.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go,” my mother worried.

  “Oh, go!” Kate yelled. “Just go and have your grown-up talk if you’re going.”

  “All right,” my mother said, kissing Kate’s head, then mine, then Davey’s for good measure. Davey looked startled, but then he always did.

  They left.

  “Where should I put him?” Davey said. The toad croaked.

  “He needs a relatively damp environment with some rocks and some greenery, possibly some leaves, to feel at home,” I said.

  “Tub,” Kate said. She stood on a chair, pouring a spoonful of batter onto the griddle.

  “Tub,” Davey said, turning on his boot heel and heading down the hall.

  He came back out and said, “Rocks.”

  “In my room,” Kate said, pointing behind herself with the spoon and splattering batter on the linoleum. Davey headed off again, passed by with his hands full of rocks, then disappeared outside, coming back in with a pile of wet leaves and some branches.

  When he was done, he leaned against the stove to monitor Kate’s progress. She was not so good at flipping pancakes because she always did it too soon, so he got to be the one who flipped. She poured, he flipped. We wound up with a pile of tiny pancakes each and settled onto the floor in the living room to eat around the coffee table.

  Kate buttered each of hers individually. “We could go to the graveyard,” she said.

  I looked at her. She passed her knife to Davey so he could butter his. Down the hall, the toad croaked. “It’s not that far,” she added. “Specially on bikes.”

  “Your training wheel’s busted,” Davey reminded her.

  “I could ride in your basket.”

  “Could do,” Davey said.

  “You been there before?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “She cuts out of school,” Davey said, and then, “Ouch!” when Kate hit him in the arm, hard.

  I looked at Kate.

  “What?” she said. “Mom never takes us. Davey cuts out too.”

  “Well, you can’t very well go by yourself,” he said through a mouthful of pancakes. “It’s getting dark,” he added. “If we’re going, we should go pretty soon.”

  We finished eating in a hurry and washed up. We decided it would be safest to ride back roads and wait until we were outside town before we got on the county road, otherwise we could be spotted. We put oranges in Kate’s book bag, and some emergency medicine for me. I zipped Kate and Davey into jackets in case it got cold after dark, and we all tied our shoes in double knots. We decided to bring the toad, who otherwise would be lonely, so we named him Arnold the Toad in honor of our mission and put the rocks and sticks in Kate’s book bag with the oranges and then put the toad in, Davey holding his hands over the opening while I zipped and Arnold hopped.

  And that was how we came to be riding our bikes, with Kate’s feet sticking out of Davey’s basket, down County Road 10 toward Nimrod in the purple dusk.

  The fields were steaming and black, all damp and tilled for planting. A low ground fog spilled through the property fences, through the dead weeds that bordered the shoulder of the road. To the east, the moon was coming up over a loose string of barns and silos, and to the west, the sky was still orange from the sun burning itself to sleep.

  I rode behind Kate and Davey. They were a many-limbed shadow on the road. The air was cold and full of spring smells so I just breathed, dizzy with oxygen. My legs were shaky from not being used much in a while.

  “How far is it?” I called.

  “A ways,” Kate called back.

  “A long ways? A medium ways?”

  “A medium-long ways,” she called. “Are you okay?”

  “So far so good.”

  The dark deepened as we rode north. It seemed almost as if we were riding into the night, leaving the day behind us in Motley. The sign for Nimrod was the only sign for miles, so we saw its shadow against the field long before we turned down the narrow road.

  “Here comes the sign!” Kate called, and we turned, our wheels crunching onto the gravel. “Not far now!”

  Nimrod had gone inside for the night and closed its curtains. Light seeped out of the houses. We rode down the center of the main strip, to the east edge of town, past a Tastee-Freez and a one-pump service station and a couple of bars.

  The trees thickened around the edges of the road. “We’re almost there!” Kate yelled, and Davey wobbled on the bike. “Hold still!” he said, and turned down a driveway I hadn’t seen.

  I hesitated, adjusting my eyes to the dark. Elms and oaks lined the sloped driveway all along its winding length. As we crested a low hill, the moon spilled over open fields of gravestones that spread out on either side.

  The gates of the graveyard were closed and the fence was high. Davey put his foot down, skidding slowly to a halt. I pulled up next to them to find Kate trying to wiggle out of the basket. “Hurry up!” she said. “Help me!”

  “I can’t,” Davey said. “If I get off the bike it’ll fall over, and then where’ll you be?”

  “Well, you help, then,” she said to me, annoyed with his logic. I leaned my bike against the iron fence, pulled her out, and set her on her feet. “Thanks already,” she said. “Sheesh.” She straightened her book bag on her shoulders. Arnold ribbited.

  “Should we check on him?” Davey asked.

  “He sounds okay,” she said.

  “How do you know if a frog sounds okay?”

  “How do we get in?” I asked.

  “Like this,” Kate said, and slipped between the bars of the fence. Standing there with her hands on the bars, she looked like a little prisoner. “Come on.”

  Davey followed her in, and I squeezed through.

  “You’re big,” Davey said.

  “Yeah, but he’s skinny,” Kate pointed out, and set off across the graveyard.

  I found I was frozen, with my back against the fence. I opened my mouth. “Kate!” I called. She stopped and turned around, her thumbs hooked in her book bag straps. She looked so sturdy and sensible.

  “What?” she said.

  I didn’t know what.

  “Are you getting weird?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? Do you need medicine? We brought your medicine.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “Ar
e you scared?”

  I thought about that. “I guess a little,” I said.

  Kate looked around her as if she was assessing the situation. “That’s all right,” she said. “Come on. If you don’t like it, we can leave.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. There’s no ghosts.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve been here lots of times, and never once ghosts or anything.”

  “Okay.” She waited for me and stuck her hand out. I took it and we set off. Her hands were supersmall and always hot. Hot, dry, teeny-tiny hands.

  Davey came up on the other side of me. Flanked by a two-person guard of midgets, I went down the rows of graves.

  “We don’t walk on the graves,” Davey explained. “That would be rude.”

  “Exactly,” Kate confirmed. “Did you know Aunt Rose was buried here?”

  “She is?”

  Kate nodded in the dark. “Fresh one,” she said, pointing to a dirt-covered mound. “So are a bunch of people I think we’re related to. They all have messages on their headstones.”

  “Messages like what?”

  “Like how they died,” Kate said. “Like in a war, or from a bad sick.”

  “Plague,” Davey piped up.

  “There’s no such thing as plagues anymore,” I said.

  “Not now,” Kate sighed. “A long-time-ago plague.”

  “There aren’t any plagues in Minnesota,” I said. I was almost sure of this.

  “Suit yourself,” Kate said mysteriously, as if she knew something I didn’t. “Right,” she commanded, and our battalion turned right at a crumbling stone cross. “That’s the baby one I like,” she said, pointing. She stopped and crouched at a headstone on which I could make out a carved cherub face that looked like a monster in the dark. “‘Baby Georgina, Beloved Daughter, Gone Home to Jesus Too Soon.’ She was four.” Kate straightened up and we went along in silence for a while.

  “I could die,” she announced.

  “But you won’t,” Davey said.

  “But I could,” she said.

  “From what?”

  “Dunno,” she said. “People die. Everybody dies.”

  “Yeah, but not right now.”

  Kate said nothing. “But sometime.” She had to have the last word.

  “I’m going to die of being an old man,” Davey said thoughtfully. “I’ll just all of a sudden get tired of being alive, and boom, I’ll die.”