Silver Girl

by Leslie Pietrzyk

  He should have been upstairs, asleep. He was on a new shift for summer and had to be up at 4:30, so he went to bed super early. We were supposed to tiptoe barefoot all the time and whisper. No TV after nine. If the phone rang, “goddamn it” came charging through the bedroom door. He hated the new goddamn shift and he hated his goddamn boss and the goddamn economy. That was really why I was so tired, because I could barely sleep until the door slammed at five, the car revved twice, and he was gone. None of us could.

  I studied the sag of his face, how heavy the skin looked on his cheeks and jowls. Beard bristles glittered. They would be rough and scratchy now, shaved clean by morning.

  He said, “Your mother took Grace to Mercy Hospital.”

  “What happened?” My heart skidded through five or six beats. “How come no one called me at work?”

  “Just a broken arm,” he said. “No big deal.”

  “Just a broken arm?”

  “Kids break arms all the time,” he said. His eyes met mine, locked me into place.

  He opened his mouth to say more, then stopped. His tongue was bright pink, as if he had sucked on a Popsicle recently. One thumb swung down suddenly, crushing a gnat into the plastic place mat. There was the empty Popsicle box behind him on the counter. It had been half full this morning when I ate an orange one for breakfast.

  Then he said, “You broke your arm. Remember?”

  My words flashed out: “Is that the same way she broke her arm?”

  His eyes narrowed, and tiny muscles in his face tightened. “She slipped in the bathtub.”

  I looked away, to the Formica counter beyond his bulk, to the empty box and its zingy colors. I spoke quietly, slowly, a mumble really, or possibly I contained the words inside my head: “Haha,” I said. “I guess that is like me then.”

  “What’s that?”

  He had heard me fine. I said, “Nothing. I hope she’s okay.”

  A flicker of something on his face, something that made him pause a half second before spitting out, “I’m not taking shit from you. That fancy school doesn’t impress me.” He didn’t stand, but his figure sharpened into focus, looming itself into my mind. The room filled with the stench of chicken and grease and my own putrid sweat, like I was marinating in it. No escape. I hadn’t wanted to come back here yet again for the summer, but it was the cheapest thing I could think of. I would never be back. This wasn’t a home. There was a wad of cash in a paper bag under my mattress, as thick as my fist. Home had nothing to do with anything. I had to breathe, had to remember to breathe this time.

  The slamming door made us both jump. He receded, blurred, and I sucked in air.

  “We’re home,” my mother called. Her voice was cheerful, optimistic, a TV mom’s voice, a pretty lady reading lines off a piece of paper. “We’re fine. Grace is fine. She was very brave. It’s all fine.” Each “fine” scraped inside my skull, each cheery note.

  She glided into the kitchen, holding Grace close by her good hand, the Sunday purse knocking up against Grace. Grace’s hair was matted down on one side, and a sucker stick angled out her mouth. She was barefoot. There was a Band-Aid on her knee that wasn’t the kind of Band-Aid we used. She wore a pink T-shirt with an applique of a double-dip ice-cream cone, one of my old shirts that was too big, hanging down practically into a dress. Her right forearm, her drawing arm, was encased in a clunky white cast, stretching from the edge of her knuckles to just below her elbow, hammocked into a cloth sling. Her zoned-out eyes seemed to be struggling to figure out the room. She looked thinner, which wasn’t possible, because I had seen her this morning, when I promised I’d take her swimming on Saturday afternoon even though I was supposed to work all day Saturday.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Want some chicken?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Just a simple break,” my mother said. “I saw the X-ray myself. Nothing complicated. Kids are always breaking something, the doctor said. He was very nice.” She talked fast, while heaving her purse higher up her shoulder and tugging the empty stick out of Grace’s mouth, which she tossed onto the counter, maybe aiming for the Popsicle box because she hit it. Then, finally, she looked over at where my father sat as if it was now his turn to speak.

  “What else did the doctor say?” my father asked.

  “That’s all,” she said, pausing before repeating, “Yep, that’s all. Just the usual. Keep it dry, don’t scratch if it’s itchy, try to keep the arm elevated. Don’t go poking around inside the cast or stick anything down there. Lucky.” She bent down and smushed a kiss on top of Grace’s head, rested both hands on her shoulders and gave her the gentlest shake. “You scared us, little lady.” Grace’s head bobbled, then she looked at the floor. I thought she’d tell them she was sorry, but actually she didn’t, and it seemed like there was a moment when we were all waiting for her to apologize and my mother said again, like it was a cue: “You scared us, little lady.”

  “You bet,” my father said. Jovial. His teeth were like a wolf’s.

  “She’s not a little lady,” I said. “She’s a kid. She’s ten. She’s a little girl.”

  My father clenched his smile, narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Surely you’re familiar with figures of speech,” my mother interrupted. “God, I need a cigarette.” She fumbled in her purse for a crumpled pack, shook out a cigarette, but her twitchy fingers dropped it on the floor, which got her muttering as she picked it up, swiped it twice against her skirt.

  Grace spoke suddenly: “Doing that doesn’t kill germs. You should throw it away.”

  My father snorted, his version of laughing. “Gotcha.”

  “Christ,” my mother muttered. “No one’s dying from a dirty floor.” She shoved the cigarette between her lips, dredged a Bic lighter out of her purse. The cigarette bobbed as she spoke: “I’m out fifty bucks. Might as well catch up on some sleep since I missed my shift. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” She cocked her head, staring straight at me as if she expected an answer.

  So I said, “Sure,” but she kept watching me, and how was I the one to blame for the missing shift? I wasn’t an adult; I couldn’t take Grace to the hospital even if I had been here. Which I wasn’t. I needed the hours, too.

  My father moved in the chair, ratcheting the legs against the floor.

  The air in the room turned heavy, unbreathable.

  Not my fault, not. I crossed my arms, uncrossed them, let them hang stiffly.

  “It’s fine,” my mother said. “Everything is fine. Grace is fine. Like I said, lucky.”

  My father slapped both hands flat onto the table and stood. Grace’s shoulders jerked at the abrupt noise. “Bed,” he said. “Good idea. Get some sleep. Goddamn morning comes too fast.”

  My mother snapped her lighter, lifting the flame to the cigarette. Her face loosened, released its tension, and she smiled. She was still looking straight at me, but that smile wasn’t meant for me. Even relaxed, there were plenty of lines crisscrossing her face. Eventually these lines would dig through the same places on my face. Jess was terrified of wrinkles, so she slathered yellow Clinique lotion into her skin twice a day. My mother said Pond’s cold cream was good enough for anyone.

  And finally she turned, the flame out, the cigarette lit. “Gracie, let’s get you to bed.” She exhaled smoke and watched it dissipate.

  “I’m not tired,” Grace said. She drew her fingertips along the length of her cast. It was pure white except for one scribble toward the crook of her elbow, which I touched.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “The doctor,” my mother said, “which was very nice of him. We’ll all sign your cast tomorrow morning, Gracie. That will be special.”

  “It was prettier all perfect white,” Grace said. “I don’t want people messing it up.” She gave a snippy sigh and scrunched her face.

  “Somebody’s had a long day,” my mother said. “Somebody’s very tired and doesn�
��t even know it.” A stream of smoke huffed out, like a dragon. She dropped another kiss onto Grace’s head.

  “But I’m not tired,” Grace said. Her good hand plucked at the sling, fingers sliding up and down the cloth. My mother nudged her hand away.

  “Stop messing with that cast,” she said.

  “Your mother told you it’s time for goddamn bed.” My father’s face reddened to that splotchy color we all understood, and my mother sucked hard on her cigarette. Grace closed her eyes. I had painted pink nail polish on her toes last week and most of it had chipped off already. Then she painted my toes but didn’t do a very good job. Not that anyone saw. I wasn’t allowed to wear sandals to work. I knew Grace wanted a story. I knew she was afraid. She didn’t know that right now she could think about something dumb like nail polish.

  “Are you talking back?” my father demanded.

  My mother’s cigarette was stuck halfway to her mouth, smoke spiraling up. I thought about Grace trying to be so careful with the little brush but still slopping polish onto the skin of my toes, how that tickled. We giggled so much; maybe she had been messy on purpose.

  All those lines on my mother’s face. She must have been so depressed every time she looked in a mirror. I couldn’t imagine her ever young.

  I spoke cautiously, the way to approach a bristling dog: “I can put her to bed.”

  My mother’s nod was the barest movement.

  “I can take care of it,” I said.

  Grace chewed her bottom lip, sucked on it with tiny puckery sounds—the new tic after being forbidden to put her thumb in or anywhere near her mouth. She tried to keep this a secret but couldn’t. My mother sighed but didn’t flick her thumb and two fingers hard at Grace’s jaw, which was what she usually did when she caught Grace.

  “It will be fine,” I said.

  My father glared at me, a heavy look of lead. I stood straighter. Ash from my mother’s cigarette drifted to the floor. She always let the ash get too long, like going for some record.

  “Don’t you go upsetting your sister,” my father warned. “Or stirring up things that don’t concern you.”

  My mother’s cigarette finally made it up to her mouth and she drew in deeply. The red tip glowed. “She won’t,” my mother said. “Even if... Grace is still woozy.”

  Abruptly, Grace tugged her arm free of the sling and punched out her arm straight. “It’s heavy,” she said. “And hot. See?” The extra bulk of the cast turned her arm misshapen. “My arm is ruined,” she whispered.

  No one looked at my father. No one looked at Grace’s arm. No one looked at anything or anywhere. It was just a moment to be gotten through, and eventually my mother told Grace her arm was fine, and my father told Grace that he’d take her out for a Baskin-Robbins double-dip tomorrow, and I told her that I had an amazing new story about the Silver Girl, and when we were all finished talking about all that, my father stood up and lumbered up the stairs, noisy as a bear, footsteps clomping hard and fast overhead, though we knew exactly how quietly he could walk that hallway when he wanted. My mother spun and followed, leaving a contrail of smoke. I snapped off the overhead light, which left only the hazy bulb over the stove. Noiselessly, I pulled out a chair for Grace and helped her settle in. Then I brought the crayons and paper from the rug in front of the TV, and I silently joined Grace, slipping into the shadows around the table.

  I could ask her what happened. Though I knew. I already knew. And she wouldn’t tell. Ask, and I’d just be forcing her to lie, to use my mother’s easy word: Fine. I’m fine. Ask, and I’d have to admit that the lie was all I wanted to hear.

  I unfolded the top of the chicken box, trying not to gag on the explosion of greasy air, the fried smell a slippery fog your hand reaches to swipe away, like fanning at my mother’s cigarette smoke, though by now I’d given up on that, since waving it away got her going on how ridiculous I was, that a little smoke never hurt anyone, that maybe I’d lose some weight if I bought a pack of Virginia Slims now and then.

  Grace fumbled for a drumstick with her left hand, tilting it awkwardly toward her mouth, maneuvering with her lips before biting down, no chipmunk nibbles, but laying in deep as if she hadn’t eaten for a while. I thought I’d asked if she needed breakfast before I left for my ten o’clock shift, but maybe not. She wouldn’t simply say, “I’m hungry,” like anyone else’s little sister. She finished in about two seconds and grabbed another.

  “So I don’t get to sign your cast?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “It’s messy.”

  “Really?”

  She chewed, swallowed, then slid a thin bone out of her mouth, which she set onto a napkin. I thought about that chicken leg snapped in half, the force needed, the jagged splinters on either side of the break. Kids break bones all the time. Doctors patch them up. Bones knit together, as good as new. I heard the words in my mind, a doctor’s soothing voice saying them.

  “You’re worried about your cast being messy?” I asked. “Or is it something else?” Maybe she would tell me. I thought I knew. She didn’t want his name on there. He would go first, signing with a permanent ink marker, a big fanfare of a signature.

  She grabbed a biscuit and teased it apart. But she struggled to tear open a packet of honey; the cast was awkward, her fingers slippery. I took the packet, bit down along one edge, then pulled until it popped open. Sharply sweet honey dribbled onto my tongue. I said, “I didn’t know you like honey.”

  She zigzagged a drizzle along the split biscuit halves and nodded. “I like honey since always.” Her eyes stayed down as she added, “It’s better if no one signs. Not even you.” All her concentration was on not looking at me, on keeping the honey-soaked biscuit level on its left-handed way to her mouth.

  “Okay.” Fake smile. Not that I cared about signing her cast. Not even you. I asked, “How long will the cast be on?”

  Another biscuit, another packet of honey, which she handed to me, which I tore open with my teeth. Honey dripped onto the straw placemat, and I rubbed the sticky dot with my thumb, imagining a trail of ants scouting this spot, thinking, Jackpot!

  It felt like a lot of silence piling up. Even her chewing was quiet. She seemed different tonight, and maybe my mother was right, that she was woozy. I said, “Time for a story? The Silver Girl?”

  She said, “I can’t color with this stupid thing.” She lifted her forearm, then let it drop heavily on the table, a hollow thump.

  “Color left-handed.”

  “It’s not the same,” she said. “I want to draw normal.”

  “Once upon a time,” I said. “There was a girl who lived in...” I paused so she could interrupt with “the woods,” but when she didn’t, I continued: “Who lived in a cave.”

  Grace crumpled a dirty napkin and tossed it at the side of the chicken box. Then she slumped into her chair.

  “Did you hear me?” I asked. “The girl lived in a cave.”

  Silence.

  Like it mattered. Like it really truly mattered where this imaginary girl lived, or what happened in this silly, waste-of-time story. I poked at the bubble of a semi-healed grease burn on the underside of my wrist. The size of a quarter. I imagined a scar years from now, reminding me of this time and place. I drew in a breath and said, “Once upon a time there was a girl who lived alone in a cave in the woods,” and Grace slid a piece of paper over and picked up a green crayon, as if powerless to resist the cue. I continued: “And what was remarkable about this girl, the Silver Girl, is that she was all silver. Her hair, her eyes, her lips—everything was a beautiful, shimmery silver, like sunlight dancing across a lake. Like the biggest moon you’ve ever seen. She was extraordinarily beautiful, of course, and—”

  “Why is she alone?”

  “Well, not alone-alone. There were lots of animals in the forest, and her best friend was a leopard named Sam.” Grace liked to draw spots, so leopard was an inspired choice. Also, it seemed easy to draw spots left-handed, easier than stripes anyway.

&n
bsp; “Does the Silver Girl like being alone?”

  “She has Sam,” I said. “So she’s not really alone.”

  “Sam ran away last week. Does she want to be alone?”

  “You are sooo talkative tonight, missy,” I said, and I gave an awkward laugh. I felt trapped, every answer dead wrong. “Maybe,” I said. “But mostly no. That’s why she has Sam, right? Because no one likes being alone.”

  “You do,” she said.

  I invented quickly: “The Silver Girl is alone because she’s in exile.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When a town sends you away for doing something really awful and wrong.”

  “What did she do wrong?”

  I pointed to the paper. “You’re not coloring.”

  She swiped wild green streaks across the paper, her eyes still on me. Usually she focused really hard on coloring; I imagined the world blocked out of her head as she drew trees and zebras and picnic baskets. If only she were really good at drawing. No one cared how much you liked drawing, only if a horse looked like a horse. Grace said, “What did she do wrong?”

  The room darkened and tightened. I was just trying to tell a story. I wanted to talk about animals in the woods. I could have, I suppose. Pushed Sam harder. But the rule was to say yes to what Grace wanted. I said, “That was the weird thing. She didn’t know what she did wrong.”

  “So they sent her off to exile anyway?” Now Grace grabbed a reddish crayon with her left hand, rolled it along the table. “The people in that town are mean.”

  The red crayon rolling back and forth, back and forth. I imagined the thoughts in her brain, back and forth. If I wanted to ask, I should do it now. Silence—like a pile of leaves, like snow, like something drifting up high while we sat and watched.

  Grace said, “Then how did she know that what she did was wrong?” She watched her rolling crayon, and I reached out and rested my hand on hers to make her stop. Her skin felt sweaty. My burn bumped against the table, flared.