by Sandra Kring
“Her menstrual cycle, Mother. Her MENSTRUAL CYCLE!”
Milo glances up. “Do you people have to talk about such things in front of me?”
“Oh, so you mean Maude Tuttle was a prostitute and that she turned tricks like a crack whore!” I say, finally getting it.
“Lucy Marie McGowan! Where on earth did you hear such a term?” Mom shouts.
I don’t dare tell her it was online—not with Mom confident that she has all the bad sites blocked—so I say, “From the stoop downstairs.”
Mom growls under her breath, and Oma shrugs. “You can’t protect them forever, honey. Even though I agree that children are growing up too fast. Good Lord, I was in the store last week, and they had thong panties in a children’s size four. What are they thinking? When did kids stop being kids, anyway?”
“When people like you started talking about things they shouldn’t in front of them, that’s when!” Mom snaps.
chapter
FIVE
OUR NEW home—if only Mom will have it—sits just a short distance beyond the cluster of new constructions about two miles west of town. The small house, two stories high, is dingy white, like city snow. It has shabby, barn-red shutters alongside the front windows, one pulled loose and cocked, and a small entranceway that juts out from the front of the house like a dog’s snout. The lawn is spacious, the tall trees fringed with long blades of grass a mower couldn’t reach. The same shaggy fringe clings to the half-dilapidated fence that boxes in the house.
“Oh, look how the house has fallen to ruins,” Oma groans.
“It looks exactly the same as it’s always looked. Like a dump.”
Mom pulls the car down the drive and brings it to a stop. She opens her door but just sits there, staring at the house. I don’t wait for her or Oma to get out before I shove against Mom’s seat and squeeze by, then rip off my shoes and socks, even though it’s chilly and windy, and step onto the cool grass. And then, for reasons it would probably take Sigmund Freud himself to figure out, I flop down on my belly, press my cheek against the ground, and skim my arms and hands over the silky grass.
One car door slams. “What are you doing?” Milo asks. I feel him standing beside me, but I don’t open my teary eyes, and I don’t answer, because I have no answer. Instead, I feel the earth solid under me and the grass pricking against my clothes. I hear the scattering of a few dried leaves making soft tinkling sounds as they skip past me, and I want Milo to shut up so all I hear is their sound.
A screen door squeaks, followed by the yips of a small dog. I turn my other cheek to the grass, open my damp eyes, and see a tiny dog charging toward me, followed by a little woman every bit as skinny as the dog, with gray hair almost as short. “Chico! Chico!” the woman calls. Her voice, too, is every bit as high-pitched and yippy as the dog’s.
The dog reaches me, still yipping, his diminutive body popping off the grass with each one. He’s a homely thing, with bulgy eyes and a red rhinestone collar around his neck that looks big enough for him to jump through.
The other car doors slam as Aunt Jeana reaches down to scoop up the dog hopping at her feet.
“Jeana,” Oma says. I close my eyes again but know they hug politely.
“These are Sam’s grandchildren. This is Milo, and that’s Lucy.”
Milo shows his good manners by saying hello, but me, I just keep my eyes closed and wish them all to go away, because lying here feels more prayerful than giving tobacco to an eagle, and more personal than using the bathroom.
“You’re looking well, Lillian,” the yippy voice says, and then it lowers. “Tess,” she says, her mouth making the s ’s in Mom’s name sound like the hiss of a snake. “I’m glad you decided to come.”
“Aunt Jeana,” Mom volleys, in a voice cooler than the air.
“Did she fall?” Aunt Jeana asks, talking about me.
“No,” Mom answers.
“Then what’s wrong with her?”
Oma’s voice is blissful as she says, “She’s just savoring her first real meeting with Mother Earth.”
Aunt Jeana says, “Hmmm,” and Mom snaps, “Lucy, get up. Now!”
There is the chatter of Aunt Jeana’s and Oma’s voices and the whomp of our trunk slamming. The voices and yip-ping fade, then disappear behind the clack of the closing screen door, and still I lie on the grass, stroking, sniffing, and loving the ground I lie upon.
When I was six years old, Marcus, a man Mom was dating, took us on a train trip to the East Coast to see the Atlantic Ocean. Marcus was thin, fair skinned, and rubbery to the touch, like a piece of string cheese. We traveled there on a vintage passenger train with red velvet seats and hanging chandeliers in the dining car that rocked above our heads as we ate our omelets. I don’t recall much about the trip itself, except that Milo vomited most of the way and that when you flushed the toilet, a trapdoor opened and the water and waste splattered onto the rocks and railroad ties bumping by beneath us. I excused myself often, flushing and watching, and wondering how it was that the health department could allow such a thing. But what I remember most of all about that trip, our only vacation ever, is the ocean. I didn’t know how to swim, so Marcus carried me out ’til the water was washing his colorless chest hairs, then he stretched me across his arms and just held me there. I closed my eyes as the waves lapped over me, and I went as mute as I am now and wished for the moment to last forever. It didn’t, of course, nor did Marcus, though I’d wanted him to be my dad too.
Only when my belly cools to the point where I start to shiver do I roll over and sit up. I draw my legs up and wrap my arms around them. I tuck my chin on my knees and look past the yard, past the patch of trees, at the rolling hills dotted with houses that, from this distance, look as tiny as the houses on a Monopoly board.
It is quiet here. Peaceful. I smile as the breeze brushes my cheeks and dries my eyes as if I’m ice skating. I look to the north of the house, where the red maples in low-lying spots are blotched with deep red, and to a patch of sugar maples that are just beginning to tinge with a brighter, orangier red, and I wonder how tall those trees were when Mom was a kid and if she climbed them or raked their leaves into piles and jumped in them, as I’ve always heard country kids do. I look at the line of upstairs windows and I wonder which of them belongs to her childhood bedroom and if Oma ever read her Goodnight Moon before tucking her in.
I head to the house. Inside, it smells like frying hamburger, oatmeal cookies, and poop. I stand inside the entranceway and see shoes—including Milo’s tennies, Mom’s loafers, and Oma’s beaded slippers—lined up on a rug alongside a narrow, short pair of oxfords. I take off my tennies and pair them up with Milo’s, and hang my jacket on the coatrack beside the door. There is a man’s hat propped on the tip, wool and charcoal gray. I lean over and study it. The silk band rimming the inside is stained darker in the front, as though it has sopped up a million drops of worry.
I can hear the women’s voices, and when I step into the living room, I can see into the kitchen. Oma is standing at the sink, running her hand up the tiny shelves that sit beside the window. Mom’s shoulder and hip are peeking out from behind the door frame.
Milo comes into the living room and looks at the TV, from which an excited man standing before a rotisserie oven is shouting, “That’s right, just set it and forget it!”
“It’s an infomercial,” I explain, knowing he doesn’t get it by the way he’s blinking at the screen. “I studied them for my paper on pop culture.” Then, “Where’s Grandpa?”
Milo shrugs and sits down on the couch, refusing to allow his back to rest against the orange and yellow afghan that looks older than us. He opens the top book on his stack, but his eyes keep darting around the room. He looks like a fish on pavement.
My eyes wander above him, where a plaque hangs next to a gob of artificial flowers. The plaque bears my grandfather’s name, Samuel McGowan. “Milo, look at this.”
“What?”
I try to keep my voice qu
ieter than the ones coming from the kitchen, and that’s no easy feat. “Grandpa’s last name! It’s the same as ours!”
“Yeah? So?”
I’m almost shaking. Around the same time I learned that Scott Hamilton was not my real dad, I asked Mom and Oma what my grandpa’s name was. I asked because a girl my age, Sonya, had moved into apartment #426, and for a short time I entertained being her best friend, like she asked me to. That notion didn’t last long—mainly because her idea of fun was making her Barbie doll hop up and down the front steps, and a girl named Lativa found that game more to her liking than I did, and also because after just five short weeks she announced that she and her mom were going to go live with her grandpa in Minnesota. The mention of her grandfather was the first time that it really dawned on me that just as I had to have a father someplace, so did Mom. So I asked if I had a grandpa and what his name was. Mom didn’t answer me, but Oma did. And all she said was, “Yes,” and, “His name is Sam.” I never thought to ask his last name. I just assumed that it was the same as Oma’s—Larson.
Milo shrugs. I scoot alongside him and hiss into his ear, “You idiot! If Grandpa is a McGowan too, it can only mean one of two things. Either our father was Mom’s first cousin or we’re bastards. I’d bet on the second—even though inbreeding often produces a genius or two among the idiots.”
Milo shrugs again, then fiddles to perfectly align the books stacked on his lap.
“We’re bastards. I can’t believe it.”
“So? Lots of couples cohabitate and have children and never marry.”
“Yeah, well, Oliver Twist was a bastard, and look where that got him.”
I can see I’m not going to get anywhere with Milo—not surprising—so I let the topic rest and I look above him, where an 8×10 photograph hangs in one of those cheap, black metal document frames. In the photo is a man holding a sheet cake that says, Happy Retirement, and there are men and women surrounding him, holding up beer glasses.
I kneel on the arm of the sofa so I’m higher and stare at the picture that has to be him, my grandfather. He has broad shoulders and dark hair that sits like chocolate frosting, thick and swirled over the top of his head, exposing a wide forehead like Mom’s. He’s wearing a dark suit. His eyes are indeed shaped like mine, but they look more so like Mom’s. His broad smile looks like no one’s. Well, except maybe for the man on the infomercial.
I leave Milo and go into the kitchen, where Aunt Jeana is busy taking brown bottles down from the cupboard. Chico is trembling at her feet. One by one, she sets the bottles on the counter, reciting their names and times per day Grandpa needs to take them. “And don’t forget his aspirin every day.” There is a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies on the counter and chopped hamburger sizzling in a small fry pan on the stove. As Aunt Jeana lists the medications, she pauses now and then to glance into the pan.
Chico has been yipping at me since I entered the kitchen, and Aunt Jeana scoops him up and kisses the top of his bony head, then whispers, “Hush now,” into his paper-thin ear. He stops barking, his bottom snaggletooth catching on his upper lip.
“Sam’s napping. That’s pretty much all he does anymore. I moved him into that room,” she says, pointing toward the door that’s slightly ajar, just around the wide, arched doorway connecting the kitchen and living room. “He couldn’t go up and down the stairs if he tried at this point. He doesn’t talk much, but he will answer you if you ask him questions. It sure has been lonely around here, though. I’m just glad I had my Chico and my programs.” She nods toward the small TV propped on the counter, where some woman with heavy makeup and dark roots is addressing herself at normal volume, while a mannequin-perfect man stands inches behind her, his head tilted as he ponders her thoughts, even though he should be able to hear every word she’s saying. On the floor under the TV are two ratty, hard suitcases and a fluffy dog bed that looks like a hat an old Russian man would wear in a blizzard.
“I’ve tacked his medication instructions and his schedule here,” Aunt Jeana says, tapping the paper Scotch-taped to the inside of the cupboard door. “He likes his coffee black and some cinnamon in his oatmeal. And, oh, no celery in his food. He hates celery. Even chopped fine, he can taste it.” Oma has a slight smile on her face, and I know that she’s wondering how it is that Aunt Jeana could have forgotten that she lived with the man for years, so no doubt knows these things already. “Oh, and watch it, because he likes to turn on the stove and walk off.”
Jeana keeps rattling off instructions as Oma circles the room. Oma stops and touches a clock in the shape of a rooster. Mom doesn’t move. She stands still, her arms wrapped around her middle, bunching her shirt so that a peek of skin shows. As I watch her, I wonder how it can be that Mom, five foot six and thirty-three years old, can look dwarfed and as young as me in this house.
“Oh, and watch the back door. I don’t know what the fascination is with that shed back there, but twice now he’s gotten loose and I’ve found him standing at the door, looking confused. He still thinks he can drive too, though where he thinks he’s going is beyond me. I hid his keys on the back of the top shelf, right here,” she adds in a whisper.
Aunt Jeana plucks a chunk of steaming meat out of the pan and pops it into her mouth, chewing it as she rattles off more instructions and excuses why she needs to leave today. Besides Chico’s brain that needs scanning, she lists reasons such as: “My plants have probably all died by now,” and, “I haven’t mailed back my Book of the Month Club card, and I don’t always care for the featured selections.” She pauses, plucks the chewed meat from her tongue, and puts it into Chico’s mouth. He gums it happily. “He’s missing so many teeth that it’s hard for him to chew,” she explains when she looks up and sees that we’re all staring at her. Well, Oma and I are, that is. Mom is turned away, gagging.
“Which reminds me: Sam is having problems swallowing, so you need to—”
“Please don’t tell us that we need to prechew his food,” Mom interrupts.
“—feed him soft foods,” Aunt Jeana finishes her sentence, and her eyes squint tight. “No, that wasn’t what I was going to say. But I’d hope that if your father needed it done, you’d do it for him, simply because he’s your father, if nothing else. That man raised you and paid your way through college. And he’s leaving all of this to you.” Aunt Jeana waves her bony hand, encompassing the room, so dramatically that one would think she was motioning to a whole kingdom.
“What time does he go to bed at night?” Oma asks, to distract her, I’m sure.
“Actually,” Mom says, facing Aunt Jeana, “he didn’t.”
“Mom said Grandpa Sam wouldn’t stop to give her water if—” I say, and Oma glides over and reaches around my shoulder, past my cheek, and pats my mouth shut before I can finish the sentence.
“What time does he turn in for the night?” Oma asks again.
But Aunt Jeana won’t be distracted. Her beady eyes are boring into Mom’s face like stingers as she tucks another clump of hamburger into her mouth. “Didn’t what?” she asks Mom.
“Support me through college. He didn’t give me a damn red cent for school. And he isn’t leaving this to me, you are. I’m curious as to why.”
Aunt Jeana grabs the meat from her mouth and holds it out to Chico. There are little gray specks left on her tongue, like scattered mouse turds, when she talks. “You are his daughter,” Aunt Jeana says. “In spite of everything. And considering that you or your children wouldn’t—”
“And Clay is his son,” Mom interrupts. “Don’t such fine riches typically go to the firstborn son?
“But we know why you’ve chosen me instead of him, Aunt Jeana. This place holds no sentimental value for Clay—not that it does for me. No monetary value either. This dump wouldn’t be fit to be an outhouse on one of his properties. Clay would have absolutely no use for it, but I’m sure you already know that, because no doubt you’ve already offered it to him. And you certainly wouldn’t want it for yourself, it being
so far from Choke-o’s doctor. As for selling it for the cash, you’d have to rid it of all this worthless junk, list it with a broker … It would be work. And you don’t need the money, since Uncle Willie left you richer than God, so why would you bother?”
Aunt Jeana gasps, and Oma hurries to her. She gently pinches Chico’s skeletal paw between her fingers and bobs it. “Ohhhh, poor little darling. His eyes do look a bit dazed, don’t they?”
Aunt Jeana’s attention turns from Mom to her dog. She cups her hand under Chico’s chin and lifts his head to peer into his protruding eyes. He makes choking noises, so she lowers it.
“We should let you go now, Jeana. Didn’t you say you fly out tonight?”
“Yes. I’ll have to wait around for a few hours, but I want to get this rental car back or they’ll charge me for another day.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re eager to get this poor little thing back home to his doctor. Thank you so much for the instructions and for the cookies. They smell delicious. Did you leave your phone number so I can call you when … well, you know.”
“On the inside of the cupboard door where his medications are kept,” Aunt Jeana says. “Oh, and I washed a load of his bedding, but I didn’t have the chance to throw it in the dryer yet.”
“I’ll take care of it, Jeana. Thank you for everything. Lucy, help me take Aunt Jeana’s things to her car, please.” Oma hands me Chico’s bed.
“We should get going too,” Mom announces after Aunt Jeana leaves. Mom is blinking her eyes, and she rubs at them with her fingertips. Oma watches her, and I watch Oma, silently pleading with her to do something, and hoping that Sky Dreamer is right, because I don’t want to leave just yet.
“Are you coming down with a migraine?” Oma asks.
“Just a little haloing,” Mom says.
“Good heavens, Tess. You can’t drive with a migraine. You’re tired too. Stay the night, at least.”