The incident of the Prince’s ball is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. I spent the day helping all three girls with their hair, easing their jitters, reminding them about knees together. At suppertime Ella pitched a hypoglycemic fit, accusing me of poisoning her with the mushrooms in the stew. As her shrieks bounced from the rafters, Anastasia turned greenish like she does before a migraine. When I told Ella indoor voice, she dumped her stew on the floor. No ball for you, I said, go to your room. Don’t you know she hitched a ride with a neighbor and went anyway? Mice, pumpkins, and fairy godmother—what an imagination! Guess it sells books.
She pranced into the ballroom and, not wasting a second on mere counts or earls, latched onto the Prince like a tick on a hound. Tugged her neckline a little too low, fluttered her lashes, and whispered something (dirty, no doubt) in his ear. When they disappeared to walk along the moat, the Queen was furious. She’s still not speaking to me, though by now she’s well aware of the futility of anyone’s trying to manage that girl. In Out of the Cinders Ella writes that she left the ball at midnight, leaving behind a glass slipper. Hah. More like dawn and her knickers. Chastity was never one of her virtues.
When the dogs struggle to their feet and nose me with a whimper, I realize I’ve been moaning epithets out loud. I can no longer trust the London Times. Shouldn’t a book reviewer check out the facts? Readers deserve the truth. Pick one: a hard-working mother, trying to teach responsibility, feed her family, and keep up a disintegrating castle? Or a surly borderline sucking all the air out the room?
By the way, aside from his eighty thousand acres, the Prince is no catch. He’s a puffy-faced dissolute with bad teeth. And I hear he’s tired of Ella’s tantrums. He’s sealed her into the tower and won’t let her out until she agrees to therapy. She paces the ramparts in a frenzy, intermittently screaming. Or is that the peacocks I hear? From this distance, they sound the same.
Scritch
RONNIE’S BEEN RIDING his sister’s bike for two hours in cold rain and has finally reached his destination, a house in the woods at the end of a long gravel driveway. He’s wet, frozen, and numb and really wants to get inside this house. It’s not much of a house, maybe four little rooms. Siding is rotten in places, gutters are rusting. He walks around it and looks in the windows. When he sees a woman in a lighted room, he pushes through prickly shrubbery to get closer, then stands on tip toe. Is she alone? There’s no one else in the house as far as he can tell. The woman’s name is Gloria and she doesn’t resemble the pictures she sent him, where her hair was long and blonde. Now her hair’s shorter, pulled back into a dinky tail except for what’s falling in her face. She’s older, too. Should he bother? What the fuck. He’s here and she’ll let him in, she was all hot to meet him in her letters.
His cell mate at Butner told him about PrisonPenPals, and though Ronnie didn’t think women would write to a sex offender, right after his ad went on the Internet, he started getting letters with pictures and proposals for sex, love, or marriage. Since he never answered back, most of the pen pals gave up, but three of them kept on sending letters, every week for eight years. He kept their pictures taped to the wall next to his bunk. With her long blonde hair, Gloria was his favorite.
Ronnie’s been out of Butner for a week. He’s sleeping on his sister Kristy’s sofa. The first day—Christ, the first hour—she shoved the newspaper at him and showed him a dishwashing job, seven bucks an hour plus a free meal. The free meal was why she wanted him to take the job. So that’s how it’s gone, her on his case about a plan, a job, starting out right, and he woke up this morning with a bad itch for a new and different relationship.
He knocks hard on Gloria’s window and she jumps, then sees him. He’s grinning hard as he can with his frozen face, just being friendly old Ronnie. He gets to the front door just as she does.
“Is it who I think it is?” says Gloria. She pushes her hair behind her ears and holds onto the door. He sticks out his hand until she takes it with limp fingers. He explains his early release, thanks her for writing and keeping him going all those years. Then she has to ask him in, just to be polite.
“You’re so tall!” she says, not like her picture at all, where she looked like a model in high-heeled boots and a leather jacket. In person she’s mousy, with bags under her eyes and a wrinkly neck.
“You got your hair cut,” Ronnie says. “Looks nice.” He wants to give her a little squeeze, but she keeps backing away. He’s pissed that she’s not more excited, that he’s having to do all the work.
“Sit, please sit! I’ll get us some tea.” She backs into the kitchen and Ronnie sits, glad to be where it’s warm even though he hates tea, it tastes like what you’d expect from dried leaves. He wants to change his order, get a beer instead, and gets up to follow her into the kitchen, where he sees she’s picked up the phone and is dialing. 9-1-1? No, too many numbers.
“I was just going to call out for a pizza, how’s that sound,” Gloria says. “Pepperoni and mushroom?” She orders the pizza, gives her address, then the teakettle is whistling and she pours water into mugs. He doesn’t want to be caught staring at her body but when she turns her back to pour the tea, he studies her, looking for curves under the baggy sweat shirt, feeling a rising tension like a zoo lion waiting for dinner. He’ll have to be patient, make himself invisible when the pizza guy arrives.
Gloria is flushed and acts nervous, patting pillows and humming. “How’s it feel to be out?” she asks. “What’s the best part about being a free man?”
He laughs. The best part, which he isn’t going to tell her, is the end of sex offender therapy group, two hours of listening to I-Was-Drunk Franklin and Bible-clutching I-Only-Did-It-A-Few-Times Sid lie about controlling their deviant urges while the furry social worker drones on about denial, the blame game, and cognitive distortions. Every day Ronnie had to come up with his own lies and apologetic speeches, such bullshit because he’s nothing like these repulsives with their high-speed Internet and videos of Boy Scouts.
“Just being able to go where you want?” Gloria offers.
“That’s it. I can wake up in the morning, decide to visit pretty Gloria, and here I am.” He sips the dusty tea, then gets up to look at pictures on a bookcase, mostly school pictures of two kids, a boy and a girl. “These your kids?” he asks.
Both are light-haired with tight smiles like their mom’s, hardly showing any teeth. Maybe their teeth are crooked. In fact, the girl’s wearing braces. Those braces, that shiny beige hair—she looks familiar. He shivers from a sudden chill.
Gloria grabs the picture and turns it face down. “Ronnie, you look cold. You want a fire?”
So she doesn’t want to share her family with him, well, screw her. It bothers him that he can’t remember where he knows the girl from. She wasn’t a pen pal, none of them had braces. No, it’s the picture he remembers, the smile with the wired teeth. He thinks it’s a high school graduation picture.
She opens the fireplace doors and pokes at the ashes. “We’ll need wood. Want to help me get some from the shed?”
“Fetch the wood? What else, wash the dishes? Walk the dog?” He smiles to show he’s joking but he’s always hated chores, working off the endless list every woman he’s ever known spent her livelong day composing for him.
Gloria shakes her head, smiling tightly. “It’ll just take a minute. Then our pizza should be here.”
Her nervousness is making him antsy, so he shrugs, he’ll go, he wants to move around. They pull on their coats. It’s stopped raining now, and Ronnie sees his breath cloud in the moonlight. He reaches out to the back of Gloria’s neck and squeezes the warm muscle until she stops walking. Her breathing is shallow and rapid. A long-lost strength enters his body and he gives Gloria a push, gets her moving again.
The shed’s a crude log cabin with no windows and at first it’s hard to see, even with the flashlight she swings about and shines onto the wood pile. “There it is,” she says. “Watch out for mice!” As he
leans over to pick up a few sticks of wood, the light goes out.
“Wait here,” she says, “I’ll get another flashlight.” And then she’s gone. He realizes she’s shut him in.
He makes his way to the door. It’s locked. When he shakes the door, nothing moves. It’s a serious lock, probably a dead bolt, What kind of weirdo puts a dead bolt on a nothing shed? He stands there, waiting. Minutes pass. He sits down on the floor and hugs his knees.
A sliver of moonlight slips under the door. His eyes adjust to make out shapes. Not much in here but wood, a small mountain of it. He hopes Gloria gets over her stupid prank soon. It’s very cold on the floor so he gets up and moves around. His pants are still damp from the rainy bike ride and he starts to shiver. Something rustles near the woodpile. Mice, she’d said. Hope to Christ it’s not a snake.
Is she calling the cops? So he surprised her, that’s not a crime last time he looked. It’s so freaking cold his feet are going numb. He pulls his hands up into his jacket and dances, shuffles, trying to keep warm.
“Ronnie.” It’s Gloria, whispering at the bottom of the door. “Are you cold?”
“What’s going on?” He’s going to be polite, at least until he’s got a hand on her scrawny neck again.
“Did you recognize her?” Gloria’s whispering makes his skin crawl. He knows who she means, the girl in the picture.
“Recognize who?” Then he begins to remember. The newspaper articles, the pictures of the three who died in the trailer fire. Neil, wearing a Padres sweatshirt and holding a beer. The two girls’ pictures from yearbooks, since they had just graduated and started college.
DNA evidence got him on the sexual assault charges, but Ronnie swore to the jury that Neil started the fire. And the jury believed him, they had to—there was no proof. The proof burned up and got their pictures in the newspaper. Yes, he thinks as his heart starts to pound out of his chest, one of the girls had shiny beige hair and braces. What. The. Fuck.
His throat tightens and he can’t speak but he must. “Gloria? Sweetheart?”
“I’m just waiting for the others,” she whispers. Something rustles behind him, behind the musty dry wood.
He shoves his hands in his pockets and touches the cord. “The others?”
“The other mothers. They’ll be here soon. Are you cold?”
“Well, yeah.” He chokes out a laugh. “You gonna let me out? Let’s have a talk. We have things to talk about.” He’s now shaking violently, dancing from foot to foot.
“Talk all you want. I’m just going to light my lantern here.” The scritch of a match, then a yellow glow under the door.
He scuttles to the door and crouches to catch any bit of warmth from the lantern. He’s worried about what she said, the other mothers. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry. It won’t be long now.” She pauses for a moment. “I used to pray for death, until we thought of this. What does a man like you pray for?”
“Right now, a key to the door.” His teeth are chattering so hard he can barely get the words out. “They said I wasn’t guilty. I did my time on the other.”
“You had a good lawyer, Ronnie. But there was no doubt, really. Wait. They’re here.” As Gloria walks away with the lantern, the glow disappears. He hears the thunk of car doors closing, and then nothing for a long while. He thinks he’s going to freeze to death. It’s not a bad way to die, he’s heard, you just get drowsy and fall asleep. He’s not at the drowsy stage yet. He’s still at the violent shivering stage, all his bones rattling as he stamps the floor.
He finds a shovel and whacks at the walls, the roof, looking for a weakness. The logs are fit solidly together. Someone spent way too much time building this goddam shed. He gets the shovel into a chink and leans on the handle. It snaps and he falls, smacking himself in the face with the splintered end of the broken handle. It smarts like hell and tears come to his eyes.
Then he hears the whispering again. “Ronnie? We’re all here. It’s Cheryl and Jackie, remember us?”
“Let me out. Please. Please.” He’ll beg. Women change their minds when you beg, when you humiliate yourself. “I’m really sorry!”
“We’ve waited eight years, Ronnie. That’s eight years more than they got.”
His nostrils fills with the stink of gasoline. He hears the women murmuring, like prayer.
Brown Jersey Cow
I’M STIRRING A pot of stew, wishing I had a bit of ham for flavor ’cause grits and carrots make a bland mix. Baby’s pulling on my skirt, wanting some now now now. My girls be digging for potatoes though I told them there ain’t nothing but stones out there. It’s been hard, our first winter on this hill with nothing put up. We’re eating corn grits three times a day, with a wormy turnip or dried apple for interest.
My cousin Jack sets hisself down on the stool and tugs on his boots. Jack and my Mam had the same grandpa. After my husband’s accident (fishing, fell in, drowned ’cause he never learned to swim) the children and I had nowhere to go but the old home place. If you picture a falling-down shack hanging on the side of a hill, you correctly vision Pappy’s bequest to his only two living descendants: Jack and me. We share a house and seven rocky acres. Jack’s simple—can’t read nor write—but fifteen years older’n me so I can’t tell him nothing. Last week Jack got out of jail after six months for selling moonshine.
“Where are you going?” I ask him.
“To fetch a pail of water.”
“We don’t need no pail of water,” I say. “The cistern’s full after last night’s rainstorm.”
Lightning and thunder had went on for hours, terrifying Pig. Pig’s still jumpy this morning when I take him the slop bucket. Pig’ll eat anything you can imagine and some stuff you’d think weren’t food at all—paper, hair, dirt. There’s not much by way of tasty scraps for him these days.
“Cistern water’s no good for brewing.”
“Are you crazy? Did you learn nothing from jail time?”
“I won’t sell it. I’ll give it away this time. Trade.”
“Trade for food, right?”
“Maryjane.”
“What?” Can’t he hear my stomach rumble?
“Marijuana, dummy. I need seeds, fertilizer. Trade shine for money and buy what I need to grow it. Fellow I know made twenty thousand selling weed.”
“Your cell mate?” I am too famished to argue the obvious, that trading for money is selling. Besides, I know Jack. Big on talk, not so much on follow-through. I can’t see him weeding no pot plot.
Jack looks out the window. His brow is creased like he’s thinking. Unlikely.
“If you’re needing something to do, Cat’s hidden her kittens again,” I tell him.
He snorts. “The girls’ll find ’em.” He picks up the pail and strolls off.
I been extra low since my brown Jersey cow disappeared. Last I saw, she were in the cowshed, munching on hay. Jack says she were stolen. Only the devil would steal a cow from a hungry family like mine. The children miss her sweet creamy milk. Baby’s not gained a pound since he turned one years old, and you can count the girls’ ribs through their undershirts. It’s a race to see what comes first, the month of April or someone dying.
I lean on the sill and look out at the mud, daydreaming about my garden. I’ll sow tomatoes, peppers, peas, and beans for puttin’ up. Fill the cellar with sweet potatoes, beets, and carrots. In the fall, I’ll plant my greens. We’ll not be hungry next winter. What I couldn’t do with a bit of money. If I had money I’d buy Leghorn pullets, they’s good layers.
But Jack’s wanting to go for water makes me suspicious, since his motto is why do today what I can put off forever and he applies it to every minute of his life except meals, naps, and taking a crap.
So I follow him up the hill, a good piece behind. The mist is heavy, dampening my arms and face. He’s hiking at a good pace, not his usual amble. When he gets to the well, I crouch behind a stone wall and watch. He lifts the cover off the well, reaches in,
and pulls out a brick. Takes out a cloth purse and pours silver dollars into a pile! Clink, clink, clink.
I knew he were up to something!
Only one way he got that money. He’s sold my cow, while the girls shiver and starve in their rags. I think about that money and my brown Jersey’s sweet creamy milk. I think about our supper—grits with a carrot. I think about Baby’s little stick arms, and I jump over the wall, grab the brick, and lay it hard upside his head. He flies tail over teakettle down the hill.
It’s believed he stumbled, broke his crown. That were a possibility, the grass were wet. Coming down the hill I myself slip, the coins jingling heavy in my pocket.
I soak brown paper in cider vinegar and wrap his head, but he never opens his eyes. He breathes his last at midday. The girls cry for Uncle Jack until I promise ’em biscuits for supper. Pig eats the paper.
In the afternoon I go to town and buy a brown Jersey cow. Get a good price ’cause I’m a widow, and there’s money left over for sugar and flour and six Leghorn pullets. At supper I spread butter on our biscuits and pour milk gravy over the grits. Baby eats until he can’t move. I swear the girls grow an inch on the spot. We all enjoy the feeling of a full belly. Nothing’s better than sweet creamy milk from a brown Jersey cow.
Something to Tell Henry
TUGGING ON HER floppy hat, Ava steps off the bus into the baking oven that is Tampa in July. She walks past pastel-colored stucco walls softened by red hibiscus and spiny agave, the only sound the stuttering of sulfurous sprinklers. An armadillo enlarges its burrow under an azalea bush. She watches for a moment. It’s something to tell her son Henry about. Is an armadillo a reptile? Does it lay eggs? He will know, or pretend to know. Though only seven, he likes to be an expert in everything scientific.
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