3. Wooden tube with a pink cartoon face and four metal prongs sticking out of her head (Madame Knitting Guide). She is hollow; a hole the size of a Smartie runs through her body. The tube has five grooves and fits in my palm like the handle of an umbrella.
4. Instructions? Nope.
Up until now, I have not been involved in arts and crafts of any kind. Lydia-Rose, on the other hand, makes bunnies out of socks. A ladies’ tube sock is best (she says men’s socks create Sock Monsters), two black buttons of equal size, white string for stitching, and red or pink string for the embroidered mouth and nose. It takes ten minutes.
She’s made one for Miranda, two for friends, and says that when she gets around to it she’ll make one for me.
They come with instructions: Wherever you go, so must your Sock Bunny. Treat him with care. He would like it if you made him a car out of one of your old Kleenex boxes.
A few months ago, she made a Sock Voodoo, which is a voodoo doll made out of a sock. A man’s sock works best, she said, because you can stuff it full of cotton balls for pinpricking and other violence. Sock Voodoo lives in the back of our closet on top of the Ouija board. When Lydia-Rose and I are mad about something, we take him out and stab him with a sewing needle. Sometimes we run him over with Sock Bunny’s Kleenex car.
I lug the knitting kit around with me for a few weeks, show it to some kids in my class and to a woman at the bus stop. No one even knows what it is. Lydia-Rose fiddles with it for an hour one afternoon and then throws it at me, exasperated.
“What’s with the French, anyway?” she asks. We think for a minute. French toast. French bread. French fry. French vanilla. French braid. French maid. French twist. French kiss.
We ask Miranda how to do it, and she shrugs.
The next day, I show the kit to my teacher, Mrs. Bell. She’s a small woman with short dark hair and a face like a fist. I am standing in the low-ceilinged classroom, waiting for lunch to be over. I have no friends this year; everyone is just a hello in the hall. Today I am on probation for writing Dick all over the girl’s bathroom (I can’t explain why I did this), and so I have to spend my lunch hour with Mrs. Bell. Seems like a raw deal for her, too, though we kind of like each other. I can tell she feels sorry for me. I feel sorry for her face.
“Spool knitting!” Mrs. Bell coos. “We used to do this when we were kids.”
Spool knitting. French knitting. I don’t like it when there are more than two names for the same thing.
“So what are you going to make?” Mrs. Bell asks. We look at the box. A multicolored octopus, snake, ladybug, and circus clown stare up at us with little knit eyes.
“The ladybug looks good.” The ladybug kicks ass. Miranda would love it. “Maybe a scarf.”
Mrs. Bell points to the snake. “Oh, you must make that.”
“Wait,” I say, “look at the ladybug.”
“No, make the snake. Little knitted reptile. Ooohhh, it’s so sweet.”
“What do I do?” I put Madame Knitting Guide into Mrs. Bell’s hands and stare at her expectantly.
“It’s been a long, long time,” she laughs and looks at me. I hate it when adults talk about how old they are, how much time has gone by in their lives. “If I remember correctly, you first put the yarn through the middle, letting it hang, then wrap the yarn around the prongs. Then with a needle go around again to one stitch and put the needle under the first stitch and put it over the stitch already on and sort of knit it off. I hope that’s right.” She puts it back into my hands, and the lunch bell rings. I have no idea what the fuck she’s talking about.
That night, I lie in bed and stare at the box.
It’s after midnight and Lydia-Rose is snoring. Thanks to tweezers, spit, and a flashlight Miranda gave me last Christmas, I’ve finally gotten one piece of yarn through Madame Knitting Guide’s body. Trust me, trying to get something weightless like yarn to “fall” down a hole in the middle of a thing called Madame Knitting Guide is about as easy as it sounds. Oh, fuck it. Fuck the ladybug. No one’s getting a ladybug; no one’s getting a snake.
That same year, Midnight and Flipper get feline leukemia and have to be quarantined in the laundry room so they don’t give it to Scratchie. They have horrible diarrhea, and we take turns each day going in there and petting them and cleaning it all up. Scratchie is so sad without Flipper that he begins sleeping under Lydia-Rose’s bed. But soon enough he starts showing symptoms, and then it’s into the laundry room with him, too, the three of them trapped in misery. When Miranda tells us that it’s time to put them to sleep, I think she means it literally, and so I agree to go with her to the vet, thinking we’re taking them for some long, extended nap. Lydia-Rose stays at home, fiddling with Madame Knitting Guide, which she now uses with dexterity. She says she’s going to knit three little cats in their honor.
Miranda and I put Midnight, Scratchie, and Flipper into two cat carriers and get on the bus after a long negotiation with the bus driver about having pets on board. Everyone stares at us, cats mewing underneath our feet.
The vet is nice. She’s a sunny-faced woman with a gap between her front teeth and a buzz cut. She tells us to go to the 7-Eleven across the street and buy a disposable camera. She says we should take some pictures of these guys; she says it’s important. Miranda rubs her temples and says that this is a good idea. And so we buy the camera and I hold Midnight, Scratchie, and Flipper while Miranda snaps pictures. The cats are listless in my arms, like rag dolls. I cradle them like babies. Miranda snaps. I put them on the examining table and push their little heads together, gently, so we can get their faces in the same frame. Snap, snap. The vet lets us do this for a long time.
Finally, she appears in the doorway, her face heavy. “Okay,” she says. “Do you want to say good-bye now?”
“They’re just going to sleep,” I tell her, and she smiles at me like I’m half stupid. This is fine. I’m used to people thinking I’m retarded because of my eye.
The vet shoots something into their veins and then says I should hold them again. So I do. I cradle them and feel their bodies grow lighter, and only then do I understand, because I’ve done this down at Clover Point with Lydia-Rose.
I’ll probably never get the pictures of them developed. Or not for a while. Someone videotaped Lydia-Rose’s grandfather’s funeral and it sits on our bookshelf with a handwritten label that says Grandpa’s Funeral. Once, I watched the whole thing on fast-forward.
A week later, we return to pick up their ashes. Miranda frowns when she looks into the bag. There are three little white urns, sealed shut, and each has been wrapped in fancy ribbon, two pink and one green, as if they are birthday presents.
“This is distasteful,” Miranda says, removing one of the ribbons and dangling it in front of the receptionist’s face. “Whoever had such a stupid idea.”
The receptionist takes the ribbon from Miranda’s hand and looks at her sheepishly. We catch the bus home, Miranda cradling the bag of urns on her lap. When we get back, she stands in the middle of the living room, an urn in each hand. Winkie circles her feet, nose in the air, trying to figure out what she’s holding. Lydia-Rose sits slumped on the couch, her feet in fuzzy tiger slippers, dabbing at her bloody nose.
Miranda surveys the room, exasperated. “I don’t really want to put these anywhere,” she says.
“Let’s bury them,” I say. “Let’s give them a funeral.”
There’s a little park between our house and the high school that nobody ever hangs out in; it’s just this weird vacant stretch of grass with a bench. Lydia-Rose and I go out after dark with a shovel and a flashlight, the urns in my backpack. Miranda has instructed us to tell the police the truth if we’re caught doing what we are about to do. She says they’ll be sympathetic, and that they’ll make us fill up the holes, but that’s all. Lydia-Rose and I don’t have anything to worry about, though. No police ever come around our neighborhood.
There are a lot of rocks in the little park, and each time the shovel hits one, spark
s shoot out. It makes me feel like a cave person, discovering fire.
I put the disposable camera in my treasure chest under the bed. It’s been a while since I’ve looked through it. When no one’s home, I take it into the bathroom, try on my mother’s sweatshirt, slide my thumbs through the worn-out thumbholes, fiddle with the Swiss Army Knife, stare at the photographs. In them, I am a strange-looking child, too small, with no hair. Sometimes I imagine that I was abandoned by accident—that my mother set me down for a second and then was kidnapped, for example. But looking at my little bald head and unhappy face, I wonder now if it was my fault. I wonder if she abandoned me because I was so ugly.
Mixed in with the photographs are a couple of newspaper articles written about me the week after I was born. A weird-looking woman at the library photocopied them for me a few years ago. We found the articles together on microfiche, and after she read them, she told me that God had a little bit of extra love in his heart for me. She said she could locate some books for me—books I might like to read.
“Tom Jones,” she said, her hand on my shoulder, “is about a foundling.”
“So is Superman.”
The idea comes to me one morning before school. I pull the covers over my head and breathe hot breath into the tiny space until my face is hot and red. I hold the thermometer under the desk lamp then put it quickly into my mouth, wander into the kitchen and tell Miranda that I’m too sick to go to school.
“Oh, little sweetheart,” she says, the back of her hand on my forehead. She studies the thermometer, tells me I don’t have much of a fever (why didn’t the lightbulb trick work?) but that I’m hot and clammy to the touch. She says I can stay home until lunchtime; she will walk me to school in the afternoon.
She pulls the covers up to my chin, feels my forehead again, and says she’ll be back in an hour. She cleans an old woman’s studio apartment on Tuesday mornings. “Don’t move,” she says. “I won’t be long.”
The minute I hear the click of the front door locking downstairs I’m on my feet, racing up the stairs to her bedroom. I shut the door behind me and scan the room. Her bed is neatly made, the Little Mermaid comforter stretched tightly across and tucked under the mattress. The coffee can is empty of cigarettes, her shoes are lined up against one wall, the ironing board is against the closet door. The room smells of her skin lotion and the stale, thick scent of old smoke.
I open each dresser drawer and flip past her folded T-shirts like pages of a magazine: her large high-waisted underwear, a different color for each day; her sensible wide-strapped cotton bras, all the same shade of beige; athletic socks rolled into balls; tiny pouches of potpourri in every drawer, their rose scent mixed with the musty wood of the dresser; folded pairs of old jeans she never wears; flannel and cotton nightshirts; panty hose. I find nothing.
Hanging in her closet are pressed collared shirts, two belted dresses, and a trench coat. I can reach the shelf but it looks like it’s just folded-up sweaters. The floor of the closet is stacked with shoe boxes, and I open each one. Each is empty, save for tissue paper, strips of cardboard, plastic rods, and other things designed to keep the shapes of shoes.
I find the photographs and the letters in a black folder hidden in the space between her mattress and the wall. The photographs are of Dell, her ex-husband, whom I recognize from the Polaroid that I stole from Lydia-Rose. He has the same sharp features as she does. He’s in a suit, sitting on a park bench in front of a fountain, his arm raised as if to wave at whoever is taking the picture. On the back of the photograph, Miranda has written Our Wedding Day in her delicate, perfect handwriting. Then there’s a tiny black-and-white photograph of Miranda and one of her sisters, the two of them kneeling on the grass in front of a tombstone. It isn’t difficult to figure out which one is Miranda; she has the biggest and brightest face. I flip quickly through the others. It isn’t Miranda’s past that interests me—for the first time in my life, it’s my own. I skim the letters, searching for any sign of my name, a birth certificate, an adoption record, something about my past. But the letters are all from her sister Sharon. I read them quickly, stopping on a paragraph here and there.
. . . We’re not married. He doesn’t believe in it. Spain is too hot. Everyone goes to the casino on Saturday nights, so we do too. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. He asks about you, Miranda. It’s been so many years. I still love you—I do. I can’t wait to meet Lydia-Rose . . .
The handwriting is hard to read, chicken scratch, like a boy’s.
. . . She was a real cunt of a woman, she slipped one of my perfumes into her purse and she might have stolen other things too . . . and someone brought a little speed over—I know, I know, I feel guilty even writing it, but it was my birthday, for Christ’s sake. Anyway, okay, she’s hurt real bad . . .
A real cunt of a woman. I say the phrase in my head, memorizing it for later use. The next letter is dated three years later, the handwriting bigger and loopier.
. . . There’s one nice thing. When they let you out, they act real happy. Like it’s your birthday. They pat you on the back like you had a rapport. And you know what they say to you? You know what they say to you when you get out? They tell you to go out into the world. They tell you to do great things.
Nothing more except a postcard made out to Miranda’s mother, the address in Miranda’s writing, but no message and no stamp, never sent.
I ransack her room further for a diary, a notepad, flip through a couple of paperbacks for something slipped inside, but there’s nothing in here about me—it’s all her past, her secrets, her life before I came into it.
When she gets home I am cross-legged on the couch, feeding bits of Ritz crackers to Winkie. Miranda’s hair is tied up in a kerchief. She walks stiffly when she returns from cleaning, especially if she’s had to get on her knees to scrub underneath something, or had to walk up and down too many flights of stairs. She stops at the kitchen sink and washes her hands—to get the smell of the latex gloves off, she says—then feels my forehead. She brushes the cracker crumbs off the couch and into her hand. She pats Winkie’s head.
“Feeling better?” Miranda puts her hand on my knee. They are the strongest-looking hands in the world.
“No.”
“You sad today, honey?”
“No.”
I push myself off the couch, grab my backpack, and run down the stairs, slip my feet into my sneakers, and kick the same little rock all the way until I get to school.
I wish I could think of Miranda as my mom, and I’ve tried. I’ve tried as hard as I can all these years. But I watch her and Lydia-Rose together—the way they twitch their noses when they’re thinking—and every time I see something like that, I’m reminded that I don’t belong here with them. I’m reminded that something is missing. At night I imagine that my real mother is coming for me, her arms outstretched. I imagine she looks just like me, that we have the same hands.
Sometimes, when I’m in a pettier mood, I like to imagine that she walked into the ocean or disappeared into the woods to be eaten by the elements, so racked with guilt from leaving me. Sometimes I imagine she was an alcoholic. Or a sixteen-year-old girl living in a basement suite with a punk rock band. Free rent if she put out and kept the kitchen clean. My father, I guess, was one of the musicians. I like to wonder—drums, bass, or lead guitar? Maybe saxophone or electronic keyboard. I have no ear for music—the notes clink around in my head when I listen to it and I can’t tell what’s good or bad. All I know is that one of my parents must have been blond. Maybe my mother hadn’t realized she was pregnant until it was too late, and the abortion clinic turned her away. I try not to think about what I know is most likely true—that she was a prostitute—and instead I imagine that she’s perfect, and beautiful, and didn’t mean to abandon me.
In my head, late at night, I draft letters to my mother and father. I say everything I want to say, everything that needs to be said. In my head, I am so eloquent.
VI.
“Yula.” Joel put the gun down and beckoned her inside, but she shook her head. They were burly, unshaven men. Joel had huge hairy calves.
“Can you take me to the hospital?” she said and motioned to one of their old rusty pickups.
Jo had broken six of her ribs, her back, her right arm, and both of her ankles, but it was the road rash that was the ugliest, the most painful. The asphalt dug so deep into her skin in places that the doctors said they couldn’t extract it until the swelling went down. Yula stood at the end of the bed and stroked her mother’s foot. Jo’s face was crusted with blood and there was a bandage around her head. She had skidded so hard on the concrete that her helmet had broken in two and a streak of hair on the back of her head had been ripped off. Her jaw was broken in three places. As she’d lain at the side of the road, her tongue had fallen back into her throat and closed off most of her airway; by the time the paramedics came, both her lungs had collapsed and her throat and nose were filled with blood.
Quinn’s left arm was crushed. It had almost been torn off completely. But he’d landed on his side, not on his back like Jo, and though he’d never fully use his hand again, he would make a quick recovery. His leather jacket and pants were thicker than Jo’s and had protected him from the gravel. He’d kept his head tucked into his chest; he knew how to fall. He stood at the edge of the bed with Yula and they waited for Jo to wake up. They waited for hours, then days. Yula sat in an armchair in the corner of the room, nursing Eugene, and Quinn knelt beside Jo’s bed and told her how sorry he was, how wrong he was, what an awful man he was, and how her life would be different now, better, much better, and that he would leave if she wanted him to, anything she wanted, if she would wake up and be okay.
Y: A Novel Page 8