I blushed. “No, I’ll stay. This is the only way to keep her out of a nursing home.” She needs me.
****
Oma was still fuming about the confrontation in the kitchen when we returned.
“Where were you?” she snapped.
“We went to the school. I had to register Keziah.”
“You were gone for hours.”
“No, we’ve only been gone forty-five minutes.”
I slipped past them as they argued. In the living room, I checked my cell phone for a message from my sister. How was I going to put up with Oma if she always acted like that?
“Look, what do you want for lunch?” Mama raised her voice.
“Steak and bacon.”
Mama lifted her eyebrows. “You don’t eat meat.”
Oma snorted. “I know that. I’m not that old yet. I don’t want you sleeping upstairs anymore.”
I slid my phone into my purse, joining them in the hallway.
“When you leave and Keziah’s here, I don’t want her up there all alone. I won’t know what she’s doing up there.”
“Am I going to get drunk or something?” I muttered.
Oma must not have heard, but Mama glared.
“I need to be able to keep an eye on her,” Oma continued. “I want her in the living room. She can sleep on the floor.”
“Wait, I have to sleep in the living room?”
“She can’t sleep on the floor, and she can’t sleep on the couch, either,” Mama said.
I envied her calmness.
“Keziah will be fine upstairs,” Mama said.
“Teenagers should not get rooms with doors.” Oma pursed her lips.
“I did. Jan did.”
“And just see what happened.” Oma threw her hands up. “There are two beds in my room. She can sleep in there with me.”
“What? No,” I yelped. “I don’t get my own bedroom?”
“That’s because after Daddy died, you didn’t want to sleep upstairs anymore,” Mama reminded Oma. “You cleaned out my room and put my bed in Jan’s room. What if we put the bed back into my room?”
“She sleeps in the living room or in with me.”
“But that’s not fair,” I yelled.
“Override me,” Oma snapped. “Argue it out with your mother right in front of me.”
“Oma, please.” Mama set her purse on the table near the door. “When we moved, we put Keziah’s old bed in your attic. What if we set that up in the living room?”
“That would work fine.” Oma brushed past us for the kitchen.
“I guess we’ll go get that down after lunch.”
“Mama, this isn’t fair! Why can’t I have my own bedroom?” First, I come here, and now I don’t even get my own space? I want to go home, but I can’t, I have to stay with Oma.
“Kez.” Mama met my gaze. “Maybe this is better. Oma needs help around here. What if something happened in the night? If you were upstairs, you wouldn’t be able to hear.”
“Thanks a lot. What did you do that was so horrible Oma doesn’t trust me?” I hissed, turning away for the living room. I ignored the paleness on Mama’s face, and the way she gulped.
****
I am five years old. Oma takes me to the summer fair in the park. It happens every year, right after school ends.
Oma and I go on a few of the rides. She orders fried dough with lots of powdered sugar, and we share it on a picnic table. When we finish, she orders us each a candied apple. I enjoy eating the junk food, since Mama will not let me eat it at home.
Before we leave, Oma buys me a huge balloon. It is as big as I am and bright pink with purple swirls. The balloon maker put glitter inside, so when I shake the balloon, it sparkles.
I store it in the backseat of the car until we get to her house. I pull the balloon out and dance to the front door, too happy to remember the briar bush by the stairs. My balloon snags on one of the thorns. The pop startles me. Glitter rains over the porch. For a moment, I stare at my shredded toy.
I start to cry, but Oma hugs me. She herds me back into the car and drives back to the fair, so she can buy me a new one.
Chapter 5
The mattress and boxspring from my old bed rested towards the front of the attic, leaning against the wall and a giant orange cooler.
Mama yanked the protective sheets off. Dust clouds plumed into the air, tickling my nose and throat and burning my eyes. Mama coughed as I sneezed.
“It’s going to work out better this way.” Mama let the sheets fall in a crumpled mess over a cardboard box.
I folded my arms, feeling a bit like a child in a china store. I wasn’t allowed in the attic, and neither was Mama, unless Oma followed, but she pouted downstairs.
Everything seemed exotic, fascinating, and fragile, as if it might disappear at any moment. I picked up a paper from the top of the vanity and wiped the dust off on my thigh. The particles clung to the fibers of my jeans to reveal a black and white photograph of my grandparents on their wedding day.
Oma wore a white dress, probably satin, since it shone. The tight collar made her neck appear long, her head tipped to the side, and a small smirk on her lips. Her hair was pinned in tight curls beneath a hat that curved like a crown, the veil spilling down her back.
My grandfather stood more stiffly, his suit a sharp contrast of black when compared to the pale gazebo behind. He had his hands folded in front of him, and his head tipped forward, so his eyes were cast in shadows.
“Why don’t you take that down and show Oma?” Mama called. “She’d be happy to tell you about the wedding.”
Probably. The word hung huge and heavy in the air. Dust particles danced in the sunbeams spilling through the windows. I poked at one.
“Your grandfather loved you.” Mama coughed into her arm and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “He would come down to our house every morning, pick you up, swing you around, and call you his little Bumble Bee. You two were really close.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, which made them itch, but I didn’t want to rub them with my filthy fingers. Sometimes I recalled sitting in a rocking chair in the living room with a man who was soft, big, and warm as a cartoon about bees played in the background.
We lifted the mattress, my muscles screaming in protest. Mama faced backwards, and I pressed against the wall. A wind chime hung from a rusty hook near my head; I bumped the hummingbird figurine dangling from the bottom and the lawn ornament rattled at me. We maneuvered the mattress through the attic, avoiding the large obstacles, and only a Christmas ball met its doom beneath Mama’s sneaker. We got the mattress past the doorframe and down the stairs.
“Took you long enough,” Oma growled. “What were you doing up there?”
“It was hard to get out.” Mama wiped her hands on her jeans, dirty handprints streaking her buttocks. “We’ll have to move the living room table from there over to here, so we can put the mattress up against the couch. Here, let me clean these off.” She picked the trinkets off the table to relocate them to the piano.
“I’m going to go get that picture.” I ran back up the stairs before Mama could make me help clean off the table. The door to the attic gaped open like a mouth.
I stepped over the clutter for the picture, but then I curled my fingers into a fist and paused. The picture wasn’t resting on the vanity’s top, although the rectangular spot where I’d picked it up from remained, dust particles settling over the mahogany finish.
“Crap.” Mama must have put it somewhere. I peered along the left side at a cardboard box of wrapping paper rolls, but no photo. On the right side were white boxes, the kind stores pack clothes into for gifts. I lifted the top of the box. Porcelain plates and tissue paper. No photograph.
A flash of light made me look at the mirror. Beneath the layer of dust, my face stared back, and beneath it another face shimmered, distorted by depth and the spider lines from a crack.
The second image looked to be a man. His face was round, w
ith pale skin and shadowed eyes. His brow creased in a frown. He’s way too similar to the homeless man on the subway.
“Whoa!” I dragged my fingers across the dust to see what it looked like under the thick layer.
Beneath the marks I made, the mirror was still dirty. I grabbed a hunk of tissue paper from the floor and rubbed clean a circle. Nothing except glass reflecting my face and the attic beyond. There was no giant picture of a man to have reflected in the glass. I licked my lips tasting dust and a chill crept up my spine.
Now I was seeing things. Great.
When I shut the attic door, a breeze stirred my hair. One of the windows must have been open.
Downstairs, Mama had the card table cleaned off.
“I couldn’t find the picture.”
“What?” Mama pushed the table against the fireplace.
“The wedding picture. It wasn’t there.”
Mama glanced at the doorway. “Don’t tell Oma you lost it, or she’ll have a fit. Come help me put the bed together. Maybe we won’t need the boxspring.”
It wasn’t much of a bed with the height lower than the couch. Mama went back up into the attic and found old linens, plus cartoon character comforters from my childhood folded on the couch for use once winter came.
Oma hovered in the doorway while we put cases on the pillows. “I don’t see why she can’t sleep with me. I don’t snore. She just doesn’t want to be here, that’s all. Go take her home with you.” She muttered something about Saint Agatha and walked away.
“Who’s Saint Agatha?”
Her mother shrugged. I gazed around the living room and sighed.
****
I sighed again as we went outside, but more in relief. Since Oma still pouted in the bedroom—her lips pressed together while she stared at the wall above the television—Mama decided we would spruce up the front yard. She seized the handle of the garage door and yanked it up, the hinges squealing.
Mama stepped over a gas can to reach the rake hanging on the wall. “Oma likes the car in the driveway so it looks like someone’s here. It should stop a robbery.”
“But what if she tries to, you know, drive?”
“She apparently doesn’t remember how.”
“Apparently?” I accepted the rake and a pair of gardening gloves.
“Don’t worry. She won’t drive.”
I had to have faith like that, but it nagged at my mind. Something dire could happen if Oma tried.
Mama pulled on the second pair of gloves and fished through a cardboard box of lawn ornaments. Plastic birds with spinning wings on long metal sticks glared at me through painted-on eyes. I shivered.
Mama handed me items, and I set the padded kneeling stools on the sidewalk, dropping the trowels next to them. Does Uncle Jan do nothing in regards to yard work other than mow?
Mama returned from the garage swinging a small plastic bag. “Sidewalk chalk, Kez. When you were little, we would sit here for hours drawing pictures.”
I laughed. “For real? I don’t remember that.”
Mama set the bag on the sidewalk. “Come on, we’re going to draw stuff. I’ll look for a photo of you sidewalk chalking later. I’m sure Oma has one around here somewhere.”
I lifted off the cushion, wincing as my knees cracked. For a cushion, it wasn’t very soft.
Mama sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, picking through the bag. Her short tresses gave her an elfin aura. Crouched over the sidewalk like that, drawing with a piece of bright blue chalk, Mama looked like a teenager. I couldn’t help but smile. She never looked that carefree in the city. Maybe it was because she’d grown up in New Winchester that she let go of her worries. Oma, for one. She was a big worry.
I pulled out a red piece of chalk and moved to the sidewalk square above Mama’s. A spot of bird poo marred the upper left corner. I drew a circle and stared at it. So now what? I had a wobbly circle. I could make it into a smiley face, but that seemed cliché. I looked over my shoulder at Mama’s square, where she had drawn a cat. Okay, my square was going to be a sunset with many lines of color, and it was going to look amazing. I leaned back on my heels, chewing my lip.
A car pulled into the two-family house next door. The driver turned the engine off, opened the door, and stepped out. Shaggy blonde hair fell around the young man’s face; he lacked a shirt, and his shredded blue jeans hung low on his hips.
The guy grinned and waved. Mama waved back. My face heated. He was gorgeous, and I was sidewalk chalking with my mother. I dropped the chalk and rocked onto my bottom. Great, the guy walked toward us. Mama stood to greet him, so I did, too.
“Hello there.” When he smiled, his teeth looked perfect and white.
“Hi,” Mama said and began telling our life story.
She explained how she was a teacher, how we had once lived in New Winchester until moving to New York City. She told him, a complete stranger, about how I was moving in with Oma to help her out, leaving out that Oma had become different. I wanted to melt into the cement.
“That is quite a story,” he said with a sarcastic whistle.
He made fun of Mama, the jerk. I ground my teeth.
“My name’s Michael.”
“And what do you do, Michael?” Mama smiled.
“I work over at the library.”
“Don’t you go to college?” she pressed.
“I graduated a few years ago.” He chuckled. “I’m older than I look, ma’am.”
How “ma’am” could sound sarcastic, I would have never guessed, but he succeeded. My face turned redder.
“Now,” he drawled, “I had best be going. Welcome to the neighborhood … Keziah.” He lowered his voice as he said my name, the word a caress.
I scowled to hide the tingle that coursed through my body.
Mama waved as he walked away with a saunter in his step. “He’s a nice young man. If you ever need anything, you should ask him for help. He’s closer than Uncle Jan. That’s what’s so great about these little neighborhoods. There are people who really want to help.”
“Yeah.” I picked up a piece of chalk to draw a skeleton hanging from a noose and labelled it Michael.
****
I am twelve years old. Mama and I visit Oma on our summer vacation.
“I want to cut my hair,” I tell Oma. We sit on her front porch and feed peanuts to the squirrels.
The one with the bushiest tail takes a peanut from her hand. “How come?”
“Because everyone on TV has short hair.” I try to give the squirrel a peanut from my hand, but the critter jumps onto the railing. “Mama said I can’t.”
“You do look very pretty with long hair.”
“So I’ll be ugly with short?” I know that’s not what she means, but I want to hear her call me pretty again.
“It will look different on you. It will take a long while to grow out if you don’t like it.”
Very true. “I still want to try it.”
“Come here then.” Oma leads me into the house. She takes bobby pins from her dresser and fastens my curls to my scalp. She pins some sections, twists others, and when she finishes, my hair only hangs down to my shoulders.
I do look different. Not ugly, not pretty, just unusual. I don’t recognize myself.
“Do you like it?” she asks.
“Maybe.” I glance at her reflection next to mine in the dresser’s mirror. “You have short hair.”
“It is easier to manage.” Oma pats my head. “So, would you like me to take you to the hair dresser’s now?”
“No. I don’t think I would like it short all the time, but this, for now, is nice.”
“I’ll do it anytime you want,” she says, even though we both know I will return to New York City in a few days.
I leave my hair short for the rest of the evening, and Oma snaps some photographs, but I never ask her to pin it for me again.
Chapter 6
The day Mama deserted me with Oma dawned sunny and warm, but it should pour bucke
ts of rain from a cloudy sky to better fit my mood. Uncle Jan arrived to drive her to the bus station. As I joined them by the car, Oma barked harsh laughter.
“What’s this? You all have to go take her back?”
“You can come, too.” Mama hugged Oma. “You know I’m going to miss you, right? Take care of yourself. Come on now, we’ll all go to the station.”
“Me? Go? I’d rather not,” Oma snorted. “I’m old. Do you think I want to ride in the car forever?”
“It’s not that far.”
“Don’t lie to me. I know you too well for that.” Oma stormed up the porch steps to the front door.
“Why don’t you stay here instead of going with us,” Mama said to me. “It might be better this way.” Mama gazed at Oma with furrowed brows. “She seems upset. Uncle Jan would just have to drive you back here, anyway.”
I wanted to beg her not to go and leave me with Oma, but I only nodded.
Then, Mama was gone with Uncle Jan. I was alone with Oma. Okay, time for me to take responsibility. I can do this.
I locked the screen door, but left the wooden door open to allow the summer breeze into the house. A mirror hung over the hallway table, framed in carved wood engraved with roses and thorny vines. I leaned over the marble table to trace the engravings.
“My friend had a mirror just like that one.” Oma rubbed her finger across her nose. “It hung in the parlor, and whenever her mother wasn’t paying attention, we would sneak in to look in it. We would primp our hair and pinch our cheeks. Sometimes, we pretended the girls looking back were from somewhere far, far away. We imagined we could join them.”
The mirror reflected the top of my head and the staircase. For a second, I thought I saw feet running up the stairs, yet it was silent in the house.
“Her name was Celia Wein,” she continued. “Her mother was French and never spoke a word of English as long as I knew her. They had a cook, but Celia’s mother made the most delicious biscuits.”
“Don’t you mean croissants?”
“What?”
“Croissants. They’re French, and kind of famous for being French.”
The Goat Children Page 4