"Nice to meet you, Billy," I said. My body shook for some reason. I certainly wasn't cold.
"Please, call me Mr. Pulman." He smiled. I watched his eyes for a moment, praying I didn't see something I didn't like. He turned from me and looked around the room. "So, what grade are you in?"
"I'm a junior." What did it matter to him?
"Graduating next year, huh? Set to get your driver's license, bouncing from boyfriend to boyfriend, out on the town on Friday nights. I remember those days well."
I opened my mouth then shut it again. I could have said something—probably should have, in retrospect—but I didn't have the nerve. I was right about him, though: he was a pompous ass and Grandma wouldn't have approved. He couldn't even look at me.
Mama walked in from the kitchen with a beer. She looked at me and dropped her smile. "Don't you have homework to do, Maggie?"
I didn't, but I wasn't going to sit around and be ignored. Mama hadn't entertained a man since Alfie left, and I'm sure she was horny. Conversation between Mr. Pulman and me would have to wait, but I wouldn't cry if it never happened.
I stood up and walked to my room.
2
I couldn't prove Steve was behind the death of Dusty. There were other boys who taunted me, and any one of them had the ability to sink so low and silence the animal with a quick blow the head and a hacksaw. I often wondered which one it was, but unless I overheard rumors, I wouldn't know for sure. Two years had passed since that horrible night, and rumors weren't about to flow easily. If they did, they would probably be corrupted by time. You see, if you don't write it all down, the memories change.
I won't lie and say I wasn't attracted to Steve despite what he might have done to Dusty. When you spend time with something so hideous, it tends to grow on you. I became more aware of his quirks and less aware of how much an ass he could be when provoked. He did have a sense of humor, a gentle touch and helpful attitude. In truth, he was more of a gentleman than I expected, but certainly not more than I needed.
The first time I kissed Steve it was no more than five feet from where I found Dusty. It felt wrong.
Steve stood back from me and wiped his mouth. "What's wrong?"
I didn't know what to say to him, but I couldn't remain silent for much longer. I looked over at the spot behind the shed. "This is where I found Dusty. I don't like this place."
"That stupid dog of Michael's?"
"Yeah. That stupid dog." I turned my eyes up from the shed to the Bus in the distance and sighed. "That stupid dog."
I think Steve felt something at that point. It's hard to tell with some men; there are those who wear their feelings on their face like maudlin makeup, while others conceal it behind blackened eyes. I wanted to believe Steve was somewhere between the two extremes, and in his brown eyes I could see remorse or sadness, maybe empathy.
"I'm sorry about what happened to him. You know that, don't you?"
"I just wish I knew who it was."
"Why? What difference would that make, Maggie? If people are capable of killing an animal and cutting it up, what makes you think they couldn't do something to you?"
I stared at Steve and let my stomach settle. Although Steve knew Dusty had died, I never once mentioned how. I figured it was something I didn't want to remember, something I could erase if I just ignored the memory altogether and let that part of my brain die with age. He pointed it out, though. On his own. Without prompting.
I turned and walked back to my home without a word, leaving Steve alone with his thoughts. I was convinced he was more involved than I thought originally, and the only way to appease the eels was to feed the bastard to the wind. I felt something for him, though, and the more I let my guard down, the closer I became without knowing it.
When I reached the trailer, Mama and Mr. Pulman were on the couch quietly watching television. They didn't acknowledge I was there, and I didn't expect them to. I was fast becoming an afterthought to Mama. I looked past both of them and went to my room without saying a word. I needed to talk to Grandma, to know I was in the right and whatever I planned was going to build my castle that much larger. I needed to sort out my feelings.
I sat on the bed with my back against the wall and cried. There are times when you're exposed to truths, to secrets kept from you. They may not have been intentionally held back, nor may you even have an inkling of knowledge. When something is revealed—whether directly or through cracks in the weather-stripping of silence—it hurts. It's not because of the truth itself so much as it's about the loneliness you feel. Face it: you weren't good enough to know.
Steve didn't confess to me, but he did have knowledge I didn't give him. That implied accessory and I'm sure I could coax that into a judgment of full guilt. Whether or not he was the one to kill Dusty, he was behind it in some form.
His kiss, however, lingered.
I wiped my mouth as if they touched tainted lips. Outside, the sun was far from disappearing behind the horizon, and its angle brought knife-like shadows into my room. I looked down through my tears at the ones crossing my sheets. I wanted to see a premonition that would tell me how to clean up the mess I'd made that started when I first kissed Michael behind the maintenance shed.
All I saw, though, were patterns in the sheets.
"Sometimes, Maggie, a brick in the castle takes a long time to lay out."
I looked over at Grandma in the corner of my room. She sat in her ethereal rocking chair with her ghostly afghan wrapped around her. Her smile was delicate, and in her eyes was the love I needed at that very moment.
"Things take time."
I wiped the tears from my cheeks and sat up straighter on the bed. "What do I do, Grandma?"
"You know what to do if you search your heart. There are parts of this life you don't understand until you marry them to the whole."
Grandma's image faded. She was never one to stick around, but I always felt better for hours after the few seconds I was permitted to see her again.
I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. I didn't know what she meant, but I wasn't going to ignore her. Somewhere in my past was a piece of the puzzle I had to dig up. It might have been placed in the cushions of my mental couch and sat on for years, but it was there. I hoped in my dreams I would find it, and I could clean up for good.
3
A few weeks later, the world turned upside down. I still hadn't figured out what to do about Steve, and as I sat on the couch in the living room, my stomach churned with the acid of anticipation. Something was going to happen.
Mr. Pulman opened the door and stepped inside. He set his suitcase down and snapped his fingers in my direction. "You want to take this to my room, please?"
I didn't like the sound of that. It was Mama's room, and this was still Grandma's house, as far as I was concerned. I'd argued with Mama enough about moving Mr. Pulman in, but she didn't want to listen. I didn't dare tell her that Grandma wouldn't approve, but I think she knew. In the end, I was being immature and Mama was in the right. Mr. Pulman was here to stay.
I did as I was told and put the suitcase up. It would be different in the house, and with all the uncertainty I had every time I looked at Mr. Pulman, I knew that difference couldn't be good. It was the end of my improved relationship with Mama and the return of living like the unwanted child Grandma tried so hard to remedy.
Another reason I didn't want Mr. Pulman in the house had to do with waking up in the middle of the night, usually naked and curled on the floor of my room. I'd done that when I was fourteen, but it wasn't until Grandma's last vision and Mr. Pulman's increased need to be around Mama that I started again. I was worried, and so was Mama. On more than one occasion, she had opened my bedroom door only to find me writhing on the floor. The way she described it made me think of the eels in the wind—unnatural and hideous.
"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked once while we sat at the kitchen table alone.
"I don't know what it is, but I'm fine."
; "Are you dreaming of something?"
I was, but how could I explain why I dreamed of cutting people with scissors and shards of glass? I looked at her, tried to examine her worried expression, and left it alone.
Mr. Pulman wouldn't be so kind. I was sure of it. His demeanor around me was authoritative, a trait I recognized the second he told me to call him "Mr. Pulman." If he found me on the floor and naked, I don't know what he would have done, but there would be no concern in his voice. I wondered at times if he wouldn't slip in next to me, naked, and try to arouse my interest. He wasn't a dirty man like Alfie, but there was that aura I hated.
Steve sensed my trepidation on numerous occasions and pestered me enough about it.
"Just ignore the old man. He's not your dad, and you don't have to listen to him."
"I don't think you understand," I said. "If he tells me to do something, I'll have to do it. He's got Mama wrapped around his finger."
"So, talk to her about it."
"I have."
"You can't go through life worrying about him, Maggie." Steve picked something out of his teeth and smiled. "Why don't you move in with me?"
I laughed. "That's funny, Steve. I'm sure Mama would be happy about it."
"We could have sex all night, every night."
I looked up at Steve. A buried memory crept up and flashed in front of me like a beacon leading me to shore. Steve was strapped to the table with duct tape, and I leaned over him with pliers. I saw the fear in his eyes and watched his forked tongue slide back and forth in his mouth. The wind had given me the answer long ago, but I didn't know what to make of it until now.
I smiled as I thought of Steve's bloody tongue rubbing across my naked stomach. I took a step forward and leaned in to kiss him. If this was the way it was supposed to be, I had to lure the man into a sense of calm. I wasn't ready to cut him, but I could certainly get him ready.
I kissed Steve across the cheeks and bit softly on his earlobe. "Why don't we do that now?" I whispered. "Take me someplace I can feel you."
I closed my eyes and heard Grandma in the soft breeze that blew around us. "Build it slow, Maggie. Build it slow."
I did just a Grandma said, but if I was confused at first about my feelings for Steve, things certainly weren't clearer after I slept with him a few times. I enjoyed it too much, but in the back of my mind—and often while in the throes of passion—I would imagine cutting into his belly and letting the insides spill out around me. It aroused me more, and in those moments of conflicting thoughts, I usually came.
I'd often lie next to him in his bed after we were done and run my fingers across his chest or stomach, pushing here and there to see just where to cut. At the same time, I felt satisfied and more complete than I was before. Steve was there for me, when so often no one else was. He smiled at me, laughed with me, and listened when I felt like talking about Mama or Mr. Pulman.
When he talked, though, I watched his tongue slither back and forth. Grandma was right: it was split down the middle and often whipped me with anger a minute before lavishing praise in my direction. I could feel that vengeful ember grow, and it was the tongue I wanted to feel against me the most, sometimes attached to his body, sometimes in the palm of my hand.
Steve made it easy to hate, too.
I probably deserved it each time Steve assaulted me with words or his fist, but I know what Grandma would say: "You don't deserve anything from a man, and they deserve nothing from you." His tendency for violence became more pronounced the more we slept together. He would rage if I denied him, if Mama kept me in the house, or if I was on my period. It was cyclical, but I could appease him easily enough by spreading my legs at every opportunity.
He was, in a word, pliable.
4
As I said before, Mr. Pulman had a tendency to look away when I talked to him. In fact, the only person he ever looked directly at was Mama. It was disconcerting, to say the least, and I often wanted to ask him what his problem was. However, Mama's wrath was something I was keen to avoid, especially since I was now the third wheel and a stranger in my own house.
I stepped out of my room several months after Mr. Pulman moved in and looked at both of them on the couch. While Mr. Pulman stared at something on the floor, Mama had a look about her that said she wanted to talk. It was a look I'd seen many times before, and I was to listen. I wondered for a moment if she knew something about Steve and me, but I had gone to lengths to make sure that was one secret I was going to keep. It was my mess, not hers, and I was going to clean it up.
"What?"
"We're getting married, Maggie." Mama sat on the edge of the couch and looked at me through her drunken eyes. I never once saw a smile creep across her face like you might expect. "Billy proposed last night."
I stood silent for a moment and tried to digest this bit of news. How could this be? I wondered if Mama wasn't so blinded by her misguided direction of late, or if she saw the world though hazy eyes after the mess with Alfie. She certainly wouldn't get married to a man that couldn't look her own daughter in the face, would she?
Rather than say a word otherwise, I turned back to my room and shut the door. I heard them whisper in the living room followed by footsteps—one set out the front door and the other towards me.
Mama opened my bedroom door and stood with her arms crossed, her expression one of exasperation more than anger. I sat on my bed with my knees pulled to my chest, back against the wall, much like all those times I cowered from her when I was five or six. Grandma wasn't going to save me, though. I had to stand for myself.
"You don't like him, do you?" Mama asked.
"No. He worries me."
"Why?"
"He won't look at me, Mama." I looked at her as she uncrossed her arms, sat down on the other side of my bed and stared at the floor.
"He's not like Alfie, you know."
I didn't want to believe her. All men had forked tongues. Why couldn't she see this? "Grandma wouldn't like him."
She looked up at me. For a second, I thought I saw a glint of anger, caught in the tears that welled up on the edge of her eyelids. "She's dead, Maggie."
"She would have cleaned up your mess."
That glint of anger was much more pronounced and crept across her face like a caustic acid, turning her lips down and narrowing her eyes. "Sometimes messes aren't what they seem until you open your eyes. I need a man, Maggie. I'm tired of living my life wondering who will turn on me at any moment. You don't understand that, but I wish you'd crawl out of your teenage skin and grow up for a minute."
"What about Alfie? You thought the same way about him."
"Don't talk to me about Alfie. It was rebellion. That's it. This isn't the same thing."
I sat silent, watching her expressions change. I realized then she was aware of her messes, but didn't know how to clean them up. Grandma must have protected her all those years, and when Mama finally stood on her own, she failed miserably and let Alfie into our lives. Without thought, she banished him instead of taking care of the problem. It was something she tried to sweep under the carpet and ignore. Some messes, however, aren't meant to be ignored. They eventually resurface, often worse than they were in the first place. Mama knew that.
As thoughts of Alfie roamed through my head, they collided with thoughts of Michael. Who cleaned up my mess? I never thought of it like that before, but I was pregnant with his child and he had turned his back to me. Someone else must have put him in the Bus, but all I could think of for the past few years was the image of the eels taking him apart. I wasn't capable of standing on my own at the time. Did Mama help?
I couldn't say. "He worries me, Mama," I finally whispered.
She stood up, and I felt something that made me want to pressure her more. There was concern, not only for her, but maybe for me as well. She didn't have to look in my eyes for me to see it. I knew she worried as much as I did.
She sighed and looked down at the Barbie nightlight I still had plugged into m
y wall. "We're going to be all right, Maggie. I promise."
I wished I could believe her. I wished she could believe herself.
She left my room at that moment and walked out the front door. I didn't know where she went, but I assumed it was to follow Mr. Pulman and let him know that I was okay with her decision. I wasn't, but I couldn't argue.
I crawled under my covers and closed my eyes. I had lost too much since Grandma left: my virginity and Michael, Dusty, Justin and now Mama. She was all I had left, and she couldn't see past her own desires to understand the mess she was leaving for God to clean up. Storms were coming, and they would be larger than any that came before.
As for Steve, he would have to wait.
5
Grandma was at the wedding. Maybe she would tell me what to do as I sat in a chair in the corner of the Justice of the Peace's office and watched Mama drive a wedge between us for good. Mr. Pulman couldn't keep his eyes on the judge. He darted back and forth from Mama to the desk to the bookshelf and finally the floor.
In a chair next to me, Grandma sat silent. I knew Mama couldn't see her, but I often wondered if she could sense her presence. There are threads that bind families regardless of how much hate exists, and they are as present in death as they are in life. Grandma had so often left her castle in the sky to tell me something or offer guidance in my darkest hours. Could she have done the same for Mama?
I looked at Grandma as a tear rolled down her face. I knew it wasn't a tear of joy, but a realization that all of her teachings had fallen on deaf ears. She finally turned to me and whispered. "She knows how to clean up a mess as good as you, Maggie. You have to remind her, though. Remind her of what it's like inside the wind. Take her outside and let her listen to what it has to say."
I smiled and didn't say a word. I would do just that. I would take Mama outside and remind her of everything girls need to do to build their castles in the sky. I would teach her one more time.
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