by Lisa Wingate
Eventually, the twins lost interest in employing the playscape for its intended use, and began running around the enclosure like over-wound toy trucks, making engine noises and bumping into the walls and other kids. When Landon fell asleep on the lower deck, they made a game of bombing their sleeping brother with balls from the ball pit. The only other mom in the place gathered her kids, sent a dirty look our way, and left. A few minutes later, the manager came in and gave us the boot. “You can’t stay there. This is a restaurant, not a day care.” He studied us while chewing his lip, then shook his head and walked away.
I felt sick to my stomach. “Barbara, we have to go.”
She didn’t answer. She just picked up her cell phone and started thumbing through her contacts again.
I walked over and scooped Landon off the floor, then told the twins to put on their shoes. They ignored me, of course, and disappeared into the maze of brightly colored tunnels overhead. Landon sagged in my arms like a rag doll, his hair tickling my chin, his feet bumping my thighs as I turned back to Barbie and Aunt Lute. “We need to go. Now.”
Aunt Lute slid to the edge of the seat and unfolded herself to a standing position, then walked to the edge of the playscape. Linking her hands behind her back, she bent forward and began walking back and forth in front of the slide as if she were searching for something on the floor. The boys stopped to watch from the playscape balcony. Mark asked what she was doing.
“I think they’ve left tracks,” she told him.
“What tracks?”
“The leopards,” was Aunt Lute’s answer. “I think they’ve left tracks.” She moved slowly toward the door, still trailing the leopards. Mark and Daniel slid down the slide and fell into line behind her.
“We mustn’t forget the little pea,” Aunt Lute pointed out, touching Jewel’s face and grabbing the car keys I’d set on the table, then heading out the door. The noise of the boys’ departure caused Jewel to whimper. Barbie gave the sound a dull look, then dialed another number on her phone.
“Barbara!” I snapped, my voice reverberating in the glass enclosure. “We’re leaving.”
“Ssshhh!” she hissed, waiting for someone to answer the phone.
“Barbara!”
“I’m trying!” she shrieked.
Landon jerked in my arms, his head sliding off my shoulder. “No, you’re not,” I spat. “You’re not trying. You’re not doing anything, Barbara. You’re just . . . sitting there.”
She flicked a narrow glare my way. “I’m trying to call someone. I’m trying to find a place.”
Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d reached out and knocked the phone from her hand. It slid across the table and bounced off the red padded seat. Landon flopped backward, and I caught him, tucking his head under my chin. “No one’s going to answer. Nobody’s going to take care of us. We have to take care of ourselves.”
“Shut up!” Barbie rose to her feet. Fingernails sinking into her hair, she paced a few steps away, closing her eyes and keeping her back turned the way she often did when the sibs were out of control. “Stop it! I can’t think when you’re doing that!”
Outside, Aunt Lute was getting in the car with the boys. Mark and Daniel had slipped in through the driver’s door, and Aunt Lute was right behind them. Getting into the driver’s seat. The scary part was that she had the keys.
“We’re leaving.” I scooped the baby seat off the table, carried it to Barbie, and shoved it into her arms. “Here’s your kid. You have four, remember? Why don’t you start taking care of them? They can’t sit in McDonald’s all day, Barbara.” For just an instant, Barbie looked hurt, and I felt a twisted sense of satisfaction.
Barbie’s eyes—azure blue because of the contacts—glittered with a watercolor wash of tears. She looked lost and afraid, completely uncertain of what to do or where to go. Even her helplessness gave me a perverse sense of satisfaction. Now she knew how I’d felt for the past seven years. Ever since my mother left and then Barbie moved in, I’d been living in a place where I didn’t belong, where no one wanted me. Now you know what it’s like, I thought, and the anger inside me took on shape. Barbie’s shape. If it weren’t for her—her idiotic plastic surgeries, the huge house, the trips, the jewelry, the thousand-dollar shoes, the in vitros, all the stuff for the kids—my father wouldn’t have ended up in this mess. He was just trying to make her happy, but there was no making Barbara happy. She always wanted more. More money, more things, more kids. More of my father. She needed, wanted, demanded everything.
I wouldn’t let her use me like she’d used him. As soon as I got her settled in the house, I’d find a way to get out—out of Dallas, away from her, away from this mess. I’d leave for college, leave all this behind, get out on my own.
Out on my own. The truth was I’d never been on my own. I had no idea who was going to pay for college now. I didn’t even know what kind of bills I’d be racking up each month. The charges were supposed to come in online, to be paid for from my father’s account. My debit card would be reloaded with cash each month. That was all I knew. It was all I’d wanted to know. I wasn’t prepared to take on the financial responsibilities of college on my own. Even if I could find a job that would work around classes, I’d never make enough money to pay for tuition at UT and living expenses. The golf scholarship was just a drop in the bucket compared to the total cost. In reality, I wasn’t any more prepared for life than Barbara was.
“Let’s go,” I whispered, the truth leaving behind a bitter taste. “Let’s just go.”
I started toward the door, Barbara’s high heels clicking after me, her footfalls heavy with the weight of the baby carrier. When we reached the car, Aunt Lute was trying to figure out which of Barbara’s handful of keys would turn on the ignition.
“She’s not driving,” Barbie snapped as she yanked open the back door and hip-butted Jewel’s carrier into the seat, then climbed onto the running board to lift Jewel into the third row.
“Shut up, Barbie,” I bit out. Right now, Aunt Lute was probably the most stable of the three of us.
“There goes the fuzz.” Aunt Lute swirled her hand in the air, indicating a police siren blaring somewhere in the distance. “Watch out. They could be headed right for us.” The direct look she aimed at Barbie seemed entirely lucid, and in spite of everything, a laugh tickled the back of my throat, forcing out a puff of air.
“Here, Aunt Lute,” I said, shifting Landon to my other hip so I could take the keys. “I’ve got it. Don’t worry. I won’t let Barbara drive.”
Aunt Lute’s eyes met mine, and she nodded with satisfaction as she turned over the keys, then vacated the driver’s seat, circled the car, and climbed into her space in the back. After the arduous process of getting the boys buckled in, we drove away with the left front tire making a strange rattling noise, Aunt Lute peering through the window at the leopard tracks, and Barbie slouched in the passenger seat with her head in her hands.
The closer I got to Red Bird Lane, the more I wanted to turn around and drive the other way. The homeless woman with the dreadlocks was standing on the corner when we reached the intersection. Her gaze captured me, stole my thoughts as the car slowed. I was conscious of the blinker ticking out a steady rhythm, demanding turn, turn, turn, turn, the rattling tire causing the steering wheel to vibrate in my hand, pulling the car left instead of right, resisting the curve. I felt my hands moving on the wheel, one over the other, forcing the vehicle to make the corner, but my mind was on the woman.
Her gaze followed as we passed, her head swiveling. When I looked at her in the mirror, she was still watching, her loose red cotton dress swirling around her in the breeze of our wake, outlining a slim, stooped figure with legs that bowed outward and shoulders curving into her neck, forming a slight hump.
“Watch where you’re going!” Barbie shrieked as we rolled toward our new address. At the blue house, Uncle Boone had disappeared, along with the moving truck.
The message was clear.
Chapter 14
Sesay
Now there are more boys to go along with Root and Berry. There are three. Three more. The new boys have skin as pale and smooth as milk, hair the color of cane straw, and eyes as blue as water. Their faces are worried and sad. They do not laugh and smile as Root and Berry do. In the house, the women yell, while the baby cries, and cries, and cries. I can hear their voices outside the window. The walls of this house are as thin as the Indian chief’s canvases, stretched on a frame.
“We can’t just go out and buy curtains, Barbara!” says the young woman. She is beautiful, with hair like the boys’ but eyes the color of fresh earth. Both of the younger women are beautiful. I wonder at the fact that the man has left them here. What man would leave such beautiful women alone? The world is not safe for a woman when her face is young and lovely.
The baby’s cries cause me to remember my babies. A cane field is no place for a baby, he said, and he took them away to his house, to his wife whose crippled daughter had died, who could no longer carry a child of her own. What would you do with a baby all day long while you work? Set it in the mud and let the alligators carry it away? I knew he was saying the best thing. I must work, after all, to pay for my food and my bed, but I begged him to take me back to his house so I could work near the babies. He only laughed and said it was a silly notion. You work where I tell you to work, he told me. You’re lucky I keep you on—lucky I keep the police from taking you away and sending you home in a boat. This is America. You don’t do what you’re told, I can have you shipped off in a heartbeat.
I gave him my babies. I did the best thing, and my heart split open, and for a long time there was not one beautiful thing in the world. Everything was gray and cold.
Now I hear the baby inside the blue house, and I want to slip through the walls and pick it up, so it will not cry. Inside the house, the women continue to yell, their words whipping quick and sharp like the cane cutters’ long knives.
“I’m not living here! You don’t know who’s out there. You don’t know who might be skulking around.” The voice quavers, high and thin.
I shrink closer to the wall, listening.
“Reality check, Barbara.” The younger woman’s voice is steady, filled with venom, heavy with anger. “We don’t have the money for anyplace else. The car payments are three months behind. If we don’t come up with thirty-five hundred dollars, they’re going to repossess the Escalade. Then what do we do—sit around and look at the curtains? If we sell your ring and the laptop, and whatever else we can find that’s worth cash, between that and the money Uncle Boone gave us, we can catch up the car payments, and buy some groceries, and make it for a month or two until we figure out what to do.”
“I’m not selling my ring in some . . . some . . . pawnshop. We can just . . . just ask Boone to—”
“Get real, will you? Wake up! Uncle Boone’s tapped out. He’s sick of us. He’s sick of this whole thing. Why do you think he’s not here right now? We’re lucky he moved our stuff and gave us a place to live.”
“Pfff! A place to live. We’re in this dump while he’s—”
“Shut up. Just shut up. He didn’t have to do anything for us. He could have kicked us out on the street.”
“It’s not fair. It’s not . . .” The words melt into a sob, a long, low moan of grief, like a woman giving birth to a child she doesn’t want. “Paul’s coming back. He’ll . . . he’ll straighten this out . . . fix it. He’ll be . . .”
“You know what, Barbara? Maybe it isn’t everyone’s job to take care of you. Maybe for once, you’re just going to have to figure out how to take care of yourself. Maybe you need to worry about how you’re going to feed your kids, instead of sitting there calling someone to bail us out.”
Silence stretches between them, then the tap of shoes crossing the floor, and then the young woman’s voice, but softer this time. “Here. Give it to me. I’ll go find some pawnshops tomorrow and sell it.”
The shoes run away. The sound disappears across the house. The young woman picks up the baby and rocks it, talks softly until the room is quiet.
At the back of the house, a door opens and closes. I slip into the shadows of the creek, move through the brush until I can see who’s come into the yard. The boys with water-colored eyes are there. They come through the doorway quietly, carefully, so that no one hears them. A gray cat follows them down the steps. I wait to find out if anyone else will come, but there are only the boys. I let them see me, and they stand watching from a distance. “Do you know the story of Peter, the little muck rabbit?” I ask, and I take the soft white rabbit from my pack. They move closer to see. They shake their heads, and so I begin to tell them the story. Their eyes are wide and so beautiful, but they are afraid to come too close. They do not know me as the boys across the street do.
From inside, a woman’s voice calls out. It is the old woman, the one I have guessed is the grandmother. She calls for the boys, but they do not answer. I step back into the trees so she will not see me. “Boys!” Her voice echoes from the house. “Where have my boys gone? Are they hiding in a box? Are they hiding under the table?”
The boys look at one another and giggle, their faces wickedly pleased. They are playing a game with the old woman, just as I once played with my mother.
The smallest boy comes to the fence. He twines his fingers through it. He is not afraid of me. “Where you how-sh?” He points over his shoulder at the house, so I will understand him.
“Here,” I say, and wave a hand toward the trees, the street, the white church on the corner, the mission. “I live everywhere, like the little muck rabbit.”
“I got nudder how-sh,” he says. “Got swim-pool, backet-ball game, swing shet, foosball . . .” He goes on, but I cannot understand many of the words.
I have the little toad on a string in my pocket. I have repainted him with my brush. He is a blue toad now. I pull him out, check to see that there is no one coming out the door, and then I let the little toad hop over the fence. The boy slaps his hands together, catching it. I slip deeper into the brush, and he cannot see me when he looks again.
“There you are!” The old woman comes to the door now. “I see you out there, but you’d better run on inside before the Crocodile Queen finds you. She’ll eat you up for being in the yard.”
The boys squeal and bolt toward the doorway, checking over their shoulders, as if they think I could be the Crocodile Queen. When they are gone, I move back to the side of the house, where there is no fence. The mother of the children is there in the window. She stands with her forehead pressed to the glass and her eyes staring upward, but not seeing. Tears seep down her cheeks, like rain.
I wonder, how can a mother cry while her children, such beautiful children, play? With your children at your feet, how can there be sadness? I think that if my children were near me, I would only have room for joy.
The little boy from the fence comes into the room, and he presses between her and the window. Tugging at her shirt, he raises his hand and opens it. The blue toad is inside, floating like a dot of water on his palm, beautiful like his eyes.
She lays a hand on his head, her fingers sinking into the straw curls of his hair. She pulls him close; then her face tightens with pain. Pushing him away, she leans against the glass again and raises her arms to shield her face. He watches her, then turns and leaves. Somewhere in the house, his brothers are yelling and making loud noises, and the baby cries again. The woman moves away from the window with an angry face.
A noise across the street catches my ear. A door closing. I shift the leaves aside so as to see. Root and Berry are coming out the door with their mother. Each carries a red plate with plastic wrapping and a ribbon tied on top. They dash toward the street as their mother closes the door, and she warns them not to go past the sidewalk alone. They stop at the edge to wait, the plates tipping in their hands.
“Don’t spill the cookies!” the mot
her scolds, but they are not listening. But for the wrapping, the cookies would have spilled already.
I wonder where they are going. Perhaps to the church. Sometimes women bring plates with cakes and cookies to the Summer Kitchen. Lunch is long over today, but perhaps they will leave them for tomorrow. If they do, I will go there again for lunch. I will have one of Root and Berry’s cookies.
They search the trees along the creek as they wait for their mother, and I know they are looking for me. I poke my head above the leaves, and they see me and wave. Then I vanish again. I watch them come across the street with their mother. I hide like Peter Rabbit in the cane field. Once across the street, the boys run ahead.
They are taking the cookies to the blue house.
Chapter 15
Shasta Reid-Williams
It didn’t take long to figure out that the new neighbors were strange. When we rang the bell, an old lady wearing a pink shower hat, a swimsuit, and a filmy bathrobe came to the door and opened the burglar bars. She caught me scoping out her swimming gear, and said, “We were just about to enjoy the water.”