Some Things That Stay

by Sarah Willis

  We go back to the house. Robert is outside the barn, just standing there looking at the bike. We never ride it. Every way out of here is up.

  I’m eating potato chips and reading Life magazine at the kitchen table when Brenda knocks on the screen door. “Hey, Tamara!” she says, squinting through the screen, holding a book.

  “Come on in,” I say.

  Something’s happened to her hair. There are whole chunks cut out of it.

  “What happened to your hair?” I say. It’s easy to ask Brenda blunt questions because that’s the kind she always asks, and because she wouldn’t get it if I weren’t blunt. You can’t talk around things with Brenda; she gets frustrated and gives up.

  She plops the book on the table and shakes her head back and forth, letting her hair fly. Most of it is untangled now, except for one lumpy spot on the top right of her head. Some of her hair is its old length, way past her shoulders, and some is four or five inches long. It looks truly terrible. “I cut out some knots,” she says, actually grinning. “Beats trying to comb them out.” She puts a hand up to her hair. Her fingers get stuck in that one bad spot and she bites her lip.

  “I can’t cut this, it’s too close to my head, and it hurts too much to comb.”

  “I got an idea,” I say. “Let’s try putting some oil on it.”

  She makes a face like I’m nuts, but then that look vanishes and she shrugs. “Hell, okay. You always got good ideas. It can’t hurt.”

  “Sit down,” I say. I go get a towel and a safety pin and wrap the towel tight around her neck, then pin it. Then I get my mom’s corn oil and my sister’s good comb. “Okay, now hold still.” I pour some oil on her head, right above the knot. Half of it runs down her hair and drips right onto the towel, so I feel pretty smart about thinking about the towel. I start rubbing the oil in with my fingers, trying not to make the knot worse, then I pull my fingers through the knot a little at a time, quitting when it tugs at her head.

  “That feels good. Hey, you know, I like this. My mom used to, like, play with my hair when I was little. I used to love that.”

  Now I get the comb, and very slowly, from the bottom, start combing out the knot. I make it looser with my fingers. It’s the size of a small robin’s nest. It takes some time, but it works. Finally, one half of her head is all shiny and perfectly combed. But it’s so uneven it still looks bad. And the oily side looks shiny and healthy; the other side looks like straw.

  “I got the knot out, but it needs to be evened up now. I’m going to comb out the other side too. Just trust me.”

  “I could sit here forever. Go right ahead.”

  So I pour more oil on the other side and comb her hair over and over until it’s real sleek, then I get my mother’s scissors and cut off the long ends. I get a little carried away and I change her part from the middle to the left side, and cut the whole thing to make it as even as I can. Brenda doesn’t say a thing, even though she’s got to see the hair falling on the floor. I stop at about an inch under her ear. Now I cut her bangs real short. When I’m done I take the comb and curl her hair under a little, taking the end of the towel to press out the extra oil.

  “Okay,” I say. “Now don’t move. Promise?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I run upstairs and get my mirror and run back down, but halfway back to the kitchen I think of something else and turn around and run back up to get a barrette from my sister’s room. When I come back down, Brenda hasn’t moved an inch. I put in the barrette, to hold the hair back on the right side, then hand her the mirror.

  “Oh my God! Oh sweet Jesus! Oh God!”

  My mouth goes dry.

  “Oh God, I love it! I look just like Audrey Hepburn! Don’t you think I look like Audrey Hepburn? My hair’s a different color but I look just like her! Oh, Tamara, thank you. You’re the best! Wait till my mom sees!” Brenda moves the mirror out to arm’s length and turns her head from side to side. I do think she looks better, not at all like Audrey Hepburn, but I’m glad she’s happy. It’s partly because of the mirror. The mirror makes things look better than they really are. Maybe it’s because it cuts out all the other things that we don’t want to look at. Brenda doesn’t see anything but her hair and her smiling face. She imagines the rest, like the life of Audrey Hepburn, the riches, the movie contracts, all right out there beyond the mirror, where hope is.

  I unpin the towel, which is spotty with dark oily stains, and carry it over to the laundry chute. Brenda won’t stop looking in the mirror.

  “At least move so I can sweep,” I say. She stands up and sidesteps over a few feet. I sweep up her hair and throw it away.

  “I got to show Helen!” Brenda says, handing me the mirror and hugging me. Then she runs out the door, leaving her book behind. I look at it. Math. She’s forgotten her homework. If I had helped her with her math we probably would have gotten into a fight, and now, instead, I’m like God. It makes me think: maybe being a hairdresser is more important than being a scientist. It’s a weird thought.

  I have another thought. I wonder if making Brenda so happy is like a little miracle from God. Nothing as big as flying, but still … Maybe instead of one big miracle I’m going to get a bunch of little ones. I better keep track of them.

  Looking at Brenda’s book I realize she’s probably going to forget all about her math. She won’t be able to think about anything but her hair for the rest of the day. I’m going to have to take her book over there. I get a creepy feeling every time I go near their house. I’m worried I might catch something from them if I go inside, or get fleas, or come out limping. But I should take Brenda her book.

  I pick up her book and cross the road.

  Rusty’s standing by the side door, just leaning against the house like he’s waiting for a train. “You cut Brenda’s hair?” He pinks up all over his face when he starts talking.

  “Yeah.” We both know this, but I don’t know what else we could talk about.

  “She sure do look different. Better, I guess,” he adds, to be nice.

  “Thanks. She forgot her book.” I hand it over.

  We both just stand there.

  “Guess I’ll go give it to her,” Rusty says. He moves the book up and down, as if I might not know what he means.

  “Okay,” I say. I can hear the sound of someone talking on the radio, big words drifting out through the screen door, words I bet none of the Murphys ever use.

  “Adios,” I say, and turn and walk away.

  In the early evening I come into the barn, looking for my mother. She is asleep, sitting on the short stool, her hands fallen into her lap, her head resting against Edith’s wide belly. I can hear my mother snore, a raspy sound, like a dry brush against thick canvas. Edith just stands there. So do I.

  Every house we rent has something unique I will never forget. Woods and rivers, fields and valleys blend together. It is the smallest of things that stay with me.

  When I was born in the early summer of ’39 we lived on a ranch in Arizona. I know what it looked like only from the paintings: open and distant, flat and lonely. We lived there until I was almost two. Then we moved to Pencer, Minnesota, near Beltrami Island State Forest, where we lived for less than a year. When the war started, my father tried to enlist, but he was forty-five years old and married with kids, and they wouldn’t take him. So in March of 1942 we moved to Monterey, California. My mother says that was the house with the sidewalks. I don’t remember the sidewalks. I didn’t know how rare they would be in my life. I must have taken them for granted.

  My father gave up painting for a few months and tried to get a job helping out the war effort. He applied for a job working with radios. That’s when they found out he had a punctured eardrum. He was told the best he could do was work in a factory, making airplane parts, which he did for less than six months. His schooling in mathematics and his talent for painting did not prepare him for hard labor, or monotony. He made mistakes. He quit, or was fired, which is my opinion, since no one talks abo
ut it at all, and we moved to a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, where my brother, Robert, was born three months later. I remember only the log railing coming down the front steps. I slid down it and dozens of long thick splinters pierced my hands and thighs, as if the railing were a porcupine in disguise. I have heard the story so often I don’t know if it’s my memory or not. Either way, my hands twitch at the thought.

  When I was five we moved to Moab, Utah. We lived near the town, but not close enough for sidewalks. My father would drive out to Arches National Park early in the morning and return in the evening. He would have been just like every other dad, just this once, except all the other dads were in the war.

  We stayed in Moab until right after I turned six, then drove halfway across the country to Bloomington, Indiana. We were in the bottom of a deep valley, with a creek next to our house. When it rained, the creek flooded; it was like living in a shallow lake. This is where I started naming our houses. It was The Hammock House. The hammock stretched from an old oak tree to the front right corner of the house. The rope of the hammock was worn soft and the metal chain creaked as it swayed back and forth, until it—and I—came to rest. And then it was quiet, oh so quiet, and no one would bother me. I could pretend I was all alone on a desert island, shipwrecked, having pulled only the hammock and a few boxes from the sea. In all my daydreams, I am alone.

  I started school in Bloomington, and am told I never spoke a word in front of anyone. A little over a year later, when I was seven, we moved to Nags Head, North Carolina.

  Nags Head was The House of the Sandy Wind. I walked everywhere with my head bent down and eyes half closed. Half the time I had to walk backwards. Sand lived in my hair and my toes and my crotch. Sand came in the house and sat down for dinner. Sand slept in my bed.

  My father was never really happy there because of that sand. It got into his paints and stuck to his pictures. I think he wanted us to move right away but my sister was born soon after we moved to Nags Head. My mother tried to convince the doctors to let Robert and me watch her give birth. The doctor said he thought that letting my father come in the delivery room was enough. Still, my mother told us more than we ever wanted to know about the whole thing.

  We lived in Nags Head for a year and a half because my mother was exhausted after having Megan. Then we began our tradition of moving in spring. I spent my ninth birthday in the car on the way to Snowball, Arkansas, along the Buffalo River, in the middle of the Ozarks, a place more lonely than all the rest. It took over an hour to drive to town, up and down narrow dirt roads; there wasn’t a level foot in all of the Ozarks. Houses were built into hills, and trees never grew perpendicular to the earth. The river changed like a living thing, sometimes creeping up to our house like a visitor who wouldn’t come in.

  This was The House of the Laundry Basket, because of the large wicker basket my sister could fit into, with thick bent handles reinforced with white tape. We used it to carry books to and from the library. Once a week we drove to town, filled the basket with dozens of books, and brought it back, placing it just inside the front door, too heavy to carry very far. I don’t remember the living room, or the kitchen, but I remember the basket.

  Next year, we lived in Valentine, Nebraska, in The House of the Bad Smell. Something had died in the floorboards. It was obvious why the owners had moved out. Then there was The House of the Seashells, in Crane, Oregon. The lady who owned it had a thing for seashells. There were seashell ashtrays, seashell spoon holders, seashell boxes, seashell wind chimes, seashell everything. When I was almost twelve we moved to Parshall, North Dakota, The House of the Squeaky Mourning Doves, named for the sound of mourning doves as they took off in flight from the abandoned flower garden next to the house. A year later we moved to Deer Isle, Maine, to The House of the Owl. There was a carved wooden owl on our door. Then last year we lived in Diamond, Georgia: The Yellow Roses House.

  I used to believe that everyone lived like we did, moving from house to house like musical chairs.

  When I was in third grade, living in The House of the Laundry Basket, I was invited to a girl’s house after school. I forget her name. I asked her where she lived last year.

  She squinted up her face. “Here,” she said.

  “Well, then, the year before,” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Here.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Since I was born.”

  I didn’t believe her. The idea made me itchy. Her house suddenly felt like a trap.

  At home I asked my mother if it was true, what the girl said, expecting to hear it was only a lie.

  “Yes, it’s true,” she said.

  “Is it just us who move? Everyone else stays in one place?”

  “Pretty much,” she said with a sigh, not a heavy sigh, but still a sigh. “Other people move sometimes, but not as much as we do. Possibly some do. I imagine so. But I’ve never met anyone who does.”

  “And these kids go to the same school, every year?”

  “Yes. But this way you get to meet so many more children. It’s quite an opportunity.”

  This coming from a woman who didn’t have a friend in the world besides my father.

  At every house we leave something behind. A sweater, a hat, an umbrella, a favorite book. My father once said he thought my mother did it on purpose. She doesn’t, but it gave me the idea, and I have done just that ever since. Last year I left a bracelet with two seashell charms in a drawer by my bed. The year before I left a plain silver ring on a windowsill. I imagined I could see it flash in the sunlight as we drove off. The year before that I left a brush with some of my hair still in it, right in the bathroom cabinet. If the boxes in the attic hold the things that Timothy loved, and he’s stuck in them, still part of the things he touched, then there are pieces of me all over this country. Maybe that’s why I feel like there is something missing in me. Sometimes I poke myself with my mother’s sewing needle, just to see the blood come out.

  Six

  I go across the road to see if Brenda’s home, and when I get up the courage to actually knock on their door, Mr. Murphy appears on the other side of the screen. He tells me Brenda’s not home. I say thanks and he’s gone before I can even turn around.

  “Psst …”

  It comes from behind the big maple the swing’s tied to. I wonder if it’s Brenda. As I move around the tree, Rusty grabs me. I yell, only because he’s scared me, not because I didn’t want to be grabbed. “Shhh,” he says. The tree is so thick it hides us from the house.

  “What?” I say.

  “You know,” he says. “You been looking at me too.”

  “And so?” My heart’s going a million miles a minute.

  “I want a kiss.” He blurts it out all in one quick breath, so he has to suck in air quick. He blushes by turning a solid hot pink. I grin.

  “Why sure,” I say. I close my eyes and in a second I feel his lips touch mine. We move our lips around, seeing how to make them fit. He puts his hands on my back and I put my hands on the back of his neck, which is very warm, and somehow feeling his warm neck with my palms is more exciting than the kiss. He moves against me and I fall back, my head bumping the tree.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry,” he says.

  “You should be,” I say, but then his face falls and I feel bad. “The kiss was good,” I add. He grins. I like to see him smile. He has a great smile. The corners of his mouth are like the points of my father’s quills, and when he smiles he shows all his teeth and the pink of his upper gums. It’s a silly and helpless smile.

  “Again?” he says. “Could we do that again?”

  “Later,” I say, and walk away.

  I want this kiss to be a one thing, not a many thing. I remember one things better, like the one firework I saw burst in the sky fifteen minutes before the show was supposed to start. It was a mistake. Someone had set it off too early. I can’t remember the shapes and colors of the following fireworks. Only that first one stay
s with me.

  I plan on kissing Rusty a lot more, and those kisses will get bunched up, like a bouquet of flowers. But this kiss I will keep separated from the rest. I go to my room and lie on my bed, close my eyes, and remember the hard pressure of soft lips. The taste of someone else’s mouth. The sound of breathing that isn’t mine.

  It is the third Sunday that we have been invited to church with the Murphys, and Robert, Megan, and I are just finishing breakfast when Brenda knocks on the door. She’s sobbing, making gasping noises, and we all stand up and just watch her, terrified. Looking at her making that horrible noise through the screen door, I am reminded of the pictures in my brother’s comics of the women freshly tortured by monsters, and I bet Robert and Megan are thinking the same thing because no one moves to open that door and let whatever has hurt Brenda into this house. “What?” I say, almost a shout. “What?”

  “They’re dead! They’re dead!” and then she blubbers more. My brother gasps and takes a few steps backwards. I imagine her whole family slaughtered by ax murderers. I am ready to slam the front door closed and bolt it when she says, “Last night Jimmy Hills and Pete Myers and Cindy Lewis all got killed in a car accident! Cindy’s my cousin. I had dinner at her house two weeks ago! I left my sweater there and maybe she was wearing it! They all died! Jimmy drove his dad’s car right straight into the wall of the lumberyard. Rusty says the car is flat as a pancake!”

  By now I’ve opened the screen door and Brenda is walking around the kitchen table in circles. She picks up a piece of my brother’s jelly toast and stuffs it in her mouth, but keeps talking even with the food in her mouth and grape jelly on her face. My parents come in the kitchen and start asking questions, and Robert and I are asking questions, and Brenda’s answering them all by saying, “They’re dead! They’re dead. Smashed like pancakes!” until my mother puts her hands on Brenda’s shoulders and stops her from walking around.