by Sarah Willis
Brenda pushes me and I roll over in the water to yell at her.
“Oh, shit,” she says under her breath, looking up the hill. I look in the same direction and see her father limping at a fast pace down the hill toward us. Robert and Rusty are already looking that way. We all tread water, afraid to get out. On the edge of the shore, Megan is covered from neck to toes in mud, looking like a child pagan ready for some sacrilegious ritual.
“Get out,” Mr. Murphy says from between clenched teeth, as soon as he’s near enough to be heard.
The pond is very muddy now, the water opaque. I don’t know if he knows we’re skinny-dipping, although our clothes are spread out all over the ground. Megan’s the only one whose body is showing, and you can’t really tell with all the mud.
We swim to where it’s too shallow to swim anymore, then on some instinct, all stand at the same time. Mr. Murphy’s jaw goes limp, then he shakes his head sadly and turns his back to us. “Get dressed,” he says very softly, but we all hear. It takes a while to put on our clothes, since we have nothing to dry off with. Megan’s the last one dressed because she has to keep dunking under the water to rinse off the mud.
Back at the farm, Mr. Murphy tells Robert, Megan, and me to go to our house and stay there. Brenda and Rusty follow him across the road. None of us has said a word. Kip goes under the hydrangea bush with his tail between his legs. He is sure he has done something terrible. I hold the door open and call him inside.
We go upstairs and I fill up the bath for Megan. She has more than two dozen leeches covering her body, like tadpole tongues. She doesn’t mind finding them. “Here’s another one, Tamara,” she says, pointing to a spot on the inside curve of her elbow. I take a fresh wad of toilet paper and pinch it off. From the direction of Robert’s room, I hear my brother scream.
Around four o’clock I make tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for a late lunch.
“Jeepers creepers,” Robert says, “can’t you cook anything else?” He’s got a wad of grilled cheese in his mouth, so I ignore him. There’s not a lot of food left in the refrigerator, but the pantry in the basement is still almost full. But no milk.
After we eat, Robert finishes the puzzle, except for the missing piece. It’s actually a boring-looking puzzle, all those poppies broken up by the wavy puzzle lines. An attempt at bright beauty, but it fails.
“Kip ate it,” I tell him. “Right when you started it. Sorry.” It’s not like I ate it or anything, but maybe I should have told him.
Robert sucks on his bottom lip, thinking. “It’s a stupid puzzle anyway,” he says. He picks it up by a corner and shakes it. It breaks into three pieces. As Megan, Robert, and I pull apart the pieces and toss them into the box, we hear someone knocking on the front door.
It’s Mrs. Murphy.
“Hello,” I say. I open the screen door but she won’t come in. Her face looks kind of tight, and she’s staring at me steadily in a way that makes me realize she’s pretty mad right now. I guess she heard we went skinny-dipping.
“We’re going to church this evening and want you to come along.” The stiff way she says this makes it obvious she won’t take no for an answer.
“Our good clothes aren’t washed.” As a matter of fact, not much is.
“Well, wear something else.” This is said directly at my clothes, not my face. She raises her eyes and gives me a stern look that changes into one of sadness. This tar-paper-house woman pities me. Her look has its intended effect. I feel shame. But not because I went skinny-dipping or am wearing dirty clothes, but for something that has to do with my missing parents, as if I personally have chased them away.
“Be ready by six please.” She turns and walks away.
I tell my brother and sister what we have to do.
“It’s Tuesday!” Robert says.
“I guess it’s open anyway,” I say.
“But why?”
I shrug. “Because we did something wrong, so we gotta ask God for forgiveness. Mrs. Murphy looked pretty mad.”
“I don’t want to go,” Robert says.
This surprises me, because he’s always liked church. Well, at least for the last few months. But we really don’t have a choice, and by five minutes to six we are ready and standing in our driveway. All the Murphys come out of their house and get into the car, then they drive across the road and we climb in. No one says a word. Rusty doesn’t even look me in the eye, but Brenda does. She winks at me when her parents aren’t looking. I wink back.
There aren’t many people in church on a Tuesday evening, just a few old ladies, and Helen in the front row, who glances back at us with red-rimmed eyes, frowns at me, and lowers her head again. There is no minister, no organ music, no singing. We are to sit and pray all on our own. But I can’t.
It has been one long day. I just want to curl up and fall asleep. I close my eyes and I realize I am talking to my mother. I tell her I’m sorry I read the letters, that I get so mad at Daddy, and that I am mean to Robert and Megan sometimes. But when I try to apologize about swimming naked in the pond, she says I didn’t do anything wrong. Actually, she says that skinny-dipping wasn’t wrong, but we should have asked an adult to go along. I can’t help grinning, even in church. It is nice to know she is still the same.
After we sit for a half hour, Mrs. Murphy stands, so we all do. But instead of leaving, she walks over to Helen and the two of them whisper while we all stand in the aisle. Finally, Mrs. Murphy kisses Helen on the forehead. We leave. Helen stays. Mrs. Murphy tells Mr. Murphy she will come back for Helen later.
No one talks during dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Murphy look at each other from across the table, and I can tell she’s mad and she wants him to know it, and he knows it and wants her to know he knows it, but appreciates her not bringing it up while he eats. Every time Rusty looks at me he blushes, so he mostly looks at his plate. Brenda kicks me under the table at least a dozen times but I’m too nervous to kick her back. Robert rolls his eyes at me once, and I can’t believe he did that. Megan just eats as if this whole silent movie is perfectly normal. When she asks what’s for dessert, Mrs. Murphy actually flinches, at which Brenda kicks me again. Mrs. Murphy says there will be nothing for dessert tonight, and that after cleaning up we are all to go right to bed. It’s still light outside, but I’m sure not going to argue with her.
Mrs. Murphy washes the dishes, but this time she bangs some of the pots.
When we go upstairs, Brenda closes her bedroom door and shows Megan and me the bruise forming on her butt. “Did you guys hear me screaming?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I got you in trouble.”
“Shit, I’d do it again anytime,” she says. “It was a lot of fun. Your brother tried to feel me up! Under the water! Can you fucking believe it?”
I can’t. I laugh so hard I have to hold a pillow over my mouth.
Megan, Brenda, and I go through her magazines, until Mrs. Murphy comes in and makes us say our prayers. Kneeling at the side of Brenda’s bed I close my eyes, bow my head, and remember Rusty’s hand groping for my crotch under the warm muddy water of the pond.
Thirteen
In my dream I am on the roof, naked, arms spread out, ready to fly. The ground seems so far away. Jump, I think. A phone rings and rings again. I hear someone yell, “Your mother is dead.” I wake up with a jerk. The phone is ringing. I hear footsteps on the stairs and then the murmur of a voice. Outside Brenda’s window, the world is awash in white, an early morning fog as opaque as milk.
In my nightgown, I creep out of Brenda’s room. Mrs. Murphy stands at the bottom of the steps holding a cup of coffee. “That was your father,” she says with a trace of frustration in her voice. “He won’t be coming back today. He says he’ll fly in tomorrow.”
I shrug. “I’m going home for a while.”
Mrs. Murphy nods. She doesn’t tell me to get dressed first. She isn’t going to play mom. She isn’t going to worry about our physical bodies, only our souls, an
d I’m betting she’s just going through the motions. I don’t think she has much hope for us.
Outside is the thickest fog I’ve ever seen. I can see only a few feet in front of me. If I stand in the middle of the road, my house is invisible. I stop and look behind me. The Murphys’ house is gone. I turn in a circle. There is only me in this world, collecting dewdrops on my skin. There are no colors. No reds or greens or yellows, no indigos, emeralds, or ultramarines. No blacks. Only me. I walk up and down the road. As I move, the world moves with me. What I have just left is gone. If a car came I wouldn’t see it until it was too late. But it is hard to believe in what you can’t see. I feel both invincible and lonely, like Superman on an empty planet. I turn around and go back to the Murphys’.
“I forgot something,” I say to Mrs. Murphy, and head upstairs. Megan is lying on her back, sleeping with her mouth open. I could drop a spider in there, but it’s just a thought that passes. Brenda is curled up around her pillow. She seems kind of young, I think. Or I feel older.
I sit on the end of Megan’s bed and watch her sleep.
A while later when Megan wakes up I whisper in her ear, “Let’s free Edith.”
Megan grins and says, “Okay.” I thought she might argue with me, since Edith made our mother sick, but she understands. This is for our mother.
As Megan and I get dressed, Brenda wakes up. I tell her my plan. “After breakfast we’ll say we’re going to our house, then you and Rusty sneak out and meet us behind the barn.”
She’s all for it. She combs her hair with her fingers and throws on a pair of shorts. “I’m ready! Let’s go eat!” Then she goes in Rusty’s room and there’s a lot of whispering.
Mrs. Murphy is dressed to go to work and has left us bowls for cereal on the table. Helen is dressed too. She doesn’t say a word, just goes out to the car. “Be good,” Mrs. Murphy says. It’s not the kind of Be good my mother would say. There is an emphasis on the word good that makes it sound Godly. Mrs. Murphy is good at that. We all nod solemnly. We are good at that. Especially Brenda.
As Mrs. Murphy leaves, Mr. Murphy comes downstairs, holding on to the banister and kind of hopping down the steps. “Good morning,” he says. “Good morning,” we chirp brightly. We say grace and eat quickly.
“We’re going to go over to our house to clean it,” I say to Mr. Murphy.
“All right,” Mr. Murphy says.
“Hey, Brenda,” Rusty says. “Want to see my fort?”
“Really?” Brenda says, her eyes lighting up. “Really?” I can tell she thinks this is for real. “Sure!”
I kick her under the table. I bet a lot of talking gets done this way.
“Well, see you later, Brenda,” I say. “Thanks for breakfast, Mr. Murphy.” We each carry our bowls to the sink and rinse them off before we go.
The fog has lifted, but everything is damp. The leaves drip, as if it’s raining under the trees. We go in the house, down to the basement, and out the basement door. We run from the house to behind the barn like escaping convicts, one at a time. Brenda and Rusty show up about ten minutes later, coming across the street from a ways down the road so their dad can’t see them. When they get close, I can hear Brenda and Rusty arguing.
“You can’t do this,” Rusty says.
“Screw you,” Brenda says.
“We shouldn’t,” Rusty says.
Now Robert joins in. “Yeah, Rusty’s right.” He’d agree with anything Rusty says. I almost hit him.
“The vet’s coming today, Tamara,” Rusty says.
“Exactly,” I say.
“I don’t get it,” Rusty says. “Why don’t you want the vet to test the cow?”
“Because if Edith’s sick, he’ll kill her, stupid,” I say.
“But if she’s sick, isn’t she gonna die anyway?”
“Maybe,” I say. “But the vet will kill her for sure.”
Rusty shrugs. “Why don’t you wait to see what happens. Maybe she’s not sick. The vet’s not going to pull out a gun and shoot her right away. He’s got to do the test first, then come back. You can do something then, if you still want.”
“I have to do it now.” And I do. I have to do something. My hand’s too sore to hit another wall. This sounds more fun anyway.
Rusty scratches his chin and wrinkles his nose. A thought comes to him, you can see him discover it just as if he stepped on something sharp. “You can’t let her loose, Tamara. If she wanders off and doesn’t get milked, she’ll get sick.”
“We’ll go get her after he leaves.”
“She might get really lost,” Rusty says.
“We could tie a rope around her neck, and tie her to a tree,” I say.
“She’d bellow. The vet would hear her.”
“We’ll get in trouble,” Robert adds.
“I don’t care,” I say.
“Me, neither,” Megan says.
“Hell, let’s do it,” Brenda says. “You guys are damn sissies.”
“Am not,” Robert says.
“Am too,” Brenda says. “So there. We just got to cut the fence and walk her into the woods a bit. Come on!” She goes into the back of the barn and comes out with an ax. “I can’t find no cutters. This’ll do.”
As we head up the hill I look at the bull that nearly killed me. He’s watching us with those red beady eyes. I bet if the vet has to test him, he’ll have to shoot him first.
Edith’s up on the first rise of the hill, eating clover. She’s far from a fence. She raises her head and looks at us, still chewing. She’s not thrilled to see us.
“I’ll go cut up the fence and then you guys chase her through the open part.” Brenda goes over to the fence, about a hundred yards away, and starts smacking at where the barbed wire is attached to a post. We surround Edith so she doesn’t go the wrong way.
“Okay!” Brenda hollers. With a final chop, the barbed wire springs loose from the post. She hauls it to the side. “Make her run this way!”
“Jeepers creepers,” Robert says.
“Okay, get on this side.” I tell Rusty, Robert, and Megan to come around to where I am. Rusty and Robert come, but not too quickly.
“Okay! Go!”
Megan claps her hands and hollers, a whooping sound I never knew she could make. She jumps up and down, then waves her arms and charges toward Edith. Megan looks like an insane monkey. Edith twitches, her eyes widening. She looks like she might have a heart attack. She starts to stumble about, not in one direction but all over, one way, then another, then in a circle, then stops, then starts. Brenda calls, “Here, cow, here, cow,” from her place by the fence.
“Get away from the fence!” I yell at Brenda. “You’re scaring her.” Brenda can’t hear me because of the noise my sister’s making. Robert and Rusty aren’t doing anything much but staying where they are, which helps just because Edith doesn’t run their way. But it’s a big field, and there are a lot of other places to run.
Megan and I get as close to Edith as we can, which isn’t too close, since Edith looks really panicked now and skittish. Her back feet stomp the earth. Her heavy head ducks down and jerks back up, turning back and forth, trying to see all of us at once. Brenda can tell we need help, so she circles around from her spot and joins us. We’re waving our arms and yelling “Shoo. Shoo, cow, shoo!” Edith stops dead in her tracks, her eyes bulging, raises her tail, and craps.
We all laugh, except for Megan, who keeps up the whooping sound as if once her voice got out, it never wants to go back inside again. Rusty falls on the grass and slaps it with his hand, and Robert does the same, just to be like Rusty. Brenda hugs me, laughing on my shoulder, tears coming out of her eyes. When we finally get ourselves under control, we see Edith has headed over to the hole in the fence. She’s just a few yards away.
“Come on!” I yell. We all charge at Edith, shouting and clapping and waving our arms, and she takes off through the hole in the fence like a bullet, right into a dense patch of an old apple orchard. By the time we get to t
he fence, we can’t see her anymore. But at that moment, we hear the blaring of a car horn.
“Damn,” my sister says. We look at her in amazement.
“We better go,” I say.
As we come around the side of the barn we see the Burns waiting by their car.
“Well, hello, the lot of you,” Mr. Burns says. “You all out here to greet me, huh? Hey, where’s the old man?” I think he means my father, but right away Mr. Burns slaps his thigh and whistles. “Here, Kip, here, boy. Come on over here, you old bum.” Kip runs up to Mr. Burns, wagging his tail. Mr. Burns leans over as far as his belly will allow and scratches Kip’s head. “You okay, boy?” he asks the dog. There is worry in his voice.
“You look okay. Yeah, you do.” He nods to himself, as if he’s trying hard to believe something, then he straightens up and looks at me. “I hear this vet thinks we might have a sick cow. He’s meeting me here now, to give her some test. We’ll see about this. I don’t think that cow is sick at all. Never made us sick a day in our lives. They’re all healthy, the cattle too, you’ll see. Not one day were we sick. And you look healthy as beavers to me.” He’s trying to convince us, to convince himself.
From behind, Mrs. Burns puts her hand on Mr. Burns’ shoulder and gives a squeeze. “Everything will be fine, Sam.” She smiles at us all, the smile a bit weary, a bit of a show.
“You won’t let him kill Edith, will you?” Megan asks, stepping forward.
Mr. Burns blinks. “Who?”
“The cow,” I explain.
“Why, no, sweetheart, nobody wants to kill her. And I don’t believe anybody’s gonna want to either. But it’s very nice of you to be concerned.”
Mr. Murphy comes out of his house carrying his mug, and limps across the road. He nods at Mr. Burns and extends his thin hand. “Hello, Sam. Hi ya, Emily.” Then he looks at us. “Hello. Something going on here?”