Grass Roof, Tin Roof

by Dao Strom

  Dad pointed at one of the tiles Thien was about to lay down. “Not straight,” he said tersely, then took it from Thien and placed it himself. Thien sat back on his heels and watched. “Now, like that,” he directed Thien. “Concentrate.”

  I didn’t want to watch anymore, so I went out the sliding glass door and made sure to close it gently behind me. I did not even leave my fingerprints on the glass.

  Beth was riding her bicycle around and around the house, raising dust. The bike was ancient, and it rattled. It had no seat so she pedaled standing up the whole time. She was singing and wasn’t watching where she was going.

  “You’re gonna fall if you don’t concentrate,” I told her.

  My mother drove Beth and me and Rebel to the church, and we sat near the back. Other kids we knew were there, too, kids we hadn’t seen since school let out in June, kids from our bus stop who used to tease Amy. It made me think I would not want for someone to be mad at me and then die.

  Maybe Rebel was thinking the same thing, because as we were watching people come in, she whispered, “I said sorry to Amy before she died.”

  The ceiling of the church arched above us, the walls a cool pale blue that cast a diffuse glow over all the faces. Everyone watched Amy Abraham’s parents enter and walk quietly to the front of the church. Crying, Mrs. Abraham walked beside another woman, whose arm was around her shoulders. Both wore black dresses. Their black clothes and their nearness to our pew as they passed made their bodies seem very large; I could not foresee myself ever becoming so large. Amy’s father followed, carrying Amy’s two-year-old brother and holding the hand of her five-year-old brother. Their black outfits, it occurred to me, were appropriate. My sister and I were not wearing black. We were wearing green and brown T-shirts and blue jeans, and we had our swimsuits on underneath, because afterward we had to go to our swimming lessons. Our mother had told us it would be good enough if we just wore dark colors. She was in a gray pantsuit with a black pointy-collared shirt underneath. Beth leaned slightly forward with her hands pressed against the edge of the bench and swung her legs, a calm look on her face. Though she was probably old enough to understand what was going on, I don’t think she did.

  Rebel’s mom had dressed Rebel in a black dress, and Rebel’s blond hair looked shock-white against it.

  At the front of the church stood the priest in a black robe that was so long, I couldn’t tell where his feet were. Surrounded by white roses and abundant long-petaled yellow flowers, the white coffin rested off to the side. The priest began to talk.

  “We are here today for a very grave reason. Please”—gesturing with his arm so his sleeve seemed to flow—“let us pray.”

  As the priest spoke I swung my feet and gazed up at the high ceilings, at their smooth curves meeting at the center. I looked at the backs of all those people’s heads in front of us. It was so quiet I heard shoes scraping the floor and stifled coughs. I felt as if I couldn’t even breathe; I would make too much noise. I held my breath then and imagined a loud noise coming suddenly from the ceiling. I imagined a man, or a boy, or many boys—an army of them—suddenly breaking through the ceiling to take me away. They would whisper their plans to me, and we would slink together under the pews, around calves and ankles and shoes, to the back of the church, where they would tell me to hold tightly onto this rope—it would be a certain boy who would close his hands over mine, guiding my grip, one boy who would know the answers to such things as where the planets came from and why I sometimes felt scared looking at the night sky—and then I would be hoisted above everybody, through the ceiling, outside, not even gravity holding me down.

  I tried to picture what this boy would look like, but the only boy’s face I could come up with was Cody Walker’s. Slowly and intently, I let out my breath and glanced toward my mother (who often scolded me for sighing, because she said I was doing it unnecessarily), but this time she didn’t notice.

  After the service we drove in a motorcade down Main Street to the Weatherwood Memorial Park, where we watched the pallbearers ease the white coffin into the ground. At the graveside I stood and looked around at the kids and their parents. The sun shone, interrupted occasionally by giant roving shadows from clouds. The mothers hugged each other. Many were crying.

  On the way back to the car, Rebel and Beth and I walked past the rows of headstones, making sure not to step on any of the graves.

  “Because they can feel you,” Rebel warned us.

  We waited at the car for my mother to say good-bye to the other mothers. She was not one of those crying. She was smiling sympathetically and laughing when it was appropriate (their laughter rising suddenly like exclamation marks into the air), but the truth is our mother did not look anything like the other mothers, even when she did what they did. They looked like plastic while she looked like wood. And this was when I much preferred the unspoiled new look of plastic things to the antiquated look of wooden things: wooden toys, how wistful and undynamic.

  Rebel pinched me. “It’s Jennifer Harsh.”

  In normal circumstances, Jennifer Harsh would not be coming toward me or Rebel Johnson to say hello, but here she was now. She had a long chestnut-brown ponytail I’d always envied and bright eyes and a big mouth, much fuller and prettier than my thin lips. She was one of the two most popular girls in our class. The other was Nicole Henley, who was the kind of popular person who could stop and talk to anybody. But Jennifer wasn’t. Jennifer was looks-popular while Nicole was personality-popular.

  “Isn’t it terrible,” Jennifer said to us, “and she lived so close to you two. How are you guys?”

  “I’m okay,” I said. I hooked one foot on the bumper of my mom’s car and raised my arms and laced my fingers together behind my head.

  Rebel was staring at Jennifer, then she looked at me sideways.

  “I just can’t stop crying,” said Jennifer, and she wrung her fingers around a tissue and wiped at her eyes. “It’s so sad, I’m so sad for everybody. It’s like, like everything suddenly has changed. I didn’t know Amy that well, but when I heard? It was like all of a sudden I felt like she was my own sister, it hit me that hard.” Her eyes were gentle and wet-looking as she peered at us. “I used to think we were different, but we’re all the same, you know? So I don’t want to ever be mean to you guys ever again or anybody.”

  Rebel said, “I cried so much when I first heard,” as if she was admitting something secret, or making an excuse for herself.

  “How could you not cry?” exclaimed Jennifer.

  I stayed quiet with my fingers laced behind my head and my arms up like a brace. I felt frozen. Beth was glancing back and forth among the three of us, listening. I knew she had not cried, either.

  "I can’t stop thinking about it,” said Jennifer. “I hope she wasn’t in too much pain, you know?”

  “I think it killed her too fast for her to feel it,” said Rebel.

  “Oh, God, please don’t say that.” Jennifer put her hand to her chest and shut her eyes briefly. She looked pretty even in shock, I thought.

  I looked past Jennifer then and saw my mother standing with Kathlyn Walker. Cody was picking up his little brother, Danny, and turning him upside down. Danny was hollering, “Stop it, Cody, you jerk!”

  I lowered my arms and folded them across my chest. I could feel my hair against the back of my neck and my body breathing. In my mind I was a loose horse. I saw things in ways Jennifer and Rebel could not, I thought.

  Jennifer was saying, “I have to go now. You guys have to give me a hug.”

  She kissed the top of my sister’s head and hugged Rebel and then me. She was sniffling a little as she patted my back with her hands in a very adult way, and for a second I pictured the mark of her hand staying there on my back, though I didn’t want it to.

  “You guys take care now,” she said, waving as she walked off.

  Rebel waited a couple of seconds, then said, “She’s such a fake.”

  That afternoon it rained on the
swimming pool in town while we were having our lessons. The raindrops splashed on top of the clear pool water and made circles ripple and collide on the surface. Above us the sky was roiling and gray. It began to rain harder. Some kids shrieked and laughed and jumped up and down. The rain coming down made everybody turn their faces up together. The mothers in the deck chairs on the patio put their books or their kids’ towels over their heads, or they just laughed. Something was happening and I didn’t understand it, but I thought it was wonderful. Like the feeling of looking at a tree or the lake through the hair falling over my eyes and realizing no one else could have that view exactly ever; and how the poignant but amazing thing about that was this: I can’t show it to you. Or like the mysterious sense I got sometimes in the late summer sitting on our driveway, looking at a blade of grass and feeling: I am very close to the ground, the dirt dusty on my knees and legs and darkening the skin where it’d rubbed into my knuckles. I wished we could be frozen in time—the rain, the voices, the pool. The water came down on top of my head and face and already surrounded my whole body, and I thought: Maybe this is what it feels like to be buried.

  I can’t show it to you.

  I am very close to the ground.

  Maybe this is what it feels like to be buried.

  ***

  A few days after Amy Abraham’s funeral, we went with my mother and Kathlyn Walker to visit Amy’s mother. It was Kathlyn Walker’s idea, and she had invited my mother to come. All the mothers in the neighborhood were doing it in pairs and threes, calling on Mrs. Abraham every few days or so. It was still gray outside. Our mothers sat in the living room while Danny and Beth went outside to play. Cody and I went down the hall with Amy’s little brothers.

  Amy’s bedroom was the same as it’d always been. I sat on the floor with her little brother, John, who was five, and he asked me did I know where his sister had gone, and I said no, and he said she had gone to heaven. I felt he was wrong (my own parents had told me heaven was just a story), but I understood this was how his parents had explained it to him, so I didn’t correct him. Besides, I had no better idea about where Amy had gone.

  “Can you read, John?” Cody was looking at some books on the floor.

  John pulled one of the books out of Cody’s lap. “I can read this one.”

  “Well, why don’t you read it to us?” said Cody. John shook his head, and Cody pointed to himself. “You want me to read it?” He winked at me. “But April’s a better reader than me. April’s real smart. Will you read it to us, April?”

  I took the book. Inside was a drawing of some people in a boat, and in the water all around them there were other people with their arms up, waving or floating on their backs. I knew it was just the Swiss Family Robinson but something about the picture was unsettling to me. “You read it, Cody,” I said, holding it out to him.

  Cody put his hand in his pocket and nudged John. “Give you what’s in my pocket if you read to us, John. It’s a surprise.”

  John took the bait. I set the book in his lap, and we looked on as he started. “The family was at sea for many days" was all he could get through. “What’s that word?” He pointed. “After the...”

  Cody sounded it out. “Ex-pol-shun.”

  “Ex-plo-sion,” I said.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Cody rolled his eyes. “I’m so sure. How would you know? I was only joking when I said you were smart.”

  I got up to leave. “I’m going outside.” I walked down the hall into the kitchen. Our mothers were sitting with Mrs. Abraham in the living room, and they looked toward me.

  “What’re you kids up to?” asked Kathlyn Walker as I went and sat down on the couch next to my mother.

  There were framed photos of Amy on the coffee tables and on the walls. I felt uneasy looking at them, as if I had to be very careful. “I miss Amy,” I said, and leaned against my mother. “Amy was pretty,” I added. And then I thought maybe I had said the wrong thing because I had said “was.” Amy’s mother was sitting forward with her elbows on her knees. Her face changed color, the skin on her forehead wrinkled. Then she put her hand over her face.

  “April—” said my mother crossly, abruptly. She made a strange, half-apologetic noise with her tongue. “Go outside now.”

  On the long gravel driveway my sister, Beth, and Cody’s little brother, Danny, were racing from the top of the drive to the gate, back and forth. The Abrahams’ dogs were running alongside them, barking. Beth was older and bigger than Danny and beating him every time.

  It was late afternoon and dead brown leaves spiraled down from treetops and landed brittle and curled on the yellowed ground. The grass had been bitten to nubs by the Abrahams’ horses and goats. I sat down and picked at the leaves, concentrating on stripping them as close to the veins as I could without breaking the stem or the veins, but the stems were too thin and dry, and they broke.

  Beth dropped down in the grass next to me. She started picking at a leaf, too. “I like this weather best,” she said, “don’t you?”

  “Yeah, it makes me want to drink hot chocolate and sit and look out the window.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have a serious question to ask you,” I said. Beth looked at me and nodded. I motioned for her to come nearer and then I whispered in her ear: did she believe in God?

  “No,” she replied. I don’t think she even understood the question. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “I was walking home from the bus stop this one time because Mom wasn’t there to pick me up, and I was really worried something bad had happened to her. So I said in my head, ‘God, please let my mom come for me and let her be alive and well.’ Right after I thought that, I swear to God, Mom came driving around the corner.”

  I looked up the hill toward the Abrahams’ horse pasture. A big white wooden cross stood there, and I knew what it was for, because Amy had told me. It was where her pony Snowcone had been buried. The Abrahams still had two other ponies and they were standing close to the fence at the edge of the pasture with their heads low, blowing out their lips and swishing their manes.

  I heard a hawk cry. Cody came walking across the gravel, grinning. “I’ll race you, April. Bet you can’t beat me.”

  “Beat you where?”

  “Down to the end of the driveway.”

  “I don’t feel like it.” I could usually outrun Cody, but just barely. We were about the same size, but lately he was getting taller.

  Cody stood in front of me. “Come on, are you scared?”

  “What would I be scared of? I’m not scared of you.” I stretched my legs out straight on the grass and leaned back on my arms.

  “Bet me,” he said.

  “Screw you.”

  “Bet me,” he said again.

  “I don’t want to. Stop it, dipwad.”

  Cody was kicking the bottom of my shoe. Behind Cody, Danny said, “Yeah, c’mon ’fraidy maple-April.”

  I made a face. “That is the lamest thing.”

  “That is the lamest thing,” Danny mimicked me, and Cody was still kicking my shoe.

  “Stop it now.” I pulled up my knees.

  “Stop it now,” said Danny in a girl’s voice. He stepped around Cody and stuck his face out at me.

  I jumped up and pushed Danny in the face with my hand. He gasped and started crying. Cody looked surprised. “What are you doing, April?” he exclaimed, and for just that moment I liked him even more because of how he was sticking up for his little brother.

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said, suddenly embarrassed.

  “Yes, you are.” Cody’s blue eyes narrowed at me.

  “I’m leaving,” I said. I turned toward the Abrahams’ house and started walking, but Danny ran after me and shoved me in the back. He grabbed onto my waist and wouldn’t let go. I twisted around and dug my fingernails into his forehead. I was so mad, my eyes started to water.

  “Leave him alone, you bitch!” Cody shouted
, and began throwing rocks at me. He broke into a rim and lunged. Both Danny and I fell down. My knees were skinned, but I told myself it didn’t hurt.

  Beth was screaming at us all to stop it. Then she jumped up and headed for the house at a stiff walk, as if she was trying to move fast but not to run.

  Danny was really crying now. “Cody, you hurt me!”

  “Shut up, Danny,” said Cody.

  Danny struggled to stand up, rubbing his eyes and whining, “I’m gonna tell Mom!” I looked Cody in the eye and said, “Cody deserves it,” and Cody yelled at me, “Well, your family is refugees,” then took off after Danny, who was now running toward the house on his short legs that were never going to beat Cody across the lawn.

  My eyes were still watering and I didn’t want anyone to see, so I walked down the driveway. I was mad and it was burning in the inside of my head. My knees stung, but that wasn’t what was making me mad, that was just what was making the being mad come out. I sighed like the horses do. I brushed leaves off my shirt.

  II

  On a night five years later, I was pulled out of a Sacramento dance club called Maximillian’s by police officers, who informed me my mother had been taken to the El Dorado County General Hospital. The police officers had had to track me down through a web of excuses my friends and I had set up in order to go out dancing; in smugly reprimanding tones, they told me this. The drive to the hospital took forty-five minutes. I arrived still wearing my cat’s-eye makeup—exaggerated rings of black eyeliner—and black lipstick, and my black clothes felt garish under the glare of the fluorescent lights. I thought: onlookers will say the teenage daughter knew all along, was waiting every day for the mother’s end to come, was celebrating death, even. Just look at her!