Her grandmother finished and made fists at the window, one for each of Birdsey’s eyes.
But Birdsey threw a hooked look back. Her bottom lip was drawn up like a beak, and she appeared interested in watching the pyracantha pull the nail and fall again. This time it hit Evelyn. It made Evelyn feel as disgusted as if a homeless person had lurched into her.
Birdsey fit perfectly at the high privacy window; she was tall and her eyes were still the metal beads they had been in the pictures of her at sixteen. Her hair had now gone a blind white, except for a few black lines left in it like something secret written in squiggles. Her hairpins were gray and fell behind her as she walked, or ended up lost in her chair or in the bed with her. She couldn’t stand for anything to touch her neck, so she wore her hair wadded up, pinned like used paper. Nobody really wanted to keep her hair, or her finger and toenails, cut for her.
Birdsey had been the first to spot Evelyn pulling in with her son Packhard in their little Volkswagen with the smallest U-Haul tagging along behind it. Birdsey had shown her fickle side. She’d gotten out to the car even before Evelyn hooked the emergency brake on. Her cane couldn’t step fast enough, so she’d held it up in front of her feet.
“Look who’s dropped on me from heaven,” Birdsey said.
“I didn’t drop, I was pushed,” said Evelyn. She tried to get her arms around Birdsey’s soft neck and hug her like she had as a child.
“Well,” said Birdsey, “there’s no room, no room here, keep going.” She poked herself back toward the house with her cane tapping. But she stopped to block the door.
Truly, Evelyn hadn’t wanted to come—the minute she left any place, she longed for her own return. This time that wasn’t going to work because she had no place to return to. Her future wasn’t in New York City anymore, though she felt her spirit had stayed there. It was the place she’d always wanted to be, where she thought everybody was. But she couldn’t get settled in such a big place with such tiny apartments, keeping her things in boxes around her, reading the expired shelf-life dates on them—that had unsettled her more. Everywhere she went was crowded. She kept thinking a child like Packhard could get crushed. There didn’t seem to be too much room left in the world. She’d decided she had too many possessions in boxes to move and tried to give them away but hadn’t succeeded. Sometimes not even the homeless wanted what she had.
What she kept hold of was precious to her—it was Packhard. He was out-of-wedlock. It was the only way she’d dare to bring a man into this family. Theirs was a family that liked men as admirers only, nothing closer had worked out, though Birdsey and Jackie had both had husbands. Then marriage had skipped two generations, her mother’s and Evelyn’s.
Jackie and Evelyn, threading their way back through the growth of the yard, both turned at the same time and looked to where they’d been; the grass was down flat behind them.
“I thought I needed to come for a while and get away from New York City,” said Evelyn. “Packhard’s scared of homeless people.”
“You don’t have to work,” said Jackie. “Just take care of your son.”
“Well, I could help you in the garden.”
“Oh, no, you can’t,” said Jackie. “The last time you did, I never saw so many colors. You planted everything we had.”
It looked like she’d tripped and spilled the seeds instead of planting them carefully.
“It’s just so hot down here,” said Evelyn, “it makes me dizzy.”
“It’s where you were born.”
The sun stuck itself onto the door glass in front of her like a big head burning. “The sun just magnifies itself. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s the South’s normal temperature,” Jackie said. “Your blood’s been thickened by New York winters.” And Evelyn did remember then the crazy crest of wind waiting for her at the top of subway stairs and everybody’s used breaths fogging up bus windows. Her feet in her thin shoes went numb. Her earrings got so cold they hurt.
“I’m only temporary,” said Evelyn. “When my emergency is over, I’ll leave, I promise.”
“I’ve got an emergency of my own,” said Jackie. “Birdsey and me aren’t getting along. Come on in then. That will give me an excuse.”
“For what?”
She hadn’t answered.
Packhard was right now in the house with Birdsey, going through the same ritual that Evelyn had when she was younger. He loved it. But when Packhard had first taken a look at Birdsey from the U-Haul, he’d said, “I won’t go in the house with that big nose.”
“She’s your great-great-aunt,” Evelyn had said. “The nose runs in the family. It’s not that big on her, it’s her expression.” And Birdsey had faced Packhard at point-blank range when he’d tried the door. She’d said, “What is this?”
“I’m a child,” he’d said.
“And I’m the Boogieman,” she’d answered and clicked her long fingernails like castanets.
Packhard had tried to run back down the concrete driveway and fallen and hurt himself.
“You know, Evelyn,” Jackie said, giving her shoulder a hug as if she were wringing out clothes, “you should always wear a size larger than yourself. You’re looking smaller and smaller. I remember when you had long hair and full skirts. That was when you were in a hurry for everything.”
They walked in on the Birdsey ritual now.
Evelyn had loved and hated Birdsey for as long as she could remember and had accepted presents from her when she was little for taking sides against whoever didn’t like Birdsey that day. Birdsey and Jackie were in competition and had never separated. The other sisters had gone their way. Birdsey’s husband had even fallen in love with Jackie, but not out of love with Birdsey, and then he died early by accident, and Jackie fell out of love with her own husband. Their need for love seemed to turn dangerous to them. They always got hurt on love, those two close sisters.
“We lived on his dreams,” Birdsey had said. “He died and took them with him.”
He had given her everything and never taught her to drive. Made her totally dependent on him, and then he left by dying. “She would do nothing, not take a bath, not change underwear. And because she was missing love, I petted her, and I shouldn’t have,” said Jackie, who was afraid that being loved meant who got there first. “You have to get in front of somebody else to get any.”
So here squatted Packhard at Birdsey’s feet. He was wearing one of her rings. It was the game Evelyn knew. Birdsey harvested gifts from her fingers to get people to love her, and then she took the gifts back at the end of the game. Packhard was wearing a bloodstone chip on a band. The other day it had been a stickpin-size diamond; another, a floating opal. The rings were her dead husband’s love, her only savings.
Evelyn walked the hall fast. On its walls her grandmother had stuck framed pictures of her past selves. It was like a movie: the faster she walked, the faster she grew up. Then a sudden stop in pictures. “The dream ends at twenty,” she said. That was when Jackie stopped framing pictures of her and stopped saying, “One day you’ll make it, baby, you’re going to be fine.” Now she kept them loose in an album, not even stuck permanent.
Evelyn came to in the present. The house air had turned strange. There was a smell to it as tangy as citrus.
Jackie yelled, “It’s Birdsey. She’s gone and left her mark! I’ve got to find it.”
Birdsey stayed in her chair, facing dead ahead, but her eyes followed Jackie. “Where is it, Birdsey?” Finally Birdsey stood, like the last one out of place, the musical chair loser. Left under her on the cushion were the flat spattered stars of urine.
“Ammonia,” yelled Jackie. “To clean it. I’ll punish everybody’s noses. My sister peed on my furniture. She’s not incontinent; she pees out of meanness. You hateful sister.”
Packhard took off the ring, scared, held it like it was two of something—little nuts in squirrel hands.
Jackie looked like she’d knock down a wall. “You always wishe
d the worst on me,” she said, “and now you pretend to sit in the living room while you are really peeing. I’ll teach you how to sit and hold it. You never would leave my things alone, you always tore them up. I’ll scrub you till you double over.”
With that, Jackie grabbed her by the housedress pockets. “Turn those pockets out!” A storm of crumbs fell by the handful. But also out came two figurines and Jackie’s favorite little screwdriver. “Look at that. She steals my whatnots and gives them to the neighbors.” Jackie hit the lamp on, as if more light would help her see Birdsey. “I don’t know how the hell you can be so immature as to steal my screwdriver.”
Packhard put the ring back on Birdsey’s middle finger. Birdsey buckled a little and then went to her room wearing diamonds, bloodstones, and an opal.
“Her mind’s come loose,” said Jackie.
The next morning Birdsey didn’t remember the day before. She played lighthearted games with Packhard. “I’ll teach you how to dial a telephone,” she told him. “See? You just punch in the first name of the person you want to talk to.” And then she said, “Do you know where night goes?”
Packhard looked serious. “It’s because of the earth’s rotation.”
“No. It’s in my closet.”
“No, it’s not,” said Packhard.
“Did you know that if you cross your legs you’ll cut off your circulation and you might die? Did you know that things are going to get you one day—and that they are already in the corners and in closets and in the dark? And there are Martians.”
Packhard said, “There’s no life on Mars. Except gnats.”
“Did you know that Boogiemen are real?” said Birdsey. “And I am one.”
Packhard sat low, his legs swung over the sides of the chair. His knees appeared to have two dead leaves on them, the healing scabs from his fall. His hands were cupped under him, making an extra seat for himself—or he could lift himself, fly up to the ceiling and stick to it if he got scared enough.
He was watching. The pupils in his eyes hopped to keep up with Jackie’s touch; she was counting every little thing in the room, which was hers and not Birdsey’s to touch. “My doodads, I love my doodads.” It was her collection of things in china, each smaller than life.
Packhard began to sneak the doodads and whatnots out to bury them in Jackie’s yard under her thickest bushes. The yard was wired with roots of the things she’d planted.
Then one night Birdsey did wrong again. She started eating and couldn’t stop; her teeth were missing so she couldn’t chew anything. She vomited the big pieces in the bathroom basket. Jackie, working in circles, had been searching all day for Birdsey’s missing teeth. “Generally I carry them in my pocket,” said Birdsey. “Or my change purse.”
“Why not carry them in your mouth?” Jackie finally started screaming. “Everything I’ve got is missing. You’re putting it all in your pockets. You are forever calling me. If you’re not calling, you’re listening. You’re eavesdropping on my peace and on my quiet.”
“I’ve got to make sure your heart’s still beating,” said Birdsey. “And the sharp chip of your voice hurts me.”
There was only the nasty whine of the traffic going too fast outside in quick rush hour. Then Jackie’s short, sour sound. “You can hear around corners; you can hear between my ears. I won’t have you anymore! You are to leave.”
“I can’t. I’m ninety years old.”
Jackie went into her bedroom and slammed the door three times, rachet, pop, pop, pop, and then they heard her lock snap. “I’m getting rid of this house ...” Her voice sifted softly back to them through the shut door. “Too much stuff has gotten in this house with me. It’s choking me. You won’t have a home because I’m going to sell it.”
Evelyn, Packhard, and Birdsey sat up all night in the living room, wearing their bedsheets. “Are you still alive?” Birdsey called out all night to Jackie.
Then Birdsey turned to Evelyn in the slow milk light of morning and said, “Who in the world are you, where are we, and why did you come back here?”
Evelyn said, “My personality went blank on me.”
Jackie didn’t have much to say that morning besides “The answer hasn’t changed” and “I don’t forgive. I believe in spite when you’re hurt.”
After that the house stayed quiet; Birdsey followed Jackie around, quiet too.
Evelyn was sleepy all the time now, but had no nightmares because she slept in the middle of the day, again at dusk, and on and off during night and morning. She and Packhard put on their pj’s for the dozings. In the bed, they still slept together; they each looked like the other’s stuffed toy. “When Evelyn was little and trying to grow up, she slept with all her dolls and so many stuffed animals that I couldn’t ever find her to kiss her,” said Jackie.
Evelyn whispered, “Ever since I got my period, I’ve felt lonely. So I had Packhard.” She’d been narrow, almost no doors to her, and it had been a squeeze. But Packhard had helped her get himself born.
She couldn’t wait to slide into the sheets like she was wearing them because she delighted in her short dreams that made no sense and Packhard loved the retelling of them. He laughed till his clothes were in a frenzy about him. The dreams collected, dovetailed around her, made her think she’d solved it. They told her to get rid of her boxes. She started giving her clothes to the Salvation Army. “I’m making room for all of us,” she told her grandmother.
Jackie wouldn’t answer except to say without even a gesture, “She’s to go to another place or I’m putting all her things out on the shoulder of the road.”
Birdsey tried to get a little conversation going. “Are we getting a garbage delivery today?”
“They don’t deliver, Birdsey. They pick it up,” said Packhard quickly.
“What if we make them mad at us, will they bring back all the garbage they’ve ever picked up and return it to us?” asked Birdsey.
“Look what I’ve got,” said Birdsey, following Jackie, and she held a glass globe. A picture was mounted in it. The sisters—she and Jackie. Two little girls with their socks on crooked, dressed alike because they couldn’t bear to be different from each other, though one was taller and one grew up to smoke secretly, the other threw up anything cooked with wine, one danced, and the other couldn’t even drive, neither had learned to swim, neither could sing on-key to anything. “I knew it would work out for us,” said Birdsey. “We’d amount to something. We’d stay together. And we have. We’ve come true.”
“Let me see that,” said Jackie. She held it in her hand, a little glass weight, a picture under it inscribed, their handwritings alike, 1921, sealed, halted with the sun above them, their hair bright with it. “That was then,” said Jackie. She laid it on its curved face, overturned. “We’re too old to take care of each other anymore. And I’ve got a daughter who’s disappeared and left Evelyn. And she’s got the boy. Evelyn takes your place. I’ve got to see to them now.” She left the glass dome, and Evelyn held it. Progeny is a dangerous and powerful hand to hold.
“I’m trying to get out of here, Birdsey. To leave room behind me,” said Evelyn, so frantic her face was swollen. She was growing allergic to herself. “I’m applying for jobs all over the place. I’ve stopped sleeping so. But when I go in, my face won’t work, it looks defeated, like a strong wind blowing me head-on. There are mirrors in every lobby and in some elevators. I’m in them all. I didn’t mean to come back home again. I didn’t mean to take your place. I didn’t mean to take anybody’s place ever.” And with that she felt her chest cave in, as if all the people who didn’t want her, and who didn’t want Birdsey, were pressing their hands and bodies tight against her. “I’m unalive!” she cried out.
She let go of all her clothes then, kept a couple of changes, got rid of clothes like leftovers of herself, former possessions of the deceased, part of herself gone dormant. It had felt like her soul had lost its shelter, no ceiling, and so had escaped. “Homeless is soulless,” she told herself,
naked in the bathroom. “You have to be careful when you lose one outer shell that the others don’t go. Finally there’s no protection and your soul escapes and leaves you.” Her teeth held her lip still, though sadness jerked it. She’d gone into a metamorphosis before her new self had arrived.
Then there was the Boogieman’s story. The big bow on the front of Birdsey’s dress flicked like a fan when she told it. “Well, the Boogieman’s story is true. There was a girl my age who lived on the property next to Mama and Papa and me. She was a girl with red hair. Beautiful, just real, real red. And she had a long red dress. It was a nightgown and she stood in front of a big fireplace. They didn’t have heat in houses like now. That night when I wanted that dress so much I dreamed of it, the dress caught fire and burnt all the hair off her head and she died while she was still burning and Mama went over there and helped get all the fire off of her, and then Mama left me and would help turn her side to side to give her some ease. The end. The girl in the red dress I wanted never came back home again.”
“You shut up,” said Jackie. “That’s a story about jealousy. You were always jealous of that girl’s hair and her gown. She didn’t die. She didn’t leave. You wished her dead cause Mama thought she was prettier. It’s just a story of jealousy cause you were never the favorite.”
“So you see,” said Birdsey, “the Boogieman’s story is true. I was right to be jealous. And Jackie had not even been born yet when this story happened. And she might not have ever been born at all later.”
Jackie waited, picking up dog-ears worn and dropped from their papers and magazines on the floor.
They stopped fighting. “You’re cold and heartless,” said Jackie. “You use anybody as your fool.”
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