“Hi,” I say, trying to sound casual. “Jesus?”
“Well, I’m not Bobby Sherman,” He laughs.
My heart’s beating so hard I barely notice the long hair and halo Judy mentioned. And He doesn’t look like Prince Valiant at all. He’s smaller than I remembered from Crawford Butte or Peace Lake, and skinnier. Maybe His body is changing too.
“What do you think?” Jesus asks, nodding to the shadows. Even though He’s showing off and I don’t like show-offs, I’m impressed. All I can make is a rabbit, but Jesus makes Ben, Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe bursting through the burning map of the Ponderosa with His hands. “You like Hoss best, right?”
“Yeah,” I answer quietly. “But I like Martin Luther King better.”
Jesus instantly walks the Negro marchers down my bedroom wall. Dogs lunge at them from the crowd, and white people spit and turn fire hoses on them. “Why don’t you help them?” I ask. “Why don’t you help the Negroes?”
Jesus puts down His hands. “Martin’s doing fine without me,” He says. “Besides, who said I wasn’t helping?”
“Lily?” Mom knocks on my door. “I see your light’s still on. Judy’s mother called. I’m sorry you didn’t have a good time, sweetheart. Listen, I made some Jell-O. How about a midnight snack?”
I look at my clock-radio. “But it’s only 10:15. I mean 10:16.”
Lauren opens her door and sings, “Jell-O Jell-O bo bell-o, ba-nana-fana . . .” She’s a perfectionist and worried about her homework. She can’t sleep either.
Everybody’s up. We’re having Jell-O at 10:18 and thirty-five seconds. I bet they’re not doing that at Judy’s house.
“Go,” Jesus says, making painful faces as He backs through an insect-sized rip in my window screen. “It’s Jell-O. Wish we’d had Jell-O when I was a kid.”
I want to feel sorry for Him, but after Mrs. Wiggins I just can’t.
Chapter 7
Stealing Mommies
We follow Dad as he gets up from the breakfast table and, singing, “All day, all night, Marianne,” shuffles calypso-style down the hall toward the bathroom where Mom puts on her makeup.
“Hon-ey,” she giggles when he grabs her by the waist and plants a noisy smack-kiss on her long tan neck.
“These are your beauty secrets?” he teases. “Lip liner? Green eye shadow?” He sticks them in his pocket and dances back to the kitchen. “Watch out, Kit,” he calls back, “you’ll be the most beautiful woman at the Rose Festival Parade. Then what?”
Lauren and I look at each other with concern.
“Keep an eye on her, girls,” he says, as we slide behind our cereal bowls again. “She’s a wild one.”
We laugh.
Aren’t our parents supposed to keep an eye on us?
“All day, all night, Marianne . . .”
* * *
Mom doesn’t tell us we’re picking up Aunt Cass.
When she takes the freeway exit to Good Shepherd Home, Lauren and I roll our eyes at each other.
Aunt Cass is family, even though she doesn’t look anything like our parents or Frieda or Uncle Po. Cass is forty years old and has Down syndrome. She used to live with her brother Uncle Po (I don’t know his real name), but she’s been at Good Shepherd for years now. Other folks with Down syndrome live there too, and people who never get out of their wheelchairs, people who’ll die much younger than Po who Dad calls “as old as the hills.”
Good Shepherd Home is at the end of a long country road. Someone ran over a skunk, and Lauren plugs her nose.
It’s only 7:20 a.m. The parade doesn’t start until nine. Maybe Cass isn’t up yet.
She’s up.
“No bra,” Mom moans as a “helper” walks Cass out to our car.
Her boobs are big and hang almost to her waist because she refuses to wear one of the bras Mom buys her at Fran’s Foundations. She’s short and chubby, and beige-pink like Bazooka bubble gum. Her cotton-candy hair is sticky with hair spray she doesn’t need but uses anyway, “covering the bathroom mirror with most of it,” Mom says. Cass still has her baby teeth, which are tiny and square like kernels of white corn, only when she smiles she keeps her lips as tight as a coin purse and never shows them.
She piles in the front seat next to Mom, which Lauren and I aren’t allowed to do anymore after Mom got new seat belts, the first in the neighborhood, and had them installed in the backseat just for us.
Forty minutes later, when the four of us pull into the parking lot closest to the Rose Festival Parade route, Cass has fallen in love with Mom all over again. They hold hands as we cross the busy parking lot to the Midway, passing a line for the roller coaster, and signs advertising corn dogs, pie-eating contests, the dime toss, gypsy fortune tellers, and Sno-Cones, 45 cents. Mom ignores the carnies who wolf-whistle at her and shake huge teddy bears at the rest of us. Lauren pretends to ride a Lipizzaner stallion, weaving in and out, her head held high. Lauren saw them perform last week; now she wants to train horses.
Cass pushes me away when I get too close to Mom. “No, Lily, no,” she says. Like I’m a dog or something.
We keep walking. Mom leads the way through the noisy crowd headed to the street with their lawn chairs, thermoses, and blankets. People look at her because she’s beautiful, and Cass because she’s strange. Mom says I’ll “grow out” of being embarrassed about Cass. She also says that Cass is “old for Down,” which means she should have died by now, I guess.
As we near Burnside, Lauren and I run ahead, claiming the curb for the best possible spots, standing or sitting. We position ourselves on either side of Mom like kid models in a Butterick pattern book, only we’re really her guards. Dad asked us to keep an eye on Mom, who lights a cigarette and says, “Beautiful day, isn’t it, girls?” Shading us with her flawless tan and sunglasses, I almost forget Aunt Cass is standing behind her.
A minute later, Mom moves her in front. She rests her hands on Cass’s shoulders and points out clowns on tiny motorcycles and kids and dogs. Mom’s finger passes over another Down syndrome adult, across the street. He looks more like Quasimodo than Cass. He wears lederhosen and laughs like a donkey.
Does Cass notice him too?
On our side of the street, people fan themselves with parade programs and look up the road excitedly. Edges of metal folding chairs glint in the sun. Babies cry. A big greasy guy pushes a grocery cart of balloons and stick toys. Little kids run into the street and point. “It’s coming!” they cry, even when it’s not.
Soon enough, kilted bagpipers strut by. Their music fills my chest with vibrating depth charges, like the recorded sounds on the battle submarine we toured at last year’s Rose Festival. Marching girls my age, in short skirts and white-fringed wrist cuffs, throw twirling batons in the air at exactly the same time. After every float is another high school band in matching uniforms with shiny instruments.
In the Rose Festival Parade every float is made with flowers, even the one of Packy the Elephant. “Pink zinnias!” Mom exclaims, as the huge flowery elephant lifts his mechanical trunk and sprays the street with confetti.
Six bright red convertibles, each carrying a festival princess, are next. This year’s queen is from Grant High School. Every year Mom cuts out the newspaper photo and biography of each high school princess, and bets Dad five dollars that she can guess who’ll be chosen queen. She’s only been wrong once.
My favorite thing each parade is the Alpenrose Dairy float with real goats, sheep, and rabbits. I cringe when Cass yells, “Goat!” and the woman standing next to us smiles and says, in an exaggerated voice, “That’s right! Good for you!”
“Look!” Lauren yells at the blue-green float carrying a giant starfish with a bearded Neptune on one arm. Mermaids lie on raised steps at his feet. They wave, like slow windshield wipers, and Mom points at one with a sash across her chest. “She’s runner-up to the Rose Festival Queen this year,” Mom explains. “Melanie Collins—four-point student and citywide high school swim champ, Lily. Isn’t t
hat neat?”
I’d rather be a troglodyte and live in a cave. I think I’m getting too old for the parade. I’m definitely too old to hang out with Cass.
The old-time swimmers are next, tossing beach balls and pretending to swim as they walk along. When a woman in a little black dress stops to kiss a man in a striped one-piece swimsuit—showing off his hairy white legs and wiggling his black cardboard mustache—the Keystone Kops run in. Blowing their whistles and shaking their small black bats, they chase the swimmers through the street, but the crowd laughs hardest when the fire brigade arrives, pulling carts of wooden barrels behind them. One of the girl swimmers stops in front of us and plugs her nose. When she raises her fingers 1-2-3, and slips to the pavement, Cass says, “Uh-oh.”
Suddenly the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz is standing over her, cackling and calling, “My pretty!” Two boys behind us dash out and swat her butt, then run back into the crowd again.
While people across the street squeal when a “fireman” stops to spray them, I look for Quasimodo. “Watch out!” someone shouts behind me, and everyone pulls back. Mom, Lauren, and Cass jump away too, leaving nothing between me and the fake fireman who stands there.
Spraying me. With the hose. It’s real water this time.
“Sorry, kid,” he says before moving on.
I can’t move. The water burns through me.
Mom smiles, then hugs me and lights a cigarette. “You’re fine, Lily. Don’t be a sourpuss. It’s a hot day. Your clothes will dry in no time.” She waves at a friend across the street. The man standing next to her thinks it’s for him and waves back.
“Sourpuss,” Cass echoes, and I pinch her. Hard. “Owww,” she says, looking at me with surprise.
Cass has Down syndrome; I shouldn’t have done that. She rubs her pinched arm and smiles at me anyway. Cass is okay. In some ways we’re even alike: our insides don’t go with our outsides.
“They’re here!” Mom suddenly cries.
It’s the Grants Pass Cavemen.
I step back in horror.
The Grants Pass Cavemen are ugly and frightening. They scratch themselves like monkeys at the zoo, then stumble around like drunk cartoon fleas. They wear scary wigs, bedroom slippers, and Flintstones clothes. One caveman waves a club at a cowering cavewoman with long blond hair and she runs away, screaming. Barney and Fred would never do that.
The cavemen throw candy and a piece lands at my feet, but I leave it there.
Their jail arrives, on wheels, pulled by two prisoner cavemen, each dragging a chain and bowling ball around his ankle. Inside the jail are people, real people, women with their fingers wrapped around the bars. A woman standing beside us touches Mom’s shoulder. “You’re pretty,” she smiles. “I bet they take you.”
Lauren slips her hand into Mom’s. “Don’t go,” she pleads. But Mom doesn’t hear her. She would have gone with them last year if Lauren hadn’t screamed and the caveman said something about “controlling your kid” which made Mom mad. She will go with them this year; she has to. “You’ll be the most beautiful woman at the parade,” Dad said at breakfast. “Then what?”
When the cavemen disappear down the street, their jail remains. But they’re sneaky; a few wandered into the crowd: they’re around here someplace. Except for the man pushing the popcorn wagon, and some guy who looks like Jesus walking down the middle of the road wearing a sandwich sign that reads, Repent! The End Is Near!, people are quiet.
Two hairy guys pop up in front of us and Lauren and I scream, but Mom laughs. When they pull on her wrists to join them in the street, she’s still laughing. She wants to go, and we know we should let her, but we can’t. We hold tight to her waist and legs and yell, “Stop it!” at the kidnappers, while people around us laugh.
It’s not funny. I know they’re not real cavemen, but the more Mom slips from our grasp, the more frightened I am. “Leave her alone!” I cry, gripping her with one hand while hitting the cavemen as hard as I can. “Don’t let go!” I yell at Lauren.
“Jesus, kid,” one of them says to me. He covers his head. “It’s a joke. We’re not going to hurt her.”
“Everybody, please!” Mom cries. “Stop pulling on me!” Lauren lets go but I don’t. “It’s all right,” Mom says, blushing and happy. “It’s just for fun, Lily. I’ll be right back.” She clears her throat. “Now, let go.”
“Let go,” Cass repeats in her dead dull voice.
Mom blushes. “Hold onto this for me, will you?” She hands me her favorite straw purse.
I don’t want it. Mom never goes anywhere without a purse.
“You have your wristwatch, right? I’ll be back in fifteen minutes—okay, boys?”
The cavemen grunt and flex.
Mom wants to go. She wants to leave us. Maybe she doesn’t want to come back. Trini Lopez sings, “If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, don’t make a pretty woman your wife.” Dad calls it his theme song.
When I finally drop Mom’s hand, one of the cavemen picks her up and throws her over his shoulder. She laughs while they rush her away and people around us applaud and whistle.
“Hold it, Frank,” the guy calls out, gesturing toward Mom. “We’ve got another one.” When they finally set her down, Mom walks, of her own free will, up the wooden plank of the jailhouse.
I feel Lauren and Cass standing beside me, quiet and still.
The cavemen are stealing mommies. One of them, pretending to be gallant, removes his hat and wig when he opens the jail door and Mom walks in, smiling. She blows us a kiss through the bars. The cavemen lurch and scratch and grunt like monkeys when they walk farther down the block where fainter cries explode from other unsuspecting kids and moms.
Mom said she’d be back. She said not to worry, that it’s just for fun. She said fifteen minutes, but I know better. I won’t even look at my watch.
Everyone wants Mom: Lauren, me, Dad, the cavemen.
Maybe some nice lady will take Cass home and I won’t have to say anything when she looks at me with her skinny Martian eyes and says something I can’t understand because she has Down syndrome and mumbles half the time.
There’s a hole in the parade. I look down the street. “Hurry up,” I whisper. The faster the parade passes, the sooner Mom will be back. I hug her bright straw purse to my chest. She got it in Mexico on her last wedding anniversary; Frieda took care of us while they were gone.
“Lily?” Lauren says.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’ve got her purse. She’ll be back.”
“She’ll be back,” Cass repeats.
“I want to hold it,” Lauren says.
“Mom told me to hold it for her.”
“I don’t care. You’re not my boss.” She snatches it away.
It’s getting hotter. Lauren burns easily. Maybe there’s lotion in Mom’s purse.
“You’re not my boss,” Cass repeats.
“Shut up!” I shout at her.
I pinched Cass and now I’ve yelled at her. I am not a nice person.
No, I tell myself when I look at her. We’re not alike. We’re not alike at all.
* * *
Thirty-five minutes later Mom returns, laughing and red-faced, three balloons in her hand. When she asks if I want one, I pretend like I don’t hear her.
When we climb in the car after the parade, and Mom announces that all of us are going to Oscar’s for lunch, I can’t believe it. Oscar’s Oyster House is my special birthday place. Just Mom and me.
“Oscar’s! Oscar’s!” Lauren chants. Dummy. She’s never even been there before.
Okay, I’ll go, but I won’t have fun, no matter what. I’ll punish Mom for sharing the place, for ruining its specialness. I just hope Oscar’s doesn’t have the usual Shirley Temple paper dolls that come with the Shirley Temple drinks she’ll probably order for Cass and Lauren. Lauren will want to come here on her birthday too.
Outside Oscar’s is a newspaper box. Negro Boycott Meets with Violence, reads the
front-page headline.
“A . . . B . . . C . . .” Cass says slowly.
“No, Cass,” Lauren interrupts. “N . . . E . . . G . . . R . . .” She wants to be a teacher.
And a stewardess
And a horse trainer.
For the last three years, on my birthday at Oscar’s, a tall man in a long white apron leads Mom and me to our table in the corner. He removes the Reserved card, smiles, and takes Mom’s order for a dry vodka martini with a twist. We eat steak and onion rings and salad with Thousand Island dressing, and talk about Dad and Lauren and books and our favorite TV shows. But this isn’t my birthday, and I don’t recognize the maître d’ who leads Mom, Cass, and Lauren to our table. I put my head down and follow them slowly, like people do at funerals.
When Cass spills her water, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom.
“Here,” Mom says, reaching across the table with a fifty-cent piece. “Give it to the nice Negro lady in the powder room.” I like Bill Cosby on I Spy and Reverend Martin Luther King, but I’ve never really spoken to a Negro before.
The women’s restroom is across the bar at the end of the hall. I walk through slowly, passing two quiet men on stools. The bar smells like cigarettes and air freshener. Behind a saloon door, dishes clatter, pots bang, a mixer whirs; cooks and waitresses yell at each other over the sounds, and the kitchen smells are meaty and sweet.
In an animated sign for Dad’s favorite beer, a small humming motor makes a fishing boat rock gently on bright blue waves. Sitting in the boat are the Hamm’s Bear and Jesus, both of them in silly hats and vests, holding fishing poles and smiling. A half-submerged string of fish hangs off the side of the boat, a case of Hamm’s bobs along next to it. Jesus throws out His line.
Up ahead are the Buoys and Gulls restrooms, separated by a cigarette machine.
Then I see the picture. Over the cigarette machine.
The Shark Curtain Page 10