The Shark Curtain

by Chris Scofield

  A dark smudgy hill of water faces a dog that’s only visible from its shoulders up. I stand on tiptoe to read the nameplate under it. “Drowing Dog. Francisco de Goya,” I say out loud. Has it always been hanging there? My pulse fills my ears. I smell the cold lake water, Mrs. Wiggins’s cancerous mouth and wet fur. I’m in the lake with her again. Drowning. Scared. The shark curtain an arm’s length away.

  A man leans over my shoulder. “Woof!” he laughs, ducking into the Buoys’ room.

  “Woof!” I repeat, just like Cass would do. Startled, I rush into the Gulls’ restroom.

  The dimness is nice at first; I can’t see anything, and it can’t see me.

  Slowly my eyes adjust, and when they do, everything is different.

  I like the blue glass floats in fishnets suspended from the ceiling and how, when I stand in front of the mirror, I suddenly hear seagulls flying overhead. When I turn on the faucet to wash my hands, I hear crashing waves. I remember the wall-embedded sensors at the science museum and run from sink to sink triggering the wave sounds. Watching myself in the mirror, I back away until the seagulls stop, then, standing on the lip of the sensor, I rock back and forth on my heels, starting and stopping the bird sounds again. The tiny spotlight over all three sinks stays lit.

  My brain watches my body run to one sink then another, opening the tap, starting both the gull and wave sounds, in various combinations. Music! Maybe I’ll be a composer someday! I don’t stop until, kneeling on the counter, I touch the starfish painted on the mirror and say, “Drowning Dog. Goya.”

  In the brief silence after my words, I hear someone clear her throat behind me, and I freeze in place.

  “Excuse me, miss,” a woman’s voice says from the dimly lit room. “You might break the thing, doing it like that.”

  I jump off the counter, shaking. “Sorry.”

  “The machine,” she says. “The sensor.” I see her now. The “nice Negro lady” sits in a chair in the corner of the powder room, smoking a cigarette. When she crosses her legs, she reminds me of Mom.

  “Were you . . . watching me?” My heart’s in my throat.

  “Yes ma’am. Me and Jesus sitting right here, taking a break. Being entertained by you, we surely is.”

  Jesus? He follows me everywhere.

  The woman wears a crucifix too and touches it with her long black fingers. “You got a lot of energy, young lady. You know that? Your mind working all the time, I bet. I see you, I do. You’re a smart one.”

  Most grown-ups tell me I’m pretty or confused, but not smart.

  I feel the half dollar in my sweaty hand. It’s a long slow walk to the woman in the chair.

  “It’s okay,” she says, seeing me coming. Her voice is gentle. “I won’t bite.”

  “I know,” I mumble. I feel myself blush and hope she can’t see it. I hold out the coin. One hand on the cigarette, the other on the arm of the chair, she looks like a queen when she leans forward to peer at the fifty-cent piece.

  “That’s all right, miss. You keep it yourself,” she says. “I didn’t earn it; I been sitting right here doing nothing.” When she takes a puff, the burning ash highlights her starched white collar.

  Lauren suddenly opens the door to the Gulls’ room. She stares at me and says, “Mom said you better have fallen in, or else she’s coming to get you.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming.”

  Lauren spots the woman. “Hello,” she smiles. “My name’s Lauren.”

  “How do you do, Lauren? I’m Mrs. Evans.”

  “Are you a Negro, Mrs. Evans?” Lauren asks.

  I blush.

  “I surely am,” she says.

  “Sammy Davis Jr. is a Negro too. He’s my favorite entertainer.”

  “You have good taste, Miss Lauren. He’s my favorite entertainer also.” Mrs. Evans laughs as Lauren runs out again.

  “I guess I better go.”

  “Your mother’s waiting.”

  “May I ask you something first?”

  “You may.” She lights a fresh cigarette.

  I pause before asking, “Do you like cavemen?”

  “Cavemen? Like The Flintstones?”

  “Yeah. But not funny cavemen.” I straighten my shoulders. “What if your mother was kidnapped by them and she was gone for a while—not for a long time, but kind of long.”

  Mrs. Evans leans forward and clears her throat. “You okay, miss?” Her voice is serious. “Something happen? You in trouble?”

  “No, it’s just that . . . we were alone for a little while. And something could have happened.”

  “Something could always happen, miss. Sometimes it does. That’s life. But your mama came back for you, didn’t she? Isn’t she waiting for you right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then you just thank the Lord for sending her home, no matter what she’s been up to.”

  I smile. “Here,” I say, holding out the coin again. “My mom wants you to have it.”

  “All right then, if your mother said so. I can surely use it.” I give her the money but keep standing there. “There something else you want to say?”

  “I’m . . . sorry,” I say quietly.

  “For what? What have you got to be sorry for?”

  “For the hoses. And the dogs. And the mean white people. I saw the demonstrations on TV.”

  Mrs. Evans disappears into the shadows again, and for a few seconds I don’t see or hear her at all. Then I hear her sniff. The chair squeaks when she stands up. She’s older than I thought, and bent over a little bit, nothing like Mom at all.

  “Don’t you apologize, young lady,” Mrs. Evans says. There are tears in her eyes. “You nothing like those bad people. Standing right here, I feel God’s love inside you. You feel it too, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say, surprising myself. God’s love, and Mrs. Wiggins.

  Mrs. Evans smiles. She takes a rag out of her apron pocket and walks slowly to the sink where she begins to wipe my fingerprints off the mirror. “Go on back to your table, miss. And thank your mother for me.”

  “Okay.”

  “You keep that good heart, now.”

  Should I tell her that I don’t have a good heart? That I drowned my dog, called Jesus bad names, and pinched Aunt Cass really hard?

  When I open the restroom door she says, “I seen you working those sensors, young lady. You do something with the way you see things, all right. It’s unique, I swear.”

  I hear Aunt Cass scraping her salad dish before I even get back to the table. She never has to be told to eat her greens; she eats everything. Dad said she’d “eat the paint off the dishes.”

  “That’s enough,” Mom says, grabbing Cass’s fork, then frowns at me when I sit down. “Why were you gone so long?”

  “You were gone too,” I reply. “At the parade.” She throws back the last of her martini and doesn’t answer. “Sorry, I was talking to—”

  “She was talking to Mrs. Evans,” Lauren says. “Mrs. Evans is a Negro.”

  A Negro waitress stands beside us with our lunch. Mom blushes. When the woman hands out the plates, Lauren cries, “Goody! Fish and chips!”

  “Goody!” Cass mimics. Cass acts like a kid only she doesn’t know it, and I don’t know I’m acting like a kid until I see her do it.

  When Mom reaches for her bucket of steamed clams, I realize she’s ordered me a whole fish. It stares at me with a boiled eye, its mouth midword. “Lily,” she says, “you said you wanted fresh fish, right? And iced tea?”

  Yes. No. Yes.

  The pee-colored glass of tea is sweaty. The fish is trying to tell me something. I watch and wait. Maybe it’ll say something in Aramaic or Latin and I can look it up at the library.

  “No lunch, no dessert,” Mom reminds me.

  “Everything all right then, ma’am?” the waitress asks. Mom nods, and the platter holding the fish stays where the woman places it.

  Untouched, until time to go.

  * * *

 
Cass sits between Lauren and me on the drive back to Good Shepherd Home. There’s an invisible line in the backseat that separates the two sides of the car (Lauren’s and mine), and we watch as Cass’s big soft body tips back and forth across it.

  At Good Shepherd, Cass’s roommate walks out to Mom’s car.

  It’s weird but kind of neat how they look alike. It reminds me of the girls uniforms at St. Rita’s, and how Mom says, “When students look the same on the outside, they’re better students on the inside.” Cass’s friend hugs her and the two of them hold hands when they walk back inside together.

  The backseat is extra-big without Cass. Lauren and I are quiet and hug our corners while we head home.

  Mom clears her throat and asks, “Did you give the nice Negro lady her tip?”

  I nod.

  Eight, scratch that, nine minutes later, Mom looks for our eyes in the rearview mirror and asks, “You were okay, girls . . . weren’t you? I mean, after the cavemen took me away?”

  Lauren looks out the car window.

  I’m the older sister so I say, “Sure,” for both of us.

  Mom’s forehead wrinkles. “Good,” she responds. At the next stoplight she freshens her lipstick.

  * * *

  At home, Mom browns the marinated pot roast in the frypan, then sticks it in the oven at 325 degrees. She peels potatoes and plops them in a pan of ice water in the kitchen sink. “What do you think, girls?” she smiles, looking out the kitchen window. “Can I squeeze another hour out of the sun?”

  She doesn’t expect an answer as she dashes to the bathroom, scurries into her two-piece swimsuit, and rifles through the drawers for her small blue eye-cups, hair net, and bottle of mineral oil.

  Soon, Mom stands beside me watching the sky, a towel draped over her arm. She hesitates for a moment and rubs a bare foot up and down her long shiny leg. Mom loves to sunbathe. She positions the chaise longue like a sundial, prepared to chase the sun around the deck. She lies down, drops the bathing suit straps off her shoulders, and fifteen minutes later, when the portable oven timer goes off, she turns over. I imagine her big boobs breaking through the green plastic ribbing, and nursing dogs on her, like the puppies across the street, or Romulus and Remus who we learned about in school.

  Lauren and I clean the bathroom and vacuum, then sit in the family room watching Mom tan herself. Soon Dad slams the car door shut, singing as he opens the door, home again: “All day, all night, Marianne . . .”

  “Fix yourself a drink, honey,” Mom yells, raising her head off the chaise longue, “I’ll be right there!”

  * * *

  “How was the parade?” Dad asks.

  “We had quite a day!” Mom giggles. They talk about Dad’s work, and the parade and the cavemen and Oscar’s, while Mom bastes the roast, mashes the potatoes, cuts wedges of iceberg lettuce and tomatoes, and tucks the red linen napkins through the napkin rings.

  When she places the silverware in the middle of the table, Lauren separates the little fork, big fork, knife, and spoon, and sets them out. I fill the water glasses and light the candles, making fingertip cups with the warm wax. After Lauren leaves the room, I crawl under the table. I like sitting under there, though when I hear Dad talk impatiently to Mom, I wish I were back in the Gulls’ room with Mrs. Evans instead.

  “It’s not just leaving Lauren there,” Dad says. “It’s not just Cass, either.” He crosses the room, and back again. “It’s Lily. We don’t know what to expect from her anymore, do we? Do we, Kit?”

  There’s a pause before the freezer door opens, ice tumbles into a glass, and Mom says, “All right, dear, you made your point. Now . . . would you like a drink or not?”

  * * *

  Under the table, on the bottom of Peace Lake, I hold my breath longer than any other teenager in history, then swim to the surface and back to shore again all by myself. I’m an excellent swimmer so my parents don’t worry.

  Our family eats s’mores around an open fire, and Lauren listens really hard when I explain where the word s’more comes from. How Hershey is a town in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania was named for William Penn, an early settler.

  We look at pictures of fetuses and discuss how America was a fetus once too, just ideas and laws and witches and preachers who ignored the Indians who already lived here. We discuss how every pilgrim and explorer, every settler and slave owner and cowboy and gold rush guy, should have turned around and gone home.

  Who would we be if we never left Europe? If there was never a Portland or Peace Lake, a Hoss Cartwright or an appliance convention?

  I talk and they listen.

  There is no drowning or sandy burial, and Lauren holds my hand all the way home.

  * * *

  “Dinner! Ten minutes!” Mom calls.

  When she looks away, I crawl out from under the table and walk-swim into the family room where Lauren’s watching Mr. Moon on TV. Mr. Moon hosts the local TV cartoon show.

  I blush when I hear his voice.

  Last night I dreamed Mom won a “Dream Date with Mr. Moon.” For their date, he flew over the telephone lines and raised Mom’s bedroom window. “Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away,” he sang like Frank Sinatra, cool, snapping his long white fingers. His big head was so bright it lit up the side of our house. While Dad slept, Mom took Mr. Moon’s hand and the two of them flew out of the yard into the night sky. The next month they were Tiger Beat’s “hot couple.” They shared the cover; only his full-moon, deep-crater face hid most of the graphics. Mom looked good; she looked like Jean Shrimpton, the model.

  When Mr. Moon goes to commercial, I turn the station.

  “Turn it back!” Lauren yells.

  “He’s ugly,” I say.

  “No he’s not.”

  “Yes he is.”

  “Hey!” Dad walks into the room, scowling at both of us, then looks at the television. “Good,” he says, falling into his favorite chair. “The news.”

  The Rose Festival Parade is on.

  A policeman rides horseback behind a group of kids on unicycles and stilts. People applaud the Rose Festival Queen who waves like the Queen of England.

  When a Grants Pass Cavemen sticks his face in the camera, Dad turns the station.

  Chapter 8

  Pissing in Three Acts

  Act I

  Heather, Artis, and Lorraine are the toughest girls in ninth grade.

  It’s strange to be standing with them, behind the cafeteria after school, while they smoke and talk. When I step out and look past the office, parking lot, and ball field, I can just make out the road.

  If Mom drove by, demanding I come home immediately, I wouldn’t mind. The girls make me nervous. They say I’m “weird but cool,” and make me promise not to tell anybody about their cigarettes.

  They just want my Beatles cards. I have ten on me; only three more at home. Collecting cards is kinda square but they’ll sell them at the flea market and make money for grass. Marijuana, I mean.

  “You don’t have cards worth shit,” Heather says with disgust. “Who wants Ringo, anyway?” When she blows smoky Os, she throws back her ironed-straight black hair. Her ears are pierced.

  The others look up from their go-go boots discussion. Artis snatches Heather’s cigarette and takes a deep puff.

  All three girls check out my twin Ringos, untouched George Harrisons, and dog-eared Johns and Pauls. “How come you taped plastic wrap around George?” Heather asks, wrinkling her nose like she smells something bad.

  I shrug.

  “Shit,” she giggles like she just made up the word. Made it up then pissed on it like one of Aunt Jamie’s lost dogs.

  * * *

  Jamie calls it pissing and explains that dogs do it “to mark their territory.”

  “All animals do,” she explains, as I help her put out salt licks for the deer that will wander through her dying apple trees at dusk. “Sometimes even females.”

  Jamie loves animals and sometimes rescues dogs that have
been hurt or dumped off on the old coast highway where she lives alone in a little yellow house with red shutters. She built the kennel and the dog yard fence all by herself. She teaches English and poetry at the community college, writes songs, and swims, of course. Aunt Jamie does lots of stuff. Dad says she’ll never settle down.

  We listen to Peter, Paul and Mary on the stereo while we sit on denim-covered cushions in her bay window, eating banana bread and sipping peppermint tea. She puts a sugared lemon slice in my cup. Outside, two of Jamie’s dogs, the ones she calls the “Heinz 57s,” push around a small three-legged terrier named Percival.

  “Poor thing,” I say.

  “They’re not bad dogs, Lily. They’re just showing him who’s boss. They’re saying, You’re a cripple and a stranger. We were here first. This is our property and this is how it’s going to be.”

  Frieda said God made animals simple and accepting to give us an example to live by. “But they’re being mean,” I remind Jamie.

  “If we went out there and stopped them, they’d just figure out a way to beat up Percy when we weren’t looking. It’s nature, Lily.” Jamie smiles. “But there are things we can do something about. Bigger things, important things.” She blows a little wave across the surface of her tea. “The war in Vietnam is wrong. Poverty and prejudice are wrong. It’s time to stick our hands in the dirt and pull out the rotting stuff.”

  Healthy green vines frame the inside of her bay window and turn their leaves to the light outside.

  “I met this guy named Kevin. We’re joining a few friends from Reed College and going downtown tomorrow. Goldwater is in town. He needs to know that not everyone in Portland is cool with his opposition to the Test Ban Treaty. You up for a little civil disobedience, Lily? I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “Tomorrow? You mean Monday?”

  Mom would kill both of us. Still, I might go if it were just the two of us. No Kevin. No friends from Reed College. “No thanks,” I say. “Maybe next time.”

  “I hope there isn’t a next time,” Jamie says, taking our dishes to the kitchen.

  I love Aunt Jamie’s house. While she cleans up, I explore her living room. A big poster of a stooped Indian on horseback, with the setting sun behind him, hangs over her lumpy green couch. Tie-dyed lace doilies sit on the arms of two overstuffed chairs; a paisley-printed cloth is pinned to the ceiling. On the coffee table is a pile of strange-looking newspapers called the Berkeley Barb, and a little incense pagoda with strawberry-smelling smoke coming out its windows. In an ashtray is a half-smoked hand-rolled cigarette; it smells funny. Is it pot?