by Fran Kimmel
“She used to suck on the middle two fingers of her left hand,” Grandma said. “She’d pop them out for a second, just long enough to say a few words or eat a cookie, then back they’d go.”
“Oh Kay,” I said. Grandma had three pink curlers on the top of her head. This was her nighttime outfit. She still had that beaded purse around her neck.
“She suckled those poor little fingers so hard they were shrivelled and stained as old pickled beets.”
“Do you know where you are, Grandma?” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up straight. There were four clocks in my room, but none of them worked. It felt like the middle of the night, mostly because who has this kind of conversation in broad daylight.
“I tried all sorts of tricks to break her sucking habit,” Grandma said, continuing. “Soaking her fingers in vinegar, binding her hand in cotton strips, bribing her with mint jellies or paper cutout dolls.”
“Uh huh,” I said. Maybe Grandma was sleeptalking. Maybe I should go round the house and try to make a safe route for her.
“Nothing worked. He was furious with us both. Get that girl to quit gnawing on herself. It’s obscene to watch. But then one day she simply stopped. Just like that. She said, ‘I don’t have to help them anymore.’ And that was the end of the finger sucking.”
Grandma smiled, half chuckling to herself.
“I’m glad that worked out then,” I said.
“Oh, she was like that. Elizabeth. Once she made up her mind about something, she never turned back.”
Elizabeth. I thought about that lady outside the Judge’s house after the funeral, a more grown-up version of Rebee. “You mean Rebee’s mom?”
Grandma looked confused when I asked that, though not more than usual, and it was hard to tell in the dark.
“Rebee’s mom. That Elizabeth?”
Grandma nodded slowly, painfully it seemed. “She looked nothing like Albert, or her sister Victoria, either. That’s what started the talk, Elizabeth skipping along the sidewalk in her taffeta dress and patent leather shoes. There was no question she was her mother’s child. Those busybodies around here couldn’t see anything of Albert in her.”
Grandma looked old and frail, remembering the little girl. I pictured Rebee’s almond eyes, like her mother’s. Her grandmother’s too, apparently.
“I think you should sit down, Grandma. Here, sit.”
“That poor lost girl. I should have done more.”
Who was lost? But Grandma had turned herself around, feeling her way back to bed.
* * *
About a month into school last year I asked Mr. McCormick, the gym teacher, if I could be excused. Normally, he said, sure, sure, be quick about it, but his wife and kids divorced him that week, moving as far away as they could get without a passport — Nova Scotia, I think — and they took his German shepherd Wally, too. Mr. McCormick loved that dog. He was in a crappy mood and said that I could do my business before gym class started and why didn’t I grow some balls and climb the frigging rope already. I made it halfway up. The stream landed like a bowl of broken eggs on top of Mr. McCormick’s bald head.
It’s embarrassing to puke on your gym teacher. This morning was worse. When Rebee leaves the hill, she doesn’t just meander down the road into town. She straps herself into a giant backpack like she’s planning to hike across Canada. Then she takes the hard way, out back of our houses, which is straight down through the trees. I’ve seen her go this route a dozen times. Sometimes she’s gone for an hour. Sometimes all day. Sometimes she brings home a carton of eggs or a six-pack of root beer. Sometimes she leaves with her hair in a ponytail and when she comes back, it’s falling around her face.
So this morning I followed her over the cliff and down into the forest. It’s dark like night in there. Very creepy. There’s a broken wooden gate growing out of the ground. And a burned tree that looks like a woman praying. It’s got fat knots in the wood for her boobs and two thick branches like arms reaching to God.
I was doing pretty good, keeping my distance, clambering over the fallen logs and moss-covered rocks, like Spider-Man without the suit. But I got so busy looking ahead, trying to keep her in sight, that I missed a tree root and went careening down the hill, head over ass. A tree stopped my fall, eventually, and I lay there panting, bark chips and needles stuck to my shirt. When I opened my eyes, Rebee stood over top of me. I’d never been that close to her before. She wore a purple tank top and jeans that sat low on her hips and she stared at me without blinking.
“Hello,” I said, my first word. Ingenious.
She didn’t answer. Just stared. It made it hard for me to pretend that I’d skied down the hill on my ass on purpose. I hoisted my top half onto my elbows and tried to look casual. “You’re bleeding,” she said, pointing to my forehead.
“What?” I raised my palm to my head and felt the lumpy wet, and when I brought my hand down it looked like it had come out of a bowl of tomato soup with pepper. There was no warning. Not even a millisecond. The volcano erupted and I spewed. It was like orange Slurpee when you yank on the handle too hard. I thought to lean to the side, eventually, but by then it was all over, and I daintily spit the last few blobs into the soggy leaves. I must have looked like a kid’s drawing. I had a bloody red hand from touching my bloody head, and now orange watery puke all down my shirt, mixing nicely with the green forest bits I’d picked up on my way down.
I didn’t dare look up. All I could see were her scuffed runners sinking in moss less than a foot in front of me. They hadn’t backed up an inch. Most people gag, or cover their mouths, or jump to a safe distance to escape the explosion. Rebee just stood there in front of me. I wanted her to be gone. I wanted her to back down the hill and melt into the trees so I could disappear off the planet. I looked at my gooey shirt, looked at my runners, looked at her runners, looked at the ants marching along the log, looked for something else to look at.
She asked, “Can you stand up?”
I remained perfectly still, trying not to pant, trying to ignore my dripping head.
“Well?” There was a hard edge to her voice. No pity. Those that stuck around were usually the “oh dear, poor puking boy” types. Big hair ladies, mostly. Rebee had none of that.
“You can go,” I said. “I’m gonna just hang out for awhile.”
She was on her knees then. She had swung her heavy backpack off her shoulders and it landed on the ground with a thunk. It was a blue deluxe model, the kind that prepares you for anything, with outside pockets handy for water bottles or wet shoes, and a rear pocket big enough for a folding avalanche shovel. I wanted to be dead, but I wanted to see inside more. When she opened the main zipper and started rooting around, I snuck a peek. It looked like everything she owned had been crammed in there. Jacket, T-shirts, a cracked mirror with a shiny frame, two rubber boots, a couple of apples, even a nightie. I thought she was going to pull out an IV bag, but her fist dived down and came back up with a tattered roll of Life Savers. Wintergreen. She popped two in her mouth without offering me one.
“You travel prepared,” I said. I waited for her to say something like yeah, I know, or, what brings you to this neck of the woods. She didn’t. So I said, “I know who you are.”
“So do I.”
I wished I could hang myself from the nearest branch. “I mean, I — I live next door. Just temporarily, probably the summer. I’m Joey. My grandma used to look after your mom, when she was just a little girl. Elizabeth.”
She looked at me hard and I bit my tongue to stop myself from turning away. The tip of her booger finger was bent under in a weird, E.T.-come-home way.
She said, “Her name is Harmony.” She passed me the Wintergreens, and when I reached out with my non-bloody hand, I could smell the reek of me fill the forest.
“I stink.”
“You do.” She sat down and crossed her legs, pulling the backpack onto her lap.
“Sorry I puked.”
But she had her head i
n her backpack and was sorting through her stuff.
“I’m sorry your grandpa died.” Wasn’t I just full of apologies. “I never met him. I’m sure he was a great guy.”
Her head popped out of her bag again. “Here.” She was holding a folded white T-shirt in her fist.
I wasn’t going to put on a girl’s shirt. I shook my head. “Thanks anyway.”
“Like you said. You stink.” She dropped the shirt in my lap.
“I’m leaving now,” I said, trying to pass her back her shirt. “Sorry.”
“Put it on. Unless you want pink.”
She almost smiled. But there was something else, too. Something tight and ninja-like. My skin felt shivery as we sat there staring at each other in the shadows.
I really stunk. I thought I might be sick again just having to breathe me in. So I fumbled with my shirt buttons, hoping she would find a hedge to hide behind or that she’d at least look away, but she sat cross-legged in front of me and watched. I crunched up my puked shirt like a dirty diaper and hucked it over by a tree. By the time I got my scrawny white arms and puny pounding chest and pathetic protruding ribs into Rebee’s shirt, she was pouring water from a plastic water bottle over a piece of cotton.
It took a few seconds for the horror to pass. She was handing me a wet mini pad and pointing to my forehead. I swiped a few times until the pad was covered with brown red blood and pebbly grit, and Rebee held out her hand and took it from me. She rolled it like a cigarette and stuffed it into the avalanche shovel pocket and passed me another. And another. And another. I thought we might do an entire box’s worth, but we stopped at four.
“It’s just a scratch,” she said. “Can you stand up?”
I didn’t want to appear helpless, not after spitting up like a baby and passing blood-soaked mini pads back and forth, so I jumped right up.
“Well, that was fun,” I said, sliming my hand up and down my jeans.
“Do you want me to walk with you up the hill?”
“No, no, no,” waving my arms like I was on fire. “I’m all right. Really.”
“I know,” she said. “Right as rain.”
We both stood and brushed ourselves off and I turned and looked up the hill and took in my impressive skid marks in the moss. Every tree looked the same except for the praying lady, standing out like a scorched thumb. Rebee must have followed my eyes, because she mumbled, Harmony’s tree, but didn’t explain.
“Weird how it could somehow burn itself up without starting the whole forest on fire,” I said.
“Whatever. It’s dead.”
She swung her backpack high like it was as light as air and adjusted the straps on her shoulders and said, “See you, Joey.”
“Sorry for the trouble,” I said. Idiot.
But by then she was gone.
* * *
The gash looks like an upside down purple V above my left eyebrow, a “this way up” arrow for dummies. It will probably leave a scar, a handy reminder that I’m a piece of turd. A part of me hopes it’s permanent. Maybe when I look in the mirror from now on I’ll only see her.
Grandma was really sweet to me when I came out of the bathroom. I was surprised her old eyes picked up on my scruffiness, that she could see how my forehead was even puffier than hers. She poured me a glass of funny-smelling milk and told me to sit and rest.
I slumped at the kitchen table.
“You have to be more careful when you play outside,” Grandma said, patting my elbow.
“I was with Rebee, Grandma. Rebee Shore.” Just a regular barf fest back there on the hill.
Grandma shuffled out from behind me and sat down heavily at the table. “Rebee Shore. Elizabeth’s child? She’s a nice girl?”
Nice was not quite the word. “Yeah, she’s nice.”
“And Elizabeth. Has she gone then?”
I didn’t want to get into the whole Harmony name change thing. “Yeah, she’s gone.” Coincidentally, so was Carla.
“She didn’t come to see me,” Grandma said.
“Maybe she thought. . .” you were dead. But I stopped myself and said instead, “. . . thought you’d go see her. At the old — at the Judge’s funeral. Or afterwards. Like, next door. Maybe she doesn’t know you don’t get out much anymore, Grandma.”
Grandma nodded as though she were thinking how maybe she didn’t get out as much as she should. “I was glad when Elizabeth left here. And she raised that child right. She’s a nice girl?”
She really wanted Rebee to be a nice girl. “You were glad Rebee’s mom left? How come? Chesterfield being such a swell place and all.”
“That house next door.”
I fidgeted in my chair, waiting for her to spit it out. She moved the top peas can to the wax bean row. I was afraid she’d start rearranging the vegetables, which could take all week.
“What about the house next door,” I yelled.
“It was a long time ago. I’m an old woman now.”
She was an old woman then. “Sounds like the Judge was an asshole.”
I shocked her into dropping her hand to her lap.
“Everybody says so, Grandma. The whole town.”
“This town loves its tittle-tattle.” She stamped her slippered foot under the table. It was a slow motion stamp, but it came down hard enough that it probably hurt. “They’re a hungry bunch hoping for a nibble of anything repeatable. I will not give them the satisfaction of speaking about Albert that way.”
“Whoa,” I said. She had gotten herself worked up all of a sudden. Her lips were sweating.
“Albert loved his wife. Elizabeth.”
“Okay. I believe you.”
“Albert kissed the ground she walked on. They used to stroll down Main Street with Victoria, first a bundle in Albert’s arms, then toddling between them in her frilly sun-frocks and matching bonnets. Back then, everyone would say there goes the Judge and his lovely wife.”
Weird. Hearing my grandma talk about Rebee’s grandma like that, the lady that died in the bedroom next door, like she might float by the window and wave hello. Her name was Elizabeth, too. Rebee’s grandma, Rebee’s mom. It seems stupid to me when families do that — Bob Senior, Bob Junior, Bob Baby Junior — like they’re A&W burgers. Victoria, the kid in the frilly outfit — that would be Rebee’s auntie, the scary one with the long black hair and skintight jeans. The one who drove the Shore girls up the drive after the funeral and then stomped back and forth from the porch to the car for three days yelling stuff to Harmony like, “Goddamn bitch,” and, “Least the old fucker had the decency to end it,” and to Rebee, “You’re getting out of this hell hole if I have to drag you by your hair.”
Grandma missed all that ruckus.
“So he was a great guy,” I said. “The Judge. A nice little family.”
Grandma looked up at me rather harshly, as if she didn’t know whether she should go on. I nodded to her encouragingly. “It crept up on them slowly — the town. How Elizabeth had stopped showing herself, how the Judge was walking down Main Street alone, going about his business, not bothering to tip his hat or inquire as to everyone’s health. They all wanted to know what went on in that house those months before Elizabeth died.”
“So,” I said. Waiting. “What went on?”
Grandma rocked back and forth in her creaky chair, head down, chins bobbing.
“Bad business.”
Bad business. What did that mean? The Judge? Maybe he was a great guy until he had a little vodka in him, all buddy buddy, joking around, and then he’d turn, mean as a snake, and throw you into a wall.
The sky outside the window looked dull and grey. I touched the gash on my forehead and sat shivering in the sweltering kitchen.
Grandma stopped her rocking. “Albert was decent.” She looked at me, really looked at me. Her glasses were covered with splotches, but her eyes were clear and soft inside their wrinkled pouches. “He was a man with a broken heart. A man like that, his world cracks open. Don’t let them tell you ot
herwise.”
She stood slowly, leaning on the table, and limped towards the counter. She poured the black liquid from the teapot into her cup.
“Do your knees hurt?”
“These old aching bones,” she said, her back to me. Then she stared out the window and slurped her cold tea. “I wished she would have come to see me.”
Well, she’s gotta come back, I thought. She left her kid here. Mothers can’t just dump their kids and not come back.
* * *
After my freakshow in the forest, I stayed clear of the hedge spot. I didn’t want to run into her again. It was almost worth the puking incident to have her blazed to the back of my eyeballs, the picture where she’s lying in the grass with her breasts pointed up. I didn’t want to wreck it by seeing what she sees when she looks at me.
I did scrub my knuckles raw on Rebee’s XSMALL made in India 100 percent cotton T-shirt, using scoops of blue-speckled laundry detergent from one of the three six-gallon drums stacked in Grandma’s hallway. By the time I got done, it looked white as milk, all traces of puke gone. I wrapped the T-shirt in tissue I found in one of Grandma’s shoeboxes of crinkled paper. My plan was to wait for a cloudy night. After Grandma did her curlers and got settled in bed, I would cleverly sneak over to Rebee’s doorstep and leave the T-shirt on the landing, same as that dropoff cherry pie.
I chose a perfect night, so still and dark up here on Blueberry Hill the whole world seemed to have sucked itself down a black hole. Rebee’s lights were off, and I stared out my bedroom window and tried to guess which room she slept in, whether she wore panties under her nightie. Grandma kept shuffling into the bathroom and flushing. When she finally started snoring, I was a bundle of nerves. I did one planned puke in the toilet, then stuffed my bony arms into my black hoody and tiptoed around the obstacle course of boxes and stepped out into nothingness. I felt my way along my side of the hedge, stretching my arms out like a zombie. Every few steps I’d get whapped in the face with a sticky branch and have to straighten myself out again. When the hedge ran out and my feet hit gravel, I turned around, and slunk back along her side of the overgrown clumps. I made it to her porch step without hearing any stomach rumbles, or feeling the Judge’s dead fingers clawing down my pants. So far so good, I thought.