Mitch Cullin

by Tideland (epub)

  In my imagination, the hatch was the door Alice unlocked in the rabbit-hole, opening to reveal a corridor that ended at a garden, where beds of bright flowers and cool fountains existed. And because the entry was bigger than what Alice had discovered, a DRINK ME potion wasn’t needed for shrinking.

  "Classique,” I shouted, using both hands to pivot the bolt from its notch, "there’s a way in!” The other end of the knot- hole, I thought. Squirrel, you can’t hide from me.

  As the hatch swung ajar, a humid draft rushed out, bringing the scent of sawdust into the bathroom. From where I crouched, it was impossible to tell what lay beyond the hatch, except a murky space illuminated by an insubstantial amount of natural light. There was no passageway to be seen, no garden, no squirrels drinking from fountains.

  So I went and got Classique, who said, "Bring Magic Curl with us. She can help."

  "Are we going in?" I asked, sticking Magic Curl on my pinky.

  "I think so, dear. I don’t see why not.”

  "I don’t want to go,” Magic Curl said. "This isn’t a good idea.”

  "Shut up, you baby,” Classique snapped at her. "You’re not going in with us, you’re just keeping guard.”

  "Why can’t Fashion Jeans or Cut ’N Style do it?"

  "Believe me, I wish they could,” Classique said. "But both your eyeballs work good, so it’s your job, okay? And if you keep on complaining -- then me and Jeliza-Rose will cut off all your hair.”

  "Please don’t," Magic Curl whimpered. "I’ll behave."

  "You better," I said. "You’d better just watch it."

  In the bathroom, I left Magic Curl in front of the hatch.

  "Please be careful," she said.

  "We will,” I replied.

  "If we’re not back in an hour," Classique told Magic Curl, "then come after us because it means we’re being pulverized."

  Then Classique and I crossed through the hatchway, where we soon found ourselves standing among the exposed fiberglass insulation of the farmhouse attic.

  "It’s a little cave,” I said, blinking while my sight adjusted.

  With daylight slanting in from a side vent, the attic was less dim than it had seemed.

  Plumbing curved out of the wall behind us.

  Electrical wiring, red and black and yellow, ran overhead.

  Before us sat three cardboard boxes and a large trunk.

  "Those boxes,” Classique said, "let’s take a look.”

  "I don't know.”

  "Are you scared again?”

  "I don’t know.”

  "Don’t be. What’s so spooky about a box?”

  "It’s the treasure chest that’s spooky."

  "But I bet there’s only slippers and maybe gold in it.”

  "Or a killed thing,” I said, thrusting Classique ahead as we ducked spiderwebs and a length of insulation that drooped from the sloped ceiling.

  "It’s Grandmother’s stuff,” said Classique.

  "Yeah," I said, brushing a fine layer of dust off the cardboard tops.

  All three boxes had been written on with a marker, each with a different word (LPs. PICTURE BOOKS. CHRISTMAS). In the first box were old 78s, haphazardly packed, the plain wrappers just a bit more brittle than the records. The second box contained six photo albums, but we didn’t recognize any of the faces in the black-and-white shots -- children riding a scooter and a tricycle and a horse, men and women at a picnic in a field, a fishing trip, a wedding, an oblong brick home surrounded by other oblong brick homes.

  "Strangers,” Classique said. "Nobodies.”

  The third box offered broken Christmas ornaments, shatered in shards of green, silver, and red, with the hook attachments still intact.

  "Worthless junk."

  "Totally worthless. We need gold -- and slippers. Gold slippers are good too."

  The chest reeked of mothballs. Inside were three blond wigs, all tangled in a clump, which frightened me.

  "It’s a head.” I said, stepping backwards.

  "No,” said Classique. "See, there’s clothes."

  I looked again, realizing the wigs belonged to a larger design: two long fluffy boas stretched alongside a baggy chemise. And there were hats. A bonnet, a pillbox, and a torn cloche. Deeper in the chest, sandwiched between the wrap-arounds and embroidered quilts, was a large mason jar containing a black cosmetic bag -- as if the items within the bag were meant to be preserved forever, sealed away from the heat and dusty air of the attic.

  "She wanted to be beautiful," I told Classique, picturing Grandmother at the front door of What Rocks, one of the boas wound about her neck, fluttering a gloved hand at someone; her crimson lips pursed, her blond wig styled and capped by the cloche.

  "She wasn’t beautiful," Classique said. "She was old.”

  "She was my grandmother?

  "She was ugly with boxes of junk.”

  "You’re lying,” I said. "If you don’t shut up, we’re leaving.”

  But we stayed in the attic until I remembered Magic Curl. Then I turned and gazed at the hatchway. Classique nodded on my fingertip, but we didn’t move. From our perspective, the hatch seemed almost as tiny as the knothole.

  "We’re squirrels," I finally said. "That’s what we are."

  But Classique couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want her to.

  "Jeliza-Rose and Classique are outside looking for us," I said. "But they can’t find where we’re hiding.”

  And as we headed toward the bathroom, I removed her from my finger, clutched her in a fist, and pretended my footsteps left pawprints on the dirty floorboards.

  7

  I was planning on visiting the grazing pasture at dusk, where I’d wait in the bus for the fireflies. And I wouldn’t let the train catch me off guard. That’s why I dug Grandmother’s cloth bonnet from the attic chest -- when the train approached that evening, the bonnet would be on, tied securely under my chin, shielding my ears.

  But after retrieving the bonnet, my shins began itching; I’d brushed against fiberglass as I crawled through the hatchway.

  "It’s awful," I told Classique in my bedroom.

  "You’ll make yourself bleed," she said, watching from my finger as I scratched at my shins. "Do it any harder and you’ll cut yourself. "

  I kept scraping like mad until the pain became greater than the itchiness. Then I sighed with relief and flopped onto my bed.

  "That’s good,” I said, my shins burning. "That’s better.”

  "I’m bored. This is boring. Let's spin on the porch.”

  Classique hovered in front of my face like a fly, so I twirled my finger, rotating her in a circular motion.

  "Stop it," she said. "I’ll get dizzy and barf."

  "No you won’t. You can’t. Your mouth doesn’t work." I quit jiggling my finger, just in case.

  My mother warned me about spinning in circles, not to do it in the apartment, especially following a meal. She said gyrating caused vomiting. But I never got sick. I spun during commercial breaks, arms outstretched. And I loved doing it in the living room -- the carpet scrunching and the TV whizzing by -- while my mother was unconscious, and my father slept on the couch. The wall pictures turned blurry with streaking colors and the shag carpet burned underfoot and snagged between my toes and the TV shot past as an eruption of static. Overhead, the bumpy ceiling swirled like a milk-white whirlpool and the plaster bumps were smoothed as the spinning increased, flattening everything, the edges all dissolved. Another spin in the opposite direction, the shag roots tugging and gritting, the living room easily shifting gears.

  When my mother was awake, she could hear the sounds of my twirling from her bedroom. And she’d yell; I was only allowed to do splits in the living room, and handstands on my bed. The mattress was close to the floor, firm and wide. My neck wouldn’t get broken if I fell. Still, handstands were tedious, so I usually did a couple before quitting. The splits were okay. Sometimes she had me do them in her bedroom, smiling as I brought my nose to the carpet. But spinning in
the living room was what I loved, and the dizziness afterwards.

  And on the farmhouse porch, I spun with itchy ankles, the wood slats groaning. It was the first time since leaving the apartment, though I considered having a whirl in the aisle of the Greyhound. With Classique and Magic Curl and Fashion jeans on my fingertips, we went round and round, all four of us. Cut ’N Style stayed upstairs. She was just too blind.

  "Eyes that can’t see don’t enjoy twirling,” Classique concluded when I began gathering the heads. We never played with Cut ’N Style anyway, unless we had a tea party -- then she became the guest of honor.

  Our corner of the front porch was shaded. It felt cool and pleasant. Sunlight shined further on, landing across the steps leading to the yard. But our corner had fallen under siege: army ants traveled in three long lines, back and forth along the slats, up and down the newels. They came and went from the thin crack beneath the front door, carrying crumbs in their pincers; some had dust balls or what looked like bits of straw. I suspected that if one of the Barbies dropped in their midst, she’d quickly be hoisted and dumped off the porch, disappearing forever in the overgrowth below. So I spun in defense, performing pirouettes on the ants. Then I stomped all three ant lines, squashing the invaders, scrambling their ranks, chanting, "Save Cut ’N Style from the monsters! Save Cut ’N Style from the monsters!”

  Cut ’N Style was unprotected on my pillow, surrounded by the torso, dismembered arms and legs. At Kmart, I once studied a brand new Cut ’N Style in her box. With hoop earrings, hands poised for clapping, red hair hanging to her butt, she was a stunning doll. Her baby-blue eyes glowed, and her Astronaut Fashion dress with matching go-go boots was an inspired touch. Years ago, my Cut ’N Style’s head had been even more stylish than Classique-and that’s why Classique hated her. In an effort to clean the black ink from Cut ’N Style’s forehead and eyes, I poured nail polish remover over her face, just a few drops. But it smeared the red paint on her lips, blemished her plastic cheeks, and didn’t put a dent in the ink.

  "Now she’s a complete freak," Classique said. "Get rid of her."

  "I can’t," I said. "What if it happened to you?"

  "Then you should kill me."

  The lines re-formed. The slats were overrun again.

  For every crushed ant, at least two more arrived and began picking at the remains, the splat, the parts that hadn't been mashed into nothing. I was too dizzy to continue spinning, so I leaned against a newel and followed the lines with my wobbly vision. The army ants looked enormous and ancient, like runty dirt dobbers -- except they didn’t have wings.

  On the soles of my sneakers, when I checked for bug parts, there were wet stains, dark and fresh, not unlike the chewing tobacco juice my father sometimes spit into a Coke bottle. And there was an ant head squirming in a tread, pincers still moving; the mangled body somewhere onthe porch, or between the pincers of some other ant.

  "Help me,” it was trying to say. "I don’t want to die. No, please-”

  I brought my sneaker down, grinding the sole, then pounded it on the slats, making certain that the ant head was atomized.

  "No mercy."

  I singled out the biggest ants. I smushed their rear sections, allowing the front and middle sections to scramble away. Or I leveled the heads so only the rear and middle parts continued moving.

  Then I watched.

  The separated rear sections went astray, often slipping between the slats. But the head sections dragged themselves forward, showing no pain. So I picked them from the line and flicked them past the edge of the porch. To serve as a warning for the others, I didn’t bother the rear parts. Sometimes a dumb ant explored one of the cleaved sections, but it couldn’t understand what had happened. So it clambered on without a worry. But it didn’t matter. I was tired of killing. These ants lacked intelligence anyway; they couldn’t care any less about getting stomped -- they weren’t even interested in revenge. Squirrels were different. A squirrel would squish a person if given the opportunity.

  "What do we do?" asked Classique.

  Tugging Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans from my fingers, I said, "Wait, I got an idea.”

  Now I had a mission. So did Classique. Fashion Jeans and Magic Curl were hostages held by guerrilla forces; their heads sat on nail butts and the army ants roamed nearby. It was a desperate situation. But we could free only one, otherwise we might get noticed. Fashion Jeans was the obvious choice. She wasn’t a whiney ass, so we’d save her.

  I leapt across the porch, clearing enemy lines. Classique swooped down, almost sliding from my fingertip, and rescued Fashion Jeans before an ant reached her neck. But the mission hadn’t been completed. We needed to get back. I sprinted over the ants -- swinging my arms -- and Classique went sailing. And when I picked her up from the porch, she said, "It’s a stupid game. Let’s do something else.”

  So we abandoned Fashion Jeans, and went searching for squirrels. But while skipping to the steps, I tripped. It was a mess. I tried getting hold of the railing, except I was stum- bling and couldn’t manage. My tailbone hit the top step; I sprang up. Then I fell. I couldn’t stop myself, I was going too fast. My legs, my hands, elbows -- they went crazy. I landed crosswise on the bottom step, clutching Classique. And for a moment I remained crumpled by the yard, like a monstrous foot had squashed me there. When I stood, splinters poked from the redness of my shins, thin slivers of wood sticking under the skin. I yanked them and then scratched. The itching was beginning again.

  "l could’ve mashed you,” I told Classique. "I could’ve fallen on you and you’d be dead.”

  Like that woman in Poland: she became suicidal after her husband said he was leaving. He told her that he was going to live with another woman. Then he left their apartment, which was on the tenth floor of a building. While he was exiting the lobby, his wife jumped from the balcony. She soared downward, hoping to collide with the sidewalk, and dropped smack-dab on her wanton husband’s skull. Killing him. And she survived. I heard all about it during this TV show. Stranger Than Fiction, Amazing Stories of Life and Death. But my mother thought I was lying.

  "A man tumbled into a coleslaw blender and got mixed to death."

  "No he didn’t.”

  "And another man tumbled into melted chocolate and died, and it happened to another man but it was gravy instead of chocolate. They died in vats."

  "Jeliza-Rose, your stories aren’t interesting.”

  "Do you know what this woman in New Zealand was stabbed to death with?”

  "I don’t care. That’s enough.”

  "A frozen sausage. Can you believe it? And this man was in a coffin--”

  "Enough. Seal it!"

  But my father believed me. And when I explained about the workmen in Houston who tried freeing a squirrel from an irrigation pipe, he listened carefully.

  "They lifted the pipe and it bumped a power wire, and they got zapped dead. But the squirrel was okay."

  "Horrible," he said. "That’s really awful."

  And that second day at What Rocks, I spied a ghost lady near the railroad tracks, and wondered if she’d died horribly - if something like a frozen yogurt machine had electrocuted her, or a vat of molten lipstick was accidentally spilled on her. Or maybe she was lured to a wedding and murdered.

  I wouldn’t have seen the ghost if Classique hadn’t asked to visit the bus. We’d been among the weeds, creeping around the farmhouse yard in hopes of spotting another squirrel, when she said, "Jeliza-Rose, show me that upside-down place."

  "Okay,” I told her, "but only you and me can go, and you can’t tell anyone else because it’s secret.”

  Then we snuck away toward the Johnsongrass, careful not to arouse Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans; their hollow necks stuck over nail butts on the front porch, hostages once more.

  Stepping along the cattle trail, Classique and I quietly sang, "I’m a little tea pot, short and stout-" And as we reached the grazing pasture, I mentioned how the fireflies had materialized from nowhere.


  "So now we can’t sing or talk now,” I said, dropping my voice, "or we’ll spook the lightning bugs and they won’t come tonight.”

  And when she said, "We must see the light bugs tonight,” I put her against my lips and shushed her.

  "You’ll scare them," I said. "They probably won’t be out tonight anyway.”

  I didn’t want her returning with me that evening. The fireflies were my extra secret friends. Classique wouldn’t understand their blinks.