What Makes a Family

by Colleen Faulkner

  I lean over the bed and make the decision for myself. “Do you mind if I have another look?” I whisper to Mom Brodie.

  I’m not really expecting an answer, but I wait anyway. Just in case. I mean it would be rude to look at somebody’s thigh without asking, wouldn’t it? I don’t want anyone sneaking into my room, picking up my sheet while I’m sleeping, and looking at my naked legs. That’s creepy.

  “Just a quick peek,” I tell my great-grandmother.

  I ease along the side of the bed. The weird carpet feels rough under my bare feet. We don’t have carpet in our house. Just hardwood and some little rugs here and there.

  Watching Mom Brodie’s face, and listening for Birdie, I lift up the edge of the blanket and sheet. Birdie likes to tiptoe around and listen to conversations she hasn’t been invited to. And if I leave my phone anywhere, she looks at my texts. I don’t know what she’s looking for. Sexts to my boyfriend? I don’t even have a stupid boyfriend. (Probably never will because boys don’t like girls who are taller and smarter than they are.) I once asked Mom to ask Birdie to stop infringing on my privacy. Mom said I’d get better results not leaving my phone on the kitchen table when I go to the bathroom. Which wasn’t exactly the response I was hoping for.

  I guess I should appreciate the fact that Mom and Dad aren’t snoopers. It’s part of the mutual agreement thing. They don’t read Reed’s or my texts, and we stay out of their drawer next to their bed. I have friends who have parents who go through their phone messages and backpacks and closets all the time. And for no reason. It’s not like they’re doing anything dangerous or jeopardizing homeland security; they’re a bunch of geeks like me.

  I still hear the pot banging and dish clinking. Birdie sure is loud about putting away the dishes. Sometimes I think she does that kind of thing for show, like to get us to look at her or feel sorry for her or something. The thing is, when I do try to help out, she just keeps telling me how I do everything wrong.

  She’s a weird duck, my grandmother. Of course, not any weirder than Dad’s mom. We don’t see her very often, though. She lives in Florida on a golf course and plays eighteen holes every day. She makes a point of telling me that every time I talk to her. She even writes it on my birthday card. Happy Birthday, Granddaughter! Hope you have a great day! I know I will! Playing 18 holes! She also uses a lot of exclamation points in her correspondence, which makes me naturally suspicious of her. And she’s got a face like one of those shriveled apple-head dolls you can buy in Appalachia. Too much sun on those eighteen holes, I’d guess.

  With no one looking, I make my move. I pull back the covers, and there it is. The bluebird garter. It’s just as pretty as I remembered it. Maybe prettier because now I see a couple of details I didn’t notice before. Like the way the shades of the ink were done to give a 3-D look to the ruffles on the garter. On impulse, I pull my phone out of my sports bra. I’m dressed to take a run before it gets too hot.

  I snap two quick pics, feeling guilty because what kind of weirdo takes pictures of her one-hundred-and-two-year-old great-grandmother’s wrinkly thigh? I cover her back up again. I’m careful to lay the sheet and blanket just right so they don’t look like they’ve been disturbed.

  Then I go back to the head of the bed, and I lean over my great-grandmother. “Thanks, Mom Brodie,” I whisper.

  I wait a second. Nothing. I glance down at the nightstand. The pill bottles are still there, but there’s also a teacup and saucer. I think it’s Mom Brodie’s; I’ve seen it in her room. Someone must have put it here for her. I think for a second and then open the drawer. I root around until I find a pad of paper and a pen. I write a palindrome on the little piece of blue paper, roll it up in a scroll, and leave it on the nightstand. I don’t know why; it just seems like the right thing to do. I put the pen and pad of paper back in the drawer.

  I go to my mom. “Mom.” I put my hand on her shoulder.

  She wakes with a start and stiffens in the chair, looking over at Mom Brodie. I see panic in her sleepy face. “Is she—”

  “No, she’s not dead,” I say, feeling bad that Mom thought that was why I was waking her. “She’s fine. Well . . . you know what I mean.”

  My mom runs the back of her hand across her mouth. “I need coffee.”

  I look down at her; she’s got a funny look on her face. And she didn’t take her makeup off last night. She’s got mascara smeared under one eye. Usually, my mom looks so pretty in the morning, even when her hair is sticking up in the back. I grin when I realize I recognize that look, although I can’t say that I’ve ever seen it on my mom before. But it’s what Celeste looks like every morning. Celeste’s pretty scary when she first gets out of bed. “Mom, were you overserved last night?” That’s what I hear my friends’ parents say. They don’t say they got drunk; they say they were overserved, which we think is funny. How does that make getting shit-faced sound any better?

  Mom looks at me and scowls, flinging off an ugly crocheted blanket and getting out of the chair. “No.”

  That’s when I realize she’s been sleeping in Grandpop’s recliner. The one that’s usually in the den. “You bring that in here?” I ask, pointing at the chair. “By yourself?” The thing is monstrous.

  Another scowl, only this time she pushes up the sleeve of her T-shirt (my T-shirt) and flexes to show me her fairly puny bicep.

  “Why didn’t you just come to bed? You wouldn’t have woken me. You know me. Dad says I’d sleep through an earthquake.”

  “I didn’t want her to be alone.” She leans over Mom Brodie. Double-checking the breathing thing, I’m sure.

  But there’s something in her tone that makes me stop being a smartassed teenager for a minute. I go to my mother, stand beside her at the bed, and put one arm around her shoulders. She wraps her arm around my waist and rests her head on my shoulder. I’m taller than she is, now.

  We just stand there for a minute looking down at Mom Brodie. Not saying anything. Because what are you going to say? She’s dying, and I wish she wasn’t? She’s dying, and I’m sad?

  But standing here with my mother in a half hug feels good. Comfortable. It’s nice and cool in the room, and the sun is coming in through the windows, and my mom smells good. Her smell makes me feel safe. Like I’m not dying today.

  And I’m loved.

  I lower my arm. Mom kisses my shoulder before she straightens up.

  We don’t hug and kiss the way we used to. And I don’t sit on her lap much anymore. She was starting to make me feel smothered. I mean, I like it sometimes, but I’m old enough to not want my mother being all clingy. And I’m old enough to start learning how to live beyond her shadow. Not that I think I’ll ever be totally out of it. Or want to be. My mom’s my best friend. I don’t tell her that, of course, because then she’d be back in my personal space again.

  “You don’t want her to be alone when she dies?” I ask.

  Mom nods and smooths the white hair on my great-grandmother’s temple.

  “You think she’s going to die soon?”

  Again my mom nods.

  “But how do you know that? She could live weeks like this, right? People do it all the time, in a coma. You see it on TV.”

  “Not at home, they don’t. Not without medical intervention. IV fluids and a feeding tube.”

  Then I realize what she means. Mom Brodie can’t live if she doesn’t get water and food. Now I feel stupid that that didn’t occur to me. Mom told me we were coming to be with Mom Brodie when she died. There’s a hospice nurse coming every day. Birdie’s asking me if I brought a dress for the funeral. Of course she’s going to die soon.

  Like maybe today soon.

  And then she’ll be gone, and I’ll never be able to tell her a palindrome again or snitch peppermints from her apron pocket. And she’ll never squeeze my hand and tell me that when she looks at me, she thinks she’s looking in an old mirror because I look just like she did when she was my age.

  All of a sudden, I feel really bad. And
sad. And totally overwhelmed. I can barely deal with picking out an outfit to wear the first day of school. How am I supposed to deal with Mom Brodie, the queen of everything, dying and leaving us?

  And how did I not know all this was going to make me feel this way?

  I didn’t come out and say this to anyone, not even to Mom, but truthfully, the only reason I came to Brodie Island in the first place was to see a dead body. Because I never saw one before. But now I realize that if I want to see a dead body, that means Mom Brodie has to die. It means we have to lose her. Forever.

  I feel like I can’t catch my breath. I need to get out of here.

  I need to go for a run. That always makes me feel better. When I run, that’s when I can think about stuff. Try to make sense of stuff. After a while, I don’t feel my legs burning or hear my breathing; it’s just me and all the crazy stuff in my head that I need to make sense of. My dad’s a runner, too. He says the same thing.

  “I . . . I just wanted to tell you I was going for a run,” I say, moving toward the door, snatching up my sneakers off the floor. I’m going to feel stupid if I start crying. And Mom’s going to think I’m such a baby. That she shouldn’t have brought me with her. That I can’t handle this. But I can. I just need to get it all straight in my head.

  “I’ve got my cell with me.” From the doorway, I look back. “Mom, you know anything about a book Birdie has?” I ask softly. “Like a big scrapbook? It was with the photo albums. Blue. Aztec kind of print on the cover.”

  She looks at me quizzically. “No. Why?”

  I shake my head, thinking how weird Birdie was about it. I mean, weird even for her. “Just wondering.” I turn away again, then look back and call to Mom Brodie, but Mom, too. “Love you.”

  18

  Sarah Agnes

  So one day I’m a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl living in a little town in Nowhere, Indiana, and the next day, I’m eighteen years old, riding on the seat of a tent truck with the man who has changed my life forever. We’re headed to South Bend, and I’m so excited because I’ve never been to South Bend. I’ve never been anywhere.

  “You leave your parents a note?” Henri asks me. He’s smoking, his left arm propped in the open window, his right hand on the big steering wheel. The road is dusty, and I wish he’d put up the window because I keep coughing, but I don’t ask him to. For now, I’m just happy to be with him. Happy to be starting my new life.

  “No,” I tell him. The road is so full of potholes that I feel like I’m on some sort of carnival ride being jostled until I think my teeth might be coming loose. “I thought about it, but what would I say? When my father gets back he might try to come after me if he knew I went with you.”

  Henri suddenly looks worried. He glowers at me with his dark eyes. “You think he would?”

  I stare straight ahead at the truck in front of us. The back is painted with advertising for the bearded lady and monkey boy attractions. I asked Henri about them this morning because I didn’t see anything about them on the playbills that had blown around town. He said the monkey boy joined a different carnival last fall, and the bearded lady was still part of the outfit but she’d been visiting her sick mother all week. I asked him if she was for real, and he winked at me and told me she was for real, all right. Henri said there was actually a whole show that was usually a part of Rudebaker’s Carnival, and that we’d be meeting up with them in another week or so, once the carnival season got rolling. He said there’s also a family of cannibals, a giantess, and a snake man who would be joining us. I wanted to ask him where a bearded woman or a snake man could live off-season. But I’d already asked so many questions, and I didn’t want Henri to think I was an ignorant girl, so I dropped the subject. I could always ask him later, or maybe ask the bearded lady myself.

  Henri throws his cigarette butt out the window. “Give any thought to a job?” he asks me.

  “A job?” I ask.

  “Everyone’s gotta pull their weight, mon petite, even a pretty girl like you.” He reaches across the seat for me, and I slide over to ride beside him.

  “I . . . Right. I thought maybe I could sell cotton candy, or . . . popcorn?”

  He smiles down at me. “Mon chér, those are Mama Baker’s concessions. She runs it; just pays Jacko his cut. She doesn’t need anyone to sell her cotton candy. She’s got her daughter, Matilda.” He nods. “She’s about your age, I think. You might like Matilda. She’s a nice girl. Ugly as homemade sin, but a nice girl.”

  I nod. I know I told Henri I would work to pay my keep if he let me come with him, but I guess I was thinking that maybe he earned enough for both of us. It wasn’t that I minded working. I just wasn’t sure what I was qualified to do. Especially since I hadn’t completed the ninth grade yet. “Well, I . . . I guess I’ll talk to Jacko,” I say slowly. “Ask him if he has a job for me.”

  Henri frowns. “Best you stay away from Jacko for a few days. He might not like the idea of your tagging along.”

  “But I’m not tagging along, Henri.” I look up at his handsome face. “I’m with you now. We’re together.” We hit a pothole so big that the whole truck tilts, throwing me up against Henri, and for a second I think we’re going to tip over. But Henri hits the gas, and the engine whines, and we come out of the hole, and we’re behind the bearded lady and monkey boy truck again. “Right?” I ask, looking up at him. “You love me, and I love you, and we’re together.” It’s on the tip of my tongue to suggest we go ahead and get married now, but I don’t say it.

  Henri tightens his arm around my shoulder and kisses my cheek. “Of course we’re together, mon amour; I’m just saying everyone works. It’s not my rule; it’s Jacko’s, and he’s the operator. He lays down the law.”

  I think for a minute. “Maybe I could take tickets with you for the Ferris wheel.”

  He shakes his head. “The ladies don’t usually take tickets. Folks in these small towns wouldn’t like it. Some places, we’ve already got the preachers breathing down our necks. They got ideas about what a woman ought and ought not to do. We can’t afford to get kicked outta towns once we put down stakes. Jacko’s got overhead. Show’s got to go on, and all that.”

  I notice for the first time that his French accent isn’t as strong as it had been earlier in the week. In fact, this morning he almost has a Southern sound to his voice. I know it’s Southern because he sounds like the butcher we used to have in Bakersville who was from Arkansas. Mr. Clements. My grandmother always made fun of his accent after we left his shop. Called him Confederate trash. That was back when we were still buying meat. He was nice. He used to throw in beef bones for soup, with my grandmother’s order for chicken necks, but he closed shop and left town around Christmas.

  I look up at Henri. “But women must take some kind of jobs. I saw a couple this morning when everyone was loading up.” I left home this morning before dawn with nothing but a pillowcase with my clothes and met Henri just as the carnival was loading to pull out of town. “They must do something.”

  He stares straight ahead and smiles this strange little smile that I don’t really understand. “That they do.”

  “Well, what do they do?” I ask him. “I can do what they do.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he says slowly. “They’re coochie girls, mon amour.”

  “Coochie girls?” I have no idea what that means. I’m beginning to see that these carnies have a whole language that I don’t know.

  Henri smiles down at me, but I get the feeling he’s laughing at me to himself.

  “You know, the girly show,” he says.

  I shake my head, still not understanding.

  Then he just smiles and points to the dirty dashboard of the truck. “Grab me another fag, will you, Sarry?”

  That’s when I probably should have gotten out of that truck. If I had, I could have made it back to Bakersville, walking probably. I’d have gotten a switching from Mrs. Hanfland and my father when he got home, too. But it wouldn’t have bee
n too late to go home.

  Of course it never crossed my mind that day to actually go home to Bakersville. It never crossed my mind the rest of my days.

  19

  Birdie

  “Can I talk to you, Birdie?”

  Little Joe startles me, and I whip around, a head of cabbage in my hand. I’m making slaw. Having crabs this afternoon out on the back porch, maybe in the yard, if it’s not too hot. But I like to make some salads, maybe hotdogs, when we have steamed blue claws. A person can get hungry picking crabs. It takes a lot of energy. Besides, I don’t eat ’em. Crabs eat dead things. To me, it would be like eating a roasted turkey buzzard for Saturday dinner.

  I stare at my husband for a minute, not even sure what to say. I can count the number of times in my life he’s said he needed to talk to me.

  Something’s up. Something more than his mama dying in the other room. But I already knew that. He’s been acting peculiar all morning. First, he slept in near to seven, which he never does, then after breakfast, he took his coffee to his office and shut the door. Which he almost never does, either. He usually does his office work afternoons. And takes a nap in there on his couch, but he doesn’t like people to know he’s slowing down. That he needs a nap. So we both pretend he doesn’t nap. And I don’t wake him while he’s napping.

  I could hear him on the phone this morning. His office is next to the laundry room. If I stand at the old table in front of the dryer where I fold clothes, I can hear him on the phone, or with the occasional visitor. Only this morning, he was talking quiet. Real quiet. I thought about trying to listen through the office door, but he doesn’t like that. I guess he can see my feet, because he knows when I do it and he hollers, “Go on about your business, Birdie.”

  So when I realized this morning that I wasn’t going to be able to tell who he was talking to on the phone or what it was about, I threw the load of towels in the dryer and came back to the kitchen to unload the dishwasher and start with the salads for the crab feast. And make more breakfast and clean up more breakfast. Seems like no one wants to sit down and have breakfast together; they all want to eat when it suits them. Late risers, my daughters and granddaughter, all of them. Which means breakfast can stretch near to midday.