Harry Sue

by Sue Stauffacher

  “Maybe your granny tied his shoes too tight,” he’d offer, or, “Maybe it was her habit of dunking his head in toilet water when he sassed her.”

  I say, any way you slice it, it’s still bread.

  On the night that changed our lives forever, the man I called father was nursing a wounded pride by drinking up as much Motor City Ale as he could locate. He wanted my mother to take him back. She’d already been down to the police station to get a restraining order to keep him away from us.

  To me, anyway, that meant, “I don’t think so.”

  But to my father it was just a piece of paper. He was too much of a man, too lit on Motor City Ale, to use that restraining order for more than what kept his chewing gum from sticking to the bottom of Granny’s wicker wastebasket.

  To make a long story short, Mom threatened to call the cops when he barged in, so he dangled me out the window to get her to pay attention.

  “I’m warning you, Mary Bell. Put the phone down.”

  People say I couldn’t possibly have a clear memory of that moment. I was only five years old and barely conscious. He’d pulled me out of that little-kid sleep, the real satisfying kind that comes from not knowing the score.

  But I do remember. I remember her crying, “Don’t hurt my baby! And how the air felt, so wet it was like fingers pressing on my face. And how it smelled—both sweet and sour—like the garbage under our sink in summer.

  I heard and felt all those things before I was yanked back inside.

  After that, it’s a blur, but I can tell it fairly from the way the neighbors whispered and from the trial. Mom connected to the Marshfield Police Station and started talking gibberish. My father, being a man of his word, picked me back up, pressed my knees to my shoulders, and shoved me out the window, using the chest pass that kept him in school until the ninth grade as first-string guard for the Trench Vista varsity basketball team.

  That is the kind of detail Homer loves because it shows how everything, every action, affects what comes after. Homer likes to say if my dad had chosen baseball over basketball, he’d have to call some other dog his best friend, for I would be long gone from this world.

  Because he was a basketball player, my father squished me into a ball and launched me out the window when his instincts took over. His anger was like rocket fuel, enough to catapult me into the branches of an elm tree. See, an elm tree is shaped like a vase, so instead of dropping seven stories to the brick patio, I began a long, slow-motion game of pinball, rolling toward the center of the tree. This is another detail Homer loves, because if it had been an oak tree, well, we’ve already touched on that possibility.

  I do remember the sensation of wet branches grabbing me, of leaves slapping my face. I rolled all the way to the center of the tree before it let go just ten feet from the ground and dropped me onto a pile of wet leaves and soggy mulch.

  In the time it took me to ride that leafy elevator to the ground floor, my father’s head cleared enough to determine he’d just committed a capital offense. Who knows? Maybe he even felt bad about it, at least bad enough to lay me on the backseat of his truck and rush me to the emergency room, where I was diagnosed with a severe case of bruising, a dislocated shoulder, and two broken ribs.

  Mom rushed out, too, but he’d copped the elevator and she couldn’t match him for speed down seven floors. In all the confusion, she forgot to put away the toy chemistry lab she’d set up on the table to make crystal methamphetamine, or crank as it’s called on the street, an illegal drug she mostly used herself to stay awake while working the swing shift at the auto glass factory.

  Homer has a field day here. If Mom didn’t have to work swing shift, if she hadn’t recently started selling to her co-workers, if it wasn’t so darn easy to make the stuff with ingredients you could buy from the mail-order drugstore. If Garnett could have found it in his heart to pay a little child support. If any of these things were the case …

  The fact is, the police officers weren’t looking for drugs, but for a madman throwing children out the window. They might have thought it was sugar left over from baking a cake if she hadn’t also left the chemistry set right there, and the order form, written out on the sheet intended for my kindergarten submarine sandwich sale.

  Left it, just sitting on the table for all to see.

  So while my father was explaining what happened to the ER nurse—swearing up and down that it was the first time and he’d never do it again!—my mom was dragged, kicking and screaming, down to the police station and booked for production of an illegal substance with intent to distribute.

  You know what, Fish? Sometimes, in my dreams, I am back in that elm tree. It is playing catch with me, tossing me back and forth in its soggy branches. And always, I am being tossed downward. That’s why I feel so terrified. Not because I’m falling, but because of where I’m falling. I’m falling straight down, down, down, into Granny’s Lap.

  Granny is the one who caught me, not really caught me, but the one who got me straight from the hospital. She seemed like the perfect choice. She’d been operating Granny’s Lap, her in-home day care, for over ten years.

  On a nice day, I will tell you there is something wrong with Granny, something that happened maybe in her childhood that twisted her heart into a knotted noose. On a bad day, I’ll say she’s evil and greedy and ranks right up there with cockroaches and the tetanus shot on the list of why did God make such things?

  When Granny realized that there’d be no assistance money since she was a blood relative, and that I’d take up a slot that could no longer be filled by a paying day-care kid, she tried to give me back. Using the famous Clotkin chest pass, Granny shoved my face into the tweedy plaid jumper worn by the caseworker assigned to decide my fate.

  I could see the woman was plain horrified by what she had to do, but Granny was my closest blood relative and she’d proven she was capable of taking care of kids, now hadn’t she?

  “I want my mommy,” I cried as we shuffled down the wide waxy hall of the courthouse. Granny yanked me into the ladies’ room and cocked her purse. She was going to whack me with it. Granny loves clouting kids. I’d go so far as to say it was one of her hobbies, she gets so much pleasure out of it. You can whack a kid real good on the back of the head and it won’t bruise like a slap on the face.

  But she didn’t hit me. And that was the only time in memory she looked to be heading in that direction.

  Why Granny didn’t hit me was, for quite some time, beyond my understanding.

  Her friend Serafina, who does tarot reading on bingo night down at the senior citizen center, was convinced by my aura that I was in the constant presence of spiritual beings. I heard her yakking about that once at Granny’s kitchen table.

  But I will tell you right now, Granny didn’t buy that.

  No, I believed that since Granny wished I didn’t exist, she just did everything in her power to make it so. In all the time I lived with her, she only admitted I was in the same room maybe half a dozen times. That was when she was too angry to keep her story straight. Only twice did she speak to me directly. And that was when things were too far gone to keep from bumpin’ her gums.

  It was the best excuse I could give for why she never patted my head or put her arm around me or gave me a peck on the cheek. On the plus side, it also meant no clouts, no kicks, no pinches, and no head dunks, either. The closest I got to Granny’s lap was touching the words printed on the sign in her front yard.

  I have to say, on the whole, if all the world’s got to offer you for a little hug or some comfort is Granny, I prefer to go it alone.

  Sure, I made it out of the bathroom that day without a mark, which is more than I can say for most of the crumb snatchers who tangle with Granny. But some things hurt more than a meeting with the bottom of Granny’s purse.

  “Oh, baby, I am so sorry.” That’s what Mom said as she held me for the last time before her sentencing. “Your mom is so sorry.” She held me tight enough to take my br
eath away, but I didn’t care. Finally, she took hold of my shoulders and looked me in the eye.

  “I gave you two things, Harry Sue. They’re going to have to hold you till I get back, honey.”

  “What things?” I asked, tears just falling down my face.

  She looked over at the lady judge, who, far as I could tell, was sucking her lips between her teeth to keep from bawling right along with us.

  The judge nodded and called a five-minute recess.

  Mom knelt down and looked me straight in the eye. “I read to you, didn’t I? And you’re smart as a whip. You didn’t start slow like me. You’re gonna be somebody, Harry Sue.”

  She shook my shoulders on that last part, like she wanted to shake the idea all the way to the bottom of me.

  “And I gave you your name. You aren’t the kind to invite trouble, so I had to do it for you. You need practice to stand up for yourself properly. No girl named Harry Sue gets pushed around. She’s the kind that goes down fighting.”

  Mom was looking over my shoulder now, past the lawyers and the social workers. Was she looking at Granny?

  “Nobody’s gonna tell a Harry Sue that she’s nothing.”

  “You hear me, Harry Sue?” Mom insisted. “You got those wishes from me folded up inside you. They’ll have to hold you till I get back,” she said again. Like I didn’t hear her the first time.

  That judge came over and laid a hand on my shoulder.

  Granny sat in the back of the courtroom filing her nails.

  “I hate her, Mom,” I said, squinting, trying to see clear.

  “I hate her, too, sweetie. But that’ll have to be our secret.”

  And she didn’t tell me to mind Granny, either, because we both knew that would turn me into something worse than if I just minded myself.

  Chapter 4

  The other thing you need to know is how we landed here in Marshfield. Because the house was big and cheap and Granny had to put distance between herself and the bad publicity. Having a family scandal wasn’t the best advertisement for a day-care business. We only moved two counties over, but in Marshfield, Granny could put her own spin on things.

  The most important person in Marshfield was a boy named Christopher Dinkins. You think I haven’t mentioned Christopher before. You’d be wrong there. Because Christopher Dinkins is also Homer Price.

  It’s the very same thing in The Wizard of Oz. If you just saw the movie, then you believe there’s only one good witch. But there’s two. And the first, most important one didn’t look like a poufed-up Barbie doll. She was old and gray and wrinkled. Nothing like a fairy princess. I guess that’s why she got cut from the script.

  He was Christopher when I met him, standing at the bottom of Granny’s long gravel driveway, watching the big kids get off the bus.

  I don’t remember exactly, but he says I was asking each kid in turn: “You gonna be my friend or what?”

  He was two years older than me, which made a big difference at five and seven.

  “Go on,” said the boy he was hanging with. “Go play with your dolls or something.”

  “I don’t have any dolls,” I answered.

  “Say, you aren’t that kid …” Another one stopped and poked at me with a stick.

  People said that a lot to me back then.

  Christopher grabbed the stick and broke it off.

  “Come on, then. Tell us. What did it feel like? Have you blinked it out or what? Did it feel like flying?”

  I studied my grimy little nails, making them wait.

  “Not exactly flying. Nope. Something different.”

  Christopher said it was the look on my face that brought him back around later, after he’d ditched his friends. He knew I was holding back. Even back then he looked at everything just like a scientist. And falling seven stories was about the most interesting experiment he could think of.

  He let me tag along while he was thinking up things. Not to any of the places he hung out with his friends. We never went by the creek that led into the swamp, the baseball diamond next to the Presbyterian Church, or Sweetland’s Candy Store. No, there was never a crowd in Christopher’s thinking places. He needed quiet. So we sat in the hollowed-out trunks of silver maples or behind tangled curtains of black raspberries whose thorns discouraged most people from wandering in our direction.

  He was puzzling out how things worked. Might be he was dissecting one of the crank pencil sharpeners we had in school or maybe a broken toaster he’d scored out of somebody’s garbage can.

  He liked to talk it through, see? Scratching in the dirt with a stick, he’d come up with what he called “add-ons.” An “add-on” made an item better than it had been before. He wanted to be the first to get a patent on the machine that would butter your bread after it had been toasted. And he figured out how to make a pencil sharpener that emptied itself into the garbage so you didn’t get all those dirty shavings on your fingers.

  Christopher always said I made the best kind of company when he was inventing because I asked smart questions. But I could also stay out of the way if need be.

  Even back then I felt like I had time on my hands, waiting as I was for Mary Bell to come back and get me. It would never do to call Granny’s Lap home, so I had to get comfortable with other places. And I did. Over the years, I roamed the open spaces of Marshfield with Christopher and, when the weather was bad, I hung around with his mom, Mrs. Dinkins, holding the other end of the sheets as she folded them or being her “go-for-it” girl when her arms were elbow-deep in dough. Where Granny was mad just because I took up space, Ariel and Gerald Dinkins seemed to have room for one more.

  Or at least that’s how it seemed. She trimmed my hair and he taught me how to ride using Homer’s old bike. She baked me a birthday cake and he sang “Happy Birthday” just like Donald Duck.

  But it’s a dangerous thing to call someone else’s family your own, Fish. Some part of me refused to let them take the place of Mary Bell. And after what happened to Christopher, it was a good thing I held back.

  Where I loved to be more than anywhere else was Mrs. Mead’s garden. Christopher took me there not long after I landed in Marshfield. We didn’t go by the road or through our yard to hers—as she lived right next door to Granny—but through the little patch of woods that separated Mrs. Mead’s house from the Palmers’ house on the other side.

  “Check this out, Harry Sue,” he said, pulling me down on my knees. I looked at the ground and saw a plant with leaves like green butterfly wings. Next to the plant on the ground were what seemed to be shriveled marbles, all caught up in a green string.

  “It’s a twin flower,” he said, touching the little marbles carefully. “After it blooms and makes a seed, the stem wraps around the seed and curls it back down toward the earth. Most plants just let go of their seeds, but this here’s a plant that doesn’t like to take chances.” He smiled at me through the curls that always hung down over his eyes.

  I pressed the seeds to show I was listening, but then I stood up. Something made me want to go forward. That day, I felt no patience for studying such things, so I left Christopher leaning over that plant in wonder, and kept on my way. Farther down the path, I rounded the corner of an old garage and was surprised to come upon Mrs. Mead herself, kneeling over the ground and poking little holes in the earth with her finger.

  “My land, you surprised me,” she said, pulling together the collar of the bathrobe she wore on cold days. I remember that bathrobe. It was heavy and white and made out of some shiny material that made it sparkle in the sun. And it seemed like the least practical thing to wear for digging in the dirt.

  “I’m planting the lettuce and the spinach today, Harry Sue,” she said, like she’d known me all my life. “But I do have trouble getting up. Give me a hand, dear.”

  I grabbed her free hand and turned to offer her my good shoulder to lean on.

  “It’s a pity I’m not as strong as your granny,” she said, grunting a little on the way up. “N
ow let’s hold it just a minute. Steady.”

  We stayed still like that for a long time so Mrs. Mead could stand on her own without tipping.

  “What a good girl you are! I might have been down there all day.” She took my face in both her hands and kissed me right on the forehead. It left a big wet mark. I wanted to wipe it off, but for some reason I didn’t.

  “Now, now, it’s not as bad as all that,” said Mrs. Mead, studying my face. “And it will have to do for when I’m not around.”

  None of what she said made any sense, which must be why I always remembered it. But I liked that I could come to her garden if I wanted to. Granny didn’t allow much socializing with the neighbors, but in July, when the pole beans and the sunflowers made a forest out of a flat place, I would sneak over to Mrs. Mead’s while the crumb snatchers napped and lie down right in the middle of it. It felt safe to dream of Mary Bell in Mrs. Mead’s garden and of how things would be when she came back. And for some reason, it was always easier to conjure up thoughts of my mom there than anywhere else in Marshfield.

  I’m only telling you this, Fish, because it’s important to make sense of things. You need to know the backstory. About my accident and how I landed in Marshfield. And how it was with Homer and me. Before. Everybody has a backstory, Fish. Garnett, Mary Bell, Homer, me. Remember that when you’re eyeballing a new con. The real story starts somewhere in the past.

  Chapter 5

  First thing I do when I get home from school is take Moonie Pie out of the bathtub. It is written in the crumb snatcher code of conduct that nobody messes with me until Moonie Pie is out of the bathtub. Granny sets him there for his nap because she doesn’t have enough proper beds. To Granny, it’s a bathtub when the drainplug is in and a crib when the drainplug is on the counter. She doesn’t have enough proper beds because she regularly takes four or more kids than she’s licensed for. Granny has two voracious habits that she feeds by cramming kids into every corner of this house. The first one, straight up, is bingo. Granny loves to gamble. The second is China Country, her curio cabinet of limited-edition ceramic figures that she orders off the Home Shopping Network. Granny calls them her pretties, a whole planet’s worth of stuff locked up behind glass in the dining room. There’s a little peasant boy and girl bending toward each other to get a smooch, a squirrel with a tail made out of real fur just about to bite down on a ceramic nut, a milkmaid and her cow, and a princess with a starry-eyed look just waiting for her prince to come.