by Lisa Wingate
When we ran out of pictures, I went back and started reading her the story. Her braids felt soft against my arm, and I got used to the way she smelled. She seemed to like listening to the story, and it was sort of cool to have someone to read it to.
After a while, I heard a car door close, and I figured it was Rusty home with some lunch, but it was just the fat guy from the office, coming back from someplace with a new box of cigarettes under his arm. He saw me looking out the blind and headed my way.
Shoot, I put on the green sandals real quick. The taller the better, I figured. It was a lucky thing that when we’d left home I’d brought some of Mama’s clothes. Grown-up clothes are important, sometimes. The shoes hit my feet in all the raw spots as soon as I stood on them. I didn’t know how Mama wore those things all the time, working down at the packing plant. She took care of the reception desk before she got so sick, so she needed to look good.
The guy checked me out like he thought I looked good. He went all the way up and down, from my shoes to my hair, then licked his nasty lips like I was a piece of pie on a plate.
“Rent’s due yesterday,” he told me.
“Oh,” I said, and blinked and smiled, like I didn’t notice he was wearing a greasy old T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and his big fat hairy arms sticking out. The hair went all the way up into the shirt, a solid line, and then it came out the neck hole. It grew up his head and stopped around a big shiny circle, like a golf green, only white. “I thought my brother gave it to you. He must of forgot to cash his check.” He was too busy picking up stray girls and kids. “He’ll bring it today.”
“He better,” he said, and then all of a sudden he turned friendly. He took a step forward and leaned against the door frame, and I didn’t have much choice but to move back into the apartment. “You doing okay here by yourself all day?”
A sweaty feeling broke over my skin and itched under my shirt. “Yeah, sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” I wrapped a hand around the doorknob, figuring that if he tried to come in, I’d act like I got off balance, and swing the door shut, and clobber him with it. “I can take care of myself.”
He looked me over again, which was sick considering he was old—like forty, probably. If Mama were here, she’d of punched his lights out. “I bet you can. You need anything, though, you just come on over and ask Charlie.”
Charlie, right. That was his name. “Yeah, no problem. My brother’ll be by as soon as he gets home. He might be here in a minute for lunch.”
The guy pushed off the door frame. He was a little scared of Rusty. Even though Rusty was skinny as a rail fence, he was six foot four. Guess Charlie didn’t figure he’d like to take that on.
“Unn-ungweee!” the kid whined on the sofa. I’d forgot she was there.
Charlie leaned in and looked around the room, then frowned at the kid. “That come from next door?” Figured, he wouldn’t know one kid from another. The littlest one next door was a boy with a mini-Afro.
“I’m babysitting,” I told him, and I was actually glad the kid was there, which meant I wasn’t alone in the apartment with Charlie crowding the door.
Charlie laughed, letting his head fall back a little, then nodding as he turned around and waddled off. “It’s probably good practice,” he muttered. What the heck he meant by that, I had no idea.
I closed the door and turned the lock.
“Unnn-ungweee!” the kid said, like that was the only word she knew.
“Yeah. Let’s read the book some more, okay?” We wouldn’t want to wake up your mom or anything.
I sat back down on the couch, and we read again. After a while, Rusty came zooming in and pounded on the door so loud I thought he was gonna knock it down before I could get to the lock.
“Geez, just a minute!” I finally got the thing opened, and Rusty about bowled me over on his way in.
“Is Kiki ready?”
“Kiki who?”
“Real funny. Is she ready?” He looked around like he expected to see the kid’s mama sitting there all dressed up in her Sunday hat and gloves, with a purse in her lap.
“Well, she’s still in my bed, if that’s who you mean. She doesn’t look like she’s ready for much.”
Rusty cussed, which Mama would have smacked him for. “Kiki, let’s go!” he hollered across the room.
“Good luck,” I said. “I tried to get her up before, and she wouldn’t budge. Her kid’s been wandering around here all day. I don’t know who she thinks is gonna take care of it. And we don’t have anything to eat here, either. Did you bring me a Happy Meal?”
Rusty glanced toward the kitchen, then he looked at the kid. She scooted back into the corner of the sofa, pulled the sleeping bag around her shoulders, and watched Rusty with her big green eyes.
“Kiki, let’s go!” Rusty hollered again, then squinted at me. “I didn’t have time to go by McDonald’s. I gotta take Kiki to her old man’s house so she can grab her stuff before he gets back in town. He’s out on a long-haul job to Idaho or someplace.”
Grab her stuff? I didn’t like the way that sounded. “What’s she need her stuff for?”
There was movement in the bedroom, and Rusty checked it out where the door was cracked, then came back to me. “She’s gonna stay here with us for a while.”
“Excuse me?” I said, and I didn’t care who heard it. “Not in my room she’s not. She got makeup all over my sheets, by the way, and now I’m gonna have to wash again. With bleach. That’s fifty cents extra.”
Rusty wasn’t paying me any attention. He was too busy watching the bedroom.
I was on a roll, though. “Not much chance she’s gonna pay for it. She doesn’t have a purse or anything in there. I looked. And her kid’s hungry, too.”
Rusty’s face turned red behind the freckles, and he checked his watch. If he got back even five minutes late after lunch, they cut his pay a whole half hour. The foreman told him if he didn’t like it, he could find a new job that paid nine dollars an hour.
“Mind your business, Cass,” he snapped, and I felt sick and cold in my stomach. My brother cared more about some girl he’d just met than he cared about me.
I couldn’t think of what else to say.
The kid sniffled and started to whine, and I went over and picked her up so they wouldn’t forget her. Besides, I didn’t want her to cry.
She needed a bath, bad.
“Make sure you get her something to eat,” I said. “She’s been asking all morning.”
The bedroom door opened and Kiki stumbled to the bathroom with her jeans unzipped. She went in and slammed the door.
“I told Kiki you’d babysit. I have to drop her at her job after we get her stuff,” Rusty said.
“I’m not babysitting. I’m not the one who asked them to come here.”
Rusty turned on me, his eyes narrow brown slits curled up around the edges like a dog’s when it’s growling. “Knock it off, Cass. Yes, you are.”
“I’m not watching her kid!”
He sighed, like he was tired. “She’s gonna pay you, all right?”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“And she’s gonna help pay rent, too.”
“With what?” In the bathroom, Kiki flushed the toilet, then turned on the water. “She hasn’t got any money.”
The kid decided she needed to use the bathroom, too, I guess, because she wiggled away from me and went and beat on the door until Kiki let her in.
“Kiki gets paid every night,” Rusty said. Rusty could be so dumb. He’d believe anything anybody told him, especially if she was hot.
“Yeah, sure.” I waved a hand toward the bathroom door. “Then why didn’t she have any money last night?”
“Her old man beat her up. She couldn’t work a couple days.” Rusty’s face turned hard and determined. It went through my mind that if Kiki’s boyfriend beat her up, he might do the same thing to my brother. If Rusty got hurt and lost his job, we were dead in the water. “Where does she work?”
&n
bsp; “Down at Glitters,” Rusty answered, looking at his watch again.
“She’s a stripper?” The words came out so loud the lady next door probably heard them.
“Shut up.” Rusty leaned over me and pointed a finger in my face. “You just shut up your smart mouth, Cass. That’s enough. Kiki needs a place to stay, and we need the extra money. It’s time you did something to help out, instead of sitting on your butt every day. I’m tired of doing it all!”
I just stood there with my mouth open. Who did he think washed the dishes, and cooked supper, and made his sandwiches for lunch, and cleaned his nasty work clothes off the bedroom floor, and lugged the laundry across the street?
Kiki came out with her kid on her hip. She set the kid on the sofa and gave it a kiss on the head, then she and Rusty started for the door.
“I need some money.” My voice was a little thin line choked in my throat, so I didn’t really feel it. “The kid’s hungry.”
Kiki blinked at the kitchen, like maybe she was seeing more than one of everything. The shiner had turned an ugly shade of brown and yellow and was almost swelled shut.
Rusty dug in his pocket and came out with a dollar bill and a wad of change. “I’ll go cash my check after work,” he said, and then the door closed behind them.
I stood there for a long time, not sure what to feel. Finally I went over to the kitchen and counted the money. Two dollars and eighty-nine cents. That’d buy a couple more packs of doughnuts.
The kid came and wrapped her arms around my leg, which she didn’t need to do. I wasn’t stupid. I knew you couldn’t, like, lock a little kid in an apartment and just leave her there alone.
She didn’t even have shoes on.
I’d have to carry her across the street in her shirt and underpants. That’d be fun.
Chapter 5
SandraKaye
The street lay in the long shadow of afternoon by the time I’d finished putting a coat of paint on the cabinets. Outside, children were returning from a day at school. I watched as they disappeared behind windows and doors shielded with the heavy iron burglar bars that had become a fixture as the neighborhood declined. It occurred to me that after months without maintenance, the bars on Poppy’s house might not be in good working order. I made a mental note to check them. I’d buy some new padlocks, too, and hang the proper keys inside each window. If a family came to live here, they might not think about the burglar bars. They might not be able to afford locks that were easy to open. A few new smoke detectors would be a good idea, too… .
On the back of a crumpled receipt, I started a list of items to pick up at the store. Jake would have been proud. At kids’ summer camp and the rec center where he’d volunteered, he’d taught a fire safety course. Jake loved kids.
“Spring and fall, change them all,” I muttered, and in my mind Jake echoed the reminder about replacing smoke detector batteries. I had the painful sense of losing him all over again and not knowing if he was ever coming back.
What if he never did? What if he found the peace he was seeking on the other side of the world, in some mythical connection to his birthright among the lush forests and thick humidity of Guatemala? What if he erased us, and his guilt over Poppy’s death, like a long dream that fades in the light of a new day?
I wanted to grab him and say, Stop this! What happened to Poppy wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have prevented it.
But deep inside me, the tiniest voice, unwanted yet determined, said that if Jake had been where he was supposed to be that night, if he’d been responsible, none of this would have happened. Poppy would still be rambling around this house. Jake would still be a few miles away in his dorm, and our lives would be normal again… .
It was easier to focus on the kitchen than to consider what might have been. Unfortunately, the paint job wasn’t turning out well. The cabinet surfaces were rough and greasy. My brushstrokes had dried over the old moss green paint in a thin streaky layer that would definitely need a second coat. I should have washed and sanded the surfaces first, but I couldn’t bear to remove the shadows of Jake, and Poppy, and Aunt Ruth. I’d painted carefully over the smudgy doughnuts of fingerprints, sealing them safely in places only I would know about.
Right now, my hard work looked like pea soup left on the counter so long it had congealed and separated.
“Yuck,” I muttered, and it occurred to me that hours of watching the home decorating channel doesn’t necessarily qualify you to paint cabinets. The thought made me laugh, a strangely sweet sound, like a favorite food you hadn’t eaten in so long you’d forgotten you liked it. If Jake were here, he’d laugh at this.
Who turned Mom loose with the paintbrush? His voice seemed so real, I looked for him.
“Don’t count me out yet,” I told the quiet house before returning to the cabinets. When Rob and I married, I’d painted an entire married-student apartment by myself. My mother was mortified that we were planning to live in the aging brick building on the edge of campus, but she eventually acquiesced. She forgave Rob for our meager accommodations, because he was, after all, in medical school. Mother was looking forward to being able to say at cocktail parties, This is my son-in-law, the doctor. Rob came from a long line of Dr. Dardens, which made him a catch according to Mother. I’d finally done something right.
She’d hate that I was at Uncle Poppy’s house, up to my elbows in paint, which, now that I thought about it, made the job that much more appealing.
When one coat doesn’t work, try two, I told myself, and decided to come back tomorrow. Preparing to leave, I felt like a child who’d sneaked off to visit a forbidden friend and stayed too long. As I left the house behind and headed across town, I tried to imagine who might move in and what their lives would be like. Maybe there would be little girls who would slip through the wall of hollyhocks to discover the hidden room where I’d passed so many childhood hours… .
Our neighborhood in Plano was quiet when I arrived, the house empty. That was probably fortunate, since my clothes and I were spattered with paint.
Rolling the sweat suit into a ball, I tucked it in the linen closet while the whirlpool filled. As I sank into the water, I felt good about the day. Tired, but good. It had been too long since the waking hours had passed with happy thoughts instead of painful ones.
The phone rang as I sat with my mind drifting. Someone answered it before the machine would have. A few minutes later, Christopher came to the bathroom door. “Mom, you in there?”
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said, slipping from the water and grabbing a towel. “Hang on a sec. I was just getting out.”
“It’s okay,” Chris preempted. “I just need a check for Mr. Hengerson before tomorrow.”
“What’s up?” I asked, to keep him from hurrying off to his room. We were always delivering checks to Chris’s band director for marching shoes, contest fees, extra lessons to help Christopher further excel in solo competitions.
“My purse is on the dresser,” I said, putting on a robe and opening the door.
Chris crossed the room in three long strides, grabbed my purse and brought it back to me. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I pulled out my checkbook.
“How much?”
“A hundred and seventy-five.” Christopher yawned and stretched, swaying on his feet, exhausted from another study night.
“A hundred and seventy-five?” I repeated, surprised by the amount.
“Mr. Hengerson sent my sax in for repair. The check goes to Cruize Music.” He combed a shock of overly long blond hair out of his face. Normally the coaches would have made him cut that by now, but lately they’d been tolerant with Chris, in consideration of our family’s grief.
“I didn’t know your sax was broken.” Propping the checkbook on my knee, I started filling in the numbers.
“Yeah.” He blinked, then rubbed his eyes. “It’s been screwed up for a while.”
“It has?” At one time a problem with his sax or his guitar would have been an immediate
cause for alarm—somebody call 911. “Why didn’t you get it fixed?”
He shrugged, his yawn fading into a sigh. “It was no big deal. I played one of the school instruments this semester. Hengerson said if I didn’t bring a check and get my sax back before summer break, he wasn’t going to release my grade, though.” He punctuated the sentence with an eye roll and a sardonic laugh. “Bust my butt in physics and advanced English, and now I’m gonna flunk band.”
My motherly sixth sense came out of hibernation and perked up. “You left your sax in the repair shop? All semester? You hate playing the school instruments.” Nothing the school owned was even close to the quality of the saxophone we’d given Christopher his freshman year.
Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Chris looked at the floor. “I’ve been busy. You know, the online college class and all.” Oddly enough, Poppy’s death and Jake’s sudden departure seemed to have awakened in Christopher the need to push himself harder academically. In the past, he’d been satisfied to be the prankster, the easygoing athlete who was Jake’s second fiddle, and admittedly not the most stellar student.
“Oh,” I said, then tore out the check and extended it to him. “Chris, your music is important, too. There’s no rule that says you have to graduate from high school with twenty hours of college credit racked up.”
Chris grabbed the check and tucked it and his fingers back into his pocket, ready to exit the conversation now that he’d gotten what he came for. “It’ll get me through to med school applications quicker.”
It bothered me to hear him talking about premed. Six months ago, he’d been determined to study music, even though his father hated the idea.
The sudden change in Chris was a subject I hadn’t found the energy to take on. On the surface, he’d held it together remarkably well this semester, but I wondered what was happening underneath.
“Just make sure you’re taking time to enjoy being where you are right now,” I said. “Next year is your senior year, Chris. I don’t want you to miss out.” My mind filled with milestones of Jake’s graduation year—senior pictures, college visits, scholarships, awards, watching Jake step from the dressing room in his prom tuxedo, the class ring, the cap and gown, packing his things for college, buying new sheets, a towel, a laundry basket, which he ended up using to haul his laundry over to Poppy’s. Poppy taught him how to do wash. Poppy was suddenly the expert even though he’d never washed clothes until Aunt Ruth passed away.