by Lisa Wingate
“Opal, stop,” Cass scolded, then picked her up and took her back to her toys. “You can’t, like, climb on people whenever you feel like it, and you’re gonna get paint on your clothes. I told you to stay over here.”
Opal’s pout lip made known her opinion of being left out. Cass ignored her and picked up a paintbrush again. We worked in silence for a while, painting the other doors, but not the one on which Poppy had charted family history. When we’d finished the others, we stood looking at it.
“I think we’ll leave this one for now,” I said.“I can’t quite bring myself to paint it.”
Cass wiped her brush on the edge of the tray and started pouring the extra paint back into the can. “One time when I was little, Rusty an’ me made cinnamon toast, and we got in trouble because we weren’t supposed to use the oven. Rusty got mad and took off, and Mama an’ me drove around all night looking for him. He’s such a dork, but guess what happened when we drove up home? There he was sitting on the porch because he didn’t have a key to get in. What a doof, huh? He got Mama all upset for nothing. Some people—boys mostly, I think—just have to figure everything out the hard way. They don’t mean anything by it.”
I realized she was trying to comfort me, trying to tell me Jake’s absence wasn’t my fault. It occurred to me that Rob and I hadn’t even attempted to extend that level of grace to each other. We’d only sought to lay blame. “You’re a very smart girl, Cass. You have a good sense of people, for someone your age.”
She watched the last of the paint stream into the can in a long thin swirl. “I’m not a little girl.”
“I know that.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“You’ve told me.”
Her eyes flicked upward, the brows in a worried tangle, then she concentrated on the paint again. “People think I’m younger sometimes, but I’m seventeen.”
“One of these days, you’ll be glad for people to think you’re younger.” The words sounded old and tired. Sometimes I looked in the mirror, and I wondered what had happened to the college coed with freckles over her nose and not a wrinkle on her face. It seemed impossible that so much time had passed, and I hadn’t done any of the things that girl thought she’d do. She thought she would finish her education degree, move someplace where passionate teachers were in short supply and change the lives of kids who needed someone to believe in them… .
Cass blew a sardonic puff of air through her lips. “I wish I were older.”
“Well, I wish I were younger, so we’re quite a pair.”
Her gaze lifted and met mine, her face filled with questions. I remembered sitting on this very porch, not a child, not a woman, already afraid I’d never be good enough for anyone to love me. Without that fear, what decisions might I have made?
I smoothed wispy strands of hair over Cass’s shoulder so they wouldn’t fall into the paint. “Don’t be in such a hurry,” I whispered. “You never get to go back.”
A noise filtered into my consciousness. I heard it dimly at first, then louder and louder. A bell ringing. The doorbell, ringing over and over incessantly.
Cass jerked upright and checked to see if Opal was still in the corner with her toys. Engrossed in a coloring book and the new crayons I’d brought, she hadn’t moved.
“Who’d be ringing the doorbell?” Dusting myself off, I looked at my paint-spattered clothes and had the absurd thought that I was in no shape for company.
Cass picked up Opal and followed me through the back door into the kitchen. I heard a conversation outside, the rapid back-and-forth of an argument, but I couldn’t discern the words, only the hum of voices, one high and shrill, one low and raspy. Neither sounded like Andrea, the real estate agent. They sounded like …
Children?
We rounded the corner into the front room, and there was someone at the window—just a shadow with the sunlight behind, perhaps my height or taller, but slim. The face was hidden, but I could make out dark skin and hair in cornrows. Pressing between the burglar bars, the figure put a hand to the glass and tried to block the glare to see inside.
“Oh, geez!” Cass’s voice was little more than a tightly controlled whisper, but it startled me in the empty room. “Geez! I can’t believe it. They must’ve followed us.”
I stopped. The shadow receded from the window, and I had the eerie sense of someone, now invisible, still being there. “Who … What are you talking about, Cass?”
She bolted past me, set Opal down, then pressed her back to the door. Opal mimicked her, and they looked like two of the three little pigs, trying to keep the wolf away. “Don’t answer it,” Cass whispered, and put a finger to her lips. Opal copied the motion, as if they’d been through this routine before. “Don’t let ’em know you’re here. If they know you’re here, they’ll never go away. They’ll knock on the door until you let them in.”
“Who will?” If I hadn’t been so confused, I would have laughed at the theatrics. The girls’ eyes were as wide as cue balls. Outside, the front porch grew silent, and the floorboards squeaked. “I think whoever it is just left,” I whispered.
Cass shook her head. “They do that. They make you think they’re gone. They hide until you open the door, and then they run into your house.” Carefully, silently, she touched Opal’s shoulder, then pointed toward the window. Opal dropped to all fours and crept to the glass like a spy evading motion detectors, then raised up and peeked through the bottom corner.
After checking the front porch, she shook her head. “No see-see kibs.” Moving to the middle of the windowsill, she scanned the porch again. “No see-see kibs.”
I couldn’t help myself. I started to laugh, then crossed the room and reached for the lock. “What in the world are you girls doing? Who’s out there?”
“Nobody!” Cass spread her arms in Katie-bar-the-door fashion. “Don’t open it.”
Opal continued her surveillance work from the window. “No see-see. No see kibs.” She stood up, braced her hands on the small of her back, and twisted from side to side, looking confident.
I put a hand on the dead bolt, and both girls gasped.
“No, don’t do it!” Cass sagged helplessly. “It’s those kids. The ones next to our apartment. They’ll come in your house, and they won’t ever leave. They do this, like, every day as soon as me and Opal get home. They’re in our house all the time, and they’ll eat all your food. I think Boo ate the Cootie leg. I do. He had it, and now I can’t find it anyplace. They eat everything.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” I twisted the knob. “We have plenty of food. I bought five loaves of bread today, and there’s food in the refrigerator. We’ll be all right.”
“You don’t understand. They won’t leave anybody alone. Me and Opal have to sneak out of the apartment at seven in the morning to keep them from following us.”
“You’ve been coming here at seven in the morning?” Instead of amusement, I felt apprehension. It wasn’t good for Cass and Opal to be out wandering the streets before the neighborhood became active.
“We have to. They tail us all the time. They’re always …” Mouth dropping open, she gaped at the doorway behind me, leaving the sentence unfinished.
I turned to see a little boy standing in the square of light from the kitchen.
“Ere Boo!” Opal observed, pointing at the boy. “Ere Boo.”
Cass growled in her throat and crossed the room with her arms stiff at her sides. “Boo! You can’t just go walking into people’s houses.” Towering over the boy, she shook a finger. “Where’s Angel? How did you get in here?”
The little boy pointed to the front window, where someone, Angel apparently, was trying to peer through the bars again. She wasn’t as tall as I’d originally thought. She must have been standing on something before. I recognized the little boy in my living room from the Dumpster day. He was the pint-sized lookout.
“Boo, did you crawl under the fence?” Cass grabbed his arm, and he blinked up at her, his dark eyes sou
lful. “He can get anywhere. Yesterday, while we were playing Candy Land, he climbed up on top of our refrigerator. Nobody even heard him, but he got up there because that’s where the cereal was. He’s like one of those frogs with the suction feet.” Huffing an exaggerated sigh, she pulled him toward the front door.
I opened it and let in the light, along with Boo’s brother and sister.
Cass wasn’t pleased. “Go home and wait till I get there.” Steering Boo past me, she placed him with his siblings in the entranceway. “I told you guys not to follow us. Go home.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “Why don’t we make the sandwiches and then you can all head home together?”
“They know how to get home,” Cass protested. “I bet they came up the storm ditch. Did you guys come up the ditch, Angel?”
Angel jutted her hip to one side and crossed her arms. “Maybe.”
“You’ll probably get poison ivy.”
“Will not.”
“Will so, and you deserve it, anyway. I told you not to… .”
I sensed a girl fight coming on, so I stepped in the middle and moved everyone to the kitchen. The sandwich making proceeded with far more help than was needed, and a latent but noticeable ongoing power struggle. I was reminded again of how fortunate I was to have raised boys. Boys didn’t care who got the coveted job of spreading jelly. Boys just wanted to eat the sandwiches. By the time we’d finished our manufacturing process, Angel’s brothers had given up helping with construction and settled on the kitchen floor with Opal, happily consuming the products as if they hadn’t eaten all day. I fixed juice in Dixie cups and they drank as if they hadn’t seen liquid in a while, either. Standing at the counter, I played bartender, refilling cups at least a dozen times.
When the impromptu picnic was finished, we packed a bag of extra sandwiches, and I drove the kids home. Cass was pleased to see Angel, Ronnie, and Boo deposited back where they belonged, but she made it clear that she and Opal wanted to return to Poppy’s with me. She handed the sandwich bag over to Angel and sulked in her seat as she watched them disappear around the corner with it.
“Can me and Opal stay longer at Poppy’s with you today?” she asked. “Book Basket wasn’t open when we drove by just now. MJ’s probably gone somewhere telling stories.”
“Why don’t you check in at home while we’re here?”
Cass glanced toward the apartment door. “Rusty’s at work, and Kiki sleeps all day. I don’t wanna bug her.”
“What about your mom?” I knew I was pushing. Cass leaned away and pressed her body into the gap between the seat and the car door.
“Mama’s at the doctor today. The Dial-a-Ride comes for her on Fridays.” She spilled the words like a street vendor popping out a bag of counterfeit Rolexes. “It’s easiest for her to take the Dial-a-Ride when she has to go to the doctor. I’d go with her, but I’ve gotta watch Opal, but it’s no big deal. Mama’s used to the treatments. She’s sick for a day or two after, and then she feels better.”
“What are the treatments for?”
Looking down at her hands, she picked some dried paint off her index finger. Her lips arched into a contemplative pout. “Dialysis … and she has to have blood transfusions sometimes. She had cancer, but they took it out. She’s on the list for a kidney transplant, though.” Her chin trembled again. The emotion was real, not manufactured, even though the medical diagnosis didn’t make much sense. “I don’t like to talk about it, okay? When she gets a transplant, she’ll be better.”
“I’m sure she will.” I reached over the console and squeezed her arm.
Her hair fell forward, like a sunlit gold shield hiding her emotions. “Me and Opal can help you put the closet doors back on.”
“I think we’d better just bring them inside and wait for Teddy to come tomorrow. They’re a little hard to manage,” I said, but more than anything I wanted to break through the shell of secrets, part it like the curtain of hair and see what Cass was hiding inside.
We drove back to Poppy’s house in silence. Opal fell asleep in the backseat, so we carried her inside and laid her on the rug in front of the kitchen sink. She curled into a ball with her thumb in her mouth, sighed and drifted off again. Bobo scratched at the back door, and Cass let him in. Panting, he padded across the kitchen, sniffed Opal, then settled in beside her.
We cleaned the kitchen, then brought the closet doors inside. We’d barely finished before there was a knock on the front window. Angel was back, alone this time.
Cass was not pleased. “Go on home. You can’t just come here anytime you want.”
“Anyone’s welcome here,” I corrected, and I could tell I’d hurt Cass’s feelings. She wanted to believe she and Opal were special. “But Cass and I are doing quite a bit of painting, so it would be best if you just came at lunchtime, all right?”
“All right.” Angel threaded her hands behind herself, rocking back and forth, then turning her attention to Cass. “That dude come to yo’ house again jus’ now. He don’t go bangin’ on the door this time, though. He bein’ all sweet, and nice, and yo’ brother girlfriend come out, and they gettin’ it on right there on the step.”
Cass’s mouth dropped open. “At our place? Rusty made Kiki promise the guy wouldn’t come back pounding on our door again. She said he showed up at her work, and the bouncers got him in a corner and told him he better stay away from her or they’d hunt him down and break his kneecaps. It scared him off.”
“He don’t look scared,” Angel said. “And he ain’t got no broke kneecaps, neither.”
“I’m gonna kill Kiki!”
“No, you ain’t, ’less you know where she boyfriend live. She done took off with that man. She don’t lock yo’ door neither. We was watchin’ yo’ stuff, then yo’ brother come home, and he ask, ‘Where she go?’ So I told him, and he mad, mad. He throwin’ thangs and hollerin’. Ronnie an’ Boo runned out back, and I come here. Man, yo’ brother got a temper. He askin’ where you at, too.”
Cass checked her watch. “I gotta go.” She bolted out the door, and Angel spun around and followed. I called after them, but Cass only hollered back, “I gotta go!” and raced down the street.
I hurried to the kitchen to get my purse, and only then realized that Opal was still asleep on the floor with Bobo. Slinging my purse onto my shoulder, I scooped her up and took her to the car, then locked the house, climbed in with Bobo on my heels, and headed down the street.
Opal blinked drowsily out the window as we drove to the apartment complex. Everything looked quiet there.
I found Cass and Angel in the apartment, picking up toppled furniture and pieces of a drinking glass shattered on the floor. “Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Yes.” Cass looked tired, and much older than twelve or thirteen. “Rusty’s just a moron sometimes, that’s all. I gotta clean up this mess. Mama won’t like it.”
“What’chew talkin’ about, Mama?” Angel piped up. “You ain’t got no—”
“Shut up, Angel,” Cass spat. “Just shut up.”
Jerking her chin upward, Angel dropped the drinking glass. It fell to the floor and splintered into more pieces. “Well, fine. You can clean up yo’ own junk, miss big mouth.” She stalked out the door and disappeared.
Opal wiggled drowsily out of my arms and slid to the floor. “Uh-oh,” she said. Steering her around the glass toward the threadbare sofa, I took in the place where Cass was living. It was even worse than the exterior indicated—just a small main room and a tiny kitchen sparsely appointed with crumbling furnishings. The olive linoleum was brown with filth around the edges and under the furniture. In the kitchen, the single counter leaned to one side, and missing patches of Formica formed divots in which food and debris had collected. Around the sink, the counter had rotted through in several spots, so that it was hard to tell what was holding up the sink. Water dripped continuously from the faucet, leaving a long oval of rust and lime. A sleeping bag on the sofa indicated that someone had be
en using it as a bed, and there was dirty laundry everywhere.
Opal climbed onto the sofa, and something brown and torpedo-shaped scampered from underneath, then disappeared into a crack in the floor. A shiver ran across my shoulders, and the sensation was quickly followed by a growing, angry heat. No one should be living like this.
Cass stopped cleaning and watched me survey the apartment. Her expression told me I was telegraphing my thoughts. She looked nervous and embarrassed.
“I can help you clean up.” My mind spun through the barrage of new information, piecing facts together. What’chew talking about, Mama? There was no mother living here. Yo’ brother girlfriend come out, and they gettin’ it on… . Opal’s mother wasn’t a relative; she was living with Cass’s brother. Cass was living with her brother, some woman who had an abusive ex-boyfriend, Opal, and most likely no one else.
“I can do it.” Filling her chest with air, Cass straightened her shoulders, then squatted down to rake up ice that had been scattered from a McDonald’s cup. “It’s no big deal, okay?”
Opal scooted off the couch, and Cass swung a finger at her. “Opal, stay there! You’ll cut your feet.” Her voice reverberated through the low-ceilinged room and blasted out the door.
I picked up a piece of glass, moved sideways two steps, and set it on the table. “All right, then, I’ll just sit here and we can talk.”
Cass sagged over the McDonald’s cup. “You better go. I’ll get in trouble. I’m not supposed to let people in.”
I sat on the edge of a dining chair, folding my hands between my legs. “Cass, if you’re in trouble …”
“I’m not, okay?” Standing up, she faced me. “I’m not. You gotta go before Rusty comes back.” The words ended in a stifled sob, both a plea and a demand.
I closed my eyes, trying to decide what to do. Was I making the situation worse? Could I make it better? “Maybe I could talk to your brother.”