by Jo Ann Beard
“The Sara kind,” Meg says, giving her a long glance while the highway scrolls by underneath us.
Whinny exhales, and they stare out the windshield in scandalized wonder.
“You talking about Sara Barton, battlefield nurse?” I ask.
Whinny turns around. “Where did you learn that—Finland?”
“I read books, that’s where I learned it.”
“Next time, turn a light on,” Whinny says, looking at my sister, who barks out a laugh.
Unlike Felicia, I don’t mind dead bodies. Our relatives extend backward into the last century—we have people who show up at family dinners barely visible inside their rusty black farm clothes, people who can’t walk or talk but still need to work so get carried in and set in front of a bowl of potatoes and a paring knife, people who ignore real kids but shout, “Whose are you?” to our parents. Because the versions that appear in the caskets don’t look that different from the versions we’ve been seeing all along, it takes a lot of the fear out.
Luekenfelter’s cousin’s mother is different. She’s young, wearing a wig that makes her look like Sandra Dee.
“I can’t be here,” Felicia whispers. “I’m getting faint headed.”
I know what she means. We’re off to the side, with a perfect view of everything, waiting to say hi to Luek and her cousin Jane, who are standing together, greeting people as they file past. They’re wearing clingy dresses, nylons, and pumps, like Avon ladies.
A group of Jane’s friends goes past, all of them in Capezio saddle shoes, a fashion at her school. When they’re gone, Luek catches sight of us and brings Jane over.
“God,” Luek says, by way of greeting.
“God,” I say in agreement.
“How are you doing?” Felicia asks Jane.
Jane pulls at her dress, looking around. “We’re having to hug half these people.”
“Sorry,” Felicia says. “Your dress is cute, though.”
“Yours too,” Jane says.
A long pause while we watch mourners shuffle past, whispering. It seems like everyone is staring down at the carpeting, which is rich looking, a dark green patterned with gray and gold paisleys.
“Want to go up there?” Jane says suddenly, nodding toward the casket.
“Okay,” I tell her.
Felicia looks wild eyed. “That’s all right, I already saw,” she says.
The crowd parts to let us in, and for a moment it’s as though Jane is introducing me to her mother: “This is my mom,” she whispers, staring at her, and I nod. The face is flushed and claylike with makeup, but she was pretty like her daughter, you can tell. Around her neck is a thin gold necklace, its heart-shaped locket opened to show two tiny pictures: young Jane, with bangs, and a small grinning boy.
We keep standing there as people file past. After a couple of minutes, a man comes up, takes hold of Jane’s arm, and starts crying. She looks at me and rolls her eyes.
Felicia and Luek are nowhere to be found. I put my jacket on and make my way outside, and they’re there, sitting on the cold steps.
“Your aunt looked nice,” I say to Luek.
“Is Jane still acting like nothing is happening?” Felicia asks.
“When we first came in and saw her mom in the coffin, she acted a little bit like something was happening,” Luek says. “But otherwise, no. She just keeps saying these things to me to make fun of people, which is more like my other cousins, not like Jane at all. She just said to me about this person, this huge guy who I guess used to work on their farm… I can’t even repeat it, it was so awful, and he could have heard. At her mother’s visitation!”
I think I saw that man in there, enormous and strange, with a little bow tie and a broad sweating forehead.
“What if this turns her mean?” Luek goes on. “And she’s an alternate cheerleader, which she never would let me tell people before, but now she’s telling everyone. How they might use her at some stupid parent-teacher exhibition game, they might use her for some swim meet, they might put her in for basketball if it turns out this girl is pregnant…”
“A cheerleader is pregnant?” I ask.
“Who cares about cheerleaders, I told her,” Luek says pointedly, “when someone’s mother is dead.”
“Yeah,” Felicia agrees, and we stare out at the small-town street, which doesn’t look any different from a street in Zanesville, really, except that it’s about all they’ve got: two blocks over is a cornfield. People are still coming in, although there isn’t a line like before.
“I wasn’t trying to say anything about your cheerleader party,” Luek says apologetically.
“We know,” I say.
Two blocks in the other direction is the town square, where there’s a dark dime store and a tiny park with a bench and a war memorial. Teenagers were sitting on the cannon when we drove through, which is why it’s taking forever for Meg and Whinny to come back for us. Eventually Jane walks outside, and then Jane’s younger brother, and then Luek’s mother comes out too. She looks eerily like the body in the casket, only heavier, and for one disorienting second it’s like Jane’s mother has gotten up and thrown on a coat to come to find her children.
“You girls tell your mothers thank you, from me,” Mrs. Luekenfelter says, lighting a cigarette.
“We will,” Felicia says.
“Not just for getting you out here, but for the desserts they sent over last night,” she goes on, exhaling into the cold night. She fastens her red eyes on me. “I’ve got to meet your mom one of these days—she knows my friend Edna, and Edna just loves her.”
“Oh yeah,” I say. “Edna.”
“I do know your mom, though,” she says to Felicia. “She works for the glasses doctor I go to.”
“Yeah,” Felicia says.
“Get your paws off me,” Jane says to her brother.
Glaring at Jane, Luek tries to pull the boy to her side, but he squirms away and goes back to his sister, pushing against her more insistently. He’s about Raymond’s age, and embarrassed.
“Paws off,” Jane says, shoving him.
“Janie,” Mrs. Luekenfelter says quietly, then puts out her cigarette on the steps and kicks the butt into the bushes. “Don’t tell anyone I did that,” she says.
“We won’t,” Felicia and I say.
When Luek’s mom takes the brother inside, the four of us stand on the steps, shivering and watching people leave.
“Well, bye,” I say finally.
“Don’t worry about being with a group of cheerleaders,” Jane says suddenly. Luek must have told her about the party. “They’re probably really nice. It’s just that they’re popular, and that makes people hate them.”
“It’s not that,” I say.
“We don’t hate them,” Felicia explains. “We think they hate us.”
“Well, they don’t,” Jane says, then turns and runs up the steps, where she stands waiting with her back to us while Luek shrugs and then follows, using the railing to pull herself along. Like a weary married couple, they link arms and go back inside.
There are still teenage silhouettes hanging around the cannon when we get to the square, but it’s hard to tell whether they’re the right ones or not. We wander along the storefronts for a few minutes, waiting to see if they’ll spot us.
“What if you had to get your hair cut at a place like this?” Felicia says, staring into a beauty shop where the window display is pink and black combs arranged in a sunburst pattern around a houseplant.
“What if you had to go here to mail your letter?” I say, staring into the bleak little post office, where there is nothing but a clerk’s window, a wall of brass mailboxes, and a wastebasket. The whole place is the size of my family’s kitchen.
“What if this was where you lived and all you could do was sit around a cannon for fun?” Felicia says. The teenagers have melded into one dark shape in the town square, a big restless creature with cigarette coals for eyes. A few feet beyond, in the moonlight, is a l
ittle pyramid of cannonballs, like something the creature left behind.
Suddenly our Oldsmobile roars around the corner, races past us, and jolts to a stop. We walk the half block, then another half block after she pulls away again. When we are finally in the backseat, Meg says, “Where were you?” accusingly.
We gaze out our respective windows.
Whinny turns her long face in our direction and asks, “So, was it icky?”
“Not really,” I say after a moment.
“Was the girl you knew crying and everything?” she asks.
Pretty Jane, with her thin dress and her rural-looking charm bracelet, had said something else while we were standing at the coffin. “This is Ellen’s friend,” she had whispered, staring down at her mother. Ellen is Luekenfelter.
“Not really,” I say.
Whinny turns back around, pushes in the lighter, and waits with an unlit cigarette in her mouth.
“It was a lot of fun driving all over looking for you,” Meg says.
There’s nothing out the window; all I can see is my own face, made haunted by the black glass.
“I may have to tell Mother that you took off and were running around Heyworth,” Meg tries again, “if she wonders where we’ve been.”
Instead of slapping the back of her head, I do what they tell you to do: count to ten. Only I do it the gifted way: 123 + 456 + 789 + 10. When your sister has hurtled you swerving into the darkness, stranded you at a funeral home, and threatens to get you in trouble, just stop and count to 1,378 before you respond.
“Did you hear me?” Meg asks. “I may have to tell her.”
“Try it, duck lips, and see what happens,” I say calmly.
“Maybe I better pull over and dump you out so you can walk home,” she says, yawning.
“Maybe you better not,” Felicia says in a low voice.
“What’s that, Flea?” Meg starts slowing the car down.
“Maybe you better not,” Felicia repeats, her voice dangerously quiet now.
“What’s that?” Swerving onto the shoulder, gravel hitting the bottom of the car.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a winter cornfield before. The furrows are farther apart than they look from a distance, and this one doesn’t seem very well plowed—there are clods the size of our feet, making it hard to walk, and if you veer the wrong way, your ankles are stabbed by corn stubble. We walk down the frozen rows, through patches of old snow gleaming in the moonlight.
“Where are we going?” I ask Felicia.
“Away from those two,” she says.
I wonder what lives in a fallow field at night. Coons and possums; maybe coyotes run through.
“My aunt Else and uncle Jimmy live around here somewhere,” I tell her. “This could even be their field.” I doubt it, though. This field is the opposite of them.
“Could we go there if we have to?”
“They aren’t exactly old, but they don’t really have any kids.”
“Oh,” she says.
They do have a one-eyed cocker spaniel named Jiffy, though, who wipes his feet before stepping into the kitchen. It’s less impressive than it seems—you can say, “Jiffy, feet!” anywhere, even outside, and he will stop, look blindly around, and then shuffle his paws before continuing on.
“Ow!” Felicia yells. She tripped and was stabbed by cornstalks. “I’d like to shove this corn up your sister’s ass!”
We move a few rows over to see if it’s any easier, but it isn’t. It’s the same.
“Sorry,” Felicia says.
“It’s Whinny making her act like that,” I say.
“Maybe,” Felicia says after a moment. “But it actually seems like Whinny is nice, compared to her. Just seems.”
I’m getting slightly tired of walking in a frozen cornfield.
“I guess she’s a little like your sister, in a way,” I comment.
“Step On Me? She’s a bug,” Felicia answers. “Know what I do to her?”
I stop, balancing myself on two clods, and put my head back so I can see the whole sky overhead, black and cold, just the way I like it. We’re on the moon out here, except the moon is up there.
“I step on her!” Felicia yells, her voice instantly sucked into the night. There’s nothing for the sound to bounce off of, just miles of bald prairie and leaning fence posts. It’s like shouting into a wadded-up quilt.
“Feck!” I yell.
“Shite!” she yells, flinging her arms out and turning in bumpy circles, her face to the sky.
Suddenly, fifty feet away, car lights go on.
“They were lurking!” Felicia says. “The crap faces.”
We crouch for a while, until our knees give out, and then we sit down on the frozen dirt. My dad should have been a farmer, everyone knows that—he spends half the year with a spade in his hand, chopping up the ground and then pushing various things into it. Nobody knows why he ended up coming to Zanesville, moving my mother thirty miles away from her family, and spending the other half of his time in the tavern, but I do know one thing: that if he hadn’t, I’d be living in the country instead of the city, I wouldn’t go to John Deere, I wouldn’t know Felicia or any of my other friends, I wouldn’t be sitting out here so far away from home, because I’d actually be home. I’d be living in the middle of an ocean of dirt.
“If we lived out here, at least we wouldn’t have to worry about the cheerleaders,” Felicia says. “Because we’d basically be the cheerleaders.”
Another thing that’s impossible to imagine when you don’t have the clothes for it.
“But if we lived out here and we still couldn’t do any better than we do now?”
“The only thing is at least we’d still be weird together,” she says. “What if I lived out here alone?”
“I guess you could hang around with Jane,” I tell her.
“Maybe,” she says.
I can’t believe that tomorrow night I’m going to be sitting around in my peach-colored pajamas in Patti Michaels’s grandmother’s house. Are we supposed to bring slippers, or what? As it is, I’m having to use Stephanie’s sleeping bag, which means keeping my legs bent. I don’t mind that, but I do mind everyone else in a nightgown when I’m in pajamas; I can’t bring a nightgown because the only one I have is hot pink and electric yellow, with flower-power flowers all over it, made by my mother, and now too short.
The car lights flash on and off, and a minute later Whinny comes stumbling partway into the field. We can’t really see her, but we can hear her, and then the horn honks and she screams, and then we hear her scrambling back to the car again, both of them laughing like monkeys.
“Ally ally in free!” Them, in unison.
Once, when I was a kid, I played hide-and-seek in a cornfield where the stalks were taller than we were. My cousins knew what they were doing: while somebody counted, they scattered, crouching and running down one row and then jumping through to the next, until they were deep inside the field, hiding motionless in the stalks. I couldn’t stand it—the corn seemed like people to me, touching my face and legs—so while they were dodging and catching each other, I swung on the swing set, high enough to get a view of the whole green enterprise, a trembling tassel here and there the only sign that anything was going on. How will Jane endure it, the thought of them closing the lid on her mother’s face?
“Get… in… here!” Meg shouts.
The horn honks again, a bright splash of sound, and then silence.
“Please!”
We stand up from the frozen ground. Getting out of the field proves a lot more efficient than getting in: we find a furrow and keep to it, back toward the car lights, straight across the shining patches of snow. We emerge behind them, sneak up, and throw open the back doors, causing the driver and her idiot friend to shriek and claw at each other, Whinny losing her cigarette somewhere on the floor and the two of them diving for it, bumping heads with an audible crack.
Felicia and I crawl into the dark backseat as th
ey clutch their foreheads and moan. The heat is blasting, which feels good.
I spend the next afternoon mentally preparing for the party by hiding out behind the green velvet chair in the corner of the living room. When I was younger and shorter, I made a reading nest for myself by stuffing a couch pillow back here and an old afghan and then crawling in with my book, staying all day if they let me, creeping out only to get provisions. Now I have to fold myself in sideways, with the register jabbing into me and my feet sticking out. Tammy waits until I’ve got it all arranged and am still before she gingerly climbs in and over, to settle behind my knees.
I still like it back here—the familiar scuffs and scribbles above the baseboard, the bright, unfaded back of the green chair, the headless carpet tack you have to watch out for. This is where the pivotal events of my childhood unfolded, while I ate banana and root beer Popsicles, two by two, tucking the sticks neatly under the skirt of the chair. It’s where Sunnybank Lad met Lady, Ken met his friend Flicka, Atlanta burned, Manderley burned, Lassie came home, Jim ran away, Alice got small, Wilbur got big, David Copperfield was born, Beth died, and, on an endless, gloomy winter afternoon, Jody shot his yearling. The pretty little deer named Flag, staggering and bloodied, doomed from his romp through the tender shoots of corn and the mother’s bad aim, pursued by the desperate, crazed boy who had to put him out of his suffering. All the fault of mothers and corn. My own mother had had to come in and pull the chair out in order to see what was going on that day. She was sympathetic until she saw the Popsicle sticks.
“That’s a bit ridiculous, isn’t it?” she says now, passing by on her way somewhere and seeing me crammed into my old space.
“What’s ridiculous is that there’s nowhere in this house to do homework,” I reply.
“What do you call that big table in the dining room?”
“What do you call the crap all over it that I’m sick of cleaning up?”
She peers over the top of the chair at me. I open The Tempest and stare into it.
“Listen, smart-ass. If this is how you talk to your family, you’ll stay home tonight.”