by Patti Kim
“Pervert,” I say.
“I think he’s nice,” she says.
“Nice like a perv.”
She looks at me and asks, “Are you jealous?”
“You want to run away with me? We can stay at that house. You know, the one they say is haunted. It’s not. I don’t believe in ghosts. No one lives there. It’s big and empty. Plenty of room for roller-skating. You can bring Charlie and his angels. It’ll just be you, me, and our pets. I got some money saved up. Let’s get out of here,” I say.
“Be quiet, Ok, and keep an eye out for my daddy. He said he’d be here. He promised. He’s tall, like over six feet, and he has a mustache, unless he shaved it off, ’cause I told him last time it tickled every time he kissed me, and he’s probably wearing jeans and his blue Mack cap and he’s real handsome and he might have a cig in his mouth if no one told him to put it out. I wonder if he stopped off to pick up a bouquet of flowers for me or something, ’cause he never comes to see me empty-handed, always has to give me a gift. He’s got to be here somewhere. He said he’s coming. He said he wasn’t going to miss it for the world. Maybe there was real bad traffic. That ain’t his fault. People get stuck in traffic all the time, especially when there’s an accident or a broke-down car on the side of the road and you have the goodness to stop and help a stranger—”
“Shut up,” I say.
“Don’t you dare, Ok. Don’t you dare tell me to shut up. Shut up yourself !”
“He’s not coming.”
“What do you know?” she says.
“More than you,” I say.
“That is not true. You don’t know more than me. You didn’t even know how to skate before you met me. You didn’t know nothing about cats and makeup and dancing before I humbled myself to be your friend. Tell me one thing you taught me. That’s right. Nothing. ’Cause you don’t share. You’re sore and selfish. Don’t go getting all high and mighty on me, ’cause you’re not,” she says.
“I hate you,” I say.
“Oh my Lordy, you are such a crybaby. Just shut your ugly little mouth and stop feeling sorry for yourself ’cause we lost tonight. News flash, Ok. We didn’t lose. We had a fun time. The audience was applauding like crazy. They loved us. We put on a good show. Look how happy everyone is. Life’s not all about getting money, money, money. If you insist on pooping on my party, you can go run away and be all by yourself. I’m too busy having a good time and looking for my daddy to partake in your boohoo crybaby ways,” she says.
“Hope makes people stupid,” I say.
“Shut up before I smack you,” she says. Her face turns the shade of red Crayola calls Scarlet. Then her eyes well up with black mascara tears. She stares me down, as if blaming me for making her cry. Now look who’s being the boohoo crybaby.
“I’m out of here,” I say, and walk away.
As I head for the back exit, I see a man who looks to be Mickey’s dad. He has her eyes, set deep under cliffs of brows. He’s taller than most, wears jeans and a Mack cap, and is holding flowers in one hand and a stuffed pink bunny in the other. He has no cigarette in his mouth, but when I walk by him, I smell tobacco. I know that smell. It’s how my father smelled. I don’t say hi. I don’t show him where his daughter waits. I don’t feel happy for Mickey. I walk by like he’s another stranger.
Once outside, I run. I run fast and far away, feeling sore about Mickey’s father showing up, her unbearable I-told-you-so happiness, about losing to Asa, about being wrong.
forty-one
Where were you?” my mother asks.
She isn’t supposed to be home. She and the d-CON are supposed to be sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Ŏmma with a baby carriage.
“Where were you?”
“School,” I say.
She touches the lapel of my jacket and says, “What did you do to your Christmas suit?”
I shrug.
“Is this my blouse?”
I shrug again.
“Stop shrugging and answer me,” she says, leaning in to my face.
“Yes, this is your blouse, and I had to paint the suit because I had a part in the school play that required me to wear a white suit and I didn’t have one and I didn’t want to bother you, since you’re busy with the engagement and suits are expensive,” I say.
“School play? What school play?”
“A Ring of Endless Light,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“The title of the play. It’s about coping with loss and looking for true love,” I say.
“That sounds so serious. What part did you play?” she asks.
“I was the priest,” I say.
“Don’t priests wear black?”
“That’s what I said, but my teacher said I had to wear white or else I’d get kicked out of the play and get an F.”
“What class was this for?” she asks.
“Language arts,” I say.
“Did you do all right?”
“I think so. I had a few lines. I managed to remember them all and say them loud and clear.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in a play?” she asks.
“Because you’re usually out with the deacon. I didn’t want to be a bother,” I say.
“Do you know what bothers me?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Me?” I ask.
“When you don’t tell me about something like this play. That bothers me. You disliking the deacon for no reason. That bothers me. Why don’t you like him, Ok?”
“I told you. He tries too hard,” I say.
“That’s because he wants you to like him. He wants you to see him as a father someday. He’s a good man. He’s a smart man. He’s a true man of God,” she says.
“He’s a thief,” I say.
My mother looks at me, tilts her head, and demands, “What?”
“He’s a thief.”
She fists her right hand and knuckles the side of my head, saying, “What kind of human being are you? How dare you make up accusations! You liar!”
“He steals money from the offering plate at church,” I announce, covering my head.
“Be quiet! Be quiet before I sew your mouth shut,” she says.
“No. I saw him take the money,” I say.
“You saw wrong,” she says.
“I didn’t see wrong. I know what I saw. He took money out of the offering plate and put it in his pocket,” I say.
“You’re making this up,” she says.
“I’m not making this up. Why would I—”
“You never liked him. You never gave him a chance. Well, he’s not going away. He’s good for us. He’s helpful. We need him,” she says.
“I don’t need him,” I say.
“I do,” she says.
“No, you don’t. You just need money. I have money. See?” I say, pulling out Asa’s ten dollar bills from my jacket pocket.
She looks down at the crumpled cash. She looks at me.
“Here. Take it,” I say, offering the money to her.
“This isn’t enough. What’s ten dollars going to bring us? A box of ramen? A sack of rice? A bottle of lotion? It’s not enough. It will never be enough,” she says, shaking her head. She walks into her bedroom, letting out a sad chuckle and mumbling something under her breath about a silly, ridiculous boy.
forty-two
My mother and the d-CON talk on the phone. I press my ear against the wall, trying to catch the conversation. She whispers. She giggles. She whines like a child. I can’t make out words, but judging from her unchallenging tone, I conclude she isn’t going to ask about his thieving ways. I go back to bed and wait her out. She’s on the phone for over an hour. Finally she hangs up, goes to the bathroom, and looks in on me. I close my eyes, pretending to sleep. She goes back to her room and shuts her door. I let an hour pass. Then I let another hour pass, making sure she’s asleep.
At a quarter after two I get dressed. I layer on as many
clothes as I possibly can without thickening my limbs so much that I can’t move. I stuff my backpack with a flashlight, a bottle of ketchup, hot dogs, peanut butter, a jar of kimchi, all the Halloween candy I saved, and a loaf of Sunbeam bread. The girl on the bag, smiling at me while biting into a buttered slice, looks like Mickey from one of her pageant pictures long, long ago. I hope she beamed this much happiness when she saw her father. I leave my mother a note.
To ,
I am safe.
I have a house.
I have food.
Do not worry.
From
forty-three
I walk to the Shelter 365. It’s quiet out. I’ve never been up this late. The air is fresh. The crescent of a moon smiles in the sky. The stars twinkle. I can taste the freedom and independence awaiting in the promised land of Nobody Bother Me.
I walk. I whistle. A tune we were forced to learn in music class automatically comes out of me. “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Mr. Bernardo made us learn that song by heart and sing it over and over again until he was certain we were singing with feeling and conviction. The song makes me wonder if I’ve ever heard the sweet silver song of a lark. Probably not, because the only birds around here are crows, and their singing sounds more like screams of panic and fear. I’m starving. I’m freezing. I’m alone. I’m scared. There on the hill stands my father’s dream house. It looks more like a nightmare. Are those vultures I see perched on the roof ? Are they crows? Or could they be larks?
forty-four
I crawl into the Shelter 365 and sleep. When morning comes, the light wakes me. It’s freezing. I stay under the blankets, trying to go back to sleep because I’m not as cold when I’m asleep, and I’m in the middle of dreaming that Mickey is hugging me and crying black tears, and Asa, dressed in his tuxedo, is dancing onstage with a constellation of dollar bills and words orbiting around him, and the girls in the audience cheer him on, their hair done in French braids, and I dream that the d-CON, having swallowed thousands of silver dollars, suffers a terrible stomachache that renders him forever curled into a fetal position, unable to move, while my mother is speeding, driving my father’s green Cougar through a desert under an orange-and-red sky in search of her son, and my father is standing on the roof of his dream house and looking down upon all creation, wearing a cowboy hat on his head and a tool belt around his waist and squeezing a hammer in his hand. He smokes, inhaling from a cigarette, its tip glowing as it burns down to ashes.
I wake up. I light a candle and warm my hands by the flame. I try to roast a hot dog, but it takes too long, so I eat it cold. I open the tent and peek out. The coast is clear. I run out. While I do a number one, I hear shuffling in the bushes. It’s a squirrel. It darts up a tree. I hurry back to the tent.
I tidy up inside. I do twenty-five push-ups and twenty-five sit-ups. The ceiling of the tent is spotted with sunlight that peeps through a tangle of branches outside. I wonder if anyone out there stopped to take a head count and noticed one was missing. Were the police called? Is the church praying for God to watch over the prodigal son, wherever he may be? Is Mickey running up and down the creek, calling for me, my name echoing through the tunnel? Does Asa dare to step into a library to look for me? I start to read a book. I take a nap. I eat a Milky Way bar. I eat a can of tuna. I have to go number two.
About ten feet away from my tent, I dig a hole behind a shrub. As I squat to go, I hear a cat meow. It walks near my hidden tent. It must smell the tuna. I pick up a stick and throw it. The cat looks my way, meows, and steps into the shrubbery. I throw another stick. The cat walks into my tent. I hurry. When I crawl back and look inside, the cat is licking the tuna can. It looks at me as if I’m the intruder. It has one eye. I know this cat. I saw it near the Dumpster that day I stole the lotion. I was running home, afraid of being caught. Seems like forever ago. I grab the tuna can. The cat meows.
“Hey, Cyclops, you want this?” I say, and lure it out of the tent. I place the can on the ground near a tree, and the cat follows me. As I watch it lick the oil, I stroke its back, wondering what Mickey’s cats are up to.
forty-five
That night I run my trash across the backyard of my father’s dream house and toss it through a broken basement window. Racing back, I feel like someone is chasing me. Maybe the man who hanged himself in the basement. I hear heavy breathing that isn’t mine, footsteps that aren’t mine, grinding teeth, and a voice that hisses, “Ready or not, here I come.” I point the flashlight over my shoulder and look behind me. No one. Nothing. I dash back into the Shelter 365, turn off the flashlight, hide under the blankets, and chant “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” until I fall asleep.
forty-six
I fight to stay awake in the afternoon. I didn’t sleep much last night. It was too cold. Even with layers of clothes and a pile of blankets, I was freezing. I was shivering so much I started making plans for moving everything into that creepy house and making my father’s dream of living there come true. Maybe I can set up the tent in the basement with all those dangling corpses.
The sun warms my face. I close my eyes. I can’t let myself fall asleep right now, because falling asleep during the day means a night of being up, scared stiff and frozen under the blankets because of strange noises that sound like the swish of guillotines, heads rolling down stairs, ceilings creaking from the weight of hanged bodies, the gurgling of my mother drowning in kimchi, the thud of my father’s body hitting the ground.
I yawn. My eyes become heavy with sleep. This is about the same time I would come home from school, eat something, turn on the TV, and fall asleep on our old couch, which has broken springs, cushions spotted with cigarette burns, and the smell of home.
I sit up and slap my face, telling myself to wake up. I throw off the blankets, unzip the tent, and crawl outside. The air is cold and sharp. I do jumping jacks to get my blood flowing. I do push-ups. I run in circles. I kick a tree. My heart races. I look across the field and see my father’s dream house. It doesn’t look so spooky during the day. It’s just an old house. It just needs someone to live in it, take care of it, and turn it into a home. It’s certainly well insulated with those overgrown shrubs. There’s a chimney, too, which means it’s got a fireplace. I am badly in need of a fire to keep warm. And roast my hot dogs. Dogs are not meant to be eaten cold; that’s why they’re called hot dogs. Light for reading. Conversations with the crackling flames. Hello there, Snap-Crackle-Pop. Haven’t we met before? My name is Ok. Nice to see you.
I pocket my flashlight and scan the field for any danger. I’m moving into my father’s dream house. The yard is clear. I drop to my stomach. I low-crawl toward the house like a soldier across a battlefield, dodging bombs and bullets.
I hurry across the cold ground, the steam of my breath leading the way. I push through the shrubs, reach the house, and shine my flashlight into the basement window. There’s my bag of trash I tossed in last night. Cobwebs dangle from the ceiling beams. Rusty shelves stand along the far wall. On the bottom shelf there’s a wooden crate perfectly sized to hold a colony of spiders or a dead baby or a creepy doll with eyes that open as it rises out of its coffin with knitting needles in its plastic hand, saying, “Who’s here? I smell you.”
I’ve developed some serious BO being out here on my own with no soap and running water. I’m not even sweating that much, since I’m freezing my butt off, but I stink. My breath is some kind of rotten too. Maybe my reek will scare off the ghosts. I move the light to another corner. I see stairs. No pale-skinned twins wearing white lace dresses sitting on the steps playing cat’s cradle and saying, “Hello, we’ve been expecting you.” None of that nonsense. The stairs lead up to the main part of the house. My heart beats fast. I’m scared. I’m excited. Feet first, I slip in through the window.
It’s quiet inside. I shine my flashlight into the corners of the basement. I smell tuna fish from the can I threw away. No corpses dangle from the ceiling. No blood drips down the walls. No skeletal hands emerge from the
concrete floor, grabbing for my ankles. This place is huge.
I slowly walk over to the metal shelves. They don’t mysteriously shake on their own, knock me down, and pin me to the floor. I look back at the window I came through. There are no clowns pressing their faces against the glass, leering at me. I peek inside the wooden crate. There are no bats fluttering out to bite my neck and suck my blood. Exactly what I suspected: empty. Nothing to be afraid of.
I breathe in the musty cold air, feeling dizzy and nauseous, wondering how in the world I ended up here, but there’s no turning back. I move toward the stairs that lead to the main floor of the house. I stand at the bottom of the steps, shining the flashlight at the door, which is shut and covered in gashes that remind me of scars. It’s freezing cold in here, but I’m sweating. I stare at the glass doorknob. Please don’t turn. My knees shake. I hold the railing and test the first step, making sure it can hold my weight. I take the second step. The wood creaks. I take the third step. Then I hear scratching. My flashlight falls out of my numb hand, rolling down the stairs and across the concrete floor. It stops at the drain hole, casting shadows on the stained walls. I’m frozen. The scratching continues. It comes from the other side of the door. Slow and steady strokes. It sounds like sharp human fingernails against wood. The scratching grows faster, louder, and deeper. The door trembles. Too scared for fight or flight, I freeze. I’m paralyzed on the third step. I can’t move. I shut my eyes and whisper, “Help.”
I’m dead. That door’s going to bust open, and a witch with nails as long as flagpoles is going to jump out at me and rip my heart out because she needs it for her chili recipe. Finally the door stops shaking. It’s quiet. The scratching has stopped too. I hear a distant voice. It sounds like a girl. It’s high pitched and whiny. It’s saying, “Me oww.” Maybe she’s hurt. Maybe she needs help. Me oww. Meow. It’s a cat.