by Noley Reid
Last night Dawn said she wasn’t going to wear her sweater so I don’t have mine, but she is wearing it. She sneaks about everything now. Pizza Inn is stupid. And she never, never said she was doing another date. I sat in the grass and weeds opposite her house today. I shut my eyes and pictured her fingers running through the scales I could hear. She did the same two over and over so much it was almost like its own song. Then Andy came riding down her street. He waved at me, then huffed up her driveway. He wasn’t in our plan. Dressing in pajamas and trick-or-treating together, that was our plan. Riding off to Pizza Inn on his handlebars wasn’t our plan.
They are so boring inside that I have to watch the traffic lights change in the metal fenders of Andy’s wheels. Then that’s so boring, I look back through the tinted window. They bought drinks at the counter and have been playing tabletop Centipede by the WAIT TO BE SEATED sign ever since. Andy’s right hand jerks like a lunatic’s over the rolling ball; his left moves so fast over the button it seems not to move at all. Dawn stands behind him, sipping her Pepsi through a straw, and sometimes she leans over the game to see it better. She bounces up and down because he must be good, then goes quiet and touches his shoulder.
It’s her turn. Finally. I tiptoe the bike a few inches closer because the sun has moved since the last time she got to play. She sits down and her hand floats over the ball, delicate like a bee that can’t decide what flower it wants to land on. Her button hand is fast. Andy gulps his drink and sets it down on the glass top. He leans over Dawn to watch the snaking centipede come at her, bracing himself with one arm, his big stupid hand all spread out on the edges of the screen. But now he jumps around like he’s Andy to the rescue, and slips his hand overtop her button hand to shoot even faster. The colors are in their faces: yellow, blue, and green. He shifts side to side depending on whether she is doing well or not. The whole time, Dawn’s mouth makes the letter O, her lips full and open like she is waiting for something.
28
Tate
“Are you okay, baby?” I call out before I can even see Enid from the basement steps.
“Shh,” says Holly. She shuts her eyes and nods toward Enid.
I pass through the waiting piles of laundry, pretending they do not exist. I get to the hide-a-bed. “You are too good,” I tell her quietly. “A saint.”
Holly smiles but lets it go fast. “Are you okay?” she says.
I wave her off. “I know this has been awful. How can I make it up to you?”
“It’s fine. She’s lovely.”
“Truly,” I say. “Babysitting, nursing? How much do I owe for your services?”
She lowers her jaw. “That isn’t funny, Tate.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t mean anything.”
“Is she here?” Holly whispers.
“No,” I say.
I kneel down where I can look at my girl, at Enid. I touch her hand and sit back on my feet. “I’m so sorry, Holly. Today has been . . . There are no words for today.”
I shake my head and look at beautiful Enid’s big, rose-flushed cheeks. Her blue jeans, always so long her toes just barely peek out, and the nails smudged and smeared in pink polish.
“Watch out your skirt doesn’t get any of that on it.” I nod to a bit of blood dried between Enid’s toes.
Holly shrugs and smiles.
And all around Enid’s face—at her hairline, her temples, and high on her cheeks—wet clumps, just a few hairs in each, have stuck in the sheen that covers her entire body. I touch one of the snaking loops, slip a finger beneath where the wisps sprout from her head, and slide beneath it, lifting as I go. Two or three or four more strands remain. I rub a circle into them and when I see my finger moving this way, I remember Francie holding Shell in the night.
“She looks like sunken wreckage on the ocean floor,” I say. “Greek statue or something. Both of you, together.”
Holly looks at me and at Enid. “Hmm?”
“The way she’s sprawled. With her hand up.” I nod at the wrapped hand. “And you just so . . .”
Holly smirks.
“Her hand,” I say, “it’s bad?”
“It’s not so bad, not so good,” Holly says. “She could need stitches. Has she had a tetanus shot?”
“I’m sure she has. Is that one kids always get? She’s had all of those, I’m sure.”
“Rabies?”
“What?”
“She said it was the dogs.”
“Our dogs?”
“Well,” says Holly, “the big white dog I’ve seen in your office picture, that’s Floey, right? She was saving Floey.”
“Floey wouldn’t bite my daughter.”
“The neighbor dog was there. The dogs had something, a pan or something, she said, and they didn’t want him to have it? I don’t know; that’s what I got out of her.”
“Basey,” I say.
“Hmm?”
“The neighbor dog. So it’s not enough that he impregnates our dog, but now he’s viciously attacked Enid?”
“It’s not vicious. It’s just a little flap of skin here.” She points to the side of her own hand near the thumb.
“At least his shots are up-to-date.”
“How do you know?”
“I went over there once she gave birth. Pretty obvious signs of a beagle.”
“Well, that’s good.”
I set a hand on Enid’s cheek. Beneath her eyelids flicker dreams. “Should we wake her?”
“At some point, probably.” Holly looks at Enid’s face. “I kind of think she needs the rest more right now. I bet she’ll tell you what she needs.”
“What, like stitches?”
“No . . . no. I mean she’ll either be in so much pain she’s screaming and you’ll know to get her to a doctor, or she’ll just kind of say it hurts and you’ll give her baby Bayer.”
I nod.
“You look like you’ve shaved three years off your life today.”
“That good, huh?”
She blushes and looks down at Enid’s face. “I think I was asleep until I heard footsteps,” she says. “I’m glad they were yours.”
I want to ask her, will you stay just like this? But Francie must come home soon.
29
Enid
I wake to the smell of the porch when it rains. I’m still on the basement hide-a-bed but Holly is gone and Vivvy is home. She is poking me, shaking me, feels like she’s wrapping me up in something, who knows what else she’s done?
“What?” I say, wiping spit off the side of my mouth, back and forth on the cushion.
“Sick,” she says.
“When did you get here?” I say.
“I’ve been here. You were out cold.”
I try to sit up but Vivvy pushes me back down.
I roll back down, stop myself from falling, and sit upright. “I don’t feel so good,” I say.
“I know just the thing.” When she returns, she has the Kahlúa.
“Oh no,” I say.
“Just a wee little bitty.” Vivvy holds her fingers up in a microscopic measurement. She unscrews the cap and hands the bottle to me.
I take it but can’t hold it double-handed so I slosh a bit. Just one sip. When I look down I’m stuffed like lumpy sausage into Ma’s royal-blue tennis dress. “Oh my god, Vivvy!”
And so is she, except hers hangs off with inches to spare and it’s yellow. The shoulders are so wide, they flop and one side hangs way over down onto Vivvy’s elbow. Every few seconds she pulls it back up. Now she’s bent over one of Ma’s special boxes we are never to touch. It’s pulled out from under the TV counter and the flaps are wide open.
“Oh my god, there’s everything in here!” she says.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing, dummy?” She pulls out a pretty scarf that’s dark blue with little red flowers all over it. Vivvy holds it end to end and folds a triangle. She bends over again—so does her dress, and no, she
is not wearing a bra—with all her hair fluffed and hanging down, then sweeps it up in a bouffy bun she wraps the scarf around to hold in place. I go to the box to look for something that will work for me.
Vivvy goes into the laundry room and when she comes back she holds up two clothespins. “Hold still,” she tells me.
“No, please, Vivvy.” I cross my arms but can feel a pinch of my fatty skin on both sides of my chest as if she’s already fastened the clips to me.
She pushes down on my shoulder until I’m kneeling and my knees feel like big yellow bruises. “Sit down,” she says.
I jiggle my right hand to shake the throb right out of it. I could run upstairs. I could find Daddy or Floey.
“Just hold still.” Vivvy places one pin between her lips just like Ma always does with a comb or ponytail holder when she fixes our hair.
I hold still.
Vivvy rakes her fingers through my hair, starting in my bangs and pulling all the way back. When she hits a tangle, she yanks right through it. She sections off a handful and snaps the pin’s clamp right around the hair. She reopens the clothespin and clips it into place along the side of my head. I can’t see it but it feels smooth.
“Is it good, Vivvy?” I say. “Is it pretty and smooth?” I put my good hand on it and try to touch every part of it without messing it up. “Should we be doing this?” I whisper.
Vivvy looks at me and laughs. Then she leans into my ear and yells, “Of course not!”
I jump back, rub at my ear. In the white wrapping over my hand, a faint pinkness has begun to show through.
“Oopsy,” she says. “Should have had these in.” She hands me cotton balls from the box. We stuff them in our ears like we’ve seen Ma do when she gets one of her headaches and everything we do is forty times too loud.
Vivvy picks up the Kahlúa and sips from it. She puts one hand on her hip and makes the other one flop around in the air while she yells, “Girls, girls! Could you please just hold still and please, oh please, not say another word, please!”
“Eh?” I say, cupping my ear. “I can’t hear you. I’ve got the cotton in my head. Did you say something?”
Vivvy repeats Ma’s line and we die laughing.
Now I try. Hand on waist, gauze hand swinging around at Vivvy, I say, “And do you think it possible, at all, for you two to make no sound at all?”
“And maybe, too,” says Vivvy, “you could be a couple of dears and stop breathing? Do you think? Hmm? Hmm? A couple of dears?”
“Might you be a pair of pumpkins,” I say, and Vivvy falls sideways on the sofa, banging her head on the far, chewed-up armrest, “and live down the street where I can’t hear you?”
“Or smell you.”
“Stop it,” I say, “I’ll pee.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
I can’t help laughing so she keeps going: “Be a couple of platypuses—”
“Be a pair of orangutans,” I say.
“Be two dolphins.”
“Be seventy-two field mouses.”
“Field mice,” says Vivvy.
“Field mices.”
“Be a penguin. Be one tiny hummingbird.”
“Be half a person,” I say.
“Quarter person.”
“A third—”
“One-nineteenth of a person,” she says.
“Be someone else,” I say.
“Yeah, someone else.”
We collapse, panting and staring, at either end of the hide-a-bed. We look at the box and the dresses, frilly tennis underpants and padded sun visors strewn about the room, in colors like ice cream scoops and other families’ cereal.
“What is that?” she says, pointing to my right hand.
“Nothing,” I say.
Vivvy takes the cotton out of her ears. She tosses it on the floor. “I know!” she says, like she’s had the best idea ever. Now she’s up and fiddling with the TV. She yanks on the knob, turning on the set. It makes the zap noise that shocks her full of electricity. She likes that.
“That’s it, that’s it!” I say. “Oh, but it’s not Sunday. Alice isn’t on.”
She’s done and backs away just a little—way too little as far as Ma would say but what do I care about that? I mouth the station number, seven, seven, seven, and the first image we see is big-headed Ernest and one of his pickup trucks. He does his thing with the teeth and says what he says: “It’s the epi-tome of excellence. Knowhutimean?” He’s funny but Vivvy thinks he’s stupid.
She turns around to look at me to be sure I’m not laughing.
“What?” I say it right to her.
“Nothing.” She turns her head back to the TV.
I pinch the cotton out of my ears, too, now. I stand up to get hers and throw them in the laundry trash because Ma, but I think of touching them and it’s disgusting, like licking a used Q-tip almost. I don’t have to do it—I don’t have to do anything, so I plop back onto the sofa.
“But turn it down,” I whisper.
She drops to the floor, as close to the TV shelf as she can get, and leans back on her palms because that’s how you have to do it if you want to see the set from there.
She looks over her shoulder at me. “Well come here,” she says.
I do.
She rubs her hands together, saying, “Now let’s watch TV!” like it’s the greatest secret plot ever.
Francie
Darkness falls through the trees and out across the length of me. I won’t go into the house tonight but sleep here with him.
Vivvy
It’s six o’clock. We can go out soon. Probably after two more episodes. We dig through more boxes and hit gold: all the fancy shoes Mom used to wear. I peel off my socks and throw them at Enid. She ducks the first but the second ricochets off her head.
She puts her left hand where it hit and feels around all over her clothespin hairdo. “Did you mess it up?”
“No.”
“Everything’s still smooth?”
“Here,” I tell her, handing over a pair of silver high-heeled sandals.
Enid unfastens the buckles to widen them. Her fat foot jams into the front band of the shoe but her heel doesn’t come close to being far enough back for the ankle strap. She looks at me now. “What will you wear?” Enid keeps rummaging in Mom’s junk. “Oh, look!” she says, pulling out a shoe box marked Yellow Patent. “They go with your dress.”
I open the box and the shoes are awesome and there is no way they are Mom’s. They are yellow patent leather with tall skinny heels. I stand them on the carpet and get myself up, tugging up the top of my dress as I do. I step into one shoe and I’m no longer a midget. I step into the other shoe. I have to hold my arms out like a tightrope walker but I manage to stay up.
“Oh my god,” says Enid. “You’re almost as tall as you should be now!” She stands up, too, but her shoes have lower heels and she is wearing them like slippers, the backs of her feet squashing the ankle straps beneath them. She takes a step and another. We both do but Enid’s have thick and low heels so I wind up grabbing for her just before falling. I take us both down into a pile of dirty clothes.
“Grody,” I say.
Enid copies me now, saying, “Grody,” too.
“Grody to the max.”
Enid’s feet are nearly up my nose and in between her toes are dried-on drizzles of blood. She swings her legs around the other way and we get ourselves back up and take a few more steps before toppling over again and again. Eventually, though, we can’t get ourselves back up. We collapse in front of the TV, our legs stretched and splayed out in front of us.
“It’s a marathon.”
“How many?” she says.
“I guess until the Charlie Brown.” I start up with our invisible microphone now, singing the theme song, “Early to rise . . .” now hold it in front of Enid.
She sings into it, too: “Early to bed.” She leans back over to me and we do that, we swerve over onto whoever is singing. Back and fort
h we go. First me then Enid, me then her, until the chorus when we smash our sides together, our faces, too, and belt it out.
Now there is just my voice holding the last note. Enid is sobbing uncontrollably—like if a person can die from crying, bang: she’s dead.
I stare at her, like come on, lady; get it together.
I pat her shoulder twice and say, “It’s okay.”
I crawl over to the bottle of Kahlúa, bring it back, and give Enid first offer. She shakes her head, wiping down her face one-handed, dragging more of the long pieces of her hair into the gooey mess of her cheeks and chin. I take a sip but keep the rim suctioned to my mouth, keep the liquid’s burn against my lips until the suction breaks and a gulp’s worth pours down the front of Mom’s dress, dark and sticky.
I set down the bottle. “Oopsy,” I say, holding the fabric out to show Enid.
She squints through gluey, gloppy eyelashes. “You’re gonna get it,” she says. Her cheeks fatten bigger with a smile, but on them old snot and tears that must have dried there who knows how many hours and layers ago have left these shiny slug trails running up and down and cracking open beneath the wet the more she smiles.
She holds on to her knees now and presses her face in deep.
I slip an arm around Enid and lean my head against hers. “You’re okay,” I whisper. “It will be all right.”
Tate
I drop Holly at work for a late second shift, drive out to Peoples Drug and slip inside a minute or two before the manager spins the lock.
I nod to let him know I understand the protocol. “Apologies,” I say. “I’ll be quick.”
“The pharmacy is shut,” he says.
“That’s not what I’m after. Where is your Halloween merchandise?”
He steps aside. Everything left is heaped on a table near the checkout. Black-and-orange half-price signs adorn the edges of the tabletop.