by T. Greenwood
I do not open the doors anymore. This disrupts the dream, turns the bare bulb light off and on. Off and on, rendering them the same. Ma’s hands no different than Lily’s. Their hair flowing together in one stream. No tributaries, only this one continuous river. I do not open doors anymore. I don’t need to, because there are cracks in the woodwork of this old house. I have traced their paths with my fingers, written maps, and imagined labyrinths. I am the cartographer of these slivers. And now, I find the largest one, the most dangerous one, and look inside.
At first there is only the orange paper daisies. Yellow sink and tub and floor. But soon my eyes register their bodies. Lily curled on the floor, holding her stomach. Ma kneeling next to her, touching her hair. You’ll feel better soon, honey. Be a good girl and let me give you your medicine. All the best girls let their mommies take care of them. Are you my best girl? And then I turn away from the sliver, and press my ear against the cool wood. I hear the crackle of paper, it could be candy wrapper plastic, a Crackerjack prize inside. But when I look again, I can see through the sliver that it is a needle. I know this ritual of vaccination. The bruised arms raised against mumps and tuberculosis and tetanus. But Ma is not a doctor. Not even a real nurse. And the orange daisy room is not the clinic, where even the ceilings are blue. Lily knows now not to cry. And unlike me, she’s not even afraid anymore of the needle, hovering in Ma’s hand like a hummingbird. She doesn’t even tremble until later, after Ma has gone back to sleep.
She doesn’t cry until later, when the sun moves through my curtains like hot fingers. She doesn’t make a sound on the other side of my wall until the morning birds beat their wings and release their voices in the trees. She doesn’t scream until all of the sounds of morning (Benny singing, coffee brewing, Ma and Daddy arguing) have reached their crescendo. Until after the poison Ma put in her starts to make her bleed.
November 8, 1999. Mountainview, Arizona. Indie Brown is grappling with new evidence in the case against her mother, Judy Brown, also of Mountainview. Reportedly a number of telling items were discovered yesterday in the cellar of their Mountainview home. The items were recovered by an environmental consultant who was testing the house for radon. No radon was detected. Instead he found a twenty-year-old box hidden in the cellar like so many cobwebs or lost toys. This new evidence may or may not support Miss Brown’s suspicions that her mother and sister, Lily Hughes of Phoenix, are in fact withholding evidence of unspeakable crimes. Further, X rays of the walls of the home indicate the presence of something transparent and neglected. It is unclear the nature of this finding, but if you knock gently on the walls, you can hear something rattle. If you press your ear firmly, you can almost hear it breathe.
I went to my mother’s bureau. She had dragged the heavy oak bureau from her bedroom as far as the hallway. It wasn’t even pushed flush with the wall; she must have gotten tired and just left it there. I searched through her drawers frantically, looking for whatever it might be that would help me make the phone call to Phoenix. Something that would help me ask Ma the questions for which I already knew her answers. Did you hurt Lily? Did you make it all up? But there was nothing revealing inside her bureau drawers. I unfolded every T-shirt. Unrolled every pair of stockings and socks. I walked down the hallway to the bathroom and opened all of the drawers, looking for answers in the blond hairs still wound around hairbrush bristles. Inside the prescription bottles with pills like candy. In the pale blue powder compact, where I saw only a small circle of my own face staring back at me.
I went back outside and stood staring at the remnants of my family’s history. The junkyard of dreams. I walked through the labyrinth of remaining furniture, opening drawers and cupboard doors, looking. And then I began to move the puzzle pieces, rearrange them. Trying to put together our lost history with furniture left out in the rain. I propped the back door open with a metal folding chair and started to drag the furniture back inside. Although according to the thermometer hanging crookedly on a tree near the porch it was only forty degrees, I took off Ma’s sweater and worked in my T-shirt. I turned the heat off in the house and left the front and back doors open. I dragged the bureaus and beds, the vanities and the desk I used to write at when I was a child back into the house. I pushed the old washing machine into the garage and set it next to the new one. I filled the empty rooms one by one with our old things, with the furniture, the wooden skeletons of our lives.
For hours, I struggled to rebuild the bed frames, to remember the layouts of each room. I worked until my hands and back and legs were tired from lifting and repairing broken pieces. My neck was sticky with sweat, and outside the sky was turning pink and orange as I finally dragged an old mattress into Benny’s room and positioned it on the metal frame. My heart thudded dully in my temples and chest as I lay down. The precarious bed creaked and sagged with the weight of my body. But I wasn’t afraid of it collapsing. I wasn’t worried that the pieces might all fall apart again. Because for now, everything was intact.
Outside, the sunset faded into the royal blue of night. Through Benny’s window, the back porch light glowed strangely on the backyard. I couldn’t see them, but I knew that all the sunflowers were dying. The snow had frozen them at first in hard yellow smiles, but now they were curling into themselves, folding over, genuflecting. When I blinked and opened my eyes, I half expected that the landscape through this window might change. But the desolate yard, now empty of furniture, remained the same.
I stared at the ceiling until the room was completely dark. Until I could count the forgotten glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck there, holding the afternoon sun. Benny didn’t understand the night sky, the rules of the planets or the order of constellations. In Benny’s sky, the sun revolved around the moon, and the stars spelled out the letters of his name.
Exhausted, I fell into a sleep so deep it was undisturbed by dreams.
In the morning, I opened up the front door for some fresh air and turned the heat up to eighty degrees to combat the cold. I could hear the furnace struggling to warm the house. I was also starving, feeling as though I might faint if I didn’t eat right away. The syringes lay spilled across the kitchen table like the contents of a piñata.
A cat wandered into the kitchen while I was making macaroni and cheese and would not leave.
“Scoot,” I said. “Whose are you anyway?”
The cat was black and white, a crooked black mustache underneath her small pink nose. I put her outside, closed the door, and tried to forget about her as I stirred the orange powder and milk and margarine into the pot of hot pasta. But she stood outside the front door, crying, begging to come in.
“Fine,” I said. “But I don’t have anything to give you, you know.”
She peered up at me and her tail made figure eights. Her mouth opened and she cried. I could see her ribs through her fur. I could also see that her breasts were pink and full. She had kittens somewhere.
“Damn it,” I said and opened the cupboard to look for something to feed her. I found a can of tuna, and though I knew this probably wasn’t good for her, I drained the oil out of the can and used a fork to flake half of the tuna into a bowl.
“There. Are you happy now?”
She ate the tuna and then asked for more. I gave in, and soon she had cleaned her paws and curled up on the couch as if this were her home. I thought about Jessica, hunting in the woods behind the cabin at home, disappearing for days at a time and coming home with dead birds and moles for us as souvenirs. She didn’t like to spend time with Peter and me unless it was on her terms. She rarely purred, making it seem that we were privy to a special moment on those rare occasions when her body would shudder and rumble under our cautious fingers. But this funny black-and-white cat began purring even before I touched her stomach, which she rolled over and exposed like a gift.
“You like it here?” I asked. “I suppose you’ve moved right in?”
She purred loudly and I sat next to her with a fork and my saucepan of macaroni and c
heese. I ate until the pan was empty save for the thick orange sauce on the sides. Peter would kill me if he knew that I was eating this way. His breakfasts were always made of something warm and healthy. Homemade oatmeal with plump raisins and slivers of apples we picked in the neighbors’ orchards. Buckwheat pancakes like sponges filled with warm maple syrup. Peter took time and care with making meals. He took the greatest pleasure in all the small details. Chuck Moony called him Martha Stewart, but Peter didn’t seem to mind. He always made sure there were pinecones in wooden bowls around the house. That the Thanksgiving turkey was one he had first picked out and then shot with his own rifle. Each log that made the walls of our house was carefully inspected for character and flaws. Each photo and picture thoughtfully chosen before hung. I missed him. But I couldn’t bring myself to call him. That would mean explaining things.
The cat purred and stretched so that I would continue petting her.
“Where are your babies?” I asked.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her face with her paw.
“Where did you leave them?” I asked.
But she only lay there, waiting for more affection.
“Fine, I’m going to go take a look around. I’ll let you know when I find them. Okay?”
I walked outside, shivering in the cold morning air. I looked under the back porch and then wandered over to the old shed where Daddy used to keep the lawn mower and his tools. It was the slightly open door that told me where to look, and sure enough, behind the rusty lawn chairs and boxes of old magazines, I found a pile of kittens, squirming and crying. I reached down to touch them, and could feel the warmth of their bodies before my fingers even reached their fur. There were five of them. A pretty big litter. They were mostly black and white, but there was one gray one. Something inside ached. While the others leaned into my fingers, searching with closed eyes for milk, the gray one was still. I touched its small chest and pushed gently. And then tears began to run down my face in surprisingly hot streams. My skin was cold, cold, but my tears seared into my cheeks like small bolts of fire.
I turned around and the cat was standing in the shed doorway, staring at me.
“Get in there, won’t you?” I screamed at the cat. The kittens kept crying. “Jesus Christ.”
I picked up the dead kitten and held it under her nose. “What were you thinking? What on earth were you thinking leaving them here?” I felt my whole body rocking, my shoulders rising and falling as I sobbed.
I grabbed a spade from a shelf in the shed and carried the kitten in my palm to the back yard. I laid its body down and started to dig a hole. But the ground was reluctant to yield, even to the sharp spade. I stabbed at the ground and flicked the cold clay-filled soil until there was space enough to put its body inside. Afterward, I filled the hole and wiped my tears with the sleeve of Ma’s sweater. I looked toward the mountains, which were covered with snow.
“Rich,” I whispered into the receiver that night.
“Indie!” he said loudly. This meant that Ma and Lily were close. I hadn’t realized until now that we had been conspiring. I could hear Ma’s voice in the background, cooing at Violet. Lily was asking Ma to clip some fresh basil.
My hands were sweaty on the receiver.
“Rich, I’m worried about Violet,” I said.
“She’s doing okay. Your Ma’s doing well too. She and Lily are making lasagna. Judy even went to the gourmet Italian place for their homemade sausages. The spicy kind.”
“Rich, you need to talk to the doctors. And you need to watch Violet.” I stared at the pile of needles on the table in front of me.
“Here, let me take you in the other room. I’m getting some static.”
I imagined him stepping away from the kitchen into the hallway. Maybe walking past the living room and sitting down on the bottom steps. I could almost see him resting his elbows on his knees, his chest falling in a sigh.
“I’m going to take Violet away,” Rich said softly.
“What?”
“I don’t mean to put you in the middle of this, but I’m afraid that if I don’t say something to someone that they’ll think I’m the crazy one.” His voice was shaking, wavering as if balancing on a tightwire.
“Rich, what did the doctors say?” I asked, my heart dipping and rising again.
“They’re getting ready to call Child Protective Services. They have suspicions that Lily made her stop breathing. That she smothered her, for God’s sake. Did you know this wasn’t the first time that she’s supposedly stopped breathing? They’re saying that Lily’s called five times.” He sighed. “Five times, Indie. While I was at work. While I was back East this summer. She never even told me.”
Sweat broke out across my forehead.
“But there’s no way to prove it. Someone would actually have to catch her. But they’re certain. They say they’ve seen it before. Some fucking syndrome. Munchausen something or other. By proxy, I think. It’s like a goddamn talk show. They showed me profiles, they had books on it.”
“Maybe they’re wrong,” I said. I felt guilty, caught. As if this were my lie. As if there were something precious to protect. I’d seen plenty of talk shows, weekday afternoons after I’d lost my job. I’d seen the jerky black-and-white surveillance videos of women smothering their children, putting poison in their IVs. I’d also watched the outraged women with pink sweaters and wet-mascara eyes who’d been accused. Who’d been blamed. The ones whose children had been really ill. The ones whose children sometimes died. I put my hands on my knees, hiding old scars. “She could really be sick. What would happen then?”
“And all of those ridiculous tests came up negative. She has asthma. That’s it.”
I leaned my head down on the table, let my cheek press against the hard cool tabletop.
“Lily has no idea that I’ve been to the hospital. Indie, I feel like I’m out of my mind.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to leave. With Violet. I have to.”
I could hear Lily’s voice in the room with him. Did the tests come back on the house yet?
My throat was thick. “Tell her I’m still waiting. That I should know in a couple of days,” I said.
She’ll know in a couple of days, he said.
“When?” I asked.
“Soon,” he said and then louder. “Dinner will be ready soon. I’d better go. I’ll give Ma and Lily your love.”
I stared out the kitchen window after the phone went dead in my hands. I closed my eyes and stared through the other window I had etched there for this very purpose. Here was a landscape distorted by the plastic walls of an oxygen tent. Distorted by words and gestures, by bodies and voices confused. Lily’s hands, like Ma’s hands, making circles on Violet’s stomach. Lily’s voice like Ma’s voice whispering secrets into Violet’s small ears. And Lily’s breath, like Ma’s breath, bringing Violet back again and again.
JUNE 1, 1964. Los Angeles, California. A blue room. A mobile of impossible butterfly wings. I wasn’t born yet when Benny stopped breathing. He got tangled up in his blanket, and he was blue. Ma said it took her almost twenty minutes to get him breathing again. That if she hadn’t been trained in CPR, he was sure to have died. That she breathed her own life into him, and that it was her breath that brought him back. Benny would have died. But she breathed her own life into him. She breathed her own life. In this story, in every story, she’s always the hero.
I used to believe that the lightning chose me. That it sought me out. That its touch was not an accident at all, but something devised by the sky. Maybe this made the reality of my mother disappearing into the Foodmart less painful. Maybe it helped to blur the sharp edges of the picture of her in her polka-dot dress with Lily on her hip. Maybe it just helped explain something I didn’t have words for then, and still don’t now. This I know: It allowed me to forgive the sky, when I couldn’t forgive my mother.
Sometimes, I still imagine that it was not an accident at all. That ha
d my mother taken the time to roll the shopping cart back into the store with her instead of walking away, her white pumps clicking against the pavement, then I might not have been privy to the same truths. And if the monsoons had already passed and I had simply sat there until she returned, bringing me a coloring book or a candy bar, then I might not have known how to be careful in our house. Sometimes I think that the lightning was a gift. That the light’s invisible hands offered me the cold heat of understanding. Every now and then, I make an offering to the sky, express my gratitude with arms outstretched under rain or snow or sun.
Here I am at nineteen: far away from home. July in the mountains. The Birches Hotel looks like a paper cutout castle in the misty afternoon. I imagine that when the rain comes, it will dissolve into the clear blue lake below. Like paper or sugar or sand. The help is not supposed to go inside the castle, except through the employee entrance in the rear. Not supposed to swim in this water. And certainly not supposed to walk barefoot toward the forbidden golf course, still wearing the uniform that smells of starch. But still, I walk with purpose across the parking lot where someone is carving a swan from a giant block of ice. I walk past the girls’ dormitory where I am living with two other college girls in a room that is smaller than my bedroom in Mountainview. Where there is one phone in the hallway that sometimes goes dead before you are done talking. We really are alone here. All around us are mountains and lakes. The nearest town is almost ten miles away, and none of us have cars.
I take my hair down from its tight ponytail and let it fall down my back. Loose and warm on my bare arms. I step carefully onto the manicured lawn. I am tentative because I fear that the green may be deceiving. It could be soft crushed velvet or emerald shards that would cut the tender bottoms of my feet.