Zuzu began, quietly, in a voice sized for only the both of them to hear. “I love you so much. I love how you are strong and can lift me above your head. I love how you teach me about bugs. I am happy that you are not dead. Lois, did you mean to make a rhyme there?”
Lois shrugged her shoulders to say she wasn’t sure.
“Ok, now you read the rest to me,” said Zuzu.
Lois started in, reading one word at a time. “I like it when you let us dig holes in the ground. And we get to bury our fears inside the holes and cover them up.” Lois put her fingers in her mouth from the embarrassment of hearing her own sentiment aloud in the world, going into other people’s ears. Zuzu pulled Lois’ fingers out of her mouth, and Lois kept reading. “And also, I’m sorry how I touch your calf when you tell me not to because it gives you cramps there.”
“This is so beautiful, Lois. I’m sure he will love it. What do you mean, calf?”
Lois pointed to her leg.
“Oh, calf, yes, ok.”
Lois finished reading the rest of her letter to Zuzu while the other children came in and sat down. Ernesto, Hera, Ernest, and Leda were all in the kitchen now, pouring coffee, saying hello. Strangely, no one asked Zuzu where she had been, only how she was doing. The house was so full and so loud, and this made Zuzu happier than anything. She thought that maybe she could just continue life as it had been, without ever dealing with the repercussions of going unaccounted for. Zuzu settled into her chair, and watched Vera’s bare legs uncross and cross again between the opening in her robe. Vera watched Zuzu watch her.
“I have a job for you this morning,” said Vera.
“What is it?” Zuzu wanted a job. She wanted more than anything to be told exactly what to do by Vera.
“We’re spending the morning outside, you and me. We have to do some of The Shoveler’s outdoor work today. We’ll leave the children to the others.”
“Where is The Shoveler?”
“He is spending the day down at the train. He is needed to help shovel a new path.”
“You mean, the train?” asked Zuzu.
“Yes, I guess XO wants a new wider path for a bigger faster train to the other XO Cities,” said Vera. “It’ll take more things, and bring more things back. Who the hell knows? I told him he doesn’t need to make any more money. I can take care of...”
“This one is going to carry people on it, too,” added Ernest.
“So you won’t have to walk?” asked Zuzu.
“Soon, we’ll never have to walk again,” said Vera.
Once outside, in the shade of a large umbrella, Vera sat carefully on a lounge chair so that her body wouldn’t spill completely out of June’s robe. Before she walked outside, she exchanged her mug of coffee for a can of cold Nun’s Hat. She held an unlit cigarette between her fingers in the same hand that she held her beer.
“We’re filling in this hole. Well, I should say, you’re filling in this hole.” She lit her cigarette, and handed one to Zuzu. Zuzu lit hers and sat down on the edge of a rectangular hole to smoke it. The dirt of the hole, and the pile next to it was fresh. Zuzu dangled her legs into it.
“Is this a grave?”
“Yes. Have you ever seen one before?” Vera moved her robe off of her legs so they could be in the sun.
“No. At least not the inside of one.” Zuzu looked up at Vera for a kind of permission, and Vera granted it with her eyes. Zuzu lowered herself into the grave, and lay on her back in the bottom. A grave was just a bed, she thought. She looked up at the rectangle of sky above her.
“What’s it doing here?” Zuzu asked into the sky.
“It’s your mother’s.”
Zuzu almost coughed on her own cigarette. She sat back up in the grave, confused about how graves work—or, for that matter, how death works. She wondered if her mother had turned invisible upon death, or was buried even further down, her corpse below her. Zuzu stood up in the grave, her head poking out of the ground like a soldier in a bunker.
“My mother’s dead? How, I mean, what...?” The news that Zuzu had always thought would fascinate her, devastated her instead. “Where is she?”
Irene Mire, who was so old that everyone around her had stopped counting her birthdays, and so sick that her eyeballs looked like they were made of rust, crawled through the back door of The Good House on her hands and knees like a pack mule with a broken back toward Zuzu and the grave. Irene had spent most of the morning quietly sliding her body down the stairs from her room, which was upstairs in the infirmary.
Zuzu wanted an answer to her question, but Vera ignored it.
“You look like a lost sheep that’s accidentally escaped from her pen, Irene,” said Vera, kindly, like saying good morning.
“I’m ready to die,” said Irene, pushing her face through the grass.
“Ok, Irene, go to your grave,” said Vera like a dog owner.
“Ok.”
Zuzu lifted herself out of the grave and sat on its lip to make room for Irene.
“Your mother’s not dead,” Vera finally said. “She only spent a few minutes in it, knocked out. The children thought she was dead, so it was a good lesson. They threw a little dirt on her legs, and then again when she woke up. She woke up like a new woman. Her madness died, but not her. She woke up in that grave with a new fear though. She woke up with the knowledge that you, Zuzu, are different from her. She once feared that you’ll go away. But now she just fears that when you go away, you won’t come back. Or if you do, that you won’t come back the same.” Vera took a drag of her cigarette. “She’s scared, Zuzu, that’s all. She’s scared you’re turning into something she doesn’t understand.”
Irene Mire was close enough now to the grave that she reached her arm out for its edge.
Vera continued. “Your mother is waiting for you to come home. I promised her that if you showed up to work today, that I’d send you straight home. She’s waiting for you at home.”
“What do you think I’m becoming?” Zuzu asked.
“A woman. It’s all very normal, you know, for a girl,” said Vera.
Irene gurgled a deep and strange gurgle.
“I don’t feel like a woman. I feel like a different thing,” Zuzu said. “I feel like something nobody has ever felt like. Is that possible? I feel like something that has lost something. But I haven’t lost anything at all. I’m not even sure I’ve ever loved anything.” Zuzu wanted to tell Vera everything she’d been feeling about her, but didn’t know how, not with her mother’s grave between them. Zuzu could see right between Vera’s legs inside her robe. She looked away, at Irene, who was now leaning her body over the edge of the grave, as if she were about to tip her body into it, and dive head first. “What’s it like, loving June?” Zuzu finally asked. “What’s it like loving the dead?”
Vera thought about Zuzu’s question for a few seconds. “There’s something about knowing right where she is, in that ground in the graveyard. That feels good. Sometimes it feels like love, to know right where someone is. But it’s not.”
“I’m ready!” shouted Irene. Then she balled up her body and rolled into the grave. She ended up on her back at the bottom, one leg propped up on the side. She made a terrible sound, like the wind was knocked out of her.
Zuzu shoveled dirt onto Irene’s leg that was still flat on the ground.
“Goodnight, Zuzu,” wheezed Irene. It felt good to Irene to have the weight of cold dirt on her leg.
Zuzu shoveled some dirt on her face. Only a little. Just enough so Irene could feel it. Some of it got into her mouth. Irene closed her eyes very hard, but couldn’t die.
44.
The old abandoned Pie Time Factory still sat on the far western edge of town like a dead moon. Unlike the newly constructed XO Factory, which was clean and bright and triple the size, the old Pie Time Factory was always dark, even during the middle of the day with the sun high above it. It looked like a factory that manufactured nothing but darkness and sadness. Even though the XO City s
treetlights within a block of the old factory came on when the sun went down, the darkness that flooded from the windows of the factory swallowed their light.
Other than the woods, the roof of the factory was the only place in or near XO City where the black birds still lived. No matter how many birds the bird hunters killed from the factory’s roof in the years after it closed, there were always more. In fact, the more they killed, the more birds there would be on its roof the following day. Birds seemed to be born from the darkness manufactured there.
Little remained inside the Pie Time Factory—mostly broken chairs, a scattering of janitorial supplies, a few outdated work uniforms with the Pie Time logo still stitched on them, a family of rabbits hiding from the birds, mirrors and sinks. The smell of barley and tobacco was still cooked into the walls, but that smell was about the only thing now that remained. For a few years, a few different families of squatters lived in it. When they left, they took the toilets with them.
The door through which Mano used to walk into work was always locked, but Mano wouldn’t have been able to fit his body through that door anyway. On Friday afternoons, he walked through the large opening on the side of the building, which had been cut years earlier to remove some of the factory’s largest equipment to transfer it to the new XO Factory. Being inside the building always made Mano feel like a little girl again, sitting alongside the other girls, and working with his hands to make something good for his mother to smoke, and something good for her to drink.
This rainy Friday afternoon was no different. Mano felt lighter on his feet in that dank darkness, and even tried skipping—unsuccessfully. It was all he could do to try to insert some joy into an otherwise overwhelmingly joyless place. Still, he tripped even on such a simple attempt. He was wearing a tie that he had stitched together from ten ties that looked a lot like the tie that The Foreman used to wear to work. He dragged his gigantic body to the stairs that were just off the main room, and he lumbered down the stairs holding the walls for balance. The hallway at the bottom of the stairs was somehow even darker, danker, and more silent than the main floor of the factory, as if it was the epicenter of all that sadness.
“Mano? Is that you?”
“Yes. It’s me.”
“I’ve done bad things.”
“I know you have. You need to pay for them.” Rain water dripped from the rusted basement pipes. “Light the candle,” Mano ordered.
The candle lit the basement. There stood The Foreman in the center of it, hands on top of his head, wearing an old Pie Time uniform skirt. At his feet was the old wooden spoon that was once used to scoop tobacco from the steaming machines, a six pack of cold Nun’s Hats beers, a pack of Nun’s Hat cigarettes, and a sack full of groceries. Mano cracked open the first of his six beers, and lit a cigarette for himself on the candle. Then he said, “Drop your skirt. This is going to hurt.”
While The Foreman was dropping his skirt to his ankles, Mano looked into the bag of groceries. He saw more Nun’s Hat beer and cigarettes, which pleased him. The Landlord used to only bring him XO beer and cigarettes, until Mano threatened to stop meeting him on Fridays. He was also happy to see some toothpaste, toilet paper, window cleaner, and other essentials. “And I don’t want any crying until I get to 50.”
“Yes, sir,” promised The Foreman.
“Drop your panties, too. To your knees.”
The Foreman slid his old pair of June Good’s panties down to his knees.
“Now, put your hands back on top of your head.”
The Foreman folded his hands onto the top of his head. Mano didn’t hesitate. He picked up the wooden spoon and started in fiercely with the first spank, harder than last week, right on top of all The Foreman’s old bruises. The heft of the spoon surprised Mano every time he picked it up. It was weighted at the end, and packed a tremendous wallop on The Foreman’s bare ass when he swung it. He hardly needed to swing it with any force at all.
“I’m going to need you to do the counting,” said Mano after the first spank. He tipped back his Nun’s Hat, nearly finishing the entire can on his first drink.
“One,” said The Foreman.
“That’s right. One. That’s the best place to start.”
The Foreman counted along as Mano went to work. “2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.” The Foreman’s voice got a little higher with each number. And then he exhaled like he had just come up for air.
“Gather around, girls. I need all of you to see this little girl’s penis,” Mano called into the blackness. He spanked The Foreman so hard, it made The Foreman’s penis flop around until it couldn’t flop anymore. It got too hard. Then a black bird landed on its tip, and perched there.
The Foreman moved his hand in order to swat the bird away.
“Hands on your head!” ordered Mano angrily. “I’ll take care of it.” Mano walked around to the front of The Foreman, and reared the spoon to his side, as if he was about to take a big swing at the bird where it perched.
“No, please, dear God” pleaded The Foreman.
“You’re right. Let’s see what it does.” Mano cracked opened another beer, and they both watched the bird as it pecked at the tip of The Foreman’s penis. Mano laughed. He laughed so hard he couldn’t take another drink. He laughed as he thought about all the years between his fear of The Foreman and now. The Foreman was just a frightened old man wearing a skirt at his ankles with a bird on his penis. Somewhere beneath this laughter was a whole basement of grief.
“Is everyone laughing at me, Mano?”
“Yes, everyone is laughing at you.”
Spanking The Foreman on Friday afternoons was not an easy job for Mano. It wasn’t fun for him, or redemptive in any way. It wasn’t about vengeance or reparations. It was only work, and it was some of the most difficult work Mano ever had to do. What made it so difficult for Mano wasn’t his memories of being spanked as a child in the factory by The Foreman. Like the wounds those spankings left, the cruelty and humiliation of those memories healed quickly in the short days and weeks after they were made. But spanking The Foreman in return in the darkness of the shell of what remained of the factory reminded him of something far more painful. It reminded Mano of the light in his childhood, his days with Pepe, how they together, as a team, had a thing to rail against, to hate together. And also of his mother, to whom he ran after those brief insignificant moments of cruelty and humiliation.
Eventually, Mano had no more energy to keep spanking, and no more beers to drink. He finished all six rather quickly, though for someone so large, it was not much of a feat. After The Foreman counted to 200, he collapsed onto the floor, and Mano allowed it. The Foreman crawled into a corner with June’s panties still around his knees, and his skirt around his ankles. His bare ass was like an apple. He balled up and wept deeply.
Mano picked up the pack of cigarettes and his sack of groceries.
“Thank you,” said The Foreman, once he caught his breath. “I’ll see you next week.”
“You’re welcome,” said Mano. He blew out the candle, and walked out of the side of the old factory, toward The Cure, over the footbridge, and back home into the woods.
45.
“Are these Zuzu’s trousers?”
“Inez?” Mano approached his cabin with groceries in his arms.
Mano had become very used to visitors to his cabin. Two distinct paths had been created to his front door like long loop hikes, although no one could be sure whose feet were wearing down the path besides their own. No one asked this question. To ask it would be to admit that their feet were doing some of the wearing down of the path.
The people who visited Mano with regularity had become his family of a sort, and could be relied upon. The Florist visited on Sundays. He mostly wanted to tell Mano stories about his lost love, Roberto, and then afterward they’d kiss, they’d make love, and they’d hold each other while they slept through the night in Mano’s bed. They’d make french toast together in the mornings. French toast had been R
oberto’s favorite.
On Mondays, Beulah Minx just wanted someone to speak to, out loud, without signing with her hands. Mano didn’t strain his face when she spoke. That’s what Beulah liked about Mano’s face the most. When she told Mano stories of her childhood, and about her love for her first husband, The Postman, Mano’s face didn’t strain and twist and laugh as he listened to the sound of her voice. On Mondays, Beulah got to feel as though her words weren’t any less important than anyone else’s just because of how the sound of her voice muddied them.
On Tuesday mornings, Mano was visited by Father Felipe, who wanted to know what it was like to be touched, and to touch someone else somewhere on their bodies other than just their foreheads to bless them. On his days with Mano, Father Felipe’s kind of touching had nothing at all to do with blessings.
Tuesday afternoons were for Mary who, as an adult, pined for the weight of her sister Mimi on her back. Mary and Mimi each lived alone, separate from each other, in two different apartments on opposite ends of XO City. Mary thought living separately would be best for them, but now she wasn’t so sure why she once thought that. Mary lay in Mano’s bed on Tuesday afternoons because she missed that other heartbeat back there, a hot breath on the back of her ear, and how the smell of her sister’s body was different than her own smell, even though they were once the same body.
On Wednesdays, even though neither was aware that the other had ever been there, Mimi lay in Mano’s bed because she missed being that weight for her sister. She missed being that breath, that heartbeat, that smell. She also liked to sit on top of Mano’s kitchen table and drink while he ate.
On Thursdays, Mano was visited by both The Lawyer and The Landlord, who needed to play different kinds of games with each other that had something to do with ownership and power, toil and trickery, but nothing to do with the exchange of money.
On Friday afternoons, Mano picked up his groceries from The Foreman inside the shell of the old abandoned Pie Time Factory.
On none of those days was Mano ever visited by Enid, nor did he ever visit her. He hadn’t seen Enid in 16 years. Enid had been standing in her strawberry patch most of that entire time.
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