The Accidental Siren

by Jake Vander Ark

  Mom Of The Year finally arrived with Fantasia’s bottle. “First prize is a hundred-dollar savings bond for the kid’s show,” she said. “They’re going to set up a TV and VCR in a conference room, and James can invite whoever he wants.”

  I searched my plate for something to calm my galloping heart, but the food was gone. Every last drop of sauce had been mopped with bread. Dangit, darnit, crap and bungholes! I thought. Should I lie or tell the truth?

  “How was your location scout?” Dad asked. “Did you find a good path for the war scene?”

  I shoulda let Danny keep the dang picture! Forget Roslyn! Why was she taking naked pictures of herself anyways?

  “James?” Dad said and narrowed his brow.

  What could I do? I couldn’t stay mute forever! My old man could read faces like Sherlock Holmes and smell fear like a raptor! He was a fierce gambler back in his day; never bet more than he could lose and only played to win. When I was old enough to hear such stories, Mom recalled an overseas business trip in which Dad out-bluffed a trio of Taiwanese business associates for eight-hundred US dollars with a pair of nines. “They won most of it back,” he added when the story neared exaggeration, “But you shoulda seen their faces!”

  “James?” Mom asked. “You alright?”

  All eyes were on me.

  “My camera!” I blurted in an Oscar-worthy performance. “I think I left it in the woods!”

  * * *

  I was sent to bed without ice cream. Thanks to my little white lie, Dad woke me up at sunrise to search for the missing camera.

  While everyone else spent Family Day baking snicker-doodles and playing spoons, I meandered through the woods in search of something I would never find. To lighten the blow and strengthen the lie, I made a production out of the punishment by drawing a map of the woods and enlisting the twins for help.

  When the DEET wore off and the ‘squitos made their move, I conveniently recalled using the camera at the beach. Jake and Bobby helped me putter around the shore, dune grass, and steps, kicking driftwood from the sand and plucking interesting shells from the water’s edge.

  When we returned empty-handed, Dad lowered his binoculars, looked at the ground, and shook his head.

  It took years before I understood the reason I lied: I never looked at the photo of Roslyn... but I accidentally glimpsed the corner of her thigh before I creased the plastic. That’s why I couldn’t tell the truth; that dang glimpse of thigh.

  I was certain that I did the right thing by trading the camera, but with the overwhelming guilt of maybe–possibly–noticing a sliver of a girl’s upper leg, how could I explain the truth to my father and expect to look him in the eyes? In our house, the word “naked” meant twin boys streaking through the kitchen after shower time. The word “girl” meant long hair, dangly earrings, and curlycue penmanship. But combining the words created a phrase that could turn a simple conversation about bullies, cameras, and “doing the right thing” into something awkward and naughty; a conversation, perhaps, I wasn’t ready for.

  I wasn’t ready because girls still left cooties on my juice-box straw. Girls were know-it-alls and brown-nosers and tattle-tales. Girls were scared of bugs–especially bugs with wings–and they screamed like sissies whenever a beetle clung to their skirts.

  But I was beginning to realize that girls play beneath a mysterious shroud of whispered secrets, of notebooks brimming with rainbow hieroglyphics, of exchanged glances between mothers and friends who knew something that I didn’t. Words like “love,” “menstrual,” “change,” “going out,” “Ryan Ryan Ryan,” or “bra;” hushed ramblings of exclusive “learning experiences” between Livy and our mother or Livy and her friends; words from conversations so exclusive that I was asked to leave the room; words I deciphered in bits and pieces with an ear glued to my sister’s bedroom door.

  Apparently, girls were different... special... delicate... but nobody would tell me why. To a flubbery sixth-grade boy who didn’t know his penis from a pogo-stick, girls were like poems: weird, incomprehensible and boring, but those “in the know” assured me that they were beautiful.

  “What’s so beautiful about girls?” I would implore.

  And the secret society of adults would reply with a smirk and wink as if I was merely a boy who couldn’t possibly have the mental maturity to comprehend such grown-up concepts as love and bleeding vaginas; “You’ll understand someday, James.”

  2. MARA

  “She’s almost done.”

  “What?” I asked. “Who?”

  “Mara.”

  I dismounted my bike and propped it against a moth-haloed lamppost. I keeled forward with my hands on my knees, panting from the half-mile ride from Whit’s house to the opposite end of his suburb. I checked my watch, I was five minutes early.

  Why is there a lamp in the woods, my subconscious asked, but I was too fixated on the boy beside me and the home before me to care. A row of tightly-sculpted bushes stood belly-to-belly against the entire perimeter of the house and heavy curtains created a sliver of light in every window of the first floor. The boy was no older than fourteen, but already sported a patch of dark whiskers above his lip. “Do you live here?” I asked.

  “Shhh!” hissed the boy, then another behind me.

  I looked back. Four boys, still as headstones, peeked from behind the tree trunks. Their eyes were glazed and focused on the back of the two-story home.

  I reached in my pocket, pulled out the newspaper clipping and held it to the lamplight. “Super-8 camera for sale. Like new. Bag, lens, two rolls of film included. $40. Call 616-555-9088 for details.” I had scribbled the address below the number in blocky, boyish handwriting: “557 Sycamore Ave. Whit’s suburb. 8:30 PM.”

  I shoved the paper back in my pocket and addressed the mustached boy as quietly as possible. “Is this five-five-seven, Sycamore?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  I reeled at the nasty language. My neck prickled and my palms began to sweat. I nearly leapt on my bike and flew back to Whit’s, but I noticed a small tape recorder in the boy’s outstretched hand as if he was making an offering to the home.

  I almost asked him what the heck he was recording– but then I heard it; a song so subtle that it took the boy’s tape player to prioritize my senses. A girl’s voice; a child. Sweet; high like a songbird without the shrill. It was a church song. It came from the house.

  “T’was grace that taught my heart to fear,

  And grace my fears relieved.

  How precious did that grace appear,

  The hour I first believed.”

  The tiny voice was unencumbered with falsetto or an overzealous vibrato; gentle, unwavering, innocent... crystalline.

  “The Lord has promised good to me.

  His word my hope secures.

  He will my shield and portion be,

  As long as life endures.”

  The melody didn’t pierce the night, but dissolved into it, giving warmth to the darkness and calming my racing heart. I found myself in reverent submission after only two verses, and when a twig snapped behind me, I hissed, “Shh!”

  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch like me.

  I once was lost but now am found,

  Was blind, but now I see.”

  Silence. I waited. We all waited. But the song was over.

  The night seemed suddenly defiled by the absence of music, as if the silence itself was injecting a sickness that only another song could cure.

  The mustached boy snapped out of his trance. He stopped the recording, held down the rewind button, then pressed “play” and brought the device to his ear.

  I careened my head and watched as he meandered past the other four boys. There was movement deeper in the woods–shadows–as if the trees were slowly multiplying. As my eyes adjusted to the new darkness, I saw them, all of them, aimless, ghostly, like faceless children lost in Limbo.

  I squinted to find my friend.
He was twenty steps away and facing a tree. Again, I narrowed my brow and attempted to distinguish bodies from branches... then I saw them: wooden planks nailed like ladder rungs to the trunks of a dozen trees. The mustached boy began to climb, a spindly, monotonous silhouette, until he disappeared into the canopy of leaves.

  One by one the others followed, and when they reached the top, they spread sideways along the thickest limbs.

  Branches rustled and someone screamed. “No!”

  “Move over!”

  “Get your own dang–”

  “Hey, shut the hell up!”

  “Shhh!”

  “But he–”

  “Son of a–” Then a branch snapped and a boy fell–knees and palms first–into a patch of ferns.

  I watched him stand. I watched him slap dust off his pants. Then he grabbed a wooden rung on a different tree and climbed back to the top.

  I looked at the house. In a second-story window–eye-level with the boys–a light turned on.

  * * *

  Her name was Ms. Grisham and she answered my knock through the two-inch seam that the chain allowed. “You know the rules, little boy. Off my porch or I’ll eat your fingers for dinner.”

  “Ma’am!” I said before she could slam the door. “I’m James Parker! I called you about the camera!”

  Her colorless eye studied me through the crack, then she removed the chain with cautious enthusiasm, checked the street over my shoulder, allowed me in, and bolted the door three times behind us. “Jaaames?” she said. “I mistook your voice for a woman’s. Silly me!” She was old; a-hundred-and-two I assumed at the time, but probably closer to sixty-five. She wore a strapless dress with a pattern like bathroom wallpaper, cream and blue flowers, sagging low enough to expose pursed, overly tan cleavage with a melanoma-worthy mole that danced on her right breast with every word. “My you’re a big boy! Have a seat on the couch and I’ll find you that camera.”

  “Thanks,” I said, still a bit shaken from the absurdity of the evening. The couch was pink velvet with pleats, buttons, ruffles, pillows, and hose marks from a vacuum. I sat.

  The living room was an ecosystem of pastel kitsch; resin and porcelain figurines that probably came to life at night, kept alive by a compressed atmosphere of bitter perfume that dizzied my senses. There were shelves on every wall lavished with doilies and candles and frilly dolls with lifeless eyes. The room was like a haunted antique store with peacock feathers, torn pages from a coloring book, collectable cards with saints instead of baseball players, frames with yellowed photographs, a row of encyclopedias, jade animals, rosary beads, angels, birdhouses, clowns, lamps, silverware, crucified Christs and more, all spotless and painfully free of dust.

  The woman hummed an unfamiliar tune as she rummaged through a pile of junk on a game table. Behind her, a light-green stairwell ascended into plush darkness. On the third step, a discarded bandaid.

  The room’s centerpiece was not a TV, but one of those ancient phonographs with a brass crank and a speaker like a tuba. Was that the source of the beautiful song? An odd and intrusive platform stood beside the record player. It was narrow–only two feet wide and three from the ground–and draped in blood-red velour. Protruding from the center of the fabric square was a single, silver eye-hook.

  “You say you want to make motion pictures,” asked Ms. Grisham.

  “Yes, Ma’am. I–”

  “I found it strange when you told me that on the telephone; filmmaking is not usually a woman’s pursuit. But you’re not a woman, are you Jaaames?”

  “No, Ma’am.”

  “I met Liz Taylor working reception at Turnberry Isle. Grey roots, she had. Can you imagine? A famous actress and roots as grey as an elephant’s trunk.”

  Before I could prove my ignorance for old film stars, the woman’s head snapped around and her eyes locked on mine. “Is this a ploy?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Are you a sneaky little brat? Did you see my ad in the paper and get a perverted little idea in your perverted little brain? To sound like a woman to sneak your way in? I saw you eyeing the stairs, boy. Is there something you were looking for? Something more than a camera? Show me your money!”

  “I– I’m sorry?” I muttered again.

  Her body twisted to align with her head. Her back arched like a hyena.

  I suddenly recalled the scene from The Goonies where that old hag nearly shoves the fat boy’s hand in the blender. I began to panic.

  “Show me that you’re serious, little boy,” she growled. “Prove that you’re here for my camera!”

  I jammed my hand in my pocket and rustled the forty bucks (thirty from allowances; ten from Whit’s candy sales). I held out the crummy wad for the woman’s scrutiny while trying to get a grasp on my breathing.

  She looked at the cash, then shook her head and waved her hand. “Bah. I won’t have your money.” She returned to the table and gathered the camera, a case, and two sealed rolls of film.

  I pocketed the cash and fingered my neck for a pulse.

  “You’re a good kid,” she said and released the armful of beautiful components to the cushion beside me. “And that’s a good camera. Hate to see her go, but I purchased a nicer model last week. Hi-8. Records on tape. How things change.”

  I was jealous. Super-8 film had a really neat look, but it would be terribly impractical. But I had to make my fairytale somehow...

  “Test it out. Make sure I didn’t forget some fancy component.”

  “Sure will.” My eyes glistened and I forgot about the woman’s moment of insanity. “Thank you, Ma’am.”

  As I inspected the dials and triggers and reels, Ms. Grisham walked to a Lazy-Boy against the back wall. She brushed the seat and eased into it, then used the back of her hand to part thick, paisley curtains. She peered into the lamplit forest.

  “I saw some boys in the woods behind your house,” I blurted. “I think they might be spying but I’m not with them, I swear. I’m just here for the camera so I can make my movie.”

  “Mmm.” A lamp with a dim canary shade was the only source of light where the woman sat. Basking in the glow atop a swatch of frayed lace was a frame with gold flakes and a photograph–torn in half–of a woman in a wedding dress. A sterling-silver chain adorned the photo as if the frame was a lady’s neck; at its center hung a ring with a thick gold band and six prongs that once carried a diamond. “Have you been baptized, child?” she purred.

  I unzipped the bag–more like a pouch–and slipped the camera inside. “The camera’s perfect, Ma’am. I’m staying at a friend’s house tonight and he’s probably getting worried–”

  “Little boys should be baptized. Especially little boys. Flushes out the perversions. Makes you pure in the name of Jesus Christ.” She pulled her hand from the curtain and crossed herself.

  Whit’s never gonna believe this. I stood.

  “How old are you, Jaaames?” she asked.

  “Twelve, Ma’am.”

  “Sixth grade, is it?”

  “Tomorrow’s the last day of class. That’s why I really should be getting–”

  “You’re not popular, are you Jaaames?”

  I hugged the camera to my breasts and shook my head. “I’m going to leave the money on the–”

  “I don’t want your money, boy.” Her gaze drifted to my face. She looked through me. “Boy...” she whispered to herself. “Boy boy boy boyyy...”

  “Ma’am, I–”

  “A glass of water! A drink before you go. Then I’ll send you on your way.” She saw my hesitation. “I’m an old woman, Jaaames, and I just gave you a free camera. Your friend can wait two more minutes, don’t you think?”

  I nodded.

  She plucked a silver bell from the side table. She stared at me again, then her penciled eyebrows tightened, her lips thinned, and her smile hardened. She jangled the bell.

  Upstairs, a door slammed. Padded footfalls trampled above me and I knew for certain that the beautiful song d
idn’t come from a record player. The moment the girl realized my presence, her childish gallop turned into a graceful stride down the last three steps. A subtle swipe of her left foot brushed the bandaid aside, and when she finally landed on the ground level, her face emerged from the shadows...

  (Forgive me as I ease into the labyrinth of my mind and attempt to recall–vainly, in both meanings of the word–my first encounter with Mara. Forgive any unnecessary adjectives, for the girl I’m about to describe could personify the minutia of every pleasant connotation of every overused, archaic or pretentious adjective in our desperately lacking lexicon.)

  She had a woman’s swagger at twelve-and-a-half. Hair: strawberry-blonde, and I vaguely recall a daisy in the crook of her ear. She was an inch taller than me, two with the ponytail; smooth cheeks and darling brown eyes that marbled in luscious contrast with her magnolia skin; cream, melting to peach, melting to pink. She beamed like a cherub without the baby fat; a tender neck; pristine lips that would never part for a dirty word. Her body–of no interest to me at the time–was wrapped from neck to toes with home-made footie pajamas, the kind they make for toddlers, but I didn’t laugh; the girl filled that silly one-piece ensemble as if it were couture.

  Dear Jesus on that cross, what have you done?

  Ms. Grisham sneered at the lovely girl. “Why is your hair up?”

  “I’m sorry, Auntie.” She tugged the blue ribbon and released fine, un-crimped strands of woven gold.

  “What happened to your blush?”

  “I thought it was time for bed.”

  “Did you say hello to the boy?”

  She turned her head a fraction of a degree. “Hello, boy.”

  (My knees became balls of play-dough and the girl’s direct address reminded me that I was an active player in this scene. I had been consumed in her appearance as if life was a movie and she was an actress. Dangit, James, I thought. SPEAK!) “Hey,” I replied with a nerdy half wave.

  The woman’s eyes darted between us as she analyzed our interactions. The corner of her lip lifted. “Get the boy a glass of water.”

  The girl nodded, turned up her chin as she passed me, and walked to the kitchen.