A Home for Goddesses and Dogs

by Leslie Connor

  “What did he say to you?” Aunt Brat wanted to know.

  “Nothing! He said nothing!”

  “Power play,” said Eileen. “It’s creepy. Unacceptable.” She gave Aunt Brat a sideways glance.

  “I don’t understand it,” Aunt Brat said. “Does anyone here think Guffer has been roaming over to the Capperows’?”

  “No!” I said. “Especially not in the deep snow. And besides, I kind of know Moss, and he would’ve told me if Guffer was causing trouble there.”

  Elloroy shook his head. “Sounds like Capperow’s the one creeping over to our place, not the other way around. Who’s the bad dog now?” he said.

  “Huh-haw!” said Eileen.

  But I didn’t want them to make jokes. Elloroy brushed my arm. “I don’t blame you for feeling shook up. I’m sorry about it,” he said. “You going to be okay, youth and beauty?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, “but today, you can call me youth and fury!”

  43

  Goddess Spill

  The niche was done. It was beautiful, with its exposed brick and new drywall and a couple of coats of creamy-white paint. The room smelled new. The bricks radiated warmth.

  But I missed the crawl—or maybe I missed the goddesses. I slid the box out from under my bed. Guffer plunked down and rested his great yellow side against it as if I’d put it there for him. He watched, sleepily, as I took two goddesses and held them up in the niche. In truth, it was a fine place for them, and Aunt Brat and Eileen had given me proper picture-hanging hooks. The lengths of braided yarns were still attached to each goddess. But I, who had been so willing to make that one very large hole, had so far resisted driving even the tiniest nail into the new walls. I sighed. Did I want to hang them in the open?

  I pulled a few more collages out. I laid them one atop the next with the yarn hangers all off to one side. I checked with Guffer. “What would you do with them? Besides chew—”

  His sharp bark pierced the room—and me.

  “Whoa! Guffer! Startle me to my bones, why don’t you.”

  He continued to rumble. Then he dove right over me. His legs kicked out behind him and thumped the box. I grabbed for the dog, but I missed. He bolted, toenails scratching, feet slipping on the hardwood floor. He came to a sliding halt inside my bedroom door. His hairs stood on end. He barked into the hallway. Turned out he had two good reasons.

  Raya Delatorre and Sari Winkle stood just a few feet away—in our upstairs hall. I scrambled to my feet. How had I not heard them on the stairs? Who had let them in? And up? And oh!—the goddesses! I glanced behind me. The box was on its side, probably back-kicked by a big yellow dog.

  Goddess spill!

  I tried to be wide—block their view.

  “Oh, hi! Hey, you guys!” I said. I sounded ridiculously chirpy, cheery—and loud. Meanwhile, Guffer continued to bark. I hooked two fingers around the dog’s collar. “Guffer, sit. Leave it!” I said. I tugged him back. He kept barking. “Guffer!”

  Raya might have said hi. Sari too. Who could hear?

  “I think he’s just startled! Because you’re upstairs!” I tried to be heard. I saw Sari lean toward Raya’s ear. Both of them crossed their arms over their chests and looked up. Ha! They’d remembered!

  Guffer stared at them. How long before he gives up? I thought. Can I sweep these goddesses under the bed before my friends look down again? I scooted myself backward a little, dragging Guffer with me.

  Finally he quieted down. Engine on idle. I let go of the collar. He turned away from Raya and Sari, who were still standing at my doorway, chins turned high. Guffer checked Raya and Sari one more time. Then he circled—full turn—and lowered himself onto the floor with a grunt.

  “Good boy,” I praised him.

  “It worked!” Sari breathed.

  “Sure did,” said Raya. They both relaxed

  “Atta boy, Guffer. See, it’s just us,” Sari cooed.

  “No, no. Keep ignoring him,” I warned. “At least for now.”

  That was going to be easy. They were both already looking past the dog and past me. I turned and looked behind me. Goddesses everywhere.

  Great. . . . Say hello to my paper friends.

  “Oh . . . wow. . . .” Sari made her way closer. She slid to her knees for a better look.

  “Yeah. Wow,” Raya echoed. She eased past Guffer. She knelt next to Sari and kept her hands tucked close to her belly. Raya, not touching, I thought.

  “Oh. Mess,” I said. They ignored that, and I had little choice but to join them at this unexpected viewing.

  “Oh . . . Lydia. What are these? Did you make them?” Sari asked.

  “Y-yes.” I felt an unpleasant heat in my face. What to do next? But then I just said it. “My mom and I made them. I brought them here with me.”

  “Whoa! Wowza . . . ,” Raya said.

  Sari let out another long breath. “I can’t believe you have these. I can’t believe I get to see them.”

  Me neither, I thought.

  “Do you know how cool these are? No, no, ‘cool’ isn’t even the word. I don’t think I know the word.” Sari looked up at me. “And I’m not sure what they are . . . except beautiful . . . women!” Her eyebrows went up. “I love them.”

  She slid her hands gently underneath a goddess and lifted it up. She looked closely at the surface. “So it’s a collage. An old photograph . . . and paint,” she said. “And papers, and some fabric—oh look, and lace.” Then Sari Winkle read my mother’s handwriting. “The Goddess of Gratitude.” She glanced back at the art on the floor. “So, are they all goddesses?”

  I gave a tiny nod.

  Then Raya began to read in that husky voice of hers. “Goddess of the New Moon right here, and the Goddess of the Third Heart—wow. The Goddess for Winter’s End—that’s cool,” she said.

  “They were my mother’s idea,” I said. “She was very creative and full of heart.” I spoke slowly. “Ironic, because her own heart was freakishly weak.” I pressed my hand against my chest.

  I guess I am going to tell them. . . .

  “Her illness brought a lot of pain to our family—troubles. And when there were troubles Mom would try to move us both through them by creating the goddesses. The Goddess of the Third Heart is from when she got passed up for transplant for the third time.”

  My friends were motionless.

  “And when there were good things, well, she thought we needed goddesses for that too.” I felt the most unexpected laugh come up inside me. “We did this to cope and to keep hope. Have some fun. And celebrate.”

  “And make art,” Sari added. She shuffled gently through the goddesses. “Neat materials. . . .” She gave me a smile.

  “Always on the cheap,” I said. “Salvaged, scavenged, or found—papers, cloth, stuff from flea markets. Some ephemera—”

  “Efema-who?” said Raya. She pushed back her eggplant-colored bangs.

  “Ephemera,” I said. I laughed and thought about how to describe it. “It’s common stuff that had a use, and usually, it’d be thrown away afterward. But then for some reason, people collected it. Saved it. So mostly printed paper things, like postcards, stamps, or soap labels.”

  “You mean if you really loved the picture on a food package or something?” Sari was catching on.

  “Yeah. Things like raisin boxes,” I said. I started to laugh—and almost cry too. I leaned forward, tapped a finger on the House of the Sun-Maid Raisin Lady, which had spilled out with the goddesses. “You could just think of it as turning junk into art. Recycling—”

  “Oh! The raisin box! Look what you did! Now I get it!” Raya said.

  “Goddesses. . . .” Sari swallowed. “We should probably all be making goddesses.” She sounded wistful—like precious time had already been lost, which made me smile.

  “Hmm,” said Raya. “Come to think of it, there have been a few times I could’ve used a goddess.”

  “Really?” I asked. “For what? I mean, if you made a goddess
. . .” Despite the fact that all of mine were spilled across the floor, it seemed like too personal a question to ask. But Sari Winkle dug in.

  “For my first goddess, I’d have to go global,” she said. She gave a little nod. “Like, maybe I’d make . . . hmm . . . a Goddess for the Good of the Earth. Or the Goddess to Reverse Climate Change. Something like that.”

  “Me too,” said Raya. “A Clean River Goddess. Something like that.”

  My own head swirled with images.

  “But for myself”—Sari tilted her head—“I’d make the Goddess of Figuring Out Your Love Life.”

  Raya faked a cough. “Do you have a love life?” she asked. “’Cause if you do, that’s news to me.”

  “I don’t have a love life,” said Sari. “But I think about it.” She gave a shrug and lowered her eyelids. “I kind of want one.”

  “For real? Right now?” Raya asked.

  “I’m probably not ready for the whole falling-in-love part,” Sari admitted.

  “Yeah, do ya think?”

  “But I want to kiss . . . somebody,” said Sari. She hesitated. “And I think I want to kiss a girl just as much as I want to kiss a guy.”

  I was suddenly thinking of . . . someone. . . .

  “Okay,” said Raya. “That’s cool. But not me, please. Just so you know.”

  “If I wanted to kiss you, I would have already asked,” Sari said. One side of her mouth curled toward her friend. “It’s funny, isn’t it? How I know that much, yet the rest is so . . .” She stopped and shook her head.

  “Mystifying?” I offered.

  “Perfect word,” said Sari. “See, part of it is I’m not sure if men can be as . . . hmm . . . warm as women are. Like, for your whole lives together.” She shrugged. “But maybe some can be, and maybe it’s wrong for me to say that.”

  “But you can say it to us,” I said gently. “I’ve wondered too.”

  “Hmm. I guess it’ll depend on who I fall in love with, and who falls in love with me.”

  My eyes started to fill. I thought of my mother, and of the morning Kemp and his broken soul walked out. I pressed the sleeve of Mom’s sweater to my nose.

  “Well, I know that, for me, it’s guys,” Raya said. “I just know it is. And the mystifying part for me is that sometimes I feel like a guy myself.” She shifted a little, but she went on. “And sometimes I wonder if other people think I’m kind of guy-ish. Because I know more guys than girls who like to do the stuff I like to do. And I’m not being sexist. I’m going by the numbers. And by what I’ve seen. Like, the wood shop? One of my fave places? It’s almost all guys. Down at the river, fishing? Same thing. Doesn’t mean girls don’t fish. I’m a girl. I fish. But I don’t see a lot of girls fishing; I see a lot of guys fishing. And maybe that’s just here where we live. I don’t know, because I haven’t lived anywhere else.” She thought for a second. “But when I think about being married someday—when I picture it—I see my husband as kind of like my bro, because we’re going to do stuff together. All those things I just said.” She pushed her lower lip out and thought. Then she said, “So yeah. For me, it’s guys. And you know what? Good thing we don’t have to figure this all out this afternoon.”

  The three of us laughed. Guffer got up and came over to us, head tilting. He tucked his nose right into Raya’s armpit for a sniff. “Whoa! Whoa!” she said. “What is this?”

  “Ha! He likes deodorant,” I explained. “And shampoo.” Guffer gave Raya a huge push and a snort and knocked her over. Then he walked right across all the lovely goddesses.

  “No! No!” Sari leaned down and spread her arms over them. She giggled and called out, “Save the goddesses! Save them! Help! Help!”

  We fell apart laughing, the three of us. We patted Guffer and coaxed him off the art. Then we scooped the goddesses off the floor and onto my bed.

  “You know, Lydia . . . ,” Sari said. She began to spread the goddesses out, looking at each one. “I don’t know the order, but I bet you do. You have a whole story here.” She stopped to fix her large blue eyes on me. “They’re a memoir, Lydia. They are.”

  44

  By the Woodpile

  First, I heard a lot of barking. Then I heard Aunt Brat. “Wood delivery!” she called up the stairs. “Lydia? We can’t keep Jaycinda waiting.”

  “Coming!” I hollered back. I ran down the stairs, stepped into the cruddy brown boots, and stuffed my arms into my jacket. Eileen was already out on the porch watching Jaycinda back her pickup truck toward the house. Jaycinda’s little dog, Jaxy, yapped in the back window of the truck. Guffer answered with deep, chesty woofs.

  Eileen made hand circles encouraging Jaycinda backward. “Yep, yep. Snug it right in. . . . Little more . . . little more . . . Halt!” She held both palms out.

  They dropped the tailgate. We put on our work gloves and became an ant farm of wood-carrying women. Guffer and Jaxy ran zoomie circles nearby. As long as Jaxy stayed, Guff stayed too. Soonie stood out of harm’s way on the porch and kept her fawn eyes on Aunt Brat.

  This was my first wood delivery. I liked stacking the logs, fitting them against the outside wall of the house under the overhang of the flattish roof. The ends of the logs formed a mesmerizing pattern of pie wedges and circles with radiating cracks. But there was a pace to keep. The stack climbed higher. Aunt Brat and Eileen and Jaycinda grunted and chatted as we thunked more logs into place.

  “Looks good and dry,” said Aunt Brat.

  “I don’t bring green wood,” Jacinda said. “Promise you that. This was cut and split eight or nine months back. Moisture content below ten percent.”

  “I vouch,” said Eileen. “The last cord burned clean and hot.”

  I kept a smile to myself during all this talk about firewood, which is not to say I wasn’t interested. I learned that oak was the most abundant firewood in our part of the country. So there you go. I felt like a knowledgeable countrywoman.

  Guffer took a break from the chasing game to check out all the new smells that had arrived on Jaycinda’s truck tires. He added a sprinkle. Jaycinda laughed. “Guess I’ll be wheeling his résumé all over town today.”

  “Lot of wood deliveries?” Aunt Brat asked.

  “You said it. Everyone is taking a look at their stack and deciding they need more. Overwhelming! I can only get so many in during the week. Depends what time I can finish up the mail route. And whether it snows.”

  “Put the wood on the mail truck, then,” Eileen quipped.

  Jaycinda, the Goddess of Deliveries, I thought. I watched her balance a few more logs atop the pile. When she turned we happened to look right at each other.

  “Well, I guess we know what you’re good at, Lydia,” she said.

  “What’s that?” I asked. I brushed wood confetti off my sleeves.

  “Hard work.” Jaycinda grinned at me.

  “True! Ever since she arrived,” Aunt Brat said with a little nod. She brushed a mitten across her brow. “We have never gotten this job done this quickly. I’m grateful. Not my favorite chore,” she confessed.

  I raised my arms, elbows crooked, to suggest that I had biceps under my jacket. “The mighty!” I said. “Maybe this is my year for growing muscles.” We laughed.

  “You just had a birthday, didn’t you?” Jaycinda asked.

  I shrugged. “Not really. November,” I said. I was thinking it was a funny question. I was also thinking that I’d had the last birthday I’d ever have with Mom. I felt the wash of sadness—it had been catching me so randomly ever since she’d died. Then just as suddenly, I was able to think: No, I’m okay. Right now, I am okay. I’m on top of the great gray threat.

  I saw Jaycinda scrunch her brow. “Sorry. I thought I’d seen a festive sort of envelope, addressed to you.”

  Aunt Brat stopped still. Our eyes caught for a split second. I took a ragged little swallow. Eileen looked at me too. She whistled a few notes of a non-song, which must be very hard to do when your face is stricken and your cheeks are paralyzed
.

  Jaycinda’s tone changed, like she meant to back off, but she couldn’t. “Well . . . I shouldn’t have said anything, it’s just that real greeting cards stand out amid all the circulars and credit card offers. Makes a mail carrier feel good to deliver something personal now and then.”

  Oh! Could she please stop talking? Aren’t there any more logs to stack?

  Finally she shrugged. “Happy Birthday anyway!”

  I have to hand it to Aunt Brat; she waited. She waited until Jaycinda rolled away, until we were back inside and out of our boots and gloves. She waited until after lunch. In fact, she waited until I brought it up.

  “Aunt Brat,” I said, “before this becomes a thing, I want to tell you about the festive piece of mail.”

  She gave me a bit of eye to indicate that she was listening.

  “And Eileen, you too, of course. Okay. So. My father—you remember him, right? Kemp?”

  “Yes, I knew Kemp,” said Aunt Brat. “Though not well.” She tried to keep her tone even—almost like she was bored.

  “Not me.” Eileen gave her head a little shake. “I didn’t know him. Never met him.” She pressed her chin forward, looking peeved. “But I’d have a strong opinion about any person who leaves their—”

  “Eileen!” Aunt Brat interrupted. “Lydia, go ahead,” she said.

  I told them how he’d sent cards for all these years and how I could tell that it upset Mom, even though she’d never say so. “It made me wish the cards wouldn’t come,” I said. “I rarely opened them. I know that’s weird. But it would’ve felt like betraying her. I don’t know if you can understand.”

  “We can.” They said it almost exactly together.

  “And he sends money,” I said, “or at least he did, but I don’t use it. A few weeks back, there was an orange envelope in the mail. That’s what Jaycinda was talking about, and yes, it’s from him. I haven’t opened it. I probably won’t.”