gods with a little g

by Tupelo Hassman

  “Where the fuck did you come from, Bird?”

  “I was shooting pool and playing darts…” He reaches into his pants, starts to adjust himself. “I was shooting shots…” I am trying to figure out where he has been doing all of this when he falls back on the bed and screams. And that is when Pen, who has been watchful of him since she first sniffed Bird at the tire yard, pushes her nose against the crack of the closet door, widens it, and leaps through. She stands in front of me, plants her feet, leans forward, her teeth bared and the hair on her ruff standing out around her head triceratops-style. She growls with her entire body, and Bird screams some more.

  I grab Pen’s collar, pull her back, and that is when I see tiny dots of blood soaking through the leg of Bird’s pants, he is holding his thigh there, where the blood is. I can’t figure out what just happened, I’m looking for the missing part, the piece where Pen bit Bird. While my mind is racing, everything else is slowing down. Bird’s scream sounds long and drawn out and it takes forever for my hands to reach to Pen’s face, her mouth, to see if there is blood on her jaw. Will there be blood on her jaw?

  Nothing. No. Pen didn’t bite him, she couldn’t have. And she wouldn’t have. It all happened fast, but not that fast. Bird is just being an asshole, like usual, and once I understand that, time speeds back up again.

  “What the fuck, Bird?”

  He is rolling on the bed now and moaning and I hear the front door slamming and he says, “Darts,” and I see the plastic feathery ends of his darts sticking up out of his front pants pocket, which is a very, very stupid place to put them. He rolls around. “Please,” he begs, and, holding Pen by the collar as far away from him as I can with one arm, I reach over and pull the darts out.

  Needless to say, Bird has lost his erection by this point. No pun intended.

  * * *

  And that’s when Iris comes in. She sees her son moaning in pain, the tiny bit of blood, the dog whose reputation she is allergic to, and she does some math. Like, some crazy mom-martyr math. I watch Iris finish an equation she has been working on for too long, since Bird was a little boy and she first started to feel like he was out of her control, and yet how everything he did was all her fault.

  DISCIPLINE

  “Go, Helen, just go,” Iris says, and turns all of her attention to Bird. Like I am going to just go. And miss this. She climbs onto the bed with him, my bed, and pulls him onto her lap. In her arms, Bird looks huge, but he sounds small. He is drunk begging-screaming for her to call the fire department, for an ambulance.

  I don’t even think his leg is bleeding anymore.

  She rocks him and shushes him, and you can barely hear her saying, “No, no, no.” I can’t move from watching her, even though Pen is whimpering and pulling us toward the door. Dogs are smart.

  Suddenly Bird remembers I’m there. He’s desperate. And stupid. If there was any doubt about what had been happening between us before, it disappears when he says, “Hell, I love you.”

  It could mean anything, it’s clear that he’s drunk. But Iris knows what it means. I can tell by the way her jaw tightens up under her powdery blush, the way she holds him tighter too, and, without even glancing at me, says, “Not anymore you don’t.”

  She doesn’t take her eyes from him when she reaches underneath him, into the front pocket of her slacks, and pulls out her cell phone. Then she does this amazing thing. She slides her phone across the floor. She doesn’t open it first. She doesn’t use it. She makes it so she can’t use it. It hits the wall underneath the dresser and that is when I finally understand what is happening, or think I do, because it is very hard to understand people who are completely losing their minds.

  Iris isn’t holding him tight until he calms down, she isn’t rocking Bird until the paramedics arrive. The nos she’s whispering aren’t a rejection of what we’ve done together, him and me. These nos are her answer to him, his needs, his brutal wants. Him. All the nos she should have ever said throughout their lives, an entire mom-career of nos gathered up right here.

  Because she thinks that Pen has attacked him and the blood is from a dog bite and not from the darts she’s never noticed in my hands, which are sharp but aren’t going to bleed anything dry but his pride. And Iris thinks the imaginary dog bite is because Bird has attacked me and so he deserves it and not because I have trained him to bring me his boner like an obedient mutt. And so, after all the things he has actually done and all the things she thinks he has done but he probably hasn’t, not yet anyway, she is going to let him die, of embarrassment if nothing else.

  Aunt Bev would say this is all because Iris only understands what her eyes tell her and she only believes what she feels, which is mainly guilt and shame, two of the most highly unreliable feelings. And here I am, the witch’s apprentice, figuring out everything that’s happened, inside this room and everyone in it, and I don’t feel guilty at all.

  HELLICORN

  The biggest surprise, at first, is seeing Dad at the shoppe. This is the border that separates our family, the line between what Dad believes and what Aunt Bev practices, like we live in a tiny divided county within all the other divided counties. But here he is. And it is so surprising, it takes me a second to put the rest together. The streamers, the balloons, the cake that is frosted with white cream and red letters, that says Happy Birthday, Helen!

  Next to Aunt Bev and Dad, there is Iris and Bird and Rain and Mo. Everyone who isn’t stuck in Bible camp or juvenile hall. Bird looks kind of shy, smaller, like he is this other version of himself. And Mo looks less shy, not bigger, you can’t tell she’s pregnant by looking at her, but it is like all of her is here, in this room with us.

  Everyone is shouting, Surprise! and then the door chimes tinkle behind me.

  The shoppe fills with warmth like a window in the sun. Aunt Bev says pay attention to that, the feeling in your body when you’re with someone, the temperatures that repeat around them.

  “Surprise.” Winthrop does not shout.

  Even if this wasn’t my birthday, it would feel like it now.

  He is himself, but bigger. Not bigger around, but across, stronger. No one has been beating him up. And he is still him. I can tell when I hug him, which I do before I even think about it. And he hugs me back. He is not as much of a marshmallow anymore, but I feel like one.

  * * *

  There are presents. I am supposed to be gracious and excited about each one. I don’t need an etiquette lesson from Iris to remind me of that, but it is hard to focus with Winthrop right there. I open the presents in a daze.

  Dad has finally broken down and gotten me a cell phone, maybe because Bird got one when Iris felt so guilty for trying to murder him. The card says the phone is from Iris too. And some stuff about God.

  From Aunt Bev, a bottle of rose water she pressed herself. It’s in a green glass bottle with the shoppe’s new logo on the front. Tied to it with a bit of twine is a business card for the Rosary Psychic Encounter Shoppe. It has my name on it. Helen Dedleder, Partner. Dad’s smile is tighter now, as I’m reading this.

  “A gift for your gift,” says Aunt Bev, and everyone cheers. Like they know what the hell she is talking about.

  And then, a red velvet box. From Mo. Inside there is a silver chain, so fine and delicate that everyone oohs. When we meet eyes across the room, Mo pulls one just like it out from under her shirt collar. There’s no charm, just the chain, and no one but us knows that this means everything. Well, us and Aunt Bev.

  Before things can get too sentimental, Bird hands me a gift he obviously wrapped himself. In printer paper. It’s a magnifying glass. Because without a tit joke, my birthday simply would not be complete. “Maybe you won’t always need it, Hell,” he says.

  “But you always will,” I say. Which is a lie and half the room knows it, but he laughs, and even for one second looks a little shy, and then everyone laughs, even Dad. Things are starting to get pretty weird, but thankfully Rain interrupts.

  “I didn’t
know how to wrap this,” she says, and pulls a black piñata in the shape of a unicorn from behind the counter. It is clear that the unicorn used to be white with a pink mane and that Rain has spray-painted it black. It is also clear that the unicorn used to be a horse and she added the horn using what appears to be a mutilated paper-towel tube. She’s drawn silver lines, stars, and hearts all over it, and the horn is mostly silver too.

  * * *

  We string the unicorn up behind the shoppe. I watch everyone I care about take turns swinging at it with a broom handle until the piñata finally breaks open for me on my second turn. There are cheers and I pull up the blindfold to see paper flowers and Sharpies and tiny bundles of sage tumbling onto the cement. And it’s like someone tore me open too, and there they all are, everyone I love, whether I mean to love them or not, picking up the pieces and calling them treasure.

  WELCOME HOME

  After all the cake is eaten and everyone is on their way out, Winthrop sits down by me and says, “I couldn’t bring my present here, Helen. I have to bring you to it.”

  And it’s like the adults are suddenly, I don’t know, smart. Iris and Aunt Bev are chummy, washing and drying cake plates together at the counter, and Dad says, “Looks like we’re all set here. Why don’t you two go on.” He says it just like that. Without a question mark.

  * * *

  I still feel blindfolded. Like I don’t know where the target is, and Winthrop takes my hand and leads me toward his house. “Pen wants to be there too,” he says, and we pick her up and then she leads both of us, down his street and around the corner to a bus stop. Where she sits right down. Winthrop looks nervous. And so am I. Pen even seems on edge, her fur rippling in the streetlight, in the nervous night air.

  On the telephone pole, behind Pen, there’s a flyer. A lost sign. It is cleaner than the ones around it, like it was just put up. Its design is familiar.

  On the bottom of the flyer there are little squares to tear off and take home if you feel like you can help. This is where a phone number usually appears. Only on these, there are two words, over and over again, bent and fluttering. The same two words that Winthrop says now.

  “Happy Birthday.”

  FOUND

  HELEN DEDLEDER

  ALWAYS ALL IN BLACK. ALWAYS ALL IN.

  SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD TODAY.

  LAST SEEN EVERY TIME I CLOSE MY EYES.

  ANSWERS TO: NO ONE.

  LIKES: GOOD DOGS AND BAD PORN.

  THE REWARD IS ALL MINE.

  LITTLE BIG

  I don’t know how to act. If I take my eyes from the flyer, I am going to cry. If I keep reading the flyer, I am going to cry. Already the letters are blurring, the always all in black and always all in blending together to always all always all.

  Here we both are. Finally.

  Except Winthrop’s not himself.

  And I’m not myself.

  * * *

  And the strangers that we are fall into each other. Pen tries to join us. She bounces off of us on every side until she finally squirrels between our legs where we stand hugging. Her tail sticks out from between us, flipping like a flag in the world’s slowest parade.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry it’s so corny,” Winthrop says. “Like a corn-o book?” He’s trying to make me laugh, to see if I’m okay, okay with this, not like last time, the orchid on the driveway. And I choke, half on laughter, and try to speak.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry, Winthrop.” And he shakes his head and pulls me to him. And we are holding each other. And I really think about how hard it is to hold Winthrop, how hard it must be for him to feel held, and then I really want to hold him right. I move my arms around, lower, then higher, then I pull him to the bus-stop bench and I climb up.

  Now our faces are closer, and I hold on to his. I look into his eyes, no matter what-all he is going to see shining in mine, whatever last bit of truth we didn’t know about each other. And I kiss him. No potion required.

  AMENDS

  Before we can all go ride off into our senior-year sunsets, Aunt Bev says there is one thing we have to do, and we have to do it together.

  We have to help Mo terminate the pregnancy.

  Not financially. That would be too easy, in its way. Not medically. That would be too stupid. We have to help her spiritually, says Aunt Bev, mentally. We have to help her recover. Like friends do.

  The day that Mo is to go off to Sky for her appointment, we all meet at the shoppe and wait with her. Rain shows up in the Lost City Bread van, because Rain is an adult with her own vehicle and the best candidate for escorting Rosary’s needful souls across the border, since she can hang out with friends there while she waits.

  And we all hug Mo.

  And when we all hug Mo, we all feel pretty weird. It turns out that we are not very good at it, this hugging. When Mo and I first try, our arms wrapped loose and high around each other’s shoulders, Aunt Bev comes over. And corrects us.

  “None of this butts sticking out.” She pushes my hips toward Mo’s, does the same with hers. “Commit to the hug.”

  It is a different hug when you do it with your whole body.

  Mo and Rain take off and we all try not to look at Mo when she is trying not to look at Bird who is trying not to look at her and I know we’re all thinking that there is a drinking game in this somewhere. Who’s the Daddy, or something. And I know we all feel bad for thinking it. Because this isn’t a game at all.

  * * *

  Then the blinds come down. The Rosary Psychic Encounter Shoppe is closed for a private event, just as the sign Aunt Bev puts on the front door explains.

  Inside, Aunt Bev guides Winthrop, Bird, and me into the most surprising shapes of our teenage constellation. She might have done this with Bird alone, she said, but he is unreliable and Mo is too weak for a partner like him. Winthrop is here as Bird’s reinforcement, his second.

  I am here to learn.

  * * *

  Winthrop on the floor, on the rug, with candles all around. Bird is on one side of him, I’m on the other, and Aunt Bev is walking in a circle around us all, holding the eagle feather she usually keeps locked in the fireproof safe.

  * * *

  Bird on the floor, on the rug, candles all around. Winthrop and I are on either side of him. Aunt Bev is walking in a circle ringing a small bell, its tiny sound barely louder than her bare feet as she steps by us.

  * * *

  We start right at 1:00 p.m., the time of Mo’s appointment, and though Aunt Bev got Bird to agree to be here, he still won’t commit to going all the way. The all the way Aunt Bev is asking for is something more intense than a real hug. More intense than sex. She is asking him to lie on the floor in the supine position that a patient is forced to take, with all its vulnerability and all its possibility. The possibility that says, is saying, in some operating room in Sky right now, “I need more than this.” Or “I need to wait.” Or “This isn’t right for me.” Or maybe just “Help me.”

  Bird is obviously weirded out at the idea of lying down on the floor.

  Did I mention that he has to get naked?

  Aunt Bev is gentle with Bird, says, “You can undress behind the curtain,” but Bird is frozen, quiet. For once. He has his arms wrapped around himself in a hug that speaks of his full commitment to not taking part.

  Winthrop gets up then, and I’ve never seen Bird look so grateful.

  Winthrop doesn’t go behind the curtain. I guess spending time in juvenile hall got him used to being naked in front of a crowd, so it doesn’t matter. Or, it doesn’t matter in the first place and he knows this, just like usual.

  He stopped wearing ties since he got home from the farm, but he unbuttons his dress shirt, takes off his pants and boxers, and lies down on the rug, his head on the pillow Aunt Bev has placed there. Then she kneels at his feet and pushes them up, until both of his knees are bent. She holds on to his feet. She looks at the clock. We wait.

  * * *

  At 1:30
p.m. precisely, Aunt Bev says, “The anesthesia is taking over Mo’s body. We will gather the rest of her with us here.” She had explained it to me, this thing Great-Grandma Helen used to do before, years ago, when abortions were even less legal and more dangerous, this way of holding the woman undergoing the procedure so that none of her, of her actual self, is lost in a process that has taken so much from so many.

  Aunt Bev said she did this for Mom when she had her cancer surgeries too, but back then she had to do it alone. “It’s good to have a partner, Helen,” she’d said, like maybe if she’d had a partner then, when she was trying to help Mom, Mom wouldn’t have come apart like she did. Which makes sense. And sounds insane. And familiar. I know exactly how it is to negotiate for Mom’s return by blaming myself. I just didn’t know I wasn’t negotiating alone all these years. I felt suddenly full of love for Aunt Bev then, the love that has always been there, but now mixed with awe at all that she has done and does and is. And I said, “Yes. Partners.” Because it has finally become clear to me what we already are.

  * * *

  “Relax your thighs!” Aunt Bev’s voice is sudden and rough and loud. Winthrop’s legs flop open like he is a giant white frog, his dick and balls relaxed in the warm room, in the heat from the candles. The silvery flesh of his stretch marks shines like satin ribbon on his skin.

  “Relax your thighs,” she says again, like a threat. She rubs Winthrop’s thighs then, massages them. “Relax.” And somehow, even though her hands are right there by his junk now, it gets less weird.