All the Children Are Home

by Patry Francis

  I tried to give her some privacy in the bathroom, but she reached for me with her good hand and pulled me inside. Then she insisted on leaving the door open.

  While she sat on the toilet, I stood in front of the mirror, pretending to readjust my barrettes. She kept her box on her lap even while she peed.

  I could hear Ma talking in a voice somewhere between serious and angry. “Two weeks better not turn into three months like it did last time. Louie won’t have it.”

  Agnes looked at me quizzically as she pulled up her pants. Apparently, no one had ever taught her to wipe herself.

  “Louie’s our dad,” I explained. “He might look mad when he first sees you, but he’s really not. He just acts that way.”

  While the negotiations continued in the foyer, I opened the medicine chest, took out Dad’s shaving cream, squirted a perfect ball of foam into my hand, and with one finger, wrote my name on the mirror. I stood up particularly straight as I pointed like Miss Robarge at the blackboard.

  “That’s me: Z-A-I-D-A. But you can call me Zaidie.”

  When it was obvious that she didn’t recognize the letters, I erased my name with a face cloth, taking care to clear away every trace. “Don’t you go to school?”

  She gave me her opaque stare.

  I looked down at her shoes, a faded pair of pink Keds with a hole in the big toe of each.

  “When Dad gets paid, we’ll go to downtown and buy you some new ones at Taymor’s. And socks. A coat. And . . . and . . . do you have any barrettes?”

  I unclasped the plastic shamrocks on each side of my head and attempted to clip them onto her hair, but it was too thick and tangled to hold. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you some bigger ones.”

  Agnes fastened one onto the top layer of her hair and returned the other one to me. “You have that one; Agnes have this one.”

  BY THE TIME we returned to the living room, Nancy was gone and Jimmy had taken off on his bike as he did every afternoon, even in the winter. Sometimes he rode to his friend Kevin’s or Bruce’s, but the days he liked best were the ones he just traveled.

  “Like I own this town,” he said. And when I saw him pedaling up the hill, the hair he spent far too much time combing loosed by the wind, an enraptured expression on his face, I understood.

  In her own way, Ma was traveling, too, absorbed in the love scene on her show, still sipping that morning’s cold coffee. At her feet, Jon played with his train, speaking in alternating voices as he imagined himself conductor, passenger, and crew. A Maxwell House commercial came on the TV. It was so familiar that I hardly heard it, but Agnes stopped and listened in wonderment to the tune played by the percolating coffee pot on the screen.

  “Good to last drop,” she said after the announcer.

  Jon glanced up at her, seeing a potential playmate for the first time. “That coffee is good to the last drop,” he repeated in his conductor voice.

  “Why don’t you show Agnes where she’s going to sleep?” Ma suggested, without looking up from the jigsaw she worked on during the commercials.

  Agnes, however, had wandered from the TV to the picture window, where all her attention was focused on the street.

  She didn’t hear me when I attempted to call her away. Nor was she aware when Jon again asked what was wrong with her. Only touch broke the spell, causing her to jump.

  “Mr. Dean come there,” she said, pointing into the deserted street.

  Though I didn’t know who Mr. Dean was, her fear surged through the room, a force so powerful that Jon looked up from his train and Ma even forgot the couple who were kissing on the screen.

  I put my arm over Agnes’s shoulder and led her away from the window. “No one’s coming here, Agnes. And if they try . . . If they try—Dad will call the cops. And Jimmy . . .”

  “Will beat him up like the Lone Ranger; that’s what he’ll do.” Jon jumped up to shadowbox with Agnes’s bogeyman. “Jimmy and me, too.”

  But Agnes heard nothing. Drawn back to the window, she repeated the dark litany we would all learn by heart in the next few weeks.

  “Mr. Dean come. He come in his yellow car. That road. Mr. Dean drive his car right down there. Mr. Dean come for Agnes and he find her, too.”

  At this point, she pivoted in the direction of the foyer, pointing at something that terrified us all even though we couldn’t see it.

  “That door.”

  Chapter Three

  Franco-American Spaghetti

  AGNES

  THAT AFTERNOON THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN BARRETTE TOOK me to her room and pointed at the bed across from the window. “You sleep here, okay?”

  I didn’t know the answer so I kept quiet.

  Then she looked at my box like she was wondering what was in it and why I wouldn’t set it down so I shook it at her, making my secrets rattle. “These my presents. Only no one can see but me.” I repeated her word: “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  After that, she stared at me the same way she had looked at the box before. Like maybe there was something secret inside me, too.

  She swung open the closet door, where her clothes hung on hangers. “You can hide your, um, presents in the back under the shoe box if you want. No one will know they’re there.”

  “You?”

  “I won’t look. I promise. Do you want to go outside?”

  She started for the stairs while I hid my secret box in the closet.

  Downstairs, the girl tied a knit hat under my chin and gave me a single mitten with a hole in the thumb for my good hand. “All our mittens have holes,” the boy explained. “Cause of Princie. Right, Zaidie?” The kids led me away from the window and toward the backyard, but the lady stopped me at the door, scowling at my pink Keds.

  “Couldn’t you find her any boots?” she said to everyone but me. “Well then, she’ll have to stay in. Can’t have her catching pneumonia on top of everything else.”

  “Please, Ma,” the girl pleaded. “Just an hour. I promise to bring her in if she gets cold.”

  The lady turned back to her chair. “A half hour and not a minute longer.”

  “Once she starts working on her puzzle, she’ll forget us till supper,” the girl whispered as we headed into the frozen yard.

  I had a lot of practice watching kids play from my window in the attic, but this time the kids watched back. They watched me and said my name, too. Especially the girl said it. Zaidie. I spoke hers inside my head at first, then I whispered it, and finally, I said it right out loud. “Zaidie!” A name as pretty as the color green.

  “Look, Agnes.” she laughed, exhaling a smoky plume of air. “I can see my breath!”

  “That’s cause it’s really, really cold out,” the boy whined. “I wanna go in.”

  “Agnes has holes in her shoes and you don’t hear her crying about it, do you? Stop being a baby!”

  I touched the skin of my face. Cold. Exhaling my own ghost breath, I walked across the yard. The ice crackled beneath my pneumonia shoes. “Cold.” I repeated it the way I had Zaidie’s name. Zaidie laughed again. “It’s winter, Agnes. Of course it’s cold.”

  “I wanna go in,” the boy said.

  When some other kids came into the yard to play, I went back to the steps and watched as they chased each other around the yard to keep warm. I had seen the kids next door play that game from the Deans’ window.

  “You got another new kid,” one of them said.

  “Yes, a midget—” the boy began before Zaidie stamped on his foot.

  “Sorry,” she told him sweetly when he began to howl.

  “Maaa,” he yelled in the direction of the house. Then he turned back to Zaidie. “What do you care anyway? It’s not like she’s staying.”

  Another boy about his size gaped at me. “Can she talk?”

  “Just Martian words. Right, Agnes?”

  Not knowing the answer, I folded my knees to my chest to warm myself inside the oversized jacket they had dug out of the closet. My toe, peeking throug
h the hole in my sneaker, was numb, even though I was wearing Zaidie’s socks.

  “Shut up, Jon.” From the yard, Zaidie narrated the action for me, announcing the important words by raising her voice. “This is freeze tag cause when someone tags you, you do this. See?”

  “Now we’re gonna play Red Light/Green Light. Watch,” the boy chimed in. “Have you ever played that?”

  I followed them with my eyes. As gray light began to seep through the trees and hedges, the neighborhood kids were called home one by one. Jeffrey! Lucy and Joe! Theresa Marie! Su-pperr!

  My stomach lurched as I imagined Mr. Dean’s voice coming through those trees.

  Didn’t I tell you I would find you? You can’t hide from me, Agnes.

  When the neighborhood kids were all gone, Zaidie picked up a stick and hurled it at the dog. The boy, who had already started inside, turned back and joined the game.

  “That’s Princie,” he told me through blue lips. “If you want to pet her, you have to ask me first cause she’s my dog.”

  “She’s the family dog and you know it, Jon,” Zaidie said.

  “No, sir. We got her on my birthday so that makes her mine.”

  “Yeah, and he insisted on naming her Prince—even though she’s a girl. Is that dumb or what?”

  “Princie likes the name, right, girl?” When Princie barked, they laughed.

  Both of them noticed the open gate the same time the dog did. “Stop her!” the boy cried.

  “Princie! Don’t even think—”

  But it was too late. The dog surged toward freedom, tongue and tail flying joyfully, energized by their orders to stay.

  Just then Ma stepped out onto the back porch wearing the same scowl that crossed her face when she had looked at my pink shoes. The kids immediately turned on one another.

  “If Zaidie went inside when I told her I was cold, Princie never would have got out.”

  “Shut up, Jon. It was your stupid friend who—”

  “My dog’s gonna end up in the pound and get put asleep all cause of you.”

  But something else was on Ma’s mind as she scanned the yard. “Jimmy’s not back yet?”

  Zaidie put a finger to her lips, but it was too late.

  “Smoking cigarettes; that’s where he is,” the boy sang out, relieved that Ma was too preoccupied to notice the open gate. “Right there in the garage.”

  Hearing his name, Jimmy stepped into the gray light. “My bike got another flat in front of the O’Connors’ house. I think Crazy Joe’s dropping nails in the street on purpose.” He held up his grease-stained hands in evidence.

  “I told you to stay away from that street, didn’t I? The kid’s a menace,” Ma said before turning to the small boy. “And what did I say about lying?”

  I waited for the boy to give her a whiny Shut up like he did to everyone else, but he just folded his arms and clamped his jaw into a pout.

  “Jimmy’s the favorite,” Zaidie whispered when Ma went to check the stove. “Because he came before all of us.”

  Jimmy opened his mouth and flaunted the piece of white candy between his teeth. “That means Ma always believes me. And even if she doesn’t, I never get in trouble. Keep that in mind if you ever get the idea to rat me out.”

  He took out a roll of candy and handed a piece to Zaidie and me.

  “Peppermint Life Savers,” she explained. “So Ma and Dad won’t smell the cigarettes. If you keep Jimmy’s secrets, you get one. And if not—”

  “Shut up, Zaidie. I didn’t mean to tell.” The small boy tripped over Princie’s stick as he hurried to catch up with his brother. “Are you mad at me, Jimmy?”

  “No one likes a squealer, pal—not even Ma.”

  The small boy’s face turned deep red as if he was about to cry, which immediately softened the favorite.

  “Aw, come on, buddy. You know I never get mad at you. But next time Ma asks about me when I’m in the garage, what are you gonna do?”

  They both ran their finger over their lips like a zipper in what was obviously a well-rehearsed routine. Then Jimmy hoisted the small boy onto his back and carried him into the house.

  Inside, the small boy led me into the bathroom. “You wash your hands like this, see?” He pointed at the two bars on the soap dish. “Just don’t use the stinky green one. That’s Dad’s on account of his hands get really dirty at the garage. Right, Jimmy?” he called into the hallway.

  “Stinky,” I repeated, which made him laugh for some reason.

  When I sat in my window at the Deans’, I used to see the kids laughing like that in the yard next door, and sometimes I laughed with them even if I didn’t know why. This time, I did the same.

  I followed Zaidie and the boys through the kitchen into the dining room. The dishes didn’t match and there were paper towels beside each plate instead of pretty blue napkins like Mrs. Dean used, but otherwise I recognized the way the table was set in my old house. I lowered my head and started toward the room Zaidie had shown me, pausing only to check for the yellow car in the picture window.

  “Where are you going, Agnes?” she called, saying my name extra loud. In case I had forgotten it, I guess. “You sit here. Beside me.”

  I shook my head quickly. “Agnes go to room.”

  “In this house, you sit where you’re told,” a man said. I watched his Adam’s apple move in and out as he gulped a glass of water. “And there’s no food in the bedrooms.”

  I had been so determined to escape that my eyes had refused to see him sitting right there at the table. Now I was overwhelmed with his presence, the weight of it, the smell of the stinky soap—Fels-Naptha, Zaidie called it—and something else. It took a minute before I realized it was gasoline, like the kind Mr. Dean kept in a red can in his garage. Stay away from that, Mrs. Dean snapped when I stopped to inhale the odor before climbing into the car. I sat at the table beside Zaidie as I was told.

  “Zaidie let the dog loose,” Jon said, as he took his own seat.

  When Dad ignored him, Zaidie stuck out her tongue triumphantly. “Remember what I told you?” she whispered to me. “Dad looks mean, but if you’re going to the store, he’ll give you a nickel.”

  The store? A nickel? I squinted at the new world I had entered.

  “For candy. A nickel will get you this many pieces,” the small boy added, holding up his fingers. “Zaidie let the dog loose,” he repeated.

  “I did not. It was Jon’s friend Jeffrey.”

  As the man took another long drink of water, I studied his oversized hands. What was the difference between being mean and just pretending? I wanted to ask. But mostly, I just wanted to go to the room Zaidie had showed me. Even though I didn’t have to pee, I had that feeling like I might do it anyway.

  “Did you see the new kid, Dad? She’s a midget from another planet,” the small boy announced when he got no reaction about the dog. “Right, Jimmy?”

  Dad grunted while Ma moved around the table, spooning a glob of orange-colored noodles onto each plate. To me, she was a shadow—always present, but less real than everything around her.

  “Do you like Franco-American?” Zaidie asked, speaking louder when she said words she thought I might not know. She passed me a slice of bread and rolled a corner of her own piece into a little dough ball. “Sunbeam—my favorite.”

  After the shadow shot her a look, she opened her eyes wide. “I’m just showing Agnes how I like to eat bread; I swear, Ma.”

  It was too late, though. When the shadow returned to the kitchen, Jimmy pitched his own doughy ball across the table at Zaidie. A minute later, the small boy hit me between the eyes with a bread pellet.

  “Jimmy!” the shadow hissed as she moved around the table, pouring milk into every glass but the man’s. “For goodness sake; you’re supposed to be setting an example around here.”

  “An example,” the small boy repeated.

  “Yeah, Jimmy’s teaching us how to be juvenile delinquents,” Zaidie said.

  Ma looked a
t her sharply. “Zaida. For goodness sake.”

  In the course of the meal, the names looped around the table so often that I would recite them in my sleep that night the way I used to say the word green.

  Jimmy.

  Zaidie who was sometimes called Zaida. Jon who was also named buddy and pal. Ma.

  There was Dad, too, but I was still afraid to look at him.

  “All I can say is Nancy better come up with that placement in two weeks or she’ll find a kid parked at her door,” Ma said.

  Mrs. Dean talked in that voice when she was trying to stop Mr. Dean from turning mad. But Louie pretended not to hear her just the way he had when Jon told him I was from outer space.

  While they talked, the kids ate quickly—bread slathered in yellow grease and squishy noodles followed by large gulps of milk. They argued about whose turn it was to wash the dishes, who had thrown the first dough ball or forgotten to bring the dog in.

  “I don’t care who did it,” the shadow interrupted. “You’re all going out to look for her after supper. God knows what she’s already dropped on the porch.”

  “Princie’s the best thief in Claxton; right, Jimmy?” Jon said with obvious pride.

  “The Robin Hood of dogs. Toys. Cat dishes. Shoes. You name it; she’s brought it home. If you don’t watch out, she’ll snag the hat right off your head.” Jimmy reached over and lifted an invisible cap from my head. I could still feel his touch when I put my hand on my hair.

  “Her favorite thing is to rip down the clothes from people’s clothesline,” Zaidie added. “The nicer the better. Remember when she got Jeffrey’s mother’s white dress and dragged it down the street through the mud?”

  “Man, was she proud of herself that day. Till Mrs. Beales pulled a switch from her tree and whooped her,” Jimmy said. “Dad pretended to beat her, too—just to make the neighbors happy, but he mostly just hit the ground.”

  Dad grunted. Aside from the sound of his fork scraping the plate, it was the first I’d heard from him since he told me what we do in this house.

  “You think that scared Princie? Never. Next day she did the same thing to the Correias’ morning glories,” the small boy added.