The Paper Garden

by Caitlin Vance

  After the twins ran back inside and told on Leah for stealing, her punishment was to pick up all the cigarette butts in the parking lot of 7-11. I helped her. “You don’t have to do that,” said the man who worked at the store. That man always seemed to be there no matter what day or time it was, and he spoke very quickly like he was a wind-up toy than never ran out of energy. It was hard to imagine him sleeping. “It wasn’t you who did it,” he said to me.

  I shrugged. I felt guilty even though it had been Leah. I would have felt guilty if I’d told on her or if I hadn’t. I didn’t know what I should have done. The twins sang songs and ate the candy bars while Leah and I picked up the cigarette butts. Leah said, “This blows.” Every time she found a butt that was only half-smoked, she put it in her pocket to save for later. “At least there’s one good thing that came out of this,” she said.

  When I got home, my mother said my hands smelled like cigarettes and she asked me why that was.

  “I just helped to pick up all the cigarette butts in the 7-11 parking lot, that’s all,” I said.

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t tell her about Leah stealing, or she might not let me hang around her anymore, and I had no other friends in this place. “It was Leah’s idea,” I said. “She wanted to do something nice for the neighborhood.”

  “What a strange thing to do,” my mother said, then bowed her head to say grace.

  That night I heard Mom crying once again, so I decided to make her a garden of paper like the garden we had at our old house. I set to work with my scissors and crayons and I folded the flowers, placing them in a line right next to her armchair: bleeding hearts, bluebells, foxglove. I hoped she would love it, even if they were a little crooked.

  The next morning I noticed other paper structures next to the ones I’d made. I had no idea what they were. My mother said they were the other flowers, that I had forgotten some. She walked out of the room. I looked closer and still I couldn’t see what she meant. I made another foxglove, this time a fox wearing a glove, plus a church bell that was blue, plus a human heart that was bleeding. But I didn’t do a good enough job making that one, so I threw it in the trash.

  I never told Leah about the paper garden, because I knew she’d think it was stupid baby stuff. Leah was tired of kid things such as art projects and board games. She liked adult things like smoking and setting fires.

  It was hot and the twins brought a water gun and Leah brought one of those long lighters used to light candles in jars, and we went into the woods behind the apartment complex. Leah told the twins they couldn’t squirt the water gun until she gave the word, which was fine with me because I didn’t want to get wet. There was a creek back in those woods and we walked until we found it. The twins tried to catch water bugs, but they weren’t fast enough. Leah took the squirt gun from the twins and they cried.

  “Hannah, hold out that lighter,” she said, handing it to me. I held it out. “Now light it,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I want to watch this water put out the flame.”

  I shrugged. I held the lighter out as far away from my body as I could get it. I lit the flame. Leah squirted the water gun and the flame erupted into a fire the size of a baby. Its flames spread across some little sticks on the ground. “Wow!” Leah said. She jumped up and down with happiness.

  I rushed over and threw as much water as I could cup in my hands on the fire. Then I did that over and over again as fast as I could. The twins did it, too, but Leah just stood there laughing at the flames. The three of us worked until the fire was out, then Leah stopped laughing.

  “How did that happen?” asked one of the twins.

  “I filled your water gun with gasoline,” Leah said.

  While we walked back, I asked Leah why she hadn’t told me about the gasoline. She said, “Because if I told you, you wouldn’t have gone along with it.”

  A month went by and it was still summer and I hadn’t seen my dad since we moved out of our old house.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked Mom.

  She glared, not at me but just in general. “He’s with Nikki,” she said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “She’s his new woman.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” she hissed.

  “Can I go see him?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” she said.

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “He’s at our old house, Hannah.”

  “Oh.” I still remembered the phone number, which Mom had made me memorize in case of emergencies.

  I went out of the living room and got the phone in the kitchen and dialed. It rang and rang and there was no answer. There was no answering machine, either, although we used to have one. He must have turned it off because on the old answering machine, it said all our names, and now it was just him who lived there, and maybe this new woman Nikki, whoever she was.

  I went back into the living room where Mom was sitting in her armchair. I climbed into her lap. “You’re getting too big for that,” she said, staring out the window and not looking at me. I climbed out of her lap, then I took her hand and kissed it like I was a gentleman. I went and got my paper and scissors because I decided to make some ladybugs for the paper garden. Paper gardens were a great idea, I thought, because the flowers would never die, not even if it snowed. Everybody should have a paper garden, even those who lived in houses like our old one with Dad.

  When I had a sleepover with Leah, her mother made us take a bath together even though I didn’t want to. “This is how we do it in our house,” she said. “Leah always takes baths with her sisters, and you are no different.” She left the bathroom, mumbling something to herself. The twins weren’t in the bathroom with us, probably because four people would be too crowded for one bathtub.

  Leah took off her clothes like it was no big deal, then got into the tub. “Come on,” she said. “We’re both girls.”

  I carefully removed my clothes and put my arms across my private areas. I scrunched my body into a little ball when I got into the tub. Leah splashed me. “Come on!” she said again. She stood up and she spread her private area open like a blooming flower, another kind I didn’t understand. She wanted to show me something but I didn’t want to see it. “Let me see yours,” she said.

  “No way.”

  She wiggled around like she was dancing.

  “I don’t want to,” I said.

  She sat back down and scooted closer to me. She plugged her nose and plunged her head under the water and tried to touch me in my private area, then by reflex I jammed my knees together on her head. She jerked up and screamed “Ow!” When her mother came running to the door, Leah told her I hit her.

  Her mother glared at me. “Are you okay, Leah?” she asked.

  “I’m okay, Mom.”

  “Good.” She went out of the bathroom.

  A few weeks went by. School would start soon and I’d have to go to a new school, since we moved to a new district. We hadn’t moved that far and I didn’t see why I had to go to a whole new school but that’s what Mom said. We went school shopping to buy the supplies on the list my teacher sent and Mom sighed and said it was too expensive, but bought the things anyway. Any time adults talked about money that summer, it made me sad, no matter what they were saying.

  Dad finally called. He picked me up and took me to Chuck E. Cheese and gave me a twenty-dollar bill when it was over. “I had fun with you, Hannah,” he said on the drive home. “We should see each other more often.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so absent.” When children are absent, it means they skipped school. When adults are absent, it means they’re bad parents. Dad didn’t use to be so absent when we all lived together. He used to help me build forts.

 
“Why did you and Mom get divorced?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to explain,” he said.

  “Is it because of Nikki?”

  “How do you know about her?” he asked. “Did your mother—”

  “Yes.”

  “No, it wasn’t because of Nikki.” I knew he was lying.

  “Does she live with you now? Is that why we went to Chuck E. Cheese instead of our old house?”

  “Well—”

  “I don’t like her.”

  “Hannah, you haven’t even met her.”

  “I don’t care.”

  When we got to the apartment complex, I got out of Dad’s car without saying goodbye. I slammed the door quickly so I wouldn’t hear him say goodbye either.

  In bed, I wondered why I could stand up to Dad but I couldn’t stand up to Leah. I told Dad I didn’t like Nikki but I could never tell Leah I didn’t like her. Maybe when I went to the new school I’d be so busy with my homework that I wouldn’t have time to spend with her. Mom said they give kids more and more homework these days. The year before, I did have a lot.

  One day Leah asked, “Hannah, do you know what sex is?” I’d heard the word but I didn’t know what it was.

  We were sitting on her bed. She said sex was when a man and a woman lay on top of each other and do disgusting things. I got a bad feeling in my stomach like I was going to throw up. “It’s what your mom and dad did to make you come alive,” she said. “Now it’s what your dad does with Nikki.”

  “You don’t know anything about that,” I hissed.

  She asked if I wanted to do it, but I said neither of us was a man so how could we do it? She said she could be the man. I said no thanks. I got up to leave. She said, “Wait!” but I didn’t wait.

  Dad called again and asked to see me. I was tired of the same old people so I said that would be fine. He picked me up and took me to our old house.

  Nikki was there. She looked younger than my mother, but not as pretty in my opinion. “I’m Nikki,” she said.

  I said, “I’m Hannah. I’m eight years old, and I used to live in this house.”

  She laughed and turned to my dad. “She’s so cute!” she said.

  Dad ordered pizza and we ate together. It was strange eating with this new woman at our old table where we used to eat meals with Mom, who cooked them. Mom always cooked delicious things. I did like pizza but I liked it better when Mom made it.

  “I work at Cinnabon at the mall,” Nikki said. “I love cinnamon rolls, but they’re so bad for my diet.” I thought one good thing about Nikki was that she could get me free cinnamon rolls, maybe. I also thought that pizza probably wasn’t good for her diet either.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What do you want to be when you grow up, Hannah?” she asked.

  “I want to be a singer. I want to be so famous that everyone gives me free stuff just because they love me.”

  “But you’re so shy,” said Dad.

  “I am not shy,” I hissed.

  After we ate we played Go Fish. I won every time because they let me. They thought I liked this but I didn’t. I was getting too old for things like that.

  When I got home, I told Mom that Nikki was okay but not as good as her. Mom said, “Well, tell that to your father.” I said I did tell him. Mom started to cry once again.

  The day before school started, Leah and the twins and I went into the woods once more. Leah had asked me to bring my Barbie doll, which I thought was strange since she didn’t like kid things and Barbie was definitely a kid thing. The twins had no water gun and Leah had no lighter this time, so I didn’t feel so afraid.

  Once again, we walked until we found the creek. The twins jumped up and down in the water, getting their clothes and shoes wet and muddy. I felt sorry for their mother, who had to clean up after them all the time. I tried to be very clean to make things easier for my own mother. She was sad enough all the time as it was.

  Leah grabbed a big stick in her hand. She pointed it at the twins. “Now, take your clothes off,” she said.

  Morgan said, “but this is not bath time.”

  Leah said, “take your clothes off.”

  “But what if someone comes?” Emma asked.

  “Nobody’s coming.”

  “But what if they do?”

  Leah pointed the stick and glared at them. “If you don’t take your clothes off, I’m going to bash your heads in with this stick.” It was a really big stick.

  The twins screamed.

  “Shh,” said Leah.

  The twins got out of the stream and took their clothes off, then stood there shivering.

  “Hannah, take your clothes off too.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Hannah, if you don’t obey me I will bash your head in with the stick.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. She glared. The twins shivered. Leah came over to me and yanked the Barbie out of my hands, then took her clothes off, then threw her on the ground and stomped on her.

  “That’s what I’m going to do to you,” Leah said, “if you don’t obey me.”

  I shook my head again. I looked at the twins and said, “you can put your clothes back on. She’s not going to hit you.”

  The twins didn’t put their clothes back on.

  “Now,” she said to them, “stand closer together. Face each other.” The twins obeyed. She said, “rub your bodies together.”

  “Ew,” they said.

  “Do it!”

  They did it and began to cry.

  “Stop!” I said. “She’s not going to hit you. Please stop doing that and put your clothes back on.” They just cried harder.

  I went over to Leah. I pushed her and took the stick from her. “You can stop now,” I said. “I have the stick.” Leah picked up another stick.

  “Take your clothes off,” she said to me, “or I will hit you.” I stood there. I went over to the twins’ clothes and picked them up off the ground, then started putting their shirts back on over their heads. They struggled.

  Leah came over and hit me in the face with the stick. It stung bad. She hit me again and a small piece of wood got into my eye. Tears came even though I tried to keep them away. I didn’t want to be a baby. Leah kept hitting me with the stick until my face bled. The twins cried harder.

  Leah put her hands under my shirt and tried to pull it off. “No!” I yelled. She yanked it off.

  Then I took her stick and hit her in the face several times. I took my shirt back and ran away.

  Back at home, I told my mother what happened. I told her Leah was trying to make the twins have sex and she was trying to make me do it too. My mom asked me how I knew what sex was and I said Leah told me. She asked how she could try to make us have sex and I told her it was complicated. I also told her about the time in the bathtub and the time Leah stole the candy and all the cigarettes.

  Mom washed up my face and got the piece of wood out of my eye. I looked in the mirror while she stood behind me. There were slash marks on my cheeks and my eye was red and terrible. “Great,” I said. “My first day at the new school, and I look like a monster.”

  Mom kissed the top of my head. “You’re not a monster,” she said. She took me to my bed and read me a story. I realized I’d forgotten my Barbie doll in the woods. Usually I slept with her next to me. Mom went into her closet and got the stuffed dinosaur I’d loved as a baby.

  “Mom,” I said, “I left the twins out there with Leah.”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “What if Leah killed them?”

  “She didn’t kill them.”

  “What if she made them have sex?”

  “I’m sure she didn’t do anything like that,” Mom said. But I knew she did something bad. I shouldn’t have left. It was like I did it as a reflex.

 
; Mom went into the living room and brought back a few flowers from the paper garden. She set them up in a vase on the nightstand and she got into bed with me. Mom said, “you didn’t do anything wrong.” Somehow hearing her say that was worse than if she had said I did do something wrong.

  After that, Mom said I couldn’t hang around Leah anymore. Once in a while I’d see her swimming in the pool or just going in and out of her apartment, with the twins trailing behind her like baby ducks. She always avoided my gaze and pretended not to see me. I couldn’t help but stare at her and the twins. I wanted to see if they were okay, and figure out what would become of the three of them. The twins still acted the same, sticking their tongues out and singing and sometimes slapping each other. They’d wave at me and call out, “Hi, Hannah!” and they’d point to me and ask Leah “Why do we never see her anymore?” and Leah would just say “Who?” and keep on walking.

  I started at the new school and I did have a lot of homework. I told myself it was so much that I wouldn’t have been able to see Leah even if she had been a nice friend. I told myself it was so much that I wouldn’t have been able to see my dad even if he had been present. I did my homework extra slow on purpose. My favorite subject was science, where I got to learn about new animals and plants. I got very good grades.

  Even though I had no time for friends, I did have time to add to the paper garden. I now had a produce section with carrots and strawberries, plus some spiders and butterflies, plus a section for everything I learned in science.

  But sometimes in the night, I’d cry like a little baby.

  Years later, because of the good grades, I got a scholarship to a good college across the country. It was so far away that I had to take three flights to get home for my Christmas visit. That first year, it was snowing so much at the good college that my first flight was delayed for twelve hours, and I didn’t sleep. When the plane finally left, we headed for Atlanta.