How to Grow an Addict

by J. A. Wright

  So I was really happy about the big new bed Uncle Hank bought for me, because it was roomy enough for me and all the cats, and I really loved his cats, even though I didn’t like their names: Helga, Thor, Alena, Vlad, Natasha, Olga, Edita, and Boris. I renamed them, and for convenience I referred to them as A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H. Short for “Are We Happy,” “Better than Baby,” “Cuddle Up Quick,” “Dizzy Girl,” “Every Little Kiss,” “Funny You Asked,” “Gimme a Paw,” and “Heavenly Fur Ball.” It took a while for both me, and them, to learn their names; it would have helped if Uncle Hank had cooperated and learned their letter names too, but he didn’t. He continued to call them the names he liked and they continued to respond to him.

  Within minutes of Dad dropping me off for the summer, I was in my room at Uncle Hank and Aunt Flo’s, unpacking my bag and getting things just the way I liked them. I couldn’t wait to go to sleep that night in my big bed, in my very own room, a room that was just a small part of a great house—a large, cottage-style house that Uncle Hank had designed and built before I was born. It was painted pale yellow with a lilac-blue trim, and it had an orange clay tile roof and a porch that went all the way around it. I heard it was just like the place Uncle Hank grew up in, complete with squeaky floors and doors that didn’t always close. The front yard was huge, with a rose garden on one side, including every rose imaginable—even the purplish gray ones that don’t smell like anything. On the other side, the garden was filled with all kinds of flowers, like lilies and petunias and daisies.

  Because the front door to the cottage was a long way from the front gate, visitors had to walk through a field of flowers (and bees) that spilled over onto what Uncle Hank said was a mosaic pathway, designed and built by him from old dinner plates and colored glass he got from friends, flea markets, and garage sales. He made a lot of stuff and he often carried a notebook and pencil in his shirt pocket to write down his ideas.

  There was so much going on at Uncle Hank’s and Aunt Flo’s that it was hard for me to keep up. Uncle Hank was busy all the time, and so was Aunt Flo. She kept busy with her various hobbies— sewing, knitting, embroidering, and fashion design. But the thing she liked to do the most was take care of her garden. She loved growing things, and sold her flowers and vegetables from the front gate using an honesty box that Uncle Hank made from an old wood ladder and attached to the bottom of the gate with a big chain and lock. Nothing went to waste in Aunt Flo’s garden, not even old flower petals. She picked them up off the ground and pressed out the juice and oil with a special machine. With the juice and oil she made her own brand of floral tonic. How she made it and what she added besides flower juice was her secret. Uncle Hank swore it was lemon juice, but I knew it wasn’t because one time I watched her add a few drops of apple cider vinegar to the pot. Aunt Flo would spray her tonic on almost everything, including on me first thing in the morning. She also sprayed my face and my hands at night before I went to sleep to help keep them soft and to help me remember not to chew my nails. I wasn’t the only one getting sprayed; Uncle Hank usually got a thorough spray, and sometimes the cats did too.

  Growing up, I didn’t always catch what Aunt Flo and Uncle Hank were doing around their house and garden, but as the years went by and I spent more time at their place, I noticed more about them and their home. By the time I came to visit that summer, I could see it all. There were six colorful pathways (with different flowers represented in each) that began at the front gate and swirled around the front yard until they met at the beginning of Aunt Flo’s rose garden. I also noticed the mosaic wall behind the bathtub (made with small stones and pieces of red plates sanded until the edges were smooth); and the very best thing of all—a large swimming pool with a beautiful mermaid on its floor.

  “When did this pool get here, Uncle Hank?” I asked.

  “We finished her about six weeks ago. Isn’t she beautiful?” he replied.

  He had it built after their neighbor agreed to sell a piece of land behind their houses so the pool would fit.

  “It took me twenty years of thinking about it and less than six months to make it,” Uncle Hank said as he bent over and splashed some of the water to scare off his cat Olga, who was about to drink from the pool. “She shouldn’t drink this water; it’s got chemicals in it.”

  I couldn’t wait to get into the pool, but Uncle Hank said I had to know the rules first. He took my hand and walked me around the pool. “This pool isn’t a regular swimming pool. She’s got two ladders on each side and one beneath the diving board. She’s more than eight feet deep for the first thirty feet. After that she gradually gets shallower, with the last ten feet being four feet deep. What that means is that you need to be very careful and head for a ladder if you’re ever in trouble,” he said.

  “Okay,” I replied.

  We walked around the entire pool while he explained the reasons I shouldn’t run or leave my stuff lying around. I nodded my head, but I don’t think I was paying much attention. I was too distracted by the mermaid. She was beyond beautiful. Her body spanned the entire pool, and her tail, which was various shades of blue and green, went all the way to the edge of the shallower end. Her flowing, wild orange hair reminded me of octopus arms. It extended up the inside wall of the pool and overflowed to just beneath the diving board. Her eyes were wide open, her mouth was smiling, and her arms were spread out like she was waiting to hug me.

  “How’d the beautiful lady get in there? I mean, who put her there?” I stammered.

  He chuckled and said, “She’s more than a beautiful lady. She’s a mermaid, a merry maid also known as a goddess.”

  Uncle Hank said he had created the mermaid at the bottom of the pool with small and large pieces of turquoise, crushed carnival and bottle glass, broken marbles, and amethyst crystals.

  “Can I swim with her now—can I, can I?” I asked.

  “Hold your horses. I haven’t finished. The most important thing for you to know about swimming in this pool is that you must tell us when you’re going in. We need to know you’re in there, okay?”

  “Cross my heart. Now can I swim?”

  “Sure you can,” he laughed.

  From above the water, the mermaid looked completely smooth, but I discovered on my very first swim that she had a few rough spots on her face. Her eyes and cheeks were made from violet and yellow crystals that Uncle Hank chiseled from the large crystal rock he bought from the same Indian guy who gave him bags of old glass marbles and turquoise pieces. Later that night, when I asked about her sharp glass eyes, he said he was afraid the rock tumbler would zap the energetic light from them and she wouldn’t be able to work her magic, so he’d left them sharp. “Venetian eyes” is what he said they were. But other than the rough spots on her face, the merry maid was perfectly smooth—even her tail. Everyone who saw her wanted to be with her, wanted to swim with her, but no one more than me.

  It was obvious to me, because of her flowing red and yellow hair, that Aunt Flo was the inspiration for the merry maid. When I asked her about it, she said, “I posed for hours in the blazing sun for Hank, and that mermaid doesn’t look a thing like me.”

  She also said she was used to sitting still and posing, as she’d worked as a model for years before she married Uncle Hank. She’d stopped modeling because he asked her to. She said he told her he didn’t want his wife to work, but really he was more concerned about other men touching her the way some photographers needed or wanted to. After a few years of not earning her own money, she took a job at the local art school as a life model, and she also let a photographer take photos of her holding vitamins and other things for a monthly leaflet promoting specials at the local drug store. Those little modeling jobs provided her with enough money to buy things she didn’t feel like discussing with Uncle Hank, like her perfume and a special kind of gin the man at the liquor store kept in stock especially for her.

  Gin and tonic was her favorite thing to drink, and usually after she made the first one she’d let m
e take over. I learned to mix them just the way she liked, which wasn’t very strong. Uncle Hank didn’t drink gin, but he did like whiskey, and by the time I was ten I knew how to mix up the perfect whiskey sour: ice cubes, juice from an entire lemon, a shot glass of whiskey, and a teaspoon of powdered sugar.

  One day after swimming for hours above the merry maid, I was sure I heard her say Mayadelsa. It was like she was introducing herself to me. When I spoke the word out loud it felt like I was speaking a foreign language. I told Uncle Hank about it at dinner and he said it was a good name and he thought it suited his merry maid perfectly. From then on she was known as Mayadelsa. For short we called her May or Delsa, and sometimes we yelled out to her before jumping in, “May I?” and then one of us yelled back, “Delsa!”

  Her glow was reliant on the sunshine, and I thought she looked her best on a sunny morning around 7:30 a.m. If you saw her then you couldn’t help but notice how she lit up the whole backyard with a glow that seemed to have every color in it. At those times, I’d sit on the diving board and stare at her until I couldn’t resist her call any longer. Then I’d let my body roll off and sink to the bottom of the pool so I could run my fingers over her orange lips and rosy chin. But I rarely got to swim with her that early because I wasn’t supposed to be in the pool until Uncle Hank said it was okay. He liked to swim laps in the mornings, and I often watched him from the side of the pool so I could count how many laps he swam. He could do a lot more than I ever could, but he never bragged about it. In fact, he never even counted; he just did it because he could.

  My summer visit was going very well, and by the end of June I could pretty much do all the swimming styles, except butterfly. I couldn’t make my body move well enough to do the butterfly. Uncle Hank said once I developed upper-body strength I’d be able to do it easily. “Why don’t you get up early and exercise with me?” he asked.

  Getting up before the sun was up didn’t sound very appealing to me, so I pretended I didn’t hear him. He told me plenty of times that he wanted me to be a competitive swimmer, and even took me to the beach so I could learn to swim through big surf, saying it would help me build stamina. But I wasn’t strong enough to get past the surf and he usually had to help me.

  One afternoon, after a day of nothing but defeat and a belly full of saltwater, I told Uncle Hank I didn’t want to swim competitively and he said, “Fine, fine, fine—what about the diving, then? I’m sure you’ll make a good diver.”

  Even though I told him I wasn’t sure diving was my thing, he insisted I learn about it and taught me what he knew, including correct positions and procedures and where to find the sweet spot on a diving board. This was the place I had to hit with the balls of both feet, at the same time, to ensure I got the right amount of lift for the front somersault or the pike or whatever dive I was doing. He told me once, after a bad belly flop, that diving was all about willingness. “Be more willing, okay?”

  What I especially liked about the back somersault was how powerful it made me feel and how at the end of it I would be face to face with Mayadelsa. What Uncle Hank liked about my back somersault was my timing and how tight I could curl up. It took me a while to learn how hard I needed to bounce to get high enough to curl and uncurl so that I wouldn’t make too big of a splash when I entered the water. Uncle Hank liked my form but he didn’t think it was a good idea for me to hang at the top of my somersault as long as I liked to, “You’re showing off with that trick and it doesn’t make your dive any better. Pay attention to your technique instead.”

  I decided to take his advice only after hitting the water head first, or chest first, one too many times. Once I hit the water flat on my back and knocked the wind out of myself, and Uncle Hank jumped into the pool—with his good clothes on—and carried me out. When I got my wind back, I swore I’d never dive again. He laughed a little bit when I said that and told me a story about him hitting a diving board so hard once that he broke his nose. He wouldn’t let me go into the house and get ready for bed until I did a double back somersault three more times, and he stayed in the center of the pool, fully dressed, for all three. I didn’t need his help, but it was sure nice to have him there.

  CHAPTER 7

  Aunt Flo said I was as good a student as Hank was a teacher. She often sat by the pool to watch me dive, and even made me a one-piece navy blue bathing suit because she’d noticed I was always pulling my suit bottoms up. But it was too tight and uncomfortable, so I only wore it a couple of times before going back to wearing the red and yellow floral two-piece Mom had bought for me at Sears. I told Aunt Flo I had plenty of time to pull my bottoms up when I was down talking to Mayadelsa.

  I liked to be close to Mayadelsa and watch her face glow when the sun hit her the right way. Some days I could stay down with her to the count of one hundred before I’d have to pop up for air. Aunt Flo was impressed but said I spent too much time in the pool and she’d like it if I could make some time to help her out in the garden because “it takes a lot of hard work to keep a garden looking good.”

  It wasn’t like she did all the work herself. A couple of Mexican guys were at the house every morning with rakes and blowers, and they’d sometimes be there until lunchtime.

  Aunt Flo liked to be outside with the gardeners so she could tell them what to do. She was also particular with the way she looked and wanted us all to be dressed and ready to face the day by the time the gardeners arrived. I hated to get up early and I often tried to pretend I didn’t hear Uncle Hank knock on my bedroom door at 7 a.m. But it never worked, mainly because he knocked so hard the cats would wake up and want me to open my bedroom door so they could get out.

  I could wash my face, brush my teeth, get dressed, make my bed, and feed the cats in fifteen minutes. And since we couldn’t eat breakfast without Aunt Flo, Uncle Hank and I had to find things to do to keep us busy while we waited for her. Sometimes I’d watch TV and other times I’d sit outside in a lawn chair and watch Uncle Hank swim laps

  I once asked Aunt Flo if it would be okay to sleep in until she was up and ready and she said, “Why? Are you sick? Have you broken your leg or something?”

  Uncle Hank laughed when he heard her answer and said, “Why don’t you tell her the reason we all have to be up and ready so early, Kitten?”

  “Because it’s never okay for the help to see you in a dressing gown. If you let them see you at your worst they will take advantage of you,” Aunt Flo said.

  Her answer didn’t make much sense to me, especially since I didn’t know what a dressing gown was, but I shrugged my shoulders in agreement and decided never to ask again.

  Uncle Hank said it took Aunt Flo a long time to get ready in the morning because she had a personal style, especially when it came to her hair. “It’s her signature piece,” he said.

  She told me once when we were out shopping that I wasn’t old enough to worry about having a style. “No one your age ever has style. Wait until you’re thirty and then you’ll know what suits you. What suits you in your thirties becomes your style,” she said.

  Aunt Flo never went anywhere, even outside, without looking like she was going somewhere important. When she swam, she tried her best to look glamorous and wore a dark red bathing suit that looked like the one Marilyn Monroe was wearing in a photo Aunt Flo kept on the refrigerator (to remind her not to eat ice cream). She also wore a white bathing cap with one white plastic flower on the top and a chinstrap to keep it from sliding off when she dove off the board. She was a good swimmer—“Very graceful,” Uncle Hank said—and I was always surprised to see her emerge from under the water with her makeup perfect, even her lipstick.

  Looking good and looking young were Aunt Flo’s favorite things to talk about. She had a friend named Helen who sold Avon and they had lunch every Tuesday in the garden and talked about the latest everything. They didn’t mind that I hung around because I was a good bartender and a willing model. Helen wasn’t as attractive or talkative as Aunt Flo, but she liked to discuss
makeup just as much as Aunt Flo did. One afternoon, after they’d both had a few “G and Ts” and Helen had finished putting almost everything from the new Avon product line on my face, she told Aunt Flo she should update her style because it was “so 1960.” Aunt Flo went quiet for a minute, and then told Helen she might think about matching her foundation with her skin tone because she looked like an orange. I looked up at Helen, who was rubbing blusher on my cheeks, and made a sour face. I wanted her to stop so that I could leave because I was sure they were going to argue. But the very next moment Aunt Flo let out a big snorting laugh, and a few seconds later Helen laughed too, and then they both laughed so hard they could hardly breathe. I got up and went into the house after Aunt Flo fell off her chair.

  I told Uncle Hank about it later because I didn’t understand what had happened and he said, “Your Aunt Flo can be very snappy when someone hurts her feelings. But she usually gets over it pretty quickly. She just wants to be helpful, that’s all. Good thing she has a sense of humor or she’d be miserable to live with. Maybe their drinks were too strong, huh?”

  “Maybe they were, but only because Aunt Flo sent me back to the kitchen twice to remake hers. Sometimes I think she doesn’t like me very much,” I said.

  “Of course she likes you. She just doesn’t show it very well. Try saying nice things to her and asking her for advice. She needs to be needed, maybe more than she knows.”