♦◊♦
Monday morning they woke to Hannah playing her scales. The others were not playing theirs. Their father was already gone; he had to catch the bus. It was dark. Everyone in the house tried to flip the lights on in their rooms, the living room, and so on. It didn’t work.
Their mother said, “It wasn’t supposed to be today.” She found the notice hanging on the doorknob. They owed the electric company $90, and a $25 reactivation fee.
No air-conditioning, then. No one was allowed to open the silent refrigerator. No one could do the laundry. No television. Clara listened to her Walkman to drown out the frustration. They sat in the dark living room, faces only limned with light from the low, rising sun that slanted through the blinds. Their hair stuck up and the room smelled of their collective odors. No one would shower in the dark. No one told Hannah not to play her scales so she continued, squinting at the darkened page.
“Did you forget a bill?” ventured Ellis.
“We have minus $200 in the account as of yesterday,” said Jacob’s mother.
“If you need help managing your money,” said Aunt Paula.
“We need money,” said Jacob’s mother, “period. I already know how to subtract.”
Hannah disassembled her flute, poured the spit into a white hand-towel, and put it in its case.
“You know what we do?” said Uncle Ellis.
“Ellis,” said Jacob’s mother.
“We write down in our checkbook everything that we take in, and everything we spend. We have an allowance for extra spending and goodies each month that we take out of the account in cash. Once we’ve spent the cash—”
“Ellis.”
“Once we’ve spent the cash, we know we don’t have any more money to play with, and then we have to buckle down for the month.”
“Ellis, please, shut up.”
“Well if you needed the money so bad why didn’t you take our rent? We tried to give you money for the whole time we would be here.”
“It wasn’t enough,” said Jacob’s mother. She had started chewing her hair. “The bill collectors write us every week. The credit card is maxed out. We need $1600 to even begin digging ourselves back out.” She swallowed back tears. “We were hoping … We were waiting for the right moment.”
Uncle Ellis stood up from his chair. “What?” he said. Nearly shouted. “You were waiting for what? Because I’ve done well for myself and you’re still struggling, I’m supposed to bail you out again?”
“So my kids don’t deserve straight teeth and yours do?” said Jacob’s mother. She stood up. She walked into the kitchen. Jacob stayed clear this time. She kicked the wall beside the fridge. A tearing sound.
Jacob’s mother ran the tap while she searched the cupboards for a glass. Hannah went into the kitchen to see what happened. “She kicked a hole,” said Hannah. “Right there in the wall. She kicked it.”
The others came to see what Jacob’s mother had done, crowding the kitchen. She coolly drank her water while they gaped. Jacob knew, and Marvin must have known, she had only kicked through the paper they had stapled over the hole. In the dark, it looked real and fresh, and the hole was deep and black. Jacob could barely make out the staples.
“We haven’t got that much to give away,” said Uncle Ellis. “We’re already over our allowance for the month. Especially with the vacation. And the zoo tickets, the pizzas, the frozen lemonade, Mighty Joe Young, the Panasonic VCR. We can still give you what I offered before. You could get the electricity back on with that.” He sighed. “That’d be something.”
She took it. She showered in the dark. Jacob knew it would be pitch black; there were no windows in the bathroom, no way to bring in light. He kept waiting to hear her fall, cry out for help. She was fine. She left with her hair wet.
♦◊♦
Jacob fed the dog. Dances was ravenous; he knocked the food from Jacob’s hand and ate it off the ground again, working with intense concentration, raising his shoulder blades and lowering them alternately. The dog growled at Jacob, warning him off.
Hannah was watching from the porch. Her hands were raised just over her pockets and her fingers curled halfway inward as if she were slowly reaching for a pair of six-guns.
“Do you want to pet the dog?” said Jacob.
“He looks mad,” she said.
“He’s just eating,” said Jacob.
Hannah slowly approached, her hand outstretched. Doll fingers rigid.
Dances growled at her as she approached. His whole body coiled like a spring, shaking with potential energy, ears turned back on his head, paws clawing the dirt.
“He’ll bite me,” said Hannah.
“It’s okay,” said Jacob. “You’ll be fine.”
♦◊♦
The blood ruined her shirt. A lop-sided red crescent hanging like a sash from her collar bone, across the yellow star that glittered in the shirt’s center. It didn’t stop Aunt Paula’s screaming when Jacob’s mother promised they would have the dog put down, but it calmed her, so that she stopped calling Jacob’s mother irresponsible and focused on the boy she’d raised, and “that vile dog,” whose smell, she said, still lingered in the furniture, the corners, and the halls. Clara comforted her little sister.
Marvin wept inconsolably to hear their dog would die. Jacob didn’t know how to tell his brother their mother was lying—that the dog would come back in when their visitors were gone, and spoil the carpet, and eat all their food, and shed his fur everywhere just as before. Jacob wasn’t even sure how he knew that this would happen. It was something in his mother’s jaw, he thought, or the dog curled up calmly outside in the shape of a croissant. Both of them licking the backs of their teeth, waiting for better weather.
She led him to the closet where he hid his naked pictures. Their eyes met. She was beautiful. She was holding back laughter. He had neglected the possibility that she might want to take advantage of him.
|
After Hannah’s bite, everyone was polite, as if they had become strangers—except Paula, who seethed quietly to the end, and Clara, who played board games with Hannah and Jacob and touched his hair. She said it was soft. She said he had bedroom eyes. They rented two more movies and ate leftover pizza.
♦◊♦
They were in his bedroom, which had become hers and her sister’s. Their own sheets and blankets, fresh and foam green, covered the bunk beds like shallow pools of water. Their pillows crowded the headboards in every shape and color. Hannah had a large stuffed Elmo to keep her company. Clara did not. There were ponytail holders and sample-sized makeup on the dresser, where some would remain for days after the sisters left. There were the little ankle-high socks with pink bands around their crinkled mouths, and one of Clara’s bras hung from the nearest bedpost like a large white mushroom, one cup tucked inside the other. She was braiding his hair into small, painful-tight strands, tied off with colored rubber bands.
She met his eyes and quirked an eyebrow. He felt heat on his cheeks. She said, a little loud, “Of course I’d like to see some of your drawings,” closing and locking the door. He didn’t know how to tell her the locks didn’t work. She led him to the closet where he hid his naked pictures. Their eyes met. She was beautiful. She was holding back laughter. He had neglected the possibility that she might want to take advantage of him—that he was shorter than her, and smaller, and his lips were getting warm. They had to be careful of his braces. “Keep your eyes closed,” she said, “like this.” Of course he had to keep his open if he was to see her demonstration. Her eyes fluttered behind their lids, unsettling her eyelashes one after the other like sliding your hand over piano keys, back and forth. Her lips were sweet, her breath hot and a little sour. He could taste hints of old pizza sauce.
He reached for her breasts. She swatted his hands away. Her eyes tittered. His lips were tired and half-numb. It took all his concentration not to drool down her chin.
She squeezed him between his legs four times. The third time, he came. “Maybe we can add that to your little bottle,” she said, pointing to the stain.
“What bottle?” he said, or began to. He said, “Oh.”
She tasted her lip. Dabbed with her finger. “I’m bleeding,” she said. “You bit me.”
“I didn’t mean to. It was my braces.” He imagined a flake of her skin caught between his teeth. He sucked his braces, tasted copper with the fork flavor of the metal. Clara’s blood.
She gave him a pair of pants from his dresser and sent him to his brother’s room, where he changed in total silence, only remembering to draw the blinds after he had risked the whole neighborhood seeing his shame.
♦◊♦
On the last night of the visit, Uncle Ellis declared they had never really played their instruments. He said, “We still owe you a show.” Hannah assembled her flute with military speed and precision. Aunt Paula laid spit towels down in front of her daughter’s chair and her own—both from Jacob’s linen closet. Clara moved her lips as she started to play, whispering the chords or secret lyrics to herself, letting the bright red streak of her new scab show. She had told her parents she’d bitten herself. Uncle Ellis followed her lead with his fiddle, and Paula and Hannah gilded the melody. They all knew the song without anyone saying what it would be. Marvin climbed into his uncle’s lap and watched his hands form chords, minding their movements as if he might start to play too. They were perfectly in tune with each other, drizzling sweet melody, amazing grace. They filled the living room, and filled the house. Jacob thought how the sound would bleed through their thin walls, out of the house, unfurling over the yard and the dog, the playground equipment, the cars, and lap at their neighbors’ homes, and the cul-de-sac, and their tree, and the lamppost that was in their yard but not their own. It was all so stupidly beautiful.
—Photo by Patries71/Flickr