Hyacinth Girls (18 page)

I didn't say anything. She uncapped her ChapStick and rubbed on some more.

When we pulled up to Grandma's house the grass in her yard had grown really tall. If DH could see it, they'd say it was ghetto. Rebecca knocked and then opened the front door without waiting for an answer. We walked past an oxygen tank on the floor, and then into the living room, where Grandma sat in her recliner, watching TV, with a little tube in her nose. Grandma wasn't a hug-and-kiss kind of person, but I went over to her recliner, and she pressed an arm around my waist. Right away, Rebecca squared off.

“Bea, are you still smoking?”

“Nope. I quit.”

“I smell it in the house.”

“That's old smoke,” Grandma said. “When you smoke for twenty years the smell sticks around.”

Before she left, Rebecca pulled me aside. “It's really dangerous for her to smoke now that she has oxygen tanks in here. That's how fires start. The tanks could explode.” Rebecca held on to my arm. “If she takes out a cigarette I want you to run out of the house and call me right away.”

I said I would. Rebecca wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. “If you change your mind about staying, give me a call. I'll be in the area for a little while.”

She hadn't told me she was going to Mom's grave, but I knew that's where she'd be. She couldn't get enough of it—but at least this time I wouldn't get dragged along.

As soon as Rebecca left, Grandma pulled out a cigarette. She'd been hiding the pack under a pillow on her lap.

“She really burns my ass,” Grandma said, flicking her lighter. “She's been like that ever since she was born. Snotty little kid.”

She sucked her cigarette and I couldn't take my eyes away from its hot tip. I didn't want to run outside. I wanted to watch it burst into a giant fireball—a red globe that would swallow me up. Heat and smoke like red planets and starlight in the fog. Death by fire. The end of my problems. I stayed put.

“Don't worry.” She waved her cigarette at me. “I've been doing this a long time.”

“I'm not worried.” My cell phone was humming in my pocket and Dallas's name was on the screen. I breathed in Grandma's smoke and flicked a finger toward her pack. “Can I have one?”

I grinned as Grandma started laughing, but then the laughing turned into coughing and the coughing turned into gasping. I stood up and looked at my phone like that might help. “Should I call Rebecca? Or nine-one-one?”

Grandma shook her head at me. She was still holding the cigarette and I didn't know if I should take it out of her hand. Her whole body was heaving and I felt as evil as DH when they watched me drown, so I kneeled in front of her and put my hand on her bony knee. She didn't look at me; her eyes were squeezed shut. I thought she was dying. Her chest kept moving up and down, and her throat was making a hot, dry noise, and if I knew how, I would've tried to pull her back to the surface. But Grandma wasn't underwater, so I kept rubbing her knee and watching her face and then finally, a million years later, the coughing and gasping stopped, and Grandma brought the cigarette to her mouth and took a puff.

“Do me a favor,” she said, her eyes watery. “Go get yourself a soda from the fridge, and bring me a beer.”

I knew she wanted me to go away because she was embarrassed, so I took my hand off her knee and went into the kitchen. I wasn't thirsty, but I ran the cold water in the sink over my hands and then found her a beer and poured it in a glass.

I was going to do everything right that week—I wanted to make it impossible for her to live without me. So I started learning all the things I could do: Velcro her shoes, read the labels on her medicine, find her three inhalers. In the morning, when Grandma woke up and muttered, “Jesus Christ! My goddamn sacs,” I knew that meant her lungs were bad, so I went to the kitchen and made her a bowl of yogurt with banana mixed in. I mopped the floor and scrubbed the shower, both without her asking. Grandma gave me a funny look when I washed out her ashtray and then I realized I was acting too much like Rebecca, who she hated. So to prove I wasn't a fuzzy-perfect blah-blah I started doing Rebecca impressions for Grandma. I went stomping around the room, pretending to look for dust under the bed, and then running my finger along the windowsill and screaming in horror that it had plaque buildup. I put on a gushy voice and said, “Hon, there's so much bacteria in the world, but if you work hard and floss six times a day everything will be awesome and cavity-free.” I didn't sound anything like her, but Grandma laughed anyway.

Then I told her how Rebecca liked to pretend everything was so perfect, always saying “Life is good,” but that I heard her crying in the bathtub at night.

“Fucking Enforcer,” Grandma said.

Sometimes I didn't check my phone for an hour. I'd be watching TV or washing the dishes and I'd forget about it for a few minutes, but after an hour I always got the jiggles. Even though I knew it would make me feel worse, I had to go check. Sometimes I'd try to hide it from myself in my room, but I'd just end up running around until I found it. I had to
know. What were they thinking, what were they saying, what did they want me to hear? Afterward I would feel like my guts had been scraped out with a knife. I was brown and green and dripping. A fat sweaty blob, made of dirt and rust and ashes, hanging upside down and waiting to drop.

When Rebecca called, I said the things that Grandma had told me to. We'd been eating mostly cereal and yogurt, watching TV all day long, but I knew how to lie.

“We just had spaghetti and salad,” I told Rebecca, “garlic bread on the side.”

“Are you getting out at all or are you just cooped up all day?”

“We drove to the mall. We get out.”

We didn't want Rebecca to know how bad Grandma was because she'd probably overreact and force me to come home. Grandma ran out of breath even walking to the bathroom, so we sat in her living room for two days, watching the vampire series, and every once in a while when I heard the click of her lighter the hairs on my neck would stand up, but then I'd tell myself,
No, it's okay to die
.

In four days, we went out in the car only twice. Grandma dressed up in her jean jacket and puffy cap, and tied her stringy gray hair in a low ponytail. She said I could take whatever I wanted from her jewelry box, so I picked out a pair of dangly skull earrings so she'd know I liked her style. I helped carry Grandma's portable oxygen to the car, and then I sat in the waiting room while she saw her doctor. Another day, we went to the supermarket, and even though we parked in a handicapped space, by the time we got inside, Grandma was wheezing and pressing her chest. I put her oxygen tank in the top of the shopping cart, and we stood near the vegetable section, waiting until she felt better. I didn't care who looked at us. They could stare at Grandma's tubes all day long and neither of us would care. I'd made myself leave my phone in the car,
and when Grandma and I started walking slowly along the aisles, I felt just as good as I used to with DH. She didn't give a damn what anyone thought and neither would I. Grandma dropped a bag of starlight mints into the cart, and she let me get two boxes of Cocoa Puffs cereal. “I love staying with you,” I said. “You understand me so much better than The Enforcer.”

“Don't get me started on her again,” Grandma said.

“I bet if I lived with you I could help a lot.”

“Oh, yeah?” Grandma asked. “You wanna be my slave?”

She pointed to a box of Raisin Bran that she wanted me to reach, and I plucked it off the shelf, dropped it in the cart. “Sure,” I said. “Yes, master!” Grandma didn't laugh. She turned away to look at something else, and by the time we got home, I knew she was mad. After I put away the groceries, she said I should go outside and get some fresh air. She told me she wanted to take a nap, and she made it sound like she wouldn't be able to if I was around. I wanted to stay inside, but I couldn't risk annoying her.

I left Grandma in her chair and went out to the garage, where she said there was a bike I could ride up and down the street. The bike was prehistoric, like something you'd dig up from the bottom of a lake and then put in a museum. It was crusty and dirty, the tires were flat. It might've been green once, but it also could've been blue or red or silver or black. There was a bar down the middle and I realized it was probably my dad's. Grandma never would've ridden it. I wasn't even sure if I should touch the ganky thing, but I knew if I was going to live here I'd need a way of getting around. I could even use it to pick up food or Grandma's medicine—that's what I could tell her. I found a pump and filled up the tires. Then I pushed the bike out to the street and held it upright. It wobbled some, like it might shatter into a thousand rotten parts, but then I pushed the pedals and it started to go. The wheels rolled and I held on to the worn rubber grips.

I rode back and forth, getting used to the trees and bushes and sidewalks and streets. Pedaling faster, I breathed in crystal fuel and began to taste the secret history of this place.

Before my dad, before the telephone poles and painted signs, everything was quiet. Ice Age, Stone Age, birds lifting into the sky. I erased houses and cars and people and lawns. There was just forest, moss, the smell of stones. Something leaking out into the universe and telling me I could stay. This would be my place. Giant trees. Frozen lakes. A woolly mammoth with thick fur crusted in ice. No language, just silence. Soft as the flapping sigh of a moth's wing.

My cell phone sang out and I hit the brakes. Rebecca wanted to know how I was doing. It was the second time she'd called that day. I knew that when she found out I was staying with Grandma she'd cry for so long that her eyes would swell up and her nose would get red and then mine would, too, and I wouldn't want to leave her. But I'd have to do it—escaping was all that mattered now.

“I ran into Dallas,” Rebecca said. “I think she really misses you. She said she couldn't get you on your cell so I told her I'd ask you to call. I thought it might be nice to bring her and Ella along when I pick you up.”

“That's okay,” I said, swallowing. “You shouldn't do that.”

“Dallas just sounded so lost without you. She can't wait for you to get back. I thought it was sweet.”

“Is that it?”

“Is now a bad time?”

“I'm just outside. I'm riding a bike.”

“Do you have a helmet?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Is everything okay with Bea?”

“Yeah. She's great. I really love it here.”

“Good, sweetheart. Well, call me later.”

After I hung up with Rebecca, I rode back to Grandma's house. When I put the bike back in the garage I read the latest text from Dallas.

You can run but you can't hide. Dead Babyshits leaves a stain.

Grandma was asleep in her chair, so I sat down on the couch, breathed in the smell of smoke and medicine, and told myself that this was home. The long wrinkles on her cheeks reminded me of ant trails, and I must've been staring when she opened her eyes.

“Why are you looking at me?”

I looked down at my phone. Maybe I could show it to her. If she saw their messages she'd have to let me stay. Either that or she'd wonder what I'd done to deserve it. Then I'd have to explain about Robyn, and DH, and the naked picture I'd sent. Grandma might look at me like she smelled Babyshits, too.

“I was just wondering,” I said. “Do you think people who have trouble sometimes deserve it?”

Grandma made a face like it was a stupid question. “Nobody deserves anything. What happens happens. That's life.”

She was still wearing her jean jacket, and I thought about the black leaves floating in her chest.

“What if everyone started calling you a name that wasn't yours? Like if everyone called you Jennifer instead of Bea.”

“What do I care about that? Some of us have real problems in the world.”

The phone was starting to sweat in my hand. I had to find a way.

“Do you ever wonder about what would happen if I lived here? In Cansdown?”

“I can't think about that, because you don't. Now do me a favor. Quit theorizing and go find yourself some dinner.”

I ate my Cocoa Puffs without mentioning it again, but that night I
couldn't sleep. The bedroom used to be my dad's, but Grandma redecorated after he died. The walls were plain white and all his things had been thrown away. Even if there were real traces of him in the room—dandruff on the mattress, toenail clippings in the rug—they were too small to see. And I was glad because I didn't want to imagine things that weren't true. Like if there was a baseball glove, I might think he loved baseball—I might even imagine him pitching in a field. I'd walk around every day thinking my dad played baseball until I believed I'd really seen it and it was true. Then one day someone might come up to me and say,
Actually, your dad hated sports and the baseball glove was just a thing he had
. Then I'd have to admit I was fooling myself, and I'd promised I wouldn't do that anymore. When Rebecca had told me how he'd left me,
committing suicide
, I said I never wanted to hear about him, ever again. Grandma had his ashes in a box in her closet, but I didn't want to see that either.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: (no subject)

Date: Wed, Aug 26 2009, 23:47:05

Robyn

I never told you this before, but my dad killed himself when I was five. When I asked them why he did it they told me he was sad. I used to think that was a bullshit excuse. Über-pathetic. Like just because you're feeling shitty doesn't mean you have to die.

But I've been thinking about it more now and I'm starting to get it. Like there was this girl Autumn Sanger who drowned at the
beach. She disappeared one day and everyone thought she was kidnapped, so they blamed all these different people, and Autumn got more and more famous. But she was only trying to escape and I think I can understand that. We're the same, you know? I need to escape, too. C