Naked, on the Edge (16 page)

When Nannie took off her first finger, Stony was back in a rage. He would not come up on the porch, but stood at the bottom of the front stoop steps and shook a fist at the woman and the girl.

"You's crazy! No wonder Chloe ain't right upstairs, she got it from you."

"Go home, Stony," said Nannie.

"They are talking 'bout you at work now. You're the bathroom talk, Nannie. You're the lunch room talk! You can't do this to yourself. Take some money. I can't handle this shame."

Nannie licked her lips and patted Chloe's face with a four-fingered hand. "Go home, Stony. We don't need you."

"There's openings out at the turkey plant. Let Chloe come work there. She might be crazy but she ain't dumb like you think she is, Nannie. She's fooling you in a big way."

"She can't, Stony. Don't fool yourself. Go home.

"And why the hell's she getting so fat these days? She got bad glands or something? Won't take yourself to the doctor, won't take her, either, I guess."

"We's eating good," said Nannie. "Chloe's just a healthy girl. Go home."

"You pregnant, Chloe?" asked Stony.

Nannie stepped down to Stony. Her good hand shot out and cracked her grandson on the side of the face. "You speak trash on my porch?"

Stony almost exploded. "You ain't my family!"

"I always knew that. Go home."

Stony went home.

And so it went. Nannie cut herself in the daytime, while Chloe held a cloth to catch the blood and sometimes put a rag in Nannie's teeth so she wouldn't groan so loudly. At night, Nannie wrapped herself up good so as not to bleed to death.

Stony didn't come back when Nannie took off another finger, nor did he show up when the left big toe came off. Nannie upped the price to seventy-five cents. The locals knew it meant more gore, and coins filled the bucket again with new fervor.

"What's a 'r' look like, Nannie, I forgot," called Chloe from the sign.

Nannie made broad strokes in the air to show her granddaughter. "Take your time, now, you'll get it."

Chloe put the paintbrush to the sign and formed a lopsided V. Then she sat back and painted the length of her forearm with the paint. She held it up to show Nannie. "Pretty!" she shouted.

"Chloe, honey, now you got to wash that all off."

Chloe brought the can and paint brush to the stoop.

"All done," she said to the doll on the porch floor.

"That sign looks right nice all done over again," said Nannie, raising her one good hand and squinting out at the sandwich board. "Now with me asking a dollar, they'll know they got some real crime to look at."

Chloe sat on the stoop and rubbed the doll's face in the paint on her arm.

Nannie turned awkwardly in her chair. Severe shadows shadows cut down the side of her face. She stroked her throat and pulled at the wrinkles. She leaned over and pulled at the end of the sock on her left foot. The sock was orange with drainage. "Threads catching on that gone toe," Nannie said. "Ought to get me a prop-up chair."

"Nannie, Stony says I crazy like you."

"Stony don't know crazy," said Nannie. "You and me, we's just practical. Give me a hug."

Chloe leaned into the rancid dress and gave her Nannie a hug.

Nannie sat back. She said, "Stony tells me you can do more than I think you can. In a way, he's right."

Chloe put some of the yarn doll hair into her mouth to suck. She strummed the now-blue doll's face.

"I know you can do many things. You can help me move 'round the house. You help me do a little cooking in the kitchen. You paint the signs for me, don't think I don't love you for it. But there is something else . . ." Nannie's voice trailed. Chloe licked the palm of her hand, and watched her grandmother.

"Want you to do my eyes," said Nannie. . Chloe blinked, and rubbed her own.

"I can hold still I think. If I cry don't stop." Nannie scratched at a curly eyebrow hair. Then she took a butter knife from her skirt pocket. "Dull one'll do better."

Chloe flinched and she drew back from the knife offered in her direction.

"George Stewart lost a thumb in his thresher last Thursday," said Nannie, her voice thoughtful and sad. "Mrs. Stewart told me when she come 'round with her money. Ain't nothing to see gone fingers now."

Chloe squinched her nose and shook her head.

"Honey, crime got to pay. We got to eat."

"How I do it?" asked Chloe.

"Just a little twist, like scooping oleo margarine from the tub."

Chloe put her doll down. She gingerly took the knife.

"Like oleo?"

"Yes," said Nannie. She leaned over to Chloe and kissed her on the forehead. "I'm the tub, honey."

Chloe licked the knife once, for luck, she told Nannie.

S
tony thundered into the living room, knocking over the can and spilling all the change. Coins rolled in a flurry through the dust bunnies on the floor. Chloe ran around behind Nannie's stuffed chair. She grabbed her stomach with one hand and the top of Nannie's head with the other.

Nannie, on her chair, buttons of her blouse almost all done back up but all done wrong, straightened and snorted.

"You!" Stony screeched, and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the crusted holes where the eyes had been. "Oh, my God, you've really blinded yourself. I prayed the folks at the plant were lying to me, trying to get my goose for all this nonsense!"

"Weren't lying," said Nannie. "Chloe done it for me. Guess you was right, she can do some things."

Chloe looked around the back of the chair. Stony glared down at her. His face was red and his ears were sweating. He pointed his finger at Chloe. "You little bitch! How could you do this?"

"Don't talk like that in my house. She's my family. I asked her to do my eyes," said Nannie.

"And you're crazy!" shouted Stony. He spun on his heel and picked up the empty

coin can. He shook it in Nannie's face, but her empty sockets could not see. "I ought to put you out of your misery. It would put me out of mine!"

"Go home, Stony," said Nannie.

"Home," said Chloe.

Stony hurled the empty coin can to the floor, and it bounced loudly. He clawed at his face. "How can I stand this? They didn't give me the promotion I was gonna get, since they said you is nuts. Said it must run in the family!”

“Go home, Stony,” said Nannie.

“It ain't fair. I gotta ruin my life for my crazy grandma!"

"Show Stony the door, Chloe," said Nannie.

Stony stood stock still, with nothing but his eyelids twitching. Then he reached into his jacket and took out out his pistol.

"I can't ruin my life for no crazy woman," he said. His eyes teared up, and he blinked the tears away.

"Chloe, honey, you hear what I said?" said Nannie.

"Show Stony the door."

Chloe stood up slowly. She and Stony stared at each other. Chloe held up her doll, and showed her brother. The doll's eyes were dug out.

"Christ Jesus," said Stony. He aimed the pistol at Nannie's head.

Chloe reached for Nannie and patted her arm. She did not look away from Stony. "I love my Nannie," said Chloe.

The pistol began to shake in Stony's grip. Chloe leaned down and kissed her grandmother's mangled left hand.

"It's a sin!" Stony cried. "It's a sin! Goddamn it, you witch, won't you stop this?" And he dropped the pistol. He turned, and holding his throat, stumbled through the door. The screen clapped behind him. He stopped on the stoop and put his face into his hands.

"Stony gone, honey?" asked Nannie.

"Yeah, Nannie," said Chloe. She picked up the pistol and held it to Nannie's temple. "He's all gone."

She bent to kiss the hand again, and then pulled the trigger.

Nannie's eyeless head jerked and fell forward. Blood spattered Chloe's hand, her face, the stuffed chair, and the doll tucked under Chloe's arm. The red was hot and thick, like paint on the sandwich board. The wound was round, like Nannie's empty eye sockets. Chloe licked the blood from her hand. She licked the barrel of the pistol.

"For luck," she said.

"Oh, Chloe," whimpered Stony from the stoop.

Chloe looked out the screen door. Her brother was pressed against the screen like a

monkey caged in an outdoor zoo. His face was a mask of disbelief, his eyes white and huge.

"Chloe," he said again.

Chloe put the gun back on the floor. Then she crossed the bloody floor to the door and put her hand flat against the screen where Stony's face was pressed.

"Nannie hated them boys," she said.

Stony closed his eyes.

"But I like boys. Like 'em for a long time. Since before Mama died. Mama didn't like me to see boys, but I did. Seen 'em on my walks a lot. Boys is pretty. They say pretty things."

"Chloe, you ain't dumb. You never was dumb."

"They give me pretty things, Stony. Things Mama never give me. Things Nannie never give me.

"Mama?"

"Boys do things for me if I give 'em my pussy. They call it that. Pussy! Like a cat!"

"Wait…did you say Mama?" whispered Stony. "Oh dear God."

"Boys didn't do it right this time, though. They didn’t do it like they did Mama with that truck. And Nannie didn't die."

Stony looked at Chloe. Her lopsided smile was coated in blood. She pointed at Nannie. "Bad Stony, you killed her."

"Chloe, you can't do that to me." Stony choked, and looked at the gun on the floor. "Chloe, I tried to help you!"

"And you give me a baby." Chloe rolled the palm of her hand around on her bulge.

“Shit! What?”

"Bad boy."

Stony said, "You wouldn't do that, Chloe."

Chloe chuckled. She tore the head off of her ragdoll and went over to Nannie's chair, where she dropped it onto her dead grandmother's lap. When she turned around, Stony could see her face clearly. She was silent.

And her smile was no longer lopsided.

The sale of Nannie's house made a nice profit for Chloe.

The money was put into a bank, and because of the trauma Chloe had survived it was a flexible trust which allowed her to buy something nice when she wanted it. Stony was put away where the sun don't shine, promised a life sentence and lots of attention from muscular men who liked to do a little turkey plucking themselves. Stony's wife and child moved away.

Chloe was taken in by a charitable, elderly widow who had once brought canned peaches on pretense of seeing the marks of a violent crime. After all, it was not Chloe who was insane, it had been her grandmother and her brother. Chloe was a poor child, with hardly a thought in her head. At her new home, Chloe played and ate and listened to the widow chat about church meetings and the neighbors. When the widow didn't know, Chloe handled the pretty glassware in the pie safe and played with the silver hidden in the cellar trunk.

When the baby came, Chloe gave it up to the state and didn't even cry.

"She's can't keep a baby," said the widow to the nurses.

"It's not that she's crazy, she's just slow as snail in the sun."

Chloe was quiet and obedient.

And in the early spring, she began talking long walks again.

T
here are things you want to forget. Like when my cat got run over by the snowplow and the night my Dad drove off in our new 1962 Chrysler and never came home.

Then there are things and people you don't want to forget. But how can you care that you forgot them, if you forgot them?

Our neighborhood was like most in my small town – tree-lined streets, warping sidewalks cross-hashed with chalk for games of hopscotch, fenced yards, and tidy frame houses. My sister Jena and I, seventeen months apart, spent the summer between my third and fourth grade year collecting rocks from the road that looked like gemstones and building a tree house out of lumber scraps we dragged across the alley from where Mr. Richards was putting in a new sunroom.
 

There weren't many kids in our neighborhood, and I played with them though they liked to get me into trouble. David lived across the street and Marla lived two doors up. They helped us with our tree house and we helped them do other stuff, like train David's fat beagle to pull a wagon and teach Marla the alphabet in sign language.

This particular summer was especially buggy and sticky. Mom was pregnant, which didn't alarm us but which made David snicker because he said, "Your Dad's been gone more than a year." The baby was due in September, so she was pretty big and didn't chase us around us much as she usually did. This gave us a delicious freedom we'd not had in summers past.

Miss Dowdy lived near the end of the block where the road curved down and to the right. Her home was a grayed, wood-shingled bungalow with a front porch with a low-riding roof. She was a really old woman, at least 200 Jena thought, but I knew people couldn't live that long so I put her at 150. Neither of us had seen her, though. Until that summer we had never played as far away as Miss Dowdy's house, not that we'd wanted to. We'd heard the rumors. She was a witch. If you got too close, you'd be cursed. Nobody knew what kind of curses she wielded, but they couldn't be good.