Neverland (14 page)

“She was not a redhead,” Mama said, and then did what she always did when she was tense, which was to whistle in a way that was half “Camptown Races” and half whisper like she was blowing through bamboo. The dinner table was always the place for tension and frustration, and I glanced from Mama to Grammy Weenie to Daddy to Uncle Ralph to Aunt Cricket, and all the grown-ups looked just like little children, sulking and pushing their food around with their forks. Unhappy, spoiled children. Sumter, across from me, was grinning just like he’d won a bet, and his eyes got small and crinkly, his face all sunburned and shiny.

Hoping to get everyone out of their moods, I said, “Sumter’s a toadhead.”

“Son of a—” The words were barely out of Sumter’s mouth when his father’s hand was out and slapping him hard on the lips. The resulting whack silenced us all.

Aunt Cricket pretended nothing had happened. “Sunny’s a
tow
head, Beau. Bright like sunshine. That’s why I call him Sunny.”

She stroked her hand through Sumter’s wispy hair, but as she did this, she seemed distracted. She brought her fingers up, rubbing them together as if they were greasy. “Where you boys been today, anyway?”

“Fishing,” I said.

“After that? You been around any dogs?”

“Huh?”

“They were playing in the woods,” Uncle Ralph snorted.

“What is it?” my mother asked.

“
Dit-do
.” Governor said to me, his lips pursed together.

Something like a distant light washed across Aunt Cricket’s face, her eyes squinting and then enlarging. As if having a sudden revelation from Almighty God—which Aunt Cricket occasionally had—she pushed herself up swiftly from the table and said, “You boys get away from the table right now and go into the bathroom and do not get near anybody or anything on your way!”

“Crick?” Uncle Ralph screwed his face up.

“Head lice,” Aunt Cricket scowled, “Sunny has
head
lice, and now we all probably do.” She pointed in my direction. “Who have you been playing with, what kind of mischief have you gotten my boy into?”

It had not been the Holy Ghost that Zinnia had slapped into my scalp, but hungry lice.

In all the time I was growing up, I’d never had head lice before, even when every other kid in elementary school had. I felt sure that by age ten you were immune to those little buggers. I will never forget the next day and night, the tar shampoo stinging my eyes, the itchy feeling of just knowing that I was crawling with tiny parasites all laying their eggs on my head, the scraping of needles on my scalp as my mother drew a fine-tooth comb through my gummy hair.

By the end of that first week on Gull Island, we’d all had head lice and we’d had to boil our clothes and practically burn our scalps with all the shampooings and combings. Sumter and I were the easiest to deal with because we had short hair.

As it turned out, Nonie and Missy also inherited the dreaded cooties. Missy held me personally responsible for the terrible haircut Mama gave her that summer.

I remember summers on Gull Island as being all begrudging mornings and afternoons that went on forever like a school day: hot and sticky and smelling like a stagnant pond.

Grammy Weenie sat among us beneath the big oak tree in the front lawn. I had Governor on my lap. I bounced him up and down and covered his eyes and said, “Where’s Governor? Where did he go?” Sometimes
Missy would lean over, pressing her face into our brother’s stomach, and make a fart noise with her lips. It made Governor cackle with joy.

The other grown-ups were going out for an early dinner, specifically without children. Julianne had just left for the day, and if the idea of spending the better part of the afternoon and early evening with our grandmother would not put fear in our hearts, nothing would. Grammy’s legs were tucked neatly to the side, and her wheelchair was folded and leaned against the tree trunk. As always, in her lap was the silver-backed brush. Nonie had been trying to swipe it since we’d arrived, but with no luck.

Grammy read from the Bible and told more stories about Big Daddy and the Giantess from Biloxi. Occasionally she would refer to her black composition books to refresh her memory. “Big Daddy, your great-grampa, was an honest man, although he was not overly fond of children. Consequently, I was often left alone when I was very young, and I’m not sure that is good for a child. I was thrilled when, much later in life, Old Lee and I were blessed with our first child, my precious Babygirl, even with her afflictions. None of us knows the will of God, so we must submit to His mystery of creation. And then came Evvie, and then Cricket.”

“Don’t you know any
good
stories?” Sumter interrupted. “Like scary stories, or bloody stuff or outer space stuff?”

“You want me to make things up? You of all people, Sumter, should know the dangers of that. No good ever came from imagining; it’s a trap for messy thoughts. Babygirl had a strong imagination, but her mind was too tender for it. Old Lee said she was too frail for the world. So she lived in a world of her own creation. She never saw what really
was
.”

“I like her already. She sounds like somebody I’d like to know,” Sumter said under his breath to his teddy bear. “Too bad she’s dead, too bad it was her and not the Weenie.” In defiance of what we were supposed to be doing, which was obeying Grammy, Sumter got up and, dragging his teddy bear, stomped off toward the woods.

Grammy continued her story about Babygirl’s thinking that the world of nature was so much more beautiful than her homes on Gull Island and
in Biloxi. The sun shifted, and shadows fell across her lap until she lost her place and set her composition book down. “You girls can go play if you like,” Grammy said, “but Beau, you and Governor stay with me awhile longer.”

My sisters gave me a look as if they thought I was in trouble. They were only too eager to get inside and hog the TV.

After they’d left, Grammy asked, “You love your little brother?”

I looked down at Governor’s face. He was round and fat like a big puffy maggot, and he was actually asleep. I nodded.

“You take care of him, then. Keep him from harm. Cain asked the Lord, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ and do you know the answer, Beau? The answer is
yes
. Are
you
your brother’s keeper, Beau? Are you?”

I nodded again.

“I have sensed that some harm will attach itself to us—all of us. You take care of yourself—and him, too. All along, I knew, and perhaps I should not have done what I did. But at the time—what was I to do?” She extended her hand out to me, and I flinched. Grammy gasped. “Are you scared of me, Beau?”

I shook my head.

“You are. All children are, but I won’t hurt you.” She beckoned me to her lap. “Just as children were drawn to my dear and doomed first child, so they have always been repelled in equal measure by me. But appearances can be deceiving. I have never done anything in my life without first thinking of what’s best for the children.”

“I want to go inside. I want to watch TV.”

“Just for a minute, come sit with me.”

Clutching Governor against my chest, I went and sat a foot from her. She patted the edge of her long dress. I scootched over another few inches.

Grammy Weenie brought her face near mine. Her breath was foul like an open wound. I could practically see through the blue-veined skin of her face down to her shrunken skull. She almost had no nose—just an impression of nostrils. “It’s fine to play make-believe, but don’t let it out. Once
out, it cannot be put back. You know the truth of things, I can tell. Let things stay make-believe.” She had a voice like a hammer coming down on a pillow, all soft and hard at the same time.

I would’ve jumped up and run away right then, but I was worried about maybe hurting Governor if I did that, so I just sat very still and nodded my head until Grammy let go of me. She had closed her eyes like I wasn’t even there. Her black composition book had fallen open, but I couldn’t read a word that was on the page because every single line was crossed out over and over again until the paper was itself just about ripped through with lines. And in the blackest ink, practically engraved into the paper, were the words,
Forgive me for what I have done
, at the top and bottom of the page.

With her eyes still shut she said, “The mother is gone, but the father is calling you. If you hear him, do not go to him, for he will never let you come back.”

“Daddy ain’t calling for me.”

“Listen.”

I held my breath and strained to hear, but all I heard were the gulls and the wind through the trees.

“He ain’t calling, Grammy.”

“I tell you he is.” Her eyes popped open and scared the bejesus out of me, and she grabbed me around the neck as if she were going to choke me and she whispered, “
He is calling children, and you must not go to him. Even Sumter . . . You must never
, never
walk in his shadow
.” I felt like I was seeing my grandmother for the first time, and that she was a stranger, that her dried and wizened features, her white hair, the smell of her curdling breath was something I had never truly beheld. I thought what so many children must think: Old people are from another species; they are not one of us.

Governor started crying, and I guess I hollered, because it hurt where she was holding my neck and I was about to lose my balance. Grammy Weenie let go, her hand curling into a fist and then dropping down into her lap. I backed away from her a few steps and waited.

“Tell your sisters to come help me into my chair, Beau.” But she would not look back up at me, and I could not bear to look at her the rest of that afternoon.

After dark I went outside again. In the woods the dirt was fresh and moldy between my toes. I stepped around wood chips and knocked the heads off mushrooms and puff balls. I clicked my flashlight beam on and off like lightning. I heard some shrieking bird as it flitted from tree to tree, and my family seemed a million miles away. My folks were back at the house knocking back some liquor, and I was supposed to be in bed. But among two families of drinkers, it was easy to sneak out. I was on my way to Neverland, thinking about what Grammy had told me. I either was or wasn’t supposed to be doing something, I wasn’t really sure.
Don’t let it out
. That must be whatever was in the crate. So Grammy Weenie knew about Lucy. The other stuff about going to Daddy was a bit more confusing, but then Grammy Weenie was always a little touched in the head.

“Hey.” I heard a voice like a combination bird and girl.

I stopped in my tracks and glanced around. The trees were not whispering, and no one ran between them.

“Hey-ey,” the girl repeated.

“Hey?” I asked, spinning around, trying to find out the source of the voice. These trees were so skinny they were impossible to hide behind, and unless this girl were hanging off the edge of the bluff, she’d have to be flying above me.

On that off chance, I glanced up.

She was there, not flying, but balancing on a limb that swayed each time she spoke. She was an inky figure of a girl, and I could not see her face at all.

“ ’Member me?”

“Zinnia,” I said, recognizing the voice. I shined my flashlight up at her. She winced when the light hit her. “How’d you get up there?”

“Flew. Can you help me down?” She was wearing a plain and dumpy dress that might as well have been a sack. As I started to make my first feeble attempts to scale the tree, only barely able to hold the flashlight at the same time, I looked up again and was greeted by the pale roundness of her white fanny. She wore no underwear. “Don’t look up there or it’ll bite you.”

I dropped the flashlight and tumbled back to the ground.

Zinnia scampered down between branches like a monkey. The last two yards she leapt, and her dress billowed up like a parachute, and my eyes went wide. Her underside wasn’t much like the pictures in
Playboy
. She landed on all fours. “Help a girl up when she’s down, why don’tcha?”

I offered her my hand, which she grabbed and practically tugged me down into the dirt, she was so heavy. “How old are you?”

“Almost fifteen.”

“Yeah, huh, and I’m eighteen and a half. You look twelve. I’m ten.”

“You’re old enough to know better. Where’s your friend?”

“Sumter? He ain’t my friend, he’s just my cousin. I think he’s in
there
.” I pointed to the shed. “Where are your brothers?”

“Who knows? They come and go—you know boys. I mean,
you’re
a boy, you must know boys. Can I be your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“I wouldn’t be if you paid me. That’s what my ma always tells them. Wouldn’t be if you paid me. What’s your name?”

“Beau.”

“Like a ribbon. What’s your cousin got in there that’s so special?”

“It’s a secret.” I remembered my oath.

“I bet it’s not really. What’s his name?
Summer?
”

“Sum
t
er. Where y’all live, anyway?”

“West Island. Big old house, and ma always gets herself mad at Goober and Wilbur if they’s to walk across the floor with mud on their feet. You
want me to kiss you like before? Felt real good to me. I know it felt good to you, I
saw
what I
saw
.” I could smell her salty breath, and it was almost sweet to me. She turned her back on me and headed toward the shack. When she got near it, she bent over and picked up a big old rock and threw it at Neverland’s door. “Hey,
Sumter!
”

“Shut up, shut up.” I leapt for her and covered her mouth with my hand. I whispered, “Nobody’s supposed to know we play in there.”

Zinnia giggled and licked the palm of my hand until I had to let her go. “And nobody heard me, neither. And if you tell me to shut up again, I’m just gonna have to go tell your mama on you.”