Words of Stone (3 page)

Joselle wasn't fat, but her knees and elbows were dimpled like a baby's, and her arms and legs looked meaty. She was wearing an extra-large raspberry sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off; it hung to her thighs. The circles under her eyes matched her clothing in color. Joselle knew that her grandmother's eyesight wasn't terrific, but she knew that her grandmother wasn't blind, either. She hoped her grandmother wouldn't be able to tell that her eyes were bloodshot. Joselle stuck her tongue out at herself in the mirror. She flushed the toilet for effect, unlocked the door, and marched into the hallway, her red rubber thongs slapping crisply against her feet.

“What were you doing in there, sweetie?” Floy asked.

“Grammy, you're old enough to know what goes on in a bathroom,” Joselle replied, walking away, an agonized look on her face.

“I'm also old enough to know when someone's been crying.” Floy grabbed Joselle by the shoulders and spun her around. Floy was strong, despite her petite size, her grip unflinching. “You
were
crying.” She drew Joselle against her chest. They were so close, Joselle could feel two heartbeats.

Joselle started to cry again. “I hate and despise my mother,” she sobbed into her grandmother's sleeveless lavender shift.

“I know, I know,” Floy soothed. “Come to the sofa. Let me do your eyelids.”

Floy settled into the low end of the worn velour sofa and Joselle lay down, her head on her grandmother's lap, her eyes closed firmly. Although their visits were seldom and sporadic, the instant Floy touched Joselle's eyelids it was as if they had never been apart. “I've done this for you since you were a baby,” Floy said.

“Since forever,” Joselle whispered.

“Relax,” Floy said, as she gently stroked Joselle's eyelids over and over. “Your eyelids are the color of my needlepoint lilacs.”

Joselle couldn't have cared less about lilacs. Or needlepoint. Her mother had abandoned her. The Beautiful Vicki had taken off with her boyfriend Rick to “get away to try to be happy for a while without any interruptions.” The more Joselle thought about it, the more upset she became. Her body shook; tears slid down her cheeks.

Her mother had done stupid, impulsive things before, but this was by far the worst. And the stupid, impulsive things usually had to do with men. Life would be going along just fine until The Beautiful Vicki became interested in someone new. As her interest escalated, so would her time away from Joselle and so would her rash behavior. Before Rick, Vicki had been involved with a
man named Bert. This was late last summer. Bert had come into the restaurant where Vicki worked and charmed her completely. Bert was all she could talk about. It wasn't long before he moved in.

Before Bert, Vicki and Joselle had watched “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in reruns every weekday night after the ten o'clock news. Since it was summer, Vicki didn't mind if Joselle stayed up so late. It became ritual. Every night “Mary Tyler Moore.” Every night cream soda. Every night microwave popcorn sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. Every night Vicki and Joselle sprawled on the futon, the little electric fan turning side to side, cooling them off as they licked their cheesy fingers clean and laughed at Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern. Every night the hypnotic light of the television flashing across the walls of the dark, dark room like a fire in a cave.

“This is my all-time favorite show,” Vicki would say.

“We could watch it all night,” Joselle would add, scooching closer to her mother. “If it was on all night.”

But as soon as Bert came, everything changed. No more “Mary Tyler Moore” (he preferred “M*A*S*H” and Vicki let him watch it). No more microwave popcorn with Parmesan cheese and cream soda alone with Vicki. No more comfortable routine.

“He helps pay for the groceries and the electric bills,” Vicki would tell Joselle. “And besides, he makes me happy.”

“He doesn't make
me
happy,” Joselle would counter. “And you hardly spend any time with me anymore.”

“I've spent more time with you than with anyone—nearly my whole life.”

“What about ‘Mary Tyler Moore'? You even said it was your favorite show.”

“So I changed my mind.” Vicki sighed, exhaling frustration, losing patience quickly. “‘M*A*S*H' is real. Watch it—you might learn something.”

Joselle was ecstatic when Bert finally moved out about four months later. In a matter of weeks, things settled back to the way they had been, and Joselle and Vicki's spats were few and far between. But then Rick entered their lives, and the cycle began repeating itself.

A small part of Joselle seemed to understand what made Vicki change from being the mother she loved to being the mother she didn't. But she was always unprepared when it happened. Joselle brought her hand up to her mouth and began playing “Strangers in the Night” on her teeth.

“Listen, it won't be so bad,” Floy said, competing with the melody. “I'm sure your mother will be back soon. You'll like it here. And anyway, it could be worse—that little Werla boy from around the hill doesn't even
have
a mother.”

Suddenly Joselle stopped humming and crying and trembling. She sat up and stared at Floy with great astonished eyes. “You mean that skinny redhead I saw sitting on the hill this morning doesn't have a mother.”

Floy nodded.

“Tell me, tell me,” Joselle demanded, snatching her grandmother's hands and squeezing them like sponges. She hoped that the skinny redhead's life story would be worse than hers. She hoped that it would be absolutely dreadful.

Joselle listened hungrily. She hung on Floy's every word until even the smallest incident blossomed into full tragedy in her mind. And there was tragedy enough, with or without the aid of Joselle's imagination.

The boy's name was Blaze Werla. And his mother had died when he was just five years old. Of cancer. “Her name was Reena,” Floy said, doing Joselle's eyelids again. “She was so young.”

Reena. Joselle liked the sound of the name. She thought it was kind of exotic and sexy. She repeated it softly, drawing out the long E sound like a bird call.
Reeeeena
.

“She died in the middle of the summer,” Floy continued, “when it was hot and muggy. She had long, thick red hair, and I remember thinking how sad it was when she lost it.”

“Lost her hair?” Joselle said, her eyes widening.

“From the treatment. Chemotherapy, it's called,” Floy explained. “It made her hair fall out. She wore pretty scarves then. Bright ones. The last time I saw her, she was resting on a lawn chair in their yard wearing a chartreuse scarf that was knotted at the top of her head.”

Joselle imagined the scene: The exotic and sexy Reena was so thin you could practically see every bone in her body. Blaze, her tiny son, was weeping hysterically, picking clumps of her hair off the ground and stuffing them into his pockets. The confused husband (who Joselle knew
nothing
about) was hiding behind a nearby bush staring into space like a lawn ornament.

Floy sighed deeply, regaining Joselle's attention.

“Go on, Grammy,” Joselle ordered.

“Oh, sweetie, let's talk about something else. Let's talk about something happy.”

“If we did that, I wouldn't have anything to say.”

“Oh, Joselle!”

“At least tell me more about the boy,” Joselle said in her best supplicating voice.

“Well,” Floy said, shrugging, “he's quiet and small and he's about your age. He looks a lot like his mother to me. I remember about a year after Reena died, there was an accident at the fairgrounds. A fire. He burned his legs on the Fourth of July and spent the rest of that summer wrapped in bandages up to his waist. Poor little thing. Of course, he's fine now. I don't really know him, but I see him alone up on the hill a lot. From my window. He must like it up there. So you see,” Floy added, “you're not the only one with a complicated life.”

“What's that mean? Complicated?”

“Oh, I don't know. Confusing, I guess. Mixed up.” Floy took her glasses off and cleaned them in her dress. “But enough of him. Let's talk about you.”

“No way,” Joselle replied quickly, getting up and clapping her hands. She was thinking about the word
complicated
.

“Well, then, why don't we unpack your bags and get your things organized?” Floy suggested cheerfully. “I'm just so glad you're here with me.”

Joselle wanted more details (What about the funeral? What about the father? Did he remarry? What did Blaze's legs look like when they were burned? What did they smell like? What did they look like now?), but she figured that she'd work them out of Floy eventually. And the things that Floy wouldn't reveal or had forgotten or didn't know, Joselle would simply have to make up. And they would be the most awful things of all.

J
oselle paced about Floy's small house, surveying every corner like a cat. Since she was going to be staying here for a while, she needed to reacquaint herself with the way things looked, smelled, and felt. Joselle moved from room to room, shoving chairs and floor lamps an inch or two in random directions, leaving her mark. She rearranged Floy's Hummel figurines, turning some so that the backs of the children's heads with their odd peaks of hair faced outward.

“Just be careful with those,” Floy warned, hovering over Joselle's shoulder, referring to the Hummels. “They're worth money.”

Joselle discovered Floy's nail polish, and they took
turns painting each other's fingernails and toenails. Joselle was intrigued by the names of the colors: Rambling Rose, Cherub Frost, Iceberry. She wanted each nail to be a different color, but Floy didn't have that many bottles and some were empty.

“You look racy, Grammy,” Joselle said, having a giggle fit.

When their hands and feet had dried, Floy made popcorn and Joselle strung the kernels with a needle and thread, making necklaces. The necklaces reminded Joselle of Hawaiian leis, and the popcorn reminded her of her mother. Joselle laced the garlands around her neck and did a rhythmic hula dance for Floy. Floy found it humorous until Joselle carried the joke to extremes, bumping her rear end into the furniture as part of her dance. Joselle gyrated until she became dizzy, falling into an end table. One of Floy's Hummels—a round-faced girl gazing dreamily at a book—wobbled and nearly fell.

“That's enough,” Floy scolded. “And those popcorn necklaces are making grease stains on your shirt.”

Joselle blushed with shame. “Leave me alone,” she snapped, her eyes pinpoints of anger. She tramped to the front window and rolled herself into the drape. She stared blankly out the window, twizzling a strand of her hair.

After dinner, at the window again, Joselle noticed movement on the hill. It was the red-haired boy. Blaze Werla. Joselle watched him intensely until the window turned blue with the onset of night.

Later, on the sofa that was her bed now, Joselle regretted the meanness that she had shown Floy. At that moment she loved Floy more than anyone. “I'm sorry, Grammy,” she whispered into the lonely night. The only one who heard her was Gary, Floy's German shepherd. He trotted over to Joselle from the kitchen, his tail wagging like a wind-up toy. He rested his head on her pillow, and she kissed him between the eyes. After a reciprocal lick, Gary folded himself up into a knobby sack on the floor beside her.

Gary's hairy body and pointy ears made Joselle think of her mother's boyfriend Rick. She wondered where the two of them were. How far they had driven. How long it would take before they wrote or called.

It had only been a few days since The Beautiful Vicki had informed Joselle that she needed a vacation. And Joselle would never forget that fateful day. Joselle had taken a felt-tip marking pen and drawn black stripes along the edges of her teeth to make them look even more like a real piano keyboard. “Look, Vicki,” she had said to her mother excitedly. “You know, the black keys.” Joselle pointed to her mouth and opened wide to reveal her handiwork.

“God, Joselle,” Vicki had replied, throwing down her magazine in exasperation and grabbing Joselle's wrist. “It's things like this that make me—”

Joselle could fill in the blank many ways—crazy, want to send you away forever, regret being a mother.

Vicki pulled Joselle into the bathroom and brushed her teeth for her until her gums bled. “It's not a permanent marker,” Joselle tried to explain.

But all Vicki kept saying was, “I could scream. I could just scream!” It was then that Vicki announced that she and Rick were going to take a trip. By themselves.

Joselle stayed in the bathroom, alone, crying, rocking on the toilet. There was greenish gray spittle all over the mirror and on the sink. Joselle knew she would always hate that color. Minty greenish gray.

It wasn't easy getting comfortable on Floy's old sofa with so much to consider. Joselle played her tongue against her teeth and gums and tried to focus on something stupid and safe. The sofa. Joselle imagined that it had been handsome when it was new—red and firm and plush. Now the dye had faded to a dirty wine color. It was soft, but lumpy. And the patchy raised pattern that was supposed to be roses reminded Joselle of bald mutant camels that were more hump than anything else. But soon the pattern resembled the fabric of one of Vicki's skirts. And then it resembled the upholstery in Rick's car. It took a while, but Joselle finally nestled deep into the cushions, wrapped in a thin blue blanket, tight as a parcel. Tomorrow I will show Grammy how much I love her, Joselle thought. And I will complicate the life of Blaze Werla.

“T
hank you, Joselle,” Floy said, smiling. “That was a wonderful breakfast. Where did you learn to cook so well?”

“Omelets are easy,” Joselle said triumphantly, as she wiped the table with a dishcloth. “And I cook a lot at home. If I didn't, I'd starve to death.”