Y: A Novel (13 page)

“Spool knitting!” Mrs. Bell coos. “We used to do this when we were kids.”

Spool knitting. French knitting. I don’t like it when there are more than two names
for the same thing.

“So what are you going to make?” Mrs. Bell asks. We look at the box. A multicolored
octopus, snake, ladybug, and circus clown stare up at us with little knit eyes.

“The ladybug looks good.” The ladybug kicks ass. Miranda would love it. “Maybe a scarf.”

Mrs. Bell points to the snake. “Oh, you must make that.”

“Wait,” I say, “look at the ladybug.”

“No, make the snake. Little knitted reptile. Ooohhh, it’s so sweet.”

“What do I do?” I put Madame Knitting Guide into Mrs. Bell’s hands and stare at her
expectantly.

“It’s been a long, long time,” she laughs and looks at me. I hate it when adults talk
about how old they are, how much
time
has gone by in their lives. “If I remember correctly, you first put the yarn through
the middle, letting it hang, then wrap the yarn around the prongs. Then with a needle
go around again to one stitch and put the needle under the first stitch and put it
over the stitch already on and sort of knit it off. I hope that’s right.” She puts
it back into my hands, and the lunch bell rings. I have no idea what the fuck she’s
talking about.

That night, I lie in bed and stare at the box.

It’s after midnight and Lydia-Rose is snoring. Thanks to tweezers, spit, and a flashlight
Miranda gave me last Christmas, I’ve finally gotten
one piece of yarn through Madame Knitting Guide’s body. Trust me, trying to get something
weightless like yarn to “fall” down a hole in the middle of a thing called Madame
Knitting Guide is about as easy as it sounds. Oh, fuck it. Fuck the ladybug. No one’s
getting a ladybug; no one’s getting a snake.

That same year, Midnight and Flipper get feline leukemia and have to be quarantined
in the laundry room so they don’t give it to Scratchie. They have horrible diarrhea,
and we take turns each day going in there and petting them and cleaning it all up.
Scratchie is so sad without Flipper that he begins sleeping under Lydia-Rose’s bed.
But soon enough he starts showing symptoms, and then it’s into the laundry room with
him, too, the three of them trapped in misery. When Miranda tells us that it’s time
to put them to sleep, I think she means it literally, and so I agree to go with her
to the vet, thinking we’re taking them for some long, extended nap. Lydia-Rose stays
at home, fiddling with Madame Knitting Guide, which she now uses with dexterity. She
says she’s going to knit three little cats in their honor.

Miranda and I put Midnight, Scratchie, and Flipper into two cat carriers and get on
the bus after a long negotiation with the bus driver about having pets on board. Everyone
stares at us, cats mewing underneath our feet.

The vet is nice. She’s a sunny-faced woman with a gap between her front teeth and
a buzz cut. She tells us to go to the 7-Eleven across the street and buy a disposable
camera. She says we should take some pictures of these guys; she says it’s important.
Miranda rubs her temples and says that this is a good idea. And so we buy the camera
and I hold Midnight, Scratchie, and Flipper while Miranda snaps pictures. The cats
are listless in my arms, like rag dolls. I cradle them like babies. Miranda snaps.
I put them on the examining table and push their little heads together, gently, so
we can get their faces in the same frame. Snap, snap. The vet lets us do this for
a long time.

Finally, she appears in the doorway, her face heavy. “Okay,” she says. “Do you want
to say good-bye now?”

“They’re just going to sleep,” I tell her, and she smiles at me like I’m half stupid.
This is fine. I’m used to people thinking I’m retarded because of my eye.

The vet shoots something into their veins and then says I should hold them again.
So I do. I cradle them and feel their bodies grow lighter, and only then do I understand,
because I’ve done this down at Clover Point with Lydia-Rose.

I’ll probably never get the pictures of them developed. Or not for a while. Someone
videotaped Lydia-Rose’s grandfather’s funeral and it sits on our bookshelf with a
handwritten label that says
Grandpa’s Funeral
. Once, I watched the whole thing on fast-forward.

A week later, we return to pick up their ashes. Miranda frowns when she looks into
the bag. There are three little white urns, sealed shut, and each has been wrapped
in fancy ribbon, two pink and one green, as if they are birthday presents.

“This is distasteful,” Miranda says, removing one of the ribbons and dangling it in
front of the receptionist’s face. “Whoever had such a stupid idea.”

The receptionist takes the ribbon from Miranda’s hand and looks at her sheepishly.
We catch the bus home, Miranda cradling the bag of urns on her lap. When we get back,
she stands in the middle of the living room, an urn in each hand. Winkie circles her
feet, nose in the air, trying to figure out what she’s holding. Lydia-Rose sits slumped
on the couch, her feet in fuzzy tiger slippers, dabbing at her bloody nose.

Miranda surveys the room, exasperated. “I don’t really want to put these anywhere,”
she says.

“Let’s bury them,” I say. “Let’s give them a funeral.”

There’s a little park between our house and the high school that nobody ever hangs
out in; it’s just this weird vacant stretch of grass with a bench. Lydia-Rose and
I go out after dark with a shovel and a flashlight, the urns in my backpack. Miranda
has instructed us to tell the police the truth if we’re caught doing what we are about
to do. She says they’ll be
sympathetic, and that they’ll make us fill up the holes, but that’s all. Lydia-Rose
and I don’t have anything to worry about, though. No police ever come around our neighborhood.

There are a lot of rocks in the little park, and each time the shovel hits one, sparks
shoot out. It makes me feel like a cave person, discovering fire.

I put the disposable camera in my treasure chest under the bed. It’s been a while
since I’ve looked through it. When no one’s home, I take it into the bathroom, try
on my mother’s sweatshirt, slide my thumbs through the worn-out thumbholes, fiddle
with the Swiss Army Knife, stare at the photographs. In them, I am a strange-looking
child, too small, with no hair. Sometimes I imagine that I was abandoned by accident—that
my mother set me down for a second and then was kidnapped, for example. But looking
at my little bald head and unhappy face, I wonder now if it was my fault. I wonder
if she abandoned me because I was so ugly.

Mixed in with the photographs are a couple of newspaper articles written about me
the week after I was born. A weird-looking woman at the library photocopied them for
me a few years ago. We found the articles together on microfiche, and after she read
them, she told me that God had a little bit of extra love in his heart for me. She
said she could locate some books for me—books I might like to read.

“
Tom Jones,
” she said, her hand on my shoulder, “is about a foundling.”

“So is
Superman
.”

The idea comes to me one morning before school. I pull the covers over my head and
breathe hot breath into the tiny space until my face is hot and red. I hold the thermometer
under the desk lamp then put it quickly into my mouth, wander into the kitchen and
tell Miranda that I’m too sick to go to school.

“Oh, little sweetheart,” she says, the back of her hand on my forehead. She studies
the thermometer, tells me I don’t have much of a fever
(why didn’t the lightbulb trick work?) but that I’m hot and clammy to the touch. She
says I can stay home until lunchtime; she will walk me to school in the afternoon.

She pulls the covers up to my chin, feels my forehead again, and says she’ll be back
in an hour. She cleans an old woman’s studio apartment on Tuesday mornings. “Don’t
move,” she says. “I won’t be long.”

The minute I hear the click of the front door locking downstairs I’m on my feet, racing
up the stairs to her bedroom. I shut the door behind me and scan the room. Her bed
is neatly made, the Little Mermaid comforter stretched tightly across and tucked under
the mattress. The coffee can is empty of cigarettes, her shoes are lined up against
one wall, the ironing board is against the closet door. The room smells of her skin
lotion and the stale, thick scent of old smoke.

I open each dresser drawer and flip past her folded T-shirts like pages of a magazine:
her large high-waisted underwear, a different color for each day; her sensible wide-strapped
cotton bras, all the same shade of beige; athletic socks rolled into balls; tiny pouches
of potpourri in every drawer, their rose scent mixed with the musty wood of the dresser;
folded pairs of old jeans she never wears; flannel and cotton nightshirts; panty hose.
I find nothing.

Hanging in her closet are pressed collared shirts, two belted dresses, and a trench
coat. I can reach the shelf but it looks like it’s just folded-up sweaters. The floor
of the closet is stacked with shoe boxes, and I open each one. Each is empty, save
for tissue paper, strips of cardboard, plastic rods, and other things designed to
keep the shapes of shoes.

I find the photographs and the letters in a black folder hidden in the space between
her mattress and the wall. The photographs are of Dell, her ex-husband, whom I recognize
from the Polaroid that I stole from Lydia-Rose. He has the same sharp features as
she does. He’s in a suit, sitting on a park bench in front of a fountain, his arm
raised as if to wave at whoever is taking the picture. On the back of the photograph,
Miranda has written
Our Wedding Day
in her delicate, perfect handwriting. Then there’s a tiny black-and-white photograph
of Miranda and one of her sisters, the two of them kneeling on the grass in front
of a tombstone. It isn’t difficult to figure
out which one is Miranda; she has the biggest and brightest face. I flip quickly through
the others. It isn’t Miranda’s past that interests me—for the first time in my life,
it’s my own. I skim the letters, searching for any sign of my name, a birth certificate,
an adoption record, something about my past. But the letters are all from her sister
Sharon. I read them quickly, stopping on a paragraph here and there.

. . . We’re not married. He doesn’t believe in it. Spain is too hot. Everyone goes
to the casino on Saturday nights, so we do too. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to
write. He asks about you, Miranda. It’s been so many years. I still love you—I do.
I can’t wait to meet Lydia-Rose . . .

The handwriting is hard to read, chicken scratch, like a boy’s.

. . . She was a real cunt of a woman, she slipped one of my perfumes into her purse
and she might have stolen other things too . . . and someone brought a little speed
over—I know, I know, I feel guilty even writing it, but it was my birthday, for Christ’s
sake. Anyway, okay, she’s hurt real bad . . .

A real cunt of a woman. I say the phrase in my head, memorizing it for later use.
The next letter is dated three years later, the handwriting bigger and loopier.