cockroach, the guy said. He’d got that far.
Through the window I watched the knotted honeysuckle and the broad leaf of the banana plant pelleted with fat rain. A hard rain blown in from the Gulf could set all the leaves in the world adance. It was worrisome. Our house lacked real foundations. Like all the houses I knew, it had only squat stacks of brick to prop us a few feet off the spongy ground and keep us dry when water rose. Probably the support beams didn’t actually shake with thunder, but I remember it so—the rattle of windows coming unputtied in their panes and the asbestos siding that held us together starting to shiver.
“Thank God they caught him,” Mother said. “Sheesh.” She wore the abstract half smile of somebody who’d just checked out. (Looking back, I’d wonder if Mother wasn’t in some state of shock, though this kind of blunt affect was part of her standard repertoire.)
“Now little titless can sleep at night,” Lecia said. She never missed a shot at my sissydom, or the chickenlike nature of my chest. I told her to shut up. “Could he see you in the lineup?” she asked, for we’d watched many an episode of
Dragnet
where the suspects line up before blinding lights while the tearful victim, slouched low in a puddle of dark, lifts a finger at the guilty party.
“It wasn’t like on TV,” Mother said. “They didn’t hold what you’d call a proper lineup.” She was just sitting around some guy’s spearmint-colored office drinking instant coffee out of styrofoam cups. A deputy led Dutch in uncuffed.
“He was awful beat up,” Mother said. “They must have worked him over with a tire iron. Weird thing was him trying the whole time to look bored. Like he was somewhere else.” Her mouth winced down, a pair of parentheses at the corners. “I swear to God, he looked embarrassed,” Mother said, “like a kid somebody just asked to dance.”
“Daddy would have done him way worse,” Lecia said. And it’s true that I’ve never seen Daddy walk out of a barroom fight with worse damage than knuckles he cut on some poor fellow’s busted dentures.
“God, if Pete had gotten a hold of him,” Mother said. Her head wagged, then cocked at an angle like a new thought tumbling inside her skull had rolled it over. She said, “If it had been one of you girls, even the law couldn’t have saved him.”
This last comment seemed odd, for while Lecia’s body always garnered looks in public, the thought that I might warrant sexual attention—even in the warped form Dutch’s took—was new. That possibility invited me deeper into the mysterious fellowship between Lecia and Mother. In that way, being worth raping came as a deformed sort of flattery and an actual promotion to womanhood. It carried a twisted kind of thrill.
But something else followed in a backwash. My scary long-dead grandma had once dropped me off at the Saturday movie matinee with a warning not to let any strange man feel under my dress.
Now why would anybody do that?
I’d wondered. I was just six or seven at the time. The idea of some scruffy-handed grown-up taking that liberty in the region of my underpants scared me. I watched all of
The Tingler
with my skirt tucked in hard under my butt. I did not get up once, even to pee, even when the popcorn hitting the back of my head came regular.
Mother picked up her pack of Salems. Thunder hit again, and the lights fluttered. She stood for a moment in that flickering then said weneeded to be more careful running around town. Then she walked away from the episode, down her hallway toward her bed, where, I figured, she’d lay up all day washing down valium with Fresca. That was okay by me. So long as I could plot her location within the vectors of our house, I was fine.
PART TWO Midway
Was it possible they were there and not haunted? No,
not possible, not a chance, I know I wasn’t the only one.
Where are they now? (Where am I now?) I stood as
close to them as I could
Through the window I watched the knotted honeysuckle and the broad leaf of the banana plant pelleted with fat rain. A hard rain blown in from the Gulf could set all the leaves in the world adance. It was worrisome. Our house lacked real foundations. Like all the houses I knew, it had only squat stacks of brick to prop us a few feet off the spongy ground and keep us dry when water rose. Probably the support beams didn’t actually shake with thunder, but I remember it so—the rattle of windows coming unputtied in their panes and the asbestos siding that held us together starting to shiver.
“Thank God they caught him,” Mother said. “Sheesh.” She wore the abstract half smile of somebody who’d just checked out. (Looking back, I’d wonder if Mother wasn’t in some state of shock, though this kind of blunt affect was part of her standard repertoire.)
“Now little titless can sleep at night,” Lecia said. She never missed a shot at my sissydom, or the chickenlike nature of my chest. I told her to shut up. “Could he see you in the lineup?” she asked, for we’d watched many an episode of
Dragnet
where the suspects line up before blinding lights while the tearful victim, slouched low in a puddle of dark, lifts a finger at the guilty party.
“It wasn’t like on TV,” Mother said. “They didn’t hold what you’d call a proper lineup.” She was just sitting around some guy’s spearmint-colored office drinking instant coffee out of styrofoam cups. A deputy led Dutch in uncuffed.
“He was awful beat up,” Mother said. “They must have worked him over with a tire iron. Weird thing was him trying the whole time to look bored. Like he was somewhere else.” Her mouth winced down, a pair of parentheses at the corners. “I swear to God, he looked embarrassed,” Mother said, “like a kid somebody just asked to dance.”
“Daddy would have done him way worse,” Lecia said. And it’s true that I’ve never seen Daddy walk out of a barroom fight with worse damage than knuckles he cut on some poor fellow’s busted dentures.
“God, if Pete had gotten a hold of him,” Mother said. Her head wagged, then cocked at an angle like a new thought tumbling inside her skull had rolled it over. She said, “If it had been one of you girls, even the law couldn’t have saved him.”
This last comment seemed odd, for while Lecia’s body always garnered looks in public, the thought that I might warrant sexual attention—even in the warped form Dutch’s took—was new. That possibility invited me deeper into the mysterious fellowship between Lecia and Mother. In that way, being worth raping came as a deformed sort of flattery and an actual promotion to womanhood. It carried a twisted kind of thrill.
But something else followed in a backwash. My scary long-dead grandma had once dropped me off at the Saturday movie matinee with a warning not to let any strange man feel under my dress.
Now why would anybody do that?
I’d wondered. I was just six or seven at the time. The idea of some scruffy-handed grown-up taking that liberty in the region of my underpants scared me. I watched all of
The Tingler
with my skirt tucked in hard under my butt. I did not get up once, even to pee, even when the popcorn hitting the back of my head came regular.
Mother picked up her pack of Salems. Thunder hit again, and the lights fluttered. She stood for a moment in that flickering then said weneeded to be more careful running around town. Then she walked away from the episode, down her hallway toward her bed, where, I figured, she’d lay up all day washing down valium with Fresca. That was okay by me. So long as I could plot her location within the vectors of our house, I was fine.
PART TWO Midway
Was it possible they were there and not haunted? No,
not possible, not a chance, I know I wasn’t the only one.
Where are they now? (Where am I now?) I stood as
close to them as I could
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