Like Family (10 page)

The two of us fit just so under the fence. We were also preserved there from the bogies of Rondo Begwits, who was quiet except
for recesses, when he ripped petals from the rosebushes near the flag. He dribbled a measure of spit into the dented center
of each petal, then chased girls around the jungle gym, chucking one when he got close. They were the perfect missiles, really,
and perfectly gross: heavy enough to fly, slimy enough to stick.

Sixth-graders walked by our hollow in clumps. They wore hip-huggers and macramé belts, T-shirts that said
Hang Ten
and
Keep on Truckin’.
We wondered aloud how the couples stayed upright, slouched the way they were, arms threaded, each with a hand in the other’s
back pocket. Through the screen of the fence, we watched recess, games of foursquare and kick ball, kids waiting in line for
the slide. From that far away, their heads were bug-size, squashable between our fingers. Everything was small and squinty
except for Olivia and me, lying so close I’d forget which of us had what flavored gum.

T
HROUGHOUT
OUR TIME WITH
the Clapps, we spent at least one weekend a month at Granny’s. Mrs. Clapp would drive us over after school on Friday so we
could have dinner there — canned corn and pork chops and applesauce tinted pink, whole milk in jelly jars. Sometimes we had
Granny’s version of tacos: cold flour tortillas stuffed with oily ground beef, shredded lettuce and American cheese slices,
ketchup drizzled over the works. As we ate and talked, Tiny yipped at our ankles until Mr. Dobbs picked him up and tucked
him into the bib of his overalls. I loved how Tiny was so happy he couldn’t stop shivering, how the full length of the denim
pouch, from Mr. Dobbs’s thick waist to the metal fasteners, quaked over the invisible dog.

On many of these weekends, our cousins Keith and Tanya spent time at Granny’s too. Their mother, Deedee, was our mother’s
best friend before she left; their father, Lonny, was our father’s older brother. When our parents were still married, the
two couples spent a lot of time together — separately, that is. The mothers jawed afternoons away in our kitchen or theirs,
gesturing with their cigarettes over skillets hissing with Rice-a-Roni or sloppy-joe mix, rum-and-Cokes melting in tumblers
on a countertop. The only time they’d quiet was when they were listening for us kids, trying to determine from the thumps
and shrieks and double-dog dares just what kind of trouble we were getting ourselves into. The fathers generally stuck around
long enough to finish a six-pack of Coors on the sofa in front of whatever sporting event was on: baseball, world-class bowling,
tractor pulls. The second six they would take to the car, seeing how sharp a peal they could milk from the tires getting out
of the drive.

After Uncle Lonny ran off to who knows where, Aunt Deedee lived in the same house as before, but with her mother, Vera, who
kept house and minded the kids so Deedee could work as a secretary for an insurance company downtown. Vera wasn’t at all like
Granny. She wore slacks, for one, and wide-collared shirts, with dark shoes that looked like a man’s slippers. Unlike Granny,
Vera never remarried after her husband passed: “What,” she liked to say, “would I do with a
man?
He’d only get under my feet.” Since Vera wore size tens, this was, I thought, a safe prediction.

For the longest time, Tanya was a baby and out of sight if not earshot, in her crib or her swing or in the walker under the
table, latched onto her mother’s leg with a slobbery fist. Then boom, she was four and even more forgettable. We let her tag
along with us because Granny would tan our hides if we didn’t, but we groused about it. Although Keith was only a year older
than Teresa, he was deferred to absolutely. He decided whether we played superheroes or kick ball, who was in, who was out,
who was Robin to his Batman. Even if Keith weren’t the oldest, we’d have listened to him. Long-bodied and tan with white-blond
hair falling into his eyes, he was beautiful. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t love him utterly, when I wasn’t chicken-scratching
with my sisters for his attention. If I couldn’t be Robin, I’d take Cat woman. If I couldn’t be Catwoman, I might as well
just die.

The other thing was that Keith could sing. His voice was bound to change soon, but right then it was high and strong. In Granny’s
car on the way to the Gospel Lighthouse, we’d do “I’m a trampin’, trampin’, tryin’ to make heaven my home” and “This Little
Light of Mine.” Keith instructed us on the harmony, how to find our note and stick to it, even if we had to hold our hands
over our ears like the hear-no-evil monkey, looking stupid and whacking each other in the chin with our elbows.

Stupid-looking or not, we were getting better and gave several performances at church. People were always asking Granny when
we were going to sing again and wouldn’t it be cute if we had matching outfits, maybe with a country-western theme? One Sunday,
just as Penny and I were about to do a car-rehearsed “Jesus Loves Me” for the congregation, the choir leader said he was going
to tape-record it. He knew a missionary family in Korea he wanted to send it to so children in his host village could hear
us. I thought about my voice being heard by people so far away and so different that they had their own calendar, their own
words for mountains and the moon, for everything. The preacher said Korea had been in a war, and though it was years before,
a country after war needed the Lord more than food or water. Our song, then, was a way of getting Jesus there, all the way
there, up on the jet stream, down like rain. I sang loud that day.

A
LTHOUGH
GRANNY’S HOUSE HAD
a small front room, she always arranged the furniture on these weekends so that Keith had his own pallet, barricaded from
ours by the lumpy brown couch. Boys were boys, girls were girls, and both needed to keep their hands and their “business”
to themselves. When we flapped around in the wading pool at Radio Park or sat on Granny’s stoop and took turns running the
hose on one another, Keith always wore his swim trunks, and we wore our matching suits with the pink hibiscus flowers as big
as cabbages. There was no flashing, no running naked through the sprinkler, no coed baths.

Mr. Dobbs, whom Granny had married shortly after we went to stay with Bonnie, didn’t seem to present the smallest obstacle
in Granny’s pursuit of a life without sin. On the afternoon he moved into Granny’s house, Mr. Dobbs opened his suitcase on
the bed in the spare room and started lining up his things along the mirrored back of the dresser — a set of bristled hairbrushes
without handles, the heavy shaving mug with its cake of soap at the bottom. After a time, the room began to smell like him,
but since he kept the door closed, the rest of the house was Granny’s: Juicy Fruit and White Shoulders perfume, biscuits and
peppered gravy and floor wax, the smell of lace breaking down. At bedtime, they pecked each other on the cheek and parted
in the hall.

Granny’s room was a chenille cave, her bedspread flat and symmetrical, the runner of fringe at its edge hanging just above
the wood floor like perfectly cut bangs. When her door closed for the night, the first creak of springs meant her heavy shoes
were in the closet, laces tucked into the mouths, and that she now sat on the edge of her bed, rolling the thick cotton stockings
down, thigh to toe. At the second creak, she was up again, unpinning her braids, placing her dentures in the pink cup. After
Mr. Dobbs came, I started listening for him too, his snores and foot-rubbings. When I asked Granny why she and Mr. Dobbs didn’t
share a bed, she said he kicked his way through his dreams like a dog. That must have been why her dog, Tiny, preferred Mr.
Dobbs, why Tiny slept nightly in a tight curl on Mr. Dobbs’s second pillow, like a head without a body. From our pallet on
the living-room floor, my sisters pressed against me, one on each side, I wondered if Tiny and Mr. Dobbs dreamed as one dog,
twitching a little as they chased rabbits through a sweet, damp field.

The one time I remember Granny permitting Mr. Dobbs in her room was when Aunt Darla came to visit. Darla was Granny’s youngest
daughter and a great favorite with my sisters and me. Like our dad, Aunt Darla had pale skin and freckles unnumbered, but
her hair was a deep brown, not red-gold. She had a sweet face, round as a button, and I thought her altogether wonderful.
When Darla married, she chose me over Penny and Teresa to be the flower girl in her wedding, solidly fixing my crush on her.
I adored my dress with its skirt stiff as a bell and the black patent shoes with a rosette on each ankle strap, but was stilled
midprance when I saw Darla step out of the anteroom on Uncle Bill’s arm. She was the real thing, quietly glamorous, a shining
slice of the moon. I couldn’t stop staring at her small sandled feet, at the glint of pink polish under her net gloves.

After the honeymoon, Darla and her husband, Mike, moved to San Clemente, where he worked as a welder, but they came for a
long weekend, promising Granny they’d go to both services at the Gospel Lighthouse on Sunday. Saturday was all theirs, however,
and they slept late. My sisters and I waited with ants in our pants until noon and then couldn’t help ourselves. Teresa knocked
once on the door, and then the three of us piled in and onto the foot of the low bed, waiting to be either entertained or
told to shoo.

The newlyweds were surprisingly agreeable about being woken up. Mike stretched and scritched and started digging in the wad
of clothes on the nightstand for cigarettes. His V-neck T-shirt was on inside out, and as he leaned over I could see the stains
under the armholes, yellow-white with raggedy borders. He always looked like this, sleepy and rumpled, bits of his hair jutting
impressively. He held up a pair of his own Jockey shorts, studied them for a short minute, threw them back.

“Damn, baby, where are my smokes?”

Darla made a little snorting sound, one of her laughs, then got up, straightening her bathrobe around her. It was a kimono,
short and thin, with a print of cattails, their edges as soft as sticks of butter. She shuffled over to the windowsill where
the red box of Pall Malls sat clear as day, snorted again, then lit one for them to share. Where she had been lying, the bottom
sheet was dabbed with brown stains.

“What’s that?” I asked, my finger edging up on a spot shaped like a Mr. Potato Head, ears and all.

“Well,” said Darla, “we had chocolate milkshakes last night. I guess we spilled some.”

This was fast thinking, but the wrong answer. Where did they get the milkshakes? Was there any left? Could we have some? Darla
looked at Mike, who simply threw up his hands:
Don’t shoot.
She stalled, plucking an invisible flake of tobacco off of her tongue, then busted out with it, the whole thing. She told
us about the womb shaped like a pear that remade itself every month. That blood was food for a baby; that the penis got the
whole business started. She used the word
vagina
repeatedly while my sisters and I sat silent. Penny had an edge of the pink chenille bedspread and was rubbing the plush
between her thumb and forefinger. Teresa and I kept sneaking looks at each other that said,
Can this be happening?
We didn’t want Darla to stop talking, not ever.

“The coolest part is if you love each other, it’s not a sin.” Darla leaned back into the headboard, wrapping and unwrapping
her hand with the satiny tie of her robe. “In fact, if you love each other, it’s your duty. Go forth and multiply. You can
even ask Momma.”

“Yesiree, we have to cleave to one another,” Mike piped in.

I suddenly had a clear image of Mr. Clapp’s turtles in their wire pen. I had never thought of them as male and female before,
but now I understood why the bigger one sometimes crawled up on the littler one’s back, claws swimming in the air. “I think
I’ve seen cleaving,” I said happily to Darla, and they both erupted into giggles, Darla giving Mike a little shove on the
thigh with her bare foot. It didn’t matter that they were laughing at me; I was thrilled to be sitting on the bed between
them as they passed the Pall Mall with its wobbly head of ash. And when they finally did shoo us out, I didn’t half mind.
We’d been let in on the business of sex. We didn’t sit and giggle about it, didn’t talk about it at all, in fact. Teresa went
directly outside, and we followed, taking the dirt path in back through the hole in the fence and up the alley toward the
corner store for snow cones. I dug into the pocket of my jeans for the dime I knew was there and held it the rest of the way
like a small, sweaty promise.