The Zebra Wall (5 page)

“Careful, Carla,” Aunt Irene barked.

“Sorry, Mama,” Carla said sheepishly, her bottom lip sticking out. “I didn't hurt him. Anyway, if people looked like worms, that's exactly what they'd look like.”

“Don't be a smarty,” Mr. Vorlob said, motioning for Carla to come to him. She stomped over to her father, her sunny red sandals clapping like applause. Mr. Vorlob set Effie down, picked Baby up, and knelt, holding Baby low enough so even Dot and Effie could see. Mr. Vorlob made gurgling noises and softly touched his nose to Baby's. Baby seemed to disappear in his father's thick, hairy arms. Mr. Vorlob's beard and deep voice were like weights pressing down on Baby's frail body. “Look, Carla,” Mr. Vorlob said, as quietly as he could. “Look what a little man your brother is. He's as perfect as can be. Perfect eyes, nose, mouth. Perfect ears, fingers, toes,” he continued, lightly kissing everything he mentioned. They all took turns holding Baby and kissing each of his toes. Then Mr. Vorlob placed Baby back in the crib.

“Okay, troops,” Mr. Vorlob said, scratching his beard. “I've got a project that needs attention.” His dark eyes flashed. “Follow me.”

Mr. Vorlob led Bernice, Carla, Dot, and Effie out of the nursery toward the kitchen.

“Can I stay with you, Mom?” Adine asked.

“Scoot,” Aunt Irene said firmly, pointing Adine in the direction of the door, with a dismissive push. “Give your mother and me some time alone. We need it.”

I
need time alone with her, Adine thought. She's
my
mother. Tears burned hot in Adine's eyes as she closed the nursery door, wishing she remained behind it.

Mr. Vorlob's project was to cart the flowers and cards that Mrs. Vorlob had received at the hospital from the bus into the living room. There was a shopful, and the back of the bus smelled like a parlor crammed with old ladies, each wearing a distinct perfume: rose, lilac, lily of the valley.

Adine thought some of the arrangements were beautiful—the globe of peach tea roses in the pewter bowl and the yellow daisies cascading from the white wicker basket. Others, she thought were questionable, particularly the planter from Mrs. Vorlob's bowling team. The planter was in the shape of a bowling ball, large and black. It was filled with orange plastic tulips and green plastic leaves that looked like knives. The plastic smelled like K Mart. Gross.

They placed the flowers on the floor, on the end tables, on the hutch. The cards—decorated with teddy bears, rattles, and blue baby booties—were lined up in between.

When the bus was empty, the living room reminded Adine of church when someone dies.

“Lookit this one,” Bernice said, holding up a ceramic pot decorated with primitive-looking cats. “I'll bet it's from Aunt Irene.”

Who else? Adine thought. The pot held an azalea plant, heavy with lavender blossoms. And when no one was watching, Adine grabbed one of the blossoms and snapped it off.

That night, Adine did spend time alone with her mother. With her mother and Baby. Dinner was over. Everyone else was playing Chutes and Ladders in the kitchen. Adine didn't mind missing out at all. She wasn't terribly fond of playing games with a lot of people. Especially with her sisters and her aunt. Bernice and Carla usually ended up cheating. Dot usually lost interest and quit. And Aunt Irene was too bossy. Sometimes she'd even slap your hand if you accidently grabbed the dice out of turn. But every now and then, Adine played games alone. For hours. She'd make up exotic names for the different playing pieces (Selena, Dominique, Juanita), keeping track of how many games each player won on a pad of paper.
That
was the way to play games.

“He's really cute, isn't he?” Mrs. Vorlob said.

“Yeah,” Adine replied, smiling at her brother.

The three of them were on the floor in the nursery. Baby was lying on his stomach on the middle of a large blue blanket, a pinkish island surrounded by an ocean. Adine and Mrs. Vorlob were on either side.

Adine didn't know how long they had been there. She was daydreaming. Looking at the fairy on the
F
wall, the falling star. Looking at her mother, at Baby. Adine heard voices from the kitchen periodically: Bernice and Carla—screaming, Dot—singing, Effie—cooing, Mr. Vorlob—laughing, and Aunt Irene—bellowing. Adine was happy to be where she was. She placed her hands on her stomach and wondered what it would be like to have a baby. One night, while Mrs. Vorlob was in the hospital, Adine had taken a pillow from the couch and stuffed it under her shirt. It had felt funny.

“Do you smell what I smell?” asked Mrs. Vorlob.

Adine did. “I think so,” she said, giggling.

“Then it's time to go to work.”

Mrs. Vorlob pulled Baby's dirty Pampers off and quickly wiped him. Adine sprinkled powder on him and secured the fresh, puffy diaper around his thin waist.

Adine picked Baby up; the Pampers slid down. Mrs. Vorlob tried her best to tighten it. “This'll have to do,” she said, gently bouncing Baby. “Grow,” she said to him with a grin.

Adine thought he grinned back.

Before Mrs. Vorlob laid Baby down for the night, Adine placed her head over Baby and sniffed under his chin. She loved the way Baby smelled (except when his diapers were dirty). Clean and white and light. The small amount of hair he had was dark and fine. Adine cupped her hand over it like a helmet. “Good night, Alexander,” she whispered.

“
Alexander?
” said Mrs. Vorlob.

“Well,” Adine explained, “I thought that if we gave Baby an
A
name, because he's the first boy, that I'd vote for Alexander. It sounds important. If I was a boy, I'd want a name like that.”

“Sounds hoity-toity to me,” said Mrs. Vorlob. “Al is a nice name, though. Simple and to the point.”

Adine instantly became aware that her mother's taste in boys' names was similar to her taste in girls'. She wasn't surprised.

“Adine,” Mrs. Vorlob said peaceably, reaching for the rolled-up diaper to throw away, “tomorrow Aunt Irene will be bringing some more things over from her apartment. She told me today that your Uncle Gilly is getting married soon to someone in Iowa. She's a little upset. She asked if we'd mind if she ended up staying longer than we had planned.”

Adine swallowed. She didn't know what to say.

“Will you do this for me, Adine? Think of it as a favor for
me
, not Irene.”

Adine nodded and looked away. She blinked hard, holding back tears.

Mrs. Vorlob rested her arm on Adine's shoulders and sighed. “What a day this has been, huh?”

Adine said nothing.

“I guess I just made a major understatement,” Mrs. Vorlob admitted, her voice less gravelly than usual.

There was a sudden burst of laughter from the kitchen.

“Well, Adine, what do you say we go play a game of Chutes and Ladders? We can be a team and beat their pants off.”

Adine didn't want to, but she said she would, anyway.

And as they walked down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, Mrs. Vorlob winked at Adine. As if they shared some ancient secret.

Aunt Irene was taking over. Everything. Boxes of her belongings were stacked under the window in Adine's bedroom, and her outlandish clothes now took up half the space in Adine's shallow closet. Aunt Irene set up a TV tray beside Adine's bed; placed atop the tray were some of her choice porcelain cats and dozens of bottles of nail polish. Knickknacks littered the windowsill. Aunt Irene even smoked a whole pack of her horrible brown cigarettes in Adine's room one afternoon as she sorted through her boxes, causing the small, cramped space—and everything in it—to reek, in Adine's opinion.

When Adine quietly grumbled, Aunt Irene swung back the curtains and heaved the window open. “Your mother smokes,” she said crisply.

“But never in my room,” Adine explained, staring at the floor.

To make sure she wouldn't do it again, Adine lettered two
NO SMOKING
signs with felt-tip markers and taped them on either side of her door. Adine even contemplated drawing a dead cat with a burning cigarette lying beside it on the signs, but decided against it.

If Aunt Irene saw Adine kiss Baby (eyes, nose, and mouth), she'd say, “Don't slobber on your brother—you'll suffocate him.”

If Adine wanted to use the telephone to call the weather recording for the local report (to see if a storm was forecast), most likely Aunt Irene was talking to one of her friends about Uncle Gilly. For hours.

Aunt Irene hogged the TV, and once, when there were only ten minutes left of a “Gilligan's Island” rerun, Aunt Irene made Adine, Bernice, and Carla go to the kitchen to do the lunch dishes.

“I'm telling Mama,” Carla threatened.

“Don't bother your mother, girls,” Aunt Irene said with authority, plopping down in front of the TV and switching stations to “Days of Our Lives.” “She's busy with your brother.”

It was always the same story when Adine complained. “She needs us right now,” Mrs. Vorlob kept saying. “Bear with her,” Mr. Vorlob would add. Why can't she have children of her own to torment? Adine continued to wonder.

Dot and Effie liked having Aunt Irene around. All Aunt Irene had to do to keep them happy was to perform her train impersonation a few times daily. And Baby, of course, didn't seem to mind one way or the other. About anything. Young children, Adine decided, are easy to deceive.

Bernice and Carla went into business. Furtively. They sold their mother's flowers from the hospital to their friends. Roses for a quarter. Carnations for fifteen cents. Daisies and all others for a dime. They also sold peeks at Baby, when they knew their mother was busy elsewhere. A penny for a quick look, a nickel for a longer one, and a dime if he happened to be drooling. Business was booming; by the end of the week they had earned three dollars and sixty-three cents.

It was Aunt Irene who put an end to their enterprise. One afternoon, as she and Adine were folding laundry, they overheard Carla sneak T. J. Deroucher into the nursery and demand a nickel in a fierce whisper. Then Carla sold him two roses and immediately made him give them back to her since she was his girl friend.

“Thank you, T. J.,” Carla said sweetly, putting the flowers back in their vase to sell again. She pecked his cheek.

T. J. blushed and looked confused. He jammed his fists deep into his pockets.

“Why don't you buy some roses for your mom?” Carla asked.

“Out of money,” T. J. answered, swaying back and forth, shifting from one foot to the other.

“And
you're
out of business, Carla Celeste Vorlob!” Aunt Irene roared, storming around the corner from where she and Adine had been watching. Aunt Irene made Carla return T. J.'s money.

“You're not going to tell Mama and Daddy, are you, Auntie?” Carla asked with supplicating eyes.

“Don't tempt me. You're just lucky your mother's napping and your father's at work.”

“I gave her seventy-five cents yesterday,” T. J. told Aunt Irene. “And a dime the day before.”

Adine giggled as she stacked towels. Carla and Bernice's commercial venture was just one of many schemes they never ceased to think of. Adine doubted if she could ever come up with the ideas they did, much less carry them out. When Mrs. Vorlob talked about Carla and Bernice, she often said they were creative and spontaneous. Adine thought that
she
was creative, in a different way, though; she loved to draw and was good at it. But she knew she wasn't spontaneous.

That afternoon, Carla and Bernice paraded from door to door in the neighborhood, emptying their milk carton of change. Aunt Irene ordered Adine to go with them to make sure they returned all the money at the proper houses. Adine thought her role as supervisor was unfair; she hadn't done anything wrong. Adine (tugging her ear) waited at the front sidewalk while her sisters reluctantly marched up to each porch. Adine kicked the weeds and scanned the sky. The large cloud following them was in the shape of Aunt Irene (if you stretched your imagination); the mass next to it was a giant, pointy sword. Adine stared at them until they merged—the sword jutting right into Aunt Irene's stomach.

On the way back home, the three of them decided that something had to be done before Aunt Irene took complete control.

“She's so
bossy
,” said Adine.

“Like she's our mother or something,” said Bernice. “We have to think of something good.”

“I've got an idea,” Carla said in a hushed, secretive voice, her eyes narrowing to slits. Then she ran ahead and started skipping. “A great one!” she yelled.

They began working on Carla's idea immediately. They bolted to Bernice and Carla's room and closed the door. Carla's idea was to draw pictures of Aunt Irene and Deedee, using Adine's felt-tip markers. The more unflattering the better. Then they'd place the pictures in strategic locations around the house (where Aunt Irene would hopefully find them, and where Mr. and Mrs. Vorlob hopefully wouldn't). “Don't you get it,” Bernice had explained, crouching between her sisters. “After she sees them, she'll
want
to leave.” Bernice thought that a few signs were in order, too.

Although Adine had liked the idea just minutes earlier, her enthusiasm was quickly waning once she actually started to draw.

“How's this?” Bernice asked, leaning back so Adine could read the sign she had just finished. It said
WE ONLY HAVE ONE MOTHER AND HER NAME IS
NOT
IRENE
.

Adine nodded.

Carla was working on two drawings of Deedee at the same time. A “before” picture and an “after” picture. The “before” picture showed Deedee eating out of her dish, an enormous steam roller headed directly for her. The “after” picture simply showed a flat, gray-and-black blob, surrounded by a pool of red.