The Zebra Wall (6 page)

“Oooh, that's
good!
” said Bernice, excited.

“Can you tell the red gunk is cat blood?” Carla asked.

“Of course,” said Bernice. “But you could make a
little
more blood, though.”

“What are you working on, Adine?” Carla asked, craning her neck to see.

“It's not that good,” Adine remarked, holding up her drawing. It was a portrait of Aunt Irene as a train—big and square and sturdy. Adine had drawn her stooped on a railroad track, toothless, with a smokestack sprouting out of her head. Black smoke spewed out of the smokestack, and out of her nose and ears, as well. Adine colored the train like Aunt Irene's loudest dress.

Bernice and Carla shrieked with delight.

“That's the best!” Bernice said. “It's exactly what she looks like. Honestly.”

“That dress part is funny,” Carla observed. “Just like the real one Aunt Irene wears. I really like how you have the smoke coming out of her ears, too. Ha!”

“Why don't we put that one under her pillow?” Bernice suggested. “Maybe we should put them
all
under her pillow,” she added, using her hands for emphasis. “That way, Mom and Dad won't see them.”

“Unless Auntie's a tattletale, too,” Carla said.

“I don't know,” Adine said slowly. During moments like these, Adine didn't feel like the oldest.

“Aw, come on,” Bernice coaxed. “Let's do it!”

Carla grinned evilly and nodded, her eyebrows wiggling on her forehead mischievously.

“All right,” Adine whispered hesitantly.

And so, without much deliberation it was decided: Adine would slide the thin stack of drawings and messages under Aunt Irene's pillow that night.

Adine was waiting. And waiting. And waiting. She had slipped the drawings under Aunt Irene's pillow and zipped back to the cot. That was half an hour ago, and still Aunt Irene hadn't come to bed. Adine's heart was moving with the speed and force of a jackhammer. She tried to compose herself and fall asleep. She couldn't. She kept thinking of her drawing of Aunt Irene. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like something Gary Wilker would do. And that thought made her hate what she had done, despite the fact that she hated having Aunt Irene around. Regret swept over Adine like a tidal wave and whooshed through her as if a kite were tied to her heart.

But still she waited. And waited. And waited. Every creak in the hallway, every shadow that skimmed across the floor caused Adine to flinch. She pulled the covers over her head and told herself how terrible and selfish her aunt was. How bossy and embarrassing. How eccentric.

Adine turned over on her stomach. She rolled to her side. Lay on her back. She heard Aunt Irene's voice. Coming closer. Closer. Adine gulped, took a deep breath, and jumped up. She grabbed the drawings, rolled them up, and flung them under her dresser just as Aunt Irene opened the door.

“You should be sleeping, little lady,” Aunt Irene snapped.

Adine flopped down on the cot with a thud and a sigh. “I am,” she whispered.

When Aunt Irene's presence wasn't commanding all of Adine's attention, thinking of a name for Baby and deciding how to decorate the nursery consumed her thoughts. Everyone else's, too. If they weren't going to keep the
F
wall, Adine thought that all the walls in the nursery would look best painted one solid, peaceful color. Light peach or yellowish. Soft and creamy like butter, as if the walls would melt if you happened to bump into them. But Adine was especially determined to come up with a suitable name for her brother. Mrs. Vorlob still hadn't decided what letter Baby's name should begin with, so Adine just tried to think of nice-sounding names, regardless of how they were spelled. She searched everywhere—in books, the telephone directory, the newspaper, even in the pantry (where she discovered two distinct possibilities: Campbell—from the cans of soup, and Duncan—from a cake mix), and under the bathroom sink (where she momentarily considered Lysol as a name, before dismissing the idea as being ridiculous).

Holding Baby, Adine whispered name after name in his ear, hoping he'd somehow respond favorably to one of them—with a turn of the head, a flutter of his thin lilac eyelids, a pucker of agreement on his lips. But time after time he gave no sign to indicate a preference.

When she was alone with Baby, Adine pretended that she was his mother. She imagined herself in a smart red dress (like the picture in the Sears catalogue she had torn out and kept folded in her underwear drawer), strolling with Baby in the outlet mall near the interstate. People would stop her to steal a look at her child, saying: “What a gorgeous baby!” and “I've never seen a more beautiful child.” Adine would blush. “Thank you,” she'd say, covering her baby and hurrying on.

Denise Gackstetter and her mother came to visit. The Gackstetters lived down the block and around the corner. Denise and Adine were in the same class. Whenever anyone asked Adine, she would say that Denise was her best friend. Last year, in school, they sat side by side in the back of the room because their teacher, Mr. Pavilonis, said that they were well behaved and didn't act up like Gary Wilker and Mary Rose Wampole, who sat in the front. They both were bashful—sometimes with each other—and their time spent together was often quiet. Reading books on the porch, doing homework at each other's houses during the school year, riding bikes, drawing.

Aunt Irene said that Denise and her parents were “artsy-fartsy.” Denise was good in art, but Adine knew that that wasn't what Aunt Irene was referring to. Adine couldn't quite pinpoint what “artsy-fartsy” meant, but Adine guessed it had something to do with the fact that Denise's mother had a colored streak in her hair, which she periodically changed from orange to pink to blue, and that Denise's father wore a small gold earring in one of his ears. Denise had pierced ears, too. Three holes in one ear, two in the other, always filled by tiny silver hoops.

Adine was a bit envious of Denise; although she'd never wear a total of five earrings, herself, Adine desperately wished that she could have pierced ears. She had wished that for at least four years. Her parents said that she had to wait until she was twelve. Adine never pressed the point.

When Denise and her mother entered the Vorlobs' house, Aunt Irene focused on Mrs. Gackstetter's hair, which was currently tinted maroon, for a few seconds and rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue before saying hello. Considering how Aunt Irene dressed and acted, Adine didn't think that her aunt had any right to pass judgment.

After looking at Baby, Mrs. Gackstetter and Mrs. Vorlob went to the kitchen to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, and Denise went with Adine to Adine's room to draw. Denise usually drew pictures of animals (horses being her favorite). Adine usually drew pictures of families and made up names for each person. She neatly lettered their names along the bottom of each drawing.

“That's a nice horse,” Adine told Denise.

“Thanks. It's supposed to be an Appaloosa,” Denise said. She pointed to the fancy dress Adine had drawn on one of her people. “I like that outfit.”

Next, Adine drew a picture of some of her mother's flowers. Denise drew a picture of a baby. She held it up to show Adine. “I asked my mom if we could have a baby. She said having one baby was enough for her. You're lucky, Adine. My mom says she doesn't know how your mom does it.”

“But sometimes it must be nice to have it be just you and your mom and your dad.”

Denise shrugged. “Sometimes they watch me too much and check on me every five minutes. Like
I'm
a baby.”

Adine thought that getting that much attention might be nice. Adine also thought that being an only child would minimize the wear and tear on her felt-tip markers. Bernice and Carla often used Adine's markers without asking, and they had a tendency to press too hard, squashing the tips and fraying them. Sometimes, they even left the caps off, drying them out. Denise's markers, it seemed to Adine, were always pointy and sharp, the colors vibrant.

They drew separately and silently until they collaborated on a drawing of Gary Wilker. Adine drew his head twice as large as it should have been and colored it red. Denise drew his body twice as small and colored it green. They gave him elephant ears, duck feet, and pimples everywhere they could fit them.

The drawing of Gary Wilker reminded Adine of her drawing of Aunt Irene. Adine had hidden all of the drawings and signs in her closet under a box of old toys. When Bernice and Carla had asked how Aunt Irene had reacted, Adine had simply said, “She didn't say anything.” Adine couldn't tell her sisters that she had chickened out, that Aunt Irene had never even seen the drawings.

For days after, Bernice and Carla kept trying to lure Aunt Irene into talking about the drawings.

“Do you think we're good drawers, Auntie?” Carla asked in a sugary voice.

“Do older people ever find anything under their pillows, Aunt Irene?” Bernice asked with a theatrical air. “You know, like things from the tooth fairy or someone?”

Aunt Irene obviously never gave them the answers they wanted. And obviously, Carla's scheme didn't drive Aunt Irene away.

Adine felt guilty about the picture of Aunt Irene all over again, but not about the one of Gary Wilker.

Denise and Adine giggled until they laughed. And they laughed until they got hiccups. Adine got up and shut her bedroom door, to keep things quiet for Baby. They broke into laughter again, loud and long.

“Whose is
that
?” Denise asked, gesturing to one of Aunt Irene's chiffon cat blouses hanging by a hook on the back of Adine's door.

“My aunt's,” Adine mumbled.

“It's gross.”

“It's not
that
bad,” Adine lied. She hated it. The blouse was yellow. A big black cat with an arched back and olive eyes wrapped itself around the blouse, from the front left-hand pocket, across the back, to the front right-hand pocket.

“My dad calls your aunt a character,” Denise said. “He says every family's got at least one. She makes him laugh.” Denise took the blouse off the hook and held it up in front of herself. “Yuck.”

Adine tugged on her ear. She realized that what Denise had just said was true, but it left Adine confused. At that moment, Adine's feelings for her aunt were a jumbled mess, just like the “junk drawer” in the pantry, which held a thick tangle of rusty nails, yarn snippets, wire, string, small pieces of multicolored thread, scraps of material, crumbs and—if you searched thoroughly enough—pennies, nickels, and shiny buttons.

Adine tried to ignore Denise's comments. “Come on,” Adine said. “Why don't we draw a picture of Mary Rose Wampole? We can make her worse than Gary Wilker.”

For a split second while they drew, Adine pretended that the picture was of Denise, rather than Mary Rose Wampole.

A few days later, while she was hunting in her closet for an old toy to give to Baby, Adine discovered that the stack of signs and drawings of Aunt Irene and Deedee was missing. Her heart beat in her throat and her stomach instantly went heavy, like the time she ate seven cookies right before bed.

“Oh, no,” Adine whispered to herself. “What am I going to do now?”

Baby grew. Not much. And not quickly. But Adine could tell that he was getting bigger. At least she thought so. She tried to keep track of his height with her father's yardstick, but could rarely make Baby lie straight enough to get an accurate measurement. Mrs. Vorlob had explained to Adine what a soft spot on a baby's head was, and where it was located on Baby. Sometimes Adine could swear it had grown harder; other times it seemed softer.

Even though Baby was the Vorlobs' first boy, there wasn't much they had to buy for him. There were enough blocks and dolls and cars and dress-up clothes and baseball gloves hiding in the closets and chests to keep him occupied when he was ready for them. The Vorlobs owned one hundred eighty-two Fisher-Price people and twenty-six stuffed animals.

Baby usually wore Pampers and plain, hand-me-down T-shirts, unless his sisters had him all decked out in their doll clothes or he was wearing his sleeveless Sylvester undershirt from Aunt Irene.

Mr. Vorlob took photos of Baby, and Adine wrote captions under them: in the back of T. J. Deroucher's dump truck (
HEAVY LOAD
!), camouflaged in a pile of Carla's dolls with sunglasses and a too-big Brewers cap on (
ONE IN A MILLION
), and stark naked, getting a bath in Mrs. Vorlob's spaghetti pot (
WHAT
'
S COOKING
?), But most of the photos were of Baby sleeping in his crib, because that's what he mostly did.

“When are we going to name him?” everyone kept asking.

Mrs. Vorlob just kept shrugging.

Before the tornado siren completed its first sounding, everyone was down in the basement, in the dark, cobwebbed hollow beneath the stairs. Mr. Vorlob brought the transistor radio with him. Mrs. Vorlob brought Baby and a couple of boxes of Jell-O for the girls to share while they waited for the warning to be lifted. Adine, Bernice, Carla, Dot, and Effie stuck their fingers into the colored sugar, then licked their fingers and kissed them clean. Over and over. Aunt Irene did, too. They could only eat Jell-O in that manner on special occasions. And they always had to brush their teeth twice, directly afterward.

Storms always seemed to excite everyone. Everyone but Adine, of course. While her sisters sang and chanted (“It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring . . .”), Adine's face grew tight as a fist and then she momentarily went dizzy. Adine had known a storm was coming. She knew by the way things smelled outside—musty and dull and fishy like new bedsheets from the outlet mall. She knew because the sky had been the color of tin all afternoon. She knew because after Willard Scott did the national weather on the “Today” show and then broke to the local station, the newscaster predicted the threat of a tornado in the area. And she knew because the insides of her stomach were bouncing around the way they always did when something like this was going to happen.