What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (14 page)

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I say. “She climbs in and out of
dumpsters
?”

“You don’t understand because you’ve probably never gone hungry,” he says. “I seen all kinds of things here, believe you me. All kinds of things. And what I learned is folks’ll do just about anything to feed themselves. The Parkers ain’t no different—well, except that kid’s a sweetheart. She’s real careful and polite. Plus, she’s clever beyond her years. She finds some pretty funny ways to put food in her belly, that one does. Reminds me of myself when I was little, if you want to know the truth. That’s why I tell my wife to lay off her. Let her be. All she’s trying to do is keep her hunger at bay, and let’s face it, her momma ain’t exactly doing much on that front.”

He tips an invisible bottle to his lips and winks at what he doesn’t need to say.

“When does Mrs. Parker usually come back?” I ask.

“Last I checked I don’t have eyes in the back of my head,” he says, “but best as I can tell she ain’t never back before dark. Not that I ever seen. You ask a lotta questions—you a cop? I don’t care one way or the other, mind you, but the missus’ll have a fit she hears the police been asking around about them two.”

“I’m not a cop,” I say. “I do appreciate your time, Mr. …?”

“Burdock,” he says, stretching his face into a painful but genuine-looking smile. “Hap Burdock.”

“I appreciate you taking the time to talk, Mr. Burdock.”

“It’s Hap,” he says, tipping his head, “and it’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

See, now there’s another example of me jumping to conclusions
and judging harshly. It’s not his fault he’s got no meat on his bones. He seems like a real nice man. I’ve got to work on that. The world doesn’t need another conclusion jumper, that’s for sure.

“You’re a good man, Mr. Burdock. I mean, Hap. I can tell,” I say, figuring I’ll make him an ally whether he likes it or not. If he feels invested in Carrie, he’ll watch out over her. “I guess I don’t need to tell you I’m worried about that little girl, and maybe I’m off on this but you seem to be concerned as well—no no, don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me, ha ha! You men—always so careful not to let on you’re all softies underneath. But I want you to know I really appreciate you looking out for that child. You shake your head like you don’t know what I’m talking about, but we both know you do. Anyway, I better get going. I just want to thank you for watching over her.”

“Whoa, Nellie! I’ll tell you what I told them,” he says, holding up his hand to stop me from talking. “I ain’t no babysitter. I don’t want to get involved with any of that. I’m just telling you what I know, is all. Hey, I got it! It’s been eating at me the whole time you’re standing in front of me. I’m thinking, gee, she sure looks familiar but I can’t put my finger on where I know you from …”

“I’ve got to skedaddle,” I say, backing toward the door. “I’m glad to meet you, Hap.”

“I seen you in the papers,” he says, pointing a eureka finger in the air. “That’s it! You’re the one who was in all them papers a while back …”

I ignore it like I do all the other times.

“Bye, nice talking with you!”

I’m careful to use my knuckles to push the glass door open—it’s so grimy there’s no telling what kinds of germs are plastered all over the metal bar. I use the palms of my hands, I get those germs on the steering wheel. Whoops! There I go again. Judging.
This door might be cleaner than my whole minivan, for all I know.

“I ain’t no babysitter!” I hear him calling after me. I know he’s just saving face, so I don’t pay it any mind. If he didn’t give a hoot, he wouldn’t know all their comings and goings like he does.

“Okay, girls, we’re homeward bound,” I say, closing the car door behind me.

“Yay!” they say in unison. Carrie is aping everything Cricket says and does.

Before putting the car in drive, I turn back to Carrie. “You sure you’re fine coming over for a little bit, Carrie honey? You feeling a little better now?”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you so much,” she says. Her eyes are real wide, like getting to come to our house is winning the lottery.

“Well, all right then. You need to buckle your seat belt back up and we’re off.”

“What’s with everybody telling everybody what they
need
to do,” I hear Cricket say to Carrie once we get under way. “Like
what you need to do is get a needle to get that splinter out
 …”

Carrie laughs as Cricket assumes different voices:

“What you need to do is take your second left,”
she says, her voice as man-deep as she can make it.

“I’ll tell you what you need,”
she says, now in a high-pitched voice,
“you need to read up on the French Revolution if you think you’re going to pass that test next week.”

More laughter from Carrie. I can’t remember the last time Cricket’s held court like this. Then Carrie chimes in:

“Or, wait wait, I got one!
What you need is a good slap—
that’ll
wake you up!
”

The only one laughing now is Carrie.

“What in the …” I see it clear as I’m pulling into the driveway.

“What’s that thing on the front door of Grandma’s house, Mom? Why’s there yellow tape up?”

Cricket bounds out of the car and up the front steps and is reading it aloud before I even have the keys out of the ignition.

“Slow down, Cricket, and wait for your guest! Sorry, Carrie, she’s fast like this all the time. Oh, don’t worry—I’ll clean that up honey, just leave it. You just go on in with Cricket.”

“Hey, Mom?” Cricket calls out, “what’s
foreclosure
mean?”

CHAPTER TEN

Carrie

My head’s a windshield wiper going back and forth on the drive from Wendy’s, listening to Cricket, who is the coolest and best human being on the whole entire planet, and looking out at the mansions we’re passing. I sure do wish Emma was here so she could see me going through neighborhoods like these. Momma wouldn’t like it much, but I bet her head’d be going left and right too just like mine. You don’t have to like what you see to want to see it. Most places have bushes cut in squares outlining the yards that are more like green carpets. The driveways are clean and smooth blacktop, with mailboxes neatly setting at the end, their family names in block lettering and what number the house is. We passed one mailbox in the shape of a mallard duck, another had a picture of two black dogs laying nestled into each other, and a third showed a horse jumping over a fence. I cain’t imagine what the houses look like inside if they take so much care for the mailman.

The grass here is like the Emerald City when Dorothy sees it
across the fields of flowers. At the Loveless there’s a dried-up ring of spiky grass circling the old empty pool set behind the rusty chain-link fence that comes up to about my armpits. When no one’s around I climb over it and the dead grass crunches hard underfoot. I have to wear flip-flops doing it because it’s so parched it hurts to set my bare feet on it. At first I was sad the pool had no water but I’ve come to like laying on the bottom of it. I pick at the chipping paint with my fingernail, stopping only when a shard cuts under the quick. There’s dead leaves, some empty cola cans that’ve been there so long they’re rusty, and tangled up in a dirty old plastic grocery sack was a lady’s brassiere, but I cleared a lot of it to the side so I could lay on my back and pretend I’m on a raft floating in the blue Bermuda sea. Lately though I been having nightmares of being down there, laying on the pool floor staring up at the clouds when someone turns on the water. I dream that they don’t see me and the pool’s filling up fast and I holler to shut it off but they cain’t hear over the rush of the spigot and then I’m splashing around like crazy trying to keep my head over the waterline and … then I wake up. I tell myself I’m not going to go down there anymore but stupid me, I forget about the nightmares until I swing my second leg over and let myself fall onto the spiky grass, then it’s too late and anyway I figure sooner or later my brain’ll get tired of having the same old stupid dream.

It’s like someone made a law against burnt-up spiky grass in Cricket’s neighborhood. Here they got flower beds along front walks. They got garages connected to their houses and right two houses before Cricket’s, I see a garage door open like magic and a car roll out all quiet, down the driveway out into a life that’s probably got magic all through it. I cain’t help but notice, as nice as these yards are, not one person’s out in them. Not a one. They go to all that trouble making it nice and soft underfoot, planting and mowing and picking up after they-selves, and I don’t see a single
solitary person out enjoying what they worked so hard to make pretty. One place has a slope that would be perfect to roll down.

Cricket undoes her seat belt before we come to a stop, and that’s how I know we’ve reached their house. Here’s the God’s honest truth: I ain’t never seen a place like where Cricket lives. Not in real life at least. In picture books there are places with picket fences and new-looking front porches with rocking chairs and fern plants and hanging baskets of pretty flowers but I never seen them in person. But then I never knew folks like Cricket and Mrs. Ford, so I guess it figures.

Mrs. Ford says, “What in the …,” and Cricket runs to the front door and Mrs. Ford fusses but I cain’t hear any of it on account of me being about to go inside the biggest house I ever been in before. The front steps don’t even creak. They’re swept clean. The porch wraps around the entire house like a moat around a castle. There’s a metal sign next to the door that says
WELCOME, VAGABONDS
with a man’s fancy top hat and cane spelling out some of the letters. The front door is thick heavy wood. When it closes you feel safe and sound.

The first thing I see is all the dolls. It’s a doll museum maybe, is what I’m thinking. Dolls, dolls, dolls. There must be thousands of them, lined up in perfect rows on perfect shelves. And on the fireplace mantel. Ever-where you look, more dolls in all sizes. I never even seen a
store
with as many dolls in my whole life much less someone’s real-life home. There’s no sign saying
NO TOUCHING
like the one hanging by the fabric at Zebulon’s, but the way these dolls are set out you just
know
not to touch them. And this is a home not a store for goodness’ sake. I feel bad thinking it—them being so kind and all—but it don’t feel much like a home in this front room. There’s doilies on every chair back, even on the couch, like they’re readying for company, but it smells like an attic and the pillows aren’t dented so I’m thinking this is a room
no one visits. Here’s another incredible thing about it: the dolls are
boy
dolls, all dressed the same, all in black suits head to toe. With round hats—black. And canes. Some of the boy dolls hold canes up and down, proper, some swing them off to the side like to show they’re happy. All of them have little bitty black mustaches. They’re all kinds of sizes.

“What is this place?” I ask out loud without knowing who is there to hear me. There’s something about the way the dolls are staring that keeps my eyes trained on them. One, in particular. He’s bigger than the rest, about halfway up to my head if I stood by him I bet, and his doll eyes twinkle and follow me if I move. I try going left, they watch me. Right, the same. I tiptoe closer to him and wave my hand in front of his face in case it’s a trick.

“So freaky, right?” Cricket says.

I jump at her voice—I hadn’t heard her come up behind me.

“What
are
these?” I say. I whisper because I feel like I shouldn’t be talking about the dolls in front of them. “What is this place?”

Cricket pulls at me and rolls her eyes. “It’s kinda embarrassing. It must seem weird, I mean. Come on, let’s go upstairs. I’ll show you my room.”

“Wait, what
are
these though?”

“It’s my great-great-uncle,” she says, shrugging. “He was a big movie star before they had sound in movies. When movies were black and white. Charlie Chaplin is his name. It’s okay you haven’t heard of him. He’s been dead forever.”

She says the name Charlie Chaplin in a grown-up accent like a butler in a movie, and makes a mustache with her finger under her nose, and waddles from side to side like a penguin.

“This is how he walked,” she says, laughing. “My grandma’s, like, ob
sess
ed with him. Everyone is. It’s freakish. Before my grandma had a hard time getting around, she used to have tour groups come in to see all the stuff. Grandma had a lot more out
than she does now believe it or not. I bet she’s in the
Guinness Book of World Records
even. He was super-duper famous. Actually, he kinda walked like this,” she says, splaying her knees out in a duckwalk, “and he always got in weird situations. Ugh, I don’t know. My grandma will tell you all about him, trust me. Hey, come upstairs! Mom, we’ll be up in my room!”

She takes the stairs two at a time and I hear Mrs. Ford hollering at her from another room to slow down. At the foot of the stairs in the hallway is a glass case with sparkly crystal glasses and silver plates and lots of expensive stuff in shapes I hardly know and all of it jingles when Cricket bounds by.

Each side of the stairs has old-timey pictures of the real-life man the dolls were made after.
Charlie Chaplin
doing all sorts of activities surrounded by all sorts of fancy people smiling at the camera. There’s even pictures of people taking pictures of him. There he is without his hat on a horse. Here he is with rich ladies and nice-dressed men standing in front of old-timey cars. I wonder how other people say his name—I only hear Cricket with that accent making the name take longer to say.
Chah-lie Chap-lunnn
. In the middle of the way upstairs is a movie poster for
The Kid—
they must’ve used that to model all the toys. Who is Charlie Chaplin? We ain’t never heard of him where we came from. Momma would surely have mentioned a man who has posters and fans and dolls made after him.