That Halloween when Mom called me into her room to dress me in my costume, I walked in knowing exactly what I wanted.
“Cicadas,” I told her. “I want to be a princess with a dress made of cicada shells. I want wings, too. Wings made of violets and—”
“And I want to be a queen with the vagina of a virgin,” she said, “but that ain’t gonna happen now, is it?” She applied a fresh layer of lipstick to her already red lips. “Anyways, princesses do not look like you, Betty. That mud-colored skin and stringy hair of yours. You ever seen a princess look like you?”
She laid down her lipstick and yanked me in front of her to face the dresser mirror.
“What do you see?” she asked, her reflection staring at my own.
What I saw in me was my father. The same black hair, the identical full brows. I had his strong jawline and nose. He would say the bones in our cheeks were the leg bones of the first deer. Our cheeks as close to the sky as the deer could leap. Then there was our brown skin. Something I would try to be rid of by making sacrifices to the river. They were sacrifices I thought the river would like. Cherry blossoms, tree bark, a pair of Mom’s nylons. I even caught a cricket and threw her into the brown water. I thought the cricket would reach the edge, but she drowned before she got there. I hoped that sacrifice would be enough, so I jumped into the river and held my breath for as long as my lungs would allow. I believed that when I breached the surface, the water would have washed the color from me. The cricket drowned for no reason at all.
“Even if you were beautiful, Betty,” Mom said, “you could not be a princess. A Carpenter cannot afford a crown or a throne.”
She picked up an old robe that had been in the corner of Trustin and Lint’s room when we moved in. After cleaning the house and throwing away most of the decrepit items, Mom kept the robe. It was the color of rust. The stains on it were like places where something once bled and broke away. In the front pocket was a mouse skeleton, partially preserved, the dehydrated skin clinging to all the tiny bones. The mouse was wrapped in yellowed paper with the words of Emily Dickinson written on it in shaky cursive, Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. To remove the skeleton felt to be disturbing a grave, so we let the remains be.
“Aw, Mom, I don’t wanna wear the robe,” I said.
She yelled when she thought it took me too long to put my arms through the sleeves. Afterward, she placed a pillow against my stomach. While she closed and tightened the robe over the pillow, I asked her what I was supposed to be.
“A witch,” she replied. “A she-monster. A female demon.” She bared her teeth. “Also known as a hag, which is certainly somethin’ a Carpenter girl can afford to be.”
She oinked as she prodded my pillow belly with her finger.
“Nothin’ more haggish than a girl who cannot control her appetite,” she said before laughing as she grabbed a shoe box of dirty shoelaces from under the bed. She tied them into my hair, creating a series of tiny ponytails. From off a bedside table, she picked up a used match by the candle. She took my face in her free hand and dug her thumbnail into my chin to keep my head steady while she used the match to draw on my forehead.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever told you how my brother came to be in the ground,” she said. “Brother was as beautiful as a sunset. If you would have asked me if he had any secrets, I would have said not one. Then came the day I heard sounds comin’ from the attic.”
Mom re-created the moans harshly like someone who’s had too much to drink, yet that day I smelled nothing more than a peppermint candy on her breath.
“I followed the noise up to the attic,” she said. “Of all the things I thought I’d find, I never thought I’d see my brother bent over a table, our neighbor boy behind him.”
She pressed the match so hard into my skin, I flinched.
“At first,” she continued, “I thought my brother might be gettin’ attacked. Then I realized he was merely makin’ love.” She tsk-tsked with her tongue. “After I told Pappy what I saw, he forced Brother to eat the Bible, page by page, in order to swallow his sin. Brother fought back, but Pappy always was a strong man. Halfway through Adam and Eve’s saga, Pappy had crammed so many pages into Brother’s mouth, his cheeks were stretched full of ’em. Even after Brother choked to death, Pappy kept addin’ pages until Brother’s lips were forced open so wide, they started to tear at the corners.”
She turned me to face the mirror. I stared at the reflection of the black eye she’d drawn in the middle of my forehead.
“All because of what I saw,” she said, pressing her finger into the pupil of the eye.
She gave one of those deep chuckles that always made me think there wasn’t anything more to do but run away from her. Before I could, she yanked me toward the closet. She handed me a pillowcase that had a border of embroidered June bugs.
“To hold your candy,” she told me.
She studied me a moment longer, then drew with the match on my cheek. I tried to look in the mirror, but she stopped me.
“It’s only a flower.” She promised. “Now, get outta here.”
The robe was long on my seven-year-old frame. Once I was outside, it dragged along the ground picking up dead leaves and other debris.
“I wish I was a princess,” I chanted as I stepped out onto Shady Lane. It was crowded with candy hounds in all kinds of costumes. A whoopee cushion. A grandfather clock. A Chinese finger trap. Then again, maybe they were all just little monsters.
Gathered in the middle of the lane was a group of kids from my class. Ruthis was there. She stopped counting her lollipops when she saw me approaching. She snickered as she straightened the small tiara on her head. The gemstones were fake, but the tiara still made her a princess.
“Why you trick-or-treatin’?” she asked me. “I thought you only ate corn and cowboys.”
She slapped her mouth as she did a whooping call. There are no small wars between girls. Everything is as epic as two wild birds sparring over the last worm.
“Oh my God, Ruthis, you’re just so funny.” I hooked a finger in each side of my mouth and pulled to make my lips wide as I crossed my eyes. “Look at me. I’m Ruthis. The world’s prettiest girl. At least that’s what the circus said.”
“Kiss my ass, squaw,” she said before spitting on the top of my bare foot. Her spit was colored red from candy.
I dropped my fingers from my mouth and stepped closer to her, tightening my hands into fists.
“Kiss your ass?” I asked loudly. “Ha. I wouldn’t kiss your ass if it was dipped in chocolate God made Himself.”
I’d heard Mom use that line once in an argument with Dad. I had been waiting for the chance to use it myself.
“Why you stringy-haired half-breed.” Ruthis stepped closer to me. We were the same height, so the tips of our noses were touching.
She gritted her teeth as we kept our eyes locked. “I’m gonna—”
A boy dressed as his mother’s rolling pin interrupted Ruthis. He was asking what was written on my cheek. Ruthis stepped back to see for herself. When she smiled, I realized my mother had not given me a flower after all.
“It says ‘hag.’ ” Ruthis laughed the loudest of them all.
“She’s a hag for Halloween?” someone asked.
“She’s a hag all year.” Ruthis snorted so hard she couldn’t catch her breath.
The four Jubilee brothers came forth dressed as a barbershop quartet in their striped waistcoats, straw boater hats, and stick-on handlebar mustaches. They began snapping their fingers, a beat which got everyone around blowing into their candy whistles. The eldest Jubilee brother jiggled his hook-on bow tie and sang as his younger brothers provided the melody.
“Here in Breathed, there’s a hag. Her name is Betty, she makes us gag. On her head, she should wear a bag. We would rather kiss a shitty rag
than Betty, Breathed’s famous hag of hags.”
“Hag, hag, hag.” Ruthis cackled.
“Shut up.” I screamed over her laughter, and covered my ears with my hands.
When she didn’t stop, I dropped my pillowcase and ripped the tiara off her head.
“Give it back.” She latched on to one end of the tiara while I yanked on the other until the gemstones popped off.
“You dirty pig.” She started to collect the stones. “I’m gonna tell my mother and father on you. They’ll run you out of town. They say you’re filthy. That you’ll bring disease.”
I bent the tiara until the thin metal snapped. I dropped the two halves to the ground in front of her.
“You don’t deserve a crown, Ruthis,” I said. “You’re no princess. A real princess wouldn’t say mean words to someone like you say to me.”
Ruthis let the gemstones spill from her palm as she slowly stood. Narrowing her eyes at me, she straightened her pink princess dress as she tilted her chin.
“I don’t need a crown to be better than you,” she said with a smile. “Don’t you get it? I’ll always be better than you, Little Injun.”
Ruthis led the chorus of laughter as I grabbed my pillowcase and ran back home. I huddled in front of the hubcap of the Rambler parked in the yard. I used my spit to wipe dirt off the chrome so I could see my reflection and the HAG Mom had written on my cheek.
“Why you cryin’, Little Indian?” Dad stepped out of the garage.
“I’m not cryin’.” I quickly wiped my tears away. “And stop callin’ me Little Indian.”
“What’d you write on your face there?” he asked.
He tried to touch my cheek, but I didn’t let him.
“I didn’t write it,” I said.
“Who did?”
“Mom. She said she was drawin’ a flower.”
I slipped the pillowcase over the top of my head, hoping I could disappear into its white cotton and never be seen again.
“Then let’s make it a flower,” Dad said as he gently lifted the pillowcase off my head.
He was kneeling in front of me, despite his bad knee. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a match. He lit it only to blow it back out.
“It’s not fair,” I said as he used the blackened tip of the match to draw on my cheek. “Halloween is the chance to be someone else, but I’m still me.”
“Who’d you wanna be?” he asked.
“Anybody but me, but I really wanted to be a princess of Breathed, with a dress made out of the shells of cicadas. But most of all I wanted a pair of wings made of violets.”
“Ah, the reddest flower of ’em all.”
“They’re purple, Dad. You never remember violets are purple.”
He laughed before saying, “You know, the Cherokee didn’t have no princesses.”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t wanna be one,” I said.
He nodded. “When I was your age, I wanted to be someone else, too.”
“Who’d you wanna be, Dad?”
“Someone important. You know why I call you Little Indian?” He stopped drawing and looked into my eyes. “So that you know you’re already someone important.”
He turned me toward the hubcap. In my reflection I saw that HAG was now the black heart of Dad’s crudely drawn flower.
“Let’s go get your wings, my princess,” he said before scooping me up in his arms. He carried me to the silver maple in our front yard, where he set me on my feet.
After some searching through the fallen leaves, he picked up two. One was a blistering vermillion with golden veins. The other was a murky burgundy with curling terra-cotta colored ends.
“What you gonna do, Dad?” I asked as he stood behind me with the leaves.
“I’m gonna give you your wings, Little Indian. I’m sorry they ain’t gonna be wings made out of no red violets, but if you ask me, leaves of a silver maple are the best damn wings to have.”
He used tape to stick the leaves by their stems to the back of the robe.
“They ain’t the wings of a princess,” I said, twisting my head around as far as it’d go to see the leaves. “They’re the wings of someone who can’t afford feathers.”
“Betty, you have to remember that other girls only get to be a princess for Halloween,” he said. “Even then, these girls can only pretend to be a princess. But you’re a real princess every day of your life. You come from a Cherokee king.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Me. I’m a king. Didn’t you know that about ol’ Landon Carpenter?”
I shook my head.
“I’m the mighty king of the garden,” he said. “And that makes you a Cherokee princess. No one can take that away from you because it’s in your blood.”
He pulled up the sleeves of the robe and tapped the veins on the undersides of my wrists.
“In your blood,” he said again.
“In my blood,” I said, looking down at my veins as if I could see inside them. “But I thought you said Cherokee didn’t have princesses.”
“Don’t mean you can’t be one.” He smiled.
As I stepped down Shady Lane, I tried to believe I was a real princess. I took each step as if my wings were real. The wind blew through my hair and the sun shone on my face until I felt as though I really did matter.
“I am a princess. I matter. I am important.”
Then I saw Ruthis still laughing, and I realized the sun that shines on me would always have a cloud. Perhaps Flossie was right. Maybe we were cursed to the stations in our lives and could hope for no better. I wished then for Halloween to be over. For autumn to be gone. For the winter to come and freeze Ruthis’ laugh until February, when I would be eight and perhaps old enough to become who I wanted to be.
I felt a hand gently grabbing my own. I looked down and saw Trustin. Mom had costumed him by setting a cardboard box on top of his head.
“I’ll walk with ya if it’ll make ya stop cryin’.” He peeked out at me from under the box’s flap.
“I’m not cryin’,” I said, wiping my eyes. “What are you supposed to be?”
“A box.” He grinned with pride at his costume. “Mom said boxes are the best thing to be ’cause everyone needs one at least once in their damn life.”
He looked me up and down, then asked, “What are you, Betty?”
“I’m a—”
“Wait,” he said. “I know what you are, Betty. You’re an angel. Look at your wings.”
THE BREATHANIAN
Same Gun Used in Mysterious Peacock Disappearances
It has now been confirmed that the gun used to shatter the front window of Papa Juniper’s Market is of the same model shotgun on record as being fired into the walls of the former Peacock house amid their disappearance.
The news has created a profound stir in the entire community. The very mention of the Peacocks and their enigmatic vanishing causes a visible shudder through residents here. It can be said that the mother is scarce who does not caution her child away from what had been the Peacock residence, which is now that of the Carpenters.
“I remember when the Peacocks disappeared,” local resident Fedelia Spicer commented. “It feels like the original poison is still present. Like it never went away. There’s always been something sinister about the Peacocks going missing. Now, it feels like the same snake has its mouth open once more.”
With concern growing in the community, Sheriff Sands released a statement.
“With the facts as they are now, we can’t separate the recent shooting from the Peacocks’ disappearance.”
With fear now permeating the air, many residents have taken up arms to protect themselves.
“I don’t want to disappear the way the Peacocks did,” said a resident of Red Possum Lane who wished to remain anonymous.
The resident went on to give a theory of who they think the shooter may be.
“I can’t trust someone whose face blends into the night,” they said. “It’s how I was raised to think and I still think the same. When there’s no separation in the races, we have violence like this.”
10
Fall into the mouth of the eater.
—NAHUM 3:12
After that Halloween, I folded the robe and hid it in a corner of the attic. When I turned eight in February, I blew out my candles with the wish that the robe would turn into a princess dress more beautiful than Ruthis’. I ran up to the attic to see, but the robe had not changed. Grabbing a sleeve, I dragged the robe behind me as I walked out of the house. Stomping into the woods, I chose a path that had the most leaf litter. It clung to the fabric until it looked as though I was dragging nothing more than a fallen branch. When I felt I had walked long enough, I spit on the robe, cursed it, then buried it in an unmarked grave.
“You shouldn’t have wasted your wish on that nasty robe, Betty,” Flossie said. “You should have wished for a bra for me.”
Ever since she turned eleven, a bra seemed to be on Flossie’s mind more than anything else. She still failed the pencil test, but begged Mom for a training bra anyway.
“Oh, c’mon, Mom.” Flossie held her hands together. “I’ll die if I don’t get one.”
“You don’t have no boobs for a bra,” Mom told her.
“I’ve been prayin’ for them, too,” Flossie replied.
“Stop prayin’ for an extra pound of flesh before you’re ready to carry it,” Mom said.
Flossie’s prayer was finally answered in a package on her bed. She immediately tore it open.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, smiling so wide at the bra in her hands, I thought she was going to eat it.
Betty Page 11
