Paper Stones

by Laurie Ray Hill

  Tammy says, “What about the babysitter?”

  We tell her: drop the babysitter off on the way to the shelter. Her husband always takes the babysitter home. Well tonight Tammy’s got to. Tammy don’t know where the babysitter lives.

  The babysitter knows.

  Marg says, “Hurry.”

  So Tammy drives off. She knows where the shelter is. She’s been there before. Most of us has.

  2.

  I GOT A LITTLE BUSY with my own stuff that week. I was working at this carpet-cleaning place. Doing telemarketing. You got your dryer vent sucked out, free, that month with our hall and two rooms special.

  The owner, Ken, he decides he wants something else sucked, free. I couldn’t just tell him to go to hell because it’s a job, right? But I wasn’t doing that for him if I could help it. He’s this big fat older guy that stinks.

  I had to watch myself every minute. Went to a lot of trouble over it. I come in and left with the other girls. Got somebody to come to the bathroom with me so he never had a chance to hit on me.

  Every day, in the back of my mind, there’s little Jenny. The ground feels like it’s rumbling. I got to hurry up and do something. Like we told Tammy.

  Hurry. Hurry. Do something before the kids get hurt.

  I talked to Pam at the shelter about it one day. Called her up in a panic.

  I said, “They’re not doing nothing at that group you sent me to! Time’s going by! They haven’t said one word about how to help a kid so she don’t get abused.”

  Pam asked me again if I had any evidence that Jenny was getting hurt or abused.

  “Not yet. But my sister keeps picking up these frigging jerks and she has Dad over there all the time playing with Jenny. It’s making me crazy!”

  “The best thing you can do right now, Rose, is keep on going to Group. You’ve got to give it some time for the group to get established. Soon you’ll be working on your own healing. Remember the oxygen mask. You need to help yourself before you can help anyone else.”

  I was fighting off a panic feeling half the time. It would pop into my head. Some dirty man beckoning to little toddling Jenny. “Come in here. See what I got to show you.”

  And I’m like, NO! Jenny, no!

  When Friday finally come, I went down to The Pig & Whistle to play bingo. They’re giving away a fridge at the end of this month, and you get your name entered just for showing up. I could sure use a new fridge. Mine’s been temperamental ever since Darrell.

  Josie’s there with her old boyfriend, I’m sorry to see. Last I heard, she kicked that guy out and it was high time by the sounds of it. He’s got a pal with him. Name of Dave. (This is the part where I meet Dave!)

  I won twenty bucks at the bingo so we were all having a beer.

  Then who struts in but Ken, my boss. He’s been playing pool in the back room and having a few. Starts hitting on me.

  This Dave fellow, he can see I want Ken to bugger off. Dave asks me to dance.

  Dave stands up. Ken don’t come up to his chin.

  Ken fades away and I get up and dance with Dave.

  That’s all right. Dave don’t smell bad or nothing. Around my age. God, it’s been a while! And it’s been a long week.

  I just let my breath out slow as I let my face settle into where it fits against Dave’s chest. There’s a dent in him there under the collarbone where my face comes to rest. He pulls me in a little closer. It feels so blessed good to relax like this, rest in somebody’s arms.

  I don’t know the guy. I don’t even care. A hug can feel good, eh. The music was loud but not to hurt your ears, just big, like this guy. We’re dancing slow, holding each other. I think he’s liking it too, the simple fact of somebody’s arms around him. Not personal. Not even what I called “sexy” at that time—no big rush. Good, warm hug on this cold night, like you wanted all the time you were a kid. I’ve got a buzz from the beer.

  Josie’s there beside me, her foot in the cast, trying to dance. She’s got one crutch and her boyfriend. I can hear her yelling in his ear, over the music, telling him there’s going to be dancing every Friday at this hotel she’s thinking of building.

  He laughs at her and rubs her curly head, kind of rough. “What do you use for brains?” he says.

  Something I remember, clear, from the night I met Dave was his clean jokes. He kept telling us these corny, harmless jokes like an eight-year-old tells and then he’d grin, sheepish.

  He said, “Two guys walk into a bar. Third one ducks.” And he grinned.

  Took me a minute.

  Well, anyways, I wound up letting this Dave guy come home with me.

  So there’s me the next Tuesday. I’m trotting up the stairs, cheerful. I run into Marg on her way to the washroom. I tell her, “Guess what! I’ve met someone!”

  Marg gets this look on her like, Here we go again. Rose and some guy.

  I said, “It’s not like you’re thinking. There’s no big buzz. It’s just plain nice.”

  Dave could’ve been a daddy long-legs crawling out of the hole in Marg’s chocolate sprinkles doughnut, to judge by the look on her.

  Back then, I couldn’t explain about Dave. If I had to put it into words now, I’d say he was not injured like any of the men I’d knew before. Old rockslide had passed him by.

  Getting to know him had a friendly sort of a feel to it. No head rush or fireworks. None of what Meredith calls “drama” or “heightened intensity.” I was not walking on any clouds.

  “Are you going slow?” Marg knows I don’t tend to go slow.

  But I says, “You know, Marg, maybe I am, for once.”

  Tammy shows up. We jump on her. “So? Are you moved into the shelter? How’s the kids? Lizard make it?”

  She says not yet. She’s going to do it soon, she says. She’s getting organized, she says.

  We all start screaming at her.

  Tammy says, “Next week for sure. I need to do a few things first, to get ready. I cleaned house this week.”

  We’re sitting there in the waiting room, checking out the ceiling tiles, picking at our fingernails, chewing gum. How long till Tammy and those kids get beat up again? Why the frig won’t she get out? How come Meredith don’t do nothing?

  After a while, for something else to think of, Sally starts telling us how she saw these cans of paint cheap at Liquidation World. “We could start buying things like that,” she says, “a step at a time until we’ve got everything we need. How else could you build a hotel?” Sally says. “You couldn’t get everything at once. It’s a pretty, soft shade of pink, like the inside of a shell. They got eight cans left.”

  Sally always buys stuff on sale and saves it up. Half the tomatoes and brown beans that ever were put in a can were now at Sally’s place. The linen closet, she had that stuffed with lima beans. Must’ve came across a lima bean blow-out. Far as toilet paper went, Sal had stockpiled enough already to start a hotel. (All them beans and all that poop paper, she could get ten counties rooting and tooting and wipe their ass afterward, according to Dave.)

  Josie’s not so sure she wants the hotel to be pink.

  I say, “Just a minute!” Spending money is a different thing from daydreaming.

  I get interrupted by the leader, Meredith, and the helper, Frances, showing up. We troop in and Meredith wants to go around the circle to check in with everybody, see how their week has went.

  Tammy says she had a nice week. She cleaned out the rec room, she says. Me, Marg, and Josie, we got steam coming out our ears, listening to this bullshit. Why don’t Meredith tell her to get the frig out of that house? Never mind farting around cleaning it!

  Meredith just moves on to Sally. How was Sally’s week?

  Now the thing with Sally is: her mother slept all the time. Saved her the trouble of living. And Sally’d been doing the same. Sleep calling to
her every day. Just to pull the blankets back up after breakfast and know nothing. But Sally, she’s trying to fight it off.

  It would be a lot easier for her to shut her eyes, with some of the things she’s looking at. Sally had a little daughter that died.

  To meet Sally, you’d take her for the softest soul, so gentle, kind. Wanting to like everybody, help everybody. But Sally’s got grit, too. She runs up and down the stairs of her apartment building for getting out stress and rides her bike to the country, which is why she’s looking so good. And she prays to God every day for what it takes to keep her eyes open.

  Meredith says she’s doing very well.

  The way Meredith says that don’t hit the right note, far as I’m concerned. It’s the voice that’s pissing me off. It’s like Meredith thinks she’s better than Sally. Not at keeping in shape, she sure ain’t. But she uses that “good for you, dear” voice. She can’t hand it to Sally in a regular voice.

  Everybody’s better at something and worse at something else. That’s the way I see it. There’s no like Best Over All the way there is at a frigging dog show.

  Meredith’s in a red chair. Her hair is frizzy. I get a picture of her as one of them thousand-dollar poodles, sitting on a red pillow. Her necklace is the sparkly dog collar.

  Meredith says I look happy today.

  It’s her at the dog show that’s making me smile. But she’s got me cornered, so I tell about Dave.

  I have not been looking forwards to telling Meredith about Dave. I had sort of a deal with Meredith. Weren’t supposed to be no more men until after Christmas. Give myself a break, was the way she put it.

  We all were doing some damn thing, and I was doing men. Meredith said we done it to distract ourselves from our problems and numb ourselves from our pain. Avoidance. We’d be farther ahead to face our past and our pain, she said. But, in them days, none of us were doing much facing up. Sally slept. Marg ate. Tammy pretended like nothing was wrong. Darlene hid in her apartment. Josie drank.

  Me, I was famous for the no-good men. I’d get such a buzz off any new thing with a man, I’d lose my brains. I’d feel like a million bucks for a few weeks. It was so good not to feel like shit that I just couldn’t resist it, in them days. Then, of course, it would all blow apart and I’d be ashamed for not knowing better. Then I’d feel so low and stupid that I’d be desperate for something to make me feel better, all over again. So the next guy that come along, there I’d go again.

  It was the same with all of us. Going in circles. Whatever we were doing, we were doing it to try to blank out from feeling our pain and our shame. Anything rather than admit that, or take a look at it. And every time we looped around again, we knew that alls we’d did was make it worse.

  But I told Meredith. I said, “Like I was telling Marg, I wonder if it’s something different with Dave because I’m not getting no big buzz off it?”

  Meredith says I’m in “the honeymoon phase.”

  I tell her Dave hasn’t broke nothing.

  She wants to know if he’s eating off me.

  I say, “Well all right, but he’s going to put in for the rent money.” It’ll help, if he does.

  Every face around that table has got some type of a look on it. Meredith has her lips squashed together. Sally’s all wide eyes and worry. Tammy, she looks like she wants to loan me her mace spray to squirt on Dave. Marg’s a cement block.

  This ticks me off. I’m not allowed to be happy for fifteen minutes. They sit there with them faces. Dave’s getting kicked out the first time he acts up. For now, he’s kind spoken, he smells good, his feet and hands are warm, he tells grade-four jokes, and he’s got a place on his chest where I like to rest my face. It’s not like I think I’ve got all my problems worked out. I’m still coming to Group, ain’t I? I’m still waiting, patient, to find out what I come here to find out.

  These nosy bitches can back off.

  Meredith’s got this exercise for us today. She hands out crayons and pale pink paper. We’re to draw pictures of our stepping stones.

  I raise my head. Stepping stones? Is there like an echo? I look at Josie, who sees omens. I look at Sally, who thinks God leads us by the hand.

  Stepping stones?

  I’m sitting there staring at my sheets of paper. Everybody else is going at it with the crayons. I sneak a look at what Josie’s doing.

  Meredith says, “Rose, do you need help to get started?”

  I admit I got no clue what to do.

  I feel weird.

  Pinkish stepping stones. Does she know about the poster? She could, maybe. But not the rocks in Josie’s town. What is it with all these pink rocks?

  Meredith’s repeating the instructions over. She says I’m supposed to make pictures of the steps I need to go through, for my healing, like we’ve been discussing, she says.

  I’m still blank as the paper. The steps I need to go through?

  I don’t know what even the first one would be.

  “Or could Rose start with a picture of where she’d like to get to and then maybe work back?” The helper puts that in.

  As soon as she says that, I’m set. I start trying to draw our hotel. Stick people at a table. Big smiles on them. Purple triangles for blueberry pie. Wavy water.

  There’s glue and sparkles. I stick sparkles on my lake. Looks like hope.

  I’m just getting started. I grab another sheet of paper. Tammy’s two kids on the swing. Quick lines for the girl’s hair flying. Now the pie lady’s yellow house. Music notes floating out her chimney. Singing while she bakes.

  When I look up, everybody else is done and waiting on me.

  Well, it turns out we’ve all did the hotel or the town.

  Josie’s just got one picture she worked on the whole hour. Josie’s a real good drawer. Maybe because she can see things so clear in her mind. Her picture looks like it was drew by an artist. Real 3D. A resort lodge. Stone, wood, and windows. Stone path leading up to glass doors. Tall pine trees in the yard. In the middle of the building, there’s a high part, built of stone. Yellow flag flying. Letter J on it.

  Sally, of course, she took it that J stood for Jesus, like at the Flying J gas station.

  I says, “Duh. Sal. Her name’s Josie.”

  Josie, she held up her picture under her chin. I can see that to this day. Our hotel getting held there in the air under Josie’s smile.

  We had fun, everybody showing their hotels and towns. Sally’s was all pink, with a fountain, flowers, butterflies. Rainbow over the roof.

  Meredith let us go on for a while before she said, “You’ve done very well in evoking a picture of the kind of life you would like to have. But the idea here this evening is to think about how you can move toward that better life. What are the steps between here and there?”

  We all shut up like we’d been shot. I mean, frig, if we knew the answer to that, would we be sitting here?

  It’s time to go home. Meredith says we’ll come back to the stepping stone business.

  I’m the one left with a Question to Think About this week. What am I avoiding by getting involved with another new man?

  Meredith never let me off the hook, after all. I give her a dirty look for that. She smiled at me like I was four years old.

  In the hall, Marg says to me, she says, “You get the rent money off this guy, up front.”

  Darlene says, “Watch out. He’s twice the size of you.”

  Tammy’s crowding up to me. “Oh Rose,” she says, “you haven’t gave him a key, have you?”

  Sally said I was in her prayers.

  They went on at me all the way downstairs. They wanted to know how much rent I’m paying and how much of my food Dave’s eating and what he does and whether he ever helps out.

  I say I’ll only keep him till the weather warms up. I’m using him to save on heat.

&n
bsp; When I’m hurrying away up the street to get away from them, I can hear Josie in her cast, clunking after me. I speed up. I don’t want to hear it. But she yells.

  I turn around. “All right. What?”

  She’s puffing. She smokes too much. “Rose,” she says, “I don’t know this for a fact. I didn’t see no omens. But we heard that guy’s hooked up with some bad ones.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be a friend of your boyfriend.”

  “They’ve knew each other since they were kids. But that don’t mean nothing. Brent’s not so much good himself. Plus he runs with some that’s worse.”

  I says, “Why did you take him back?”

  “Why did you take this Dave guy in?”

  There was Christmas lights in the store window beside us there. Josie was lit up green. I’m sure I was too. We stood there, shivering, pale green.

  How do you quit doing the same stupid thing over and over your whole life? Or even know if that’s what you’re doing? God, it beat Josie and me, at that time!

  I had this thought that Dave was better because I wasn’t getting a buzz off him. But I didn’t know if that made sense. I wanted to ask somebody. I wanted to say, How can I know if this is any better than the other times? I don’t feel so sure, even, as I usually do. (Normally, at this stage with a guy, I’m sure he’s the missing half of my heart.)

  What are the stepping stones? Where do you put your foot so as to take a forward step? I wanted to say, I’m like in a bad dream where you can’t get no place.

  All that come out was, “What’s wrong with us?”

  We stood there in the cold, our cheeks on fire. Pale green tears.

  I says, real unsure of myself, I says, “I think maybe this time is going to be different?”

  Josie, she just put her arms out. Give me a tight hug. Then she brightened up. Dabbed her eyes with a used Kleenex and said, “In the town, I seen this house with blue curtains.”

  I let out a sigh. Her and her frigging daydreams! There’s a time and a place. And this was not…. But then I blinked because I was looking at blue velvet curtains. Did the night clouds ever look like that, swagged over the dollar store roof, with three stars hanging in the window of sky between them! It lifted up my mood. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve.