When Ratboy Lived Next Door

by Chris Woodworth

  Mrs. Merrill whispered, “Please have a seat, Mrs. Baldwin. Could I offer you a glass of water?”

  Nanna matched Mrs. Merrill’s low voice. “Oh, thank you, no. We just finished breakfast. Please call me Nanna—everyone does. And it’s Miss Baldwin, actually. I never did get around to marrying. I was too busy, I guess. I raised my brother’s daughter, Lydia’s mother, after his wife died. And I’m helping to raise Lydia since her mother and daddy both work.”

  “Oh! You sound like me! Except that I did get married, but Willis and Elliot aren’t mine. They’re my husband’s boys. We got married a few months ago…” Mrs. Merrill just let the sentence drift off. She looked scared, as if she’d said too much when she hadn’t really said anything at all.

  Nanna reached out and put a hand on Mrs. Merrill’s arm. “So you’re raising your husband’s boys. How nice they have you. And is Beth your stepchild, too?”

  “Oh, no!” Mrs. Merrill looked so relieved that it was almost painful to look at her. “Beth is my daughter from my first marriage.”

  “Well, she sure is a pretty thing,” Nanna said. “Just like her mother. You have the most beautiful hair.”

  Mrs. Merrill’s cheeks turned bright pink.

  “I don’t recall hearing of any Merrills from around Maywood,” Nanna said. “Did you travel far?”

  “We lived in Kentucky before coming here. Boyd heard of a factory job in Aylesville, so here we are.”

  Nanna smiled and nodded. Then she said, “My lands! I just remembered that I left the milk at home. Why, you can’t give someone an applesauce cake without milk to wash it down. Lydia, would you please go get the milk in the refrigerator that I bought for the Merrills?”

  Milk! Whoever heard of taking milk to someone’s house? But Nanna was giving me that look that told me it was an order, so I just said, “Yes, ma’am. Be right back.”

  I flew down the steps and back to our house, happy to get away from Ratboy’s porch, even if just for a few minutes.

  There was only one carton of milk in our refrigerator, and it was already open. I didn’t know why Nanna lied about buying milk for the neighbors, but she’d never lie unless she had a good reason. I dug around the cupboards until I found a pitcher that was big enough to hold the milk. That way Mrs. Merrill wouldn’t know Nanna hadn’t bought it especially for them.

  I walked slowly so as not to splash the milk, and that meant I could hear Nanna talking, too.

  “And we go to the United Methodist church every Sunday. I was raised a Baptist, but my nephew is a Methodist to the bone, so I go along. You’re welcome to come. It’s a nice walk in the summertime, just four blocks to the east and one block south. If you like, you can come with us once you get settled in.”

  I looked up at Mrs. Merrill. She had the most excited look on her face listening to Nanna. It was a pretty face with big brown eyes, and Nanna was right about her hair—it turned under just like Jackie Kennedy’s. She could have passed for Willis and Elliot’s big sister. Pretty as she was, though, there was something about her face that bothered me—something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then it hit me. Some people don’t show their feelings on their face, but Mrs. Merrill’s face showed too much.

  I handed Nanna the pitcher.

  “Thank you, Lydia.” Nanna looked me straight in the eye as if to say she really meant it. “And here you go, Carolyn.”

  Nanna handed Mrs. Merrill the pitcher of milk, then said, “Well, I need to get on home now. Housework never waits, but you know all about that, don’t you, dear? Now, don’t forget—I’m right next door if you need an egg or directions or even some company. I’m always there, you hear?”

  I wondered why on earth Mrs. Merrill’s eyes would shine with tears over someone offering her an egg or directions.

  At the thought of leaving, my breath started coming at a normal pace for the first time since the visit had started. I hopped off the porch, ready to bolt for home, when Nanna said, “Lydia, you come home in an hour. We don’t want to wear out our welcome, but I know you and Willis will want to get acquainted.”

  “Nanna!” I said, much too loud. “I’d better help with the housework. Willis and I met yesterday, so we’ve already talked.” I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, and he looked at me as if nothing bad had passed between us.

  “Oh, honey, I know how you’ve longed for someone to play with. I wouldn’t dream of tearing you away from your new friend. Carolyn, send her on home in an hour or so.”

  I watched helplessly as Nanna walked away, abandoning me at the devil’s door. I couldn’t tear my eyes off her back until I felt Beth tugging at my arm.

  “Want to see my doll?”

  I want to go home! my mind screamed. But Beth shoved her doll into my hand. It was buck-naked, with most of its hair gone. What was left had a kind of hard feel and was sticking straight up.

  “Where are her clothes?” I asked.

  Beth stood there sucking on her pointer finger the way some kids suck their thumbs.

  “Don’t you have doll clothes for her?” I tried again.

  Instead of answering, Beth said, “Look what she can do!” She grabbed the doll and tilted her. One of her eyes closed, but the other was stuck open. It sure was a sorry excuse for a doll. Still, Beth seemed so proud of her that I found myself saying, “Well, what do you know. She can wink!”

  Beth laughed, then asked, “Want to see Zorro?”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me around to the backyard. Willis hopped down and ran ahead of us.

  “Who’s Zorro?” I asked as she pulled me over to where Willis stood beside a rusty rabbit hutch. Inside the hutch was his old raccoon.

  “That’s Zorro!” Beth said, giggling and clapping her hands.

  I had to admit that Zorro was a good name, what with the dark fur around the animal’s eyes making him look like Zorro, the masked avenger from TV. “Oh, I’ve already seen Zorro.” I tried to look bored.

  “Don’t touch him,” Willis said.

  “Don’t worry. I never wanted to touch that dumb old rat of yours.”

  “He ain’t a rat. I’d wager he’s smarter than you.” Willis pushed by me and opened the door. The coon ran out of its cage. Willis looked me right in the eye with a smirk on his face. I matched him stare for stare. Willis gave a real nasty smile and slowly lowered himself to the ground. Then I knew I’d been had. That old raccoon ran right up his back!

  My blood boiled when I remembered yesterday. “I thought you said he didn’t run up backs.” I tried to keep my voice steady.

  “I never said that,” Willis drawled. “What I said was, he wouldn’t run up your scrawny back.”

  My face flamed hot with anger and I shouted, “That whole mess was your fault. I didn’t do one thing wrong yesterday. If you’d kept your filthy pet in his cage, none of that would have happened.”

  Willis stuck his face right into mine and yelled, “He’s cleaner than you, and you’d better get used to him. I don’t think I’ll put him in his cage a’tall now, ’cept maybe to sleep.”

  Willis was just a few inches from me, but I didn’t flinch when I shouted back, “You know, you might be right about him being clean. I thought that stench I smelled was coming from him, but now that we’re nose-to-nose I see who really stinks around here.”

  I couldn’t stand to look at his ugly, freckly face for a minute more. I headed for the fence that separated our yards. When I thought of the money Willis had taken last night, I got even madder. I yelled over my shoulder, “And I don’t know where you’re from, but around here if you drop your Popsicle, it’s your own fault. Nobody owes you money for it.”

  “Popsicle! You got to buy a Popsicle, Willis?” Beth asked.

  “No. She’s half crazy.”

  “Hah! You think I’m crazy?” I didn’t get to say anything else because Beth started yelling at Willis.

  “You bought a Popsicle and you were s’posed to bring all the money home. That pop-bottle money was for grocer
ies, Willis! I’m telling!”

  Before Willis could grab her, she ran in the back screen door. Willis put his hands on top of his head and spun around as if looking for a way to escape.

  Then the back door blew open with a bang and a man I figured must be his daddy charged out the door.

  “Boyd, no! Please!” Mrs. Merrill cried as she ran after her husband. When she saw me, she flapped her hands in the air as if to shoo me away. “Lydia! It’s time to go on home now!”

  I climbed up the fence, jumped into our yard, and watched Mr. Merrill pull his belt from his pants. He made it into a loop and held it in one hand as he chased Willis. Mr. Merrill looked mad as all get-out. Willis made a break for it and ran down the street.

  I headed for our house. I really thought Willis needed a taste of his own medicine, but I couldn’t help feeling a chill thinking that Mr. Merrill might actually use that belt on Willis. I’d never seen anybody get whipped. Surely Mr. Merrill was just trying to scare him.

  I heard Nanna talking to Mother before I got to the back door. “I could be wrong, but it’s my guess that the milk and cake we just took over is all the food that’s in that house right now. And if I’m not mistaken, I’d say those kitchen chairs are the only things they have to sit on. Oh, Evelyn, it was sad.”

  “How do you know they only have kitchen chairs? Maybe their furniture hasn’t arrived yet. Maybe she hasn’t been to the grocery store. Really, Nanna!” I could see Mother through the screen door, crossing out what she’d written with an angry slash of her pencil.

  “Well, if you had bothered to go, you’d know what I was talking about.”

  I scuffed my feet real loud on the back porch so they’d know I was there. Nanna saw me and reached for the coffee tin that held the grocery money. She counted out some change. “Lydia, I’m going to need you to run to Hanson’s A&P to get some milk. Make sure they put it in a sack for you. That Fred Hanson is so tight with his money he won’t put just one item in a sack unless you ask.”

  I figured she wanted the milk in a sack so Mrs. Merrill wouldn’t see me bringing it home and catch her in the lie about buying milk for them.

  “Here’s some extra money for an ice cream Drumstick. I know how much you like them.”

  Nanna never gave me money for something like ice cream. I knew she was repaying me for not acting funny about giving the Merrills our milk. Normally I would have snatched that money up and run all the way for an ice cream Drumstick.

  “No thanks, Nanna. I’ll just get the milk. And I’ll make sure they put it in a sack.”

  I didn’t like Willis any more today than I had yesterday, but thinking about him getting into trouble for something as little as spending a nickel on a Popsicle made my insides feel funny.

  5

  As soon as I finished my pancakes and bacon, I ran upstairs to get ready for church. Nanna never let me put on my church clothes until after I finished breakfast because she said I always wore whatever I ate. I wanted to remind her that I wasn’t a little kid now and knew how to use a napkin. But I figured the first time I ate in my church clothes, I’d spill a whole glass of milk down my front.

  I jerked a prissy dress with a starched collar over my head and clomped downstairs in my good shoes.

  Mother was in the kitchen tying Daddy’s necktie for him. Usually she still had her robe on when we left, but this morning she’d dressed in her gardening clothes.

  “It’s a nice morning for planting,” Daddy said.

  “I know! It’s been such a lovely week. I’ve been itching to get my petunias in the ground.”

  “It’d be nice if you were itching to sing praises to the Lord,” Nanna mumbled.

  Mother rolled her eyes and Daddy gave her shoulder a squeeze. We went through this every Sunday morning. Mother never went with us, Nanna always grumbled about it, and Daddy tried to keep the peace.

  The only times I know of that Mother stepped foot in church was when she married Daddy and when she went to the mother-daughter banquet held every year on the last Sunday in May. For that, she never put up a fuss, because it meant so much to Nanna to have her there. Whether Mother liked it or not, Nanna was the only mama she had ever known.

  Nanna salted a roast and slid it into the oven so it would be ready when we came back. The one good thing about Sunday was eating that big meal at noon instead of having to wait until the end of the day.

  “Get your Bible, young lady,” Nanna said. “And hurry! We don’t want to be late.”

  I clomped back upstairs and grabbed my Bible. I hurried out my bedroom door, running right into Mother.

  “Oh! I’m sorry!”

  “I wasn’t watching where I was going,” she said. “I’m so anxious to get outdoors that I left my new gardening gloves in my room.”

  We stood there for an awkward minute, until she turned to go into her bedroom. Staying home on Sunday morning and working in the garden sounded more like heaven than anything Pastor Owen was going to say about it. But I knew better than to ask Mother if I could stay home. Even if she said yes—which she wouldn’t—Nanna and Daddy would have fits. They never missed church for anything.

  When Mother came back out of her room, tearing the tags off her new gloves, her face looked flushed, as if she really was happy to get to work on those flowerbeds. It made me think I might be able to ask her a question that had been weighing on my mind. “Mother?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I don’t really like church, either. But”—I squeezed the Bible hard and croaked out—“I’ve been wondering … Why don’t you ever go with us?”

  I made myself stand very still. I didn’t want to fidget.

  She took a deep breath and looked around the hall, as if she might find the answer there. Finally she said, “God and I parted ways a long time ago, Lydia.”

  I slowly walked downstairs thinking about that. I didn’t much care for the fuss of church, but God was a whole other story.

  * * *

  Monday morning came before I was ready for it, but then Monday morning has a way of doing that when it’s a school day.

  As soon as the class finished saying the Pledge, Mrs. Warren was called into the hall. My head held up my desk lid while I searched for my science book. She came back into the room and said, “Class, I’d like you to meet our new student, Willis Merrill.”

  I rose out of that desk so fast the bang of the lid could have been heard all the way to Chicago. Sure enough, there stood Willis with Mrs. Warren on one side of him and his brother, Elliot, on the other. At least I knew his daddy hadn’t killed him for spending that nickel.

  Mrs. Warren fiddled with her brooch the way she always did when she was happy, mad, or just plain thinking. “Willis, we’ll need to have a desk moved in for you. All our desks are full right now, but you may take a chair from the reading area and sit…”

  Bobby Wayans sat third seat back, same as me, but on the other side of the room. I heard his whiny voice saying, “Mrs. Warren? Oh, Mrs. Warren? Willis can sit with me. I’ll be happy to share my books and desk with him.”

  “Oh, Bobby, what a nice gesture. Yes, Willis, why don’t you sit with Bobby? He’s one of our best students. I’m sure you’ll get along beautifully.”

  You could have hung coats on the sides of Bobby’s mouth, they were turned up so high into a smile. Nobody could stand Bobby’s mealymouthed ways for long, and it had been years since anybody’d tried. Bobby was almost giddy as he ushered Willis to his desk.

  When I looked back at the door, Elliot was walking out. Maywood Junior-Senior High School was one block away on the other side of the ball diamond, and he was probably headed there to enroll himself. I wondered why Elliot had come instead of Willis’s daddy or his stepmother. But more than that, I wondered why on earth anybody would start school just two weeks before summer vacation.

  All in all, the morning went pretty smoothly, considering the kids kept craning their necks to get a look at Willis. Mrs. Warren didn’t call on him, so he jus
t sat quietly at Bobby’s desk. It was lunch that I was dreading.

  Rae Anne was on me the second the bell rang. “He’s in our class!”

  “Gee whiz, Rae Anne. What was your first clue?”

  “Well, you didn’t tell me he’d be in our class! Poor you. There’s just no escaping with him being your neighbor, too.”

  “Is reminding me of that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Sorry. Who was that with him?”

  “You’ve gone to school with Bobby Wayans your whole life and you forgot his name?”

  “Not him, silly. I mean that cute guy. Was that his brother?”

  “Well, yeah, that’s Elliot. What’s got into you, calling him cute?”

  “He’s sure better-looking than Willis, you’ve got to give him that!” she said.

  Picking up my lunch tray, I said, “Willis’s raccoon is better looking than he is.”

  We sat down, and Bobby sat at the table next to us with Willis. Bobby looked proud as a peacock sitting among boys who wouldn’t normally give him the time of day.

  I took a bite of my lunch and heard Bobby say, “Go on, Willis. Tell the guys how you taught your raccoon to do tricks. Tell them about how he’ll ride piggy-back style.”

  “You’ve got a pet coon?” one of the boys asked.

  Willis just nodded.

  Another said, “Bring him to the next Free Show. Would he ride on my back?”

  I snorted loud enough for them to hear me.

  Willis whispered something to Bobby, then Bobby said, “Willis says he’s particular about whose back he’ll touch. For instance, Willis said his raccoon wouldn’t ride Lydia Carson’s back if she tied bait around her neck!”

  Everyone at the table laughed. Doing a slow burn, I picked up my napkin and put a blob of green Jell-O in it. “Watch this,” I said to Rae Anne. I walked right over to Bobby and Willis, picked up my napkin, and said, “Ah-ah-ah-choo!” blowing into the napkin on the “choo” part. Green Jell-O sprayed all over the back of Bobby’s head. The whole cafeteria roared with laughter.