On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light

by Cordelia Strube

  Jed squashes ants with his thumb. “You must’ve been spilling relish juice on the counter again. They like the sugar.”

  “Pish tah.” Gran pulls condiments from the fridge and slaps them on the table. “Who wants what on their hambangers? Help yourselves.”

  Harriet eats two burgers while the adults drink more peach fuzzes and discuss what motivates flashers. “It’s the shock factor,” Buck says. “I did it in high school. There’s nothing like flashing your jewels at the prom queen.”

  “There is a child present.” Jed settles on Archie’s old La-Z-Boy.

  “That’s no child,” Gran says. “Mugsy knows more about life than the two of you combined.”

  Harriet sips her orange juice. “There’s a flasher in the dog park. He pulls down his running shorts and asks the dog people to slap his ass.”

  “Yeow!” Buck says. “And do they?”

  “They call the police but he always gets away on his bike. If he asked me, I’d slap his ass really hard. I’d wear rubber gloves though.”

  “He’d like that,” Buck says.

  Harriet can’t get over how easy it is to talk with Buck. She can say whatever she wants and he doesn’t get upset. The neg is the pot smoking. Lynne thinks potheads are lazy, says they consider rolling a joint an accomplishment.

  “Anybody for Scrabble?” Jed asks. They play for a while but Gran uses words that aren’t in the dictionary. As she doesn’t have a dictionary, they can’t prove her wrong. After butterscotch ripple Jed falls asleep in the armchair and Gran puts Frank Sinatra on her record player to teach Buck the foxtrot. She tells him to hold her close and feels him up while adjusting his position. Buck doesn’t seem to notice because he’s busy looking at his feet, trying to get the steps right. Gran’s apartment isn’t air conditioned and sweat patches spread across Buck’s T-shirt. It has two vertical arrows printed on it. The one pointing up says THE MAN and the one pointing to his crotch says THE LEGEND.

  Harriet’s ingrown toenail throbs. She’s been trying to ignore it because she knows better than to bother Lynne with minor problems. But it’s really starting to hurt, and she pulls off her sneaker and sock to examine it. It’s swollen, and pus oozes from where the nail digs into her skin. When this happened before, she felt sick and had to go on antibiotics to stop the infection spreading through her body. She wonders if this is what septic shock is, and if it will kill her. She plugs the phone in and calls her mother at the hospital. “I’m at Gran’s.”

  “I figured.” Lynne’s voice quavers. “I’ve been calling for hours. Where’ve you guys been?”

  “We went for doughnuts. We had a really good time. Gran’s really happy to have me here.”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  “She’s asleep. I don’t want to wake her. You know how hard it is for her to get to sleep.”

  Lynne sighs. “Bunny, you can’t just run out like that.”

  “He stole my glue gun.”

  “It’s a dangerous tool.”

  “Grandpa Archie gave it to me and I’ve never burnt anything and I only left it on once.”

  “I want you to come home tomorrow. Irwin needs you. He keeps asking for you.”

  If that really was Archie telling Harriet that Irwin will die in a week, it means in seven days Harriet will be free. She belts this secret deep inside her.

  Gran cranks the volume, and Buck says whoops every time he screws up a step.

  “What’s that noise?” Lynne asks.

  “The TV. She can only sleep when it’s really loud.”

  “Gennedy’s a good man, Harriet. I wish you’d learn to appreciate him.”

  Harriet squeezes more pus out of her ingrown toenail and wipes it with one of Gran’s cocktail napkins.

  “There’s a mother here,” Lynne says, “whose husband died when her daughter was five.” Harriet knows Lynne is telling her this to make her learn to appreciate Gennedy. “She’s been raising her child on her own for sixteen years and the girl’s gone completely sideways—like sex, drugs, the whole deal. Now the girl’s got something wrong with her brain because of herpes.”

  “What’s herpes?”

  “A sexually transmitted disease. All her mother talks about is how this wouldn’t have happened if her husband were still alive. Bunny, you have two fathers who love you very much and all you do is alienate them. Why?”

  There’s no point arguing that they don’t love her, they love themselves. “I’m not coming back unless I get my glue gun.”

  “Oh, Irwin’s awake, say hi to him.”

  “Haarree?”

  “Hi.”

  “I miss you sooo much.”

  Harriet puts her sock and sneaker back on.

  “Harry, guess what, we’re coming home tomorrow.”

  “I heard.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “Maybe. I’m at Gran’s right now. She kind of needs me. She’s having trouble with her back.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” Irwin’s concern for other people’s health always astounds Harriet.

  “Sure, I’m just helping her out. In fact, I’ve got to go, she’s trying to lift some groceries.”

  “Tell her to be careful.”

  “I will. See you later.” She hangs up and unplugs the phone.

  Buck ambles into the kitchen. “Is that a plug-in phone? Fuck me. I didn’t know anybody still had those.”

  Gran sidles up to him and puts her arm around his waist. “How ’bout another cocktail?”

  “You’re a dangerous woman. I’m driving.”

  “Sleep over. I won’t tell.”

  Harriet wants to shout at her to keep her hands off him but instead says, “You should get back to your truck, Buck. I’ll show you where it is.”

  “Why’s he got to go?” Gran says, reaching for the vodka. “We’re just getting started.”

  “I’ve got to drive Harriet home.”

  “What for? She hates that place, don’t you, mugsy? She’s staying here.”

  “Gran, Buck has to work tomorrow.”

  Gran waves the bottle. “One more for the road.”

  Harriet grabs Gran’s keys from the hook by the door. “Wake Jed, Gran. You know how bad his hip gets if he falls asleep in the La-Z-Boy.” She makes eye contact with Buck and jerks her head towards the door.

  “Oh, you’re so right,” Gran says. “He’ll be hopping mad.” She wobbles over to Jed and starts shaking him.

  Outside heat radiates off the tarmac even though the sun’s gone down. Buck pulls off his T-shirt and wipes his armpits. Harriet wishes her mother could see his muscles. Gennedy’s meagre muscles are covered in pasty white skin. Trent’s legs are muscular from biking but his gut spills over his bike shorts.

  “Want to cool off in the cab, Ranger? It’s got air con. We’ll have us some Pepsis.”

  “Sure.” High up in the cab, she feels untouchable.

  “Do you think I can park here tonight?”

  “It says visitor parking and you’re a visitor.”

  “Yeah, but some places have psycho supers who don’t want trucks in the lot.”

  “I don’t think there is a super here.”

  “Sweet. Mind if I smoke a weedie?” He starts rolling one without waiting for her reply.

  For Lynne to like Buck, Harriet needs to make him cut down on weed. “Studies show that potheads’ IQs drop by ten percent a year.”

  “Yeeow, that must mean I’m pretty stupid because I’ve been smoking for a lo-ong time. It’s why I don’t get sick. Other drivers get bowel trouble, migraines, back pain. I don’t get any of that because I take my medicine.” He winks as he hauls on the joint. It occurs to Harriet that if he’s stupid, he’ll make an even better Gennedy replacement. Gennedy thinks he’s smart because he went to law school, and Uma thinks she’s s
mart because she’s working on her thesis. They both get hysterical about dumb shit nobody cares about. Buck doesn’t get hysterical about anything. Inhaling second hand weed smoke, Harriet leans back in her seat, resting her feet on the dash, and imagines her world free of adults who get hysterical about dumb shit nobody cares about. “Do you have ‘Thriller’?”

  “Are you kidding me? It’s my ringtone.”

  “Can you moonwalk?”

  Buck hops out of the cab and moonwalks better than anybody Harriet’s ever seen besides Michael Jackson.

  “Wicked,” she says.

  He climbs back up, hands her a Pepsi and scrolls through his iPod till he finds “Beat It.” They sing along really loudly when Michael sings “beat it.”

  “My mother also loves Michael Jackson.” Harriet doesn’t know if this is true. Since Irwin was born, Lynne stopped playing music because she was afraid she wouldn’t hear him if he seized.

  Buck takes a call on his cell and tells the caller not to get excited. “My phone’s been acting up . . . No worries, baby . . . Oh you know how it is, no talking when I’m driving. Seriously, baby, I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He puts the cell back in his jeans pocket.

  “Why do men call women ‘babies’?”

  Buck pulls on a clean T-shirt that says DON’T STEAL, THE GOVERNMENT HATES COMPETITION. “Good question. Never thought about it.”

  “It’s patronizing.”

  “Is it? Fuck me. I think we mean for it to be, like, affectionate or something, sexy even.”

  “Babies aren’t sexy. Except to pervballs.”

  “Too true.”

  “Are you seeing somebody seriously right now?”

  “You mean, like, a woman?”

  “Yeah. Like the one who just called you.”

  “I think maybe she thinks we’re serious.”

  “You don’t?”

  Buck pushes his seat into the reclining position. “She says she likes me because I’m ‘emotionally available.’ She says a lot of guys expect women to figure them out then get pissed off when they get it wrong.”

  Harriet wonders how long it will take the woman to figure out Buck thinks with his dick. “What does ‘emotionally available’ mean?”

  “What you see is what you get with me, Ranger. No mind games.”

  Lynne would appreciate this. She hates mind fuckers. She calls Uma a mind fucker.

  Harriet touches the baby shoes dangling from the rear-view. “Did these belong to Dee?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Nina thinks you screw around because you want to spread your seed even though you don’t want any more kids. She said that’s just part of male psychology, and that once a woman isn’t fertile anymore you’re not interested. She said that’s why you chase girls twenty years younger than you are.”

  Buck stares out the windshield as though looking at something very far away and not the back of a dingy apartment building. “That woman’s got me so wrong.” He sucks hard on his fatty.

  “Do you think if you met the right woman, you wouldn’t want to spread your seed anymore?”

  “Totally.” His cell rings “Thriller” again. He looks at it then puts it back in his pocket.

  “I believe in true love,” Harriet says, even though she doesn’t. “I believe we’re all destined for one person, and sometimes it takes years to find that person, even though we don’t realize we’re looking for them, and then suddenly they’re just there, in the laundry room or someplace, like, where you’d least expect to meet the love of your life.”

  “Sounds like a movie I want to see.” Buck flicks ash out the window.

  “You just have to open your mind to the possibilities. Nina doesn’t want you back, Buck. You broke her trust. I’ve heard her say it, ‘Fucking Buck broke my trust.’”

  “No shit, she said that?”

  Harriet nods sagely. “It’s time to move on.”

  “You’re making me sad, Ranger, way too sad.”

  “I’m just being realistic.” This is what Trent told Lynne when they argued about Irwin. “You shouldn’t be sad, Buck. You’re still young enough to start another relationship, just not young enough to have babies, but you don’t want babies anyway.”

  “Oh you’re wrong there, Ranger. I wouldn’t mind a baby. I love babies. Their teeny tiny fingers and toes, and the way they look up at you with those big goo-goo eyes, oh man. Babies are soooo cute.”

  If Lynne couldn’t get pregnant with Gennedy, it’s unlikely she’ll be able to have babies with Buck. Her eggs are probably rotting like Uma’s. “Babies are stressful and cry all the time. Mindy in 408 keeps trying to Ferberize hers.”

  Buck squints through smoke at her. “What’s that?”

  “You’re supposed to leave them to cry for longer every night until they get conditioned.”

  “Conditioned for what?”

  “To cry themselves to sleep. It takes forever. Mindy’s babies cry all night for months and she doesn’t get any sleep, and drinks Brown Cows, and talks about killing herself.” She has discussed possible methods with Harriet, including putting a plastic bag over her head while inhaling on a helium tank. Mindy says you can rent a tank for blowing up balloons at Toys “R” Us. Harriet wouldn’t want to die this way because, if she tried to talk, she’d sound like Porky Pig.

  “Is Mindy that sexy chick who was chilling with Nina?”

  He’s thinking with his dick again. “Yes. She’s seriously messed up. Her husband shows up and beats her, even with a restraining order against him.” Harriet tries to squash her empty Pepsi can between her palms. “I never want babies. My great-grandma had eight and it killed her.”

  “It’s a bit early to decide that, don’t you think, Ranger? Especially with you believing in true love and all that.”

  “True love has nothing to do with babies.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  “It’s time for you to grow up and find a life partner.” Uma calls Trent her life partner. “Otherwise you’ll become a lonely, dirty old man. Mr. Fishberg in 314 is always sitting out front with his shirt unbuttoned, watching the girls and talking dirty. The other seniors don’t want anything to do with him.”

  Mrs. Rivera, when she could still leave the Shangrila, would scold Mr. Fishberg and chase him inside with her chinela. If he resisted, she’d give him the evil eye and talk about the multo making his tong tong shrivel up and drop off. If Mr. Fishberg saw Mrs. Rivera coming, he’d button up his shirt and scoot into the building. As soon as she died, he was back on the bench out front with his shirt open, sometimes with his hand down his pants.

  “Dirty old men don’t deserve to live,” Harriet says, still trying to squash her Pepsi can. She hands it to Buck because she wants it crushed for And I Think to Myself, What a Wonderful World. But Buck has passed out from the peach fuzzes. She takes the roach from between his fingers and pitches it out the window. She leaves both windows open a crack, turns off the ignition, locks his door then climbs down from the cab and locks the passenger door before closing it. She jumps on the Pepsi can until it’s flattened.

  Eleven

  Jed’s left and Gran’s asleep on the couch with the TV blaring. Harriet turns it down slightly before rifling through Gran’s recyclables. Gran forgets to take the bags stuffed with newspapers, ice cream containers, toilet and paper towel rolls, milk cartons, Kleenex boxes and soda bottles downstairs. These materials thrill Harriet because they are the building blocks for papier mâché sculpture. Gennedy won’t let her make papier mâché at home because it’s too messy. She digs around in Gran’s cabinets for flour, cornstarch and the big mixing bowl. She pulls out Archie’s toolbox from the broom closet and finds wire cutters, wire and duct tape. After stirring three teaspoons of sugar into a cup of Sanka, and eating six Peek Freans with red centres, she starts to work on The Leopard
Who Changed Her Spots, cutting the recyclables into shapes and wiring or taping them together. “Hot diggity dog,” she says.

  It takes hours to construct the body, and she can’t get the tail right. It’s four in the morning before she mixes the flour and water. The ticking of Gran’s smiley face clock keeps distracting her. She climbs onto the counter, takes the clock down and removes the battery. Time stands still and she senses Mrs. Rivera. In science class, Mrs. Elrind showed a video explaining that matter never really goes anywhere, just moves around and changes shape. Which means people, even when they’re dead, never really go anywhere. So feeling Mrs. Rivera in the kitchen doesn’t frighten Harriet. She attempts to sing what words she can remember from “Billie Jean” to please Mrs. Rivera. She moonwalks and does the chicken dance. If only Harriet had discovered Michael Jackson before Mrs. Rivera died, she could have demonstrated her new moves and made Mrs. Rivera laugh. She stopped laughing at the end, and the morphine flattened her eyes. She wasn’t really seeing Harriet anymore. Before she got really sick, Mrs. Rivera made Harriet feel whole. She realized only after Mrs. Rivera was dead that she never felt whole anymore.

  But now in the kitchen she can hear Mrs. Rivera saying, “You are special, anak,” and nodding and smiling at The Leopard Who Changed Her Spots.

  When the cancer treatment didn’t work and they cut out Mrs. Rivera’s colon, Harriet began to despise healthy people walking around free of pain and suffering, clueless as to how incredibly lucky they were to be able to walk, shit and complain about dumb stuff like phone bills and bad movies. The doctors pulled a piece of intestine through the skin of Mrs. Rivera’s abdomen for shit to come out. Mrs. Rivera had to regularly measure, cut and glue a ring of plastic to her skin around the piece of intestine, then attach a plastic pouch to the ring to collect her feces, and fasten a clip to secure the plastic pouch’s opening. It was a complicated procedure and often shit spilled from the intestine before she was able to get the ring glued properly, or the pouch attached with the clip. The shit would spurt all over Mrs. Rivera’s surgical wound, the bed, the plastic ring and the pouch. If Harriet was there, she’d try to stop the stream of green and slimy feces with a towel. At first she thought it would be embarrassing for Mrs. Rivera to accept help from a child, but soon it became obvious that all Mrs. Rivera cared about in those distressing moments was containing the shit leaking out of her. Harriet became adept at cutting out the ring and gluing it over the stoma, as well as re-dressing the wound because she’d watched her mother clean and dress Irwin’s surgical wounds countless times. Another stoma on the other side of Mrs. Rivera’s abdomen drained post-surgical fluids. This stoma required a pouch and changing too, but didn’t leak with the same urgency. A few months after the surgery the fluid-draining stoma closed up, leaving another scar on Mrs. Rivera’s abdomen. She had as many scars from surgeries as Irwin. Harriet did a painting called The Tree of Death. The trunk combined Mrs. Rivera’s and Irwin’s scarred torsos. The tree burst into blossom above their mutilated bodies and reached into a Prussian blue sky dotted with silver stars. The painting upset Lynne. She asked Harriet to put it in her closet.