The Perfect Place

by Teresa E. Harris

  “For the love of God,” Mom mutters. “You’re cute, Tiffany, okay? Jesus, Treasure, are you trying to get on everyone’s bad side?”

  I don’t answer. I just stand right where I am, my arms crossed over my chest. “Gag’s a criminal. How do you know she won’t turn us on to a life of crime?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. And don’t call her Gag,” Mom says.

  “She has a million and seven rules.” I have rules too, but that’s my business. “Gag’s rules are just oppressive. She’s an oppressor!”

  Mom sighs. “Okay, Treasure. I’m going to get your things out of the car. Try not to be too oppressed while I’m gone.”

  What I do is start planning our escape. By the time Mom comes back with two suitcases in one hand and my asthma machine in the other, I’ve got it almost figured out. When she returns from her second trip, this time carrying Tiffany’s Disney Fund, I’m ready to state my case.

  “Mom, our stay here is going to be detrimental to my health. First of all, Great-Aunt Grace smokes. And I don’t think I need to remind you, my mother and current sole guardian, that smoking is bad for my asthma. Asthma, which—by the way—is aggravated by irritants, such as pet dander, dust, pollen, and cigarette smoke. Her house has all of those things, except maybe pollen. I believe you saw what just happened to me in the living room. I’ll be lucky if I even survive this.”

  Mom takes the heavy blanket off of Tiffany’s bed and folds it up. She tries to act like what I’m saying doesn’t bother her, but she stops suddenly and presses down on the bridge of her nose with her fingertips. She helps Tiffany remove her sneakers and socks. Tiffany climbs into bed in her shorts and T-shirt, still holding on to Mr. Teddy D. Mom rubs her back and talks quietly to her about how things will be different once she finds Dad. We will convince him to stay for good this time, she says, just wait and see. Mom says “We,” but she’s leaving the two of us here with Great-Aunt Grace.

  I go over to the other bed, the one closest to the window overlooking the front yard, but I don’t sit down. Sunlight pours through the dingy glass and spills onto the blue comforter, revealing its frayed edges and three holes. When Tiffany falls asleep, Mom comes over to my side of the room.

  “Sit down, Treasure,” she says, and when I don’t, she places her hands on my shoulders and pushes me down. “Take off those sneakers.”

  I use the toe of one to pull off the other, not bothering to untie the laces.

  “Don’t you care that my death is imminent if I stay here?”

  “You have your nebulizer and your asthma pump, and before I leave I’ll talk to Great-Aunt Grace about her smoking and her cat.” Mom sounds like that conversation is the last one on earth she’d like to have.

  “That’s not going to change the fact that she hates me.”

  “She does not hate you. Where are you getting that from?” Mom bends to push my sneakers up against the nightstand. “And for the last time, Treasure, I’m only doing this because I have to.”

  Mom comes to sit down on the bed beside me. She looks worn out; the lines around her eyes and mouth seem deeper than ever. We drove more than six hours to get here, and now she’s about to hit the road again to find Dad.

  “But how?”

  “How what?”

  “How are you going to find him?”

  “The rainy-day credit card. I haven’t used mine in months, and a few weeks ago there was money on it. Now there’s not, which means Dad must’ve used it. So I called and checked and found out where.”

  “And?”

  “He used it at a Kmart in some town in North Carolina, Boydon, I think, and at a convenience store there too. So I’m going to go down there with the pictures in my wallet and ask around, see if anyone has seen him. Great-Aunt Grace says this is the dumbest idea she’s ever heard. I say desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  “How desperate are we?”

  “We have nowhere else to go.”

  Whenever we moved with Dad, he always had the next place set up for us. He’d have made some calls or skipped work to fill out a rental application, and Mom would be mad at first, but in the end she’d shake her head and say, “This is what I get for falling in love with a crazy, restless man.” Dad isn’t here now, and what if Mom can’t find him in the next two weeks? Will we be stuck staying with Great-Aunt Grace?

  “You have to take us with you. We could help you look.”

  Mom gets to her feet. “No. It’s better for you girls to stay here. I’ll call as much as possible and I’ll see you soon, okay?” Mom leans down to plant a cold-lipped kiss on my cheek. She reaches into her pockets and pulls out money. She puts it on the nightstand beside me. “Here. You take this for emergencies. I’m getting cash from Grace.” And then she’s gone, shutting the door softly behind her. I lie down on my raggedy bed and close my eyes.

  It was Dad’s idea to name me Treasure. Treasure Jeanie May Daniels. He says he gave me that name because that’s what I was to him and Mom, a treasure. Something they wanted to cradle in their hands and protect from the world.

  But people don’t leave treasures behind, not for two months or even for two weeks.

  First Dad. Now Mom.

  I’ll go by Jeanie until they both come back.

  Nine

  I wake up to the sound of Tiffany in the middle of a throat-ripping wail. It takes me a while to rub the crust out of my eyes and remember where we are. At Great-Aunt Grace’s house in Black Lake, Virginia, where Tiffany’s sitting on the bedroom floor tearing through her suitcase. Mr. Teddy Daniels lies crumpled at her feet.

  “They’re not in here!” she hollers. “Mom didn’t pack them!”

  “Take it easy, Tiffany,” I whisper. All this racket is bound to bring Great-Aunt Grace up here, and the last thing I want is to see her face—or hear her voice—any sooner than I have to.

  Tiffany doesn’t take the hint. “Mr. Teddy Daniels’s clothes aren’t in the suitcase!” she yells. “He needs them, Treasure!” She picks him up and clutches him to her heaving chest. “You said you saw her pack them. You said!”

  “I know, but—”

  “Liar!”

  I go over and turn Tiffany’s suitcase upside down, pawing through her cartoon-character panties and bright tops. Not a scrap of Mr. Teddy D.’s wardrobe to be found.

  “Can’t he just wear his overalls while we’re here?”

  Tiffany’s eyes open wide. I should’ve known how stupid that question was before I asked it.

  “Mr. Teddy Daniels can’t wear the same clothes every day. He needs clean ones, just like you!”

  The clock on the nightstand reads 8:52 a.m. I’ve slept for barely two hours. Now a new kind of tiredness hits me, one that spreads all over my body and makes my shoulders sag. I stare at the pile of clothes on the floor. A knot of anger forms in my stomach. Mr. Teddy Daniels’s clothes are more important to Tiffany than her own clothes. How could Mom say she packed them when she didn’t?

  Tiffany’s still wailing, and this time I know better than to run through Mr. Teddy Daniels’s skit. Seeing her bear slip in invisible poop while wearing his same old overalls is not going to cheer her up. Still, I have to do something before—

  The door flies open. “What’s with all this noise?”

  Great-Aunt Grace stands in the doorway, holding an unlit cigarette.

  Tiffany’s too involved in her hysterics to answer, so I do it for her. “Mom forgot to pack Mr. Teddy Daniels’s outfits. He has one for every day of the week.”

  Great-Aunt Grace raises one eyebrow. “What in the sweet name of Jesus does a stuffed animal need clothes for? Makes about as much sense as nonsmokin’ establishments. Rule Number Four: No cryin’ over foolishness. Now, y’all come get something to eat.”

  Great-Aunt Grace can’t cook. The pieces of bacon that aren’t crispy and black are raw and floppy. There’s no middle ground. I’m either going to get some kind of poisoning from eating undercooked pork or lose a tooth. She places somethi
ng in front of me that looks like a bowl of spitballs.

  My face must have asked a question because she answers, “Grits. By the time you get to the bottom of that bowl, you’ll be a southerner through and through.”

  Grits: Rough, hard particles of stuff, like sand. And dirt. A word that should not be applied to food.

  Great-Aunt Grace pushes a pat of butter toward me. “Makes ’em taste like heaven.” Coming out of her toothless mouth, heaven sounds like the other place.

  I mix the butter in the steaming grits anyway—yellow on white, like dog pee on snow. I stick a spoon in my grits and take just a small bite off the top. I roll them around in my mouth—and my taste buds turn against me. They like the buttery taste. I take another bite. The grits are sweet and lumpy and make me feel warm all the way to my pinky toes.

  Tiffany picks at her food, her eyes on Mr. Teddy Daniels.

  Great-Aunt Grace doesn’t eat at all. She smokes the rest of her cigarette and flutters around us like a bad-tempered waitress. When Tiffany drops her spoon, Great-Aunt Grace is right there to give her a dirty look and hand her another. When I finish my orange juice, she pours me more so fast it’s like she conjured the stuff out of thin air.

  I watch Great-Aunt Grace’s every move. She’s got about twenty-nine strands of hair, pulled back off her face in a tiny bun. She has to be three hundred years old. Mr. Shuffle waddles in and she tosses him a piece of flabby bacon. He gulps it down in two bites, and Great-Aunt Grace tosses him another piece. When she catches me watching her, she says, “You got something you wanna say, Miss Treasure?”

  “Actually, it’s Jeanie.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not going by Treasure anymore. I’d like to be called Jeanie now. It’s my middle name.”

  “My middle name is Onika, but I’m still Tiffany, and this is still Mr. Teddy Daniels.” Tiffany holds up her bear.

  Great-Aunt Grace comes to stand over us at the table. “If y’all think I got time to be rememberin’ middle names and teddy bear names, y’all got another think comin’.” She looks right at me. “I’ll call you whatever I want to, girl, and when I do, you best come runnin’. Understood?”

  She stares, waiting for an answer. I nod.

  “Can’t hear you, girl.”

  “Yes, I understand,” I say between clenched teeth.

  “Good.” Great-Aunt Grace eyes us, her forehead creased like she’s deep in thought. “Y’all need chores,” she says.

  “Chores?” Tiffany asks, as if the word is foreign to her.

  “Yes, chores. Didn’t your mama and daddy put y’all to work?”

  Tiffany and I shake our heads.

  “Spoiled as the day is long, I see. Well, y’all gonna pull your weight while you’re down here with me.” Great-Aunt Grace points at Tiffany. “You gonna feed Mr. Shuffle every mornin’ and every night. Half a cup of dry food and a can of wet. And don’t take too long gettin’ the food down, girl, or he’ll swat you good. Lord knows he ain’t got all day. Now you.” Great-Aunt Grace jabs her index finger at me. “Starting tomorrow, you gonna wash the breakfast and dinner dishes.”

  “Dishes?” I say slowly. “Every day?”

  “Every. Dang. Day. Now hurry up and finish eatin’.”

  I go back to eating my grits, slowly, so Great-Aunt Grace won’t know I like them. I’m snail-walking the fifth spoonful to my mouth when the phone rings. Great-Aunt Grace says, “I’ll-get-it-Treasure-stop-messin’-in-them-grits,” all in one breath as she hurries by me.

  Is it wrong to will an old lady to fall on a linoleum floor? In this case, no, it’s not. But Great-Aunt Grace makes it to the phone in the living room without so much as a stumble. She tells whoever it is that she doesn’t have time to talk because she’s been invaded by her freeloading kin.

  She returns to the kitchen a few minutes later and tells us it’s time to go.

  “The three of us got thangs to do,” she says.

  Great-Aunt Grace clears our plates away before either of us is finished. Thangs? What thangs?

  “Hurry up, wash those faces and get dressed so we can get goin’.”

  “Going where?” Tiffany asks. “To do super-fun stuff like Mommy said?”

  “Not even. Now, go upstairs and do like I told you.”

  Tiffany hurries past me and out of the kitchen.

  We take our time, neither of us in a rush to find out what Great-Aunt Grace has planned for us. I find our toothbrushes in one of the suitcases and head down the hall to the bathroom, Tiffany trailing behind me. The upstairs bathroom is small and tiled in the same dull shade of blue as the carpeting. Must be Great-Aunt Grace’s favorite color. There’s a small window in here, overlooking her backyard.

  “Mommy said Great-Aunt Grace might take us on adventures,” Tiffany says, Crest foaming up at the corners of her mouth.

  I spit a wad of toothpaste in the sink. “Does Gag seem like the type of person to go on adventures? She’s three hundred years old.”

  “Mr. Putter is old, but he does fun stuff with his cat, Tabby, all the time,” Tiffany replies. “Great-Aunt Grace has a cat, and Mommy told you not to call her Gag, Treasure.”

  “My name is Jeanie and I’ll call Gag whatever I want.”

  “You’re gonna be in big trouble if she hears you.”

  We hear Great-Aunt Grace’s feet on the stairs. Tiffany and I go tearing out of the bathroom, down the hallway, and back to our room. We pull clothes from our suitcases, like we were up here getting dressed all along and not lollygagging in the bathroom.

  Great-Aunt Grace appears in the doorway. “Movin’ like molasses, I see. Well, that ain’t gonna get you out of workin’, so you best come on.”

  “Working? Where?” Tiffany asks.

  “In my store, girl.”

  Suddenly I remember Mom saying that Great-Aunt Grace owns her own store. What does she sell? Cigarettes and burnt-up bacon?

  “I’ll tell y’all like I told your mama,” Great-Aunt Grace goes on. “You two ain’t gonna lay around doin’ nothin’ for the next two weeks after I done paid back rent and gave your mama money to chase behind your fool daddy. No, ma’am. Not on my watch.”

  “But we’re already going to be doing chores,” I say. Great-Aunt Grace is unmoved. “We’re underage, you know. You could be violating child labor laws.”

  “And you’re violatin’ Rule Number Five: Tuck in your lips and do what I say.”

  Great-Aunt Grace fixes me with her death stare and goes to stand over Tiffany, who starts moving in fast-forward. She’s dressed in no time. I hurry up and finish too. I don’t want Great-Aunt Grace hovering over me like some geriatric vulture. Tiffany grabs Mr. Teddy Daniels; I grab my inhaler and some of the emergency money Mom gave me and shove them in the pockets of my shorts.

  As she turns to leave the room, Great-Aunt Grace stumbles over Tiffany’s three-gallon water bottle of change. She doesn’t fall, but a small smile tugs at the corners of my mouth just the same.

  “What’s this?”

  Tiffany answers in a small voice. “My Disney Fund. I’m going to Disney World one day.”

  “With nickels and dimes, girl?”

  “There’re eight dollar bills in there too!”

  Great-Aunt Grace rolls her eyes and starts down the hallway. We follow her downstairs, where she stops in the kitchen to grab her things. Great-Aunt Grace doesn’t carry a purse. She puts her keys and wallet in her pants pockets, picks up a small red cooler from the kitchen counter, and ushers us out the door in front of her.

  It’s even hotter now than it was before. Great-Aunt Grace starts up the walkway. I don’t move. I look over at the patch of grass where the driveway should be. Empty save for a big bald space in the middle.

  “Don’t you have a car? Aren’t you going to drive us?”

  She looks at me like I’ve asked her if she wants to bend over and let Tiffany and me climb on her back.

  “I don’t drive. Besides, that won’t be necessary. Moe and Joe will get
us where we need to be.”

  “Who’re Moe and Joe?” Tiffany asks.

  Great-Aunt Grace points down at her two sneakered feet.

  “We can’t walk in this heat!”

  Great-Aunt Grace swats away my words the way a horse swats flies.

  I should take Tiffany and demand that Great-Aunt Grace let us back inside. But even this heat isn’t enough to make me stupid. It’s one thing to suggest to Great-Aunt Grace that walking in weather this hot is ridiculous. It’s an entirely different beast to try to go back inside when she told us to come out. We have no choice but to follow her. This is going to be the Longest. Walk. Ever.

  It is a bit after nine now, the butt crack of dawn in the summer as far as I’m concerned. And yet, people are out. Two old men wearing tank tops and shorts sit on the saggy porch of a white house. When a car drives past, they wave. They don’t wave at us. In fact, they exchange a look and shake their heads. As we pass the house two doors down from Great-Aunt Grace’s, a woman comes flying out the front door, carrying a stack of papers. It’s the same woman who darted in front of Mom’s car on our way here. She’s still wearing her flowered housedress and big sun hat.

  “Grace!” the woman calls out.

  I stop. Tiffany does too. Great-Aunt Grace keeps on walking, her cooler banging against her thigh.

  “Grace!” The woman comes charging down her walkway and stops beside Tiffany and me. She doesn’t even acknowledge our presence. “I’m talking to you!” she shouts at Great-Aunt Grace’s back.

  “And that is unfortunate, Dot,” Great-Aunt Grace says loudly, but she stops walking and turns to face the woman. There’s a stretch of dirt road between Great-Aunt Grace and Dot that doesn’t invite conversation, but Dot closes the distance in four huge steps.

  “I’ve been robbed. Low-down dirty thief stole my elephant statue with the little flecks of gold in it. Look.” Dot pulls a flier from the top of her pile and waves it in Great-Aunt Grace’s face. Great-Aunt Grace reaches up with her free hand and snatches it.

  “A hundred-dollar reward, huh?” she asks.

  “Yes, indeed. I gotta get to the bottom of this!”