The Perfect Place

by Teresa E. Harris

  “Yes?”

  Great-Aunt Grace sounds like she’s not happy about being interrupted.

  “Hello, Grace. It’s Eunetta. Fancy that we’re chatting so soon.” Eunetta’s voice is like melted butter. I could gladly kick her in both shins. She laughs a stupid little laugh and pauses for dramatic effect.

  Great-Aunt Grace doesn’t disappoint. “Just tell me what those kids did and don’t leave nothing out!”

  “Not kids. Jeanie,” Eunetta replies, and she does not disappoint, either. By the time she’s finished telling on me, Great-Aunt Grace is breathing like she ran up ten flights of stairs two steps at a time.

  “Is she there? Can she hear me?”

  “She’s here.”

  “You listen to me, girl, and you listen good. I’m on my way and you best believe I got something in store for you!”

  Before Eunetta can say anything else, Great-Aunt Grace hangs up, the sound of the dial tone lingering in the air, low and ominous, like a threat.

  Great-Aunt Grace does not come quietly. During Jaguar’s phone call home, I’m parked in a chair outside of Eunetta’s office, and I hear my great-aunt well before I see her. She turns the corner and barrels down the hallway like a tank into battle, kids running to get out of her way. Moon is behind her, struggling to keep up.

  “Girl, you done it now!” Great-Aunt Grace roars. She’s moving at the speed of light.

  In my mind a voice says, Run! But it’s too late. Great-Aunt Grace is in my face now, her index finger pointing right at my nose. Some kids nearby have begun to stare.

  “I had to close up shop to come down here and get you, girl. You costin’ me money! But you ain’t gonna cost me a bit more of my time.” Her eyes alight on one of the boys in the audience. “Find me Tiffany Daniels, and don’t you dare drag your feet.”

  It’s likely the kid has no idea who Tiffany is, but when Great-Aunt Grace talks, folks listen. He takes off. Moments later he returns with Tiffany, who’s struggling to carry my backpack and hers. She looks up at me, her eyes asking a million questions. I just shake my head and hold my hand out for my bag.

  “Let’s go,” Great-Aunt Grace barks. Then she turns on Moon and says, “This is why I didn’t want kids.”

  I keep my eyes on the ground as I follow Great-Aunt Grace and Moon to his car. This is one fight I don’t have a chance of winning. I slide into the back seat. Great-Aunt Grace slams her door so hard, Moon mutters, “Baby, take it easy on Betty. She ain’t much longer for this world.”

  “Shut up, Moon,” Great-Aunt Grace snaps.

  “Will do.”

  The ride home feels longer than the one from Jersey to Black Lake. Moon turns on the radio, tries to encourage a sing-along—to break up some of the tension in the car, I guess. Great-Aunt Grace turns the radio off. We drive the rest of the way in silence.

  When we pull up to Great-Aunt Grace’s house, I take my time getting out of the car. My mind is racing faster than my heart. What has Great-Aunt Grace planned? Maybe she’s going to go to the back to get a switch. I heard that’s how they do things in the South. No. She goes up the steps and through the front door.

  “Good luck, girl,” Moon says to me as he gets out of the car. “She really ain’t one to mess with.” He starts up the road on foot.

  “Thanks for the warning,” I call after him, sarcastic as you please.

  I trudge to the front steps and into the house. Great-Aunt Grace is already in the kitchen, taking out some of her anger on the pots and pans.

  “Treasure, get in here,” she says.

  I drop my backpack on the living room floor and go into the kitchen. Three of the four burners on the stove are lit. Great-Aunt Grace is opening a bottle of vegetable oil. When she sees me, she nods at the corner near the back door.

  “Go stand over there.”

  “I need to take a shower. There’s ketchup in my hair.”

  “Go stand over there.”

  “But—”

  Great-Aunt Grace gives me the full heat of her glare. I go stand in the corner.

  “Now get on your knees.”

  “What?”

  “And stay there.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until you get it through your hard head that you best keep your hands to yourself and do what I say. I reckon your knees will be pretty sore by the time that happens.”

  “She hit me first, and she wrecked your store!” I add that last part hoping Great-Aunt Grace will ease up, thinking I fought this battle for her.

  “If you think I need you to take up my cause, girl, you are truly as simple as you look.”

  “This is child abuse!”

  “On your knees!”

  I do as I’m told.

  “I’m telling my mother.”

  “Go ahead,” says Great-Aunt Grace. “Make sure you tell her about the fight. Oh, and don’t forget to mention all the talkin’ back you do. If you gonna do some tellin’, may as well tell the truth.”

  My knees are already starting to hurt. I grit my teeth. I won’t beg to get up and give Great-Aunt Grace the satisfaction. I listen as she plops saucepans down on the stove. I’ve heard the sounds of her cooking enough to know that when she grunts a bit it’s because she’s getting the big cast-iron skillet from the bottom cabinet.

  “Tiffany!” she calls.

  Tiffany doesn’t respond.

  “Tiffany!” Great-Aunt Grace bellows like a walrus this time.

  Tiffany scrambles down the stairs and into the kitchen, looking more scared than that time she snuck and watched that movie about the killer dolls on cable.

  “Treasure, get your eyes on that wall!”

  “I was good at camp today,” Tiffany says. “You can call Eunetta and ask.”

  “Ain’t nobody lookin’ to punish you, girl. Just set the table.”

  Tiffany breathes a sigh of relief. “Should I set a place for Moon? He left, but his car’s still here.”

  “Yeah, he’ll be back. Walked on over to the convenience store for some smokes. Didn’t want to waste his gas.”

  Great-Aunt Grace starts for the living room, muttering something about Moon being cheap enough to bargain shop in a dollar store.

  My knees are on fire. Mom and Dad used to say we shouldn’t hate. I don’t care what they say. I hate Great-Aunt Grace. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her. I hate her house, too, especially her hard kitchen floor that’s covered with grit. It’s a good thing Great-Aunt Grace didn’t have any kids of her own, because they’d probably hate her too.

  I grit my teeth against the pain. But the ache in my knees is not going anywhere. I take a deep breath in through my nose and blow it out through my mouth, but the tight feeling in my chest isn’t going away either. I close my eyes and concentrate on breathing, in and out, in and out.

  I want to go home.

  Where’s home?

  In and out, in and out.

  It’s not fair. A girl as rotten as Jaguar gets to have a home. A good home too, I bet, with two parents who both stay put.

  In and out, in and out.

  And I’m stuck here with Great-Aunt Grace.

  “I can’t breathe.”

  Tiffany runs over to me, just as Great-Aunt Grace comes back from the living room.

  I press my forehead against the cool surface of the tiled kitchen wall. “I can’t breathe,” I say again, loud enough for Great-Aunt Grace to hear.

  “What are you talking about, can’t breathe?” she says. “Let me find out I got an actress on my hands.”

  I’m wheezing now.

  “She’s not acting,” Tiffany says. “She’s having an asthma attack. She needs her inhaler!”

  Tiffany runs into the living room, where I dropped my backpack, and returns with my inhaler. She hands it to me. I take one puff, two, and close my eyes while I wait for the medicine to take effect.

  I don’t have to open my eyes to know that Great-Aunt Grace has leaned down and is now peering closely at me. Her breath is warm o
n the side of my face.

  “Maybe you weren’t actin’ this time,” she says gruffly. “I don’t know much about this asthma. How did she get it?”

  “She was born with it,” Tiffany says.

  “And what makes it act up like this?”

  “She was mad. When she gets mad, she gets sick.”

  “And,” I put in loudly, now that I can speak, “it’s aggravated by pet dander, dust, and cigarette smoke. You’ve pretty much got all three covered in this house.” I turn around to face Great-Aunt Grace. She glares at me. “Mom was supposed to talk to you about it. Did she?”

  “She may have mentioned it, but I can’t go rearrangin’ my life at a drop of a hat, girl.”

  “Can I get up now?”

  “Suppose so, but you gotta go upstairs to your room and do some further thinkin’ about what you done.”

  I go upstairs, take a shower, then go to my room but I don’t do any thinking. I fall asleep.

  Hours later I roll over in my bed and stare up at the ceiling. It’s late. I slept right through dinner, which is fine by me because whatever it was, I’m sure Great-Aunt Grace burnt it to a crisp.

  The door opens. Great-Aunt Grace comes in and turns on the light. Tiffany squirms in her sleep but doesn’t wake up. Great-Aunt Grace has a plate in one hand and a glass of water in the other. She comes over to my bed and puts the plate on the nightstand next to me. It’s piled high with two pork chops smothered in gravy, white rice, and corn. It smells okay, and it doesn’t look burnt. . . . My stomach rumbles. I won’t eat it in front of her.

  She holds out the glass of water to me.

  “I’m not going back to that camp,” I tell her.

  Great-Aunt Grace’s sneakers squeak a little as she shifts from one foot back to the other. “Okay. You all right, girl?”

  Of course I’m not all right. And it’s all Great-Aunt Grace’s fault. I shake my head, grab the water, and gulp it down. Great-Aunt Grace takes the empty glass from my outstretched hand and turns to go.

  “Well, you did it to yourself, you know,” she says.

  “You helped.”

  Great-Aunt Grace doesn’t turn around.

  I make sure she’s good and gone before I inhale my dinner, every last bite of it. And it’s good, too. Looks like one of my wishes yesterday at the lake came true.

  I lie down again and my eyes close immediately. Sometime in the night, I hear footsteps and feel the bed sink as someone sits down next to me. A rough hand on my forehead, and then the weight of someone’s head on my chest as they listen to me breathe. It is not until the footsteps are near the door that I force my eyes open, just in time to see Great-Aunt Grace slip out of our room and into the hallway.

  Twenty-Three

  THE next morning, I open my eyes to see Great-Aunt Grace standing over me, this time holding her ancient cordless phone.

  “It’s your mama,” she says, thrusts the phone at me, and leaves.

  Mom doesn’t even let me say hello before she shrieks, “You got into a fight?”

  I glance at the clock. It’s barely nine in the morning and Great-Aunt Grace has already snitched. “Gag made me have an asthma attack.”

  “She didn’t. You got yourself worked up, as usual. Now, why were you fighting?”

  “Because this girl, Jaguar, said something mean to Tiffany.”

  At the sound of her name, Tiffany stirs and wakes all the way up, blinking hard. “Who’re you talking to?”

  “Mom.”

  Tiffany flies across the room and snatches the phone. I don’t put up a fight. “Hi, Mommy! Did you find Daddy yet?” Tiffany frowns. “I don’t know how to put it on speaker.”

  She hands me the phone. I don’t want to press the speaker button, but I do. Mom picks up right where she left off.

  “What did the girl say?”

  “What girl?” asks Tiffany.

  “The girl your sister fought.”

  “Oh, her,” Tiffany says, and then the dramatics start. She recounts the fight, word for word, hit for hit. By the time Tiffany’s done, Jaguar is the most deficient human being on the planet and I am the hero to trump all heroes.

  “There is such a thing as the perfect place for us and Daddy is looking for it. That’s why he left,” Tiffany says.

  “Is that right?” Mom says. She sounds far away. I hear a horn honk in the background.

  “It is. Jeanie even talked to a sidekick and the sidekick said that Daddy is in our future as long as we don’t stop believing that we’ll find him.”

  “A ‘sidekick’?” Mom sounds bewildered.

  “A psychic, not a sidekick,” I put in. Then I tell Mom what Jane told me. “She said happiness is in our future, and we can’t have that without Dad, right?”

  Mom is quiet for a good long while. She’s been gone for days now. We’ve been talking for ten minutes, and she still hasn’t mentioned anything about finding Dad.

  “You can’t give up hope,” I tell her.

  “I’m doubling back to Boydon, North Carolina, because he hasn’t used the card since, but—”

  My eyes meet Tiffany’s. If Mom gives up hope, so will she. “Mom, don’t give up hope,” I say again, more firmly this time.

  Mom sighs. “Okay.” She pauses, but when she speaks again, her voice is just as sad and flat as before. I remember Jane’s words: Happiness doesn’t come easy; you have to be willing to fight for it. Suddenly, I know what I have to do.

  “Let’s get off this phone before Grace starts talking about you running up her bill,” Mom says. Then she says a bunch of stuff about us behaving ourselves and ends with, “You two got that?”

  Tiffany says, “Yes.”

  “I got it,” I say, even though I didn’t. What I do have is a plan.

  Since I refuse to return to Camp Jesus Saves and Tiffany won’t go back without me, it’ll be business as usual: breakfast and then a full day of work at Grace’s Goodies. We find Great-Aunt Grace and Moon in the kitchen. He’s sitting at the table, sipping from a can of soda, as Great-Aunt Grace wipes down the kitchen counter with broad, quick strokes.

  Something is missing. I look around. There’s Mr. Shuffle, perched on the windowsill, looking like an overstuffed black trash bag. There’s the newspaper on the kitchen table, open to the word find, and Great-Aunt Grace, leaning against the counter and chomping on something—hard.

  What’s missing is smoke. Not a tendril of it hovers in the air.

  “Well, don’t just stand there gapin’,” Great-Aunt Grace says to us. “Tiffany, feed Mr. Shuffle. Treasure, set the table.”

  When she speaks, I see a big wad of chewing gum rolling around in her mouth like a lone T-shirt tumbling in the dryer. There’s no smoke because she’s not smoking.

  “What’s with the gum?” I ask, even though I know.

  “Nothin’. Just ran out of smokes.”

  I hide my smile as Great-Aunt Grace reaches into the silverware drawer and hands me forks, knives, and spoons. Tiffany opens up a can of wet food for Mr. Shuffle. Moon grunts a “Good morning” at us.

  “My leg is actin’ up again, Gracie,” he says.

  Great-Aunt Grace stirs the grits and says, “Been to the doctor?”

  “Not since that first time. Nothin’ he can do about it really, but put me back on those pills. Damn things made me sick as a dog.”

  Tiffany and I take our seats at the table. She quietly points out the word faith nestled in the letters of Great-Aunt Grace’s word find. I find tiger and comeuppance. We do this silently until Great-Aunt Grace comes over and spoons steaming grits into both our bowls. Then she spits her gum into the trash and eats her grits standing up. Moon either isn’t hungry or isn’t ready to stop talking about his leg. He doesn’t eat anything. He goes from his leg to his heart trouble and high blood pressure to the headaches he gets only in the fall. And all the while he’s talking, his hand is reaching into his pocket, feeling around for something. He finally pulls out a pack of cigarettes and an orange lighter. Gre
at-Aunt Grace is focused on her grits, but when she hears that lighter flick, her head snaps up. Moon looks at her and shrugs.

  “Stress,” he says.

  “What did I tell you?”

  “I said I got stress, woman!”

  “And then what? You gonna have another?”

  “Don’t see why not. Some of us is temporary, while others is permanent.”

  Great-Aunt Grace stares at Moon long and hard. Something’s going on here, but I can’t tell what. This is the first time I’ve ever seen Moon stand up to Great-Aunt Grace. She responds by taking an ashtray from the top of the refrigerator and slamming it down on the table in front of him. Then she turns to Tiffany and me.

  “Let’s go. We got thangs to do.”

  “What about the dishes?” I ask.

  Great-Aunt Grace tells me they can wait. “Get dressed and get back down here in five minutes—or else I’m comin’ up.”

  We meet Great-Aunt Grace at the front door in five minutes flat, sweaty and winded. She has an empty fold-up shopping cart with her. We leave Moon sitting in the kitchen, working on cigarette number two. Or three.

  Great-Aunt Grace’s expression is grim as we walk. Dot is outside sweeping her walkway. When she sees the three of us passing by, she shakes her head and scowls.

  “Dot’s still suspicious of you,” I say.

  Great-Aunt Grace looks back over her shoulder at Dot and then quickly away. “I ain’t got time to be worried about that fool. I got thangs to do.”

  Tiffany and I have to just about jog to keep up with Great-Aunt Grace. By the time we make it to downtown Black Lake, sweat is pouring down my face and into my eyes.

  “You’re walking too fast,” Tiffany complains.

  Either Great-Aunt Grace didn’t hear her or she doesn’t care. She keeps up the same rapid clip as we cross at the intersection of Main and Ridge. Byron comes walking toward us with the girl from church. He calls out, “Morning, Ms. Washington,” and waits for the three of us to approach him. But Great-Aunt Grace just passes right on by, grunting something that sounds like hello. Tiffany and I stop, trying to make up for Great-Aunt Grace’s rudeness.