The Firefly Dance

by Sarah Addison Allen

  Petey turned away and stared out of the car window at everything passing her by. Every so often, she’d notice Momma’s palomino hair blowing in the wind. It blew longer than before, since Momma had been trimming her own hair instead of having it styled at the beauty parlor.

  “Petey! Is my tongue purple-urple-super-duper-durple?” Hill stuck out his purplish tongue.

  “A little bit.”

  Hill took a gulp of drink and then panted with his tongue dripping. He barked at her, once.

  Petey rolled her eyes.

  “When we get to Fart Worth will there be cowboys?”

  “I dunno.”

  “How come you don’t know?”

  “I just don’t. Now leave me be.”

  “Where we going to live? Will we live on a ranch and stuff?”

  “No. We will not.”

  “Where then?”

  “Do I look like a encyclopedia?”

  “You sure are grouchy, Prissy Panties.”

  “You sure are ugly.”

  “Am not,” Hill said. And he wasn’t; Petey knew that. Her little brother had the cuteness disease and she didn’t believe there was a cure for it. She wished she had the cuteness disease or even better the beautiful disease.

  She wondered where they’d live, too. What their house would look like. What kinds of people Texas people were. What she would do with herself once there. How she’d do without her best-ever in the whole world friend.

  She had ridden her bike to Angela’s house to tell her they were moving. They’d held onto each other and cried, not even caring if they were big babies. Angela gave Petey a favorite fire-pink pen so she could write to her and think about Angela while doing so. When she’d ridden away from Angela, she kept turning around to wave, while Angela kept standing in her front yard waving back, until Petey turned a corner and couldn’t see her anymore. The rest of the ride home felt like her body was one big toothache.

  Up until the day they left, Petey woke at first light so she could visit all her secret places she went to be alone and think about things: the place she hunted for special rocks in the creek, at the switchback in the trail where she’d taken the empty hornet’s nest and brought it home to hang in her room, under the locust tree where she watched the fawn and its momma tiptoe on their little hoofed feet to feed on the corn she threw about.

  The day before they left, Grandma drove in from Watauga County. She pulled Petey into a hug and Petey smelled snuff, her grandma’s sweet rose powder, and how her dress smelled like sunshine from hanging on the wire line Grandma stretched between two trees. Petey didn’t cry. Hill cried, snuffling and whining like a puppy into Grandma’s dress.

  Grandma asked Momma and Daddy, “How you’uns going to stand it in all that heat and flat and with all those cowboys and bulls snorting and barbeque not even done the right way?” She couldn’t figure on a place without mountains, and snow and quiet. She said, “That Texas will be loud as can be!” Not like how all they could hear from Grandma’s house was birds, squirrels (she called them boomers), and the wind in the trees.

  “Petey! Hey Petey! Petey! Watch this.” Hill pulled his eyelids up, showing the red nasty inside.

  “They’re going to get stuck there.”

  “Nuh uh.” He flipped them back down and blinked hard and fast.

  “I saw a boy with his eyelids stuck like that forever, at school.”

  “Did not.” Hill sat back as if he was tired of trying to get her attention.

  Petey cracked her window and let the air blow in from outside. It didn’t smell like home. She tore open and then licked the inside of the Frito’s bag, hungry since she hadn’t eaten breakfast. She’d tried, but her mean ole stomach had bucked up and made like it wanted to throw the food back.

  Hill tore open his bag and did the same as she, except he lapped at his like a stray dog.

  They ate the Nabs next, three each, the peanut butter and cracker sticking between their teeth all brown, orange, and nasty.

  Momma said to them. “We’ll stop to eat at the next rest area.”

  Daddy said, “And everybody better do their pee-business while we’re there. I don’t want to stop any more’n I got to.”

  “If it were up to your daddy, kids, he’d drive all the way through without pause.” Momma pushed Daddy on the shoulder, and Daddy said, “That I would, straight through, kazoom kazaam.”

  When it seemed they’d driven and driven and driven and Petey’s stomach was whining with hunger, Momma pointed to a rest stop sign. “Don’t forget to stop.”

  “Well, I am hungry for those sandwiches,” Daddy said.

  “What we got to eat?” asked Hill.

  “Peanut butter and apple butter sandwiches.” Momma had made the apple butter and the bread herself. Daddy said she’d have made the peanut butter if she had a mind to. Petey liked Jiff the best, creamy not crunchy. The only time she liked crunchy peanut butter was when Momma put it on apples—and Petey would only eat North Carolina apples, period period at the end of her sentence period.

  Daddy parked, they found a nice picnic table, and from a grocery bag, Momma took out sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. There were still other things in the bag, like more bread, salt, pepper, tomatoes, and whatever else Momma had packed inside. The tomatoes Momma had picked from her garden before they left. She kept what she could and gave the rest to their neighbor, and the neighbor said they couldn’t believe such a fine family had to go way down south in the flatland. Then they stood around talking about how Petey’s family wasn’t the only ones; there were others who had to move away, too.

  Momma wrote a note about her garden to the people who were moving into their house, how the tomatoes grew, and the beans, and squash, and melons. She told them about the wild blackberries and the apple tree. She told them about the coon she fed, the funny white possum that came round, the hummingbirds that buzzed the feeder, and about the other birds—grosbeak, goldfinch, cardinal, nuthatch, titmouse (Hill always giggled over that bird name, his hand over his mouth), sparrows, and all the rest. She wrote them about taking in the feeders at night so the bears wouldn’t get to them. And she wrote about how nice the neighborhood was, and how Haywood County was the best place to raise children.

  Petey wanted to write the people moving into their house how much she hated them and why didn’t they go back to where they belonged instead of living in her house. Even if it wasn’t hers right out, Daddy had rented it since Hill was born—six years—and he had talked about buying it from the owners once he saved enough.

  In between bite-and-swallows of sandwich, Daddy was telling Hill how Texas used to be Mexico’s but people from the states wanted Texas for their own. There was a famous Battle of the Alamo where the Mexican army beat the United States Texan people, and that’s why the Texans cry out “Remember the Alamo!” He went on to tell about other fighting and arguments and settlements. It was sort of interesting, and she was sure Texas people liked their history just fine. But Petey liked North Carolina history because it was her history of where she was born.

  Petey knew Bath was the first town in North Carolina, and how Blackbeard the Pirate was killed at the North Carolina coast. She especially liked to read about girls in history. How Sarah Malinda Pritchard Blalock cut her hair and wore men’s clothes so she could join the army and was the only girl soldier in the Civil War, far as anyone knew anyhow. There were first girl lawyers and doctors from North Carolina, and a first free slave girl to get a degree, and all kinds of things girls did that made Petey proud to be one herself.

  Daddy was saying, “. . . and that Texas barbeque. And steaks and Texas-Mexican food. Texans love their beef and their Tex Mex. My new boss said there’s a restaurant on near-bouts every corner that we can try.”

  “And pray tell what money you’ll find for restaurants?” Soon as Momma
said that, her face turned red and Petey knew she was sorry for her mouth speaking before she thought of the hurt it’d cause. She said, “I’m sorry, Quinn.”

  “It’s okay,” Daddy said, but he looked sad.

  Momma had then leaned over and kissed Daddy’s cheek. He stroked her hand, picked it up and kissed it. Petey turned her head away; it hurt too much to see how Daddy all of a sudden didn’t look big and strong and Momma all of a sudden didn’t look as if she could wrestle a problem down and make it behave right. Petey had squeezed shut her eyes and when she opened them, her parents were back to the way she wanted them to be, her regular parents.

  Daddy then jumped up, scaring Petey out of her thoughts, hugged Petey tight, twirled her around, and pulled on her long ponytail, while she cried, “Stop it, Daddy.” All the while, she secretly loved the way he teased and twirled her.

  Hill ran off, peanut butter stuck to his face, his sneakers kicking up just-mown grass. He barked at dogs doing their business or sniffing around in the grass. If the dogs came too close, he growled at them. People stared and pointed at him. Momma called sharp to him to stop and he did. He always listened to Momma; he said she was the alpha dog.

  When they piled back into the car, Daddy turned up the radio and tried to find a station that played his favorite music—Etta Baker, North Carolina Ramblers, or the fastest fingers in the whole world, Raymond Fairchild, or anyone else who played good traveling music. He instead had to tune to a country-western station. Petey hated all that singing about tears in beers and wives in another man’s arms and trucks that were a fella’s best friend, next to beer or Old Crow or Jack Daniels.

  When it was dark and everyone was stone-tired of being stuck inside the car, Daddy stopped at a rickety motel in Arkansas with a sign that blinked on and off with some of the letters not blinking so it read ACAN Y instead of VACANCY. Daddy went inside to pay for the room, soon was back with a key, and drove around to room number 12.

  Inside their room, Petey checked the sheets like Grandma had told her to. Grandma said if they weren’t “white as cloud nine” then Petey should call the front desk and make someone come give everyone clean sheets pronto. Grandma told a story about how once she stayed in a hotel where the bedbugs had bitten all over her legs, and that was why she always said, “Good Night; sleep tight; don’t let the bed bugs bite,” with an extra oomph because she knew. Where Grandma lived in Watauga County wasn’t very far from Petey, but it was way far from Arkansas, and a trip to the moon away from Fort Worth, Texas.

  The Arkansas sheets were nice and white, smelled like spring, and were softer and thicker than most sheets were. Momma fingered the top sheet. “I never did think a little motel like this would have such nice linens.” She then set to making them a supper of tomato sandwiches with extra pepper, except for Hill, who said pepper made him feel too sneezy.

  Daddy gave Petey and Hill the Fanta drinks he’d bought at the filling station down the road, along with two big pickles he broke in half.

  Petey and Hill sat on their bed cross-legged to eat. Hill bared his teeth at Petey when she sat too close, and she rolled her eyes at him.

  Momma and Daddy sat at a little table with two chairs and didn’t talk much at all, and when they did, it was silly things like, “Just enough pepper on the tomatoes, Beth.”

  “Why thank you. Driving went well today, not much traffic;”

  “Yup, lucked up so far and hope tomorrow is as lucky;”

  “It was coming up a cloud earlier but looks like it passed us by;”

  “Yes, yes, I know you hate riding in the rain, anymore.”

  Not so much like the easy laughing and talking about all kinds of things that went on at their supper table at home.

  Daddy cut on the TV and up popped Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, one of Daddy’s favorite shows. He still talked about the time Marlin Perkins wrestled the big snake in the water and near-abouts drowned and was near-abouts squeezed to death. During TV watching, Petey and Hill took turns brushing teeth. Momma had a suitcase with everyone’s pajamas and a change of clothes, and Hill upended the whole thing searching for his underpants with puppies on them. He found them where they always had been since Momma packed them, rolled inside his pajamas. He hooted and held them up for Petey to see.

  Daddy pointed to the rumpled clothes on the floor. “Cri-mon-ey, Hill! Look it what you done.”

  Momma only sighed and began folding all the things back in place.

  “That boy is a mess in all sense of the word,” Daddy said, then he laughed and ruffled Hill’s hair.

  After that, Petey had, just had, to give Hill a noogie on the head that their daddy had ruffled, to make him cry uncle for being a big pain in everyone’s hind end. She grabbed him in a headlock and gave a polish to his head with her fist.

  He growled and gnashed his teeth, and when she didn’t stop, he cried, “I said Uncle in dog, stupid idiot. Can’t you understand dog?”

  “No I can’t. Talk like a human why don’t you?”

  Hill barked at her.

  Momma told them to settle it down or they’d be thrown out in the street. She sat on the bed and bounced on it, then rubbed her hands across her belly that grew bigger by the minute. Momma said, “Glad these beds are comfortable. I’m about wore out.”

  “I’m give out myself,” Daddy said.

  Petey grabbed a gown and clean white underpants, the underpants hidden in the gown so nobody could see them, and ran to the bathroom before Hill could.

  Hill stomped to sit on the bed with Momma, his arms crossed over his chest. “You make me so mad, Petey! So mad!”

  She only laughed at him and slammed the door, then set about checking the tub for bugs, and when there weren’t any, filled the tub with warmish water. She was careful not to look anywhere near the mirror. Mirrors in strange places at night were the worst of all. In the movie, every time the man was in a strange place at night, everything was scarier.

  While Petey washed, starting from her head and working to her toes, in the way Momma taught her, she thought about how Hill had told her she didn’t need to be looking into mirrors anyhow. He said she had buggy fisheyes and fat fish lips. That’s exactly how he said it, and his words still made her mad even though he laughed and poked her arm so his words wouldn’t sting and be more like teasing.

  I wish I was as lovely as a princess, Petey thought. She liked the word lovely even more than pretty or beautiful. Lovely was how a person acted along with how a person looked.

  Petey scrubbed between her toes, a place Momma said everyone forgot about and they shouldn’t, since dirt found its way there sure as anywhere else. Even though Petey didn’t feel lovely, one time in the schoolyard Barry Burke had said she was “cute as a newborn kitten” and then he’d grabbed her and kissed her.

  Right. On. The. Lips. She’d beat him up, even though secretly she liked the way his lips were soft against hers and how the kiss happened as short and light as a butterfly lighting and then flying away. She’d never see Barry Burke again, not that she cared any ole way. Not one bit. She stared down into the water, at how her legs seemed bent and funny. Everything felt strange.

  After she dried off and put on her gown and clean underpants, Petey came out of the bathroom and Hill went in next, telling her, “Gosh-a-mighty, you take for-ever to do every littlest thing!” He was done with his bath faster than the Speedy Gonzales mouse—He sort of looks like the Speedy Gonzales mouse, Petey thought, giggling to herself.

  All night Hill kicked his big sister. She knew he did it on purpose to get back at her for the noogie. She couldn’t sleep anyway, so why did she care.

  The next morning for breakfast, Momma handed them each an apple and a banana. Petey ate the fruit and asked her stomach to please keep it down there. It did, as a favor to her since she was so sad. Daddy turned in the key, and they set out again. />
  The land became flatter without hardly a bump to call a hill much less a mountain, and the wind was thick-hot compared to her cool mountain breezes. Petey tried not to look out the window but she couldn’t help herself, curiosity took over her brain and made her watch everything as their 1966 Ford Country Squire flew down the highway to Texas.

  Chapter 3

  When Momma saw the house they were moving into, a two story with pimpled blue paint built by the side of scraggly woods with trees that hardly ought to be called trees at all, she put her hand on the side of her face and said, “Oh my word.”

  Daddy eased up under what must have been a carport before it turned into a house for birds and squirrels and rust and who knew what all else. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

  Momma didn’t answer at first, then she took in a breath, let it out, and said, “At least it’s a good-sized house.”

  Daddy turned off the engine, cleared his throat, said, “Only the top level is ours. The bottom level is rented out to someone else. But it has all the things a regular house has: a bathroom, kitchen, everything!” He said everything! as if it was the most wonderful thing in the big ole world, and maybe beyond to the Milky Way.

  Momma sat quiet, hand flat on her belly, as if she was soothing the baby brother or sister who’d have to live in that house and not know how pretty the other one had been.

  “It’s temporary, until we catch up on things.” He smoothed his fingers on the steering wheel. “The one who lives in the bottom part, Mr. Mendel said she’s on vacation. Somewhere far away, he said, but couldn’t recall.” He turned to Momma. “Maybe you two will become friends.”

  Momma sat up tall and then turned to the backseat. “You kids stay outside until your daddy and I get things straight.” They slipped out, walked across the yard, and up the iron steps. Petey could hear the steps rattle as they climbed.

  Petey peeled her sweaty legs from the car seats (she thought some of her skin surely had been left behind), jumped out into a blazing furnace heat, said, “Whew,” and let her tongue hang out as if she was a dying cow in a far away desert with camels. She humped her back and showed her teeth. Hill galloped, neighing and braying, then he sniffed the air. She laughed at him and he laughed back at her. His eyes near took up his whole face. She wondered if her eyes were wide as supper plates, too, like wild animals trapped and put in another place.