Stumps. That’s what was inside those special shoes. This past winter, Da’s sugar had acted up again, and she’d gone into the hospital, missing her daughter’s wedding at the last minute. Not only that. When she came out, she left behind four toes.
Clump da clump da clump. Da’s shoes and cane beat a slow rhythm. Mo swallowed hard. Not that she was the squeamish sort. How could she be, living with Dottie, who regularly ate boogers and scabs? The sight of a run-over squirrel? The stink of Baby Baggott’s poopy Pampers? Business as usual.
But something about a three-toed foot made her knees wobble. Mo liked things whole. She refused to begin a jigsaw puzzle unless she knew all the pieces were there. A puzzle was nothing compared to your own body.
Da had the table set with her good dishes, yet something wasn’t quite right. Normally this house was all about neat corners and polished surfaces, but today it had a dull, unwashed look. Mercedes ran a finger through the dust furring the windowsill and frowned.
But the food! Da’s cooking was like an excellent mystery story, with spicy clues and sweet clues and then a great whammy of an ending when it all came together. Mo had just put her napkin in her lap—Da was a stickler for manners and posture—and picked up her fork when the glasses began to shiver and the dishes to tremble. A redheaded torpedo fired into the room, scoring a direct hit on Mercedes.
“You’re here!” The Wild Child squashed her face in the vicinity of Mercedes’s belly button. “I thought you’d never get here!”
Mercedes managed to peel Mo’s little sister off her, all except for a sour-apple lollipop, which hung suspended from her black tank top. Dottie retrieved it and graciously offered it to Da.
“Oh, wait, you can’t eat candy. You’re diabolic.”
“Diabetic!” corrected Mo.
Wrinkling her nose, Mercedes peered down at Dottie’s knotty red mane. “Eeyoo! What’s that? A fly that got caught and buzzed itself to death?” Mercedes did not exactly return Dottie’s affection. In fact, Mercedes preferred not to associate with anyone under four feet tall.
Dottie scrambled up into a chair and lovingly spread Mercedes’s napkin across her own lap. She wore an enormous T-shirt advertising hot sauce and, given how much she hated underwear, probably nothing else.
“Your head’s like a bowling ball,” she said pleasantly. “Dude, it’s hot in here. It’s hotter than h—”
“Lord give me strength!” Da’s face was arguing with itself, her mouth frowning while her eyes danced. “When was the last time those hands met soap and water? No one sits at my table with hands like that!”
She hauled Dottie into the kitchen. Mercedes and Mo took the opportunity to clean their plates and slip out the front door.
The heart-shaped leaves of a big ancient lilac drenched Da’s front porch in shade. If you sat here for a while, Da would pop out with lemonade, or a Band-Aid for the splinter you always got from a floorboard. Those rough, gaping floorboards had a ferocious appetite—over the years Mo had played here, they’d swallowed down more Barbie shoes and game pieces than she could count.
Her mother used to sit here with Da, listening to ball games on the radio. Mo could remember that. Mr. Wren watched on TV, but Da and Mrs. Wren claimed the more you had to imagine, the more exciting a thing was.
“Mo?”
“Yeah?”
“I just had a funny thought. You know all the toys we lost down the porch? Not to mention all the candy wrappers and Popsicle sticks we pushed through the cracks.” Mercedes sounded wistful, which was disturbing, since she was not the wistful type. “Imagine someday an archaeologist excavates down there. What would he or she think?’
“That it was the royal burial ground of an ancient civilization where Uno cards were sacred.”
“Where they worshipped tiny plastic shoes.” Mercedes laughed, and Mo forgot to be disturbed.
“Not to mention peach pits and repulsive Band-Aids.”
Oh, it was good to have Mercedes back!
“Come on,” said Mo. “I’ve got the Den all stocked, and we seriously need to catch up.”
Fox Den
THEY SPED PAST MS. HUGG’S pink house and then the Petrones’, where a hearse took up the whole driveway. Mrs. P styled hair at a funeral parlor, and when she worked late they let her drive the hearse home instead of taking the bus. The Baggott boys—named for signs of the zodiac because Mrs. Baggott believed they’d one day be stars, ha ha—were giving one another rides in a shopping cart stolen from the E-Z Dollar. Pi Baggott, a year older than Mercedes and Mo, practiced skateboard tricks on the edge of the Crater.
“Hey!” he called, flipping his board upright. It was strange. Up until this summer, Mo had never bothered to distinguish one Baggott from another. But all of a sudden, Pi stood out. Pi was impossible to ignore. “Welcome back!” he told Mercedes.
“I can’t believe the city didn’t fix that pothole yet!” she replied. “It’s seriously bigger than last year!”
“Hello to you, too,” Pi said.
The daisies were in full bloom, and the butter-and-eggs, too. Mo climbed over the guardrail, careful to avoid the thistles. On the other side, a path meandered down the hillside. Scraggly as they were, the trees clinging to the slope didn’t mind if you grabbed their trunks to keep from slipping. As you descended, rocks jutted out like the snouts of buried dinosaurs. And everywhere you looked, the landscape was decorated with trash.
People—no one on Fox Street, Mo was certain, but other people, who were lazy and ignorant—had the notion the ravine was a free dump and heaved all sorts of things over the guardrail, right past the sign that read $100 FINE FOR LITTERING. Mo spotted a wheel-less bike, a broken high chair, a torn lampshade. Ghostly garbage bags fluttered in the trees.
Ghostly, but in a good way—this was the feeling Mo always got here. Climbing down the hill, she took her time, making as little noise as she could, her eyes peeled. Fox Street had gotten its name for a reason, and sometimes, especially toward dusk, the air took on a mysterious, deep red texture. At those moments, Mo felt a beautiful pair of amber-colored eyes watching her. She’d sense a rust-colored tail, tip dipped in cream, disappearing just behind her. But no matter how quickly she turned, Mo never saw anything.
Still. Never once did she come down here without being on fox lookout. Light and quick and shy as they were—Mo had read a good deal about foxes—they always saw you before you saw them.
Mo didn’t keep secrets. She disliked them nearly as much as she did surprises, which is to say a great deal. And yet, deep inside her, wrapped up as carefully as a fragile glass egg, she cherished, if not exactly a secret, a belief. One she had never confided to anyone. Not even Mercedes.
“Maureen Jewel Wren! Come on!”
Mo believed foxes lived down here. And that they knew she was looking for them.
Or, at least, one fox knew. A certain one, graceful and beautiful, that she had seen in her dreams. And though it might take a very long time, if Mo was patient enough, and persistent and faithful enough, someday that fox was going to reveal herself. To Mo.
“MO!”
“I’m coming!”
Mercedes had already twirled the combination lock on the toolbox and set out cans of Tahitian Treat and bags of chips on the flat rock they used for a table. The Den was a hollow in the side of the hill, not quite big enough to stand up in, shaded and half hidden by an outcrop of rock. Mercedes and Mo had decorated it with things thrown over the guardrail, including the two only slightly ripped beanbag chairs on which they sat.
At the bottom of the ravine, across the stream, stretched the vast city Metropark. Mo could hear the distant cheers of a softball game—the one Mr. Wren was supposed to be playing.
“I can’t tell you,” Mercedes said, handing Mo a can, “how much I’ve been looking forward to this very moment.”
They clinked cans. Down at the invisible baseball game, a cheer went up.
“Especially since,” Mercedes went on, “this is my
last summer coming.”
Tahitian Treat shot out Mo’s nose. “Whaaaaa?”
“It’s a miracle I got up here at all. My stepfather registered me for one of those enrichment camps where you learn calculus in the morning and French in the afternoon and for extra big fun you take a trip to a museum. He says a girl with my potential shouldn’t waste a whole summer doing nothing.”
Mo wiped her sticky chin with a leaf. “Nothing! Is he mental?”
Mercedes nodded.
“It’s useless trying to explain to him about Fox Street. He’s all about getting ahead in the world. He grew up poor, but he worked hard and took advantage of every opportunity and became an attorney and blah blah blah.”
Mercedes paused. She gazed at a spot somewhere over Mo’s shoulder. “It’s…it’s weird, Mo. But I’m afraid he’s infecting me.”
From down on the ball field came a huge, collective moan.
“Infecting?”
Mercedes knotted her fingers. “With the snob virus. Monette and I, we always lived in such butt-ugly apartments. The last one, if you sat on the toilet you had to put your feet in the tub. After you checked for roaches. But now we live in his stupid mini-mansion, and I…I don’t know.” Mercedes kept her eyes on that spot just beyond Mo. “You get used to nice things. Real fast.”
Mo hugged her knees. She searched for the right words.
“But Fox Street is nice.”
Mercedes pursed her lips. For no reason, a little rock broke loose from the hillside and tumbled down past them.
“When I got here last night, everything looked so, I don’t know. Used up. I told myself it’d look better in the morning, but…” Mercedes swallowed. “It looks even worse.”
One day last winter, Mo had been hurrying down Fox Street when she’d hit a patch of ice and whomped over flat on her back. All the breath went out of her. Her lungs refused to work, and for an endless moment, Mo lay staring up at the gray metal sky, abandoned by her own body. By the whole universe. This is how lonesome dying feels, she’d thought in terror, just before a great pain stabbed her chest and delicious, frigid air flooded all through her.
That was how it felt now. A shock, and then an outburst.
“Looks!” she said. “You said ‘looks.’ But looks don’t matter. It’s what’s underneath that counts!”
“This gets worse,” warned Mercedes.
“How could it? You’re disrespecting Fox Street! That means you’re disrespecting me, not to mention Da! And speaking of Da, I guess your stepfather—by the way, doesn’t this bonehead even have a name? I guess Mr. X doesn’t care if he breaks Da’s heart, because that’s what’ll happen if you quit spending summers here.”
Mercedes ran her fingertips over her gleaming head. “You didn’t even ask me why I shaved my head.”
“I did so. You ignored me.”
“I did it to make him furious. He’s always telling me I look just like my mom, and in his eyes, that’s the biggest compliment in the universe.”
Mercedes jumped up and started pacing on the edge of the Den, sending up dust clouds.
“He makes her so happy! It drives me bonkers! And now she can afford to quit her dumb job and go to college, the way she always dreamed.” Mercedes paced back and forth so fast Mo began to get dizzy, then came to a sudden stop. “It’s extremely challenging,” she said quietly, “to keep hating him.”
Mercedes had never known her father. When Monette had discovered she was pregnant, she’d moved away from Fox Street and never looked back. She refused to even say who he was—he was sweet and he was gone, that was all the information Mercedes had. Here was yet one more way Merce and Mo were alike, beside having identical initials, and being born the very same autumn, and both adoring Fox Street: They were both half orphans.
“He wants me to call him Dad. Ha! They’ll fix the Crater before I call him that.”
“What is his name?” Mo asked.
“Cornelius!” Mercedes cried. “Cornelius Christian Cunningham!”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“Three-C!”
“Lord give me strength!” piped a voice, and Dottie butt skidded down beside them. A licorice whip drooped from her mouth like an extra tongue. Her hair not only was brushed, it had a ribbon in it, making her look like a stray someone had attempted to dress up for a dog show.
“You’re more persistent than the plague.” Mercedes wiped her eyes. All the merriment drained out of her.
“You all right, Mercey?”
“Do I look like I’m all right?” Mercedes sank back down on her beanbag. When Dottie nestled close, Mercedes didn’t even shove her off.
What would it be like never to know one of your parents? Dottie claimed she had memories of their mother, but she’d only been three when it happened, practically not even human yet, and she also claimed she could read the minds of cats, and fly when no one was looking. She wanted to remember, Mo knew. Could you need something you’d never had, the way you did food, longing for it even before you’d had your first taste? And which was better—having no memories, or memories that made your heart swell with sadness? And—
“That was just the appetizer bad news.” Mercedes’s voice broke in on her thoughts. “Here’s the main-course disaster.”
It was quiet now. The ball game must have ended. To calm herself, Mo tried to imagine baby foxes curled up pointy nose to bushy tail in their den.
“I told them I was coming up here this summer if I had to walk the whole way, and they said they understood. I know Monette does. He was probably lying. But they both made me promise one thing before I left.”
“What?” Dottie whispered. “What did you promise?”
“To talk Da into selling her house and moving to Cincinnati.”
Traitor, Part 1
“BUT YOU KEPT YOUR FINGERS CROSSED, right?” Mo demanded.
“Of course! What kind of traitor do you think I am?”
“So it doesn’t count!”
Mercedes threw her hands over her eyes as if she couldn’t bear looking at Mo a second longer. “You insist on searching for a bright side, no matter what.”
Mo shrank back like a poked pill bug. “Something wrong with that?”
“You don’t get it!” Exasperation zapped Mercedes’s voice. “Sometimes there is no bright side. Okay? Da’s getting old! Understand? She’s only got six toes.”
“But…but she gets around fine on those…” “Stumps” stuck in Mo’s throat.
“Sugar’s a treacherous disease,” Mercedes lectured. “You can lose your leg if you’re not careful.”
A bad taste rose in the back of Mo’s mouth. A taste that, if it had a color, would be greenish black.
“Monette says Da shouldn’t be on her own anymore. Her pension’s not big, and she’s got too much to worry about between her health and taking care of the house.” Mercedes waved her hands in the air. “Not that I agree, but my bedroom? Monster water stains down the walls. It even kind of…smells. You know how Da is about cleanliness! That leak in her roof must have gotten bigger. If it rains…”
“It’s not going to,” the Wild Child said soothingly. “Daddy says it’s a freaking trout.”
“Drought!”
Mercedes sank her poor head into her hands. “It feels like everything’s falling apart here.”
“Feels!” Mo was on her feet. “Another measly word, just like ‘looks’! Nothing to do with the real, actual truth!”
“Go ahead,” said Mercedes from behind her hands. “Philosophize away. Be my guest.”
“Let me think.”
Mo concentrated. She fed a chip crumb to a passing ant, who immediately began dragging it home to share. Share. A meteor shower lit up her mind.
“Your mom can move up here!” Mo cried. “Three-C’s got oodles of money—let him fix up Da’s house. He’s a lawyer—he can get a job here easy. And your mom can go to Cleveland State, and we’ll all live here together. You and I will be
in the same class at school!” Shooting stars, zing, zing! “Just like we always wished, Merce! Sleepovers every weekend! You and me, twenty-four seven! It’s been nice to know you, Greyhound bus!”
Dottie bent her knees and pretended to stir a big pot. “The dance of victory!” she proclaimed.
But Mercedes shook her head. “Don’t you think I already tried that?”
The stars began to fade.
“Monette will never come back. She said good-bye to Fox Street because she’d made a mistake—namely, getting pregnant with me.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mo protested. “Nobody thinks you’re a mistake. Not anymore.”
Mercedes smiled. “Thanks, Mo.”
“It’s true! Why does Monette have to be like that? It’s too dumb!”
“When she lived here, everybody was so proud of her. After they got over their witless shock at a black family moving onto the street, everybody acknowledged she was brilliant, and stellar, and so excellent at so many things—”
“Like you.”
Mercedes smiled again. Mo knew all the stories about Monette—how people predicted she’d go to Harvard, or Hollywood, or who knows.
“Everyone pinned their hopes on her,” Mercedes went on. “Well, maybe not Starchbutt. As if she counts.” Mercedes bit her lip. “I’d run out of fingers and toes if I tried to count the number of times circumstances have gotten really, really low and I said, ‘You know, Monette, we could always move back in with Da.’ She always tells me, ‘No, we can’t. Retreating to Fox Street would be a giant step backward.’”
“I can walk backward. Want to see?” Dottie demonstrated.
Heavyhearted, Mo closed the toolbox and snapped shut the combination lock. They trudged back up the hill. On Fox Street, Ms. Hugg, the piano teacher, perched on her pink steps, painting her toenails the same purple as the streak in her hair. The younger Baggott boys were tearing around the A.O.L. (Absolutely Off Limits) House, machine gunning one another with sticks. As the girls approached, Pi Baggott executed a perfect 180 across the Crater.
What Happened on Fox Street Page 2
