Calf

by Andrea Kleine

Tammy went out into the hall alone and Gretchen shut the door. She felt dizzy, but she thought she could do it and get it over with. She raised her hand to knock on the door, but, she thought, if Kirin was asleep, her mother probably didn’t want to wake her. She probably just wanted to check on her or kiss her good-bye. She probably didn’t knock. Tammy reached down and opened the door.

  Hugh was still lying there curled up on the bed. Gretchen, Monique, and the boys were lined up by the window like an audience watching a show. Tammy took a few steps into the room, not sure what she was supposed to do next. She didn’t have a script. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say.

  “You’re supposed to aim the gun,” Colin said. Tammy was holding the gun down by her side, the same way she would carry a book. She lifted up the gun and held it parallel to the floor. She took a few steps closer to the bed and veered a little to one side. Every time she moved, her head moved a little farther than the rest of her body and made her feel off balance. She saw her brother lying there like a sleeping lump. She sorted it out in her brain that he wasn’t playing Toto anymore, he was playing Kirin. Usually kindergartners don’t get two parts.

  “Get closer,” Gretchen said.

  Tammy took a couple of steps toward the bed.

  “Really close,” Gretchen said.

  Tammy shuffled forward until her shins were touching the side of the box spring and the gun was a few inches from her brother’s back.

  “Now shoot her,” Gretchen said. Tammy took a deep breath and waited for Hugh’s breath to catch up with hers. She used to do the same thing with her dad when he fell asleep in his armchair watching Saturday-afternoon sports on TV. Tammy didn’t like to watch sports, but she would climb into his big chair and match her breath to his. It was the only time she ever liked taking naps.

  Tammy tilted the gun up to the ceiling. “Pow,” she said quietly in an annunciated whisper.

  “That was lame,” Gretchen said. “No one believed that. You have to really do it. Do it better.”

  It was agreed that Tammy would have to pull the trigger to make it real. She hadn’t thought about it, but they were right. She should be serious. After all, it was a real gun. She should do everything real.

  Tammy got back into position. She held her arms straight out and pointed the gun at her brother’s back. It was easier to get her finger in the trigger hole if she held the gun with two hands. She looked down at her black sleeves merging into the black gun. The end of the gun was splitting in two. Her arms were wavy. There were lots of wrinkles on her sleeves because it was her mother’s turtleneck and it was too big for her.

  She looked at Hugh sleeping in front of her. He often fell asleep watching TV if Tammy and Steffi let him stay up late when their mother and Nick were out. For a second Tammy thought she might fall asleep and softly float down onto the bed like a person who was fainting. Tammy had never fainted, passed out, or had her lights knocked out. That happened all the time on TV. A person passes out and then wakes up in their bed the next morning. They can’t remember how they got there, but everything is okay again.

  Tammy didn’t know how long she stood there, waiting to faint, about to shoot her brother, but it was long enough for Gretchen to say, “Okay, we’re waiting.” Tammy knew this was Nick’s gun. She knew it was real. She knew that if she pulled the trigger, a bullet would go into her brother’s back and probably into his aorta and his heart. His heart would stop beating and he would bleed a lot. And then Tammy wouldn’t have a brother anymore. She wouldn’t have to walk him to school or baby-sit him at night. She might be able to move into his room and not have Steffi walk through her room all the time. Nick and her mom might get a divorce since they didn’t have a kid together anymore. Nick would move all of his stuff out. They wouldn’t have his shit-green coffee table anymore or any of his stupid stuff. Nick would be out of their lives and they wouldn’t have to see him on school vacations since they weren’t related. He would be gone and he wouldn’t come back.

  It would be sad that Hugh died. Everyone would cry a lot. He would have a funeral. Maybe he would be cremated and put into a little box. But then everyone would get over it and move on and stop talking about it. People would even say, you shouldn’t talk about that anymore. That’s what happened with Kirin.

  If she did it fast, she thought, she could shoot the gun and not kill her brother. She could shoot it into the wall or into the air. Tammy was trying to stay in character, but she wasn’t sure which character she was anymore. She didn’t know if she was Kirin’s mom, or the Witch, or Tammy. Or if she was some other character. Some person who couldn’t talk. Some girl who was raised by wolves. Some Indian girl who was left behind on the Island of the Blue Dolphins for so long that she forgot how to speak because there wasn’t anyone to talk to for years and years. She was alone for all that time. Her tribe had left her and her brother on the island to fend for themselves. They had left her brother by accident and she had jumped overboard from the white man’s ship so that her brother wouldn’t be alone. But the tribe never came back to look for them. Her brother died a few days later and she lived there by herself with only her pet wolf as a friend until she was an old woman and there were no more real Indians left in the world.

  Tammy lifted the gun up and pointed it at the wall and squeezed her fingers against the trigger. She didn’t think about it. She did it the way a person has to jump into a swimming pool they know is full of freezing cold water. You have to not think about it and just jump in. Almost surprise yourself that you are doing it. If you try to ease yourself in bit by bit, the water will be even colder. And it will be freezing by the time you finally get your bathing suit wet. You will never get used to it that way and you will probably back out before you are all the way in.

  The gun went off with a loud crack and spat out a little flash of fire. Tammy lurched backward, tripped on her skirt, and fell down on her butt. Her head spun to the floor and for a moment she didn’t know where she was, whose room she was in, or what furry, carpeted planet she had crash-landed on. She heard Monique say, “Oh my God,” and Kenny say, “Holy shit!” and she heard them all race out of the room and down the stairs. Hugh was making high-pitched screams with his lungs, which meant he wasn’t dead.

  Tammy’s head hurt. She felt hollow inside. She lay on the floor with the gun in her hand, her eyes closed, her arms spread wide over the plush. She wondered if she had missed the wall and maybe Hugh had a bullet wound and needed to go to the hospital, but she didn’t get up to check. She felt heavy lying on the carpet and had no desire to move. The carpet was nice and cushiony and it felt good under her body. She felt warm and comfortable and the rectangle of skin exposed between her turtleneck and her skirt felt good. She wanted to stay like that a long time.

  Tammy opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. It was the kind of ceiling made up of little stucco bumps. They looked like distant stars in a galaxy far, far away. If she closed her eyes halfway, her eyelashes made purple waves and a flashing rainbow of light. She wondered if they had rainbows in outer space. She slowly opened and closed her eyes a bunch of times, making flashing rainbows of different pastel colors. No one could see them but her.

  A laser beam shot through the night stucco sky. In her extraterrestrial world, Tammy thought it was a spaceship coming to rescue her and take her home. As it got louder, she knew it wasn’t a laser beam, but something else. She rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled over to the window to peek out from behind the shade. Swirling red police lights turned down 46th Street a couple blocks away.

  Tammy bolted upright. She had to get out of there. Her brother was still on the bed. Tammy didn’t see any blood, but Hugh was still crying. He was curled up with his eyes closed and he didn’t notice Tammy until she grabbed his arm. Then he let out a scream and tried to pull his arm back.

  “We have to go,” Tammy said and dragged him off the bed. She saw the naked photos lying on the carpet near the bedroom door. Gretchen had probably dumped th
em on her way out. Tammy grabbed them, but she didn’t have any pockets in her costume so she stuck them down the front of her underpants and hoped they wouldn’t fall out.

  Hugh moved slowly because he was still breathing heavy from crying. Tammy told him to hurry up, but after all, his legs were much shorter than hers. At the bottom of the staircase the two of them saw the red police lights shine through the window next to the front door. The laser siren stopped and Tammy could hear a car door slam.

  “Run!” Tammy said to Hugh giving him a little push on his back. She turned him in the direction of the back door and he ran out into the backyard. Tammy didn’t tell him not to run on the pebble path because she figured the police might find them if she said something out loud. She lifted the latch on the gate and the two of them ran into the alley. They ran as fast as Hugh could to where the alley emptied out onto the street. Tammy thought they would get caught if they walked on the sidewalk so she took Hugh’s hand, crossed to the other side, and continued running through the alley. Hugh was dragging behind her, slowing her down. She pulled his arm until it almost stretched out of its socket and Hugh was running on his tiptoes. He stumbled over his loose shoelaces and fell down to the pavement. His pants ripped at the knee and his pink skin showed through the hole and started to bleed in tiny dots. Hugh began to cry.

  “Shut up!” Tammy said, but it didn’t help. Hugh shook his hand free from hers and acted like he wanted to sit on his butt in the alley for the rest of his life.

  “Come on!”

  “Nooooo!” Hugh wailed. He looked at his bare knee as if it didn’t belong to him, as if a small pink worm had inched across his body and taken over his leg.

  “Come on,” Tammy said. “I’ll give you a piggy-back ride.” It was all she could think of to get him up. She squatted down with her back to him and he wrapped his arms around her neck and buried his snot-drippy nose in her hair. Tammy hooked her hands under his thighs. She had the gun in her right hand and it made it hard for her to hold his legs, but she managed to hoist him up and start running again although she was slow and clunky. After another block she turned and took the alley that ran in the direction of their house. She was tired, Hugh was heavy, but she ran all the way. She ran until the alley dumped them out onto 43rd Street and she only stopped to let Hugh slide off her back when they crossed to the corner where their house stood.

  Tammy thought it would be better to go in the back door. That way maybe her mother and Nick wouldn’t hear them and they could sneak in and pretend to be watching TV with Steffi. She could pretend they got home a while ago and everything was normal. That was her plan. To act normal like nothing had happened and the police weren’t after them. But Hugh was a problem. He couldn’t be trusted to tell a lie.

  “Look,” Tammy said. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. She thought it would be better to see who was home and then sneak Hugh in. “I have an idea. Sit on the steps and count to one hundred and then come inside.”

  “Like hide-and-go-seek?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hugh sat down, put his hands over his eyes, and started counting in a soft voice. Tammy pulled her cape around to the side and wrapped the gun by winding it in the fabric until it was twisted up into her armpit. She would wait until her mother and Nick were at work and then put the gun back in their room. She fished her key out from underneath her shirt and pulled it up through the turtleneck opening.

  When she unlocked the door, Steffi wasn’t watching TV. No one was in the kids’ TV room. Tammy decided it was still a good idea and walked over to the TV. She reached for the channel dial when Nick grabbed her elbow and whipped her around. She didn’t even hear him walk in.

  “Where have you been?” he asked. “Do you know what time it is?”

  Tammy tried to think of something. She needed an excuse, a good one. She thought about saying she got lost walking home in the dark, but she knew he wouldn’t believe her. Even if she told him the truth he wouldn’t believe her.

  “Where’s your brother?”

  Tammy wasn’t really scared before, she was just kind of confused. As soon as Nick said, “Where’s your brother?” a thousand ants were crawling over her skin. She had forgotten what her plan was, and whatever it was, it was already not working out. She knew if she said Hugh was outside it would be followed by something like, what is he doing out there? And it’s possible that Hugh could get spanked for something Tammy told him to do.

  “I don’t know,” she said. It was barely a whisper.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Nope.” Everything she said got quieter and quieter and she hoped she was slowly falling asleep.

  “Well, think!”

  Tammy thought she was going to fall over and crash into the shelf. The only thing holding her upright was Nick’s big hand wrapped around her arm.

  “I don’t know . . . outside somewhere,” Tammy said.

  Nick pulled her wrist forward and stepped behind her. With his other hand he spanked her hard across the butt over and over again. Really hard and it hurt.

  Tammy wanted to tell him to stop it, but she was scared that if she did, he would spank her harder. She usually didn’t yell when she got spanked. She just took it and cried to herself.

  Nick spun her around to face him. “Where is your brother? You left a little boy somewhere late at night and forgot about him! Where is he?” He grabbed her wrist tighter. It was swelling up and he was cutting off the circulation.

  “I don’t know!”

  “Yes, you do!”

  “I don’t know! He’s probably outside playing somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Nick turned her around again and took off one of his shoes. This time he spanked her over and over again with his shoe across her butt. A couple times he missed and got her shoulders or her legs. Tammy’s mother wandered into the kitchen to see what was going on. She stood in the doorway to the kids’ TV room. Tammy could see her watching. Her mother didn’t come in to stop Nick. She watched for a little bit and then walked away.

  “Stop it!” Tammy yelled and tried to get away from him. She took a step forward, tripped over one of her brother’s toy trucks, and fell down. The gun slipped out from her armpit and unraveled to the floor. She tried to reach for it, but Nick yanked her back up and grabbed it.

  “Where did you get this?” he yelled. He clicked something and took a piece of it apart saying, “Jesus fucking Christ.” Then he screamed at her, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING WITH THIS? DID YOU TAKE THIS OUT OF MY ROOM?”

  Tammy didn’t take it out of his room, so she said, “No.” Nick punched her in the face with his hand. It made Tammy’s head turn and it knocked her off balance. She took a step to keep from crashing into the toy shelf and tripped over the truck again. She fell down to her hands and knees with her butt facing Nick. Her head hurt. Her teeth hurt. Her nose hurt. She tasted blood inside her mouth. The photos hung in her underwear and slowly peeled away from her skin. She squished her eyes closed, not sure if she was crying or not, and wondered if Steffi was upstairs, directly above where she was now, listening with her ear to the floor.

  Tammy couldn’t move. She waited on her hands and knees for Nick to start spanking her again.

  “Go to your room,” Nick said.

  Tammy picked herself off the linoleum and walked inside to the living room. Her mother was sitting on the shit-brown couch watching TV, pretending like she didn’t know what was going on. Nick grabbed a jacket and said that Tammy was a liar and a thief. She was irresponsible and had left her brother behind at school all by himself. Nick was going to go find him. They would decide her punishment when he got back. When he opened the door to go out, Tammy yelled at him, “I HATE YOU! YOU SHITHEAD!” He turned around, pointed his long finger at her and told her to go to her room. And Tammy’s mother repeated, go to your room. Tammy told her she hated her too. Her mother said too bad.

  Tammy heard a squeaking sound from th
e kids’ TV room. She looked over and Hugh popped out from behind the back door.

  “He’s right there,” Tammy said as Hugh walked into the kitchen. Nick turned around and her mother got up off the couch. Nick put his hands on Hugh’s shoulders and asked, “Are you okay?” like he was all of a sudden trying to pretend he was such a nice guy who really cared. Everyone was such a fake. Everyone pretended. Everyone was really mean. Everyone would kill people if they thought they could get away with it.

  Hugh was sent upstairs to bed. He tried to say, “Good night, Tammy,” as he walked up the stairs, but Tammy’s mother said, “Hugh, just go to bed,” in a mean voice and he ran up the rest of the way.

  “Sit down,” Nick said when Hugh was gone. “We have something to tell you.”

  Tammy sat down on the shit-brown couch. The TV was still on. It was some boring detective show that her mother liked. Nick saw her looking at it and turned it off. Her mother and Nick went through the usual stuff about how they were disappointed in Tammy and how she was going to have to learn about responsibility. She was responsible for her brother. She was responsible for making sure nothing happened to him, for making sure he got home safe, and for making sure someone was around in case of an emergency. Playing with a gun was not responsible. She could’ve seriously hurt someone or even killed someone. They’d tell Tammy what her punishment was tomorrow. Tammy only half-listened because they always said the same thing. They were like a commercial she had to sit through in order to watch what she wanted on TV.

  “Was there something else?” Tammy asked because she was bored.

  “Watch it,” her mother said. This was usually supposed to scare Tammy, but Tammy didn’t care. She thought, you can’t punch someone in the face and beat them up with a shoe and then expect them to be afraid of a “watch it.”

  Her mother and Nick were quiet for a minute and then they both sat down. Nick had gotten a new job, her mother said. Well, not exactly a new job, but a promotion and a transfer. And a raise. We didn’t want to tell you until we knew for sure, they said. The new job was in Topeka. They were going to move there a few weeks after school ended in June. Tammy asked where Topeka was. They said Kansas.