What Makes a Family

by Colleen Faulkner

  I look down at my grandmother, lying there looking innocent. I wonder why she didn’t tell me. She should have told me. About all of it. Warned me. I’m actually annoyed with her. “You couldn’t have left Birdie a few dollars?” I say softly. “All that money and you couldn’t leave her anything?” I sigh again and walk away. It’s probably not good etiquette to criticize a dying person to her face. Even if she is in a coma. And she just left you a bajillion dollars. Or what seems like it right this minute.

  I start pacing again. Joseph just stands there. He’s gone back to looking out the window, leaning so he can see the bay to the far left. The Chesapeake Bay holds some sort of spell over us Brodies, or so my husband says. She mesmerizes us, calls to us in our sleep. No matter how many times we take in the view in a day, we lay our heads to our pillows wishing we could see her one more time.

  I wonder if Mom Brodie is wishing right now that she’d seen the bay one more time before she closed her eyes for the last time. It’s funny; she wasn’t born here, but she loved this island as fiercely as those of us who were.

  “Did Daddy tell you what he told me? That he thinks that Celeste borrowed money from her and didn’t pay it back?” I chew on my lower lip when he doesn’t respond. “You think it’s true?”

  “I don’t know why it’s so hard for you to believe.” He stares out the window. “She certainly borrowed money from me and never paid me back. You?” he asks.

  I don’t want to be a tattletale, but I nod. Mom Brodie, unlike Birdie, never liked tattletales. She liked us kids to settle matters amongst ourselves. Police ourselves, unless someone was in danger or something big was on fire. I look at him. “But that’s still no reason to—”

  Joseph meets my gaze, and I don’t finish. Of course that’s a good reason not to leave someone an inheritance. Surely Mom Brodie didn’t loan that kind of money to Celeste. I never gave her more than a couple of hundred dollars at a time. Well, maybe a thousand once or twice, but only when she was about to be evicted. Or the time she went to some island in the South Pacific with a guy who was supposed to be the love of her life and then dumped her there . . . without a plane ticket home.

  And then there’s Mom Brodie’s opinion of Celeste’s lifestyle. And how she spends her money. And other people’s. I can’t deny that my sister is irresponsible with money. Worse than irresponsible. Wasteful. Negligent.

  I sigh. Long and hard, feeling it to my toes. “Did Daddy say if he told Birdie?”

  He nods.

  I cringe. “How’d it go?”

  Joseph gives me a look that says, Are you kidding me? How do you think it went?

  “Birdie’s got to be devastated,” I muse. “Probably more than Celeste will be.”

  “You think?”

  We’re both talking quietly now.

  “You know how Birdie is about Celeste. Her little girl can do no wrong. She deserves the best.”

  He crosses his arms over his chest. “Little jealousy there, sister?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No?” His eyebrows go up.

  “Of course I’m jealous,” I scoff. “I don’t want to be. I don’t like how it feels. But I am. As long as I can remember, everything has been about Celeste. It doesn’t matter what I do: education, good job, perfect husband, perfect kids. Birdie barely notices me. She’s too busy looking at our movie star sister.”

  “Really?” Joseph grimaces. “You’re kidding, right? You’ve got everything, and Blondie has nothing. She hasn’t even got her looks anymore. How can you be jealous of her?”

  I cross my arms over my chest so that we look like some sort of dueling sibling pair. He looks at me. I look at him.

  “Abs,” he murmurs. “You shouldn’t be jealous of her. You should feel empathy for her.” He reaches out and takes me in his arms. Kisses the top of my head. I hold onto him, afraid I’m going to cry. “She’d give anything to be you,” he tells me. “Don’t you know that? To have just a little bit of what you have. You have so many people who love you.”

  I sniff, feeling silly. “You’re right.” I give him a squeeze, breathing in his scent. I remember the first time I held him and smelled the sweetness of his little head. It was the night Daddy brought him home to Brodie from the hospital in Salisbury where his mother died. To this house. I was fourteen years old, sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework, and Birdie just plopped him in my arms. I loved him from that moment on.

  I let go of Joseph and grab a tissue. “Did Daddy say if Birdie thinks Celeste should be told?”

  “Dad didn’t—” Joseph goes quiet and lifts his chin in the direction of the hall. I hear silence, then footsteps. Birdie’s.

  She walks into the room and looks at me and then Joseph. I dab at my eyes and then blow my nose with the tissue, wondering if she was standing out there listening.

  “What?” she asks, taking in my red eyes. Then she looks at Mom Brodie, an emotion in her face I can’t read. “She’s not—”

  “No,” we both say at the same time.

  She looks at us both again, pointing at Joseph. “What’s going on?” She points at me. “I know something’s going on.”

  “I’m going to go ahead and dispose of these.” Joseph scoops up the pill bottles off the nightstand. “Should I get the steam pot out of the shed, or is Dad getting them steamed?”

  “Getting them steamed,” Birdie answers. “Get newspapers for the table. Not too hot to eat outside. I don’t want the whole house smelling like crabs. This house will be full of people after the funeral. I don’t want anyone saying this house smells of days-old fish.”

  “Nobody liked the smell of crabs covered in Old Bay better than Mom Brodie,” Joseph points out.

  Birdie ignores him. It’s a clever ploy of hers, really. She just pretends that things she doesn’t want to hear were never said. I don’t know why I don’t try it.

  Joseph is making his retreat with the pill bottles. I’m surprised Birdie isn’t putting up a fight over them. She’s got expired drugs squirreled away in a drawer in her bedroom, just in case. “Newspapers. Right. I’ll get paper towels and vinegar, too,” he says. “You have saltines in the house?”

  “Have you ever known me not to have a box of saltines?” Birdie asks. “Where’s Ainslie? I thought you went to go get her. She should make her good-byes to her great-grandmother.”

  “Marly’s dropping her off, Mom.”

  Birdie looks over her shoulder at him. “You ask Marly to stay for crabs?”

  “Nope,” my brother answers. He’s almost out the door, the bottles in both hands.

  “Good,” Birdie says loudly enough for me to hear her, though possibly not Joseph. She’s at Mom Brodie’s bedside now, fussing with her pillow. “Think we should change the sheets?” she asks me.

  “I don’t think we need to today.” I speak to her gently. I know she’s upset, whether she’s letting on or not. She’s got to be devastated about the will. “Let’s do it tomorrow.”

  “She needs to be bathed,” my mother says.

  I go to stand beside her, and I actually feel the urge to put my arm around her. She’s got to be upset about Celeste being cut from Mom Brodie’s will. I’m upset, too, though not for the same reasons. I just can’t get myself all that worked up right now about Celeste not getting the money, now that I know she owes Mom Brodie. But I am upset that Mom Brodie left Joseph and me all that money and didn’t leave Birdie, the person who’s cared for Mom Brodie the longest, after Daddy, a single cent. Mom Brodie left an old lady who lives in a shack on our property money, but she didn’t leave any to Birdie?

  I don’t put my arm around my mother, though. It will just make her uncomfortable. It’ll make me uncomfortable.

  Suddenly I want to talk to Drum. I need to talk to him, to tell him about the money. To tell him I’m angry with Mom Brodie and feeling guilty about being angry with my favorite person in the world. Who left me a ton of money and didn’t even tell me.

  “I’ll bathe
her,” I tell my mother. Even though I don’t think it’s necessary to wash her. She’s not perspiring. There are no bodily functions to clean up. Mom Brodie doesn’t have a smell anymore. Mostly I smell the clean sheets.

  It’s like she’s fading away.

  Birdie smooths the pillowcase one last time and turns to go. Joseph is already gone. “Time your sister got out of bed. She needs to be with her family, a time like this.”

  “I thought we were going to let her sleep—”

  “You going to wake her or should I?” our mother interrupts.

  I stare at the blue carpet. My sister’s just been disinherited. And I know she’s been counting on that money. The least we can do is let her sleep in. But I keep my mouth shut.

  Birdie turns to go again. “And you better look in on Sarah. Been locked up in your father’s office. No tellin’ what she’s getting into.”

  In a split second, I go from feeling sorry for my mother to feeling like banging my head on the wall. Instead, I go to wake my sister before Birdie beats me to it.

  22

  Sarah Agnes

  Four months after I left Bakersville, I’m sitting in the food tent in Nowhere, Tennessee, talking to my best friend, Minnie. It’s a hot morning, and we got into town late last night. We have a lot of work to do if we are going to be up and running by suppertime. Already, I can hear the ring of sledgehammers hitting iron tent poles. But it’s beginning to rain, and the ground’s already a swamp from rain that fell over the last couple of days. It’s so hot and humid that it feels to me like what I imagine the jungle must feel like. I just finished reading Tarzan, so the jungle is on my mind. Bilis loaned it to me. He drives his own truck, lives in back, and he’s got more books in his truck than Mrs. Abbiati had at the market in her so-called town library back in Bakersville. And every town we pull into, big or small, Bilis goes out looking to buy books, old and new.

  “I’m real sorry about Hank,” Minnie tells me in that Southern drawl that I love. She’s sewing a tiny skirt that one of the dancing dogs is going to wear. A new act Jacko picked up in Dayton.

  Minnie’s my age. My fake age. She and her sister Millie are coochie girls. They dress like they’re identical twins. They’re not. Millie’s a year older. And I don’t think they look all that much alike, except they both have jet-black hair, and they wear the same hairdo. But they do this act together, covering their private parts, after they strip down, with big black-and-white feathers. Minnie starts out all in black, and Millie in white, but then they start sharing feathers and swapping them out. The marks love it. Minnie makes so much money that she can buy anything she wants and still send money home every week to her mother and grandmother in Atlanta.

  I groan. Henri. I was trying not to think about him. I caught him three nights ago in the back of the tent truck making business on our mattress with a local girl. He swore he hadn’t done anything with her, but she was only half-dressed. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen. She ran when I started hollering at Henri. Actually, she ran when I threw her shoe at him and it bounced off his forehead. I don’t know what scared her so bad. I didn’t use language. I was mad at him, not her. Though I did tell her she best get home to her mama. But I just said that because I was so angry with him.

  After I threw the rest of his stuff out of the truck, Henri got mad at me. He used language. Then he grabbed up a pillowcase, stuffed it with his things, and walked off. And he didn’t come back. The next morning, we set out for here, and I drove the truck. First time ever. Wasn’t hard. I’ve been watching him do it for months. And when the old truck got twitchy in second gear, instead of hollering and beating on the steering wheel, I was gentle, and she popped right into third with barely any effort.

  The rain’s starting to come down pretty heavy. It’s not looking good to open tonight. I stare out into the falling rain, trying not to cry. After Henri left, I was so mad that I let my anger carry me. He cheated on me. He was supposed to love me. We were going to get married after he saved up some money. And he made business with another girl. But my righteousness wore off sometime around midnight last night when we took a wrong turn headed here. I tried to back the tent truck up, got stuck, and Jacko yelled at me. He called me stupid. Some of the boys helped me get it unstuck.

  I told Henri good riddance when he stalked off the other night, but now I’m starting to miss him.

  I sniff and wipe my nose with his handkerchief I keep in my pants pocket. I wear pants because of the work I have to do. Odd jobs for Jacko. I pick up trash. I grease gears that need greasing, and I clean up after the animals. We’ve got a couple of horses, one that’s pink. And a lion. Lion manure smells pretty awful. Bilis calls it dung. But manure or dung, it’s nasty. I get dirty doing this kind of work, and the pants keep me a little cleaner. It was Bilis who brought them to me about a week out of Bakersville when I was struggling to lug water and tore one of the two dresses I had, clear up to my drawers. He found me sitting on the ground crying, and he didn’t say a thing. He just walked away and came back five minutes later with a pair of men’s pants that fit me pretty well with a string around the waist to hold them up.

  I bite down on my lower lip and look over at Minnie. “I thought Henri loved me,” I say quietly. But I’m beginning to realize how little I know about love. I thought my father loved me. I thought he’d come looking for me. Put two and two together and guess I was with Rudebaker’s. A few days after we were gone, I think I was actually hoping he’d show up. But he never did.

  “Hank loves you. He does, sweetie.” She bites the thread at a knot she’s just made with her teeth. “Best he can.”

  I sniff, fighting back tears. I haven’t cried in weeks. Crying is for little girls, and I’m certainly not a little girl anymore. Any little girl left in me was gone by the time we crossed from Indiana to Missouri. Funny thing is, it wasn’t making business with Henri that did it. I don’t mind the business; sometimes I even like it when Henri’s being sweet to me. When he kisses me a lot. And tells me how pretty I am. But it wasn’t that that made me grow up; it was life. It was earning my own keep. Seeing the good and the bad in people that I never noticed before because I guess I was too busy being a kid. It’s funny; I’ve only been with Rude-baker’s four months, and I feel like I’m years older than the night I snuck out of my father’s house. I was such a silly girl. Such a foolish girl.

  “If he loves me, Minnie, why would he do that? Why would he kiss on that girl? Why would he kiss her on our bed?” I ask.

  She reaches out and squeezes my hand, then reaches into her pocket and pulls out two peppermint candies. One for me. One for her. She pops hers in her mouth and goes back to threading her needle again. I don’t know how she knows how to make a skirt that will fit a dog, but she’s magic with a thread and needle. That’s what Bilis says. Turns out, she was the one who made Bilis the suit I saw him in that first time we met. She made Spotty’s red pants, too. Spotty’s her boyfriend. Nicest guy you’d ever want to meet as long as he doesn’t have money in his pocket and there’s not a craps game to be had. Minnie keeps most of his money for him so he doesn’t gamble away the farm, she says. Which is a pretty funny thing to say, since he doesn’t have a farm.

  “Men are different than women, Sarry. Don’t you know that by now? They don’t think with their heads all that much. Mostly just with their little johnnies.” Minnie arches perfect eyebrows that she plucks every day. She keeps offering to help me with mine, but I think it must hurt, pulling them out like that, one hair at a time.

  I laugh. Mostly so I won’t cry. I put the peppermint in my mouth; I love peppermints, and Minnie always has a supply of them. “You think he’ll be back? Bilis says he’ll be back. Just like a bad penny.” I realize that’s not a very nice thing to say about someone. When I first joined Rudebaker’s, I thought Bilis and Henri were friends. I think Henri thinks they are, but I’ve figured out pretty quickly that Bilis doesn’t like him very much. Bilis is always telling me I can do be
tter. (And correcting my grammar. Quick is an adjective, used to describe a noun. Quickly is an adverb, used to describe an action.)

  Turns out Henri’s not only not French, but he’s never been to France or even anywhere in Canada where they speak French. I know as much French as he does from the little book I got from Mrs. Abbiati. He won the beret in a card game the winter before we met, and the accent is something he copied off a seasonal worker who had ridden with the carnival last summer. His name had been Henri, and he had been from France, Minnie says. The whole Frenchman thing was just a game with Henri, who’s from Texas. But I don’t hold it against him. I still think it’s kind of sweet that he would like me enough to pretend he was a Frenchman to get me to like him.

  “I think he’ll be back.” Minnie holds up the little dog skirt, and I catch a glimpse of her new tattoo on her arm. It’s an exotic bird, like a parrot, with a long tail. It’s the most beautiful picture I think I’ve ever seen, God bless my Presbyterian soul. There’s an old Japanese man named Haru who does them. Minnie says he was the husband of a Japanese dwarf who used to travel with the carnival. After she died, Haru just stayed on. When he feels like it, he’ll let Jacko put him in the sideshow. He wears a piece of a bedsheet wrapped around him, kind of like a big diaper, and sits solemnly, letting people pay a penny to see his body covered in tattoos. And I mean covered. He’s even got them on his face. Most of them he’s done himself, Minnie says, but I don’t know if I should believe her or not because carnies, even the good ones, I’ve learned, lie a lot.

  I look out at the rain, watching it run off the tent sides, and sigh. There’s a group of men and women in the far corner playing cards and laughing and drinking coffee. I smell their coffee. I never drank coffee until I ran off with Henri. Now I love it. I love it so hot it burns my tongue. I love the smell of it in the morning in the food tent the best. “I guess I should get to work hauling water for the horses,” I tell Minnie. I can’t work up much energy for it, though. I’ll be covered in mud in twenty minutes.