Red Ant House

by Ann Cummins

  “You want me to tell her?”

  “Of course I don’t want you to tell her. But you will.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Yes, you will. You cannot keep a secret.”

  I didn’t say anything. Just soaped the fingers.

  “Leigh?”

  “What?”

  “Can you keep it a secret?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look at me.”

  I looked at her.

  We looked at each other for a long time. She took my chin. She pinched it. She was pinching it. “You are the one,” she said, “who cannot keep a secret. Am I right?”

  “I can,” I said, but she was pinching it. She shook my head back and forth.

  “Here,” she said. She pulled the sheet back. She put my face against her belly. The baby was kicking. “Feel that?” she said. “That’s your blood, too.” She put her hand on my cheek and held my face there. The baby stopped kicking, and my mother laughed. “Well,” she said, “it probably doesn’t matter.” She let me go. “It’s just as well that little girl knows what kind of man is living under her roof.”

  “I can keep a secret.”

  She closed her eyes again and leaned her head against the wall behind her. She tried to twist the ring on her finger, but it wouldn’t move. “I believe,” she said, “we’re going to have to cut this ring off. I cannot feel this finger anymore.”

  This was the summer they announced they were closing the mill. They were opening a new mill in New Mexico on an Indian reservation. Some workers got their walking papers. Some got transfers.

  “What shall I do?” my father asked Wanda and me one night when we were walking down to the train depot. “Shall I take the transfer? Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

  We had to keep it secret because it was just the sort of news that would send my mother into a tizzy.

  “It would mean a smaller house. You girls would all have to share one room, and the boys would have to share the other. But we’d eat good.”

  “What else could you do?” Wanda wanted to know.

  He shrugged. “Collect the garbage?”

  “You could do a lot of things,” she said. She was against moving. Wanda was fourteen. She and Zippy had limbo parties for their friends in our living room. My brother Ronnie and I could out-limbo everybody because we were bendable beyond belief.

  “You could work for the post office,” Wanda said.

  “I guess I could.”

  “Or the lumber mill.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Hate to let old Mike Reed down, though.” Mike Reed was my father’s boss. “That gentleman’s done a lot for me. But I want to be fair to you kids, too. What do you think, Leigh?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “You’d have to leave all of your friends.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “She doesn’t have any friends,” Wanda said.

  “I do too.”

  “It’s different if you’re a little kid,” she told my father.

  “I think somebody’s only thinking of herself,” I said. He winked and took my hand. Wanda gave me a look.

  “Good jobs are not that easy to come by,” I said. My father squeezed my hand.

  “We should put our fate in the hands of the Lord,” I said.

  He laughed. “Not bad advice,” he said.

  Wanda crossed her arms and just stared at the sidewalk in front of her.

  On our way home we saw Joe at Lucky’s Grill. We always stopped at Lucky’s for ice cream on our way home. Joe was in a booth with a blond woman and two little boys. When he saw me a queer look came over him.

  “That’s the man who sniffs around Rosie Mooney,” I said, “and I bet that’s his wife and kids.”

  My father looked at Joe. “Wouldn’t be the first time for old Joe Martin,” he said quietly. He nodded and Joe nodded back.

  “Mr. Martin, how you doing?” I called.

  “I’m okay, Leigh. You?” The blond woman smiled. She was wearing red lipstick that made her look like she was all lips. That’s how blond this woman was.

  “Can’t complain,” I said. “I haven’t seen Rosie and Theresa Mooney in a while, though.” The blond woman kept smiling. She was smiling at her french fries.

  “That old boy,” I told my father when we got outside, “probably has a wife in every state. Don’t you think?”

  My father put his hands in his pockets. “You shamed him, Leigh.”

  “Joe?” I hooted.

  He looked at me. “You shamed me,” he said.

  Wanda dug her elbow into me. “You shamed that man’s wife,” she said.

  I dug her back.

  “She shamed them, didn’t she, Dad.”

  My father didn’t say anything. He watched the air in front of him.

  “God wouldn’t spit you from his mouth,” Wanda hissed.

  Wanda’s no saint. She’ll knuckleball you in the back, and who are you going to scream to? The cats under the bed? The bloody cats?

  Wanda’s no saint, and Zip is no saint—You used to be such a sweet child, we used to dress you up and take you in the buggy and everybody said what a sweet child you were, whatever happened to the sweet child?

  I’ll tell you who’s the saint. My father is the bloody saint. He’ll say, “When I was over there in Guam? When I was fighting the Japansies? I walked to holy mass every day. I’d walk five miles if I had to. If it kilt me, I was going to holy mass.”

  So give the saint a hand.

  The Bean was lying on our lawn, winding the music box. The skater skated. The Bean was keeping her finger on the skater’s head, and the music was chugalugging because she was pressing the head too hard.

  “My dad’d never leave my mom,” I was telling her. “He’s a good Catholic.”

  The Bean sucked her cheeks.

  “This is why you want the holy sacrament of matrimony in the house. To keep ‘em from leaving.”

  She wound up that music box. Everywhere she went, the music box went. Terry was addicted to the skater on the pond.

  “Joe’ll be back, though,” I told her to give her comfort. That morning, we had sat in the peach tree and watched Joe throw his clothes in the back of his truck while Rosie sat on the front porch and just smoked. “Don’t you think?”

  The Bean lay on her back and let the skater skate on her stomach. She closed her eyes.

  “I mean, what’d he say? Did he say, ‘I’m leaving you forever,’ or did he say, ‘I need time to think,’ or did he say . . .”

  She was holding the skater, letting her go, holding her, letting her go, and the music was revving up just to stop, and I said, “Am I invisible?” Because she hadn’t said a word all morning. “Are you a mute?” I said.

  She looked at me for a minute, and then she screamed and laughed and the music box tumbled to the grass. “We’re invisible!” she shouted. She flung her arms and legs out like an angel. “I’m a mute!” she yelled.

  Then she started bawling. She said, “Don’t look at me.” She put her hands over her face and was bawling, a pitiful thing.

  Me, I lay down next to her, and I didn’t look at her, just lay there. The sky was blue-white. After a while she stopped bawling and started hiccupping. I said, “Got the chuck-a-lucks?” She sort of laughed and hiccupped. “You know the difference between chuck-a-lucks and hiccups?”

  I felt something scratchy on my hand, and it was her withered little paw. She whispered, “Leigh, you are my best friend.”

  I thought of how skinny she was, and how she’d probably never find anybody to marry her. I held her dry hand and we started to sweat.

  I said, “I know what’ll cheer us up.”

  She said, “What?”

  I let go her hand, rolled over on my side, and propped my head on my hand. I said, “That rich gentleman’s money.”

  We both peed ourselves. I tried to hold it in but the Bean hotfooted down the sidewalk, did a little sidewinder dance, trying to keep her knees togeth
er, her pointy bottom shining, and the pee ran down, and I don’t know if she was laughing or crying, but I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt. I peed his porch. Cars were honking. The Bean turned around and did a little dance for them, then scatted off around the house before we got the money. I pounded that door, and rang the bell. He was in there. The shades were open and then they closed. He was in there shaking in his boots.

  After a while we went for our clothes, but then this car stopped at the curb, and this lady got out, yelled, “Hey!” We started running. I looked back, and the lady’s my mom’s friend, Mrs. Malburg, who made oily donuts and ate them, fat Mrs. Malburg: “Hey, Leigh!” She was standing on the curb looking at the bush where our clothes were. She shaded her eyes. She looked straight at us.

  We hid in the little cave under Jesus Rock up there on Smelter Mountain. Theresa Mooney moaned, “I’m dead.” She scrunched in the dirt, shivering up against the rock, and I didn’t tell her there were ants there in the shadows. The year before I had buried a box of Cracker Jack there for a rainy day, but when the rainy day came and I dug them out, they were crawling with ants. I couldn’t see Theresa Mooney’s dirty feet where she was dug in. I didn’t know if the ants were awake.

  The Bean moaned, “I am dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.” She said, “Will she tell?”

  I started digging in the dirt with a stick. “Once,” I told her, “there was an Indian maiden who got stole by the calvary, and when she ran away back to her tribe, they buried her naked in an ant pile and the ants ate her. Her own people did that.”

  “That’s not true,” Theresa Mooney said.

  I shrugged.

  “First of all,” she said, “ants can’t eat people.”

  “You don’t know about all the species,” I told her. “Sugar ants, no. But these were not sugar ants.”

  She didn’t say anything to that.

  A train whistle was blowing—the Leadville train coming in. It was five o’clock. By now, my dad would be home. He’d be sitting at the kitchen table with his boots unlaced, stirring his coffee. Wanda’d be taking the potpies out of their boxes.

  “Will she tell?” the Bean whispered.

  Mrs. Malburg, muddy-eyed Mrs. Malburg, would be sitting across the table from my dad, giving him trouble. They would be talking in whispers so my mother wouldn’t hear. “It is,” I said, “against human nature to keep a secret.”

  The Leadville train whistled again. It was probably pulling into the depot.

  I closed my eyes and listened hard.

  “I’m cold,” the Bean whispered.

  “You can wrap yourself around me like a spider monkey,” I told her. “I don’t mind.”

  She crawled from the back of the cave and wrapped her ice-cube self around me. She said, “You smell like yellow urine.”

  “So lick me,” I said, and the Bean laughed.

  I was listening for my brothers, who would be coming after us. Wanda would send them. She would say, Jesus wouldn’t spit you from his mouth. They would all say it. “The calvary is coming,” I told the Bean. “Mark my word.”

  “We’re dead,” the Bean said.

  “We are dead under Jesus Rock,” I yelled so they’d know where to look.

  “Shh!” the Bean hissed.

  “This is Lazarus’s cave!”

  She unwrapped herself and scowled at me. She crawled to the edge of the hole, knelt there looking out, her little bottom tucked under her filthy heels. She stood up and stepped out into the sun. She stretched on her tiptoes and looked down the mountain. She turned around, her face twitching to go.

  I crawled out, too. The evening breeze had a sting, and the sun was sitting on the mountain. Scrub oak leaves were crackling all around.

  “Nobody’s coming,” she whispered. She squinted down the path.

  “That,” I said, “is an optical illusion.”

  At the bottom of the hill in the back of Sick Slim’s house, a light went on, and then Sick Slim was standing at the window, looking up Smelter Mountain. We scatted back into the hole. Terry started giggling and whimpering. “He saw us,” she said. “We’re trapped.”

  “Him?” I hooted. “He’s blind.” Then I remembered what my dad had said, how ever since he got back from playing soldier, Sick Slim didn’t like anybody at his back. But we were at his back. “Two naked children. I laughed.

  “What?” the Bean said.

  I crawled back out into the sun. I stood up and walked to the edge where he could see me good. I put my hands on my hips like King of the Mountain. I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see him looking, but I knew he was.

  I said, “Next time, we’ll make him give us money.”

  “How?” the Bean said.

  I didn’t know exactly how. It was coming to me. It was a dream in the distance.

  Trapeze

  The Bureau of Indian Affairs did three good things this one year: they got us band uniforms, gymnastics equipment, and releases from class for special assemblies every third Friday. So every third Friday we trooped down to the cafeteria with its pink walls and gummy floor to watch exotic acts. In September we got quilters from the Baptists’ quilting bee, three women who told us the history of America in quilt patterns, and in October Farmington’s volunteer fire department showed us how they trained their dogs. But in November we got a hypnotist. A hypnotist!

  He drove up during third period, and we watched him unroll himself from his Ford pickup. He was a long, lanky specimen dressed in black: a Stetson on his head, Tony Lamas on his feet. Mr. Lawson said, “Time passes, people. Will you?” We were just staring. The hypnotist was a handsome man!

  This was unexpected. In that little corner of the reservation, we were unaccustomed to handsomeness among adults. None of our teachers was handsome, not big-eyed Mr. Lawson, who penciled in the bald spots of his little mustache, and not Miss Adams, the bull-legged, square-bodied P.E. teacher—she had this whinny in her voice—and not fat Mr. Bellows, the history teacher, though we all liked him, especially when he propped his feet on the desk, leaned back in his chair, went to sleep, and then fell over. There was one handsome adult in town, the state trooper, Officer Chris, King of the Bloody Thirty, the thirty-mile stretch of road leading off the reservation. Now and again he invited us kids to look at pictures of accident victims. The pictures made our eyes pop.

  After lunch, we trooped into the cafeteria, which was also the girls’ gym. They’d rolled out the bleachers on one side of the room and put down brown paper over the sticky floor. In the center of the room there was a pile of rope. The hypnotist sat in a folding chair next to it. He was wearing this green swami hat instead of the Stetson, though he still had on the Tony Lamas. He looked us over, and he looked interested. He had this little smile. A curious eyebrow climbed high on his forehead when he looked at our varsity cheerleaders in their Friday getups, the cherry and gray cheerleading skirts. They sat in the front row, their knees pressed together.

  I hadn’t yet figured out how to be popular, but I was working on it. My brother, Ronnie, was advising me. “Say hi in the halls,” he was always telling me. He said hi in the halls like a roving politician, and he got elected: band president, student council president, basketball co-captain.

  Before we moved to the reservation, we lived in this big Victorian house in Colorado, where I was mostly invisible. I’m the fifth of seven kids. “Our little pill has to raise her hand if she wants to get a word in edgewise,” Mama liked to say every time I opened my mouth at the dinner table. “Quiet, everybody, the little pill wants to speak.”

  I liked the dark places in that old house. I liked sitting on the staircase between the first and second floors. This was a windowless place with plaster walls, a door at the bottom, and a little brown fence at the top for baby safety. Light sifted down from the bedroom where Ronnie liked to parachute my underwear out the window, and below, in the kitchen, Mama clanged pots, reminding us that she hates to cook. The staircase was my secret place. I liked sitting in the
shadows, watching the roof where it sloped to the door and thinking about trapezes.

  I saw only the trapeze and me on it, holding the bar between the bend of my knee or in the arch of my foot. A long-roped trapeze, thousands of feet long with no floor below or ceiling above. It would swing me lazily—I loved the feel—through black space. I could stay in sync with the moving rope, make my muscles reach their greatest stretch when the trapeze slowed to its peak, flip off at the last possible moment, and curl myself into a roll. I could roll twenty times in twenty somersaults before it was time to catch the next trapeze.

  To sit between floors and flip to the beat of clanging pots—that was what I liked best about that old house. On the reservation, we got a company house, a tiny gray three-bedroom box that looked exactly like all the other company boxes, and outside our window we had what Mama called the Wasteland—miles and miles of sand.

  I missed that old house. Truth be told, though, I didn’t mind the Wasteland. I loved riding shotgun in the car with the window open, the hot, dry air rushing past me, dreaming of Nancy Drew, whom I imagined gliding along next to me in her red convertible, a white scarf around her neck, a victory laugh on her face, blind to the sagebrush she crushed and the gullies she leapt. She’d dip in and out of dry washes, skip prickly pears, dodge hogans and sheepdogs and telephone poles. I liked to imagine my bike was hooked to the back of her car and she’d whiz me along with her. I had fat tires that could easily handle the heat, and I’d roll over rattlesnake heads, zoom up utility poles to follow the electric wires.

  I figure-eighted thousands of miles over dry desert, skidded through lizards and scorpions and tarantulas, barreled headlong toward fat birds on telephone poles, jumped ditches, zigzagged canyons—it wasn’t so bad.

  What I didn’t have, though, after three years on the reservation, was friends, and I was in danger of becoming—maybe already was—a dork.

  During assembly, we stomped up the wooden bleachers and Mr. McGilly growled at us through the microphone, “Quiet, please, softly, please,” and, “If you’re chewing gum and I find it on the floor there’ll be no more assemblies.” The senior boys always grabbed the top row against the wall. They meowed and hissed—“Shhht”—and threw sunflower hulls as we marched in.