Precious

by Sandra Novack

  “Dad smokes,” Eva tells her, without looking up. “You don’t get on him for it.”

  “It’s his house, and he can do what he likes. It isn’t your house, so there are rules. You embarrassed your father the other night, in front of his friends from work.”

  “Did I?” Eva inhales and blows a line of smoke, casually in the other direction. She extinguishes her cigarette. In the sun, her head throws off streaks of chestnut and gold. She threads her fingers through her thick hair, pulling out a few loose strands.

  “You don’t have a right to make him feel that way, not after everything he does for us all. You can’t just bring shame to our family.”

  “Shame,” Eva says, without looking up. “That’s all we have.”

  Her tone exacerbates Natalia. There is too much Natalia wants to say—her discovery in Eva’s room, her knowledge that Eva goes out to get high, her displeasure with how Eva influences Sissy. She wants to tell Eva that every once in a while she might think to cover her knees or chest when she goes out to meet her friends. She wants to say Frank is right—it’s Eva’s problem. That Eva acts like a szuka, a dog. She wants to say all of this, and more. “Look at me,” she says, waiting. “Why are you so angry with me, with your father?” In the backyard, children shriek with laughter. It is a pleasant enough day, Natalia tells herself. Everything is taken care of. There are no small catastrophes. Everyone is doing the best they can. Eva, she realizes, sees none of this. “Ungrateful,” she says finally “You’re ungrateful for all that people do for you.”

  “Me?” Eva glares at her then.

  It is this type of willfulness and defiance that only infuriates Natalia more. She opens her arms a bit, to let the incoming breeze cool her. “I heard from Milly I know that Sissy was alone, that you just left her.” Natalia pauses, letting this thought in, too—all the things that might have happened with a girl entirely alone in a house: grease fires and broken bones, slips in the tub, a head cracked on the porcelain. “You talk about me, and look at yourself. Look at your attitude, your lies.”

  Eva shifts uncomfortably, and Natalia feels a flash of victory. To her mind, Eva has asked for this—with her sullen demeanor over the past weeks, her cruel words. She doesn’t know what else to say, though it seems impossible to her that a mother does not know what to say to her own daughter. If Eva were a young girl again, this argument might turn into a conversation, might end with Eva throwing her arms around Natalia in apology. Natalia stands, wishing that her daughter would apologize, but of course Eva does not. She will not apologize for anything. “Lies are bad habits.”

  “If that’s the case,” Eva tells her, “then everyone except for Sissy is screwed.”

  There seems to be more to say, more to ask and uncover, but Natalia hears a voice and turns to see Milly and Jenny come around to the front yard.

  “There you are,” Milly says. Worry shadows her face. “I tried to call Ginny Her phone is off the hook.”

  Natalia eases her posture and pretends that no argument has happened at all. “Maybe she changed her mind?”

  “We’re going over to see,” Jenny says. “You’ll come, won’t you? Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

  “In a minute,” Natalia says. “Yes.”

  The women walk away then, launching into immediate discussion on how best to handle what Milly has already deemed a delicate situation. “We’ll wait for you outside the house,” Milly calls, turning briefly.

  Eva is still glaring. She pulls her legs up more and lights another cigarette. “Glad you’ll go and help them,” she says, her words measured.

  “Spit it out,” Natalia demands. “Whatever you have to tell me, spit it out.”

  Eva hesitates. She stares off across the street, to nothing in particular. “You didn’t care what happened,” she says finally. “After you left. You didn’t care that Dad went out one night, that he got drunk, that he came home late. And what did he do? Call me by your name? Come up to me? Put a hand on me?” Eva inhales and waits. Then she flicks her cigarette and sends sparks flying to the ground. She pulls her legs closer and wraps her arms around them.

  Her words feel like a smack, quick, across the face. Natalia stands, shaking her head. “All you do is lie,” she concludes, pushing Eva’s words from her mind. “All you do is make up stories.”

  Upset, barely able to register Eva’s words, Natalia walks to Ginny’s house and finds Milly and Jenny still standing together like an envoy calling out, unleashing a relentless succession of knocks on the front door. The afternoon light pushes down through the trees and between the row of houses. Somewhere beyond the house, a dog barks.

  “We’ve been at this for five minutes,” Milly says in an exhausted way. She checks her watch, possibly worrying at this point about the dwindling food and ice at the picnic, the necessity of putting items away. She peers into the window and raps on the glass, her knuckles white from effort. “Ginny” she calls, trying to peer in. “You’re missing the picnic.”

  Natalia goes to the door and feels it give without hesitation. She lets it drift open, intending to only call into the house, intending to remain a bystander, but it is the smell of burning food that hits her hard and the slight gray smoke that grows diffuse in the living room. Her feet react before her brain. All the thoughts she had of Eva on the walk over disappear in that moment and are lost to the day. Instinctively, she runs. Milly and Jenny follow close behind. In the kitchen, they find Ginny on the floor, slumped over, the phone cradled in her lap. There is a vacancy in her expression that startles Natalia, but she permits herself only a moment to let this register before she flicks off the oven and grabs a towel. She opens the door and bats away smoke and pulls out the cake, blackened, smoldering.

  “They called,” Ginny says, just audibly, nodding but not seeing any of them.

  Natalia places the cake in the sink. She comes over and tries to help Ginny up, but her body is like a lead weight that won’t budge. Natalia rests on her knees, feels the cool linoleum through her summer pants. “Who called, Ginny?” she asks. She looks over to Milly and Jenny.

  “They found something, but I don’t think— By the creek. They don’t think it’s her. They said they aren’t sure.”

  “My God,” Milly says.

  Ginny nods. Her face is pale. Natalia senses that she is falling, that every word they say is tumbling in after her, into an abyss. She knows this look. She saw it in so many broken faces when they became ghosts, floating, finally lost to the world.

  “Ginny,” Natalia says.

  “They said—” Ginny tells them, choking up on the words, “—they said the girl was raped.”

  Natalia picks up the phone from the floor, replaces it on its receiver. She feels numb, lost in things. She thinks of Eva, she thinks of Sissy. A shiver travels through her, even on this mild day. She is aware of the cuckoo clock above the sink, how it ticks and ticks away the hours, and she remembers that a cuckoo is a bird of bad luck, each call it makes sounding out the years the listener has to live. A heaviness hangs on her and she forces herself to breathe. “We’ll go together, Ginny,” she says, leaning forward to help her up. “We’ll go with you to see.” She places her arm under Ginny’s. The women help. Together, they manage to right Ginny, just as Natalia sometimes saw men do—men holding each other up even though it was futile, really, a last defiance against death, a last affirmation of something defiantly, wholly humane.

  Ginny trembles, her body tilting sideways. “I can’t. I don’t want to know.”

  “You have to,” Natalia says, steadying her. “We’ll do it together.”

  “They aren’t sure.”

  “You’ll be sure then.”

  “I should go back to the picnic,” Jenny says, shaking her head. She wipes back tears with her knuckle. “To let everyone know.”

  “Frank,” Natalia tells her. “Tell him I don’t want Sissy to hear. Tell him to take the girls out. I don’t want them home when I get back, particularly if … ” She fe
els Ginny get weaker and pulls her up. She whispers into Ginny’s ear. “We’ll go with you. Milly and I are going to go with you, but you have to walk yourself. Ginny, you have to walk.”

  There was, in Sissy’s estimation, a sudden disruption at the Morrises’ house, after Mrs. Schultz arrived, her face blotchy, her pretty hairdo smashed against her thin face from running, and her hand resting on her chest. A distress rose in the neighbors and there was, subsequently a whispered conversation as the adults gathered in a circle, away from the children. Sissy strained to hear until Eva—Eva who was included in the conversation, who stood opposite their father—caught Sissy by her bony shoulder. Seeing Eva’s expression—suddenly blank, palpably shaken—Sissy became nervous, her foot tapping the ground. She scanned the circle and the empty tables. She ran around the house and searched for her mother. Then, breathless and more than a little beside herself, she pulled on Eva’s T-shirt.

  “Eva,” she started, her voice quivering.

  “Go. Go play” Her tone was like their mother’s was on that day she was in no mood, that day she left them all.

  Within minutes the picnic ended, the men and women cleaned up, and a somber air seemed to settle over the once festive activity. The quoit game ceased, the hose was wrapped up. Broken pieces of balloons were collected and thrown into the trash, along with the empty beer cans and paper plates. On the walk home, both her father and Eva were oddly quiet. Eva teetered on the edge of the curb in a fine line, her mind elsewhere, her head down. Inexplicably, she held Sissy’s hand the entire way home, gripping it tightly. Sissy should have felt overwhelmed with newly found happiness when her father announced later that he was taking them to the circus that night, the outing itself that, in light of the picnic, she had all but given up on, and yet the entire arrangement had a conspiratorial air, the longed-for event no longer what it was the day before. It reminded her of the day she was sent to Mrs. Morris— exiled suddenly, cast off—even though she didn’t want to go there, even though she sensed something was very wrong.

  Now in the car, her father keeps his eyes on the road, and Eva, her body turned toward the door, watches the shops that go by on the square. Sissy, alone in the backseat, finds the silence unbearable. Her mind unravels possibilities, all of which end up in calamitous ruin. “Eva,” she says again, frowning.

  Eva looks back, tilting her head slightly, studying Sissy. “What?”

  “She didn’t leave again, did she?”

  “Who?” For a moment she pauses, her mouth open, as if she might say more.

  “Mom?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Sissy, no,” her father snaps, though Sissy doesn’t know what she’s done or said to make him out of sorts. She doesn’t know why he’s been brooding the entire drive, the vein in his neck throbbing. His voice sets her back against the seat again, and she knows enough to be quiet. The passing lights illuminate her arms and legs in strange, eerie ways, making her feel like a ghost. She watches her father, not knowing what he thinks—how his mind at this very moment is going over all the things that might happen to a girl, how violence can be inflicted on the flesh. She does not know that, thinking about all this, he wants to kill the sonofabitch who would do something like that, whoever would hurt a child in that way. He wants to pummel the sonofabitch with blinding fists. Sissy only senses his fury—palpable, the energy of it shooting in all directions around the car, ricocheting off the windows, piercing into her heart. This, coupled with Eva’s lack of any further response, only confirms for her that she is accurate in her perceptions, that her mother is gone again, that what unfolds now is a lie constructed by everyone and meant only to appease. In the distance, she catches sight of the taunting big top, yellow-white against the darkening sky, a red flag flapping in the evening breeze. The Ferris wheel makes its spiraling descent, mocking her with idiotic motion, each chair outlined in lights and swaying when the ride is started and stopped again. Yesterday such a scene would have filled her with awe and wonder. Whatever oddities she found in the day would have dwindled against the bright musicality of the night. But now, for whatever splendor there is in front of her, the air is also tinged with something else. She will hear only a tenor of sadness against the music, and the contrast will make the world seem strange, inverted, everything hinting of something Sissy can’t quite see or touch. Is it always to be this way? Sadness lurking behind laughter? Something amiss in the appearance of perfection?

  Frank scans the parking lot for a pay phone, eager to call Natalia and find out the news. His eyes follow the rows of cars in the parking lot, then move to the booths lined with banners and clicking turnstiles, the crowd of people funneling into the gates, the sudden noise.

  “Come on, Sissy,” Eva says. She grabs her hand so that Sissy can feel the pulse in the space between Eva’s thumb and finger.

  Their father walks behind them. He tucks his shirt into his shorts. He pays at the turnstiles and ushers in the girls. The smells assault them: buttery popcorn, steaming hot dogs, oil from funnel cakes. Around Sissy there are gleaming faces, bright with perspiration, some of whom she knows. Foreheads shimmer under the strings of light that are thread unevenly from stand to stand. Children, hoisted on their fathers’ shoulders, peer over the crowd, strings of balloons trailing behind them, bumping against one another gently. In the distance Sissy sees two balloons drift above the faces and heads, above the lights, carried westward by the breezes.

  “Stay close,” Eva tells her. “You hear me?”

  “Is Mom coming later, then?” Sissy yells this above the din, but Eva says nothing, and it’s impossible to guess whether Eva hears her and chooses to ignore the question or whether Eva hasn’t heard Sissy at all.

  Frank watches Sissy, her startling silver suit catching every bright bulb, reflecting them like a prism. Even this angers him tonight and makes him think that this is exactly the type of thing the eye is drawn to—the play of light—this is exactly what makes a girl stand out and makes her suddenly vulnerable. He imagines Vicki that day in the park, how appealing a lonely girl might have seemed to whatever sonofabitch who watched and waited and sensed an opportunity in the quiet, placid day. He looks from side to side, past the faces, past the rides. His face pinches. He already has it in mind that, in this mood, he won’t be able to stand this for long—the blaring noise, the flashing lights, the screams from children, people packed like sardines, the smells of their bodies intermingling: sweat and perfume, grease and dirt. The more he dwells on events of the evening, the more he thinks of the things that could happen. (A man attacking a girl, forcing her down. My God, he thinks, what if she were kept alive? What if her death were slow, spanning across days, or weeks?) When he first heard the news at the Morrises’, his mind went utterly blank. He felt numb and distanced from everything, pushed back into a void that contained only oceans of dumb silence. But now he is slightly dizzy, hot in the crowd. His body tenses.

  “Hold up!” he yells.

  To his surprise, Eva obeys. She turns and waits, still gripping Sissy’s hand. Frank pulls out his wallet and gives her the last of his money. Eva releases Sissy. She counts the bills and shoves them into her shorts pocket. Eva and Frank’s eyes meet. And there is something that is shared between them—doubt, guilt, regret. Something seems to register in her face for a moment—he imagines forgiveness—but then it disappears entirely. “The ticket booth is over there,” he says, pointing. “Take Sissy on what rides she wants; get something to eat, too. I’ll be back; I’ll find you.”

  “Where are you going?” Eva says.

  “I want to see if your mother is home. I need to find out what happened.”

  Sissy takes this in, a panic rising in her again. It is true, she realizes. What is gone and comes back is surely destined to go again. All her thoughts, all her worries. She grabs Eva’s hand and squeezes, but Eva doesn’t look down to reassure her.

  “I’ll find you. If an hour passes, meet me right here,” he says, pointing to the ground. “And Eva, you watch
Sissy, do you hear me? You keep your eye on your sister.”

  With that, Frank leaves the girls to weave through the disorienting crowd. As they walk, they bump elbows and push against people, and the ground changes from a paved surface to dusty grass, worn thin from traffic. The air is tight, stale. Concession stands and game stands lined with red-and-white canopies are to the left of them, the prizes—stuffed animals and plastic blow-up toys and dolls—strung along the tops, hanging precariously by arms and legs. The shooting gallery. The ring-toss. The water guns. The hoops. Lights flash, like a disco, pulsing in time with the loud music. They pass the big top, where a wiry-looking man takes tickets from the line of spectators. The woman on the wire; the wolf boy; the bearded lady; the woman balancing plates—they were all true, Sissy realizes. All of them. Away from this, a carousel turns in circles, like Eva’s dancer in her music box turns—slowly, with a measure of caution. Creamy horses lope up and down on their poles; the pipe organ in the center plays by itself, the keys pressed down by a phantom. A house of glass spins on a metal platform lit with green lights. To the right, a fun house lined with mirrors towers up, a painted figure—a monstrous woman with beer steins in her hands and Heidi braids—looks curiously though absently down on the crowd. Behind this structure is a petting zoo, metal pens with llamas and horses and goats, and then the field, the parked tractors and RVs, and the stationary train, the boxcars emptied, the flatbeds vacant.

  A pulse, a beat. Music. A hum.

  All the people. What do they wish for?

  Eva pulls Sissy as she might a piece of hesitant thread, walking toward the ticket stand. Sissy glances up and sees a man high above her, as tall as the woman with the Heidi braids, but thinner and in animated movement, a stick man dressed in long blue pants, a white-and-red-striped jacket, a top hat. He looks down at her and waves happily. Sissy squeezes Eva’s hand tighter and looks away. She searches the crowd of Gypsies.

  The lines snake from the booths, uneven, noisy. A pale girl about seven or eight passes alone and seems to float along with the crowd. Above her head, she holds a large crimson flower—delicate, airy, made of tissue paper pulled apart from a tight center. As she moves, the flower inches up higher, as if it is bouncing along the faces before being swallowed up entirely.