by Haven Kimmel
“Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s another perfect ten for Zippy!” Dad would shout, while my mother clapped politely. I tended to do it until my neck got twisted, which would make me incredibly mad. Sometimes I had to stomp out of the house saying I hated that sport and would never do it again.
I was also very good at Interview. What follows is an actual transcript from a tape I made with my mother:
Me: “Mom. Mom. Mom. Hey. Let’s do Interview.”
Mom: “Not now, sweetheart. Let me just finish this arm.” [Note: She was knitting a sweater.]
We hear the “Me” character snort unhappily into the microphone, and then something that sounds remarkably like cat fur. The recorder is shut off abruptly, and then comes back on.
Me: “Hey, Mom. Mom. Mamamamamam. Let’s do Interview now.”
Mom: “We will. I’m almost done with this.”
There is generalized stomping and fury. The recorder is shut off, and then comes back on.
Me: “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so. Lootle ones to heem belonga. They are weak but he is stronga. Mom. Mom. It is time for Interview?”
Mom: “If you don’t stop pestering me I’ll never finish this sleeve and then we’ll never play Interview.”
A little primal throaty sound. The recorder is shut off. Comes back on.
Mom: “Good evening, and welcome to Interview. Let’s just go straight to our guest and have her tell us her name. Can you tell us your name, miss?”
Me: “No.”
Mom: [surprised] “Don’t you know your name?”
Me: “No.”
Mom: “Okay, then, is there something else you’d like to tell our audience?”
Me: “Not today.”
Mom: “Well, then. I guess we’ll just sign off. Would you like to say good-bye?”
Me: “No.”
Tape is shut off.
I WAS ALSO SO GOOD with animals. Once when I was walking to my friend Laurie Lee’s house I saw a woodpecker on a telephone pole, exactly level with my face. He seemed to be pecking in slow motion. I stepped up to watch him. He pecked! then slooowwwly pulled his beak back. Then peck! then sloooowwwly pulled his beak back. Then peck.
I wrapped my hands around his body. He was stuck in the telephone pole by his beak, so I pulled him out and carried him home, saying calming words over him. I found a shoe box and a baby blanket and wrapped him so that just his little fuzzy red head was sticking out the top. He looked very sweet. I left him on the front porch and went tearing in the house, yelling for my mom.
“Mom!! Come quick! There’s a sick woodpecker on the porch! I’m keeping it warm!”
Mom came out of her bedroom, where she had recently spent a great deal of time digging through her closet. None of us knew what she was looking for, but it seemed ominous. Periodically, though, she’d come up with a gem, like a stash of Avon lipsticks no bigger than the tip of my finger that she’d found in an old purse. They were the smallest lipsticks ever, and had the names of their colors printed in tiny red letters on the bottoms of the white tubes: Night on the Town, Coral Reef, Strawberry Frost.
“Is it alive?” Mom asked, carrying a pair of blue polyester pants I was praying she wasn’t going to cut up into a “jumper” for me.
“Don’t know. Can’t tell. It ain’t moving.”
“Don’t say ain’t. Well, cover it up till your dad comes home.”
So I sat on the porch swing with my woodpecker for what must have been a long time. The woodpecker’s black eye was all looking at the side of the box. When Dad pulled up to the house in his truck he hit the big hole in front of the tree that had water in it year-round, splashing the water onto the tree and the sidewalk, like he did every day. He got out of the truck, flipped his cigarette toward Edythe’s house, and hitched up his pants, like he did every day. He noticed me sitting on the swing with the shoe box.
“Gotcha a dead bird there, Zip?”
“Yep. It’s a woodpecker. Got stuck in a telephone pole. I rescued it.”
“Good for you. Let’s take a look.”
I delicately turned back the receiving blanket to reveal the whole of the woodpecker’s body, including its yellow feet, which were more decidedly scrunched up than the last time I looked.
“Oh, yeah,” Dad said, looking the bird up and down. “You’ve got a dead woodpecker, all right. Want to bury it?”
“Hmmm. I don’t know. I was thinking I might keep it for a while, maybe see if I can get it better.”
“I don’t think there’s gonna be much getting better for this bird. He’s got it as good as it gets. Look: he’s got a soft blanket and his own box. Let’s go ahead and just put him in the ground with the others before all these cats get wind of him.”
So we buried him in the garden. I was also very good at digging holes.
NOW THERE WAS SIMPLY no one more professional at strays than my sister. She was a one-woman Humane Society when it came to sick or wounded animals; our house was virtually saturated with them. But she also took in people, which wouldn’t have occurred to me. She must have noticed that it wouldn’t have occurred to me—I can’t imagine any other reason why she wanted me to accompany her to the Kizer encampment, and so close to Halloween.
Tom Kizer took in foster children by the dozen. He had built five or six little houses on a pretty big lot on Jefferson Street, and the kids were scattered through them by age and gender. The townspeople suspected that he was making a fair profit on the children, who were packed together and ill treated, but no one ever confronted him.
I had never been inside any of the little houses, which were all the same—white with blue trim. Melinda was baby-sitting me that evening, and said she had something to take care of with Mr. Kizer. The night was cold and clear and as we walked our breath steamed out in ribbons.
“Lindy. Hey. Whatcha got to talk to Mr. Kizer about?”
“He wants me to help take care of some of his kids. I’m going to see if we can agree on what he pays me.”
“He’s gonna pay you?” I asked, disbelieving. The idea that she might get paid for baby-sitting cast my sister in a whole new light.
“Don’t just stop in the middle of the street like that. Keep up with me. Yes, he’s going to pay me.”
“Wow. Wow. Do Mom and Dad pay you?”
She just snorted and sped up.
Mr. Kizer himself lived in the first of the houses, the one closest to the street. It was guarded by a mangy foster dog that growled even while Melinda was scratching it behind the ears. As we knocked on the door we could hear all kinds of ruckus going on in the house.
“Sounds like wild Injuns,” I whispered to my sister, who hushed me with a look.
Mr. Kizer himself answered the door. He was wearing blue work pants, a white T-shirt, and a brown cardigan. He was in his sock feet. Something about the way he was dressed struck me as askew, but I couldn’t say what. Behind him was a whole mess of children, some standing still and sucking on their hair, some jumping around and yelling. The house was strangely dark. There could have been kids in the corners I couldn’t even see. I suddenly realized there was a kid in a corner, but the fact of her completely stumped me.
My sister had been talking to Mr. Kizer while I surveyed the scene, but I hadn’t paid any attention to what they were saying.
“Lindy. Hey.” I pulled on her sleeve.
“Excuse me, Tom, just a second.” She put her face down next to mine. “What?” she asked, with a sharp little point.
“What’s wrong with that girl in the corner?” I whispered, pointing at her.
“I’ll tell you on the way home,” Melinda answered, smacking my hand down. “Don’t point.”
The girl was in what I took to be a wheelchair, though I’d never actually seen one, and the whole left side of her body was pulled up tight. Her hands hovered uselessly up near her face and she was drooling, as if she had spent too long being drawn by someone.
“Lindy. Hey. Hey. Lindy.”
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“Excuse me again, Tom.” I could feel my sister’s mouth right next to my ear, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the girl in the corner. “Stop it right now, I mean it. I’ll talk to you about it on the way home.”
“Lindy,” I whispered, “what’s wrong with that girl?”
As she straightened back up Melinda casually pulled me closer to her, so that she basically had her arm around my throat. My sister could give it to me and give it to me hard, it isn’t as if I didn’t know that.
“Lindy, hey. Lindy. Melinda. Would you just please tell me what is wrong with that girl?!” I was trying to whisper, but I was exasperated.
She tightened her grip around my throat and kind of lifted me off the floor. “Tom, we have to be going. I’ll see you on Wednesday night and we’ll work this out.”
In seconds we were out the door and on the sidewalk. My feet had never touched the ground. Melinda had me by the arm and she was dangerously mad.
“You are so rude! I’ve never in all my life . . . I don’t even want to talk to you! You don’t even care how you make other people feel. You nearly embarrassed me to death in there, and I can’t imagine how that poor child felt. You just walk behind me. I’m not talking to you.”
We walked in silence for a few seconds, but I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Lindy? What was wrong with that girl?”
She turned around lightning quick, grabbing me by the arm and giving me a quick shake. I was a tall child, but only weighed about seven pounds, so when she pulled my left arm east, my right arm, my head, and both my legs went west. By this time we were in front of Roscoe Brown’s house. Roscoe had always been favorably disposed toward me, so I hoped he might be out on his porch and would give my sister the what-for. But no Roscoe.
Now she was dragging me and talking through her clenched teeth at the same time. “I can’t believe all the ways Mom and Dad have gone wrong with you, it just makes me crazy. You act like you don’t even have a heart! This summer you didn’t even cry at Bambi! What is wrong with you?!”
I was trying to think of how to tell her why I didn’t cry at Bambi even though my heart was broken, when we turned the corner at Reed and Mary Ball’s house. We were almost home.
“Lindy? What was wrong with that girl?”
Melinda took a deep breath, then let it out in a cold cloud. She reached out for my hand, quick to anger and quick to forgive. “She was just born that way, honey.”
It was an answer I hadn’t really expected. She was born that way? It was as if Melinda had both answered my question and refused to answer it. She looked down at me, waiting for me to devil her even more. It was a still kind of look, like the moment when a seesaw is perfectly straight. I had appeared in her life almost without warning when she was ten years old, when she thought she knew what her life was about, and who she was. What she became was my sister. She led me off the dark street and into our house, gently, like a pro.
* * *
CHANCE
No. No. Take back this card. Give me a different one,” I said, shaking my head and thrusting the card at my dad.
He sat perfectly still across the dining room table on which no meals were ever taken. “You’re giving me back a card I just dealt you?”
“Yes. That’s the six of clubs and I don’t want it because it’s a boy.”
“The six of clubs is a boy?”
“I would like to only have girls in my hand, please.”
He continued to study me a moment, considering his best tactic.
“Zip: when I deal you a hand of cards you just take what you’re given and then we play the game from there. It’s a game of chance.”
“Well, that’s just stupid. Also I don’t want this three of diamonds, because even though diamonds are girls, threes are boys. How many cards am I supposed to have?”
“You’re supposed to have eleven, but I’ve only dealt five so far and you’ve tried to give back two.”
“Then could I please have one two three four five six seven eight cards, please? All girls?”
Dad tapped his very wide, blunt fingertips on the table top, then reached over and picked up a book. He opened it up to a very nonspecific-looking page in the middle and read aloud: “Players may not refuse to accept cards on the basis of boys or girls. Players must accept hand dealt by their dads.”
“Let me see that,” I said, speedy-quick reaching across the table to grab the book.
“Nope. Only adults can look at this rule book. There’s an age limit. Also, you can’t read.”
“Two days ago I read the words french fries and frozen Coke, ask Mom. We were sitting at the counter at Grant’s in New Castle and I just looked up at the board and read them.”
“Can you spell french fries?” Dad asked in a testing sort of way.
“Nope.”
“Could it be that you happen to know you can get french fries and frozen Coke at Grant’s, and so you said you could read the words on the board because you knew they were up there somewhere?”
“Could be.”
“May I please give you this five of diamonds?”
I shook my head yes.
“Okay. What about a queen of spades?”
That one stopped me. It was a girl all right, but not the kind of girl you’d want to hang on to. I took it anyway.
“I don’t think that book you read from has anything to do with cards.”
“And why would you say that?”
“Because there’s a hoot owl on the front of it.”
“Good point. What about the seven of hearts?”
Seven was a boy, but the seven of hearts was a very, very sweet boy. I took it.
“Why aren’t you at work?” I asked my dad, studying my cards carefully.
“Why aren’t you in school?”
I eventually accepted an ace of diamonds, because all aces were girls, even the ace of spades. The two of clubs came next, which I debated, but accepted. Dad went right past the nine of spades—no way. The other red five I took; another queen (although the queens made me nervous); a lonely four that could have been a boy at another time, and finally, the eight of spades. Eights were completely girls, but the black eights were girls who were maybe a little too good at sports.
Dad then dealt his own hand face down, as if he didn’t care a lick what he got. He picked up his cards and studied them in his straight-backed way. His face was as blank as the face of a wild Injun.
“What do I do now?” I asked.
“The object of the game is to put together sets of threes, three cards that match. Do you have three cards that match, like three aces?”
I stared at him.
“No. You don’t. Okay, then. What we’re going to do is take turns getting cards from this pile right here. You decide on a card you don’t want anymore and discard it, then take a new one, and try to put together three sets of three. When you have three sets of three, you put your extra card on the pile when it’s your turn and you win the hand.”
“Who goes first at discharging?”
“You do, because I dealt to you. You actually have eleven cards, so when you discharge you’ll have ten.”
“I’d rather not.”
He looked at me blankly for a moment. “You’d rather not what?”
“I’d rather not go first.”
Some more sitting around saying nothing followed, then Dad carefully studied his hand, and chose one to discard. He placed it on top of the spare cards with a little snap.
“Zippy? What’s the name of this game?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Gin,” he said, and spread his cards out on the table. The winning hand was all boys, in sets of three: three kings, three jacks, and three ugly tens, lined up like war veterans in front of the drugstore. He stood up, slid his cigarettes and silver lighter across the table and into his breast pocket, and headed for the door.
“I’ll see you later,” he said as he stepped out o
nto the front porch. “Good game.”
“Thanks,” I called after him. I continued to sit at the table for quite a while, sorting out the girls and putting them in a little girl pile where they’d be safe. For good measure I put all the boys back in the box with the Joker, where they belonged.
* * *
A SHORT LIST OF THINGS MY FATHER LOST GAMBLING
1. My pony, Tim. He was excellently small and nice, and lived in the meadow behind the Mooreland Friends Church, with no one’s permission. One day I came home from school, and poof. If it were not for a photograph I have of me astride the little horse, with his name and mine written on the back by my mother, I would for certain think I’d made him up.
2. A small motorcycle. It appeared on the front porch one morning; no one learned to drive it; shortly thereafter, it was gone.
3. My mother’s engagement and wedding rings. The wedding band was heavy gold, with a little cluster of shooting stars that even had tails. In the center of each star was a diamond chip. In my imagination she just looked down one day, and they had vanished.
4. A boat. Like the motorcycle, it simply appeared. We lived nowhere near water, but every day I went out and pretended to drive it at abnormal speeds across choppy waters. For a brief time it took the place of rodeo as my favorite sport.
5. My twenty-five-dollar savings bond. I won it at the Mooreland Fair in a game of intense skill and concentration called Guess How Many Pennies Are in This Huge Jar. I guessed 468 and got it exactly right. My name was announced just before the Grand Champion pull at the Horse and Pony Pull, the zenith of the Mooreland social season. Twenty-five dollars was an unheard of amount of money at the time, and my father volunteered to deposit it in my “savings account” for me, which I had never heard of before that moment. Over the next few years I probably asked him for the money 736 times, and he always assured me we were just waiting for it to mature.
6. A wide variety of excellent hunting beagles.
A SHORT LIST OF THINGS MY FATHER WON GAMBLING
1. A wide variety of excellent hunting beagles.
