by Diane Munier
So I do three cartwheels across the stage for my act. He is sitting on the stage holding Little Bit.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” he says.
“Abigail May,” I say. Well she taught me.
“You’re like a fairy. Like Tinkerbell,” he says.
So I go to him and I’m puffing a little and he hands me Little Bit and gets on his feet, and right off he gets on his hands and walks about ten steps on his hands, and his shirt works its way down, and there’s his whole stomach. Like Moondoggie. But he don’t even care, the tail of his shirt tickling his chin. He’s watching me and I just don’t know what to do. He’s very strong. So he pushes off his hands and leaps onto his feet and he’s pulling down his shirt and looking at me.
“What’s wrong?” he says.
“Nothing,” I say quick cause I don’t know.
“Well you ever see that before?” he says.
“Ed Sullivan Show.” They always have acrobats on there.
He laughs, and when he does it’s just…Christmas. His face is so powerful or something. He smiles and I have to smile and he’s laughing and now I am.
He takes Little Bit again and she likes him so much she puts her front paws on his chest and reaches to lick his chin.
So I put my hand over my mouth so we can stay quiet. I reach for Little Bit and he gives her over and he plunks my nose before he hands her all the way back. I smile a little. It’s nice. But it reminds me what a kid I am.
“You ever see the church?” I say cause it’s just across the yard and I got business there.
“No,” he says. “It haunted too?”
“Probably,” I say, so excited to show him the amazing beauty of Bloody Heart.
We cross the yard quickly staying as far away as possible from the eyes of the rectory. But the side entrance to the church goes right by their door, so we have to sneak along the church most of the way and Easy is very, very good at sneaking. So we get to the staircase and we have to crouch so the railing hides us. We get to the big arched doors and pull one enough to slip in and he slips in behind me. I dip my hand in the holy water and make the sign of the cross. He watches me, then does the same, then he smiles. He’s about the funniest boy I ever knew.
So we creep to the entrance cause we’ve just been in the foyer, and we look in there and it’s enormous, and empty. It smells like incense, layers upon layers of it from all the Tuesday high masses. First off I walk him along and show him the confessional and he pulls the door where Father would sit, he pulls it wide open and I can’t believe it. I have never seen in there, and it’s just a booth with a bench, nothing to it in there.
Easy looks around and smiles at me. He goes in and sits and I’m not sure. It just isn’t right, I know it. But I look around again and ignore all the saints and their suffering and I get in the smaller side booth where you get in to kneel and tell your sins.
“Easy?” I say, my face pointed at the sliding door that Father opens to hear all the things you’ve done wrong.
He opens the little door. Little bit has her nose against the screen sniffing at Easy and he puts his fingers there and says, “Hey Little Bit. And Little Girl.”
“You tell your sins in here.”
“You do?”
“Well what did you think it was for?” I say.
“For praying I guess. Don’t Catholics pray all the time?”
We laugh some.
“Yes,” I say.
It’s just so so weird to see Easy where Father sits. I can’t see him very well, but enough.
“What do you say in here?” he asks.
“Um…Bless me Father for I have sinned. My last confession was a month ago or something like that. Then I tell him my sins and he tells me to pray some prayers.”
“And why do you tell him?”
“Because that’s his job. One of them. To forgive my sins.”
“How does he forgive them?”
Easy is not stupid. These are very hard questions.
“He forgives them for God. He’s God’s worker. God wants to forgive our sins but we have to say them…like admit them. We say what they are and the priest has the job on earth to forgive us.” I did not even know I knew that. I think I said it very well. I think that makes up for Easy being in the priest’s booth.
“I wouldn’t tell him shit,” Easy says.
I can’t believe he cursed in church and in the booth.
“We better come out,” I say.
“I’d tell you something.”
“What?” I say.
“Did the police come to your house?”
I don’t know what this is. I am looking at him through the screen. “Yes.”
“You never said anything.”
I touch my pigtail, my braid. It feels like a rope. It holds me to myself. “There’s nothing….”
“You brought the cake.”
We stare again. There’s usually a purple light in there, but it’s not on now and we can barely see one another, but we are sharing the air. Little Bit licks my face and I pull him away.
“Let’s go,” Easy says.
That’s why he’s with me. He wants to know what I’m going to do.
He’s out first and he pulls my door and I look up at him. He gives me his hand.
I let him help me off my knees. He’s going to pull me toward the door, but I don’t move and he looks at me.
“Hold Little Bit.”
I know my head isn’t covered, and there’s not much I can do about it now. But he takes my dog and I go around him and through three sections of pews to the center aisle. I am walking slowly toward that big altar and a million memories. “Bless Easy Father, for he is a heathen and he doesn’t know better.”
I get to the rail and take that quarter out of my pocket and lay it three. It clicks solid against that white marble top and I think of Abigail putting her bottom there the day she threw her legs over and I went after.
I look at that big gold altar going up and up. I figure being Catholic is me doing right, but Easy is going into the flames on that terrible Day of Judgment. So I’m trying to make it right, this one thing at the store. I can’t go in and pay Mr. Hoagy, I can’t chance it for Easy’s sake. But I can give it to God, all I have at the moment. I can leave it here and hope some poor person will get it.
I make the sign of the cross and I turn and run down that aisle, the sound of my thongs flipping filling the domes and echoing like the wings of angels. Easy is holding the dog and he adjusts to meet me at the door.
He has questions, I see that, but he doesn’t ask. He just follows me out.
We get in the foyer and he stops me, hand on my arm. “He was bad,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what? You didn’t do anything.”
“I’m sorry…for your dad. It’s what you say.”
He stares at me. He swallows like he’s dry too, but not as dry as me. “Don’t be scared of me,” he says.
“I ain’t.”
He lets me go then. “I’m not good,” he says. “But I will be good to you.”
“I know,” I say. Maybe I should clarify. Sometimes Abigail May would yell this at me, “Clarify.” But I don’t think I can. I just know both things he said. I know.
“If you have to tell,” he says, “then just let me know so I can go.”
My tears are burning. “I don’t…I don’ know anything,” I say.
“Well…what about God?”
“He knows,” I say. “But not me.”
“I mean…will you have to tell because…you’re a church-goer?”
“Well I’m Catholic. That means I’ll go to heaven. Worse can happen I’ll have to go to Purgatory for a while. But eventually I’ll get to go in when everything burns off,” I say.
“I don’t know about all that. You go to church and get all worried about everything….”
“I’m not worried,” I say. “Just about Granma. I’ve been gone a long tim
e and she’ll be looking. But Easy…don’t you worry?”
He smiles and shakes his head. “Not so much anymore.”
We go then, get our bikes and go toward home. It’s pretty fast and we don’t talk, and end of my street he goes straight for Scutter and waves and I turn on Darnay Road. I am not lighter, but I am solidly in myself. I’m carrying things and maybe that makes me bigger. Older. That’s all I know.
Darnay Road 26
“Are you going to read your books?” Granma says because I dumped them on the table in the hall when I came in yesterday and didn’t take them up to my room right away. Usually I’d have two of them read by now.
I can’t say I’ve been too busy to read them because I’m not that busy. But the spying hasn’t gone away, and that’s good. I didn’t know for a few days after Abigail May left if I’d ever spy again but I had, first at the school, then in the church, then that same night, watching out my window, trying to ignore Abigail May’s dark and silent room, but looking for something, maybe for Easy, I don’t know. But all I saw was Father Anthony leaving Aunt May’s at eleven thirty pm. Talk about creepy.
Her first letter came today. Granma didn’t even say cause she hadn’t sorted the mail, just set it on the same little table where I’d plunked my books. The return address said Twelve Sea Gull Lane, Apartment B. That’s where Abigail May lives now.
If she tells me how wonderful it all is, I will hate her. And I don’t want to. If she tells me that, I will be so angry, like when Cain killed Abel, but I’ll kill her in my heart only.
So I take that letter and run up the stairs and throw myself across my bed and tear it open, but I don’t tear the return address. I pull out the letter, three sheets cause Abigail May writes like she talks, I know that, but I’m pleased, pleased she wrote so much.
Then Granma calls me and I can’t believe it. Right when I’m getting ready to read, ‘Dear Georgia.’
So I keep that letter and go to the top of the stairs and say, “Yes Ma’am?”
“Well there is a boy outside cutting our lawn. Do you know about this?”
I hear the blades whirring.
“No,” I say.
I think back on yesterday after I left Easy. I pretty much stopped at Aunt May’s because she called to me and she wanted me to know Gloria Sue called and said everyone is fine. Well Aunt May looked sad when she said that so I said, “Thank you Aunt May,” as polite as possible.
Maybe I was so generous because I’d had the most surprising day of my life sneaking around with Easy on his birthday. Maybe I was so full from that I didn’t have time to be boo-hooing like everyone expected.
“You doing all right?” May asked looking into my eyes like they were slides on a microscope.
“Yes,” I said, pulling my chin back a little.
Then she had to hold Little Bit and say hi and ask me to bring her over some, and then I had to stand there straddling my bike and needing to go to the bathroom while she decided she had enough little licks and put Little Bit back in my basket. But Aunt May said then, “Tell Granma she can hire Tim to cut her grass.”
And I’m thinking, ‘not him.’
“You know who told him to do this?” Granma asks me now concerning the ‘him’ who is cutting our lawn.
“Why would I know?” I ask her, and it’s crabby, but I didn’t mean it to be.
She is standing there, just home from going two houses up the street to her friend Nelda’s. I know there will be a new batch of magazines on the porch by her chair now.
Well she looks at me with her brows pulled down and I feel this gulp in my throat because maybe I’m guilty about all my spy-work. I give her the eyes cause they are all I have, and I go past her to the screen and look out and the handsomest boy in the whole world is cutting our lawn. And his shirt is off and sticking out of his back pocket, and he has some muscles as he pushes that contraption through our grass. Saints alive.
“Well Ricky’s not here anymore,” I remind in case she ain’t noticed. Ricky has cut our grass for the last two summers.
“Did you hire this boy?”
“No ma’am. I didn’t even think about it. The grass I mean.” But I have thought of Easy. Many times.
Granma is beside me and she pushes through the door and goes on the porch and she’s waving as Easy comes past. He stops then.
“Young man you get that shirt back on,” she says.
He looks at her, at me beside her, and I am saying with my face, ‘What in the world are you doing?’
Well she knows him now from the broken arm embarrassment and his wheelies and his father dying on the tracks and all.
He takes that shirt out of his pocket and flashing that underarm hair he puts it on quick like boys do.
“I suppose Georgia Christine has forgotten her manners,” Granma says to me.
“This is Easy,” I say. Then I say, “This is Granma.”
“Mrs. Green,” Granma says. “And what do you think you’re doing?”
Easy looks at the mower and at Granma. He plucks at the neck of his shirt like it’s sticking. Granma doesn’t like it when someone lets their whites go gray, and it’s real obvious that Easy’s mother has no gift for laundry.
“Well that shirt has suffered,” Granma says.
Easy stares at her. He is just waiting on her to be still I think.
“But we have another belongs to you,” she says, and she folds her arms and looks at me.
I just stare at Big Gray. I forgot all about Easy’s shirt from the kittens.
Easy says, “Can I finish Ma’am?”
“Don’t you generally ask first?” Granma says.
“I am,” Easy says.
“Oh well in that case you doing this from the goodness of your heart or trying to start a business?”
Easy rubs his chin against that raggedy sleeve. “Can I?”
“How much you charge?”
“Nothing,” he says.
“Well we can’t have that. I think a dollar fifty should go along fine if you do a good job and don’t leave raggedy edges,” she says.
He looks at me, but he doesn’t smile and me neither. He takes off pushing that grass eater then, and I stare after.
“Georgia Christine, I imagine you could get him some cold water from the jug,” she says.
She settles herself right there on the porch. She’s already holding a “True Detective,” magazine with a cover she doesn’t have to hide this time. But some issues, whoo-ee.
And never mind she’s living with one—a true detective--and doesn’t even know she can’t hide anything. And…it seems I can hardly either with her guess on Easy’s shirt.
Well I can’t imagine that Easy is cutting our grass. I open the cabinet and get the big glass. I get the jug out of the icebox and carefully fill the tumbler. Little Bit comes clicking down the stairs, one big hop at a time and tap-taps her way into the kitchen. She stands there wagging her tail while I get the cookie jar and get out two big chocolate chip cookies my very, very favorite.
I get the water and the cookies and I go out the back door. I make Little Bit wait inside. I go around the side of the house and Easy is cutting across the front, but we’re in the far corner now.
I’m walking pretty quick and some of the water sloshes on my thong and it is co-old. So I take smaller steps and he sees me and pushes the mower right to me which means he makes a wavy line that wrecks his neat pattern.
I give him the water and he drains the whole thing. Then I hand him the cookies and he takes those and puts a whole one in his mouth and smiles at me while he chews and real quick sticks the other one in there too. He winks at me and pulls a u-ee with the mower and gets right back to cutting.
I just don’t know what to think about Easy sometimes. But I do think he’s hungry or starved or something.
But maybe that dollar fifty will keep him from having to steal.
Then I remember, oh my gosh, Abigail’s letter. So I take a last look at Easy and he is
slicing through another row, and I run to the back porch and set his empty glass there and I pull that fat letter from my back pocket and read, read, read.
Well she doesn’t like it, sounds like. She says it right off, “I hate it here.” They’ve got flying cockroaches and Lord she hates those, goes screaming if she ever sees one, screaming all over. And they got them in Florida, she says, the way Missouri has sparrows. That’s how she writes it and I love her so much. Miss her so terribly there’s a hole in my heart so big my heart is just a frame with no middle at all.
I wipe some tears from my eyes so I can keep on reading.
She says Mr. Figley is a prune. That’s what she and Ricky call him. Behind his back only because Gloria Sue won’t allow disrespect.
“How can I respect a prune?” Abigail May writes.
And I am laughing and crying. Laughing in my mind anyway cause he did look like a prune. Like Gomer but shriveled.
Well she misses me.
“I miss you,” I say out loud.
They live in an apartment, one in a long row and all alike. She has to share a room with Ricky! That’s the most terrible thing I ever heard. They have bunk beds. That’s something I’ve always wanted to try. But of course Ricky gets top. And if she cries at night he yells at her to shut up or he’ll hold a pillow over her face, he says. Well he ain’t changed.
And Mr. Figley doesn’t like children to make too much noise. He says that old, “Children should be seen and not heard.” And Gloria Sue says they should be more quiet, that Aunt May must not have worried about their manners very much.
How insulting!
Well I’m so mad now. It’s not fair the way Gloria Sue treats her own children! And Prunley cleans his ears with bobby pins then hides them under all the doilies and when Abigail May has to dust she finds them and most times she just leaves them there and dusts around.
This is too, too horrible!
And sometimes Prunley takes Gloria Sue to dinner and Abigail May has to stay home with Ricky and be babysat by her own brother! And he’s so mean they can’t watch her shows but just his and he loves Combat, the most boring show ever made and McHale’s Navy and we love Ernest Borgnine, but not that dumb show.
