A Home for Goddesses and Dogs

by Leslie Connor

  I laid one hand on the bricks. I felt just a little warmth . . . and cobwebs. Wow. Everywhere! They stuck to my bare hands. They stretched themselves into strings that wrapped between my fingers. “Ew! Ew!” I tried to shake them away, but they clung and made me feel freaky. I wiped them onto the hip of Mom’s sweater with rough swipes.

  “Ew!” I said again. “Okay, okay.” I calmed myself down. The bricks stretched six feet or so, the same as on the other side in the upstairs hallway. That made sense. But how surprising that there was a passageway behind the chimney. At the far end, I could see the plumbing pipes that fed the bathtub.

  I started forward but quickly saw that there was more framing than flooring underfoot. I made a point of stepping on the joists. Between them lay tattered rows of insulation, the old kind made of pink fuzz and brown paper. I’d heard that you weren’t supposed to touch that stuff. It’d make you itchy. I did wonder what was under the rows. One thing I was sure of: mice.

  I spotted little chewed-up nest bundles everywhere, and some nutshells, and turds. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. . . .” Generations’ worth of whiskery ones must have crawled through here.

  Oh . . . a crawl space? . . . Is that what this is?

  I ducked under another swag of webs and reached into the peak with my open hand. It was nearly as cold as the outdoors up there. My adults would not be pleased that they were losing heat through this hatch.

  That reminded me, they and their dogs would be back from that walk soon. I stooped down to exit and something caught my eye—my ruler! I’d forgotten about it. I grabbed it and squeezed back through the hole.

  Well, the crawl space wasn’t the cleanest, warmest spot on earth. Far from it. But when I turned back just to poke the flashlight in and have one more look up and down, I knew I had found something that I’d been wanting: this was a home for the goddesses.

  24

  A Name to Stick To

  In the evening I stood at the kitchen counter topping the two bowls of dry dog food with a dollop of the stinky wet stuff. Eileen brushed by me, mumbling something about croutons for our salad. That was disconcerting for one who was looking into a pan full of kibble. But then she stopped abruptly right beside me. “Goodness, Lydia. You’ve got a webby thing here,” she said. She raised an eyebrow as she pinched the sticky strand off my hip. She walked partway around me, still pulling. “Extraordinary,” she mumbled.

  Eileen unraveling me.

  “That’s a nice decoration,” said Elloroy.

  “Oh, and looks like another on her sleeve.” Aunt Brat pointed at me with a cooking spoon. Great. I had everyone’s attention. With any luck, they wouldn’t ask—

  “What did you get into?”

  “Oh . . . who knows?” I said. “I did do some dusting earlier.” (Not a complete lie.) “Oh, hey, the dog! You’ve named him!” I said. “Guffer, right? So how’d you come up with that?”

  “Well,” said Aunt Brat with a coy grin, “he said it to me. In fact, he says it all the time. This morning after you left I was giving his coat a brushing. He was mouthing my hands—you know the way he does?” (I did.) “There’s a little sound he makes. He says, ‘Guff-guff.’ So I said it back. I said, ‘You’re an old guffer, aren’t you?’”

  “That’s right. And he said yes!” Eileen piped up.

  “He what?”

  “He said yes.”

  “Ludicrous,” said Elloroy.

  “Oh, tuning in, are we?” Eileen teased him. “And here I thought you were a little bit dead or something.” Then she argued, “It’s not ludicrous. As soon as Brat said it, the dog turned belly-up, tail wagging. That’s a sign of extreme well-being. He was saying he likes the name.”

  “Says you,” said Elloroy. He offered Eileen his pinkie and she hooked hers into it.

  Aunt Brat laughed at them. Then she said, “I hope you like it, Lydia.”

  How funny. Why would I have a say? “Sure!” I gave a shrug. “I just hope it sticks.”

  “Well, we spent all morning saying it out loud and giving him treats if he looked our way,” Aunt Brat said.

  Elloroy leaned toward me. “And you want to know what happened right after that?” I narrowed my eyes at the old man. “He pooped!”

  I snorted. I snotted a little, too. Couldn’t help it. I grabbed a napkin and buried my face in it.

  That set Elloroy off. He laughed so hard his eyes closed up tight. Great, magnified tears wet his magnified lashes. He had to mop them on his sleeve. Elloroy laughing made Eileen laugh and that made Aunt Brat laugh. Then the yellow dog—Guffer—came over, head on a tilt, ears askew, to check on all of us. He rumbled, then barked the sharp bark at us. That startled Aunt Brat. She made a big O with her mouth. We all burst into a new round of laughter.

  All the next week they worked on teaching the dog his name. We had to be consistent, my aunt and Eileen kept reminding me and each other. “At least we, the humans, are remembering this name, after all our failures,” Aunt Brat pointed out. “We probably had him thoroughly confused, poor thing.”

  Maybe she was right. Sometimes I thought the dog was getting it, and I don’t mean just his new name. There were times he actually cooperated, and I’d wonder if it was true compliance or just that in certain moments he wanted to do the thing we all wanted him to do.

  Regardless, at least once a day, he still botched it all up by peeing or pooping indoors or giving us the slip and running off. Aunt Brat’s shoulders would drop every time he messed up. One day I overheard her talking to Eileen. “We know the adage: It’s training the owner as much as it is training the dog. I’m perplexed. Soonie arrived with plenty of baggage from her days at the track but we worked through that. Was it this hard? Have I forgotten?”

  Eileen just sighed and said, “We’ll get there. We knew where Soonie came from. We had a little greyhound handbook. This dog didn’t come with operating instructions.”

  I’d hear those conversations and think about the old dog tag up in my art box and that name, Cici Hoover. I had her phone number. What if I could learn something that would make life with the yellow dog go smoothly?

  For my part, well, I used his name when I walked him to the enclosure at night, where he sat looking south and I stood looking northwest. I spoke to him; I even confessed. (Our back-to-back poses seemed good for that.) “I’ve put a serious hole in the wall up there, Guffer. Yep. Inside the house where these good people have taken me in. Taken both of us in,” I clarified. “But you know, Guffer, at least I didn’t use it for a toilet.”

  In fact, I’d been cleaning the crawl space whenever I’d had the house to myself—or almost to myself. I’d taken bags of felted cobwebs, mouse nests, and plaster pieces out to the trash in secret.

  “Guffer, I’m going to move the goddesses in,” I told him. “Ya hear what I’m saying?” I faced his back, then said his name sharply. “Guffer!” He turned suddenly to look at me. He let out a pitiful little yip like something had stung him. “Oh, what?” I said. Not for the first time, I had the thought that he might be a bit of a crybaby. But then he came over on his hoppy legs and waited in front of me to get his treat.

  “Good boy,” I told him, being consistent. Then I gushed at him so I’d sound even more like Aunt Brat and Eileen.

  “Gooood boy!”

  25

  Looking Forward and Back

  Looking through the glass wall of the fish tank, I saw a bloated version of Moss Capperow looking back from the other side. I had not come here to see him; I wanted only to see the baby trout. Still, Moss looked pretty funny. I might have been smiling about that—right up until I realized that I must be looking bloated too. I stepped back from the tank.

  “Hi, Lydia.”

  “Hi, Moss.”

  “How’s it going with your dog?” he asked. Funniest thing, I wanted to answer the way Elloroy would: That’s not my dog. Moss had probably watched our troubles from the windows of the morning bus.

  “Hmm. Not so bad, I guess. Th
ey finally gave him a name. It’s Guffer.”

  Moss gave a nod. “That’s a cool name.”

  “Well, seems to fit him,” I said. “But so would a lot of other names.”

  “Oh really? What other names?”

  I shrugged. “Like, Run-away. And Rug Wrecker.”

  Moss laughed again—not the kind of laugh that makes a lot of sound, but a wriggle that started in his shoulders and ended in his hands. Goofy. And a little bit sweet.

  “I just saw one of the other dogs from that day,” Moss told me. He seemed to think I’d be very interested, but I was confused.

  “From what day?”

  “Oh. Sorry. The adoption day. Maybe you didn’t notice me. I volunteered that day. I saw you. It was really windy,” he said as if that would jog my memory.

  So that’s why he’d said it was nice to see me again back on my first day of school here—the “significant fact” day. “I—I noticed you,” I said. “But then I forgot. I mean, I got to school and had it in my head that I’d never seen anyone before, so . . . You know. Besides, you had a hat on.”

  He smiled. But then again, he never really stopped smiling. I thought to ask, Hasn’t anyone ever told you, if you keep that up your face will get stuck like that? You’ll be terminally cheerful. . . .

  No, no. Don’t say that. . . .

  Instead I asked him a question. “So, where does Moss come from?”

  “Spores, I think.”

  I sputtered a laugh—clapped my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t spray Moss Capperow. He wriggled again.

  “Mossimo,” he said. “My mother’s maiden name.”

  I recovered and managed to say, “Oh . . . interesting.”

  “What about Bratches-Kemp?” he asked, and for once he looked like he was thinking instead of just smiling.

  I wished I’d had something clever to say, like that Bratches-Kemp was a species of salamander, or a team of brilliant physicists, or the cross streets near my birth home, or, better yet, something to do with a renowned artist.

  “Mother. Father,” I told him. I flipped my thumb from one side to the other.

  “I figured,” said Moss.

  I thought about how much I didn’t like wearing “Kemp” on the end of my name. All my life, I’d heard and liked the story of how my aunt, who’d been named Anna Lois Bratches, had decided to legally shed two-thirds of her name and just be “Bratches.” Mom had once said Aunt Brat was trying to free herself of anything that my grandma, her mother, had given her because they’d had a terrible relationship. Why did I have to keep Kemp when the real Kemp had chosen to up and leave me?

  “No dead ones,” Moss said.

  “What?” Then I realized he was looking into the fish tank again.

  “We lost a few in the beginning. Did anyone tell you?”

  I shook my head no. I looked at the fish hovering close to one another in the tank. “What did that . . . look like?” I asked.

  Surely a fish does not turn blue . . . does not tell the others how much she loves them. . . .

  “Floating,” said Moss. For the moment, his smile was gone. “We felt bad about it,” he said. “But when it happens we take the dead out and look them over with a magnifier.” He shrugged. “A dead fish is sad. But it’s interesting.”

  Moss had to go. I was surprised when I didn’t want him to. It was my turn to record the water temperature. I added it to the trout log. I pulled a chair beside the tank, sat down, and watched the trout wiggle their tails.

  Moss Capperow had me thinking about floating fish and things that happen last.

  Mom and I had made a last goddess—of course. We called her the Goddess of Looking Forward and Backward. Mom had started her in early December when she was thinking about the coming of the New Year. This goddess was unusual for us. She’d gotten her start as a female version of a male god from Roman mythology—Janus. He was the guardian of doorways, the protector at the gate. He gave his name to January. Mom had seen a sculpture in her favorite art magazine—a rendering of the god Janus—but as a female. We’d always invented our own goddesses, but Mom had felt inspired, and she’d set right to altering one of the Wasserman gallery portraits. She’d given the woman two profiles that faced opposite directions. Looking forward and looking back. We nicknamed her She-Janus.

  Our She-Janus sat around unfinished longer than any other goddess we ever had. Mom had less energy. I’d known it and she’d known it. She’d say, “Put a little paint or something on our She-Janus, will you, Lyddie?” I’d stood over that goddess and had tried to think what she needed besides two faces.

  One afternoon I’d mixed white paint with clear gel medium and I’d painted over her entirely. It looked like I had drowned her in milk; she was nearly gone. I dabbed some paint off to reveal her again. “Nice,” Mom had said. “Conceal and reveal! Now lay down some lace for pattern. Lift more white off.” So I had, and that left a wintry frost on She-Janus. I’d held her up for Mom to see. Mom had relaxed back into her pillow, wearing a smile of pure approval. But I’d had the thought that Mom, too, was paling into her own background.

  In the days after, I wondered at the coincidence of Mom dying so close to the New Year—leaving at that traditional time of looking forward and backward.

  Mom . . . it’s all I do now . . . I try to see forward . . . but I keep looking back. . . .

  26

  Two Little Goats

  The third week of January brought changes. Aunt Brat went back to her position at the university. That meant that on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings, after doing the bus stop thing with Eileen and the dogs (I hadn’t the heart to tell them that they were cramping my style), she took her long walk, then was gone until early evening.

  She was worried about not being home for me after school. I reassured her I was fine without saying I was actually kind of pleased. I’d hop off the bus and check in with Elloroy and Soonie to see if they needed anything before their nap. I’d take Guffer outside, get him to do his business, then I’d do my homework. “I’ll start dinner if you need me to,” I offered. “I know how to cook.”

  “I know. But you need to be a kid too.”

  It was just a few words, but I felt them in my chest. Our helper, Angelica, used to say that to me too.

  “Oh, if only I didn’t have afternoon classes,” Aunt Brat muttered.

  “But if you had to be in for early classes, you’d miss your morning walk here,” I said.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  We decided she’d pick me up on Fridays. (I think she liked the idea of us checking in with each other at the end of each week.) As planned, she was waiting for me in the circle inside the boxy car on Friday afternoon. Her head was bent. She was studying her phone. I opened the door and she jumped. “Hi, Aunt Brat. Sorry I startled you.”

  “It’s okay. I have a message from Eileen,” she said. “She wants to be picked up.”

  “Did the truck die again?” I asked. (I swear that truck was held together by rusted safety pins.)

  “Hmm . . . she doesn’t say, but I don’t think so. I’m not sure what this is about. But I think we best hop on over there.”

  “Right now?” I was surprised. The Feed didn’t close until six p.m.

  “Yes,” said Aunt Brat. “Seat belt.” She pointed at my lap. She dropped her phone into her purse and off we went.

  We found Eileen in tears. She’d had an awful day. I heard her say so as she buried her swollen face on Aunt Brat’s shoulder. There, she chugged out sob after sob. I stood near. I alternately stared down at the pine floorboards and watched my two adults working their way through some unknown awfulness. I listened for clues.

  “They dumped them,” Eileen said. “Right out on the front porch here at the Feed. I didn’t even know what I was looking at, not at first—” Eileen lost it in another flood of tears. “It’s two. Little pygmy goats. Alive. But bloody as . . .”

  Bloody?

  “They’ve got no hind hooves,
and three out of four ears were taken.”

  Taken? Off goats? For what? My guts lurched.

  “Oh, dear God!” Aunt Brat cried. “Oh, no, no! How awful. Oh, Eileen . . .” She tightened their hug. “I’m sorry. So sorry. Oh, who could do such a thing?”

  “No idea. It’s a crime, is what it is,” Eileen said.

  “Yes. It’s inhuman.”

  Aunt Brat held Eileen while Eileen cried and swore. I tried to figure out if I’d heard right. Eileen looked at me over Aunt Brat’s shoulder. “S-sorry, Lydia. Sorry.”

  I shook my head. I was aching and bewildered. “I—I’m sorry for you, Eileen.” I truly was.

  Barley, the owner of the Feed, came up the ladder at the loading dock. “She told you, huh?” He came around to the checkout counter, eyes on Aunt Brat. “Been a rough day,” he told her. “Brutal.”

  “Do you have any idea who, or how?” Aunt Brat asked.

  “Nothing yet. I hope we can get an investigation. Cruelty case, if I ever saw one.” He shook his head. “The vet will come as soon as she can.”

  “Oh, she’ll have to put them down, don’t you think?” Aunt Brat asked.

  “It’s her call,” Barley said. “She can’t get here until closing. I laid down straw and penned them in the corner so they won’t try to move around on those injuries. They each took a little feed and water,” he said. “But they’re listless. Look for yourself, if you think you can take it.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.

  It was hard not to look where that thumb was pointing. I wanted to see them. Was that awful?

  “No, no. Don’t look at them, Brat,” said Eileen. “And Lydia, not you! Don’t do it.” Eileen shook her head. She blew her nose on a wad of tissues.

  But Aunt Brat did cross the room to the corner and I walked with her. Eileen covered her face while we looked inside the makeshift enclosure.