Sleepovers Read online

  When we go in to see Sister in that bedroom we have to be real quiet and everything is dark. Aunt Nell’s covered the windows with paper and tape and blinds and curtains because Sister cries when the light comes in. We whisper in there one at a time and the fan moves like it’s hardly working. Sister looks like a baby swallowed in pillows. And the ends of the old bed posts look like pineapples. And I’m sitting in Mama’s lap and she points at the fireplace and tells me when she was little she saw Aunt Nell beat bats out of it with a broom. There’s an old painting on the wall of a castle by the sea. The waves are high and there aren’t any trees or birds singing. It’s chipping in the corner.

  If I get too close to Sister I might get mono too. But I lean up on the bed and ask her if she’s afraid in here and she says no. I ask her if she’s seen an old lady ghost and she says no. I ask her if she likes the castle painting by her bed and she says no. She says her head hurts. Aunt Nell says it’s a “my-grain.”

  I was still a baby when Sister was born so I don’t remember it. Her birthday is May thirteenth. I miss her kicking me in the bed at night.

  I don’t like leaving Sister in that room. I bring her in June bug shells. She won’t hold them because she’s a little scared but she tells me to hang them on the lamp in the corner. It’s the only light she likes to have on in the room. I take my time and hang them all real careful in a neat row. And Sister squints and sees them. She says they’re her jewels. And it is so pretty and I want to fill the lampshade full of June bugs for Sister. Her birthstone is an emerald. Mine is peridot.

  I dream that great-grandmama sits on the end of Sister’s bed when she’s sleeping. And in my dream great-grandmama’s skin is clear with no sores or blood or pus. It glows like a nightlight.

  Mama sleeps with me at night because I’m too afraid to sleep by myself. I don’t want to wake up with someone sitting on the end of my bed. Mama says Sister will get better soon and come home but she can’t tell me when.

  Aunt Nell tells me not to bring Sister any more June bugs. I tell Aunt Nell to leave me alone she’s my Sister and I want to see her by myself. I have to get up on my tiptoes but I have good balance and I get the castle off the wall real easy. I put it in Sister’s lap and crawl up in bed with her and we pick at the painting. We start at the ocean and then the cliff and when we get to the castle Sister falls asleep. I get out of bed and it’s a big mess. Dark flecks are all over Sister and the sheets.

  Then I go to the end of the bed and ask Jesus to let Sister come home. When I open my eyes and look up I see that the ends of the bedposts ain’t pineapples, they’re really just magnolia blossoms before they bloom.

  I ask Aunt Nell where I was when Sister was born and she says I was there, but that I was too little when it happened for me to remember.

  Aunt Nell says Sister’s gonna grow up and have her own babies and have a good life. And I want to know how she knows.

  And that’s when Aunt Nell tells me about the night we buried Sister’s afterbirth. The afterbirth is the last part of us that comes out of our mamas. And we have to bury ours out by the swamp field. Aunt Nell said we buried hers right next to mine right out back of her house.

  I leave then, run out the back door and try to remember. I run to the swamp path, the birds fly up around me. I stop to catch my breath. I close my eyes and hear the summertime bugs in the grasses. I think real hard back to when I was a baby, so hard I start to feel how the rocks turned warm in my hands that night. The dirt smelled wet and I could see the moon in the bottom of that hole, shining on that afterbirth of Sister. I wanted to help, I put the rocks down in the hole easy. I didn’t want to break that moon.

  An Unspoken

  Hal Parker runs out to his wife’s hydrangea bushes. He’s trying to scare away the neighbor’s black Lab, Major. Hal claps his hands in front of him and shouts, but Major’s already peeing on the bush. It seems to Hal that lately the dog just won’t stay in his pen. Hal has watched him dig holes under it and even seen him climb over it once or twice.

  Hal looks next door. His neighbor Corey Lane’s Camaro is in the yard. He decides to tell Corey about his dog. As he knocks on the door and waits, Hal looks over the front of the house and thinks he should have talked to Corey about Major weeks ago. He also thinks the bricks need to be washed and the shutters need to be repainted. He knocks again and hears the floorboards creak on the other side of the door. Major is back at the hydrangeas.

  Hal doesn’t see Corey much. He doesn’t go to church, he doesn’t go uptown except to get gas, and, Hal thinks, he sure doesn’t spend enough time in his yard. He’s inspecting the overgrown boxwoods beside him when Corey opens the door.

  The first thing Hal notices is that the young man looks rough, thinner than he’s been. But he goes ahead and asks him how he’s been doing.

  “All right, I reckon,” Corey says. He scratches a scab on his wrist. His hair is greasy.

  “Well, I hear you been doing good work at Johnny’s chicken houses. He’s told us about it at the café,” Hal lies.

  “Really?” Corey straightens up a bit. “Sure did. Johnny’s a good man, he’ll take good care of ya if you keep on doing good.”

  Corey’s scab starts to bleed.

  “Lord knows it ain’t the best-smelling work,” Hal laughs.

  Corey smiles a little.

  “But shoot, you’re probably used to it by now.”

  “Yes sir.” Corey wipes the blood with the palm of his other hand. “I don’t even notice it no more.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re doing good for yourself, Corey. I really am.” Hal takes a step toward him. “But I came over here to talk to you about your dog. Now I don’t know what you got going on with that dog pen, but he can’t keep getting out and running all over.”

  Corey shakes his head in agreement without looking at Hal.

  “I know Major don’t mean to hurt nothing. But you know how much Clara loves her flowers, and we’ve been working out in the yard all summer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Corey says, “I really am.”

  “Have you tried an electric fence yet?” Hal asks him and he looks back at his yard. Clara’s there squatting on the ground with Major, giving him long strokes down his back. His tail wagging.

  When Fred and Jenny Lane moved next door, Clara was excited. The Lanes were young and happy. And Jenny was newly pregnant. Clara enjoyed watching her with her growing belly plant boxwoods and azaleas around the front of the house. Jenny emitted that glow all new mothers do and Clara found it intoxicating. She helped throw a baby shower for Jenny with some of the other women at her church’s fellowship hall. And to this day, Clara remembers how gracefully Jenny opened her gifts, unwrapping the paper at the taped ends instead of tearing it apart. And how she saved all the bows and ribbons, saying how pretty each of them was as she set them aside.

  Corey was just two years old when Jenny was T-boned by a transfer truck on Highway 35. They say she died instantly. And Clara watched over the years as Fred brought in women who came from people she didn’t know. She watched them move in and out, sometimes bringing their own children, sometimes not. The toys would always be left out in the yard. And the boxwoods and azaleas overgrew. Clara thought that if Jenny could see it all she’d roll over in her grave.

  Clara did what she could to help Corey. She babysat him whenever Fred needed, refusing payment. She took him to Vacation Bible School every summer. And she gave him five dollars for every good report card.

  Clara encouraged Hal to spend time with Corey. “I think it would be nice,” she said to him. But Hal never showed any interest.

  While Clara’s at the grocery store, Hal cuts her Knock Out roses. He wants to have them in a vase in the kitchen for when she walks in the door. He’s trying to make her happy. She used to scratch his back until he went to sleep. He does not know why she stopped doing that but he’s not going to say anything, either.

  Clara remembers trying to hold her baby when he died. He was going in and out
of fits and convulsions. He was screaming louder than she’d ever heard before. He was perfect, but he’d been born with a hole at the bottom of his spine. And that was in 1964 and the doctors told her that he wouldn’t live six months, but he made it to eight. Every night before she went to sleep Clara thought about when he’d die and she tried to prepare herself for it. She thought it would be a peaceful thing. She thought she’d hold her baby boy still and quiet as he went. But he would not stop screaming. She didn’t know that he’d bend and fight, that he’d turn in her arms into an unright thing. She did not think the Lord’s will would work that way.

  She does not remember much from the funeral. But the preacher asked everyone to join him in singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” And everyone joined hands in a circle around her. They all were crying and singing.

  Hal brings a glass of water to Clara in the living room. She’s drafting the Murfreesboro Historical Association’s newsletter, jotting in cursive on a legal pad, her feet on the couch.

  Hal settles in his chair and puts the Western channel on TV. “Now I’m not trying to stir you up,” he says, “but it’s going on about twenty years you’ve been secretary. Ain’t I right?”

  “Well, something like that,” Clara puts down her pen.

  “Just think, if you didn’t have to give tours near ’bout every weekend in the summer, maybe we could get down and see my brother’s place in Pensacola.”

  Hal retired from auto insurance ten years ago. He had been one of the top sellers in the district. Working to make his home with Clara the best it could be. Enough for a carport, a koi pond, and a fountain with an angel tipping water out of a vase.

  “I’ll think about it,” Clara says and she picks up her pad.

  “I know you don’t believe it, but they’ll survive without you.”

  Hal looks over to the built-in bar in the corner cabinet and thinks that he’s a better man now, better than the drunk he was. He gets out of his chair and sits next to Clara on the couch.

  Clara packs mashed potatoes and hamburger steak into some Tupperware and covers it all in brown onion gravy. Sometimes she brings Corey leftovers and he especially loves her brown onion gravy. She sets the Tupperware in a paper grocery bag with two tomatoes from her garden and a ziplock with two sugar cookies she’d made for their last women’s auxiliary meeting at church.

  Then she goes back to the sink to finish the dishes. She washes quickly because she wants to bring Corey his food before sundown. And she washes out of habit, not looking at what she’s doing. Instead, she checks on her African violet sitting in the window in front of her. She’d just planted it in this bigger pot and she thinks that it’s filling out nicely. It’s early September, the window is open and there are sounds outside.

  When Clara looks up Corey is fucking his dog, Major. They’re together

  in the dog pen and Corey is pushing Major into the dirt. The dog yelps, and Clara screams.

  She closes her eyes and turns away from the window and she stands there in her kitchen feeling like she’s been thrown.

  Hal finds Clara standing with her wet hands in balled fists covering her eyes. She clutches a fork in one hand and a sponge in the other. Water and suds drip down her arms and onto her apron and the floor.

  Hal says her name and asks her what’s wrong but she won’t respond or move. When Hal starts to unpry her fists, she says, “I saw him. I saw him.”

  “Who? Let go. Let’s sit down. What’s wrong? Clara! Clara!”

  “I saw him.” Clara shakes her head back and forth.

  Hal grabs her shoulders and then Clara stops and unclenches her fists. The fork and sponge fall to the floor. She opens her eyes and with her palms open on either side of her face she says, “I saw him having sex with the dog.” The first thing Hal thinks is that he wants to kill that son of a bitch.

  The sun sets and Clara sits at the kitchen table. She looks at the refrigerator and sees the clipping of Corey she cut out of the paper when he was the valedictorian of his high school class. And then she starts to cry. “I always knew something won’t right with that boy. He won’t ever right.” Hal grabs the phone on the wall.

  “Not yet,” Clara says, “don’t call the law yet. Please, Hal.” Hal stands there with the phone in his hand. “I’ve got to pray about it.”

  “Pray? You want to pray about it?”

  “I know you’ve never showed any care for Corey as long as he’s lived. He was just a poor child and you never wanted anything to do with him.” Clara starts to wring her hands. “And you know just as good as me that he’s done dwindled down to nothing. Since his daddy died, he don’t have nobody.”

  Hal looks out the window.

  “You told me yourself that the other night when you went over there he looked the worst that you’d ever seen him.” Clara wipes her face. “This is gonna ruin him.”

  “He’s already rurnt, Clara.” Hal hangs up the phone and comes toward her. “Everybody knows he was runt from the start. Them Lanes were trash, but you never wanted to believe it.”

  “That’s not true. You know that’s not true. Corey is a good boy, Hal.”

  “With that lowlife daddy, dragging women from Arrowhead onto our street, stealing out of my shed. You know as good as me he was the one that stole my generator last Christmas, probably sold it for who knows what kind of drugs,” Hal went on. “But you turned an eye. And don’t you think I know that you give him money here and there for gas or shoes or whatever you think he needs whenever you go over there?”

  Clara looks at the bag of food she got together for Corey sitting in the middle of the table.

  “Clara, this has gone on long enough. It’s time you faced the facts. That boy is sick and you can’t save him.” Hal puts his hands palms down on the table.

  And outside Major starts to bark.

  Even though their son was born “defected,” Hal still named him after his father. Hal was proud to have a son. And doctors are just doctors, Hal thought, they can be wrong about a lot of things. His son could still grow to be strong.

  When their son was dedicated to the church when he was five months old, Hal insisted on holding him in front of everyone. The mama always holds the baby during dedications, but Hal wanted to do it.

  “What will you do if he gets upset and starts to fidget and all?” Clara asked, holding their son on the bottom church step.

  “You’ll be all right, won’t you, bud?” Hal touched their son’s nose.

  “Now you have to make sure you hold him real gentle when the preacher sprinkles the water on him.” Clara passed their son to Hal. “It might surprise him, scare him some.”

  “My son ain’t gonna be scared,” Hal said and he walked up the church steps with their baby.

  Hal ended up being right about the dedication. He told everyone afterward that his son had acted like a little man. Later that night before they went to sleep Clara told Hal that she’d been thinking about what she wanted to bury their baby in. Hal had never wanted to yell at Clara before, but he wanted to then. Clara looks over. Corey does not have his front porch light on. But the moon shines bright enough that she can find her way. She calls Major to her and she watches him move toward her from the edge of the darkness until the moon finds him and shines down his black coat. She squats down and takes his head in her hands. She holds him there and looks into his eyes and prays. She listens and waits for God’s quiet voice. Major breathes warm and heavy onto her and then he jerks his head to sniff into the bag of Corey’s leftovers. Clara gets up and gives Major a sugar cookie. And she watches him take it back into the dark.

  Clara prays all the way to Corey’s door. She knocks and the porch light comes on. She waits for God to tell her what to do and the door opens.

  “Hey, honey,” Clara says, “here’s some leftovers for you.”

  She does not want to look at him, but she hands him the bag. “Hamburger steak with that brown onion gravy you love so good.”

  The overhead ligh
t is swirling with bugs.

  “Thank you, Miss Clara,” Corey says.

  And Clara tries to smile.

  “You’re welcome,” she says and she turns to leave. “Now go on in and eat. Put some meat on them bones.”

  “Miss Clara,” Corey stops her.

  She turns and looks up to him from the bottom step of the porch. And for a moment he doesn’t say anything. The swirling bugs make strange shadows on his face. And his eyes look like deep holes in his head.

  “Miss Clara, I… I heard you scream earlier. I know you saw me. And I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry…”

  His voice breaks.

  “Yes,” Hal says into the phone, “you heard me right. He was fucking his dog. Corey Lane.”

  The police tell Hal they’ll come get Major the next morning and even though it’ll be Sunday, this is a special case.

  Hal tells the police everything he can think of about Corey. He’s a druggie, a thief, a dog fucker. And while he talks he looks out the window and there under Corey’s porch light, Clara’s in the dog fucker’s arms.

  When Hal and Clara got married, Clara’s cousin suggested that they go to Pecan Grove for their honeymoon. It was a quaint resort hotel the county over, with little bungalows on the river. “Just big enough to spit in,” Clara’s cousin said, “love shacks.”

  Hal knew Clara was a virgin. He knew he’d have to be slow, but he hoped eventually she’d learn to be wild. He remembers thinking about this while he tried to make love to her that night. How he could wrap her long hair around his fist, pull her head back, take off her clothes. But all she wanted to do was look at the river. Jumped out of the bed to go stand at the window. She would not stop talking about how pretty the stars were reflected on the water. How it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. How they made different colors, not only silver but gold and sometimes purple, too. She pulled him off the bed, put him next to her.