Sleepovers Read online

  Abner comes back to the table.

  And Sister pours him more tea.

  Daddy tells Mama that her wig looks nice. But he says “hair” instead of “wig.”

  Mama says Lena tried to convince her to get the one with the red wash on it. “But I don’t need no wash at my age,” she says. She fluffs her wig and laughs. “I’ll look about like that cashier woman in Food Lion, hussy like.”

  Wayne and Daddy and Sister laugh a little at that.

  There’s three butterbeans left on Abner’s plate and he’s moving them around with his fingers. He looks at Sister and says, “Wash.” He eats one butterbean at a time and says, “Wash on her hair, wash on the land, the world needs to be washed in the blood of the Lamb.”

  “Stop that messing, Abner,” Mama says. “I don’t know where you think you are eating with your hands like that at the table.”

  Daddy takes his cap off and pushes his hair off his forehead. It’s sticky from sweat. He puts his hat back on, and lets it sit loose.

  Abner starts singing, “Are you washed…in the blood…in the snow cleansing blood of the lamb?”

  Sister looks at me like she’s afraid. Abner’s never sang at the table like this.

  “That’s right, Abner,” Wayne says to him laughing, “like what we sing in church.”

  Abner nods his head and keeps going, “Are your garments spotless, are they white as snow?”

  And I don’t sing it out loud but I sing it in my head, I join in with Abner to finish it, “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?”

  And he gets up from the table. The table shakes again. Abner turns his glass up and gets whatever ice is left in it. He walks out, crunching it with his teeth.

  “See y’all later,” he says and he throws up a wave behind him.

  “See you later, Abner,” Daddy says as the door slams.

  Everybody’s through eating.

  Daddy and Wayne head to the living room to take their naps during the stories. They can’t be in the field in the middle of the day like this. “Daddy, y’all ought to go on out there now and tend to that bear,” Mama yells from the kitchen. “’Fore it gets to smelling too bad, the heat like it is.”

  I get the scraps together to take out to the cats. Mama hands me some cantaloupe she can’t finish. On the porch I can hear her telling Sister how to wash the plates.

  I go out to the smokehouse and the cats come out from everywhere like they’re starving. Running over each other, meowing. When they’re eating like that is the only time you can touch them. They’re real skittish. There’s a little black one with a white spot on her chest. She’s the runt. I’ve been trying to get her to like me and I think it’s working ’cause when I touch her now when she’s eating, she purrs. So before long I’ll be able to get my hands on her and hold her soft under my neck.

  Since we ain’t had no rain, I’ve been giving the cats water plenty times a day. I keep one of the gallon buckets ice cream comes in at the back of the smokehouse in a shady spot for them. I grab the bucket and dump their old water out on Mama’s hydrangeas and take the bucket to the pump. The sky is still heavy and the dirt under my feet is cool like it’s gonna rain.

  I look out towards that fallow field and see the vultures circling. I walk to the edge of the yard to get closer. That’s when I see Abner out there. He’s punching his arms up at them. He starts slinging hisself faster and harder. He’s singing, “What can wash away my sin?” He’s moving back and forth in front of the bear. It’s laying there still, a big black shape. They’re all out there far from me. They can’t hear me but I come in with Abner, singing loud as I can, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus!” Then Abner stops everything, kicks the bear in the face. And he stands there looking at it real still.

  “C’mon in the house,” I yell to him. Abner turns around and sees me looking at him. I watch him coming to me fast, holding out his arms.

  And before I know it, Abner’s holding me. I’m shaking.

  “It’s alright,” he says. “It’s alright.”

  Lorene

  Lorene’s mama found her out behind the barn, under the sweet Betsy bush. She was laying there with her eyes closed. It was May, a pretty afternoon, the sun was shining, and the birds were singing. But Lorene couldn’t stop crying. She said she felt trapped and her mama didn’t know what to do. The doctor in town said maybe a change of scenery would help her. This was 1958. Lorene was fifteen.

  So, she went to live with her sister, Jane Ann, in Rocky Mount. Jane Ann was a seamstress and married to Billy, a photographer for the paper there. They had two children, Baby Barbara and Tom. It was nice in Rocky Mount, the trains were always running. And Lorene could walk to the library, check out all the books she wanted about Mexico.

  Lorene was shy. She didn’t talk much. She wasn’t close with her sister or brother-in-law, Baby Barbara or Tom. And she still cried from time to time. But at least she won’t on the farm anymore still having to use an outhouse, waking to miles and miles of fields and nothing.

  In Rocky Mount all she had to do was help with the children and wonder if the kids at her new school would like her blouses. She shared a bedroom with Tom. She hung out the laundry, gave Baby Barbara the bottle and dusted every week. She read about Mayans and Incas and Aztecs. She looked at pictures of The Goddess of the Dead drawn on walls and pots and jewelry—her mouth was always open, she ate the morning stars.

  And then one night at supper there was a moth fluttering at the screen door trying to get in. And Lorene felt she was the only one who saw it. So she got up from the dinner table and stood at the screen and pressed her face where it was fluttering on the other side. She wanted to feel how soft its wings were, like powder on her cheeks.

  But Jane Ann called her back to the table.

  And then that’s when Billy said it. “Lorene you’ve got quite the eye—quite the eye for detail,” he said.

  Lorene blushed.

  Billy was eating a chicken leg clean.

  She sat down and looked at her lap. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to see it real close.”

  Jane Ann was holding Baby Barbara. She was gnawing on her hands.

  Then Tom piped up. “We’ve got to catch it,” he said. He slammed his hand flat on the table. Everyone ignored him, but the ice in Lorene’s tea clinked.

  “Ain’t your birthday coming up soon?” Billy said.

  Lorene could feel him looking at her. It felt like a bolt of lightning.

  “Yes,” she said into her lap. “In a couple of days. August 20th.”

  Billy was tearing up his roll, sopping up the last of his sweet corn juice. “Well, we’ll have to do something,” he said.

  Jane Ann sucked in real quick then, Baby Barbara had bit her with growing teeth.

  When it came time for Lorene’s birthday, Billy gave her a camera. And she brought it with her everywhere. She saw how in the late afternoons the camellias hung with heavy blossoms and the holly bush reached through the fence.

  And then, during the night, Billy started slipping notes under her bedroom door, with instructions on how to capture light. Then close-ups. Then texture. Then “I always think of you.”

  So, when he asked Lorene to run away with him, she did it gladly.

  She dreamed of Jane Ann re-marrying a mailman with a small belly, one who’d make the children pancakes from scratch. She dreamed of visiting temples and mountains on assignment for National Geographic and Time.

  But what happened was Billy took her to Acapulco and strangled her with beautiful silk scarves. She gasped and gasped into the morning. She lost her virginity and took care of what would have been the baby. And then Billy left her too.

  But Lorene kept the camera he gave her, it sits on the shelf. She’s a cleaning lady at a hotel now. She’s shy and doesn’t talk much. She walks on the beach at night, pretends she sees dolphins. And sometimes, while washing mirrors, she looks at herself and opens her mouth.

  Jacuzzi

  The
first time I went to Myrtle Beach was with Courtney Robbins. She told me to roll up my shorts to show off my legs. She wore a string bikini. She wanted us to get boyfriends. We rode the elevators at night and stopped on every floor to see who’d get on. Her mama drank in the hotel bar with her boyfriend.

  We went to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not aquarium and took pictures in the shark tunnel. We got puka shell necklaces from the gift shop. We ate Sour Cream & Onion Pringles. We walked up and down the beach pulling gummy worms out our mouths until they dissolved on our tongues. We got tans. And then two boys were behind us in the snow cone line. And then Courtney went to singing that To The Window To The Wall Till The Sweat Drop Down My Balls All These Bitches Crawl song which made me blush but she elbowed me to join in. She knew I didn’t like that music. She knew I’d never had a boyfriend. She knew I’d never been kissed.

  She didn’t have a daddy. She could probably count on one hand how many times she’d ever seen him. She slept with a pee pad on her bed. Her house was outside of town, across the railroad tracks. She stuffed her bra with toilet paper. Sometimes, when we slept together, I woke up with her holding my hand.

  The boys in the snow cone line asked us where we were from and of course they’d never heard of it, but we’d never heard of where they were from either. But we were all staying in the same hotel so we decided we’d meet up with them in the jacuzzi later. They wore caps and silver chain necklaces. They said they were twelve, thirteen and they’d be leaving on Sunday. “Us too,” Courtney said.

  Courtney was skinnier than me in every way but somehow her boobs were bigger and that made me feel dumb. But it was exciting when the boys showed up. I told them I’d never been in a jacuzzi before. And they said they hadn’t either. But Courtney did what she always did to try and look cool and lied. She said her daddy had a jacuzzi and she’d been in it plenty of times.

  It was hot and my seat was gritty with sand. Courtney scooched over to the boy with freckles. I watched the bubbles keep coming and asked them all if they thought it’d be okay if I put my head underwater. No one got kisses that night, or touches, we just went back home more tanned. But Courtney told everybody at school that me and her got drunk at Myrtle Beach. She said we made out and did other stuff she couldn’t remember. Davis Askew turned around and licked his lips at me in the auditorium. I didn’t like it. And I didn’t talk to Courtney anymore after that.

  Sleepovers

  Nicki chewed on pen caps and twisted them with her teeth. She tore off pieces and kept them in her mouth. You could see them sitting on her tongue when she talked. I could never figure how she did that without choking.

  She came into our class in the fourth grade. She’d just had her appendix taken out and the boys picked on her. Will Fletcher said she smelled like pigs. Her daddy was a hog farmer. His hog houses were back off the road on the way to school. Sometimes on the playground, when the wind blew right on the top of the swings, you could smell them.

  Nicki and her family had moved down from Virginia. She had three sisters and they all had lots of freckles and long blonde hair. I’d never seen hair so thick and frizzy before. They all wore worn-out clothes that looked like mine just faded. And they all lived with their mama and daddy in front of their hog houses way back off road on the way to school. You could see their trailer sitting back there every morning. It was yellow down a long dirt path.

  And Nicki had a lisp—I’d never heard anybody talk like that. She was the littlest girl in our class. She sat in front of me and her shoulder bones stuck outta her sleeveless tops. She was the second oldest sister.

  When they had sleepovers it was like all the girls at school got invited. We played hide-and-go-seek and three girls would squish together in the same spot. One time I got a spot to myself in the kitchen cabinet and I saw a mouse caught in a trap. I screamed then we all screamed and then Nicki’s sister Samantha came in there and told us to shut up or we’d wake up their mama and daddy. Samantha was the oldest and we all huddled together hanging outside the storm door to watch her fling that mouse off the porch. It was flying in the air when Nicki said “Look—it’s still wiggling.” It’s little body shined in the porch light or maybe it was moonlight before it disappeared in the yard. “Poor thing,” Samantha said. “It’s half dead, half alive.”

  Samantha always did our makeovers. I loved her to French-braid my hair. She never pulled it too tight. And to make things work good with so many girls, Samantha made a rule that when she was braiding somebody’s hair, that girl would be brushing somebody else’s hair and getting her ready.

  At the first sleepover, Nicki asked me to brush her hair. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to hurt her. There was probably lots of tangles in her thick thick frizzy hair, maybe in the little baby hairs up around her neck. But I got all her hair in my hands and smoothed it down her back. Then I started brushing from the bottom, working out the knots. And then once all the knots were gone, I took the brush and ran it down from the top of her head all the way to the bottom. I remember she shook like she had goosebumps then, turned around and giggled, “You’re giving me the tinglys.”

  Samantha told us to hold our breath when she put her mama’s nice Mary Kay mascara on us that way we wouldn’t blink. And she told us how the lipstick and eyeshadow she gave us went with our season and what that all meant. And she had a special hand mirror with sparkles in it that she used to show us our new look. And then she’d make all the girls who were too scared to get makeovers get up off the living room floor where they were giggling and carrying on, they’d move their sleeping bags out the way, clear us a circle, and we’d walk around it so everyone could see our new look.

  And then we’d lay down, so many of us all together. You had to tiptoe not to step on anybody. And we’d watch Titanic and look at Rose’s naked body on that fancy couch, her pretty breasts heaving under that big necklace. As soon as it was over the Barrett Twins would holler for somebody to rewind it. And we’d watch it again and again—“the naked part.”

  In the fall, Nicki’s daddy got his leg tore off in one of the hog houses. He got caught in a piece of equipment. Every time anybody talked about it all I could think of was how he’d wallowed in pig shit and slosh after his leg had been ripped off, dragging himself through all that mess to get some help, with all the pigs grunting and running around, slick and mud wet.

  The school threw a spaghetti supper for him. To raise money so he could get a fake leg. But when he got it, it won’t quite right. Like it was too little or something and he hobbled around the best he could at basketball games. And then everyone would go to him on the bottom bleacher and shake his hand and tell him how pretty all his girls were.

  Everyone put Nicki’s daddy on the prayer list. And Mama gave me black trash bags and told me to put clothes in them I didn’t want nomore. She said she was gonna take them to Nicki and her sisters. I filled the bags but didn’t go with her. Mama came back and talked all night at supper how Nicki and her sisters smiled when they saw all the clothes, how they started trying them on right there in the middle of the living room floor.

  At the lunch table the girls talked about Nicki’s new dress, how they thought she looked nicer. It was black and white plaid with yellow sunflower buttons. I didn’t tell them it used to be mine. In class I thought about her shoulder bones, were they sticking out more? And I wanted to brush her hair. She turned around and asked me if she could please borrow a pen. Will Fletcher looked at me and said, “She’s gonna eat it.” I reached into my pencil box and grabbed a pen that I had chewed on and gave it to her. She took it and started to trace a picture of one of them wild horses running on the beach. She really liked that section in our North Carolina notebook, how those horses swam to shore after shipwrecks and stayed there in their own horse families, taking care of each other for hundreds of years in their own horse way. I watched Nicki work on the wild horses. She’d scratch out the tail and start again to get it right.

  The next thing we knew all t
he sisters stopped coming to school one day. The teacher told us they’d gone back to Virginia. We emptied Nicki’s desk out. The boys tipped it over and all her wadded up homework and half used notebooks spilled out. Us girls dumped out her pencil box. She didn’t really have any crayon colors we needed. She didn’t really have many crayons at all. All she had was the regular colors that everybody has, nothing special. But we split them between us anyways. And I stayed and dug for a pen cap to keep.

  Return to the Coondog Castle

  Cricket rode by where her husband is living with that Coonie girl, in that little shack house behind the black Baptist church. And she saw that girl sitting out there on the front porch and Cricket couldn’t help but feel sorry for her and hate her at the same time. The girl was spinning around in a computer chair, holding her legs out in front of her in the air. She’d put her legs down, stop herself quick and then push her feet on the porch floor, propelling herself again.

  And now this is the first time Cricket’s seen her husband since she threw him out. That was eight months ago, when she found out he’d been sleeping with Coonie’s daughter. She told everybody she threw him out because of the drugs. And that was half the truth. He’d been doing good for their three years of marriage and then he started back using. But everybody knows Daniel Adam has always been getting into trouble with meth. And “drugs” is easier to say than “infidelity” or “affair.”

  Last night Cricket held up her family’s old christening gown, the one she’d worn and everyone before her had worn too. She held it in front of her and thought there wasn’t a need for her to have it. And she cried not so much because her husband didn’t think of her, but because she was farther away from the family that they could have had.