Ask Anybody (8 page)

“My ma never shoulda had us,” she burst out. “She's sorry she did. 'Specially me. Said we were a mistake. All four of us. I told her if that was so, she shoulda learned from her first mistake and not gone on to make three more.” We sat there and looked at each other, not talking.

“Then you know what she did?” Nell's eyes were enormous. I shook my head, not sure I wanted to know.

“She slapped me. In the face. Just plain up and slapped me.” The lavender circles under Nell's eyes deepened in color.

“If she wasn't tied down with us kids, she said, she'd be famous,” Nell went on.

“Doing what?” I asked, sorry at last for Nell I couldn't imagine my mother not wanting me.

“She always wanted to be a singer. Like Loretta Lynn or Dolly Parton. One of those. You know. Get on the television, that's what she said she'd do. She used to sing with a band. She was real good too.” The color came into Nell's face as she got going with her story. Her feet moved as if she were dancing, there in the muddy road.

“My ma's built exactly like Dolly Parton, you know. And her hair's the exact same color. From the back you couldn't tell 'em apart. You oughta hear her sing.” Nell rolled her eyes. “If I put a blindfold on you, I bet you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between her and Dolly.” She gave me a challenging look, daring me to disagree.

“I never heard her,” I said, playing it safe. “And I never saw her either, so I can't really say.”

“Once we were in a diner and this man came right up to her and asked her for her autograph. Thought she was Dolly Parton.”

“That so?” I said in the way Maine people have when they don't want to commit themselves.

“Yeah, that's so.” Nell mimicked me.

I peered down the hill, hoping the bus would come soon.

“You're some tough cookie,” Nell said to me.

“I am?” I'd have to think about whether I liked that or not.

“We're a lot alike.” Nell smiled at me so I knew her mood had changed and she was feeling friendly. I felt flattered when she said that. I don't know why, I just did.

“What makes you say that?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “In this life you watch out for
numero uno
. That's me. Number one. That's you too. You watch out for yourself. That's the only way to make it in this world. Be
numero uno
and you've got it made.”

The bus finally came. As it bounced and swayed toward school, Nell's words kept going through my head.
Numero uno
. Number one. Watch out for yourself. We're a lot alike.

Was that true? I wondered. And if it was, was that good?

14

Rowena's mother changed her mind. She says we can't have her fur coat for our yard sale. Not if we're going to charge only two dollars for it. She's insulted, Rowena says. That coat was a present from her mother and father when she graduated from high school. It was very beautiful and cost a lot of money back then.

Even if it's old, it's worth more than two dollars, Rowena's mother says. You can't put a price on sentimental things, she says, and she's sentimental about that coat. We asked Rowena what her mother thought was a fair price for her fur coat.

“Ten dollars,” Rowena said, blushing. It wasn't her fault her mother changed her mind.

Nell snapped her fingers. “I got it!” she shouted. “We hang the fur coat out in front, so's the wind catches it, swings it back and forth. Everybody'll notice it then. It's a come-on. Lure the big spenders. They see it swaying there in the breeze from a distance, how do they know it's got the mange?”

“It does
not
have the mange,” Rowena said indignantly. “You haven't even seen it. How do you know what it's got?”

“I figure your mother didn't graduate from high school yesterday,” Nell said. Rowena got all red and opened her mouth, but before she could get herself worked up, Nell said, “Today's our dump day. My uncle says he's going there, he'll take us.”

“Which uncle?” I asked her. I hoped it was the one with the spread out West and all the horses. It seemed to me he'd be more interesting than the one who drove the egg truck. But you never could tell.

Uncle Joe drove. He had kind of a nice face, all sort of red and bristly, and I liked his eyes, which were the size of dimes and very blue. He took the back way. We rode the ruts the winter had left in the road as if the pickup were a boat on stormy seas. Up and down, down and up we went. Uncle Joe sang to liven things up. “This old heap had a radio,” he said, “I wouldn't bother. But I got to have music wherever I go.” So he sang songs I'd never heard before, at the top of his lungs. He drove slowly so that Nell's brothers, trotting alongside, could keep up with the truck.

“They don't ride in cars if they can help it,” Nell explained. “Makes 'em throw up. You ever been in a car with three people, all of 'em throwing up? All at the same time?”

I said no, I didn't think I ever had.

“It's fierce,” Nell said. “Just plain fierce.”

“I bet.” I watched out of the corner of my eye as the brothers kept pace. They ran with frowning faces, chins and elbows tucked in, eyes straight ahead. Their concentration was terrific. They were in the Olympics. One of them was sure to win a gold medal. Their faces grew more and more flushed as I watched, until they looked like a trio of beets on legs. The littlest one kept losing ground. Even though his legs churned as fast as the other two, he kept dropping farther and farther behind until he was only a dot in the distance.

“Do your brothers have names?” I whispered to Nell. If they had, I'd never heard them. Betty and Rowena sat squinched together on the seat, rolling their eyes at us and Nell's uncle, keeping their traps shut for once. It was quite refreshing.

“Of course they have names,” Nell said in a snippy voice. “Big guy's named Harold after my dad. Middle one's Leo. Little one's Eddie. Fast Eddie we call him on account of he's so slow.”

I looked out the back window. Fast Eddie had disappeared. The other two kept on coming, although the truck was outdistancing them rapidly.

“Can he find his way back?” I wondered, meaning Fast Eddie. He was a small wisp of a boy with pale uneven eyes and thin pale hair that put me in mind of chicken fuzz. I'd never heard him say a word. He was in Tad's class at school. Tad allowed as how he'd never heard Fast Eddie say a word either, but that didn't prove anything. They'd make a fine pair, Fast Eddie and Tad. If they learned sign language they might be able to carry on a conversation.

“Oh, don't worry about him,” Nell said. “He'll be right there, waiting for us on the way back.”

The pickup pulled into the town dump. It was a bald, flat space at the end of a dirt road, surrounded on all sides by mounds of remains of people's lives. Piles of big black plastic garbage bags lined the roadway, spilling their contents haphazardly. Seagulls circled, eyeing the orange peels, eggshells, and coffee grounds, looking for a free meal. Three or four rats scuttled away as we hopped out of the pickup. Betty and Rowena let out a series of little piercing screams, but nobody paid any attention so they soon stopped.

Uncle Joe said he'd stay put. “You need help with anything,” he told us, “just holler. I'm going to get some shut-eye.”

“You take the left side,” Nell directed us, “I'll take the right.” I set off, Rowena and Betty bringing up the rear. “What're we looking for?” Betty said in an irritated way. Betty always got mad when she didn't have control of a situation. She hadn't wanted to come to the dump anyway. I'd made her. I'd told her she had to participate.

“What we want is nice big pieces of furniture we can fix up,” I said. There were mounds of old tires, a few refrigerators without doors, a lot of auto parts, but no big pieces of furniture. Or small pieces, either, for that matter. No chiffoniers. The smell of burning rubber filled the air. Gulls squalled overhead, dipping, swooping, looking for good stuff too, maybe.

I saw two plastic garbage pails off to one side. They looked practically new. I ran over to claim them and discovered they were perfect except for each one having a big hole in its bottom. How'd those holes get there? I wondered. And how could they be patched up so the garbage pails would hold garbage?

“Look here!” Nell cried, stumbling toward us, carrying what looked like a rolled-up rug. Which is what it was. “You suppose somebody threw this away by mistake?”

“Maybe there's something inside,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Maybe a person.” I had heard that Cleopatra had herself rolled up in a rug so she could get to see Julius Caesar. That had always seemed very clever to me. I laid an ear to the rug and listened. It sounded empty.

“Stand guard,” Nell said. “I got something else might be good.” She darted behind a hill formed by a heap of discarded mattresses and came back lugging a two-wheel bike. Rusty, with bent wheels, and the paint peeling from it, it was a recognizable bike.

We stood in a semicircle, studying her latest find. “We can fix it up fine,” we agreed. All things seemed possible.

When we were getting ready to load the stuff into the truck, Betty spied a lawn chair, its plastic webbing gone, leaning against a bulging trash bag. She whooped and hollered and carried on like she'd found buried treasure. Nell took one look, said, “That piece of junk!” with such scorn that we left the lawn chair where it was.

“What does she call that stuff
she
found?” Betty hissed, sending a shower of spit over us all. Uncle Joe woke, and we started back, keeping an eye out for the brothers. I figured Harold and Leo had each other. Fast Eddie was the one to worry about. We rounded a curve and there he was, lying on the side of the road, face lifted to the sky as if he were taking the sun at Popham Beach on the Fourth of July.

Nell rolled down the window and screeched, “Hey, pie face! Go back where you come from, why don'tcha?”

In a flash Eddie was on his feet, legs churning, making like a marathon runner. His rest had apparently done him good. Uncle Joe stopped the truck after a few minutes, called out, “Get in here before you bust something!” and Fast Eddie, winded at last, crawled in next to Rowena. I saw Rowena flinch and pull herself in tight, trying to put as much distance between herself and him as possible. But Eddie only breathed hard and stared moodily out the window, getting ready to throw up at any minute, until we pulled up in Nell's driveway. Fast Eddie was first out of the truck. He ran behind the house, and we heard sounds that told us he'd made it just in time.

15

I dreamed about my mother. Only she was my own age, a child with knobby knees and knobby elbows. She wore little white socks and black Mary Jane shoes and braces on her teeth. When she smiled, the sun caught in her braces and little lights flashed and danced in her mouth, blinding me. She had the most truly sparkly smile I'd ever seen. I dreamed that she and I were walking down a wide street with trees on either side so huge and wide their branches met, forming a canopy over our heads. I could smell the ocean. We held hands. Once in a while we skipped, but mostly we walked sedately, as if we were middle-aged.

And although we were exactly the same size and even wore matching dresses so that people passing us took us for twins, she acted much older. At every street crossing she looked both ways, then when the way was clear, she helped me across the street as if I'd just learned to walk and couldn't be expected to know the ways of the world.

I always dream in color. Some people I know dream in black-and-white. But in this dream the colors were very vivid. The sky and the grass and the flowers all were their true colors, only brighter than true colors, if you get my meaning. My mother's lips were rosy, and her hair was beautiful and shiny and long. I had never seen my mother with long hair in real life, only in photographs taken of her when she was a child. She kept calling me “my child,” so that I laughed and said, “Don't call me that. I'm not your child.”

At first there was no one in the dream except the two of us. Then, after a while, a crowd formed on the edges of the dream. It was a crowd of men and boys. They looked like Tad and Sidney and my father. It was amazing. We started to dance, my mother and I, and when we stopped, they clapped and whistled.

All of a sudden a big tall man appeared. He had on a wide-brimmed hat like the one my mother wears when she goes to Africa to photograph wild animals. Those hats are designed to keep the terrible African sun off your head. The stranger came up to us, tapped my mother on the shoulder and, next thing I knew, she had left me and was dancing with him. The crowd began to boo. The booing got louder and louder. The stranger and my mother stopped dancing. It was then I saw my mother was crying. Tears were streaming down her face, and she made no attempt to wipe them away. I pulled out a big handkerchief and went over to her. I offered her the handkerchief. She shook her head. Her face stayed wet. The tears splashed out of her eyes and flooded her cheeks.

I was alone. They had left me. All of them. My mother and I had turned into one and the same person. There I was, dressed in my black Mary Janes and my white socks, walking down the street under a canopy of trees. I smelled the ocean. I held hands with someone, but every time I turned to see whoever it was who was holding my hand, something came between us and I couldn't make out the person's face. Presently the sun went down and it was dark. I began to run. I ran and ran, trying to catch up. I was crying too. Just the way my mother had.

I woke up. I felt sad and mean, meaner than I ever had before. I hate dreams like that, the ones that begin so happily and end leaving such a dreadful empty feeling. At breakfast I took the biggest doughnut, the one with the most sugar on it. When Sidney said he wanted a glass of milk, I poured one for him although I was almost positive the milk was sour. I kept my head down and watched him as he drank it. He was halfway through before he made a face and said, “It tastes funny.” I said, “Drink it and stop complaining,” and he did. Then, to make up for it, I let him eat what was left of my doughnut.