Harry Sue (16 page)

I looked at Baba, waiting.

“Will you paint with me, Harry Sue?”

“Paint with you?”

“My wife tells me that to heal we need to go back to the time before it happened, back to when we still painted with our fingers.”

I wasn't sure what he was on about, but he looked so serious as he set another cookie sheet next to mine and squirted red paint onto it that I picked up the blue paint bottle. After blue, I squirted yellow right on top of it. Swirling my fingers in the paint, I made streaks of green appear from the other two colors.

I looked up at Baba. Was this what he wanted?

He put blue on top of his red and moved his fingers until they swirled purple.

I tried to remember before, but I couldn't. I tried to, for Baba's sake, but I'd laid too many pictures down after, pictures of how things would be after Mary Bell came back. They were on top of the old pictures—the real pictures. I couldn't get to those anymore.

So instead I painted the way Baba's food felt inside me … the food I was smelling at that very moment: tomatoes, lamb, peppers, spices. All the different things—the vegetables, the meat, the fruit—became one thing, one big green growing thing, like the runner beans that crawled up the back of Mrs. Mead's garage.

And Baba made one thing, too, but all his colors became a muddy brown, like the shallow ponds that suddenly appear when the swamp overflows.

After a few minutes, he collected our sheets and put them in the big sink at the back of the room and ran water over them. Then they were just cookie sheets again. Because of the paint, we washed our hands in the sink and didn't use the penny bowl and the pitcher. I wanted to, anyway, just to feel the cool water running over my hands, but I didn't ask.

As we began to eat, I tried to put all my bad thoughts of what Granny had done to Carly Mae's bear into a cupboard so they didn't spoil the taste of the food.

“You have to go back, too?” I asked him. “To the time before?”

He looked up at me. In the joint, if somebody looks you in the eye after you ask a personal question, that means it's okay to go ahead. So I did.

“Was that in Africa?”

“Sudan,” he said, nodding. He pulled a fat little banana from a bunch in his basket and cut the stem with an exacto knife.

“So that's home?”

“The country is there, yes,” he said, chewing slowly. “We can find it on a map. But the village where I was born and where I was a young boy is gone. My family … all gone: my two brothers, my parents, my uncle Aboduin …”

Baba set the dishes in front of us on the table and unwrapped the bread. He took off the lids, and I felt like even if all I could eat were those smells, I would be happy.

“There was a civil war…. The soldiers came to our village and burned everything. They killed everyone. When the soldiers came, my mother told me to run. I was a very fast runner. I ran very fast and I hid. But when I came back, everything was gone….”

It seemed wrong to eat while Baba was talking about such things, but he set out the plates and placed a round fat pancake on each one. Taking the covers off of the dishes, he waited for me to begin. He wouldn't talk again unless I was eating. I took a deep breath and tore off a piece of my pancake.

“There were a few other boys like me, who were left with nothing. There was nothing to do but leave our village. And so we began to walk. We walked because there was no reason to stay. And we were hungry. We didn't know where we were going, and after a while, we didn't know where we were.

“Walking was very dangerous, Harry Sue. Some of the boys were killed by lions. One was eaten by a crocodile as we crossed a river. And there were the patrols.

“I was much afraid to be so lost. But we knew that to be found could be even worse. If the soldiers found us … We had to keep going and trust. It was the fear that kept us moving night and day. Finally we arrived at a refugee camp. There were so many children, thousands, just like us. Most of them were boys. That is why they called us the ‘Lost Boys.’”

Even though Baba hadn't eaten anything but the little banana, he pushed his plate aside and picked up Oswald. I shoved food into my mouth and smiled, wanting to make him happy again.

Baba went to the teacher's desk and pulled out a small plastic case filled with needles and spools of thread and a tiny scissors. He came back and sat down again.

I tore off another piece of my bread and held it over a pot of creamy sauce with pieces of chicken floating in it.

“But how did you get here?” I asked him, dunking my bread and pinching the chicken.

“That's very good,” he said, as I held it up for him to see.

He squinted, threading the needle.

“There is an Episcopal church in Marshfield. Many churches in your country have brought Lost Boys to America. I was one of the first boys to come. I have been here now for almost eight years.”

Baba took a piece of napkin and wiped the ex-acto knife clean. Then he held up Oswald and inserted the knife into his back, razoring him open at the seam.

He got up again and walked to a cupboard at the back of the room. When he returned, he had a bag of cotton balls. By the way he walked, with his shoulders hunched, I could see that telling this story was like making me relive my fall.

Soon as I knew that, I stopped even wanting to ask.

“This is really good,” I said. “Do you cook all this, or does your wife cook, too?”

He tore open the bag of cotton balls and laughed. “My wife cannot cook,” he said. “Or maybe I should say, we cannot eat her cooking. I am the cook in the family.” He set a handful of cotton balls on the table and looked at me. “You see, Harry Sue, in my country it is not the men who cook. But
since this food makes such a … such a pleasant memory, I decided to learn.”

“Do your kids like this food as much as I do?”

My guess was that Baba didn't have any kids, but how could I be sure? I didn't want him to have any, I knew that, and if I'd been my old self, it would have worried me to know I was getting so attached. But now, with the letters and everything, well, I was throwing caution to the wind.

Baba focused his concentration on Oswald again, inserting one cotton ball after the other and pushing them around inside the bear's tummy with his thumbs.

“We cannot have children,” he said. “She was very sick when she was younger and the medicine they used to treat her made her sterile.”

What the heck was “sterile”? I thought it meant clean, but clearly it meant you couldn't have kids, too. That must have made Baba really, really sad. He lost his family and he couldn't make a new one.

“Sorry,” I said, swallowing. I thought he might cry after telling me all that, so I kept my head down out of respect.

“You don't have to be sorry, Harry Sue. But let us talk of happier things, no? Do you think your friend would like it if I gave her bear a nice necktie to wear to church on Sunday?”

The rest of the time, he worked in silence. As he
was knotting the last thread, Baba said: “You must remember, Harry Sue. Where I come from, no one is ever really lost to us. Not as long as you hold them in the palm of your heart.”

He smiled at me so sadly then that I wasn't sure if I should say anything or not. I decided not. I thought maybe a look would be good, but the current Harry Sue catalog of looks did not contain an item for this moment.

Before I came, I had been thinking of telling Baba about the letters. But watching his face when he wasn't looking changed my mind.

I didn't want him to know how close I was to being found.

At that moment, I just wanted to stay lost with him.

I walked home that day, my mind full of the things that Baba told me. His story weighed me down and made my shoulders ache with sympathy. But what pulled me up was that I was going to put my hands on places where Mary Bell had put her hands. I was going to hold her in the palm of my heart, like Baba said, and we'd take up the book on the page we'd left off the night Garnett blew through the door and I went out the window and he and Mary Bell got sent up. It was the place where the Wicked Witch makes Dorothy her slave, and she can't run away because the Lion is being held prisoner. Me and Mary Bell were finally going to get past the part where things looked the worst for old Dorothy.

Even the smell of wet smoke didn't trouble my dreams. After all, it was the time of year for burning leaves.

“Where is she?” I asked when I got to the kitchen, pulling out the smoochy girl I'd retrieved from her dried grass nest and unwrapping her from her half-roll of toilet paper.

“Out back,” Sink said, avoiding my eyes.

“The kids?”

“In the basement watching a show.”

“Moonie Pie?”

“Where do you think?”

So I shrugged off my backpack and went outside to tell the old bat it was time to deal.

Granny burned leaves in a big can made out of wire mesh so even the leaves at the bottom would get air. She stood there, squinting into the smoke, her cigar in one hand and a single envelope in the other.

I wasn't used to looking her in the eye, but I wasn't about to back down now. Not even when she gave me her look that said,
It's on!

“Wish I could tell ya that you got a letter from your old Mary Hag, but it just ain't true. You never did.”

“What's that, then?” I asked. I wasn't even troubled. Lying was like breathing to Granny.

“Even when I try to starve it out, you look more like her every day,” she said, shaking her head. “Never could stand that woman. Didn't trust her.”

Granny narrowed her eyes at me. “Dark as a gypsy, that one. She sure did put it over on my Garnett. Made him plumb crazy…. Forgot all his dreams. He was gonna be designing cars, not putting mirrors in 'em on a factory line.”

Much as I enjoyed going down memory lane with Granny, I wanted that letter even more. I started walking toward her real slow, smoochy girl perched in my outstretched hand.

“And when I burn it,” she said, “all bets are off. Go on and break what you got. There's a number on the bottom to reorder.”

“Give me my letter, you old …”

Granny poked at the fire with her stick. Her bloodshot eyes watered as she locked her stare on me through the smoke. “You're slow, girl. It is
not
your letter.”

“You got no right to keep it.”

But Granny dropped the letter on the smoking pile anyway, and that's when I felt Clotkin blood rushing to places it had never been before. Growling, I jumped at her and rattled the wire cage, looking for my letter. But that smoke was blinding. So I pushed the can over with all my might, hoping to save it. I pushed it right at Granny, hoping against hope that something hot and glowing would scar her forever the way she had scarred me.

She screamed and jumped back, falling to the ground as the ashes hit her.

“See what you done!” There she was, rolling on the ground, beating at the piles of gray ash that had landed on her and around her. I threw myself down, too, searching for the letter but closing my hands instead on a broken piece of smoochy girl.

“You'll go to jail for this, see if you won't,” Granny cried.

But I didn't pay her any mind because I saw it then, lifting gently on the hot air. Just out of my reach. Out of Granny's, too. I scrambled to my feet and took off after it, feeling like Dorothy must have felt with the balloon just beyond her fingers, feeling just like Dorothy that this was my only way home.

Baba's house wasn't far from Granny's, maybe a quarter mile, but in the strange way of our neighborhood, I don't remember ever seeing it before. It sat almost directly behind another, bigger house with only two narrow tracks to make up the driveway.

I never was afraid of the night or being out in it. As you have learned by now, Fish, people were my main problem. But tonight I felt so crazy I was shivering, and in looking for some safe place to settle, I thought of here.
Baba's tires drove here
, I told myself, putting one foot in front of the other. I had my backpack on my shoulder, and it was filled with cold ashes. Buried inside were the pretties I'd scored off
Granny as well as Granny's letter from Garnett, for safekeeping.

Dorothy never made it to the balloon, but I caught up with the letter, just as it was settling onto the surface of the swamp out back. Splashing in, I nabbed it, never giving one thought to how I would smell later. Lifting the flap, I read what I could, icy cold water pinching my toes.

It wasn't a long letter, just a single sheet, and even though it was burned, I could make out most of it. It was from my father, Garnett Clotkin, dated not long after he was sent up north to the state correctional facility for men.

Dear Ma, well you always said I would come to know good and now sending you a letter from the joint. You can go on and sell the car and spend that money on what you need for Harry Sue….

There were other things he wanted her to sell so she could take care of me. Things I never knew about to get money I never saw.

Garnett wasn't much of a writer. He came to the point quick.

I swear to God, Ma, if you touch one hair on her head, I'll never speak to you again. That child is the only good ever come of Garnett Clotkin and when I get out, I'm gone take care of her real good. Now if anything happens to me or Mary Bell, you got to promise not to hurt her. Don't you ever do them things you did to me….

Granny was right. It wasn't my letter.

By the time I reached Baba's house, I could feel the fatigue crawling up my aching shoulders to sit there like a winged monkey.