The Memory Closet: A Novel (16 page)

I’d hear Mama in Joel’s room at night when he was little, tucking him in bed, asking him, “How much do I love you?” And I could imagine him stretching his chubby little arms out as far as he could.

“Dis much?”

“No, no, no. Much more than that!”

“How much?”

“Oh Joel, I love you
all
the much.”

That
woman was my mother. The woman who loved Joel and me all the much. That other woman was an imposter.

I shook my head violently, trying to shake the images out, then leaned back against the wall again and felt hot tears slide down my face and drip off my chin.

I thought about the big black man in the movie
The Green Mile
who had a magical gift of healing. He could lean over a sick person and inhale the disease, the injury, even death, suck it out of them. Then he’d blow it out his mouth—the ugliness, black spots and flies.

I wanted somebody to suck this ugliness out of my mind and breathe it out as flies. I wanted a do-over! I wanted to start again in my studio in England with the eyes looking out of the pictures. Only this time, when I saw the eyes, I’d chuck the canvasses and all my art supplies into the rubbish bin in my garage and go back to being a librarian.

And leave my childhood in the black hole of hell where it belonged!

I didn’t want to know Laughs in the Wind.

I didn’t want to know my alcoholic mother.

I went over and over the images in my mind. Mama had been drunk or well on her way there, and I didn’t want to know the woman who was already so tanked before noon that she smashed feces into my little sister’s hair.

But she didn’t get a free pass with the booze card. Her behavior was unconscionable, drunk or sober. She was abusing a little girl who’d come to our house after she’d been sexually assaulted!

So what am I supposed to do with that?

It was sunset when Bobo came looking for me, shuffling from room to room. I heard her calling, “Anne? Anne, where are you?”

I hated the concern I heard in her voice. She was worried about me, and she had every right to be.
I
was worried about me.

Obviously, the combined effect of the emotional body slams of the last few days had caused some kind of psychotic episode yesterday morning. I hadn’t even gotten around to thinking about
that
yet.

Does a crazy person know they’re crazy?

If I toppled over the edge, I wondered if I’d even know I was falling.

“I’m in here, Bobo,” I called out, and she hobbled up the stairs and stopped just inside the studio door.

“Phew!” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I smell something
nasty
.” This from the woman who’d lived with rotted food behind her dresser!

She eyed Petey in his cage on the other side of the room. He was walking back and forth on the swing, clucking happily.

“It’s bird dookey, ain’t it. I know it. I hate birds. The only good bird’s a—”

“Bird frying in a skillet. I know.”

“You watch out or that parrot of yours—”

“Petey’s not a parrot, Bobo, he’s a parakeet.”

“Or that parakeet’s going to turn up hung.” She started back across the hall toward the stairs, talking as she went. “Come on down to supper now.”

She stopped, turned around and gave me a toothy smile that revealed both sets of dentures securely in place.

“I made meatloaf!”

Goody.

T
he next morning, I went into the studio and found Petey with a noose around his neck, hanging lifeless from the center bar on the top of his cage.

The sight literally knocked me backward, slammed me against the wall. I screamed, the wailing, anguished screech of a horror movie heroine, only no sound came out my mouth. Just a little squeak, a breathless gasp. I dug my knuckles into my eyes, trying to wipe the image away. But I saw it even with my eyes closed. I’d see it in excruciating detail for the rest of my life. In only a glimpse, my mind had recorded every dot, every pixel like a digital camera.

Little green bird, wings limp, head twisted to the side at an unnatural angle. Hangman’s noose so tight around his neck the gold twine disappears in the feathers. Gold twine.

Gold twine!

Bobo. Where’s Bobo!

I had no memory of going down the stairs. I was at the top of the stairs; then I was at the bottom of the stairs. Nothing but a blank space in between. I must have found my voice, the scream in my head found its way out my mouth because Julia looked up in shock as I raced past her. She gawked at me, the dust cloth in her hand and the Philco radio forgotten.

Through the kitchen.

Bobo!

Out the back door.

Bobo!

She was standing by the gate to the chicken house, holding a white hen upside down by its feet. The bird was fluttering its wings and squawking, but it was powerless to do anything but struggle.

Bobo caught sight of me on the porch, smiled and called out, “We’re having fried chicken for supper.”

She lifted the protesting chicken with one hand and grabbed its head with the other. In a motion like popping a whip, she yanked, snapped the chicken’s neck, then spun its body around and around like a British bobby twirling his baton.

Suddenly, the bird’s body flew through the air and plopped on the ground with blood squirting in heartbeat bursts out the gory hole above its wings where its head used to be. Its white feathers now crimson, the chicken actually got to its feet and ran in crazy, staggering circles. It flapped one wing, and the other dragged limp, smearing a trail of blood behind it in the dirt. Then it fell over on its side and the blood no longer squirted. Its feet kept running, though, clawing at the air for a few seconds before it lay still.

With the chicken’s bloody head still in her hand, Bobo smiled approval at the dead bird.

“You got to snap it just right for the head to come completely off like that,” she said as I advanced across the yard toward her. “Else the hen just runs around with its neck broke and its head floppin’, and sometimes you got to chase—”

I was close enough that she could see the look on my face and she stopped abruptly in midsentence. She actually took a step backward, as if the force of my countenance had shoved her out of my path.

“Why?” I screamed. She was so startled she dropped the chicken head on the ground. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you kill Petey?”

I was conscious of the Mentholatum stench of her and of how thin she was, smaller than I was and I was a stick. She looked up at me, her chin shoved out so she could see without tilting her head back. Her wispy hair was blowing in the breeze, revealing bald spots all over her head. And in the absurd intensity of the moment, I noticed the forest of white whiskers growing out of her chin, sticking like cactus thorns from her wrinkled skin.

“What are you talking about? I didn’t kill your bird.”

“Don’t lie to me, Bobo. Don’t pretend you don’t remember. He’s dead. He’s hanging up there in his cage, strangled with a piece of
your gold twine.”

All the color drained out of her face; she couldn’t have looked more shocked if I’d slapped her.

“I didn’t touch your bird.”

But she wasn’t sure anymore.

“Yes, you did. Why? He wasn’t hurting you. He doesn’t belong to you; he’s my bird. How could you kill a defenseless little …? “

Then I broke down, put my head in my hands and sobbed.

I felt Julia’s arm around my shoulder, and I turned instinctively toward her. She enveloped me in a warm, soft hug, her round arms holding me tight against the pillow of her breast as she patted my back.

“There, there,” she said.

Pat, pat, pat, pat.

“Shhhh.”

Pat, pat, pat.

“It’s OK.”

I pulled away from her and looked into her dark eyes.

“No, it’s not OK, Julia! Bobo killed my parakeet. She hung Petey in his cage with a piece of that precious gold twine of hers.”

Julia looked questioningly at Bobo.

The old woman wouldn’t meet her gaze, just stared at the ground, shook her head and mumbled to herself.

“I didn’t … I never … wouldn’t a done a thing like … “

My shock and sorrow morphed into rage between one heartbeat and another.

“You telling me you didn’t kill him? Then what happened to him? Did Petey commit
suicide?”
I screamed the word in her face. “You come look at what you did. Just come with me. I’ll show you!”

I reached out to take her arm. Then withdrew my hand. I didn’t trust myself to touch her. I was too angry and she was too fragile.

The three of us marched across the yard, up the porch steps and into the house. I climbed the stairs to the second floor, the head of the platoon, started across the hall to the studio and then ran out of gas.

I turned away from the doorway, leaned against the wall and struggled not to cry.

I’ll have to bury him, I guess. What else can I do with him? Go out in the backyard and dig a bird grave. A bird grave! How sick is that?

I gestured to the studio. “Go see for yourselves.”

Bobo and Julia filed past me into the room.

I squeezed my eyes tight shut, clinging to a tattered wisp of denial, but I could picture them edging up to the cage, not wanting to look even as their eyes were drawn to the horror of it, like you gawk at a wreck when you drive by it on the road.

Bobo will remember when she sees it, when she sees what she did.

“Anne?” Her voice was barely audible; Bobo sounded like a small, frightened child.

“You need to come here, Miss Anne.” Julia was shocked, confused. I’m sure she never dreamed Bobo was capable of such vicious meanness. Neither did I.

With a deep breath, I turned and stepped into the room.

Petey’s my baby. I don’t want somebody else to take him down off …

Bobo was standing on one side of the birdcage, Julia on the other. Between them, Petey was swinging back and forth on his miniature trapeze.

He spotted me. “Hi there,” he said. “PeteyPeteyPetey!”

The room went black.

I could hear before I could see. Pieces of sentences. Random words.

“… an ambulance!”

“… going to die?”

“Should we … ?”

“… 911.”

“…
do
something!”

I opened my eyes.

The studio had hitched a ride on a merry-go-round and was spinning so fast it made me dizzy. I blinked and the room slowed down, gradually stopped. I was sprawled on the hardwood floor with a sharp, stabbing pain in my back. A background hum,
wooom, wooom, wooom
pulsed in a heartbeat rhythm in my head.

Julia was down on her knees beside me; Bobo stood next to her. When they leaned over me, their faces were distorted, like looking through a fisheye lens.

“Anne? Anne! Annie, Sugar, are you all right?”

I struggled to sit.

“Now, you just lie still right where you are.” Julia was in charge.

“But there’s something under—”

“Don’t try to sit up yet.”

“Something’s poking—”

“You’re going to be just fine,” Julia pushed me firmly back down and whatever I was lying on stabbed me again, felt like it was puncturing my lung. I rolled onto my side, and Julia spotted the Phillips screwdriver on the floor beneath me and moved it so I could roll back flat.

The room had stabilized. Julia’s and Bobo’s faces looked normal, upset, but normal size and shape.

Suddenly, it came back to me.

Petey was dead! Bobo killed him! I remembered the little bird dangling there, his body limp. No, wait. He wasn’t dead. He was alive. How could he be alive?

I shoved Julia’s hand away and sat up, frantic to get a look at the cage.

There was Petey, drinking from the thimble-sized water dispenser, leaning his head back to swallow. I gasped out a sob, covered my mouth and stared. Petey was alive.

But he was dead. I saw him; he was dead!

I lurched to my feet, with Bobo and Julia clucking around me, and staggered to the cage. My heart was pounding like a fist on a door. The twin images of Petey dead/ Petey alive slammed together in a head-on collision in my mind.

I stuck a trembling finger through the bars. Petey jumped down off the swing, hopped over to it and pecked at it affectionately.

“Goodbye, hello, pretty boy,” he chirped in cheerful bird-speak.

I turned to Bobo and Julia.

“He’s alive! Look! He’s alive; he’s fine.”

Bobo and Julia exchanged a look.

“Miss Anne, I think we need to call an ambulance. You need to see a doctor.”

“Anne, you listen to Julia, now.” Bobo said.

If 
you
listened to Julia, Bobo, you’d notice the “wetback” is speaking English like a Rhode’s Scholar.

I turned back to Petey, suddenly terrified that in the seconds I had been looking away, reality had shifted again and he was hanging there lifeless and cold.

“Hi there! PeteyPeteyPetey.”

I exhaled a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and leaned my forehead against the cage bars, struggling not to cry as waves of relief washed over me.

He’s alive. He’s alive! But he was dead. I know he was dead. I saw him.

Julia was saying something about an ambulance again.

“I don’t need an ambulance and I don’t need a doctor,” I said without looking at her. “I just fainted, that’s all. I’m fine.”

I was fine, right? I must have bonked my head pretty good on the floor because it hurt in a spot on the back, and there was probably going to be a lump. And there was the punctured lung from the screwdriver. But other than that—unless you counted that I saw a dead bird that wasn’t dead.

“See.” I faced them, straightened my blouse and smoothed my hair back out of my face. “I’m OK.” They were beginning to believe I wasn’t injured; they were not at all convinced I was OK.

I looked back at Petey. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Little green bird, limp wings, gold cord around …

I saw Petey dead. He’s alive. What’s wrong with me?

Julia and Bobo stood looking at me. I knew I needed to say something. But what was there to say?

I held my hands out palms up and shrugged my shoulders in the universal I-don’t-know-what’s-going-on-here gesture and said, “I don’t know what’s going on here.”

Julia advanced toward me a couple of steps. “You said the parakeet was dead.”

“And you accused me of killing it.” There was no recrimination in Bobo’s voice, no I-told-you-so. She was scared.

“I know I did. And I don’t know what to say about that. I came in here this morning and looked into Petey’s cage and he was dead.”

The photographic image formed on the viewer screen in my mind. Petey, wings limp, head twisted to the side at an odd angle. A hangman’s noose made out of gold twine around his neck and tied to the middle bar on the top of his cage.

I examined the cage, scrutinized the middle bar like maybe there was still a piece of gold twine on it—a tiny thread that Horatio Caine of
CSI Miami
could spot even with his sunglasses on and know a crime had been committed here.

No gold twine. No gold twine fuzz. No crime. Nothing.

And Petey was just fine, hopping around happily, making smooching sounds at me and cocking his head to one side, waiting for me to make smooching sounds back.

I turned to face Julia and Bobo.

“I … I must have been … dreaming.” Not a chance. “I guess I was sleepwalking. I’ve done it before lots of times.”

I made myself sound sane and rational, tried to make the explanation appear plausible. And it could have happened that way. But it didn’t. I’d been awake for ten or 15 minutes before I came into the studio. I’d already brushed my teeth and made my bed. I couldn’t have been dreaming.

Bobo bit on the explanation.

“You told me about waking up in the bathroom a week or two ago,” she said. She glanced at Julia, smiled and nodded. “And didn’t you sleepwalk the other day, didn’t you tell me you did, and you woke up in the parlor downstairs?” Bobo wanted it to be true. She so badly wanted it to be true.

I forced a sheepish smile.

“Yep, standing there in front of the mantel, looking at the spot where the clock used to sit.” I tried to shift gears into normal conversation and pointed to the clock with the cracked face. “That clock used to be on the downstairs mantel, didn’t it Bobo?”

“Sure did.” Bobo beamed, ridiculously thrilled that I was making sense. “Moved it upstairs because it was broke and wouldn’t tell time no more.”

Julia was not so easily convinced.

“But do you keep dreaming after you’re awake? Keep seeing things that aren’t really there? Do you ever do that when you sleepwalk?”

Never!

“Always. That’s part of the experience. You always see things that aren’t really there in a dream, and the more vivid the dream, the longer it takes to sort out reality.” I laughed nervously, like I was embarrassed over my ludicrous behavior. “One time in England, I woke up out in the backyard.”

Actually, it’s called a back
garden,
and I didn’t have one.

Julia finally cashed in her chips and smiled a little shakily. “Well, you sure had the two of us scared to death.”

She glanced at Bobo and suddenly caught herself.

“Eet ees time to start lunch, sí?”

Bobo looked at her a little suspiciously this time. “Sí.”

Julia waddled out of the room but Bobo stayed. She hobbled over to the blue loveseat and sat down carefully. She was limping worse than usual today. Dragging her up here from the backyard at a dead run probably didn’t do anything for the arthritis in her hip.