Up High in the Trees (22 page)

Come on! Jackson yells. He's waiting for me at the place where the blood spots start.

I run to him. I don't want to think anymore.

It doesn't really look like blood, says Jackson.

I know, I say, but it is. I touch one of the blood spots. It feels the same as the rest of the sidewalk.

What do we do? Jackson asks.

I pour out a little bit of Coke onto one of the blood spots. The Coke fizzes. We lie down to watch it up close.

Let me do it now, says Jackson.

I give him the bottle and then I count. There are seventeen blood spots.

I'm going to be a stand-up comedian, I tell Jackson.

What? he asks. He's pouring out Coke.

You know Steve Martin? I ask.

Jackson shrugs.

I'm going to be a master of comedy like Steve Martin, I tell him.

You mean, like, tell jokes? asks Jackson.

Yes, I say.

But you never tell jokes, he says.

Jackson laughs at me. I try to think of a joke, but I can't think of any.

I can learn, I tell him.

A car is coming and we both look because no other cars have gone by. It's Mother's old green car. I think maybe Cass won't see me if I lie down flat on the ground.

What're you doing? asks Jackson.

Shhhh, I tell him.

Cass stops the car right next to us. I hear the sound of her rolling down the window. I stay on the ground and close my eyes.

Sebastian, Cass says, what're you doing?

I close my eyes tighter. I listen to Cass open her door and there's the dong, dong, dong noise that the car makes when you open the door with it turned on.

Sebastian, says Cass. She's close to me now.

We're cleaning the blood spots, Jackson tells her.

What? Cass asks.

We're cleaning the blood spots with Coke, says Jackson.

Sebastian, Cass says. Her voice is right by my ear. She puts her hand on my back.

Sebby, she says, come on. Cass holds me under my arms and pulls me up. I don't want to look at her.

I told you to stop, Cass says, you can't be doing this weird shit.

I don't say anything.

Cleaning blood spots off the sidewalk is weird shit, she says. Sebastian, are you listening to me?

Bye, says Jackson.

I can hear his feet running away down the sidewalk. I don't move and I don't look at Cass. The car is still making the dong, dong, dong noise.

Come on, says Cass. She pushes me into the car.

Cass drives the rest of the way to the white house. When we're there, I get out fast and run inside.

Dad! I yell.

Sebby, Dad says.

I run into the kitchen and Dad's sitting at the table. On the floor by his feet, my blue and green bag is packed up full.

Hello, Dad, says Cass. She's in the kitchen now, too.

Dad stands up and walks over to where she is. He hugs her and then Cass puts her hands on his shoulders and pushes him back.

Do you know what he was doing? Cass asks. He was cleaning blood, she says. What do you think about that?

Dad doesn't say anything, so Cass talks to me.

Sebby, she says, do you even know who the president's going to be?

I shrug.

I want to write a letter, I say.

Clinton got elected, says Cass. It's possibly the most important political event since you were born, she says to me or Dad. I don't know who she's talking to.

My friends are Democrats like Clinton, I tell her.

Dad laughs a quick laugh through his nose.

What? he asks.

Shelly and Jackson, I say.

At least your friends give a shit about the world, says Cass.

I want to write a letter, I say again.

Not now, Cass says, we're leaving.

It takes a long time to get home.

I don't want to sit in front with Cass, so I'm sitting in the back. There's just the sound of the car and wind. My head feels soft inside from being tired. I lie down and that's a good feeling because my head touches one door and my feet reach all the way across to the other. I like to push my feet against the door and that makes my head push backward into the other side. It feels good and tight, like the car is squeezing me and holding me in. The ceiling of the car has tiny pinholes so small you can't count them all.

Cass turns on the news radio. She looks back at me for a second and then faces forward again.

Pay attention, she says, you should know what's going on in the world.

I try to listen, but the voices are just words in my head. I can't understand them.

The car stops and I open my eyes. I can see a gas station sign—an orange ball with number 76. Sinclair dinosaur gas stations are my favorite. Leo says that all of the dinosaurs' dead bodies give us oil for gas and that's why Sinclair has the picture of a brontosaurus. When I was little I asked Leo what sound they made and he said the brontosaurus sounded like a giraffe, so we went to the zoo and listened to the giraffes, but I couldn't hear anything. Leo said they were making a quiet noise that sounded like this:
minu-minu
. I know that sound is not for real.

Cass is outside putting gas in the car and she knocks on the backseat window by where my feet are. She waves at me.

I'm going to run into the store, she says.

I think about how dinosaurs are extinct. It's sad to think of the world getting too hot or too cold and all of the dinosaurs lying on the ground together, dying.

Cass comes back and drops a Charleston Chew candy bar on my chest.

You're welcome, she says.

I wake up in my bed at home.

Hello, I say to the dark. I reach over and turn on the light that's on the small table next to my bed. The lampshade makes a gray shadow on the wall.

My Charleston Chew and my glasses are on the table next to the light. Maybe Cass left them there for me.

I slide down off my bed and put on my glasses. I don't want to sleep anymore. I want to get up and look around. I sit on the white circle rug by my bed and open my Charleston Chew. I think it tastes like dried-out ice cream. I eat almost the whole thing.

Then I pull open the table's drawer. I know what's inside. My book that's called
What Do People Do All Day?
by Richard Scarry—it's not really about people but about animals who look like people and wear clothes like people do. It used to be the book I needed to read every night before I fell asleep. Folded inside the book is the yellow piece of paper Mother left for me with the words to the Mamas and Papas song. Also in the drawer, I find my favorite scratch-and-sniff fruit stickers with almost all of the smell scratched off. The purple grape sticker smells the best, but I won't scratch it anymore because then it will be all used up. In the very back of the drawer, I have Mother's lipstick that I took out of her purse. I can't open it or touch it since that would erase all of her that's still there.

My orange flashlight is under my bed. You have to twist the top part where the light comes out to make it turn on. I twist it on and point the light out of my room, into the hallway so I can walk down to the kitchen.

I shine my flashlight on the refrigerator. I need to check the magnets. We have six magnets that are different kinds of fruits. I count them all. The fruit is made out of rubbery plastic and I used to chew on them when nobody was looking, but I don't chew on them anymore. You can see the chew marks and Mother used to say, Who's trying to eat my magnets? She pretended not to know that it was me.

On the refrigerator is a picture of Dad lying on the couch in his pajama bottoms with no shirt on and he's reading the big, brown dictionary. There's also a picture of Cass sitting on a pumpkin in the pumpkin patch and she's trying to hold Leo on her lap, but he's slipping down. Leo is only a baby in the picture and he's looking up at the sky, because he doesn't know he's supposed to look at the camera. Then there's a picture of me. I'm a baby wearing a diaper and I'm sitting on the floor with Dad's white headphones on, listening to music.

Those are the three pictures on the refrigerator.

I look in the drawer of the kitchen desk for the cat book. The cat book has the addresses of all the people we know written in Mother's handwriting. It's called the cat book because every letter in the alphabet has a different cat picture. Mother crossed out Uncle Alexander's name after he died, but she didn't cross out Grandpa Chuck's name and Grandmother's name.

In the downstairs bathroom, I lie on the floor so I can reach back into the cabinet under the sink and touch my piece of grape gum that I put there on my birthday when I was six. I have to feel around with my fingers and then I find it. It's hard now and mostly smooth, like a piece of plastic. I shine the flashlight inside so I can see. The gum isn't purple anymore, but darker, almost black.

Now I need to go to the room where Mother used to sleep with Dad. I shine my flashlight up the stairs and the wooden steps look yellow instead of brown. I walk slowly down the hall, past Cass's room.

On the floor of Mother's side of the closet, I open the box that has her red slippers. I don't touch them, I just look for a long time.

Then I open another box and find Mother's black winter boots. I reach inside and pull out the old note that says:

To Mother,

Cass said you went out. Where did you go?

I waited for you by the door. You took too long to come back, so I chewed the inside of my mouth. I know that is a bad habit to have. Are there good habits?

From, Sebby

I put the note back in Mother's black boot. I'm the only one who knows it's there.

Then I crawl over to Dad's side of the closet and reach all the way back to touch the cold handle of the secret door. It
feels scary to touch the secret door in the middle of the night. I pull my hand away fast and jump back.

On Mother's side of the bed is a little table that looks the same as the one on Dad's side. I pull open the drawer to check for the book that Mother was reading. I know the book is called
Nightwood
by Djuna Barnes. But the book is gone.

I run into Leo's room. He's sleeping on his stomach with his covers kicked off onto the floor. I sit at the bottom of his bed and shine the flashlight on his pillow. I'm pointing the flashlight at his sleeping face, but it doesn't wake him up. His face looks very white and shiny, except for under his eyes are dark shadow spots.

I lie down on the floor in Leo's kicked-off covers. There's so much time in the night and I can't fall asleep. I don't want to be here in all of this time.

In the morning, I go downstairs and Cass is sitting with her feet tucked up on the soft, brown corduroy chair. The TV is on, but no sound is coming out of it.

Cass! I yell at her. I just woke up and I'm mad because she moved me back into my own bed.

Hang on, she says, I'm almost finished with this page. She's reading and not looking at me.

I want to see the name of Cass's book, but I can't because she's reading it behind her legs. I think she's sitting like that to hide the book from me.