Up High in the Trees (3 page)

We had fat, ripe tomatoes. There's a picture in Dad's office of Leo and Cass sitting on a yellow chair, holding Mother's tomatoes. It's like the really old pictures with nobody smiling. The tomatoes are big and round like empty faces.

Dad said I used to eat Mother's tomatoes just like they were apples. He said it made Mother happy to watch me eat.

Dad said, You know, it was hard to make Mother happy.

I didn't know that.

When I was little, I practiced drawing different kinds of faces.

Mother sang a song for me:

This is happy

This is sad

This is scared

This is mad.

She made her face match the words.

Leo's mad at the house. He doesn't want to go inside, so I walk to the door by myself. Dad's music is there on the front porch. I can hear his voice singing. Dad gets loud when he sings. I open the door and all the music inside jumps out. It sounds like this:
Goodbye to Rosie.
I know how the Rosie in the song looks. She's blue like how the ghost lady looks on the cover of one of Mother's records. Dad says the blue lady is Joni Mitchell. We don't listen to her record, though, because her voice gives Dad the goose bumps.

Dad's sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing the speakers, so he can't see me. I reach out and touch the back of his neck with one finger. He turns around fast.

Jesus Christ, Sebby, don't do that, Dad says. He grabs my hands and rubs them between his hands. Your hands are freezing, he says.

Cass comes and turns down the music.

Where's Leo? she asks me.

Outside, I say.

What's going on? Dad asks.

Nothing, Cass says.

Dad looks at me and I don't say anything.

Let him stay outside, Cass says.

Dad goes to the door.

Just leave him alone, Cass shouts.

But Dad goes out. He closes the door slowly so it doesn't make any noise.

We're going to eat, Cass says to me.

She takes my hand and pulls me into the kitchen. The table is already set with the brown place mats that have orange and yellow and red leaves on them. Cass pushes down hard on my shoulders to make me sit.

Here, she says.

Cass puts a plateful of steaming spaghetti down on my place mat. I lean forward and let the steam make my face sweaty wet.

Stop it, Cass says. She sits down next to me and uses my knife and fork to cut up the spaghetti.

Dad treats everyone like a baby, Cass says and leans back in her chair. I hear the front door open and then close. There are steps, but Leo and Dad don't come to the kitchen to eat. I look down at my spaghetti because I don't want to see Cass.

Eat, Cass tells me.

It's too hot, I say.

Cass takes a bite of my spaghetti with her fork.

It's fine, she says.

I try a bite.

See, Cass says, it's fine.

She takes another bite and then it's my turn again. We keep taking turns.

How was school? Cass asks.

Long, I tell her.

Cass doesn't have to go to school anymore because she finished twelfth grade and had a graduation. I'm in third, so that means I have nine more grades.

Cass takes another bite and then says, Stop. Stop eating, she says, it doesn't taste right. She gets up and carries the plate over to the sink, then dumps off all the spaghetti.

I stand up and watch her.

Go take a bath, she says.

I don't move. I don't want to take a bath.

I'm tired, I say.

Cass turns off the water. She doesn't look at me.

Whatever, she says, then go to sleep.

I go upstairs and sit down on the top step. If I go to sleep now, then morning will come and I'll have to go back to school. I don't want to go to school, I'll say, and Cass will say there's nowhere else for me to go. In my head, the song says,
Goodbye to Rosie
. I look at the white wall until it makes my eyes go blurry. There are bright spots where Mother touched that haven't been touched by anybody else. You have to look for a long time before you can see a bright spot. Then the spot glows and that's how you know where Mother still is. The spot glows and it's like the spot is glowing inside of you, because it makes you warm inside your chest and that feels good. You want to touch the spot, but you can't because then it will be gone. What's wrong is that everybody always goes around touching everything and Cass is always cleaning and that erases the spots.

I know that when I was three, I was standing on the couch looking out the window at all the flowers. The window was open so I pushed myself out and fell two stories. I landed on my back in Grandmother Bernie's summer garden.

Mother put her hand on her chest and screamed. She could feel her heart in her chest. Her heart felt like it was getting bigger. She kept screaming and ran down the stairs, out the door to me.

I was quiet there in the dirt. Mother picked me up and held me tight. Then I started screaming, too.

Dad was watching from the upstairs window. He ran down to me and Mother. Dad looked at the ground and saw how my head left a dent in the soil. He bent down and kissed the dent. Then he blew a kiss up to Grandmother Bernie and everybody watching us and he couldn't stop blowing kisses because Grandmother Bernie had just put the new garden there with fresh, soft dirt.

Mother held me and she screamed louder and louder—louder than me. Dad put his hands over his ears. I stopped crying and I listened. I could hear everything inside of her.

I didn't talk until after I fell.

Dad tried to get me to talk before that. He sang me songs. He carried me around the house and pointed at everything we saw and told me what it was. He put the words in my head.

Dad took me to the doctor, but Mother wouldn't listen to what the doctor said about me. Mother said I would talk as soon as I had something to say.

After I fell, I said a whole sentence. I want a garden, I told Mother.

Of course, she said.

I helped her plant the seeds. I liked watching all the different colors grow.

Sebby, says Cass's voice.

I can hear her, but I don't want to wake up. She pushes back the hair on my forehead and holds her hand there. Her hand feels cold and then warmer.

Sebby, she says again. She leans in close to me and I can smell her morning pancake-and-syrup smell. She takes her hand off my forehead and it leaves a cold spot.

I stretch my arms up out of the covers. It's morning and I don't want to go to school. My eyes are foggy. I have to rub them so I can see better.

Don't, Cass says, and she pulls my hands down away from my face.

My eyes hurt, I tell her.

That's because you're rubbing them, she says. She's getting my clothes out for me, stacking everything in a neat pile at the bottom of my bed. First my pants, then my shirt, and then my underwear and socks on top. It has to be in this order or else I don't want to get dressed.

How about no school today? she asks.

I nod.

Good, she says, you get ready and I'll call and tell them you're not coming.

My eyes are still foggy. I look out the window and the hill with the big house on top is barely there at all. It's like the outside has gotten smaller. I close my eyes.

Sebby, Cass calls from downstairs.

I push off my covers and crawl to the end of the bed where my clothes are. I dress fast and run down to the kitchen.

Cass is sitting at the table, chewing her tiny fingernails.

Eat your cereal before it gets soggy, she says. Cass is skinny-skinny and her face is bony and sharp to look at.

Does Dad know? I ask her. She stops chewing on her fingernails and leans forward. Her face gets bigger. Her eyebrows go up and her eyes look like heavy, black stones.

About what? she asks.

School, I say.

She shakes her head.

I look down at the table to think.

Come on, says Cass.

At the end of the driveway, the green car is lonely and wet with dew. I have to squint because the sun is making the car sparkly bright. Across the bumper, Cass put stickers that say,
CLINTON GORE
in red, white, and blue.

Is it winter? I ask Cass.

Not yet, she says.

The car smells cold inside.

Seat belt, Cass says.

The buckle is so cold I can't really even feel it when I put it on. I sit back and wait for the seat to get warmer. Cass starts the car and flicks on the wipers to clean the dew off the wind-shield. Then we go.

Cass is happy in the car. She pushes the eject button on the tape player and her tape flies out into the backseat. We
laugh. The green car is so old we've had it since before I was born. It used to be Mother's and then Mother gave it to Cass. Now Cass has to share it with Leo because he learned how to drive, too.

I look out my window and watch the houses go by. There are also big, green parks and grocery stores with empty parking lots and there's the new bank and the movie theater made out of bricks with a sign that says,
THE MIGHTY DUCKS
in red letters that glow at night. We go faster now past houses and more houses. They are tall and close together. I watch how the colors change from light brown to yellow to dark brown to light blue. If I turn my head and look straight at the houses going by, I can make the colors blur into tan.

Cass rolls down her window a little.

Put yours down, she says.

I do it and the cold wind from outside blows through. Cass's long yellow hair flies and snaps around her face in the wind. She puts on her black stocking cap. Then she reaches back and hands me a scarf from the backseat. I bunch it up into a ball and hold it against my chest like a pillow.

You know, Cass says, you're going to be okay. The car is windy inside, so Cass has to make her voice louder than the wind.

Sebby, she says.

I look at her. She's facing straight ahead and talking to the road.

I'm sorry about yesterday in the library, Cass says. I'm sorry I said that you looked dead.

The word starts going in my head. I know the word
dead
. I hear it over and over again. I have to catch it and then my head is quiet.