When I Was Five I Killed Myself (16 page)

Soon all the people at Hanley-Dawson Chevrolet were standing around the car looking at Jessica and me. I waved to them. It was like we were in a parade, only Jessica didn't look at them. She looked down just.

The man in the suit went and got the lady with the earplugs.

“You're a mother,” he said. “See if you can do something with them.”

The lady made a big smile and looked at us and said, “Come now, children, don't you think it's about time you got home? I think your mommies and daddies must be worried about you.”

But I was busy driving. I was on my way to Miami.

Jessica had ribbons in her hair that matched her dress. They were wet though, from the rain outside,
and they dangled. And I went to touch one but I didn't.

One of the men in a suit started laughing and the other one said, “Don't encourage them.”

Then the old one came out again. He yelled, “Where the hell is the key to that car? Doesn't anybody know what's going on here anymore?” Three men in suits went to find the key.

I kept driving to Florida and Jessica bent her head down and closed her eyes. When she bent down blankee slipped off her legs. I reached down to fix him, and when I did my hand hit something. Next to the steering wheel. It jingled. I looked. It was the keys to the car.

Then I did something. I didn't know how but I did. I reached down with my legs onto the long pedal and pushed it up and down up and down, and then I turned the key. Smoke came out, it made me jump, it was real loud. All the people ran back away from the car and the old man in the suit ran up and banged on the windows again with his fists.

“I'm going to call the police on you brats!” he said.

Then I didn't do anything, because I didn't know what was going to happen. But something happened. Jessica started talking.

“Raggedy Ann didn't die, Burt. I killed her in the hospital. I went to see Daddy. They took him in an ambulance. I was with my aunt, she took me into the room. My mom was in there, next to him, he was under a plastic thing, a tent, and he had tubes all in
him. But his eyes were open. I walked up to him. ‘Daddy, it's me, Contessa,' I said, but he didn't say anything. ‘It's me, Contessa,' I said. He looked right at me but he didn't say anything. He acted like he didn't even know who I was. I said, ‘It's me, Daddy, it's me,' but he looked the other way and I thought it was the plastic, why he couldn't see, so I reached to pull it away from him but my mom grabbed my hand and I pushed her away. I was mad at Daddy, he wouldn't even talk to me, I yelled at him. I screamed that he was being mean and wouldn't talk to me. My aunt pulled me away, out of the room. She made me sit outside, on plastic chairs that were hard. I had Raggedy Ann with me.

“Then my mom came out of the room and she was crying. She told my aunt it was all over and to take me home. But I screamed that I wanted to see Daddy. My aunt held me real hard, she wouldn't let me. She said that there are some things children don't understand.

“And then I decided that I wasn't going to be children anymore. I took Raggedy Ann and killed her in the wastebasket by the elevator.”

And Jessica started to cry. She cried and cried in the car, all bent over and I didn't know what to do. So I put my arms out, like my dad does when I have nightmares, and I put them on Jessica, I put them around Jessica and she leaned on me, on my front. I hugged her in the car. I hugged her very tight, while grown-ups pounded on the windows all around us.

T
HE POLICEMAN HAD A GUN BUT HE DIDN
'
T KILL US
. H
E
was nice as a policeman and liked children, but said it was dangerous to drive cars inside a store. He called Jessica's mother on the telephone but she wasn't home and then he called my house but Jeffrey answered and said it was the wrong number. So the policeman said we could go if we promised to go straight home, and when we left I heard the old man in a suit say, “Is that all, you're letting them go just like that?” and the policeman said, “Weren't you ever a kid, mister?”

The sky was just gorgeous, which is what my mom says when I come home dirty, it was gray like dirt and drizzling. The streets were shiny from the water and you could see your breath. We walked back.

I followed Jessica to watch her. We passed Maxwell's on the other side coming back. The big clock outside the bank said four o'clock.

We didn't talk anymore. We were silence all the
way back to Jessica's house. In the driveway were two cars, a station wagon and a little one, in back. I knew the little one was Jessica's father's car. Jessica opened the side door of the house and went in but I didn't want to. I waited outside until she said to come in. I went in.

The lights were all off, nobody was home, no pets even. Jessica took off my mom's coat and hung it up but I left mine on. Someone was in the pocket, Monkey Cuddles, he was sleeping. Jessica went through the hall to the living room. She didn't talk. She sat down on the sofa sideways and put her feet on it which made dark spots where they got it wet. (But you shouldn't put your feet on the furniture, it ruins it, said my mom, and you have to give it away. Once my grandfather sold all the chairs in our house without telling anyone. A man came and was loading them in a truck when my mom got home. She yelled at the man. She said, “What can you say about an eighty-year-old man who doesn't know the value of furniture?”)

I stood in the hall and looked at Jessica. In the corner of the living room was a grandfather's clock. Captain Kangaroo has one that dances, but Jessica's didn't, he didn't even have the face, just a thing on the bottom that went back and forth back and forth.

Next to the sofa was a table with doilies, which are cloth snowflakes, and coasters. (I enjoy coasters as items, you don't have to wind them.) Jessica looked out the window behind her and bounced one foot up and down up and down.

Outside was Mr Moon. In Music we had a song,

“Do you see the Man in the Moon?” I said. The clouds went over the moon and made it go on and off. And once I was standing on my front porch looking at the moon and my mom came out and tried to show me the Man in the Moon, but I couldn't see him. I have never been able to see him.

Jessica didn't say anything. I sat down on the sofa. Outside the rain stopped. On the edge of the sky it was red. Everything in the house was brown. In winter it gets dark early and you turn the clocks backwards. The sky is where God lives, I have prayed to him there. I prayed for Jessica's father to not be dead, but God didn't
help me. When I was little I used to think that night was when clouds covered the sky.

“You got the sofa wet,” I told Jessica. She looked at me and said, “When my daddy died my mom covered everything with sheets so the company wouldn't spill on it. She only uncovered it yesterday. She said it was time to stop being sad, but she cried all night.” Jessica looked at where it was wet. “She should have left it on.”

I looked out the window, and put my nose on it and breathed out donuts. I said, “Look, Jessica, donuts,” but she was looking at something else, by the stairs, hanging on the bannister, a purse.

Across the street a porch light went on. It got darker outside. I looked for the moon but it was gone now. A dog went down the sidewalk, a man walked him. An airplane went over, the noise was behind it. Down the block somebody yelled, “I've got to move the car,” and Jessica stood up and walked into the hall, she looked at the purse, and said, “That's my mother's purse.” Then she looked up the stairs. Then she walked up the stairs.

I sat on the sofa. There was a candle on the table on the doily but it wasn't lit, it was off. The refrigerator in the kitchen hummed. The grandfather's clock rang five times. And outside the sky turned dark blue with no stars. I folded my hands up in my lap and waited, but Jessica didn't come back down.

I got up. I walked into the hall. It smelled like Jessica. I looked at the purse.

I listened. There wasn't any noise. I put my foot on
the first step. It had carpet on it. I was standing on the stairs.

I walked up the stairs. When I got to the top I looked around. I could hardly see. I waited for my eyes to get used to it. There was a bathroom. Next to it was a bedroom with a big bed for two people. Next to it was a closet, I opened it and it had sheets and towels in it. Then I looked down the hall. At the end I saw another room, the door was open and Jessica was inside, sitting on her bed sideways looking out the window, her feet hung over the edge.

I walked up to her doorway and stopped. She didn't hear me. I stood and watched her just. Her face was lit up from outside and her eyes had diamonds in them. I waited and waited and soon she started to sing a little song.

I listened. I watched her lips open and close open and close. She leaned on three pillows. One was pink, one was checkered, one was plain. Her feet dangled over the side of the bed. I watched.

In the corner of the room was a wood horse that
was really a chair. On her ceiling was a lamp with clowns on it, and hanging from her wall over her bed was Jerry the Puppet.

Jessica pushed off her shoes and they fell on the floor. She pulled her legs up on the bed, she had on knee socks still, folded on top and smooth and soft. Then she said something.

“Peter Pan is a girl.” She was looking out the window still. “They made her look like a boy but she is a girl, they just cut her hair short and made her wear a tight brassiere.”

(I saw it too, on television, and it made me want to fly so I made my dad call up the television station to find out how they did it, but Jeffrey said there wasn't anybody on the other end, that my dad lied to me.)

“I'm not old enough to wear a brassiere,” said Jessica. “But I have one, my mom gave it to me, for when am.”

She went into her closet and took it out. She showed it to me, it made me feel funny. It was wrong. I'm not supposed to look at them. But then I did something, I took it and put it on myself, only backwards. “Look, Jessica,” I said. “I'm a camel.”

It surprised me that she laughed. She laughed like I never heard before, it was like singing. I put the brassiere on my head and jumped up and down and she laughed more and I put it on my face and then she fell on her bed laughing.

“Knock knock,” I said (it was a joke).

“Who's there?”

“Boo.”

“Boo who?” said Jessica.

“You don't have to cry about it,” I said.

Jessica looked at me. “I'm not,” she said.

“No, see. You don't have to cry about it.”

“I'm not, Burt.” She stopped laughing.

“No, it's a joke.”

“What is?”

She just turned around to the window again, because she didn't understand.

“Jessica, it's a joke,” I said.

But she wouldn't turn back around. I watched her back, it made little humps, she was crying.

“Jessica.” I said her name but she just put her head down on the bed and her shoulders went up and down up and down. I didn't know what to do, so I walked next to the bed.

I tried to show her a magic trick, you pull your thumb off it looks like, but she wouldn't look.

“Maybe we can pretend, Jessica,” I said. “Something. So you won't be sad.”

“No,” she said. “That's for children. I don't want to be children anymore.” She said, “I hate it,” and hit her bed, and said “I hate it” again and hit her bed, and again, she made noise with her voice like an animal. “I hate being children!” she screamed and put her head inside her arm and layed down on the bed and cried.

I didn't know what to do. I stood and watched and was angry. Because I am children too. And I hate it too.

My mom told me that someday when I was grown up I would love somebody and it would mean I would want to stop everyone from hurting her. I used to think it was Shrubs. But it wasn't. It was Jessica.

I sat down on the bed next to her and put my hand on her hair on the ribbons, and I pulled one of them, and it came undone and fell on the bed. And the other one. I held it in my hand. And I put it on my cheek, because it was softness. Like Jessica.

When she looked up at me her hair was in her face. I pushed it back with my hands and it was wet too but not from outside but from crying. I picked up a tear on my finger and put it in my eyes.

I put my arms around Jessica like Daddy does when I cry and did this to the back of her head. She rolled over and leaned on me with her side on me, it was warm. I took off my coat and someone fell out onto the bed. Monkey Cuddles. I put him on the window sill looking outside, to keep guard over Jessica Renton and me.

And I looked at her crying and I said something real soft. “I won't let anybody hurt you. I won't. I'll make it so we won't be children anymore.”

And she looked up at me with her eyes and pushed down on me with her head on my stomach and I pulled her to me tight and it was warm on me. Outside I saw it started to snow and Monkey Cuddles watched it in the wind but we were warm inside. And suddenly something happened. I saw the streetlights go on. They lit up and shined on us. Jessica put her face
against my stomach and said, “You are my friend,” and her eyes had diamonds in them.