Winter Loon(31)

SHE HAD SEEN ME. MORE than that, she’d watched me for days on end, passing her house, sometimes on foot, other times on bicycle, sometimes behind the wheel of Ruby’s clunker. And when she was good and ready—because that’s how Jolene Oliver worked, on her own time—she stepped off the porch and stopped me.

I’d spotted her by the time it was too late to divert or retreat, so I kept walking, examining my fingernails, listening to my shoes slap the hot concrete. She was sitting on her porch behind the rail on my right so I glanced left, wishing I had a watch I could check to show her I had someplace to be, that this was a shortcut to get me straight to where I was needed. When I was lined up with the front walk of the Hightowers’ house, I dared a look. She was at the landing, one leg out to the side, hands on her cocked hips.

I smiled, tight-lipped, weak. My guts and brains dropped into my pants.

“Wanna come in?” she asked.

I stopped, scratched my head, did a poor job of faking surprise. “Oh. What?”

“Do you want to come into the house?” She bobbed her head with each word, like I might need to read her lips.

“Uh, sure,” I said. I don’t know why I did it, but I looked around, like someone might be watching me, like what I was doing was somehow wrong.

“Worried you’ll get caught?”

“Caught? Caught by who?”

The look she gave me was complete, an x-ray of my emotions, my biology, my potential. In that silent exchange, I came to believe she understood everything that there was to know about me. I was drawn to her by a terrestrial force I had no power to resist.

The spot Bull had occupied on the couch was empty, which was a relief to me. I wasn’t ready to have him see my intentions, which felt embossed on my face. Chaos rose in some other room, thrilled screaming of children. I heard a rush of feet, then a little girl in a flowered dress shot out from a long hallway. She stopped in her tracks and stuck her tongue out at me. I threw my suspicion back at her with a squint.

“Who’s the white boy?” she asked Jolene, her eyes glued to me.

“Get lost,” Jolene said. She flicked her away with her wrist like she was shooing a fly. The little girl stood firm. “I mean it, Mariah. Scram.”

I got one more fresh face. Then the chanting began: “Jolene and a white boy sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.” Jolene lunged at her and she took off, smooching sounds trailing down the hallway.

“Forget her,” Jolene said, grabbing me by the arm to lead me into the kitchen. Mona was sitting at the square table, an assortment of needles and thread and a bowl full of tiny colored beads in front of her, the telephone wedged between her ear and shoulder.

She looked up at the two of us. “I’ll talk to you later,” she said, standing to hang up the receiver on the wall-mounted base. Jolene dropped my arm, and I touched it without thinking, rubbing the spot she’d been pulling on. “You remember Wes, right? Works with Bull?”

“Sure,” Mona said. She wore a man’s T-shirt with a howling wolf on it. Her long braid rested on her shoulder. “You’re looking for Bull? He’s not here.”

Jolene answered while she rifled through the whitewashed pine cupboards. “Wes is here with me.” She said it as if we’d made a plan, like we were to be friends. “You want a peanut butter jelly sandwich?”

I was looking for signs that I wasn’t welcome in that warm kitchen. White curtains spotted with red strawberries fluttered and sucked at the screen in the open window. The sun was behind the house and the kitchen was in shadow. The dog, Sparky, was panting under the table, not interested in me or my crotch this time. I felt the urge to vow that my intentions were good, that I could not possibly harm this girl, if that’s what her aunt feared might happen. All of me was foreign yet I wanted more than anything to sit down at that table, maybe even lay my head on my arms and rest. “Sure,” I said to Jolene. I turned to Mona. “That is, if you don’t mind.”

“Not one bit,” she said, pushing a chair out for me. “Have a seat.”

Mona picked up tiny beads with the end of a long needle, then wove them between threads strung on a wooden loom. “I remember her, you know,” said Mona. “Your mom. She was a few years younger than me in school.”

I shifted my feet a little and kept my head down, not sure what else to say.

“How’s it going over there with Gip and Ruby? Been a long time since they had a kid in the house.”

“Quit with the third degree, already,” Jolene said. “Sit down, will you?” She pushed on my shoulder, put the plate on the table. “Here’s your sandwich.” She shifted her attention back to Mona. “You making more bracelets?”

“Oh, you know me,” Mona said. “I was talking to Dot. We have to run our hands while we run our mouths.”

I tried to keep up with the dueling conversation and eat the sandwich at the same time so as not to appear ungrateful. I choked down the bite in my mouth. “It’s okay,” I said to Mona. “With Gip and Ruby.”

“They know you’re here?” Mona asked. The sound in her voice made me think she probably knew a little about them.

I was content there in that jam-scented kitchen, content with my discomfort, content to have those two sets of brown eyes staring at me. I took another bite of the sandwich and sipped milk from a glass jar with little orange flowers painted on it. I didn’t want to go back to that other kitchen just yet.