Winter Loon(32)

“They don’t pay much mind to what I do.”

She nodded, satisfied enough, I figured. “Well, glad to have you then.”

“You about done?” Jolene asked as I took another bite of sandwich.

“Give him a chance,” Mona said. “You’re so impatient.”

Jolene rolled her eyes at the both of us, then snatched my sandwich away midbite and dropped it on the plate. “Oh, just leave that.” I gulped from the glass of milk to help wash the peanut butter down as she grabbed hold of my arm again. “Let’s go,” she said and pulled me into the dining room.

I’d barely swallowed the last bite before the little girl in the flowered dress ran up to me in terror, circled my legs like a barrel racer, and peered through my knees. “He comin’ to git me!” she screamed. “Hide me!”

I crouched to make a better shield of myself. “I’ll protect you,” I said, with all the bravery I could muster. A black-haired boy wearing a leather vest, white underpants, and nothing else but a plastic holster belted around his waist came squealing into the room. He brandished a toy pistol.

“Where’s that varmint? She stoled my gold!”

Jolene pried the little girl off my legs. “Here she is, prospector! Here’s your thief!”

The little girl kicked and wiggled until Jolene let her go. She stood in front of me, the pistol pointing into the base of her spine, scorn pouting out her squinted eyes. “You said you’d protect me. You’re a liar.” The accusation stung, salt in a fresh wound.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.

“He gonna string me up now, and it’s all your fault.”

Jolene’s hand shot up like she might slap the girl’s face. She caught herself and let it drop. “You and George go on now. We don’t want to play with you two. Go on,” she said.

“Fine,” the little girl said. “I don’t trust him anyhow.” She laced her hands behind her head and turned stoically. The underpantsed prospector led her back down the hall.

I’d flinched at the “string me up” remark and wondered if that’s what made Jolene want to raise her hand to the child. Me, I wanted to put my arms around Jolene and make promises to protect her from all manner of hurts, whether sticks, stones, or harmful words.

Jolene let out a puff of air. “They’re so stupid sometimes. Come upstairs. I wanna show you something.” We climbed the back stairs through the middle of the house into an open room Jolene shared with Mariah. Under the eaves on either side was a bed, one with a blue quilt and the other with yellow.

“Tidy,” I said.

“Yeah. Rules, you know. Mona says we have to make our beds every day.”

Jolene opened a door in the far corner, despite the handwritten sign declaring the room off-limits to girls. “This is Bull’s room.”

The room was at the front of the house, A-framed, a single window with a bed beneath it. “He can climb right out and sit on the porch roof,” Jolene said. I’m sure my mouth was hanging open. It was a life-size diorama of a boy’s room, and I’d never seen anything like it. It even smelled like a clubhouse, though I couldn’t tell where that smell was coming from—the poster of Steve McQueen on a motorcycle? The plum-colored satin blankets that shone like Ali’s boxing shorts? The gold trophies of athletes frozen midpass, midshot, midswing? Or was it coming from the car magazines and wadded-up clothes that littered the floor? I wanted to go in and inspect it all. I’d never in my life lived anywhere long enough to accumulate an identity in the room where I slept. A younger Bull and Lester stood next to another basketball player in one of the pictures on the wall.

“That’s Bull and Lester, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jolene said. “The other guy’s my uncle Thomas. He used to live here, but he got married and moved to South Dakota. My mom, Trudy, she and Mona were sisters. Thomas is their little brother. They all had the same mother, my grandmother. She died a few years back. And Bull, he’s Troy’s son but from a different woman, not Mona—long story. Mariah belongs to Mona and Troy. That naked little bugger downstairs is George. He’s Mona’s friend’s little kid. Mona watches him sometimes.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Tell me about it. Anyway,” she said, closing the door to the boy’s room, “that’s not what I wanted to show you.”

A denim curtain hung on a thin pole in the doorway of a closet in the corner of the room. She pushed the curtain aside and glanced over her shoulder. “Just follow me, okay?” she said and got down on her hands and knees.

The bare soles of Jolene’s feet disappeared when the curtain fell back in place. No rustles or bumps, no noises at all. She was gone and there I stood, motionless, wondering what cavity had swallowed her, wondering for a brief moment what might ice over her, to seal her away from me. I pressed my hand against the curtain, testing the force field for tingling or teeth. Her head popped out below me, and I stumbled back.

“You’re a jumpy one,” she said. “So? Are you coming or what?”

I crouched onto my hands and knees and inched toward her. I knew I was being stupid, thinking about my mother and that other gap in the world, of falling through or being pulled down. I rubbed the floorboards with my thumbs. When I lifted my head, my face was up close to the pockets of Jolene’s cutoffs as I crawled behind her. I could smell some sweet part of her drifting over me, and I let myself be led. An assortment of coats and tablecloths and ladies’ dresses swept over our backs as we made our way to the corner. Jolene pushed on the wall with her hip and a section of particleboard collapsed, revealing a narrow void, black as pitch.