Unspeakable Things(34)

“Yay!” Sephie squealed.

“No,” he said, sounding irritated. “They’re not going to want a limping sitter. Cassie, I told them you’d do it. They’re on their way, so clean yourself up.”



I’d only babysat for one family before.

Over the winter, I’d taken on one of Persephone’s cast-off babysitting jobs, this one for the Millers. Their four blond boys were indistinguishable except for height: John, Kyle, Kevin, and Junior. The oldest was five, and having them so close together meant their mom couldn’t laugh too hard anymore or she’d accidentally pee. (She’d told me on the uncomfortable ride home.) Because I couldn’t tell them apart, I said the boys’ names all at once when they were naughty, which was regular. JohnKyleKevinJunior, do not light that match. JohnKyleKevinJunior, do not hold your dad’s golf club over your brother’s head. JohnKyleKevinJunior, get your hand out of your pants.

At the end of an exhausting evening, I discovered that the only way the monsters would sleep was if I let them crowd the nappy rust-colored couch and watch TV with me. Not much was on that late and that far out in the country but The Twilight Zone (which seemed like a mean trick). The boys fell asleep before the episode got too spooky, and I wished they hadn’t because it terrified me. I’d have changed the channel except JohnKyleKevinJunior had crashed out on my lap and looked like boogery angels. The best I could do was close my eyes and plug my ears.

I hoped things would go better with the Gomezes.

“Your parents keep their property very neat.” Mr. Gomez’s accent was faint, his vowels longer than if he’d been a native Minnesotan. That and his black hair told me he was from Mexico, but a while ago.

I smiled and nodded, crammed into the farthest corner of the pickup cab. Mr. Gomez hadn’t done anything wrong. It was just my standard response to being in a car with a stranger. “Thank you,” I said.

I was grateful that the ride was so short, a little over a mile from our house as the crow flew. Making conversation with adults was the worst. Plus, Mr. Gomez drove with his window down, and one of the area farmers had recently spread manure. The air was tangy with the odor of composting hay and ammonia.

I wondered if Mr. Gomez knew about Clam being attacked and the curfew in town. If he did, I bet he was regretting moving his family here. “Do you like your new place?” I asked.

Mr. Gomez nodded. He had deep creases around his eyes that reminded me of a cozy leather chair. “Having a larger house is nice.” Dad said they’d moved from Rochester, that Hector was a farmer and his wife a redheaded Minnesotan who’d fallen in love with him on sight when they’d met at a bar. It was clear how Dad said it that he didn’t approve. I don’t think it bothered him that Mr. Gomez was Mexican. Both our parents were clear to me and Sephie that immigrants were good people. The problem was that they were uneducated. To Peg and Donny, being not-book-smart was a crime.

It made me feel tall when I thought about my parents’ master’s degrees, and my grades. It was good to be a brainiac. Dad said his mind moved too fast for most people. Because it raced so hard, he needed to work extra hard to entertain it. Books worked, he said. So did all those magazines, some thick with science fiction stories, others with popular mechanics (which, if that’s what you name your magazine, you’re trying too hard), and the others, the ones I hated, bursting with pictures of naked women with their hands between their legs and soft smiles on their faces.

Dad had tossed a warning my way when Mr. Gomez pulled up. “Don’t let your guard down when you’re there, Cass, and don’t talk about what happens over here. You can’t trust anyone but family.” A thought popped into his head, I could see it skitter across his face, and he turned to Mom. “Hey, love,” he said, face bright with the pleasure of his good idea, “maybe we should invite the Gomezes to our next party? We could welcome them to the fold.”

Mom had been facing away from us, stirring green pepper slices with a wooden spoon. Her shoulders tightened. “Maybe. Cassie, why don’t you wait outside to get picked up.”

I was more than happy to. Mom was cooking up tofu stir-fry with brown rice for supper. I didn’t know if the Gomez family expected me to cook for their children. I didn’t even know how many kids they had, but I knew whatever I’d find in their fridge would be tastier than what Mom was cooking.

My stomach had been audibly growling when I pulled myself into Mr. Gomez’s dusty Ford pickup. It’d had the good graces to shut up on the drive over. I think me and Mr. Gomez would have stayed silent after the initial small talk, if not for the fist of squawking black birds he plowed through taking the corner by Goblin’s house.

My arms shot up reflexively.

“The hell!” Mr. Gomez said, braking and swerving. The birds had been hiding in the unmowed grass on each side of the road until we were nearly on top of them. It was a wonder we hadn’t hit any.

The back end of the truck skidded before Mr. Gomez brought it to a full stop at the lip of the ditch, near where Sephie had gathered those wild strawberries. I dropped my hands and smoothed the cloth of my sundress, tasting the road dust pouring through Mr. Gomez’s open window.

“I didn’t know crows gathered this late in the day,” I said, my voice small.

Mr. Gomez looked at me straight on, for what seemed like the first time. It was too shadowed to read his eyes. “Feed truck must have dropped some corn,” he said.