“Delrita! Delrita! You had me worried sick!”
I forced one eye open and peered up into the haggard face of Uncle Bert.
“Come on, hon, you can’t stay here,” he said.
I was shivering, curled up in a ball, vaguely aware of a pain in my chest. I looked down and saw that I was stabbing myself with the God’s eye.
Suddenly I felt smothered by cold, harsh reality, and I shot upright.
“You can’t stay here,” Uncle Bert said again. His voice sounded hollow, like he was speaking from a tunnel.
“I have to stay,” I insisted. “It’s my home—and Punky’s.”
“Your home will be with Queenie and me now,” Uncle Bert said. “Shirley and Sam—” He stopped as his voice caught in his throat. “Shirley and Sam had papers naming me legal guardian.”
Legal guardian. The words hit me like a rock between the eyes. I didn’t want a legal guardian. I wanted Mom and Dad.
“Couldn’t we live here?” I pleaded, hearing the panic in my voice. And then I remembered what Aunt Queenie thought of antiques—that they were dark and ugly and depressing. If she moved in here, she’d get rid of the old furniture and replace it with fancy, modern pieces. It wouldn’t be a home at all, but a showcase. I smoothed the covers on the bed and straightened the doily on the washstand. Pineapple lace. Mom was crazy about pineapple lace. Uncle Bert’s voice intruded on my thoughts. I stared at him, barely hearing the words: “If you’ll gather up enough things to last you and Punky for a few days, I’ll come back later for the rest.”
I was a robot, doing what he asked while he got Punky up and dressed.
TWELVE
The Blank Wall
Uncle Bert’s house quickly filled up with relatives waiting for the funeral. Dad’s side of the family stayed at a motel, but they spent a lot of time at the house.
The whole experience was a nightmare. For the first time, I wanted to be invisible, but the relatives wouldn’t let me. So I became a blank wall instead, sitting with the family because it was expected of me, but doing nothing except take up space.
With each new batch of relatives came the same old phrases: “Your folks didn’t suffer.... They lived a good, happy life.... At least they went together. So many times, one is left to grieve alone....”
I knew people just wanted to be kind, but those were stupid things to say. How did they know my parents didn’t suffer? The seconds waiting to die would have been an eternity as the car hurtled over a cliff. No matter that Mom and Dad had lived happy lives, their lives weren’t long enough. And it would have been something to have even one parent left over.
Aunt Queenie checked out the clothes in my closet and insisted that I needed a new dress appropriate for a funeral. “All I saw was green,” she said to my Aunt Donna.
They wanted to take me shopping, but I wouldn’t go. I just said, “It doesn’t matter. Buy what you want.” After all, a blank wall would look good in anything.
Punky was the glue that held me together. With all the people coming and going, he thought it was a party, and was bewildered that my parents didn’t arrive. At least a hundred times a day, he would ask my aunt or uncle or me, “Shirley and Sam come home?” Aunt Queenie would throw up her hands and mutter to the ceiling, “Give me strength, Lord, give me strength.”
Over and over, I tried to explain to him that Mom and Dad weren’t coming back, but how do you explain God’s decisions when you don’t understand them yourself?
Nighttime was the worst, because Punky cried when he had to go to bed in Uncle Bert’s house. It helped when Uncle Bert brought the Ronald McDonald poster and the punching-bag clown and all the little things that Punky loved, and set them up in his new room. Uncle Bert brought things from my room, too, including my Barbie doll case, but I didn’t have the heart even to open it, much less pick up a knife and carve.
The night before the funeral, everyone went to the mortuary for visitation. When I walked into the crowded room and heard all the commotion, my blank wall almost crumbled. I was furious. How dare these people be laughing and talking so close to my parents, who would never laugh and talk again!
The funeral at least was a sober affair, with the very same people snuffling and blowing their noses. It was hard to figure out. Punky cried, too, not because he understood the occasion, but because of the organ music.
The dress Aunt Queenie bought for me was navy blue with a prim white collar and tiny flowers embroidered across the bodice and the hem. It was stiff and scratchy, but it seemed small punishment for a girl who would attend her own parents’ funeral and not shed a tear.
I thought I’d be relieved when all the relatives left, but I hadn’t planned far enough ahead to think what it would be like to be alone with Aunt Queenie.
She was a fanatic. The pencils in her desk drawer were all sharpened to the same length, and the foods in her cabinet were arranged alphabetically. Every morning she emerged from her bedroom like royalty, wearing a nice dress, a made-up face, and a pencil sticking out of her bun.
Holiday dinners at Aunt Queenie’s house had always been too prissy to be comfortable, exactly like her personality. Every room was carpeted in a cream-colored shag that made you want to swing from the rafters to keep from making footprints.
Aunt Queenie’s favorite room was the family room, and her “family” consisted of a hundred potted plants that she talked to as if they were people. The place was a jungle, with plants spewing forth from every nook and cranny. A huge philodendron on top of the TV had leaves that draped down and hid part of the screen. A dozen spider plants, suspended from the ceiling, had sprouted baby spider plants, which, I supposed, would sprout more babies and eventually take over the whole house.
Punky moved his sawed-off table into the family room, but Aunt Queenie hauled it to the garage and replaced it with one that matched her decor. Punky kept switching the tables, and she kept switching them back.
Once, when Uncle Bert jokingly suggested putting wheels on both tables to make the moving easier, Aunt Queenie practically went through the roof. But the day finally came that she admitted defeat.
“All right, Punky,” she said. “You win. But that sawed-off piece of junk would,be rejected by a secondhand store.”
Dad had teased Aunt Queenie about being a “do gooder,” but I hadn’t paid much attention until now. She was forever on the phone or on the go, working for some cause or community event. When she plucked the pencil from her hair, you could bet the blood bank, the garden club, or the United Church Women would be whipped into shape.
Aunt Queenie, of course, wasn’t used to kids. It didn’t take long for me to discover that Punky and I were just a broken fingernail, a thorn in her toe, a source of trouble in her organized life. She tolerated Punky’s red plastic plate at her table of fine china, but she flatly refused to let him eat in front of the TV. One evening, when Punky tried to walk off with his plate, she told him to sit down and mind his manners.
“Don’t want no manners,” replied Punky, jutting out his lower jaw until his upper lip disappeared. He sat back down, but he wouldn’t eat.
When supper was over, Punky went to the family room while I carried our dishes to the kitchen and started loading the dishwasher.
“Bert,” said Aunt Queenie, “did you fill out the paperwork for Punky?”
Paperwork? Why would Punky need paperwork? I stopped clanking dishes to eavesdrop.
“Yes,” replied Uncle Bert, “but there’s no hurry.”
“Maybe not, but it’s wise to plan ahead. His application will have to be approved at Jefferson City, because the workshop receives funding from the state.”
The workshop! I froze as I pictured Punky being herded into a dark, depressing warehouse by a man with a whip.
“My nerves can’t take many more soap operas and soap commercials,” Aunt Queenie continued, “and today I found chicken bones—chicken bones—behind the TV.”
“That’s my Punk-Man,” chuckled Uncle Bert.
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“It’s not funny. We’ve had a drastic change in this household, and if you expect me to deal with it, you have to consider my feelings, too. The workshop is a valid solution.”
I slammed the door on the dishwasher and marched into the dining room. Through clenched teeth, I said, “You can’t do that to Punky.”
Aunt Queenie rolled her eyes and spoke to me as if I were a two-year-old having a tantrum. “You don’t understand, Delrita. There are supervisors there who are trained in dealing with the handicapped. They‘ll—”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand!” I cried. “Mom kept him at home with good reason. You don’t know what it’s like out there for people who are—different. You don’t realize how many kids have laughed or stared at Punky. Or how many parents have yanked their kids away as if he had some horrible disease!”
“Punky’s a born comedian,” said Aunt Queenie, so calmly that I wanted to shake her. The expert, Dad had said. Aunt Queenie did a little volunteer work with the handicapped, and she was the expert. I folded my arms and waited for her expert opinion.
Sure enough, she gave it. “He loves it when people laugh,” she said. “Sure, kids are going to stare, because they’re curious, and parents are going to be embarrassed at their kids. It’s a natural reaction, and it’s something we can change by being more open where Punky’s concerned. I know how your mother handled the situation, but I also know nobody can solve a problem by pretending it doesn’t exist.”
“A problem? Is that how you see Punky? As a problem?”
“Of course not, but his life could be so much richer if he was involved with his peers. The sheltered workshop, Special Olympics. Why, I’ve been—”
“No,” I said, remembering Mom’s smoldering blue eyes. “No, no, no, no, no.”
Aunt Queenie threw up her hands and turned to Uncle Bert.
He said, “Delrita, do you know what goes on at a sheltered workshop?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.
“They have people with varying degrees of ability. Some do very simple tasks, and others who are less handicapped do harder jobs.”
I could feel Uncle Bert looking at me, but I couldn’t answer. No matter how pretty he tried to paint the picture, it still looked bleak to me.
“You love Punky, don’t you?” asked Aunt Queenie.
I gawked at her. What kind of question was that?
“You’re overprotective,” she said. “You’re smothering him. The best way to prove you really love him is to stand back and get out of his way.”
In a roundabout way, Aunt Queenie was criticizing Mom, and I was speechless with anger.
Finally Uncle Bert said, “It’s too soon, Queenie. Let’s give it some time.”
I went to the family room and sat beside Punky on the floor.
“Look, D.J.,” he said, laughing at a commercial where a kitten was streaking through a house toward some cat food.
I smiled absentmindedly and started picking up the crayon papers that were littering the carpet. Maybe if I tried harder to keep things neat, Aunt Queenie would forget about the workshop. Maybe I could even talk Punky into giving up his table. After all, it was just a sawed-off piece of junk, and it did look out of place.
THIRTEEN
The Swan
I was getting ready for school when I heard Aunt Queenie screech, “Punky Holloway! What are you doing?”
I raced out to the hall, certain that Punky had been caught picking petunias or setting fire to a mattress.
He was hotfooting toward me with Aunt Queenie in pursuit.
“What’s the matter?” I yelped.
“Gone,” said Punky, darting behind me.
“Twelve dollars!” shrieked Aunt Queenie.
I spied the empty bottle in her hand. Shampoo. Punky had emptied her shampoo.
“Twelve dollars a bottle! Wasted! Down the drain!”
“Six dollars,” I said meekly.
“What?”
“Six dollars. Punky only pours out half of it.”
Aunt Queenie covered her eyes with her hand. Finally she looked at me and said, “You mean he does this all the time?”
I nodded. “But only the last half.”
“And just what other tricks might Punky have up his sleeve that you haven’t warned me about?”
“Matches,” I squeaked. “Mom always hid the matches.”
“Well, I declare. I just declare.” Aunt Queenie turned and walked away, muttering about losing her mind.
I walked to school hunched over, clutching grief to my chest as if it were a notebook. Nine days had passed since the accident, and this would be my first day back.
As I traveled the unfamiliar path from Uncle Bert’s house to Tangle Nook Junior High, the chilly October air stung my eyes and nostrils. All around me were trees in glorious shades of red, yellow, and orange, but I concentrated on the dead and dying leaves that dropped like tears before me, cluttering the sidewalk.
The route that had been so scary when Punky and I slipped away in the dark had put on a cheerful, sunshiny face. A big jack-o‘-lantern grinned from a window, even though Halloween was three weeks away. Doors banged open, then closed, as children left their homes for school. I heard mothers calling out last-minute instructions, their voices mingled with snatches of music from cartoons on TV.
The farther I got from my uncle’s ritzy neighborhood, the smaller and closer together the houses were, and the more kids I saw. Did the size of a house diminish in direct proportion to the number of people living there? I wondered, to keep my mind off the agonizing thoughts that were nagging at my brain.
Always before, there was home to look forward to when school was over. Now there was nothing. An empty house that Uncle Bert was putting up for sale. A thousand memories going on the auction block, just like the roll-top desk Mom had wanted.
Choking back a sob, I rammed my free hand into the pocket of my jeans jacket and discovered the package Whittlin’ Walt had given me when I left his house. So much had happened I’d forgotten all about it.
I tore open the package and caught my breath. Inside, not more than three inches across, was a trumpeter swan in flight. Its neck was a graceful line no bigger around than a matchstick, and feathers lay in perfect rows across its outstretched wings.
Carefully I lifted the swan from its packing. Underneath was a note from Walt that read: “Life is like an untouched block of wood. We can carve out a beautiful niche for ourselves, or we can leave it unused and unproductive on a shelf.”
I didn’t know how an invisible girl would go about carving out a niche for herself, but I suddenly wanted to carve a swan. Tears welled up in my eyes as I remembered Dad cutting out the swan shapes for me on our last night together. He’d thought I could handle the outstretched wings, and I wanted to turn around right this minute and prove to myself that I could.
But Aunt Queenie would never allow me to miss more school. I put the swan back in the box and trudged on.
“Hi, Velveeta.”
Without meaning to, I’d reached the Shacklefords’ house on Magnolia Street. Birdie was sitting alone on the steps, her moptop tangled and her freckled cheeks rosy from the chill. She was wearing a sweater over her pajamas, but her feet were bare. Of course, she wouldn’t be inside watching cartoons, because her family didn’t have a TV.
“Hi, Birdie. What are you doing out here in the cold?”
“Waitin’.”
“Waiting for what?”
“The baby.”
“The new baby? Did your mom go to the hospital?”
“No.” Birdie laughed as she picked up the whistle that dangled from her neck. “The old baby. Mama says I can’t blow this ‘til he wakes up.”
A sudden burst of resentment gnawed at me. Birdie’s father, locked away in a jail cell, had left her with nothing more to look forward to than blowing on a whistle. Why hadn’t he died in place of Dad?
“... How about you?” Birdie said.
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“What?”
“I said I’m gonna be a hobo for Halloween. How about you?”
Birdie’s eager upturned face made me ashamed of myself. How could I have wished her or anybody’s father dead? God didn’t make trade-offs. When He was ready for new souls—zap! He took the ones He wanted.
“How about you?” Birdie asked for the third time.
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“You don’t want to go trigger-treating?”
“No, I’m too old.” The truth was, at the farm I hadn’t had to worry about Halloween.
“That’s what Tree says,” Birdie replied, and her face took on a pout, “but he’s not too old to eat my candy.”
I smiled at Birdie and told her good-bye. She had taken my mind off my troubles for a little while. When I got to school, though, depression wrapped around me like a cloak.
The hallway was crawling with kids laughing and talking. It was just a routine day to them, but to me, nothing would ever be routine again.
I stared into my locker, unable to remember what class I had first hour. Then Cindi Martin smiled at me, and I spied her English book. English. As I sorted through my books to find the right one, Avanelle came up to me and said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” I mumbled. My chest hurt and my eyes burned, and I didn’t want to talk to her or anybody else.
Avanelle stood staring at her worn-out tennis shoes. I knew she was thinking she should say something about my parents, and I waited for the same tired words I’d heard so many times. “Your folks didn’t suffer ...” and on and on, with meaningless phrases that were supposed to lessen my grief.
Instead, she said simply, “I’m sorry about your mom and dad.”
I nodded and closed my locker.
It was strange, but I wasn’t invisible that day. All my teachers made a point to speak to me personally, and most said my grades were high enough that I didn’t have to worry about making up work. Brad Miller offered to sharpen my pencil in English class. Cindi Martin asked me to pass her nail polish across the aisle to Debbi Blackwell. Debbi said she was going to let her hair grow out long like mine.