The plan was to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Grandma’s kitchen was off limits, but it was also loosely guarded territory. The breakfast dishes had been cleared hours ago; anything out of place would be noticed right away. Grandma was down the hall, in the Pink Room, ironing sheets and folding towels. She shouldn’t emerge again until almost dinner time.
I usually claimed the Pink Room when the family got together. It was out of the way, and out of mind. I would build my forts and watch my shows undisturbed. Sometimes I would even sneak into the off-limits rooms at the front of the house. Today there was only Grandma, Brittany, and me. Since Grandma was working in the Pink Room, I set up camp in the family room with its big television and open space.
The family room was the most important room in the house. It was where Sunday dinners were held and football games were argued over. The path that separated the family room from the kitchen also connected the hallway to the back door, which was the main entrance. At any minute an adult could arrive and catch me in the kitchen. If that happened I’d be in trouble—again. Grandma and her guests would reclaim the family room, and I would be shooed back into the Green Room where Brittany was watching Cartoon Network.
My little sister was a bigger issue. The sound of cars passing the kitchen window would alert me to new arrivals well before they reached the patio. But Brittany was unpredictable. If she showed up at the wrong moment and caught me making a sandwich, I’d have to make one for her too. She’d have to eat it in the family room with me, because food isn’t allowed down the hall. Then she would discover that I had found Disney Channel, which only came on once a year. If she saw that I was watching Tail Spin she’d move into the family room with me and never leave.
That would be a disaster. I’d lose my alone time. She’d see me sneaking snacks from the kitchen and follow me on my secret excursions into Grandpa’s garden. She’d hinder me from starting a fire in Grandpa’s fire pit. Or worse yet, she’d copy me: steal snacks from the kitchen, pull plants from the garden, and set things on fire near the pit. Playing with her always got me into extra trouble.
I moved on tip-toes into the kitchen. Grandma was only a little taller than me so her stepladder was always by the counter. I climbed into position where I could reach most of the ingredients. The bread was put away in its special box. I laid out a paper towel for two soft white pillows of Little Debbie bread. The peanut butter came in a silver can with a picture of a peanut on the side; the jar was left on the counter to keep the gooey brown treasure inside soft, so that it spread smoothly. I was just about to hop off the stepladder, to get the Welch’s grape jelly from the refrigerator, when the phone rang.
I fled back into the family room where I dove under the table. There were only two phones in the whole house: the cordless square phone in the hallway and the wall phone in the kitchen. Either way Grandma would be drawn out close enough to see me. I hid where I could see the TV in case her call lasted a long time. I listened and waited. The phone stopped short on the third ring. Grandma must have had the cordless phone near her. Tail Spin was still on commercials. If I hurried I could finish my sandwich and be feasting in my hideout before my show came back on.
Before I could move, Brittany bounced out of the hallway into the path between the family room and kitchen. Her hair was braided; each braid was weighted down with a collection of plastic beads, the color of a sunrise. They clanked every time she turned her head. She loved the fact that she was a walking noisemaker. She was too short to see the sandwich fixings on the counter when she scanned the kitchen.
She hopped like a bunny out onto the porch where the laundry machines were. SShe stood for a second, no doubt checking to see if I was out in the yard. There was a soft pop as she unlocked the screen door. I almost moved to check on her, when the beads signaled her hopping back into the room. She twitched her nose like a rabbit as she came around the sofa and scanned the family room.
At four years old my little sister was the same height as the table I was hiding under. However this table had one large leg to resemble an oak tree; it was rooted to the ground by four broad anchors. I was skinny and flexible enough to hide behind the trunk of the table leg, curled up around its roots. The tablecloth draped over all of this to form a perfect canopy. She’d never seen me hide here before, so she didn’t know where to look.
She whimpered, loosing her bounce. “Grammmaa!!!!” she shouted. “I can’t find, Porsche!” I leapt from beneath the table raking my shin across the hard oak root and knocking over a chair in the process. This spot was ruined now.
“There you are!” Brittany exclaimed delighted. “I thought I had lost you forever, sis!” She threw her arms around me. She’d gotten this line from some show we’d watched. I just rolled my eyes and waited to see if Grandma had been alerted. Sure enough the floorboards of the hallway moaned under her approaching weight.
“Britna? What’s wrong?” Grandma’s pitch was the envy of wrens and robins. Brittany is the baby in the family – the youngest of thirteen grandchildren. Everyone knew that she was Grandma’s favorite.
“What are you two up to?” She dropped her pitch as a warning.
“Nothing, Gramma!” We sang back in unison.
“I found her!” Brittany added. There was no stopping the investigation now. She needed visual confirmation that everything was as it should be. I tried to look as innocent as I could when the family matron entered the room. No one could compete with my sister’s cuteness though.
Grandma sort of wobbled when she walked because of an injury from when she was an infant. In her younger days she’d given birth to two intelligent daughters and four headstrong sons. So she carried a lot of weight on her front. She’d healed from these things, and survived who knows what else, during some of the darkest times of Southern history. So, she was strict with us. Her policies reflected her own upbringing, restrictions she remembered well-off white women using against her. Now she used them to enforce clear limits on this home she held with such pride. My grandparents had raised a family in this house. She was not about to let her playful grandchildren break any part of it.
“Are ya’ll playing nice in here?” She wasn’t asking us. She was asking the space around us. Like a loyal pet, it answered. “What’s wrong with that chair?” She pointed to the lopsided chair hanging off the sofa.
Drat, I’d forgotten that I’d knocked it over. I hurried to correct it before I was told to. “Why are my couch cushions on the floor?” Grandma pointed to her new white sofa cushions stacked like blocks on top of one another. I’d been in the middle of building a fort before the urge for a sandwich came over me.
“You’re watching . . . The Disney Channel!!!” the television announced. Brittany turned in shock and delight as Tail Spin gave way to Dark Wing Duck.
“Who left the bread out?” Grandma was in the kitchen now. “Po-shun! You’ve been playin’ in my kitchen again? Girl, I’ma skin you alive!” Grandma never hurt us; she only ever threatened. But upsetting Grandma meant upsetting Dad, and upsetting Dad was the worst thing anyone could do. There was only one escape.
I pushed Brittany hard on the shoulder, “Tag, you’re It!” I then beat a hasty retreat out of the family room, across the porch and burst out the backdoor.
I leapt from the top of the concrete steps to land on the sand- driven bricks of the parking area and sprinted with all my might through the lush green yard: Grandpa’s territory. I glanced back to make sure Brittany was following me. I saw her shadow fill the screen door.
Good. I hung a hard left behind Grandpa’s tool shed and hid between the wall and his motorboat. Cottony- white spider webs, the size of saucers, blossomed from the burgundy slates of the toolshed. I ran over the oily dirt of the garage to the bushes behind the red brick fire pit.
My new plan was to hide so well that Brit couldn’t find me. She’d get so turned around trying to follow me that she’d get lost in the bushes. Meanwhile, I would tip- toe back to the house! By the time she gave up looking for me and came back inside, I would have finished my sandwich.
I could practically feel the horns and tail grow as my devil’s grin curled across my lips. I settled into my hiding spot under the azalea bushes at the back of the yard where I could see everything and nothing one could see me.
Brittany was gone. I held my breath to listen. It’s not in Brittany’s nature to be quiet. Surely she’d be calling my name or beating the bush searching for me. But there was nothing. My devil horns faded; the tail withered. Had Grandma caught her? I thought back. No, I had heard the door open while I was hiding near the boat.
Yet, no sounds of searching came from the tool shed. No cries of frustration from the garden. There was no way she’d go around to the front of the house. That area was super off-limits. Madison Avenue had killed all of Dad’s pet dogs when he was a boy. It was the black sea of death as far as we were concerned. Any kid caught in the front of the house was skinned alive by their parents.
A car honked. My heart turned to ice. I ran, on jelly legs, across the yard and down the grassy corridor between Grandma’s house and the abandoned Haunted House next door. I didn’t make it half way before a flash of a neon pinck shirt caught my eye. I paused. The clank of hair beads was unmistakable. BrittanyShe was in the bush!
“Hey! You’re “It”! You’re supposed to be hunting me!” I shouted.
“I found something!” she called. I doubled back. The only way to reach her was by returning to the stairs at the back of the house where I could jump behind the azalea bushes. I followed the path back around until I came upon where she was.
The last time we’d played this game, I’d hidden here. It had been easier to sneak back inside from this spot, next to the door. She’d learned my trick and tried to catch me at it. I was both annoyed and proud of this. As I came up behind her, she still hadn’t moved from her discovery. Her little back was curved away from me where she squatted in the leaf litter.
“What are you doing?” She didn’t look up, so I peered over her shoulders at the thing she’d found. A cat lay at her feet; its mouth open, revealing sharp yellow teeth. A few ants crawled over its face, looking for entrance past it’s closed eyelids.
“Hey! Get back before it gets you!” I shouted. She retreated.
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.
“It’s dead!” I sneered at her ignorance. “But we don’t know what killed it. It could be diseased. If one of those ants bites you, you might die too!” She recoiled. “Didn’t your teacher tell you about germs?”
“Germs! Germs! Everywhere!
On your skin and in the air!” She sang. I endured the entire song knowing she wouldn’t stop once she started:.
“Germs! Germs! Everywhere!
Even if you can’t see them
They’re still there!”
“Yes.” I said when she was done. “Well, that’s just a big ol’germ city.” She was behind me now, sufficiently afraid. “You didn’t touch it, did you?” She shook her head, her beads rattling in a rainbow of denial. “Okay, good.” I picked up a stick and poked the dead cat. My little sister clung to my waist to watch. The cat’s flesh wriggled and churned underneath weather- beaten fur. “See that?” The beads rattled. “Germs -galore.”
Brittany gasped. “Do you think it had kittens?” Her bright onyx eyes were large with concern.
“Maybe.” I said. “We should look just in case.” We searched the bushes all around Grandpa’s backyard. Then we combed the azaleas that divided our gGrandparents’ property from the Haunted House.
“I found them!” Brittany cried. She’d discovered a nest of bright pink, little squirming babies. They were fat little naked things the size of grapes. I watched a lot of nature documentaries, so I was the expert on animals.
“They’ll die without their mother.” I said.
“What should we do?” Brittany cried. I thought for a moment.
“Milk! Baby mammals need milk.” I stooped down to get a closer look. The weak little things trembled with every squeak. “We have to keep them warm, too.” I heard my own voice soften as I picked up the delicate nest of pine straw.
“I want to hold them!” Brittany demanded.
“Hold out your shirt.” She lifted her shirttail out. I placed the nest in the pocket it created.
“Now you look like a kangaroo mom.” I said. At this my little sister began to bounce up and down. Her excitement was amplified by the clanking of her beads.
“Okay, calm down before you drop them!” She stopped at once. “You go find a place to sit. I’ma go get them some milk!”
Grandma was no longer in the kitchen when I returned; neither was my incomplete sandwich. In the refrigerator I discovered a glass of milk, already poured, sitting on the top shelf. Pouring my own glass could make too big a mess, so I just borrowed this one. I then used Grandma’s stepladder to pluck a tiny saucer from the highest shelf in the cabinet. It was one of the gold- trimmed plates that only came out for Christmas dinners. It was lighter and easier to carry than the bigger plates on the lower shelf.
As an after thought, I ventured into the quieter parts of the house. I crept on all fours to distribute my weight over the tricky floorboards. I found Grandma working at her desk in her bedroom. A creepy haunting gospel tune played over her old radio. Through its watery static the music sounded a hundred years old.
I dashed into the Pink Room before she saw me. It was the second largest bedroom in the house and had the biggest closet. All of Grandma’s pretty Sunday dresses and heavy furs hung from fancy curved hangers and were protected by clear plastic bags. The closet was deep on both sides and the dresses formed a thick curtain from one dark corner to the other; it was one of my favorite hiding places. High above me sat Grandma’s collection of large, colorful hats in pristine white hat boxes. She had one for every dress. But they were too high to reach. I checked under the dresses for Grandma’s step stool, and found something better.
Back outside, Brit had found a spot to sit in the shade of a camellia bush. She was singing a lullaby, making the words up as she went, while rocking and cradling the bundle near her stomach. The kittens were squeaking along with her.
“Here,” I presented Brittany with a box full of toilet paper. “Put them in here. It’ll be their nest.”
“But they like my shirt,” Brittany protested.
“Put your shirt in the box, then.” She dumped the kittens into the box; then she took off her shirt. I folded it into a nice nest shape for them. I placed the box on the ground then put the saucer inside. The little pink squealers squirmed in the cold white puddle.
“They need a bottle.” I said. We looked around for something we could use as a bottle. The closest substitutes near us were pine needles. We dipped the needles into the milk then dripped the milk into the kitten’s tiny little mouths.
We took turns cradling our little ones. We dressed the box in leaves, and feathers to make it comfortable. Brittany hunted up some bugs to see if they would eat them, and I diluted the milk with water to make it easier for them to drink. We placed the box in the shade of the camellias to keep them cool, and then out in the sun to warm them. Brittany tried to name the brood but it was impossible to tell them apart, and she forgot the names almost as soon as they were chosen. I plotted out tricks for a circus routine, which we’d get to when they were older.
“We’re good kitten mommies.” Brittany mused. I didn’t respond, but I agreed with her. “We’re all they have.” Brittany took the box, and put it in her lap, and began singing to them again.
“I’ll be right back,” I told her. “I have to pee.” I had just touched the back door when a familiar rumble shattered our oasies of motherhood. Grandpa’s orange Chevrolet truck bellowed up the driveway, and around the house to appear with a roar into the arena of the backyard. Mom’s Ford Explorer followed close behind him.
The jig was up. We both knew we were in trouble. Brit tried to hide our brood by putting the box under the white wire patio table, but nothing we’d done that day had quietedquailed the kitten’s’ shrill cries.
No one would believe me if I said I had nothing to do with this. I had already tried to raise a nest of baby birds before Brittany could even walk. There was also the summer when I brought a rabid puppy into the house – at the time I thought it just needed some water.
Mom parked in the brick lot between where I stood at the door, and where Brittany sat among the flowers. My instinct was to make a break for it; I could leave the girl to her fate and hide in the house. There were a dozen nooks and crannies where my slight frame would go unnoticed. I’d live in the shadows of Grandma’s house, coming out only at night, to feed on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They would never see me again!
“Little girl!” Mom called once she was free from her car. “Where is your shirt?” Brittany shrugged in a cartoonishly cute way and shrugged her shoulders.
“You don’t know?” Mom said. She still sounded nice, almost amused by the spectacle. “Why are you out here with no shirt on?” Brit looked to me for help.
I had already crossed the yard. I came out from behind Mom’s car and offered a suggestion.
“Uh? Fashion sShow?” I shrugged my shoulders. There was no getting out of this. I only hoped that being entertaining would dull the blow.
“Fashion sShow!” Mom cried. She did buy it for a second. Of all the games her daughters played, ““fashion show”Fashion Show” was not one of them.
Grandpa’s truck door slammed behind us all. He moved on strong, (though somewhat crooked), bones to get a better look at the situation. He was taller, and bit a bit more lean, than Grandma. His is the face that echoes so clearly in the features of my sister, my father, and all my father’s siblings. When he spoke, it was in the same deep clear baritone that sang hymns to the Lord every Sunday morning.
“What dat is?” He pointed with a gesture of his pipe. His wife’s pretty white shoebox was out of place anywhere, except the Pink Room closet.
“Nothing.” I lied.
“I dunno!” Brittany said.
“Squeak, squeak!” the box cried.
Mom took hold of my sister as Grandpa picked up the box. Brittany made a weak attempt to grab at it, but it was already out of her reach and beyond her control.
“We found kittens!” I exclaimed, begging Grandpa with flailing arms, to treat them gently.
At the same time Brittany shouted, “Please, Mom! Their Mommy Cat is dead in the bush! They’ll die without us!” Mom had a soft place in her heart for cats. For a moment, we had her sympathy.
“Ain’t no kits,.” Grandpa said. “Y’a’ll gals out here playing with mice!”
“Mice?” Mom shrieked. Grandpa pulled out the neon pink nest we’d made. “Is that your shirt, gal?” Our mother wasis a soft-spoken woman. She never yelleds at us; she never sworeears at us. Her anger wais a scathing, quiet intensity that burneds you more the longer you foughight it. She turned on me; her eyes were wide. Her fury reflected my horror.
“Rats?” Mom hissed. “You let your little sister play with rats?” She was so angry that she hissed the last word; her expression dared me to correct her. “She could have been bitten! You both could have been hurt!”
“I put my shirt in there to keep the kittens warm, Mommy!” Brittany cried in my defense. My sister’s passion was unhindered. She reached for the box again; Grandpa moved it away. Mom held Brittany by both arms to study her naked body for bites or scratches. She managed this while also keeping me in a death stare.! I was paralyzed by her and could not run away. “Are those your Grandma’s Sunday shoes?”
“No, it’s just the box,.” I countered weakly. “I took the shoes out first.,”
Mom marshaled us both back inside with pinches to our ears and arms.
Half an hour later, Brittany and I were sharing a bath. Mom supervised to continue her rant: “What if the mMama rRat had attacked your little sister? What would you have done then? She could have been seriously hurt! I wish you’d act your age!” Brittany wept unrestrained tears. I hid clinched fists beneath the suds, fighting the urge to punch her.
The bath spared us from Grandma’s direct wrath, but her shrill angry threats cut directly to our souls through the heavy oak doors. The whole extended family heard about that day’s events. By the following Christmas, I was the butt of every rat joke, or shoe pun. A homeless pair of sparkling purple pumps still lay hidden in the Pink Room closet.
That night Brittany lay in her bed still sobbing.
“Do you think they are out there dying, right now?” She howled. I knew for a fact that Grandpa had drowned them. He’d laid poison out for any other mice, or rats, that might be out there. After our baths we couldn’t go outside. Mom was afraid we would look for the babies and get into the poison. She wasn’t wrong. I was just as brokenhearted as Brittany was, but I was old enough to know the futility of my feelings. I was tempted to tell my sister the truth, just to hurt her more.
“They weren’t kittens, Brit.” I said again.
“I like mice too!” She cried. “Mice are cute!”
I had to relent; she had a point. Our mice circus would have been amazing.
I crawled out of my bed and into hers.
“You didn’t let me finish,” I whispered. “They weren’t kittens or mice.”
“What were they, then?” she whimpered.
“Magic beans!” I said. “Like in the story.”
“How do you know?”
“They were too small to be anything else. They were magic jumping beans just like from “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Grandpa tossed them back under the Old Haunted House thinking they was mice babies - just like Jack’s mMamma did them beans in the story.”
“What’s going to happen to them?” Her voice had stabilized.
“You’ll see. Right now those magic beans are digging themselves into the ground. They are digging down way deep under that house. It’ll take a while for the beanstalk to grow though, because thereir ain’t much magic in our world. Not like Jack’s where there is magic everywhere. So it’ll take a while for the beanstalk to grow. When we grow up we can buy that house. The magic stalk will grow, picking the whole house up. It’ll take us both up to the top of the clouds. Right up into . . .” “
“Dragon Land?” She had a perfect baby- toothed grin. Her bright black eyes were as large as spoons.
“Yeah. Dragon Land.” The words themselves were like magic lulling her to sleep. Magical candy-colored dragons drew her into one of our favorite cartoons. Her deep breathing brought me with her – into the clouds of make-believe. I dreamed of a house where every door led to a different dream. Every dream was an adventure. Every adventure would end with us telling our stories to each other, helping each other sleep until the next adventure began.
Published Aug 2021 by Oyster River Pages
