Читать книгу Quick Kills - Lynn Lurie - Страница 18

Even in photographs, Mother’s hairpiece doesn’t look real. She keeps it bobby-pinned to a Styrofoam head that sits on her vanity. In the late afternoon, anticipating a dinner party, she brushes each shaft the way the sales lady instructed, then, positions it on her head using the combs sewn inside the wig to attach it to her scalp. Unlike Mother, the fall has straight long hair in many shades of brown. She wears a velvet headband to disguise the stitching of the wig.

Father likes the guests to hear how well Helen plays the piano. Before the performance the maid helps Helen with her hair, sweeping it from her face and piling it on top of her head. She plays Mother’s childhood piano that Mother never plays. Before beginning, Helen stares at Mother hoping to get her attention. Mother casually leans against the wall and smokes her extra long cigarettes. She doesn’t look at Helen but stares into the distance. For most of the night Mother is quiet. It is unusual to hear her speak except when she is telling the maid to do something.

Father’s expression during the performance is of pleasure, and when Helen is done, she takes a bow and makes a curtsy. Some guests ask her questions. Others compliment her. It is true she is pretty when she smiles.

That night there is a commotion in Helen’s room. I think Father must have disturbed her when he left a gift on her nightstand, which he does after she performs.

In the morning I ask Mother if Helen is okay.

A mouse scampered across her dresser and frightened her. Still, she insists on keeping food in her room.

But, I argue, Helen likes the mouse. She keeps the lifesavers in the dish next to her brush and comb so he will come. She even tries to wait up for him.

The gift Father gave Helen is a blue-eyed, blonde-haired Barbie. When I come home from school I find it on the floor alongside Helen’s dirty clothing, undressed. Barbie’s hair is in tangles. A pin from Helen’s Girl Scout sash, the one she received for International Friendship, is in Barbie’s eye. The gash is larger than the circle of blue.

There are other disturbances, and I wonder if our house is haunted like my friend Thea’s, who lives on the plantation her family has owned for over a century, where slaves once grew tobacco. Their main house is lit by gas, which throws an eerie and unreliable light. Beneath the foundation are underground tunnels connected to storehouses. Her brother takes us through using a flashlight. Without warning he turns it off and rushes ahead. Thea pleads with him to come back, and when he doesn’t, she starts to sob.

Get on your knees, I tell her, and use your hands to feel the wall on the left and the ground in front of you. Just crawl.

I can’t without seeing. Do you know what’s in this ground? All sorts of dead things. It is awful to even think about it.

Yuck. But you don’t want to stay here. And besides we don’t know if he is coming back.

When she doesn’t move, I squeeze in front of her. The damp soil scrapes my knuckles. It still hurts, especially now as soil collects under the nail and then a shard of glass, or something sharp, cuts into my palm. I was in the tub when Father came in. I grabbed the shower curtain to wrap around me to hide myself, but he was pulling from the other end and my fingernail got caught in the crease. He kept pulling until the nail tore from its bed.

It’s a joke. Her brother says and then turns on the flashlight.

Thea is huddled against the wall, her cheeks streaked with tears and soot. Above her head, iron hooks jut from the wall and the ground beneath is stained.

Animal blood, he says pointing, cows and chickens, what they ate back then, duck too, just like now.

The ground slopes as if the blood carved a shallow stream and its banks are tinted red. I see cow heads hung upside down so the blood can drain, then I see people, whole bodies, naked black men, the skin of their throats wrapped over the hand-hewn hooks, the way a jacket’s hood loops over a metal store-bought hook.

Thea’s mother and father sit at opposite ends of a very long table. We answer only when we are spoken to and we always begin with Sir or Ma’am and end with Thank You. The servants hover at the swinging door that leads into the kitchen. Our backs are to them, but when they approach to clear the table, the light of the chandelier outlines their dark faces, accentuating their white crisp shirts and ironed skirts, but even still I cannot see their expressions. The most they do is nod.

It is implied that not a bite of food is to be left. I wouldn’t know for sure, but I think we are eating goose or maybe duck. Something I have never eaten, more the texture of chicken than steak, although the meat is grey and oily. Her parents do not look across the table or at each other. Their eyes are focused on their plates. At the end of the meal there isn’t even dessert.

Tucked into Thea’s bed, we stare at the frilly lace and ribbon canopy. Thea takes my hand. It’s about Tilly, she whispers, the slave that haunts our house. She comes at night and stands at the side of the bed that you’re on and waits for me to wake up. She stopped growing the day she gave birth to a daughter here in this room. She was thirteen and hadn’t looked pregnant. When her baby came out more white than black, the midwife knew if she didn’t kill it Tilly would have been sold as a field hand and sent away. She told her to rest, that she would wash and swaddle the baby, but instead she drowned her. When Tilly found out, she ran from the house wandering the fields, not remembering her name or who owned her. Now she comes back because she is still looking for where the baby is buried. I have been trying to help her but I can’t find anything. In here, she pulls a composition book out from under a stack of comics, I keep a map of the places I’ve searched.

How can you tell?

By temperature. If the soil isn’t warm it means the bones can’t be there. Once you practice, I will show you tomorrow, you get the feel of it.

I hear Helen other nights. Like Tilly, she doesn’t rest.

Usually I am able to get back to sleep, but on one night Mother and Father are speaking loudly. Father tells Mother to shut up, which is something we have been forbidden to say, especially now that we live in the South where manners and rules are important.

In the morning Mother isn’t in their bedroom, and the heavy blanket from her side of the bed is strewn across the length of the couch. Father has already left, which explains why Mother doesn’t wake Helen. He is the one who insists we don’t miss a day of school even when we are sick. Mother hasn’t put our juice and toast on the table.

I call to Mother. What happened last night? Why was everyone awake?

You must have dreamed it.

She doesn’t say goodbye to Jake or to me, and she doesn’t remind us to take our lunches.

Why does Helen get the day off?

Hurry, Mother says, I hear the bus.