"She wanted to be beautiful," I told Classique, picturing Grandmother at the front door of What Rocks, one of the boas wound about her neck, fluttering a gloved hand at someone; her crimson lips pursed, her blond wig styled and capped by the cloche.
"She wasn’t beautiful," Classique said. "She was old.”
"She was my grandmother?
"She was ugly with boxes of junk.”
"You’re lying,” I said. "If you don’t shut up, we’re leaving.”
But we stayed in the attic until I remembered Magic Curl. Then I turned and gazed at the hatchway. Classique nodded on my fingertip, but we didn’t move. From our perspective, the hatch seemed almost as tiny as the knothole.
"We’re squirrels," I finally said. "That’s what we are."
But Classique couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want her to.
"Jeliza-Rose and Classique are outside looking for us," I said. "But they can’t find where we’re hiding.”
And as we headed toward the bathroom, I removed her from my finger, clutched her in a fist, and pretended my footsteps left pawprints on the dirty floorboards.
7
I was planning on visiting the grazing pasture at dusk, where I’d wait in the bus for the fireflies. And I wouldn’t let the train catch me off guard. That’s why I dug Grandmother’s cloth bonnet from the attic chest -- when the train approached that evening, the bonnet would be on, tied securely under my chin, shielding my ears.
But after retrieving the bonnet, my shins began itching; I’d brushed against fiberglass as I crawled through the hatchway.
"It’s awful," I told Classique in my bedroom.
"You’ll make yourself bleed," she said, watching from my finger as I scratched at my shins. "Do it any harder and you’ll cut yourself. "
I kept scraping like mad until the pain became greater than the itchiness. Then I sighed with relief and flopped onto my bed.
"That’s good,” I said, my shins burning. "That’s better.”
"I’m bored. This is boring. Let's spin on the porch.”
Classique hovered in front of my face like a fly, so I twirled my finger, rotating her in a circular motion.
"Stop it," she said. "I’ll get dizzy and barf."
"No you won’t. You can’t. Your mouth doesn’t work." I quit jiggling my finger, just in case.
My mother warned me about spinning in circles, not to do it in the apartment, especially following a meal. She said gyrating caused vomiting. But I never got sick. I spun during commercial breaks, arms outstretched. And I loved doing it in the living room -- the carpet scrunching and the TV whizzing by -- while my mother was unconscious, and my father slept on the couch. The wall pictures turned blurry with streaking colors and the shag carpet burned underfoot and snagged between my toes and the TV shot past as an eruption of static. Overhead, the bumpy ceiling swirled like a milk-white whirlpool and the plaster bumps were smoothed as the spinning increased, flattening everything, the edges all dissolved. Another spin in the opposite direction, the shag roots tugging and gritting, the living room easily shifting gears.
When my mother was awake, she could hear the sounds of my twirling from her bedroom. And she’d yell; I was only allowed to do splits in the living room, and handstands on my bed. The mattress was close to the floor, firm and wide. My neck wouldn’t get broken if I fell. Still, handstands were tedious, so I usually did a couple before quitting. The splits were okay. Sometimes she had me do them in her bedroom, smiling as I brought my nose to the carpet. But spinning in the living room was what I loved, and the dizziness afterwards.
And on the farmhouse porch, I spun with itchy ankles, the wood slats groaning. It was the first time since leaving the apartment, though I considered having a whirl in the aisle of the Greyhound. With Classique and Magic Curl and Fashion jeans on my fingertips, we went round and round, all four of us. Cut ’N Style stayed upstairs. She was just too blind.
"Eyes that can’t see don’t enjoy twirling,” Classique concluded when I began gathering the heads. We never played with Cut ’N Style anyway, unless we had a tea party -- then she became the guest of honor.
Our corner of the front porch was shaded. It felt cool and pleasant. Sunlight shined further on, landing across the steps leading to the yard. But our corner had fallen under siege: army ants traveled in three long lines, back and forth along the slats, up and down the newels. They came and went from the thin crack beneath the front door, carrying crumbs in their pincers; some had dust balls or what looked like bits of straw. I suspected that if one of the Barbies dropped in their midst, she’d quickly be hoisted and dumped off the porch, disappearing forever in the overgrowth below. So I spun in defense, performing pirouettes on the ants. Then I stomped all three ant lines, squashing the invaders, scrambling their ranks, chanting, "Save Cut ’N Style from the monsters! Save Cut ’N Style from the monsters!”
Cut ’N Style was unprotected on my pillow, surrounded by the torso, dismembered arms and legs. At Kmart, I once studied a brand new Cut ’N Style in her box. With hoop earrings, hands poised for clapping, red hair hanging to her butt, she was a stunning doll. Her baby-blue eyes glowed, and her Astronaut Fashion dress with matching go-go boots was an inspired touch. Years ago, my Cut ’N Style’s head had been even more stylish than Classique-and that’s why Classique hated her. In an effort to clean the black ink from Cut ’N Style’s forehead and eyes, I poured nail polish remover over her face, just a few drops. But it smeared the red paint on her lips, blemished her plastic cheeks, and didn’t put a dent in the ink.
"Now she’s a complete freak," Classique said. "Get rid of her."
"I can’t," I said. "What if it happened to you?"
"Then you should kill me."
The lines re-formed. The slats were overrun again.
For every crushed ant, at least two more arrived and began picking at the remains, the splat, the parts that hadn't been mashed into nothing. I was too dizzy to continue spinning, so I leaned against a newel and followed the lines with my wobbly vision. The army ants looked enormous and ancient, like runty dirt dobbers -- except they didn’t have wings.
On the soles of my sneakers, when I checked for bug parts, there were wet stains, dark and fresh, not unlike the chewing tobacco juice my father sometimes spit into a Coke bottle. And there was an ant head squirming in a tread, pincers still moving; the mangled body somewhere onthe porch, or between the pincers of some other ant.
"Help me,” it was trying to say. "I don’t want to die. No, please-”
I brought my sneaker down, grinding the sole, then pounded it on the slats, making certain that the ant head was atomized.
"No mercy."
I singled out the biggest ants. I smushed their rear sections, allowing the front and middle sections to scramble away. Or I leveled the heads so only the rear and middle parts continued moving.
Then I watched.
The separated rear sections went astray, often slipping between the slats. But the head sections dragged themselves forward, showing no pain. So I picked them from the line and flicked them past the edge of the porch. To serve as a warning for the others, I didn’t bother the rear parts. Sometimes a dumb ant explored one of the cleaved sections, but it couldn’t understand what had happened. So it clambered on without a worry. But it didn’t matter. I was tired of killing. These ants lacked intelligence anyway; they couldn’t care any less about getting stomped -- they weren’t even interested in revenge. Squirrels were different. A squirrel would squish a person if given the opportunity.
"What do we do?" asked Classique.
Tugging Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans from my fingers, I said, "Wait, I got an idea.”