But Classique wasn’t growing sleepy. As I rinsed her hair, she was wide awake, gazing beyond the yard, studying the gray clouds that stretched overhead. The sun was hiding; I couldn’t see where.
That morning, fog hugged the ground, obscuring every- thing. In my father’s bedroom, I parted the curtains above the bed. "We’re flying,” I told Classique, imagining What Rocks adrift in some cloud. By the time I dressed and went outside with the jug, the fog had lifted. The farmhouse had descended through the grim sky, returning safely to Grandmother’s property.
Now I wrung Classique's hair, shaking the water from my hand, saying, "It’ll lightning. It’ll flood and What Rocks will float off with us.”
Then, in order to prevent frizziness, I smoothed her hair between my palms.
"You’re shiny," I told her. "You’re cleaner than soap.”
Classique ignored me. She was angry because I didn’t use shampoo. She thought I was spitting in her hair. And spit stunk. I explained that the water came from the jug, that I was only dribbling so she wouldn’t get too wet.
"What can I do?" I asked. "I’ll help you get happy."
"Do you want to check the radio? If it’s still there-”
"Do you?”
"Yes.”
We were of the same mind.
I ran as fast as possible toward the railroad tracks, holding Classique aloft; that way her hair would dry quicker. When we climbed the rise, I crouched in the weeds by the tracks, but the ghost wasn’t there. So I walked down into her meadow, which had an earthy, moist smell like after rain. Stormy clouds swirled over the sorghum and behind them a hazy sun, round as the moon, hiding out.
Classique and I went to where we left the gift.
"She’s been here,” I said, squatting by the rocks.
The radio was gone.
"She found it.”
"And look what she did-”
The rocks were rearranged, spaced evenly, making a figure eight; in each loop a freshly planted bluebonnet. I saw it as a sign, an acknowledgment, a thank you. And a response was expected. So I set Classique in a loop, under a bluebonnet, and began shifting rocks. But I couldn’t think what to do. Another circle was pointless. A square or an arrow seemed dumb.
A smiley face then.
"The universal mark of friendship," was how my father described smiley faces. "In Japan or Holland or Mexico, it always means the same thing." He never gave autographs, just smiley faces with his initials jotted underneath the grin.
In my Big Chief sketch book, my father and I sat for hours at the dining table, drawing pictures with crayons. I made sunflowers or Barbies or stick figures parachuting. And he colored black grins, black-dot eyes, black-dot noses, of various shapes and sizes -- but unmistakable. He’d fill page after page with them. Once he made an American flag with nothing but red, white, and blue smiley faces.
Then there was the song he sometimes sang while tucking me in bed.
Don’t be wonderin’ if I love you
‘Cause I’m a lecherous so-and-so
Just take a hard look at my face
And my smile will let you know
All you think you need to know
And I hummed that song as my hands upheaved the rocks. The ghost would find my universal sign of friendship, and she’d probably laugh or smile. She’d probably whistle her pretty tune, fully aware that someone cared about her. The next day, I planned on returning -- then I could see what she created with the rocks.
But it didn’t happen like that.
I should’ve noticed Classique because she was looking past me, too horrified to speak; her blue eyes were huge and unblinking. But I wasn’t paying attention. I was busy working, pressing a rock into the soil with both hands.
The clouds parted. The sun suddenly shone behind me. A great shadow swept across my back and onto the half-finished rock grin -- the ghost’s broad silhouette, the beekeeper’s hood cast at an angle. I froze; my heart almost burst from my chest, my hands trembled.
"Child," her low voice said, "what are you doing?" She sounded like a man, like my father in the morning, his throat gravelly and hoarse.
I couldn’t answer. My legs couldn’t run. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
The shadow moved. I heard her footsteps clomping, , coming toward me. From the corners of my eyes, I saw the hem of her housedress swish by, the muddy brown high boots she wore.
Then she stood in front of me, nudging at the rocks with a boot tip, saying, "This won’t do, you know. You’ve ruined my cat eyes.”
Cat eyes? Not a figure eight then. But cat eyes, with bluebonnets for pupils.
I raised my head slowly, scanning the length of her; the white apron, the gray mittens, the pith helmet draped on all sides by the hood. Her arms were crossed. I could see her features in the mesh -- big nose, big jaw, gold-rimmed glasses.
Ghost, I thought, please leave. You’re scaring me.
"Are you mute, vandal?" she asked. "You can’t speak?
I shook my head.
"What’s that mean? No or yes?"
"I’m scared,” I muttered.
"Vandal is scared,” she said. "As you should be, I think.”
She had me confused with someone else.
"I’m not Vandal," I told her.
"What?”
"I’m not Vandal. I'm Jeliza-Rose."
"What kind of rose?”
"Jeliza-”
"Uh-huh,” she said, nodding. She repeated my name to her- self, rolling it around in her mouth like a marble. Then she went, "Well, a vandal by any other name -- do you understand?"
"No.”
She unfolded her arms, saying, "It doesn’t matter, I suppose."
Then she sighed, poking at the rocks again for a moment.
In the brooding sunlight, transfixed by the ghost, touching the ground with my fingertips, the fear that had seized me was now settling. I didn’t need to runaway just yet; I could wait a little longer.
"Any bees?"
I managed a shrug.
"One sting and I’m paralyzed,” she said. "One sting and I’m most likely dead."
"You’re dead,” I told her.
The ghost gasped as if I’d startled her. "What a thing to say," she said. "`What kind of child are you?”
I shrugged.
"Well then, if you see a bee -- or hear a bee -- you’ll say so, right?"
I nodded.
"If I’m stung and die, it’ll be your fault."
Her mittens were at the hood, turning up the mesh, bringing the net-like fabric over the helmet. The hair hanging on her forehead seemed unnaturally yellow, recalling the discolored corners of the brittle newspaper my father kept in his closet -- KING OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL DEAD.
A ghost’s face?
Nope, thought Classique.
But she was white. She had a pinkish color, a jowly, abstracted appearance -- a weathered countenance that was also unforgiving, wrinkled, graceful. Her glasses lacked a left lens, the right lens was shaded and impenetrable.
"They’ll stay far," she was saying to herself, drawing a circle in the air. "They’ll mess elsewhere."
I wasn’t sure if she was referring to me and Classique, or the bees.
She clapped her hands together, once. She pivoted her head and spit. "That’ll keep them gone for a bit," she told me. "It usually works. You’d be surprised."
Then she knelt, scrutinizing the disrepair at her feet. And like a parachute sinking to the earth, the hem of her house- dress billowed and ruffled outward. She reached for the rocks I’d rearranged -- shaking her head some -- and began fixing her cat eyes.
"See, everything has a place,” she said, moving the rocks. "Even the smallest thing. If you tamper with something -- take it from its place -- there’s no order. And then there’s no light. Everything is chaos."