"It’s a boy.”
"How can you tell?”
I took the arm and held it between my legs, aiming the diminutive appendage outward as if it were a boy thingy.
"That doesn’t mean it’s a boy," he said.
"Yes it does. It’s a thingy. You got a thingy, I know."
"No.”
"I can see it after we peck. I can see it bigger."
"No you can’t. That’s wrong. I don’t have that.”
He rocked forward, folding his forearms over the front of his trunks. A soft breeze pushed around us, stirring the dust in the wig, powdering us with rock flour.
I set the arm on his left knee.
"Dickens, I’d like to see your dynamite.”
"Maybe tomorrow,” he said, "when Dell goes to town. I don’t know.”
"But you’re my boyfriend," I said.
"I don’t understand that,” he replied, removing the wig, dumping it in my lap. "I better get home, I think."
I love you, I thought. You are my dear sweet captain.
And on the cliff high above the Hundred Year Ocean we kissed for a moment in the late afternoon, then we wandered away, silently, listening as we went, hoping for another boom that never came.
20
Cut ’N Style wouldn’t shut up.
"Dickens has a girlfriend,” she teased. "He’s your boyfriend."
"He’s my husband,” I told her. "I’m his wife."
"He’s a dreamboat. He’s a sunny cloud.”
It was morning, hours before noon. And even though Dickens always brought my meal after lunchtime, I waited on the porch steps for his arrival.
"Kiss me,” Cut ’N Style said.
"That’s gross. You’re a girl."
"Please. Kiss me and I’ll be a boy."
"Girls don’t kiss girls that way.”
"Please-"
I kissed her, but it wasn”t the same as kissing Dickens; there wasn’t any tingling in my belly. Then I consumed her with my mouth, sucking her from my finger, pretending that she was a trout and I was a whale. Her skin tasted like soap, her hair like licorice. She made me gag. So I spit her into my palm.
"You’re disgusting,” I said.
And she was supposed to cry or complain. Instead she started laughing.
"That was fun,” she said. "That was great."
You’re nuts, I thought. You're crazier than the wind.
Then we were both laughing.
"You’re my best friend,” I told her.
"And you’re mine too.”
"And I love Dickens.”
"He’s the sweet prince. He’s the great king.”
"He’s apple juice and jerky.”
"We’re a happy family."
"That’s what we are.”
And Dell would take care of us all. Soon she’d watch our babies while we explored the Hundred Year Ocean. She’d marry my father and become my mother. Then she and Dickens and Cut ’N Style and I would build a castle from mesquite branches and flattened pennies. We’d eat meat and pound cake at every meal. We’d drink juice from gold-plated Dixie cups.
"It’s a dream come true,” I said.
"It’s Christmas,” Cut ’N Style said.
My belly tingled. I poked my stomach, imagining a baby squirming within, a Barbie baby with real rooted eyelashes and blue goggles and a real brain. I saw it on TV -- if a boyfriend silly kissed a girlfriend enough times, something was bound to happen.
"Tell Dickens,” Cut ’N Style was saying. "Tell him about the castle and the babies. And then you’ll see his dynamite. Maybe Dell is driving to town already and he’s there alone thinking he’d like you to visit and see his dynamite."
"But maybe she’s still there-"
"And she’ll invite us for a tea party or picnic because she loves Daddy and she’s our friend too. That’s why she won’t drink our blood. Anyway, she doesn’t do that anymore, Dickens said so."
My stomach grumbled; the baby was kicking around. That’s why my belly always tingled while Dickens and I squished our lips together -- every peck caused the baby to grow a little more. I should have known.
"Better tell Dickens," I said. "I think a baby is in me from kissing. I think it’s Classique, I think. She"s coming back."
"Let’s go tell,” Cut ’N Style said. "Let’s touch the dynamite.”
And as we drifted from the steps, a shiver shot through me, beginning at the base of my neck and rippling down my spine. I pictured Dell and Dickens' dark house -- the windows locked, the shades shutting out the daylight -- their bee-stung mother dozing somewhere inside.
A castle is safer than a home or a farmhouse, I thought. A castle keeps bees and ants from attacking everyone.
When we arrived, their house seemed as unknowable and forsaken as ever. On either side of the gravel walkway, the beds that once fostered tomatoes and squash were now barren, just upturned soil and withering vines. The dirt yard was littered with bootprints and twigs. And moving onto the porch, I noticed that the yellow floodlight no longer glowed above the front door; the imagined queen mother of all fireflies was defunct.
I knocked -- quietly at first, three soft raps with my knuckles.
"Hello," I said, addressing the door. "It’s me."
I paused, expecting Dell or Dickens to answer. But neither came.
"It’s Jeliza-Rose.”
I knocked harder -- knock knock knock -- then paused again.
"It’s really a nice day for a tea party so me and Cut ’N Style are here in case you’re not too busy."
I put an ear against the door, held my breath, and listened; nothing -- not a creak or a bump or the clomp of flip-flops
"Maybe they’re sleeping," I told Cut ’N Style. "Maybe they're in town.”
Maybe they’re hiding, she thought. Maybe they’re at What Rocks looking for us.
"Maybe.”
After that, we tramped from the porch and went alongside the house. And ignoring the sudden pangs in my stomach, I skipped toward the backyard, heading where the weeds and foxtails thrived, where the Ford pickup with the cracked windshield sat. But the Ford was gone.
Stopping near the house, I stood between the curvy ruts left by the pickup’s tires, and spotted Dickens -- out of his captain’s uniform, dressed like a farmer -- unlocking the padlock on the storage shed door.
Tell him, Cut 'N Style was thinking. Tell him you’ve got a baby and he’ll show you his secret. He said he would.
Dickens pushed the door open and entered the shed. So I hurried across the backyard, running over the beaten trail, hoping to surprise him. I wanted to tell him that I loved him so much and that Classique was coming back as my Barbie baby. I planned on surprising him with -- Sweet prince, Classique is on her way; and those words would’ve sailed past the shed doorway had I not seen the squirrel -- if I hadn’t hesitated before the shady doorway, gazing to my right at a wooden hutch, puzzled by the tufts of gray fur bulging through the chicken wire, the puffy tail curling in on itself.
Was he dead? No. Asleep? No. Wide awake -- lying still with his paws on his muzzle, breathing deeply, watching me with black eyes. See what she's done to me, Jeliza-Rose. See what happens when you’re small and hungry all the time. You get trapped and stuck in a cage. I’m a prisoner. I'm doomed.
I felt sad for him. He wasn’t a monster or a nasty thing, only a squirrel, and now he didn’t seem so mean. But I didn't dare stick my fingers in the hutch to pet him; if I did, he might bite me. He might confuse me for Dell and chomp my fingers off.
Know what she’ll do to me? Go in the shed and you’ll understand. Look for yourself Thats right, go on-
And what did I find when stepping beyond the doorway? A long folding table and wide shelves, each surface crammed with Dell’s handiwork, novelties and what-nots, some finished, some in progress. On and around the table - lamps with deer antlers for a base, an antler hat rack, foot stools (the legs formed by two pairs of antlers), deer foot lamps, a dozen or so deer foot thermometers. But it was the shelves that held my attention -- a fierce-looking tabby cat ready to pounce on a coiled rattlesnake, squirrels clutching acorns, three rabbits huddled together, a raccoon with a trout in its paws, another tabby biting into the head of a bat, an upside-down armadillo, a convincing jackalope sitting upright; all glassy-eyed creatures, inanimate and posed, mounted like trophies on varnished flat cuts of wood. This was where Dell kept Death at bay, where she saved silent souls from going into the ground. But I didn’t want to end up like those creatures-frozen and on a shelf; I didn’t want to be stuck like that forever. Might as well go into the ground, I thought. If you can’t run around and yell and cut muffins, you might as well be dead.