I see now that was not only cowardly, it was another one of my big mistakes.
She wasn’t being morbid. Well, maybe she was just a little, but just like this picture of Mars, I think Woody has also been trying to tell me something important in her art. Something about the night Mama vanished. Like a drawn-out charade. Yes, I’m sure of it.
“I let you down before,” I tell her, biting back the disgust I’m feeling towards myself. What a coward I’ve been. “I’m ready now. Show me.”
When she notices how bad my hands are shaking, she flips open the cover of the drawing pad for me.
The first picture takes the rest of my breath away. It’s our gorgeous mother with her short hair. It makes me recall the morning she lopped it off.
We were sitting on the back porch steps, the three of us. The hose was running across our feet and Mama was humming “Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair” while she trimmed Woody’s and my bangs. When she was done snipping, she let out a sigh, and said, like she’d been thinking about it for a long, long time, “I’ve had just about enough of this.” She gathered the thick coil off her neck and took the shears to it. I had no time to beg her not to, her crowning glory was already lying at my feet. She ran her fingers through what was left. Picked up the hose, doused her head, and shook it. “That’s much better. Lighter. Freer.”
Woody squealed, “You look like the movie actress Mia Farrow,” but I thought she was acting crazy. Had Mama forgotten what Papa had told her about never cutting her hair?
Later that afternoon she came out to the fort with a couple of sandwiches and two soda pops. His Honor was due home from the courthouse at any minute. She called up to us, “Stay put for a while, peas. I fear there are rough seas ahead,” and she wasn’t acting so full of herself anymore.
Woody got dewy-eyed and shouted back all stuttery, “No matter what he says, I love your pixie cut.”
I pretended I didn’t hear Mama as she headed back up to the house heavy-legged. She stopped at the rose garden to give us a weak wave. That’s when I lost my temper and told Woody, “I don’t see what you’re so upset about. She’s bringin’ this on herself. She knows how much he loves her long hair.”
Oh, how I wish I had that afternoon back. I would’ve complimented her, too. Thrown her kisses, shouted, “Good luck” or “Buona fortuna.”
There’s somebody standing above Mama in Woody’s drawing. It’s hard to tell if it’s a man or a woman.
“Who’s that supposed to be?” I ask, pointing to the barely there figure. “Papa?” If I got to face this, she might at least lend a helping hand. She could pick up a crayon and write, Shenny, quit being dumb as a bag of hammers. Can’t you see that’s a picture of ____________________? Is that too much to ask?
Woody jumps off the bed and rushes to the window, starts wildly gesturing. I head to her side and cinch my hands around her waist. I look in the direction of the reading bench and then the clearing that Mama vanished from that sits right behind it. There’s nothing there. My twin is going absolutely bat shit. Flapping her arms and making this weird noise that sounds like a going-dead car battery. Whatever she was trying to tell me about the drawing is long gone. She’s just acting up now.
“C’mon. That’s enough.” I’m tugging with all I’ve got. She can get like this sometimes. Especially after an encounter with Papa. Hard to work with as a piece of Saran Wrap. “Let go of the sill. Let go!” When she does, we fall backward into a heap onto the carpet. We roll around for a while until she straddles my stomach and pins my hands. “Maybe I should sell you to the carnival, not as Mule Girl but… Wrassling Woody.” I laugh, but when she gets her hands around my neck and starts squeezing it’s not so funny anymore. “What are ya doin’? You’re… I can’t… breathe!” I say, chopping at her arms to break her hold.
She lets go and looks down at me, hurt and confused.
That’s when I get what she was gesturing to from the window. It had to be the Minnow place. “Woody, don’t cry.” She’s still sitting on my tummy, her chest heaving and her hair going every which way. Suddenly, I realize I don’t care anymore what Papa will say or do if he catches me. I’m doing what he should’ve done for his little girl. Getting her what she wants, what she needs. “If you would let me up, it might be easier for me to go over and fetch Ivory. That’s what you’re tryin’ to tell me, isn’t it?” I ask, positive that it is.
Her tongue darts out from between her lips again.
“Don’t even think about it,” I say, bucking her off. “One lick of appreciation is fine, but I do not want this to become another one of your peculiarities. I mean it.”
My sister starts happy wagging, not just her tail, but her arms and legs, even her head.
“All right then.” I slip on my sneakers and head out our bedroom door. “Get out the soap and start running the tub. That pup takes after Clive. He’s gonna look like hell and stink to high heaven.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ivory Minnow is small for a Lab.
Looks like he’s got some Corgi in him. Or maybe like what happens to people, he’s just shrunken with age. He’s lying between the bentwood rocker and Mr. Clive’s metal-detecting device that’s propped up against his house, which is about the same size and shape as a boxcar.
That’s how our neighbor spent most of his day when he was still alive. Rocking in his chair or wandering around in the woods that’re between his place and ours, using his metal-detecting device to unearth what he called, “Buried treasure. Free for the taking.” He found scads of Civil War coins and other left-behind-in-the-heat-of-battle momentos. Muskets and snuff boxes, lots of uniform buttons from both sides, belt buckles and swords. If Clive found something he thought was extra valuable, he would snap a picture of it and then ask me to bring Mama over. She’d take what he found into town for him the next time we went. Artesia Johnson, who owns What Goes Around Comes Around, would place Clive’s find in her store and some enthusiastic tourist would buy it.
The money he got from those doodads would help supplement the check Clive got each month from the government for his service to our country. When he was a younger man, he was in the U.S. Coast Guard and got tossed overboard during a hurricane. He didn’t get rescued for two whole days. Clive told me at least once a week, “You think we’re alone in the universe, but we’re not. I saw four flying saucers whish over my head while I was bobbing in that ocean waitin’ to get saved. Not one, not two. Four.”
I’d sit out here with him some nights on this very porch, because just like me, Clive loved the sky. Not for the same reasons, though. He didn’t mind me pointing out the constellations to him, but would tell me to hush if he saw something that looked like an unidentified flying object. That was his passion. UFOs he called them. “They’re up there. They’re watchin’ us,” he’d say, real creepy. Thinking that there might be aliens peeking down on us would about scare the undies off me, but for him, it was a comfort. Since he had few friends on this planet, I think he believed there might be beings from far, far away who would be willing to visit him. (I’ve seen aliens in movies. None of them are that good-looking either, so Clive and those UFO beings would have a natural jumping-off point.)
He’s going to be so disappointed that he died and didn’t get to see the men land on the moon. He was really looking forward to that.