Summer/Fall 2016

 

by Debbie Labedz

 

The police had called Marguerite two Sundays ago to tell her that Tiny was gone. The shock wasn’t the suicide itself, but the method. “But Daddy got rid of his guns,” were the only words she could muster as she hung up the phone that day. There was to be no real funeral, and though the choice wasn’t hers, she welcomed it with relief. She peered out the sunroom window of her family’s estate, and sipped from a glass of diluted gin, debris from a battered lime wedge swishing around her tongue. The wicker couch squeaked. A train echoed in the distance. She had arrived in Bamberg county from Atlanta ten days ago, after her sister’s body had been taken care of in whatever way the state handles abandoned remains. She didn’t care to know.

In the twenty-five years since she’d last called this place home, the house had become unrecognizable. The August heat had done a number on the whole yard; crispy bald patches peppered the front lawn, aching for a drink. Dried up vines choked the home’s exterior paneling, slinking up toward its second story, threatening to cover the windows, and they weren’t the thick, layered sort of vines, those reminiscent of tree roots, but fragile, spindly ones, more like spider veins. No ghosts in the walls. Her parents didn’t echo in the house as she’d anticipated. When she first arrived, Marguerite grazed over the relics of her past: Mama’s wedding linens folded in the hall closet, Daddy’s duck decoys lined across the fireplace mantle, the chipped, ivy-patterned plates on which she and Tiny ate peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches after school. These objects didn’t speak to Marguerite they way she had wanted them to, and tracing their dusty outlines merely exacerbated her distance, like observing pieces in a gallery. They had died together ten years ago, Mama and Daddy, instantly, a collision with a train, and Tiny had them go from morgue to urn faster than Marguerite could make the drive: unanswered calls followed cancelled plans.

There were some new things as well, which Tiny had chosen, that collided furiously with the history of the place. Layer upon layer of rugs covered the oak floors in the living room, displaying a kaleidoscopic array of texture: inky stains, bouclé wool, frayed edges. A tray of glass snails adorned the coffee table, each one a cloudy vermillion. She had lifted a snail to take a closer look and saw a coil at the end of its tail, like pulled taffy.

In the sunroom, rows of potted venus flytraps lined a low-hung shelf along the paneled glass, spiky mouths open, waiting. Their bubblegum interiors seemed innocent enough at a distance. The buds, if you could call them that, piled on top of each other, clamoring for space, a chance to swallow you up. Carnivorous sons of bitches; to think that anyone could find such creatures beautiful. Marguerite pulled the belt tighter on the silk kimono draping her petite frame. She assumed it was Tiny’s. She’d found it strewn across the bed in mama and daddy’s old room, and wore it around the house every day, over just her underwear, the silken fabric a new layer of skin, smelling of sage bush.

Their parents had named her sister Clementine because she came out wrinkly and orange- hued, but also sparkly and crystalline, like the interior of the fruit. And despite her supposed illness, she was their jewel. Eight-year-old Marguerite tasked herself right away with nicknaming her new sibling and landed upon “Tiny” as a means of capturing her essence and cementing her status—tiny in stature, tiny in spirit—and not a threat to her own position in the family. None of this came true, but at least the nickname stuck. What had once been written off as the mood swings of a precocious child grew into full storms of closet lock-ins and tears. There was the great cutting incident of 1989, when her sister sliced across her wrists with daddy’s shaving razor and mama found her in the bathroom, clutching the sink and screaming. She was hospitalized for a week after the incident and put on a strict routine of pills. Some of them worked, most of them didn’t. “We’ll put this behind us,” mama had said, pulling sweetly on Marguerite’s ribboned braid, but they both knew better. The townspeople invented names for Tiny’s behavior: hormonal fluctuations, a touch of the flu, the work of the devil, etc. Swift was the decay of their social status in the county. Mama’s dinner parties dwindled, daddy stopped hunting and sold off his guns, and Marguerite’s friends dodged her invitations. They paid the price for secrecy in a small town. They were bound to Tiny, the three of them, stitched together inside a shelter-less house, and the only way out was to untether completely.

Marguerite had spent the afternoon filling boxes: keep, donate, toss. There were piles of leather notebooks in their old bedroom, page after page of scribbly nonsense: manifestations of her sister’s ill mind, yet there was little meaning she could press out of them. Munchy mulch. The clouds are looking very prickly today. The mailman’s going to poison my soup. A cloudless sky is never a good sign. Tea leaves are violets. I looked in the mirror at my lemon head. Pickled socks. What did any of it mean? She half thought to set fire to the whole lot and watch the black smoke rise, but changed her mind. No lighter fluid. Through the open sunroom windows, she heard metal grinding, sputtering coming from the tracks at the edge of the property. Great, childhood adventures had taken place along these tracks, the kind that lead you past the wild berry fields and thickets of milkweed, almost to the next town, the point of no return, forging a reliable path toward home.

“Margie! Margie!” Six-year-old Tiny had called out to her with a singsong lilt. From behind, her tangled hair bopped around like hay as she ran toward the tracks, further from Marguerite’s view.

“Catch me. Catch me.”

“Tiny, wait. Come back.”

Marguerite was always running after Tiny. By the time she caught up with her, Marguerite found her lying down on the tracks, giggling, her body wedged between the two posts.

“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing,” Marguerite said.

“I want to watch the train go by from under it.” Tiny replied, as if that were a perfectly logical thing to do. With the sun at full peak, Tiny’s eyes glittered; their almond shape made her appear squinty, even in the dark.

“Are you crazy? That’s dangerous. You’re going to get yourself killed.” Marguerite pulled Tiny up by her doughy wrists.

“What’s ‘killed’?” Tiny asked.

Marguerite still couldn’t answer that question. The time on her watch read 8:59 pm. The last train of the night was as on time now as it had been back then, and darkness moved in from beyond the pines while the katydids began their nightly overture, sharp in the key of loneliness. Marguerite translated their songs. Come find me, won’t you? Come see yourself in me. The space where drunk meets drowsy was a delicious place to live, a place to lose all the things she’d collected: crystal decanters, vintage cookbooks, a divorce. Her eyelids took over and she drifted off, counting one…two…three.

 

***

 

A knock at the door startled her awake, and Marguerite peeled her face off the plastic cushion, working to orient herself to the time of day. The knocking continued. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she hollered. As she walked toward the door, she heard keys jostling in the lock, then the door flung open to flood the foyer with a rush of hot, prickly air. A young man, perhaps nineteen or twenty, stared back at her.

“Who the hell are you?” Marguerite braced herself the banister. “What do you want?”

“Oh fuck! I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was here.”

“Well, yes. I’m here. What are you doing in my house?”

“Your house? This is Clementine’s.”

“I’m her sister.” She unfolded her arms and saw a look of confusion drape across his face.

“I’m Teddy.” He reached out a long-fingered hand, but Marguerite wouldn’t budge.  “I’m not a stranger, I promise. I live down the road and come by sometimes to fix things around the house, replace light bulbs, stuff like that. That’s why I have a key. Is Clementine here?” His eyes glowed mood-ring blue.

“I’m afraid you’ve missed her. She’s dead.”

His mouth gaped open like a frog’s, and Marguerite couldn’t tell if he was going to chuckle or cry. The tremble in his voice didn’t match his expression, a waxy sort of look: stiff, pursed. Word traveled fast in this town, too fast to escape his ears. He wrinkled like a wet berry at the slightest hint of pressure.

“Ok, look, you caught me,” he pleaded.

He had heard she was dead, and was sorry to get the news. Rumors come true. A storm was on its way, he said, and the windows may not hold; what a shame it would be to sprinkle the house with shattered glass. Deep breaths sunk between his words, lanky arms swaying when he talked. Marguerite had forgotten how fast and frenetic youth could seem. Payment not accepted; this one’s for free. Let him do this last thing for Clementine; let him appease a ghost.

“I’ll be quick,” he said.

“Fine,” she said.

When Marguerite ushered him in, the kimono slid off kilter, exposing the milk white cotton of her bra. “Give a gal a moment,” she said, turning away, and refolded the silk over her chest. She closed the door behind them, its color a violent shade of lilac. It was just like Tiny to repaint the door an absurd color, and to live such an absurd life behind it.

Marguerite went upstairs to change, and by the time she got back to the living room, the work had begun. Some tea might be nice, iced of course, fresh lemon to quell this heat. Hand him a glass and step back; don’t get in the way. Her uselessness was showing, which would bring this house to ashes, but here, in the form of a boy, was someone who could save it. The thought crossed her mind that she could offer the house to Teddy: call a lawyer, transfer the deed, leave the keys in the mailbox when you go. So easy it could be, tying all her loose ends in a knot. The words were just at the edge of her tongue.

“You know, I don’t ever remember Clementine mentioning she had a sister,” Teddy said before taking a gulp of tea.

“Tiny. She’s always been called Tiny,” Marguerite whispered.

“I mean, I knew about your folks, the accident some years back, but no, never anything about a sister.”

In her real life, she skirted her sister’s existence, in re-telling of childhood, but she’d never imagined Tiny could be doing the same. If she was erased from her sister’s past and her sister erased from hers, were they even sisters at all? Their mistruths cancelled each other out. He looked at her as if waiting for a reply. None to give. No, not yet. There must be more to this boy, she thought, Teddy with the gingered hair, the one holding all of the secrets.

“Planks. For the windows,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find some.”

Marguerite followed behind Teddy, toward the kitchen door. The old table remained in the corner, its linoleum cover. She sat down on the plastic seat cushion and pressed her back into the open-weave caning. Marguerite had spent many afternoons at this table helping Mama prep dinner and making sure a wiggly Tiny stayed in her high chair while Daddy was away. Her favorite doll, the kind whose eyes would close when you tipped it back and whom she’d named “Dolly,” followed her everywhere. She brushed her blond, fibrous locks during chores like picking the ends off green beans. One afternoon, Tiny had been particularly restless, screaming and rocking back and forth in her high chair, throwing potato pieces from her lunch on the floor. “Margie, you keep her still,” mama yelled over her shoulder, without looking at either of them, de-boning a chicken in the sink. Marguerite wiped the mashed peas off her sister’s face when Tiny bit her, hard, hard enough to draw blood. Tiny cried. “Ouch! Mama!” Marguerite yelled, then shoved the high chair, and her sister and the chair fell over onto the floor. The plastic tray cracked and Tiny had tumbled onto the floor, wedged under the chair. There was clanging in the sink, but no sound from Tiny. Marguerite had broken her sister, she was sure of it. Mama screamed and picked up Tiny, who was making crying faces without crying sounds. “My finger, mama my finger!” she cried, holding out her hand. “Get out!” Mama yelled, “Get outta here!”

Marguerite did as she was told, running out of the house, toward the shade of a yellow magnolia. She’d left Dolly behind, but she refused to go back in and get her, not until her tears had dried.

The sweet scent of salted butter invaded the air as she wiped her hands on the tea towel folded on the table.

“Marguerite!” The kitchen door flew open. Teddy walked in, his arms fused to his waist, hands cupped and shaky, as if holding a life.

“What the fuck is that?” Marguerite asked.

Teddy opened his hands, and in the center of his finger folds a creature wriggled, stone grey and mottled, peeping breathlessly; it bent its neck like a noodle and blinked little black bead eyes. Helpless. A baby bird.

“He must have fallen from his nest.” Teddy said. “What now? Can you put it back?”

“Of course not,” Teddy pleaded. “He’ll die.”

Marguerite searched the cupboards for a temporary bed. She pulled out a soup pot, filled it with dish rags, and kneaded a dent in the fabric for the bird to sit. The bird chirped and chirped, crying out to Marguerite, a piercing sound that outmatched the katydids. It must be hungry, she thought. Worms, beetles, shooflies: there were no such things in the house. While Teddy watched, she pulled out a jar from the fridge, spooned out some jam, and dipped the tip of her pinky finger into it. The bird peeped again and swallowed her fingertip.

Teddy laughed. “I think you’re supposed to throw up in its mouth or something.”

An aggressive rain began to fall. It swept across the rooftop and overflowed the gutters.

The wind followed, curling its fingers around the walls. A pattern of flash, bang, flash, bang emerged. Marguerite had forgotten how frenzied southern rainstorms could be, how the sun could rise to a dew-covered morning only to set prematurely behind billowing nimbus clouds. This heat was the culprit, of course. The air had grown thicker with each passing day, lining itself with moisture so that by now it was bursting, starving everything on the ground. Marguerite and Teddy sat in the living room, stacked boxes surrounding them, a blinking light shining over their heads.

“Should we give him a name?” Teddy asked.

“Why are you so convinced it’s a ‘he’?” Marguerite asked. “Could very well be a ‘she’.”

Its eyes, barely opening, were bulbous and strange. No feathers to speak of, but patches of dust-bunny fuzz crowned its head, which bobbled, displaying a mouth permanently ajar. So hungry and needy and desperate, Marguerite felt that she could collapse under its demands.

“How about ‘Tiny’?”

“Not funny.”

“How about Baby Blue?” Teddy suggested. “Like the skin around its eyes.”

The name fit. Baby Blue continued peeping in the pot on her lap. It hadn’t yet developed the scaly talons of a grown bird. When it wiggled around inside the pot, ending up on its back, she flipped it upright again. The bird wasn’t chubby or cute like a kitten or a panda, but it was beginning to burrow a spot in Marguerite’s heart.

Bang. The whole house blackened.

“Shit. Told you it’d be a bad one,” Teddy said. “Guess I’ll be stuck here for a while.”

Marguerite felt her way through the darkness to the kitchen. She grabbed a couple hurricane lanterns from underneath the sink, a bottle of whiskey and two glasses, balancing them between two fingers. The lanterns cast an ominous glow on the room. The floral wallpaper yellowed even more in this light.

“What are you going to do with this place,” Teddy asked, “now that your sister’s gone?” As a girl, she’d imagined coming back someday and filling this house with grandchildren.

She would expand the porch on its farmhouse frame and paint the shutters a dusty blue, cook decadent Southern meals that always ended with pecan pie and a bourbon, fill the rooms with jars of yellow magnolias from the front yard, and hum the tunes of Patsy Cline while pulling sun- soaked linens from the clothesline just before an afternoon storm.

“I’m not sure yet,” said Marguerite. “I suppose I’ll have to sell eventually.”

The fact that her sister would take her place hadn’t crossed her mind; that her sister would be allowed to fill the house with her emptiness was unthinkable. And now that Tiny had taken her own life here, it was ruined, forever tainted, and all she wanted to do was fold down its walls like a paper box and hand it to the highest bidder.

“Really? That’s so sad. I bet you’d get a lot for this place, though. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, that’s for sure.”

“What choice do I have? This isn’t my home anymore, hasn’t been my home for so long.”

The rhythms of ask and answer were exhausting. She checked off his questions with canned answers: married once, no children, work at a flower shop outside of Atlanta. Reciprocity was not a virtue to which she adhered.

“Why did you just take off? Because Tiny wasn’t well?”

“It was more than just sickness. She was like a ticking bomb.” Her pulse quickened. “I had to watch over her and help make sure she took her medication, explain to strangers that she was ill, that her shouting wasn’t their fault, pay her no mind, leave us alone. I had to do all of these things. Me.”

“But what about your parents—”

“Trust me, I was alone in this.”

“So then you abandoned her the moment you could,” Teddy said.

Abandoned. That word was so harsh. She liked to think of it more as preservation, weaving memories into a cocoon, so that the house could disappear quickly in the rear view mirror the day she left, so that she wouldn’t feel her mother’s tears or miss Tiny’s fingerprints on the bathroom mirror.

“Tell me, really, why you would come here in the first place? I mean, what did you really have to offer each other?” She nibbled her lower lip. “Tell me the truth.”

“Maybe you’re the one with the problem. You ever think about that?”

How strange, she thought, for this boy to find kinship here. She didn’t have any young, male friends. The possibilities tumbled through her mind, the improprieties.

“Teddy. What aren’t you telling me? What were you doing with my sister?”

“Nothing!” He raised his arms in frustration. “It’s not what you think. Sometimes you just need someone…to give you half a second of their time…to not ignore you.”

She noticed his hands, broad-knuckled and freckled, the kind that moved seamlessly between holding boyhood hopes and exerting masculine strength. There was a flickering in his eyes, and Marguerite wondered if he was familiar with the kind of pain that had driven Tiny to take her own life, and it dawned on her that perhaps Teddy and Tiny were somehow cosmically linked, trapped in the same, sad orbit. Teddy gave her a curious sort of look, unlike any she’d ever received, that went beyond melancholia, a gaze she could hardly stand to meet: a wordless whisper. I see you.

“Let me show you something,” he said.

Marguerite and Teddy made their way up the stairs and down the hallway, to the other set of stairs, leading to the attic, the low-ceilinged junk room, which Marguerite had called the “upstairs upstairs,” the house’s other dimension. Everything was dark, save for their lanterns.

There were trips and creaks and stumbles. Hands wet with sweat, she rubbed her palms on the sides of her jeans. When Teddy pushed open the attic door, the smell of fading turpentine wafted in the dark. She could feel objects surrounding them. Marguerite lifted her lantern to reveal row after row of canvases, of all different sizes, fields of color and swashed strokes, layered and impeccable. Paint spatter remnants lined the floor.

“I…I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“Look around, Marguerite. This is what Tiny was capable of.”

“She made these?”

Teddy nodded. It was impossible to believe that these paintings, beautiful in their abstraction, could have come from the same tattered mind that tore her family apart. A painting in the corner called to her: the figure of a woman, blue nose with straw hair, face turned to the side, but not quite a profile. The marled background showed little depth; the painting was about the figure, and only about the figure. Marguerite touched the crackling paint around the figure’s eyes and recognized in their shape a familiar tilt. It was Tiny herself staring back at her. She turned the canvas around to face the wall and headed down the stairs thinking, you’re all grown up now.

 

***

 

Marguerite woke up to a still house, the quiet that could only follow a storm, the surrender of energy. Knees heavy, too much booze. Her neck creaked from the bizarre angle in which she’d fallen asleep on the couch. Teddy, draped over the armchair, let out faint, rhythmic snores. She peeked over the edge of the soup pot, to watch the baby bird slumber, but its body wasn’t moving. Marguerite stirred the little creature back and forth, to no avail.

“Teddy, wake up.” Marguerite shook his shoulders. “Wake up!”

He let out a lion’s yawn.

“It’s…it’s not moving.” Marguerite shoved the pot in his lap.

Teddy took a turn poking at the bird, and drew the pot containing the bird toward his face for a closer look. “I think he’s dead.”

“You mean that’s it? It’s just gone?”

It killed her to think this innocent creature could be fine one moment and gone the next. Tingling sensations ran up and down her arms. It was too late to trick mother nature into sparing this bird just for her. Not fair. Marguerite felt Teddy’s hand on her arm as he guided her to sit down, and pushed him away.

“You okay?” Teddy asked.

“It’s…. it’s fine. Just throw it out back or something, in the trash, whatever you want, just get rid of it.”

Baby Blue had to go. It couldn’t stay in this house any longer, taking up room in her heart.

“I think you’ll regret that.”

“Not possible.”

“These things…they happen.” Teddy hinted that this scene would make a lovely painting, the bird in repose, splayed out on a cloth. Tiny would treat the subject with great care, he said. Its beak might not exist, just a field of shapes: she’d search for feeling over form. “Can’t you see it?”

With lips buttoned shut, Marguerite picked up the dish towel and held it in her palms. Peep, goddammit. For the love of God, start squawking, something. Through the towel folds, she caught a peek of its face: the swollen eyes closed shut, shut for good. She walked toward the kitchen door, prepared to toss it out onto the grass, when she felt a tug at her arm.

“Don’t,” Teddy said. “Let’s find something to put it in. We’re gonna bury this thing proper.”

With the bird stuffed in a shoebox, Marguerite followed Teddy outside. It was soggy now and clumps of grass stuck to Marguerite’s ankles as they walked. The air smelled green. Mangled branches had been tossed all over the yard. The weeds grew taller the farther out they got, and she began almost marching, her wet feet losing their grip inside her sandals. She turned back only once. The house looked so meager from this distance. A glint of light bounced off the sunroom. At the edge of the property, near the overgrown train tracks, they stopped. Teddy pierced the ground with a gardening spade, clay brown mud collecting on his jeans, and inch by inch a grave appeared before them.

“Care to say a few words?” she asked.

“Here lies a dead bird. We barely knew ye.”

Marguerite chuckled, watching Teddy scoop clod after clod of dirt into the hole, so deliberate in his actions. As the box slipped from view, everything seemed so final. Her eyes started to mist. Teddy gave the spot a quick pound, a pattern from his soles stamping into the dirt. Tears dribbled down her cheeks. He kicked the dirt around, and she knelt before the grave and began to sob, her body letting out strange, guttural noises she didn’t even know she was capable of making. She clawed at the spot under which Baby Blue rested, mud caked underneath her fingernails. It was terrifying and exhilarating, like floating above your body and witnessing it from a new angle. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried like this, not when she left her parent’s house, not when they were killed, not during her divorce, and certainly not when she got the call about Tiny.

Five years ago, Marguerite had been on a plane. She was flipping through a Reader’s Digest, curled up in the window seat, when a bulbous man, sweaty and starchy, arrived to take the seat in the middle. He’d introduced himself as Thomas, Thomas something with a “C,” a woman’s name for a last name, Courtney. He dozed off, and Marguerite continued reading. An hour into the flight, his light snores turned quick and breathy. His head started shaking, and spit was flowed out of his mouth. He seemed to have bitten his tongue, and there was blood.

Marguerite called for help. No doctor on the plane, no nurse. Within minutes of their emergency landing in Wichita, he was carted off, and Marguerite peered through the window as his sticky, bloody shirt disappeared into the ambulance. She never knew what became of him, as often happens with strangers in distress, and she wanted to fill in the blanks of his story. Did he die?

Where did he eventually land if he was still alive? So many things she’d never know, so many questions left unanswered, questions to which she was afraid to write the answers.

Teddy scooped her up from her arms, and gave them a little shake.

“What’s the matter with you?” The words dribbled out of his mouth.

“Who’s Thomas? You were babbling about a Thomas.”

“I…I don’t know.” She felt the heat from his breath.

“You’ve got some dirt right here.”

She turned her face away as his clammy fingers touched her cheek. Teddy coiled his arms around her, and her body stiffened, but soon her flesh sank into his nimble frame, and she released her bodyweight, closing her eyes. Scratchy skin. Almond soap.

“I heard the shot.” Teddy whispered.

“What do you mean?” She stepped back from him.

“A couple weeks ago. At first I thought it was just a shot, but later I realized it could only have been the shot.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

Her vision wobbled, and the colors surrounding her—the greens of the trees and grass, ruddy soil, a lavender sky at the edge of sunrise—all rose to an apex ice-breakingly sharp.

“I gave her the gun. It belonged to my Pop.” Teddy took a step toward her.

“No, that…that can’t be true.”

The edges of her toes unraveled, like a spool of thread loosening, up her noodly legs and torso, denying her the ability to hold tight, hold on.

“Sometimes you just know when enough is enough.” His eyes looked wild. “And you need a little help to get there.”

A train whistle blew. It got louder and louder until it arrived, slick black metal barreling past them. Teddy’s mouth moved, his hands gestured, but there was no other sound, save for the train. Her grey-blond locks blew this way and that, sweeping across her eyes, and she stretched her arms out, hoping the train would pull her away, free from gravity, toward oblivion.

 

[Check out Debbie’s backporch wisdom here]