This One is Deadly (2 page)

“I’m going to kick you in your…” Jenny went ahead and whispered ‘privates’ even though there were no adults around to scold her.

Devin didn’t budge. He just stood there with the brown pond water seeping deeper into his hair and skin. Nowhere in his mind did it look like he had considered the bath that mother would force him to take or the lecture my father would give him.

“Run, Jenny. I promise you. Right now you need to run,” Devin said.

“I’ll tell, Daddy. He doesn’t like you.” Jenny pinched up one side of her face with that ugly smile of hers. 

My other sister, Rebecca, stood next to Jenny. She’d do whatever Jenny said. She was the youngest and Jenny babied her like she was her own. Not Devin and I, we were the middle children left to fend for ourselves.

I reached down into the muddy water and clenched my fist around the black leaves that lined the bottom.

Then I threw it in Jenny’s hair.

She screamed bloody murder. I wished I had killed her ugly curls. How nice it would be if she’d melt away like the Wicked Witch in that Oz movie.  Instead, Rebecca was already half way back up the hill towards the house to tattle. She’d tell our parents that she’d seen it all and Jenny hadn’t done a thing.

Jenny couldn’t leave without making a few more threats and promises. I’d already had some ideas on how I’d make sure she never had a moment to enjoy my punishment. I knew where Mom kept the chili powder. The thought brought a smile to my face as I imagined all the uses. They came to me in such delightful sights. Oh how Jenny cringed in my mind and Rebecca got her just desserts as well. I’d seen all their tortured faces before, but these were going to be even better than I’d ever known.

I couldn’t contain my laugher to my mind. It bubbled out like a burp that I had to play off. Only, I was proud of it.

I turned to Devin, but before I could ask if he was okay, he spoke up in that soft voice of his when Dad was around.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Come on, get out of the pond. Maybe we can dry you off before Mom catches us.”

Devin shrugged. He hung his head between his shoulders like he’d already been scolded.

“Cheer up. We will have our revenge. Revenge is good,” I said. He smiled at me as if we were talking about jellybeans. I liked it. It was a pretty smile, even for a boy. All he ever had to do was flash that smile at Mom and she forgave him or gave into whatever he wanted.

I was jealous, but I was almost accustomed to being the low child on the totem pole. I wasn’t the oldest or the youngest, and I wasn’t the only boy, like Devin. I wouldn’t want any favors now. I had an image to uphold. It had been this way for almost ten years. No handouts for this girl, I was going to earn everything on my own.

Because I deserved it.

And they deserved to realize one day when it was too late that I was able to make it all on my own.

Devin deserved the extra kindness from my Mom. He was the third child, and the only boy. He was born to three hellacious sisters to claw his arms and scream at him until Daddy came to the rescue and turned his buttocks to eggplants.

He was supposed to have known better. As soon as he was born he was expected to treat girls with respect—while we treated him like a daddy long-legs and plucked all his legs off.

No, I had not always been nice to him. If Jenny didn’t pick on me so much maybe I never would’ve been nice to him. But mutual hate builds bonds quick.

Jenny had made us super glue.

Not that he was entirely innocent. Sometimes, I got the feeling he wanted to lure Jenny into a fight. But once he did, he never did much. I reckon it was because he did know better. Boys shouldn’t ever hit girls, no matter how much they deserved it, and if he ever did there wouldn’t be an eggplant in the compost pile that looked worse than his behind.

“I have a plan,” Devin said.

It perked my ears up, but our names were already being shouted in mashed syllables in my mother’s ear ravaging howl, “Kris-evin! Dev-ristin!”

“She’s mad. That stupid no good liar Jenny. You know she lied. All she does is lie-lie-lie.”

We sulked back up the hill towards the house. My mother waited with her arms pinned to her hips and her elbows pointed out like two open car doors. Her high beams were on though, and they burned through us. I lowered my head and tried to find the most innocent looking face I had in my catalog.

Once I had it, I flung it forward.

My mother didn’t buy it for a second. I’d be a fool to believe otherwise.

She raised one finger and said, “Don’t even.”

“But, Mom!” I said, eloquently I might add. There was more to that statement, but it never came out. Somehow I didn’t have the proper link from my mind to my lips and so I just repeated, “But! But! But!”

“No buts. You know better, Kristen. And Devin, you need to leave your sisters alone. You just wait until your father hears about this.”

There was snickering from behind glass. Even my mother heard it, but her eyes never left Devin and I.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Devin said. He hung his head low. “I wanted to play with them.”

If it was just an act, then Devin had a career ahead of him.  My mother bent over and whipped a dark lock of wet hair off his brow.

If it wasn’t an act then I felt truly sorry for him.

He had no friends, not even at school. He didn’t seem different. I didn’t understand why others didn’t like him. He even smelled better than most the boys I’d met. He just kept quiet. But he listened. He remembered if you said you liked something.

“Get inside, and take a bath before your father gets home. When you’re finished, you better clean whatever mud you tracked into my house. Not a speck!”

Mom’s eyes went to me too quickly. She missed the look of love Devin added as she pushed him up past her and into the house. He was grateful that she hadn’t said that father would be speaking with him. Sometimes my mom did not rat him out. Sometimes she kept it between us—but it always felt like it was blackmail for later.

“You wait out here, Kristen Ann. When your father gets in, you help him bring in the groceries for our trip tomorrow.”

She waited for me to nod or say ‘yes, ma’am.’ I just stared at her hoping she knew I was right and that Jenny and Rebecca had lied to her. They were the bad children. Why couldn’t she see that?

Her stare ended. She left me out on the porch and went back inside. I heard her yell for my sisters. Then it went quiet. I can only assume my mom had scolded them to some degree because they didn’t laugh or smile the rest of the night. It was a cheap justice. They still deserved our revenge, but when dad came home that was out of the question.

Dad’s pickup truck sounded like it hated doing its job. It even whined when it stopped. It was a wussy piece of metal even though it looked tough and manly.  My father didn’t say hello yet, or he hadn’t noticed me sitting on the porch. He just went to the back of truck and yanked a big red cooler all the way down to the tailgate. He groaned as he lifted it and set it on the ground next to Mom’s station wagon.

Without looking, my father said, “What’d you do?”

We both let his words hang in the air as I slowly walked over to him.  When I reached him again, he was already opening the bags of ice he’d had in the cooler and began emptying them back on top of soda cans.

“Today wasn’t such a good day for me,” I said, then I added, “or Devin.”

My dad always waited to hear our best excuses before he revealed his allegiance. It almost made it seem possible to appease him with the right set of words or phrasing. But tried as I might, I hadn’t been successful.

“Jenny was picking on us. She wouldn’t stop, so I threw the leaves off the bottom of the pond at her.”

“What were you doing in the pond?”

I hesitated. I’d screwed up already. Under no circumstances were we to ever go into the pond because of germs, snakes, snapping turtles, and the fact that despite having all had swim lessons every summer, we might drown because no adult was there to use their magic anti-drowning spells.

“Jenny and Rebecca pushed Devin in.” I lied. I lied about both Rebecca and Jenny because I knew they would’ve defended the other had I left them out of the guilty party and it didn’t matter. Whatever truth my parents believed was also a lie. Devin might go along with my lie or at least appear too scared to tattle on Jenny and Rebecca so it really didn’t matter what I said.

“Uh huh,” My father said, trying to crush the ice under the lid enough to close the cooler lid shut again. He struck it hard. I jumped back at the sound, but he swung around and smiled.  “Darn thing. I think you’ll just have to help me make room for all this ice.” He reached down inside the cooler and pulled a soda can. “Grape or Orange?”

My eyes must’ve lit up, because my father laughed.

“Orange,” I said.

“Don’t tell your mother,” he added, as he opened the can and handed it to me. He yanked the cooler up above his shoulders and staggered for a moment as he slid it onto the roof of the station wagon.

“You girls need to learn to play nice with each other.”

I nodded with the soda can still against my lips. My father must’ve had eyes in the back of his head because he seemed to know I agreed without ever looking at me.

“Good. I will talk with Jenny and Rebecca, but I’m getting real tired this bickering. It’s not right. Family is family.”

He had a smaller cooler in the back of his truck and from it he pulled a brown bottle with beer in it. He popped the cap with his pocketknife and lifted me up into the bed of the truck, and then sat down on the tailgate with me.

“I love you kids. And you’ll need each other. It may not seem like it now, but friends come and go, but family you’re stuck with. That’s why we had the four of you, so that you all would have help in life. Right now, Rebecca and Jenny help each other, and I guess you’ve been looking out for… Devin.”

My father always said ‘Devin’ the same way he said things when he wasn’t really listening. I didn’t understand it. I guess my brother was a mistake. He looked enough like my father not to be the milkman’s. I wiped the soda from my lips. My father helped with his thumb.

“Can’t let your mother know that I spoiled your dinner.”

“Do you love Devin like you love Jenny and Rebecca?” I asked. For a second there I saw a frown in my father’s lips, but then they shot up into smile.

“We love all of you equally,” My father said with a laugh. “There’s different things we love about each one of you, but a parent’s love, the love that is right here.” He thumped his chest. “The love that can’t go away if we tried—it’s equal.”

“I love Devin more than Jenny and Rebecca.”

My father didn’t argue with me. He pulled me off the truck and we went inside for dinner.

Dinner took everything from me. I knew two things. First off, my dad was not upset with me yet. He understood and he was secretly on my side, I think. He’d had to be blind to think Rebecca and Jenny weren’t always the instigator. The second was if I made a scene and called Jenny and Rebecca liars, even as they sat there and complained how Devin and I ruined their day, I would be in a whole heap of a lot of trouble.

Somehow, Devin knew to keep his mouth shut as well. He didn’t even look up from his plate.

Then Jenny said, “Kristen isn’t eating her peas.”

I let out a soft, but defiant, “Yet.”

“Eat your peas,” Mom ordered.

All the effort in the world failed me.

If my father was still on my side, it was only enough that he didn’t bruise my backside as he walloped me over his knee.

I shouldn’t have flung the peas at Jenny. I should’ve dipped them in mash potatoes first, so that they actually stuck to her, rather than littering the floor behind her. Plus, then I wouldn’t have had to clean up the mess after everyone else finished eating.

I could’ve found ways of bathing Jenny that would’ve humored me. But I doubt they would’ve given me the pleasure. I made an effort to remember to use the mash potatoes next time.

“You’re dead,” Jenny said later. She’d been wearing a pretty ugly looking grin since dinner.  I tried to stay calm and remember that if she kept making that face it would stick and then everyone would know she was smug and mean. She followed me into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She stood too close. So I put an elbow in her rib.

She didn’t tattle.

And that’s what worried me. She just said, “You’re really dead now.”

Like all family trips, this one started out with a bit of yelling, some pouting children and everyone being told to stay on their side of the station wagon and keep their hands to themselves.

Two hours was spent wisely. We bickered and racked up enough warnings from both parents that any further act was likely to give one of them an ulcer. If anything, they’d realize that we were better left at home, watching cartoons, than trying to create memories for us by taking us camping.

Old people forget things. That must be my parents’ problem. They forgot that when they were kids they would rather have just stayed home and played.