“You look funny all hunched over like that,” I said.
“Well, people in the old days used to be smaller. Each generation gets a little bigger than the one before it. Pretty soon we’ll be a race of giants.” He paused. “You’re a tall girl, Margaux, you’re shooting up like a stalk. You’ve grown a couple of inches, it seems, in just a few months. Or maybe it’s my imagination. The time has flown by so fast. Sometimes don’t you wish you could put a hold on it? I sure do.”
I got off the motorcycle and walked to an oak Victorian wardrobe, similar to the one that Poppa had in his bedroom. I opened it, without asking, and waited to see if Peter would say anything, but he didn’t. That was one of the things I liked most about Peter—he had hardly any rules. Whatever rules he did enforce were ones my mother made up, and I think he just did that to keep her happy, not because he believed in them. Sometimes I fantasized that my mother would just vanish and Peter and I could be alone, all the time, and there would be no more rules.
Inside the wardrobe were dresses, hats, and feather boas. There was also a kind of crown, which Peter said was a tiara. “Try it on,” he said, and though I’d rather have tried on the dusty black fedora, the flamenco hat, or the floppy velvet one, I put it on anyway.
“You look so beautiful,” Peter said, very softly. “Just like a princess.”
“I’m not a princess, though,” I said, “I’m the Queen of Hearts! Off with their heads! Off with their heads!” I made a chopping motion with my hands.
Peter frowned. “Wouldn’t you rather be a princess than some crabby old queen?”
I dropped the tiara onto the floor. “This thing is ugly anyway. I don’t like these dresses; they’re too old and dingy looking. Why does she keep this stuff anyway?” And I didn’t know why, but I tore the dresses off their hangers and scattered them all over the floor. I looked at him and smiled.
He looked horrified. “Pick those up! That’s her past! Most of her family is in Spain and she never gets to see them! That dress you just threw on the floor was her dead mother’s wedding gown!”
Humbly, I picked them up and put them back on the hangers. We were silent.
“Anyway,” Peter said, “the reason I brought you down here was not to show you Inès’s things. I came here to get some plywood and a little bit of rope and some sandpaper to sand the wood down and my drill so I can drill some holes in the wood. And, oh, some paint, I need some paint. What’s your favorite color?”
“Purple.”
“Well, I don’t know if I have purple. Is pink okay?” He smiled.
“Are you making something for me?”
“Maybe.” He smiled again. I rushed over and hugged him.
“Everything you do is for me. You make me so happy.” I paused. “Is it a skateboard? Are you making me a skateboard? Tell me: am I warm or cold?”
“Chilly as the Arctic. Now come on, we have to go and get started on this. But first you have to give me a kiss, for strength. My back is starting to hurt from bending over. I don’t know if I’ll make it back up the stairs.”
I went over to give him a peck on the cheek, but he turned his head so my kiss would meet his mouth.
Peter fastened the pink handmade swing to the attic ceiling, where it would hang for the next year and a half on large knotty ropes. I would often sit on this swing on the days when it was too cold outside, and Peter would push me. “Higher, higher!” I would yell, kicking my legs up to the slanted ceiling’s wooden beams. Through the windows, light made buttery patches on the hardwood floor; and I would look to the boys’ bunk beds, where blankets were tousled and sheets unhinged (no one kept after them about cleaning the room) and I could see egg-shaped indentations in the pillows from the boys’ heads. Here, upstairs, lived Blackhead the guinea pig; I was responsible for changing his water bottle and giving him food pellets, which was a job Ricky once had. But the boys, at thirteen and ten, were more interested in skateboarding and playing arcade games than caring for animals, Peter had said. For two days a week, I not only relieved the boys of their usual duties concerning the animals, but I started to take over the dishwashing whenever Peter cooked. Peter was fond of saying that I would make a perfect wife.
“EIGHT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AGE FOR A GIRL”
I
n Peter’s basement, it was easy to forget the outside world. We couldn’t hear much, Peter and I, from within those concrete walls. Not the bumping of cars as someone struggled to parallel park, not teenagers whistling through their fingers, nor two pigeons fighting over a bread crust. In the basement, I couldn’t hear someone wheeling laundry or groceries home in a shopping cart purloined from the Pathmark parking lot, and I couldn’t hear the wheels of bustling baby carriages, or the mothers affectionately calling their little daughters “Mami.”
Some stray cats had learned they’d get food and milk if they managed to slip into the basement; there was one pretty tabby that had carried a sagging belly for weeks before the afternoon when she wearily lay down in the tightest corner of that basement; the next time we saw her, she had a nest of suckling kittens. Peter said he had named her Little Mama; she’d given birth twice already in this basement. The kittens were so much fun to play with. I had found a small bag of marbles and would roll them across the floor; then I’d watch the frisky kittens try their best to still the quick, slippery balls in their paws, a feat they could never quite manage. “You’re very maternal,” Peter would say as I played with the kittens. “I bet you dream of having a big fat belly someday. I like that little girls have potbellies. It makes them look like they’re pregnant. Isn’t that what every girl dreams about? A baby of her very own to love?”
I hadn’t thought of it before, but Peter brought it up so often when we were alone that I began to fantasize more and more about having a family just like Little Mama.
The first few times we went to the basement, Peter would insist on hugging and kissing me mouth to mouth for long periods of time. The first time we kissed like grown-ups, I thought too much about the largeness of his face and the feeling of his skin close up. That I couldn’t breathe well bothered me, so I dropped to the floor, pretending to be Sleeping Beauty. While I was positioned on what I imagined to be a bed covered with tulips, I felt like I was really sleeping or in a trance as he continued to kiss me. These games went much deeper than regular playing. As I sat playing with the kittens, Peter would begin to stroke my back, face, buttocks, neck, and between my legs. He always found ways to make me accept more touching when I was past my threshold. For instance, when I sank to the cement floor to show him I’d had enough, he’d caressingly remove my pelt, as big-game hunters do to tigers. Convinced I really was dead, I no longer felt the overwhelming sensations.
As the weather got warmer, Peter suggested I undress, and he’d play hide-and-go-seek with me in my underpants. Peter would count to ten and I’d try to figure out where to go, since there were so many hiding places in the huge basement. A few times, I hid in the oak wardrobe, or climbed into a trunk; occasionally, I crouched behind the motorcycles. It was strange and freeing to run about in just my underpants. Then came a day when Peter dared me to take off the underpants, saying real animals in the jungle didn’t wear clothes. After that first time, I had no problem getting naked; it made me feel less like myself and more like a tiger or a rabbit, or whatever I pretended to be. Often, while naked, I would growl under my breath or lick the Suzuki’s handlebars. Another time I wouldn’t open my eyes or stand up until Peter shone a flashlight in my face. Afterward, he remarked, “Boy, you get so wrapped up in your games it’s like you disappear. It’s a little scary.”
Down in the basement, I sometimes climbed atop the Suzuki nude: seizing the big handles, I pretended to drive. One time Peter slipped the motorcycle key into the ignition, turning it on; I felt a roaring, searing feeling rise from somewhere inside the engine and radiate out, through the cracked leather seat, spreading all through me like the strands of one of the arching cobwebs in the crevice of a wooden beam, and I gripped the handles, barely able to take it, my eyes tearing; I said something weird, that I felt like Little Mama having her kittens; and then this melting, searing, crazed feeling burst like a sac containing millions of dazzling pearl-sized eggs, like pollen swirling through the air, like the white wisps of exploding seed heads. I got off the motorcycle, drowsy, almost falling over, wondering what had just happened to me.
By spring, I was getting naughtier than ever, throwing more tantrums, and bossing Peter around so often that he started to call me Sergeant Ma’am. My mother often said that he was giving in to me way too much lately, and that if he wasn’t careful I’d be spoiled rotten. I was even starting to do mean things just for the thrill of it, like letting go of Peter’s hand when we went to the playground and running across the street by myself. I also started to deceive Peter by breaking something and then concealing the damaged object, or hiding his cigarettes and lighter and then insisting I didn’t know where they were.
“I don’t like deception,” Peter said. “We have a really strong bond now. Every lie you tell, whether large or small, is making a crack in our bond. It’s just the tiniest crack, you can’t see it, but this lying stuff—it only gets worse and worse. Let’s make a pact right now, never to lie to each other and never to break any promises.”
We made the pact and, for some reason, I took it very seriously, so I stopped lying. But I still had a habit of being naughty, which didn’t upset Peter as much as the lying had, and he even tolerated downright nastiness from me—cruel practical jokes such as spilling his coffee down the sink when he was in the bathroom, or the times I mocked his false teeth or ugly ingrown toenails.
Mommy told Peter that I had many reasons for “acting out” and they were all linked to Poppa in some way. Recently laid off from work, he now started drinking early in the morning and continued to drink all day. He’d taken to spending the night in my room while I slept in the master bedroom with my mother. Whenever I went into my old room to get clothes, Poppa would scream at me to shut the door behind me because any light hurt his head. If he was really hungover he’d hurry me to the point where I came out with the wrong clothes, such as two shirts instead of a pair of pants and a shirt. According to Mommy, Poppa burned through his unemployment checks drinking and gambling, and he said if he wasn’t allowed to do either he’d go into such a fit of despair he wouldn’t even be able to get dressed in the morning.
I didn’t know if I was acting out the day of my eighth-birthday party when I let the guinea pig loose. Peter had told me to go upstairs and feed Blackhead and put fresh water in his bottle. He also said to play with him for a while because Blackhead was looking a little lonely lately. I was thrilled to be given the responsibility. Peter had never sent me up to the attic alone before. Maybe since we’d made the pact not to lie he trusted me more. I raced up the attic stairs, nearly tripping on Ricky’s skateboard, which clattered down the steps, blue twisty steps that wove and wound all around the wall. Inside the attic, the walls were dark blue. I hadn’t known the room was blue until I saw it without Peter. Now that he wasn’t with me, I noticed how messy it really was. Boy clothes, paper plates, paper cups, and cards were strewn all over the floor. I picked up a card and saw that it was a Garbage Pail Kid card with a picture of a tubby doll-like child lying on a bed of nails. I didn’t know Miguel and Ricky collected those things, and it considerably lowered my opinion of them; I knew that boys liked gross things, but this was too much!
I sat cross-legged on the floor and began to look at the cards, hating their grossness but feeling unable to resist examining them. Kids at my school had taken to collecting these cards, and some of the girls had started to sing a hand-clapping song that was just as bad:
Say, say, my enemy, come out and fight with me,
We’ll bring our B.B. guns; we’ll have us lots of fun.
I’ll gouge your eyes out and make you bleed to death.
When I was younger, I used to fight with girls,
But now I’m older I fight with B.O.Y.S.
Boys, boys, boys, boys, boys, boys!
Crisscross applesauce.
That day, I thought of the nurse’s office at school, which was the most comforting place in the world. I’d been getting a lot of stomachaches lately. Sister Mary, the school nurse, had a very small room in her office with a white ceiling and white walls and stiff white bedsheets and a white fluffy pillow and a small brown cross with Jesus crucified yet looking serene with his arms outspread, his feet nailed safely down, his head bent to expose his crown of thorns. The ritual Sister Mary and I shared was the same each time: she would take my hand, lead me to the white bed, and then tell me to lie very flat and very still and look to the figure of Jesus on the cross for comfort and support.
On the white bed, ankles together, arms at my sides, I would wait for prickles to shoot up my legs, for the blood to thicken in my feet. Slowly, I would spread my arms out to the very upper corners of the bed: right arm, palm up; left arm, palm up. Legs straight, knees slightly lifted, and feet stilled by the nails that I imagined kept them safely pinioned. Chest cavity, elbow, belly, ankle, eyelash, all accounted for. Hair, fingernails, hip bones, shins, eyes, all accounted for. Be still, I would tell them like the conductor of some grand orchestra, you are all under my power now, my brain is in charge of you all. I could feel the tiny hairs in my nostrils and the down on my forearms and thighs and calves listen and obey. I could hear the gate to some tremulous heaven open and summon, palms, freckles, chest, ribs, hips, jaw, private parts. Like Noah leading the animals in pairs to the wide cedarwood ark, I hurried my heart and eardrums and navel into the wide white peace. When every part of me was packed up in the ark and sent down the rolling waves, the peace would come, drowsy as the sun, warming the wood of the cross that Jesus lay upon, warming the thorns that pierced his forehead, winking off the nails in his feet and palms.