Castles (4 page)

She died on my tenth birthday, waiting for another storm to come.

I'm sure the wind took her.

The days and nights before Grandma's funeral were surreal. It was mid-summer. The days were hot, the nights hot and humid. I stayed in my room after her death, sweating and crying.

I never empathized with Mama; it was Grandma who raised me, Grandma who taught me how to be a woman, and Grandma who showed me love when no one else would. Mama was around more after Grandma passed away, but I was determined to never feel anything for her. Perhaps I didn't see Mama's pain the way I should have. She did, after all, lose her mother. Looking back, however, if I'd lost my mother at that point, I probably wouldn't have been as devastated as I was after losing Grandma. I just didn't care enough.

Mama came in once to ask me how I felt, but thinking back, I really believe her attempt at understanding my pain was more a formality, something she needed to do as a parent. I looked past the pain in her face, the wet cheeks she wiped off with the back of her hand and her unkempt hair. I drew away from her, pushing back against the wall as I'd done so many times before. Maybe that's why she never said another word to me about Grandma.

The morning of the funeral, I dressed myself and braided my hair the way Grandma taught me. I wanted to look my best, even if my best would be lost on those around me. In the back of my mind, however, I know I wondered if Michael would be at the funeral. Grandma had seen the way he looked at me, and just maybe she would smile down on me from her castle in the sky.

The drive to the funeral home was quiet. I looked out the window at the passing houses and strip malls, like I had on many occasions when Grandma would drive me here or there. I could almost feel her in the car, smell her clothes and taste the air around her. I didn't expect to feel so many things. Hell, I didn't know what to expect really. I'd seen a dead body, but not one I knew. This was to be my first glimpse at death from a vantage point not far removed from my life. I was to be humbled, and even if I didn't understand that word at the time, I knew something was going to change.

"Mama." I didn't turn away from the passing world beyond the car's window.

"Yes?"

"Do you miss her?"

Mama didn't say anything. I don't know if she cried at that moment or if she felt the same pain I felt. Perhaps she had the time to prepare herself for the inevitable. Grandma was old when she passed away, and I believe Mama must have known Grandma's life clock had been ticking toward eternal silence for years.

For a child, a parent's death is something different, something more shocking. In a second, the nurturing stops and a slow—often painful—education of death begins. For me, the woman who raised me, fed me, dressed me for school, made sure I was healthy and along the way dropped life lessons in tiny chocolate-covered morsels . . . was gone. In the car at that very moment, I took a look back at everything I could remember.

There was finality. The end. No future.

Michael
was
at the funeral. He was dressed in a blue suit I'm sure he'd never worn before, a yellow tie clipped to his neck. As the priest spoke words that blended together into an incomprehensible burble, I kept looking up from the coffin in front of me, hoping to catch Michael's wandering eyes. I felt foolish, sad, alive, scared, giddy and rejected all at the same time. My mind was a jumble of emotions, like someone had taken the best and the worse, tossed them into a bowl of Honey Nut Crunch, poured in some sour milk and stirred it up with a whisk.

When the funeral was over, Michael walked over. He had his hands in his pockets and he refused to look at me. In that instant, I fell in love. Granted, I had no idea what love was outside of Grandma's version. Still, it felt nice.

"Hi," he said. "Sorry."

I smiled weakly. I wanted to kiss him, for no other reason than to say I'd kissed a boy. Grandma was right; I could feel the connection between Michael and myself. If I could see the astral plane, I'm sure his aura would have been painted my favorite color.

He opened his mouth briefly then looked away. "I went back to the Bus."

My heart sank. All of those feelings mixed in the bowl of emotional cereal must have turned my stomach. Images of the funeral and Grandma, images of Michael and his lips suddenly coalesced into a black hole. In seconds, the only thing left in my head was that damned thing I'd seen on the floor of the Bus, crying.

"Yeah?" My voice cracked.

"The body wasn't there." He looked back at me briefly. In his eyes, I could see confusion and fear—the same look I probably had when I'd made the same trip.

My mouth was dry. "I know."

"
Maggie!
" Mama yelled from the car on the street. I hadn't realized the only people left near the gravesite were the caretakers and the two of us. People leave funerals a lot faster than they arrive.

"Did you go back?" Michael asked.

"Yeah."

"You didn't tell me."

"I didn't tell anyone."

Michael nodded and looked down again. He shuffled his feet. "I found something I want to show you."

"What is it?" I looked at the jar he'd just pulled from his freezer. Inside, there was a black, leathery looking thing, the thing I feared the most. It was much larger than I remembered. Then again, I'd spent all of two seconds with it in the confines of that Bus. Michael had it coiled in the jar, its head mashed against the glass.

He set the jar on the kitchen table and sat down. I pulled up a chair, sliding it as close to him as I could without being too obvious.

I tapped the side of the jar. "Have you taken it out?"

"It's frozen right now. It would break. Besides, I really don't want to touch the thing again."

I looked closer, leaning in despite my fear. The face against the glass made it difficult to see features, but there were definitely two eyes and some ugly teeth. The image I'd carried of the last time I'd seen this thing were quickly replaced with a new version and new sound effects. When it looked up at me, I knew then it wasn't really crying; it must have screamed at me.

I glanced at Michael then back to the jar. I noticed for the first time how good Head and Shoulders smelled, especially in Michael's hair. "What do you call it?"

"An eel, I guess. There's no water, though."

"Kind of looks like a snake, but the teeth are so big."

"So, it's an eel that lives in the dust." Michael smiled and pulled the jar closer to him. "I'm going to turn this in and get some money. Maybe we can give it a name."

"Did you tell anyone?"

"No. My mom hasn't found it yet, and I don't want her to. I wanted to show you first, though. Since . . ."

I wanted him to say something sweet at that moment, something that would give me a reason to kiss him. I looked at the way he held the jar with both hands and stared through the glass at the beast we'd both discovered. We would be famous, together on magazine covers and on television shows. All that time we'd spend together in the spotlight of John Q. Public would assure that in just a few years, we'd be married.

He licked his lips. His pink tongue slid just over his chin.

Grandma's voice careened through my head, bounced off my skull and echoed louder and louder. "
The tongue of a man is like a snake's.
"

I blinked. I knew it was just a memory, a thought stuck in my head more likely than not brought out by the funeral so fresh in my mind. Still, her voice was unbelievably real.

". . . like a snake's."

Damn it, Grandma.
I shook my head and tried to concentrate on the beast in the jar, on the smell of Michael, on
something
other than Grandma. I didn't want to think such thoughts, especially right then.

"You watch out for the tongue of a man."

I shook my head again, trying to get her voice to settle down. It seemed relentless and chastising, like she stood right behind me, guiding my actions at that very moment. I looked at the jar and the dust eel inside. I looked up at Michael, still licking his lips with that tongue, that very tongue I was told to watch.

I shut my eyes, as if doing so would help me block out her voice. Was she really right there, in the room? Was her ghost warning me? Or was she sitting in her castle in the sky, rocking away on her chair and yelling down from Heaven?

I stood up from the table and backed away. Michael looked up at me, a puzzled look on his face.

"What?"

"Watch the tongue, Maggie."

I shook my head and closed my eyes again. "
No!
"

"What are you saying?"

When I opened my eyes, Grandma was sitting in her chair in the corner of the kitchen, the afghan wrapped around her. She rocked back and forth, a stern look painted on her face.

I backed up even further. I didn't notice that Michael had stood up as well and was trying to hold me, trying to put his arms around me like I was throwing a tantrum and needed to be calmed.

"
Watch
," Grandma said.

I turned to face Michael. His eyes were wide open and I'm sure he was as scared as I was—not for the same reasons, though. He said words I couldn't hear, words that fell from his lips, formed by the interaction of his tongue and teeth. I watched the tongue move up and down, pull inside and disappear just to come back out again. It writhed, almost, like Grandma's snakes.

"Calm down, Maggie." I finally heard Michael's voice, and it soothed, like a breath of reality in the surreal Hell I'd just found myself in. "I'll put the jar away."

I stopped shaking and felt my body relax. On the table, I saw the dust eel stare at me. Michael let go of my arms and picked up the jar.

"Don't," I whispered. I didn't know what I was going to say after that or why I wanted him to keep the jar out. I looked in the corner of the room where I'd seen Grandma, only to find a broom and dustpan. Reality was a lot kinder than whatever my mind had just conjured up as a replacement.

I gathered my wits about me and sat back down at the table, a little shaken but more at ease. "I want to see it again."

Michael never told anyone about my outburst that day, and I never mentioned it again. I don't know what he thought—I was afraid of the dust eel in the jar, I was stricken with grief over Grandma's passing, I was just a crazy girl with a few screws loose. I didn't tell him that I'd heard Grandma's voice and saw her in the corner of the kitchen. If I had, I'm sure he would have been convinced I was insane and would never have kissed me behind the maintenance shed a few days later.

I slept that night with thoughts of Michael running through my head. I had fallen for him, and wondered if I'd really fallen for him long before that. I'd always considered him to be my best friend, especially since girls rarely played with me, and none of the other boys paid much attention to my blossoming figure. We shared something that no one else knew about—a secret we could keep from Justin and Cade, a secret stashed in our minds that only we could talk about. There were other secrets to be learned in life, and other boys to share things with. This one, however, changed the way I viewed the world.

Grandma knew that was going to happen.

Alfie McCammon moved in when I was eleven. He'd come around a few months after Grandma passed. At first, I assumed he was there help Mama fix the plumbing on the trailer, and I guess, in retrospect, that's what he was hired to do. I didn't know how Mama could have afforded a plumber, but I didn't question her.

Mama worked during the day at the grocery store down the street and managed to get me off to school in the morning. In the afternoons, she'd come home, throw something in the oven and leave again, usually for the night. I'd get instructions on what to do while she was away—wash the dishes, vacuum the carpet, do some laundry—and I did my part to make sure the place was kept up. It was, after all, my home and one I was pretty sure I'd be living in for years. When Mama would come home drunk, I'd quietly retreat to my room and fall asleep.

I don't talk about Mama very often because I didn't really get to know her. She grew up in a large family, the fifth or sixth child of nine. Grandma lived in the trailer park for years before Mama moved in out of desperation. While Mama's brothers and sisters spread across the country to plant themselves, Mama wandered, blown more by chance and landing wherever fate put her. She wound up back with Grandma shortly before I was born and stayed there ever since.

The trailer was Grandma's. She was kind enough to leave it to Mama, but I like to think she really left it for me. It was, after all, a home, one that Mama didn't care much about and one I routinely kept clean. Grandma's monthly check paid for the electricity and the water along with some of the food, but when she passed on, the responsibility was left to Mama. I don't think Mama liked that.

Mama rarely kept a boyfriend and those I had met in the past always left her shortly after. I used to think it was me, as if the burden of a child was more than these men were ready to commit to. Grandma seemed to take a disinterest in many of them, and would occasionally talk to them in bitter tones. The majority of arguments between Grandma and Mama were related to those boyfriends. Maybe Mama thought her inability to settle down with someone was attributed to Grandma's inability to stay out of her life.

Alfie was different in that respect. He showed a genuine interest in me at first and even held a few conversations. Grandma wasn't around to show her distaste and Mama seemed at first much happier because of it. It was like she could relax and devote all her time and energy to pleasing Alfie and getting drunk. I even found myself cleaning less after he moved in. I had time to play with Michael or sit out on the porch and listen to the wind, waiting for the storms and imagining my castle in the sky.