A Veritable Household Pet, page 16
“Huh,” Jeremiah said. “Will she… I mean, do you think she might…”
He looked at me expectantly. “Recover?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
Even though I’d spent the past few years wishing for nothing more than Darla’s full recovery, even though I’d cried countless times when Darla failed to progress, even though I still wished for her to be able to take care of herself one day, I told Jeremiah the truth.
“No,” I said. I didn’t want to think about Darla anymore, and whether she would get better. It was time for me to focus on myself, on what I needed and wanted out of life. If Darla couldn’t live the way she wanted to, then I would live for her. At least, that’s what I told myself.
“Huh,” Jeremiah said again, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“It’s just… it’s not easy to get over brain surgery,” I said, irritation creeping into my voice. “They scrambled things around in there, and it can’t just get fixed with stitches or medicine. Or even time.”
“Right,” he said.
Before I could say anything else, he slapped his knees and pushed to standing. “I’ve got to get home for dinner,” he said. “See you later, Ellen.”
He left me sitting in the lawn chair. I stayed there for a long time, until the light was leaving the sky and Mrs. Knowles finally called me in for my own dinner.]
1975
Summer came and went, Ellie studied, I sat outside. The weather got colder, Ellie went back to school, and I stopped sitting outside as much. Mrs. Knowles would take me on walks instead, bundling me into her old winter coat and holding my arm as we went around the neighborhood. Sometimes she talked, and I listened, but sometimes we just walked in silence, listening to the leaves crunch under our feet. Every now and then, a neighbor would be out mowing their lawn or getting their mail, and Mrs. Knowles would stop and chat with them. They always said hi to me, and I would say hi back, but I didn’t feel like talking. If I was going to get better, I needed to do more listening, more watching. I needed to remember how to be a person that could be around other people not just some of the time, but all of the time.
One afternoon, Jeremiah knocked on the door. Mrs. Knowles answered, and then she called for me.
“Jeremiah has asked if you’d like to take a walk with him,” she said.
My stomach rumbled. I’d walk with him anywhere. “Yes,” I said.
They both smiled, and then Mrs. Knowles was grabbing my coat.
“Let me,” Jeremiah said, and he pulled the sleeves over my arms, then zipped everything up tight. “Comfortable?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said again.
“Have her back by four o’clock, dear,” Mrs. Knowles called after us as we headed down the sidewalk.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jeremiah said.
He was quiet for awhile, and then he started talking. Once he started, it was like he couldn’t stop. “I’ve missed you a lot, Darla,” he said. “I know it’s too cold to sit in the backyard anymore, and I’ve really missed talking with you. I mean, I know your sister thinks you can’t do much, but I think you can, I really do. When you look at me, it’s like you really see me, you know what I mean?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Nobody really sees me, not my mom, not my dad, definitely not my sister. Not even my teachers or the kids at school. Dad wants me to be an accountant, like him, but I’m terrible at math. I want to be a sculptor, like Michelangelo. Mom is always telling Dad to go easy on me, and then he’ll say how can she expect me to grow up to be a man who can provide for his family if they’re too soft on me. Then my sister will butt in and call me stupid, which makes both of my parents yell at her, and then she’s crying, and then it’s all a mess. Everybody looks at us and thinks we have this perfect family. I can tell—everybody at school, at church, in this neighborhood, you all think we have nothing to complain about, but you’re all wrong. I know you understand that, Darla. You’re the same way—people look at you and think you’re one thing, or only able to do a few things, but they’re all wrong. Nobody knows what’s going on inside you, just like nobody knows what’s going on inside me. Nobody except you, I guess.”
Jeremiah paused, breathing hard. We hadn’t walked very far. Was he really out of breath already? I still felt fine, and I was the one who usually fatigued easily.
He caught his breath and kept going. “What I’m saying, Darla, is that you’re the best friend I’ve got. And…” That heavy breathing again. Was he alright? “And… maybe more than a friend?”
More than a friend? What did that mean?
I stopped walking and turned to look at him. I wished Ellie were there with us. She would have known what he meant, would have known what to do.
Before I could say anything, Jeremiah leaned closer to me, and then his mouth was on my mouth. His hands grabbed my shoulders, pulling me into him. His lips were cold and wet, and they made me think of the leftover salmon Mrs. Knowles gave me for lunch on Saturdays, after the last night’s fish dinner. She told me she read in Ladies’ Home Journal that salmon was really good for you, and so it would help me get stronger, would make my brain work better. I liked it hot, but when it was cold, it always made me feel sick. I ate it anyway.
Jeremiah’s lips felt a bit like that. I didn’t really like the way they pressed into me, but I stayed there anyway. His hands starting rubbing my back, and then his tongue poked into my mouth. At least his tongue was warm, but it was wetter than his lips, and I could taste the potato chips he’d eaten earlier.
Then it was over. Jeremiah let me go.
“Was that… was that okay?” he asked.
I nodded, and his entire face relaxed.
“I better get you home now,” he said. We were quiet the rest of the way back, Jeremiah squeezing my hand like I might run away if he didn’t hold on tight enough. When we got to Mrs. Knowles’s house, he pressed his mouth to mine again, but this time it was much shorter.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. He stayed on the sidewalk until I was inside the house.
“Where have you been?” Ellie asked. She was sitting on the couch, a book in her lap. It was strange seeing her in the living room. I was so used to her holing up in her bedroom, bent over her desk.
“On a walk,” I said.
“By yourself?”
“With Jeremiah,” I said.
She pressed her mouth into a tiny line, and I wondered if I should do that the next time Jeremiah kissed me. Was that how it was supposed to be?
“Oh,” she said.
“He kissed me,” I said, wanting to see Ellie’s reaction. Could she help me make sense of everything? Could she tell me what to do?
[Scribe’s note: I’d known Darla was with Jeremiah. It was the first thing Mrs. Knowles told me when I walked inside and started heading for the back door. Anger flared up in me. I’d thought the colder weather would put an end to their little visits, but clearly, I’d been wrong. I wanted to punch through the sliding glass door. How could Mrs. Knowles be so stupid? How could she let Darla go off on her own with a boy?
Part of me had wanted to run right back out the front door and go find them, but I didn’t. Jeremiah had acted so distant, so cold, when I’d run Darla off before, and I couldn’t face it again. Instead, I sat on the couch, staring at the front door. I waited, reading and rereading the same sentence in my history textbook until, finally, the door opened, and Darla stomped in.
When she told me about the kiss, I felt a physical pain in my chest, like the wind had been knocked out of me. I was thrown back into Go Ask Alice, remembering Anonymous’s kiss with her longtime crush, Roger. She’d gone on and on about how significant it was, how beautiful and life-affirming and magical, and, at the time, I’d thought she was being dramatic to the point of histrionic.
I understood it now. I’d been correct before: that brush of the lips held far too much power—both to lift up, and, in my case, to destroy.
Darla was looking at me, waiting.
“What?” I said.
“He kissed me,” she said again, and it almost felt like gloating. He picked me over you. He likes me more than you.
“Great,” I said.
Darla just stood there. She was probably waiting for me to help her get her coat off. I closed my textbook and stood, then I left the room. If she needed her coat off, she could do it herself. Or she could just roast. I didn’t much care.]
1975
[Scribe’s note: I caught Jeremiah on the way home from school the next day. He was just about to turn into his house when I tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped, and when he turned to face me, he smiled, but it was the sort of smile you reserve for someone else’s small child. It said, I’m being polite, but I really don’t want to talk to you.
Too bad. We were going to talk.
“Can we take a quick walk?” I asked.
Jeremiah glanced at his house, then back at me. “I really should get home…”
“This will only take a minute,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, and we continued down the sidewalk. As we passed Mrs. Knowles’s, Jeremiah sucked in a breath.
“So,” I said, crossing my arms into my chest. “Darla told me what happened yesterday.”
I could feel Jeremiah stiffen next to me, could hear the hitch in his step.
“What do you mean?” he said.
Fine. He was going to lie about it, was he? That was okay with me. I leaned into the anger, hoping it would obliterate all of the hurt, the pain, the anguish.
“You kissed my sister,” I said.
He cleared his throat. The sound was phlegmy, like he might be getting a cold. He better not have passed that to Darla—that was not something I wanted to deal with, cleaning up her mucus-filled drool and watching snot stream down her upper lip at the dinner table. It had happened before.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “I… I did.”
“And?” I asked.
“And what?”
“You know she’s two years younger than us, right?”
Jeremiah shrugged. “My mom is four years younger than my dad.”
His nonchalance enraged me even further. “Did your mom also have part of her brain ripped out?” That wasn’t a completely accurate depiction of the lobotomy, but I didn’t care.
“Dear God,” Jeremiah said. Then, quieter, “No.”
“I didn’t think so,” I said, thinking that was that.
“But there’s nothing wrong with Darla,” he said.
I couldn’t help it—I laughed. “Are you kidding me?” I said. “She’s permanently brain damaged, Jeremiah. She can’t make decisions for herself. You don’t know her!”
Jeremiah seemed unfazed. “I know her well enough.”
I snorted. “How could you possible know her well enough?”
“I know her heart,” he said self-righteously. “She has a good heart, Ellen.”
I didn’t give two hoots about that, I’ll be honest with you. “That doesn’t change anything,” I said.
“It changes everything,” he said.
The anger inside me was raging, roaring, demanding to escape the confines of my body. This was not how things were supposed to go. Jeremiah was supposed to be my friend. He was supposed to be interested in me. He was supposed to be the shoulder I needed to lean on. How could things have gotten so twisted?
“Darla listens,” he said, and something clicked inside me. Of course that’s what it was.
I thought about Mother and Father, about how they’d both been sold a bill of goods that was rotten—marry this person and you’ll be set for life; have this many children and you’ll be accepted; buy this house and you’ll live happily ever after. Had Jeremiah absorbed those same sorts of messages about what life was, about what women were like? I could understand it, even if I hated it. In many ways, Darla was the perfect woman, a welcome side effect of her lobotomy. Besides being beautiful, she was, for the most part, docile, obedient, complacent, pleasant. She knew her place. She was quiet, which Jeremiah had probably mistaken for being an avid, rapt listener to whatever spilled out of his mouth, when it wasn’t pushed up against hers, that is.
I would never be good enough for him, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it (without getting my own lobotomy, of course). In a way, these thoughts almost abated my guilt over Darla’s surgery in the first place. Maybe she was better off, if somebody like Jeremiah wanted her so badly.
We’d reached the end of the street, and I turned back around. Jeremiah followed. I walked quicker, but he kept pace with me.
“Ellen?” he said. I didn’t want to answer him. I was done. If his expectations of a woman were met by Darla, then I would never satisfy him.
We reached Mrs. Knowles’s house.
“You better not hurt her,” I said, and then I opened the door.
“I would never do that—”
I slammed the door in his face. When the sound finished echoing, I realized something.
I’d forgiven myself for what happened to Darla. And that felt far better than Jeremiah’s clumsy kisses ever could.]
1975
“I see you’ve been spending quite a bit of time with Jeremiah,” Mrs. Knowles said as she handed me my plate. She’d made a macaroni casserole the night before, and she’d reheated leftovers for my lunch. It had looked much better the night before, and I told her so.
“Don’t be rude, dear,” Mrs. Knowles said. “Plenty of children in the world starve. They would love to have food like this.”
Was it rude to tell her the truth? I shrugged and started eating, Mrs. Knowles standing near me to help. Would I ever understand the right way to behave? The right way to act? The right way to be?
“Do you like him?” Mrs. Knowles asked.
When I answered “Yes,” a glop of casserole fell out of my mouth and onto my lap. It landed in my napkin, but I could still feel the wet warmth of it on my legs.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Knowles said, but I didn’t know if she was talking about the food or how I felt about Jeremiah.
She was quiet a moment, then she said, “Darla, dear, I know we’ve talked about this before, but you understand how important it is to save yourself, don’t you?”
I stopped eating. What was she talking about? Save myself from what?
When I didn’t answer, she kept talking. “Pastor Sable talked about our one and only gift as women? Don’t you remember?”
I nodded. I didn’t understand, but I remembered.
“Well, it’s especially important to keep your gift safe now that… that there’s a boy,” she said.
Was he going to steal something from me?
She kept going. “Don’t get me wrong, Darla, dear, Jeremiah Fannin is a lovely boy. Smart, family-oriented, with a strong faith. But even boys like that can give in to temptation. It’s our job, as women, to protect ourselves and the boys from that temptation.”
I still didn’t have much idea of what she was talking about, but I nodded anyway. When she smiled, I figured I’d done the right thing.
But then her eyebrows met in the middle, and she was frowning. “And…” she sighed. “I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to get it out. With your… condition… it would probably be unwise to engage with boys. At least for right now. Who knows what will happen in the future? But, dear, I’m terrified they’re going to take advantage of you.”
“Okay,” I said, memorizing her words so I could think about them more later.
The smile was back, and she patted me on the shoulder. “Just remember, dear, to hold on tight to your gift. If, one day…” Her eyes got that glittery look, but she was still smiling. She cleared her throat. “If you’re ready one day to get married, your husband will want to know you’ve remained chaste and pure. It’s worth saving, Darla.”
I tucked that into my mind with the other words, then I picked up my fork and continued eating. The casserole was cold now.
[Scribe’s note: I found Mrs. Knowles in the kitchen after dinner, wiping down the counters. She was always doing that—wiping the counters, mopping the floor, vacuuming the rug, scrubbing the baseboards, dusting the windowsills, even when the house was immaculate. I suppose it made her feel useful, that she was in motion, instead of in the sort of middle-aged stasis I’ve seen on the faces of so many biopsy and cardiovascular patients over the years.
“Mrs. Knowles?” I asked, taking a seat in Darla’s usual chair.
She let out an “Eek!” and whipped around, her hand flying to her chest. “My goodness, dear, you startled me!”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I hadn’t tried to scare her.
“It’s alright,” she said, dropping her rag on the counter and turning to face me fully. “What’s going on, Ellen?”
This was going to be a difficult conversation, to say the least, and I wanted it to be over as quickly as possible so I could get back to my room to study for my English test the next day. “Jeremiah likes Darla,” I said.
“I know,” she said, sighing.
“Did you know he kissed her?”
Mrs. Knowles’s eyebrows shot up into her thinning dust-brown hair, which was pulled back into a sensible bun. “No, I did not know that.”
“Well, he did,” I said. “Darla told me so, and I believe her. I even had a talk with Jeremiah myself.”
“What did you say to him?” Mrs. Knowles drifted over to the table and took the seat opposite me. She smelled of lemon and vinegar, and underneath that, something meaty.
“I told him I knew what he’d done, and that he better not hurt my sister,” I said.
Mrs. Knowles’s mouth twisted into a knot. “And?”
“He said he would never hurt her.”
