Melanie Thon - Meteors in August

We sat for an hour or more, until Daddy appeared, swaying down the poorly lit street, his hands in his pockets, the whistling man. Mom gripped my arm. “Don’t let him catch us,” she said. Even in his stupor he might sense we’d been talking about Nina.

I climbed slowly to my room, our room, Nina’s and mine, the room where she had read to me night after night to help me fall asleep. I was restless even then, chased by dogs at the edge of my dreams. I thought of that last summer and how there were so many mornings when I’d wake to find her curled around me in my bed instead of sprawled across her own. She must have known she wouldn’t be around that long; she was trying to say good-bye. At night the shadows in the yard were alive, swarming with boys. But I was only nine and didn’t understand. I tossed in her arms, kicked the blankets from us both and let her soft kisses fall on me, thinking they would always be as plentiful and constant as the rain.

That night I prayed to a god I barely knew, and I made a bargain. I didn’t want to be lost like Nina. We knew nothing of her life. I had no place to root her. In my mind, she drifted in a desert, parched at noon and frozen at midnight. I couldn’t stop thinking that what Zack and I had done in the tree house could make what happened to Nina happen to me. I saw the stain in the crotch of Zack’s jeans when he rolled away from me. I felt the pressure of his hipbones grinding into mine. Then I saw Daddy slapping Nina so hard I thought her jaw would snap and her teeth would clatter to the floor like the pieces of a broken teacup. I heard him call her those names, names I’d never heard before but understood at once; my father’s tone could not be mistaken. I crouched on the stairs. He grabbed her yellow hair, twisting it around his hand. He told her not to show her face in his house again, and she thought he meant it.

I was no purer than my sister, no more virtuous than that loathsome cruel boy who could snap the neck of a cat. A grin could tempt me, muscled arms could hold me down, a boy’s tongue in my mouth could make my hands numb.

That night I promised my new God that if He spared me, just this once, I would devote my life to His work. I’d never give Mother and Father cause for grief again. I would be good enough for two people: my sister and myself.

BY THE end of April I knew I’d been spared this time. I wasn’t going to end up like Nina, my stomach swelling so I couldn’t hide what I’d done. I figured a girl wasn’t going to get too many breaks in her life and that I’d better find a way to show God I was grateful. It wasn’t easy. Zack took no interest in me, so I had no opportunity to resist temptation.

I kept my eyes on the ground when Father spoke to me. I wore baggy pants and long sweaters so that even I wouldn’t notice my body. I set the table before I was asked, scrubbed the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, and scoured the toilet once a week. When I saw Marlene Grosswilder at school, I forced myself to think one kind thought. “That’s a pretty dress,” I said to her one day. She peered at me through her thick glasses, suspecting some nasty intention, then hurried away without a word. I smiled to myself: virtue was its own reward.

Still, I wasn’t satisfied. These were small changes. My knowledge of God’s truth was one drop of rain in the river. I didn’t want to do good things; I wanted to be good. The vast difference wasn’t lost on me even in my ignorance. I was hungry for the Lord now that I was sure He’d heard me. He’d let my beautiful sister go to ruin, had cast her into the wasteland, a barren place that was only beautiful when twilight turned the horizon green for half an hour. But He had chosen to pardon me. I began to wonder if I’d been saved for some special mission. A girl like me had little chance of becoming a saint or martyr. I’d have to accept a more ordinary course, without glory or recognition. By chance, Aunt Arlen revealed the simplicity of my calling.

She plunked herself down at our kitchen table. “Dean can stop flogging himself over this Lanfear Deets business,” she said. “I saw him this morning pumping gas out at Ike’s Truckstop, working every bit as fast as any two-fisted brute I ever saw. Thank God for Ike Turner, always willing to hire an Indian or a cripple. He took Miriam on too; she’s waitressing on the morning shift. I have to say, Lanfear looked like a happy man. I believe there’s a kind of person who’s so common he takes a certain pleasure in being maimed. Sets him off from the rest, know what I mean?”

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard you say all month,” Mom said.

“The lame shall enter first; says so right in the Bible,” said Arlen.

“No one wants to be deformed in a permanent way.”

I leaned against the stove, curling my fingers into a stiff claw to see if I could imagine a mangled hand making me feel special.

“Well, anyway,” Arlen said, “Dean can stop feeling responsible. Lanfear Deets most certainly is not suffering.”

“Dean knows he’s not to blame.”

“I got eyes, Evelyn. I’ve never seen my brother so thin. And his drinking is no secret.”

“We can’t all be fat and happy like Les,” Mom said. She made the word fat sound vile, something you wouldn’t want to touch, but Arlen didn’t choose to notice.

“Yes, he is happy, my oh my, don’t I know. He gave Justin and Marshall the word — six months and they’re out. Collin goes soon as he graduates. Fair warning. Les wants some privacy before we’re too dried up to enjoy it.” Arlen had become an expert on marital bliss ever since she’d gone back to Lester. I didn’t think it would last. I didn’t think that loving my uncle would be nearly as satisfying as bitching about him had always been. She turned around to look at me. “You keep that in mind, Lizzie. Find yourself a decent job or a half-decent man when you get out of high school. Give your parents some peace.”

“She doesn’t have to do anything of the kind,” Mom said. “There’s room for her in this house as long as she wants to stay, till she’s forty if it suits her.”

“Oh, Evelyn, please ,” Arlen said, “I hope you aren’t seriously wishing such a thing on your daughter. Look at Myron Evans living in that filthy house with his mother and those awful cats. Look at Eula and Luella Lockwood, the terrible twosome. For all the time they’ve spent part they might as well have been joined at the hips since birth. Siamese twins couldn’t be more attached than the two of them. No one’s invited them to dinner or tea for twenty years. No one can stand it — all that giggling and carrying on; you ask one of them a question and they both answer, same time, same words. They’re always poking their heads over the fence, babbling at poor Jack Wright. They got him so rattled the other day he backed his car over his own cat. And I hear they do everything together, you know what I mean? One doesn’t go to the bathroom without the other one trotting right behind. And they take baths together too — long, hot baths.”

“They’re lucky to have each other,” Mom said.

“You’re talking nonsense, woman. No one should live in another person’s skin. I don’t have to remind you what taking care of her father did to Minnie Hathaway.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Turned her into a lush. And when he died, she had to sell his house to support her drinking. Lives like trash. I hate to think what’s going to happen to that woman when the money runs out.”

“Me too,” Mother whispered.

Arlen stood and kissed the air near my cheek. “Staying with your family too long will warp you, Lizzie,” she said. “You just look around this town and you’ll see I know what I’m talking about.”