Annie DeWitt - White Nights in Split Town City

The door to the crawlspace was the only one that didn’t squeak. I closed it quietly behind me, putting a shoe between the door and the frame so I could get in again if I needed.

Outside it was cool. I sat on the rock under the apple tree. The damp had set in. I felt smaller than I expected. It was a relief. The road was there if I needed somewhere to run.

When I got cold enough, I wandered over to Father’s Bronco. The front seat was a banquette. I lay down on it. With the windshield above me, I still had the stars. The sun would be in my eyes before the next day had broken. I’d be up by the time Callie appeared on Otto’s lawn, before they knew I’d gone missing.

For now, it was enough to sleep out.

I was awoken by the sun. My body must have moved some in sleep. The back of Father’s T-shirt, my usual sleeping gown, had climbed my torso in the night. It clung in a ball to the sweat at the small of my back. I looked down. My hip bones jutted out from the velour of the Bronco. I gripped the two bones where they rose up from my body as though they alone might direct the vehicle. There was a flatness to the stretch of stomach between them. I admired its shape. That small placid sea.

There was a certainty to the way the door of the Bronco closed behind me. The lock clicked into place and I started for the Bottom Feeder. As I walked up the stone path toward the porch I had the sensation of the road spiraling toward me as if I’d once again been dropped into a world that had receded from my grasp. Even the grass looked sharp and crisp and tangible. The gnarled stems of the apple trees whose heads had once appeared rabid with blossom now leaned out of the lawn no larger than two small shrubs. There was a tightness in my chest as I strode toward the Bottom Feeder that morning. It migrated down to my stomach and the small of my back which felt connected as if by a some small piece of string where Otto Hauser had held it.

Granny Olga was in the kitchen. Despite the bed of wildflowers whose current drifted in through the windows, the house smelled of cabbage and onion.

“Morning, Gran,” I said.

“Morning, child,” she said. “You’re up awful early.”

“I forgot to pull the shades,” I said.

“I told your mother she should install those curtains,” she said.

“The shades work alright,” I said. “As long as I don’t forget to pull them. If I do, the day breaks and I’m in a pool of sweat with the sun raging in on me.”

“I advised her when they bought this place,” she said. “I just can’t see living in a house where you sleep with the birds in the attic or hole up in the basement next to the rodents. Nothing but a recipe for fleas and mold. That’s just my advice.”

“Birds don’t have fleas, Gran,” I said.

“Never mind about that,” she said. “Sit down and have a juice. As long as you’re up you may as well help me set my hair.”

Despite the fact that her girth never shrank, Granny Olga was always preparing for famine. Mornings were the time when she did all her cooking. It wasn’t healthy to slave over a stove in the day. That was her advice. After cooking, she set her hair and had a sponge bath. She slept on her back on the top sheet to preserve her rollers. She’d slept twice each day before anyone else had risen. For all intents and purposes, she lived two lives for every one.

That morning, I’d stolen in on her mid-prep. The gullet of some long-necked bird was boiling next to a stick of celery on the stove. The haluski was just out of the oven. Granny Olga was nursing her tea and a piece of dried toast, which she gummed slowly having not yet applied herself to her dentures. There was a pot of fresh coffee for Mother.

The canister of curlers sat at the far end of the table near the window where she’d have light.

Mother came down in her skimpies.

“Lord child,” Granny Olga said glimpsing Mother’s form as she swung into the room, “It’s not a crime to preserve the mystery some.”

“It’s too hot to be modest,” Mother said.

“Its too hot to be most things,” Granny Olga said. She laughed then. Her words were more compliment than chiding. She was still impressed with Mother’s figure.

Mother poured herself a coffee and picked at the row of sticky buns set out on the counter.

“I can see you’ve settled in,” Mother said, surveying the spread.

“As long as I’m here, I reckon I’ll cook,” Granny Olga said.

“Well fine,” Mother said, sipping her coffee.

“It took me half an hour to find a spatula,” Granny chided.

“If it weren’t for the heat, I’d have half a mind to reorganize this kitchen.”

“I like my organization just fine,” Mother said.

“Everything at arms length,” Granny Olga said. “I’m just saying it would be easier is all.”

“My arms are longer than yours,” Mother joked sidling up to her mother’s lap and sitting in it for a second. Granny Olga ran Mother’s slip through her fingers.

“Put some underwear on, child,” she said. “I can feel your nakedness under there.”

“Why bother,” Mother said. “It already stinks in here to high heaven.”

They laughed then. As she got up, Granny Olga spanked Mother playfully on the bottom.

“You’ll never amount to more than an idea, doll,” she said. “If you don’t learn how to keep a proper kitchen.”

“I just like to allow you to spoil me every now and again,” Mother said.

“Go on forget about it,” Granny Olga said.

Mother walked toward the living room to have a smoke.

“Go outside when you’re done with all that,” she said to me. “If you stay inside she’ll have you slaving over the stove.”

“Don’t act like you’re needing her all of a sudden,” Fender said later that afternoon. We were riding bikes on the macadam next to the garage.

“I’m not acting,” I said. “She’s lonely is all.”

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“You don’t like what?” I said.

“All this niceness,” he said. “It’s some big fake.”

I was waiting on him then to say something. I wasn’t sure what.

“It’s like Father says,” I said, hitting the wheel of Fender’s bike with the thick plastic bat we used for swinging at the softball. “Never leave lonely alone.”

I looked at Fender circling me on his bike and thought of tearing a scab off my body. For a moment I glimpsed all of Fender’s future violences. The lying and looting. The time in the boys penitentiary.

“Who’s good now?” I said as he pulled up next to me. I leaned into him and kissed him long and hard until I could taste his body odor where it had gathered above his lip.

I hung there in front of him. We were nervous with each other. The kiss had reduced him to something sad and soft. I thought of Grandfather, how he used to golf in the house in a pair of trousers with his big belly hanging out. Those days it was too hot for the driving range, he’d putt into a series of cups he’d lined on the carpet while he watched the game shows.

“You don’t fool me,” I said to Fender. “I can see you’ve gone soft under there.”

“Sure,” he said. “Isn’t everyone soft under their clothes?”

“Some people,” I said. “Have another layer before you get to the skin.”

“What makes them worth the trouble?” he said.

“It’s exciting,” I said. “Difficult people. You want to discover them.”

“You’re not half as nice as you think,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “And you’re not half as afflicted.”

“What?” he said.

“It means,” I said. “You’re down on yourself and not worth anyone’s trouble.”

“Oh,” he said. “You believe them then, about me.”