The Smell of Other People's Hou - Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Page 0,25
current had picked up. He wouldn’t listen.”
“But your mom was safe. She’d already been rescued, right?” I know she’s fine because she’s here, and yet I can feel my heart racing along with Dumpling’s story.
She shakes her head. Her pupils have turned from brown to black pools of muddy water that look like they’re watching her mother drown over and over again. “She was trapped in the basement and he had to swim to her and then pull her out. She was unconscious and he just kept pressing on her chest and blowing air into her nose. He said she finally spouted water out of her mouth and he was so happy, he wanted to drown her again in kisses.”
“He really loves her that much?” I ask, before I can stop myself.
“Yeah” is all Dumpling says. Then, “He grabbed the red silk slip out of the fence on his way back to the high school, but my mother was horrified by it.”
I look closer at the red ribbon in her hair. I honestly cannot imagine Dumpling’s mother—who is round and plump like a loaf of bread—wearing anything like that slip. But I don’t say this.
“I held on to it. Because of the way he said she’d look in it, like a beautiful salmon. I’ve never told anyone before,” she says.
“Did you cut it up?” I ask, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her ribbon.
“A bunch of little strips,” she says. “I have a whole cigar box full of them. I figure it’s good luck. You know, a reminder of what love can do.”
“And if he had died?” I ask. “Or she had died?”
“I’d still have saved it,” she says. “Because sometimes you just have to hold on to whatever you can.”
Dumpling takes the ribbon out of her hair and hands it to me. “For you, Lucy,” she says, smiling and pointing to the name on my sweatshirt. “This one’s extra-long so you can cut it and give half to your baby.”
I’m holding the scraggly ribbon in my hand and I’m so afraid I’ll start crying, I say nothing.
“It works,” she says, “I promise.”
And then she gets up and walks away with a slight wave of her hand.
How does it work? I wonder. But the next time I look up she is already just a tiny speck in the distance, like a planet that is a million miles away.
Winning the Ice Classic was both the best and worst thing that could happen to a girl like me. In between dreaming about all the things I could buy with that money—like new boots, thick woolen socks, and cherry-dipped cones whenever I wanted—there was the huge overriding fear that this would make my parents and their friends very interested in me.
It reminded me of a poem we read in English class called “If They Chop Open My Body.” It was all about what they’d find inside the author if anyone dared to do such a thing. Some of the things were silly, like a silver Suburban with the keys in it still idling in her rib cage. But our teacher said it was metaphorical, and I sort of understood because of the bit that said when they chopped her open they also found a little girl in a magenta pinafore saying over and over, “I’m getting tired of walking.” A pinafore is an apron, apparently.
One line said if they chopped her open they would find that all along a woman named Rita had been inside her doing the cha-cha in turquoise beads and a swishy black dress. I had nightmares that I was being chopped open so that people could find the money and buy booze with it. It didn’t feel like a metaphor, it felt real.
—
Someone from the newspaper kept calling and calling, asking to interview me. Dumpling’s father said “No interviews” in that firm but nice way he talks. My mom and her friends had been coming around more often; Dumpling’s dad would sit out on the porch and chat with them, and when Mom asked about me he’d just say, “Dora’s doing real fine.”
There is nothing at all scary about Paula and Annette—or my mom, for that matter—unless you count the way they like to drink and how they avert their eyes from bad things happening right under their own roof. I would give them all my winnings if I thought it would change things, but even I’m not that dumb.