the party?” John Joseph grinned. Lula tried to scowl, but even she couldn’t pull it off. Granny shook her head. He had always been her favorite, Justine knew. It was okay. He was Justine’s favorite too.
“Can you please take us home, young man?” Lula asked. She smoothed her hair, and Justine noticed that her fingers shook ever so slightly as she tucked a handkerchief into her bag.
“At your service,” John Joseph said. He opened the primer-colored door and pushed the front seat forward so Lula and Justine could squeeze into the back. Then he helped Granny down into the frayed passenger seat.
Uncle Thorpe walked out the back door as John Joseph was backing out. He raised his hand, trying to get John Joseph to stop, but he hit the gas around the corner out of the gravel parking lot. When he did, the car skidded sideways, and Justine slid into the middle of the seat, pressed against Lula.
“John Joseph!” Lula shouted, and Justine laughed. Granny held tightly to the roof outside the rolled-down window and muttered something in Cherokee that Justine couldn’t understand. Lula’s shouting only goaded John Joseph. He pressed the car faster up the big hill into town. The wind whipped in the windows, and Justine forgot for a minute what would happen when they got home and the real questions and shouting and crying began. She couldn’t know how in a few months she’d be flooded with a crippling love for another human being that would wound her for the rest of her days, how her insides would be wiped clean, burdened, and saved by a kid who’d come kicking into this world with Justine’s own blue eyes, a full head of black hair, and lips Justine would swear looked just like a rosebud. For now, that little car filled with three—almost four—generations flew. And when they dropped over the top of the hill, Justine threw her hands up, her mouth agape in wonder.
The Care and Feeding of Goldfish
My mom, Justine, brags on how I set my own alarm and have since kindergarten. She was usually working the night shift, so I got up, dressed, and brushed my own teeth. Then I’d sneak into her and Kenny’s room and sit on the edge of the bed where she’d brush through the rats in my hair and pull it back in barrettes. I knew not to wake up Kenny. He didn’t exactly work, not like she did, but he was on a night shift of some kind.
If I whined about her pulling my hair, Mom shushed me with a brush upside the head or a good hard yank. Sometimes she’d rub the spot and kiss it real quick. I knew she was just tired and worried about Kenny getting mad, but on weekends when we had time to just be, she’d want to say sorry. It was usually when we were watching cartoons and eating cereal, two things she never got to do when she was a kid because they were too religious for TV and too poor for cereal. She might say something like: “Mama used to jerk me bald when I was little. It’s a wonder I had any hair left to pigtail.” Then she’d get lost in stories about being raised so strict and the switches and belts Lula took to her. My mom told those old stories like she talks about a lot of stuff, like it’s a little bit of a favorite joke she loves to tell and a little bit of a sorry memory she wishes she could forget.
She’d say, “Lord and Mama forgive me,” if she went on too long. Then she’d close her eyes real tight and whisper, “Bless her, Jesus.”
They found a tumor in Lula’s brain when I was just a baby. The doctors call the terrible spells she gets grand mal seizures, but Lula doesn’t believe in doctors. She believes in God. I think Lula breaks my mom’s heart in more ways than she could ever count.
“I love you more than anything, my Teeny Reney Bean,” Mom would say after she fixed my hair, and then she’d pull me into her arms and squeeze. Just when it felt like she wasn’t ever going to let me go, she’d kiss me and point me toward the door. Then she’d stretch her never-ending arms and fingers to the ceiling, take a sip of water from a glass on the dresser, and fan her long, black hair over her pillow.
I’d drop a few flakes of fish food into the bowl for Blinky, grab the lunch Mom packed before bed, and catch the bus at the little pond out front of the apartment managers’ office. I didn’t feel special using an alarm clock or locking a door with the key that hung from a string around my neck or walking myself down the sidewalk to wait with other kids for a school bus, but I think it makes Mom proud to say I am—and always have been—perfect.
After I heard somewhere that goldfish grow as big as their container, I kept after Mom to let me put Blinky in the pond. She always told me the same thing, that 1) he’d freeze to death out there and 2) I was too tenderhearted. “You’ll be bawling for him as soon as you dump him, Reney,” she’d say and push her hair behind her ears. “And I’m not getting you another fish if you let this one go.”
We got him at the carnival when Kenny, who was high on life and the Wild Turkey he’d snuck in his boot, got to feeling happy and calling us a family. He said, “I love you like my own, Teeny Reney,” and forked over enough money for me to play all the games I wanted. Then he rubbed my hair so hard that one of my barrettes pulled out and my hair fell into my eyes.
Why Mom married him, I do not know. She was still half Holy Roller. Couldn’t help it, I guess. She only wore a bun to keep her hair back at work, but she still wouldn’t cut it. She parted it down the middle—like a hippie, she said—or pulled it back in two barrettes just like mine. She didn’t wear makeup and hadn’t even started drinking in those days.
I was used to Kenny and how he got, though. I even missed him sometimes when he took off with his buddies and didn’t show up for a while. I came home from the carnival with an armload of junk, a little bowl of Blinky, and a mad hornet for a mom because Kenny got mouthy and jealous after his happy bubbles popped.
I couldn’t get off the idea of setting Blinky free once I got on it. Maybe letting him out of his sad little bowl felt kind of like a good or right thing that God calls a person to do sometimes. Or maybe setting Blinky free to see if he got huge was just some kind of science experiment to me, because I don’t know if anybody can really love a fish.
He was a really good fish, though. He swam happy zigzags at the top of the bowl when I came into the room. He even let me feed him by hand when the apartment was quiet. I kept him for longer than I’d ever kept anything alive. The carnival came and left and came back again, and I still had little Blinky swimming circles in our living room, watching us live our lives like a TV show he couldn’t turn off.
My mom and Kenny argued. Sometimes they fought. I won’t say I ever got used to it, but I did get used to laying awake in the dark after the sounds faded, feeling nervous they were going to pick back up again. The night of their big knock-down-drag-out—their last fight—I lay in bed with my pillow over my head for what seemed like half the night when it started getting real rough. That’s when I busted through my bedroom door and saw Kenny holding my mom up against the wall by her jaw. He had her pushed up there so her neck looked long and skinny, like the rooster I saw my cousin slaughter with a knife he’d just sharpened. Mom was calm as the rooster that day. She looked as mean as him, too, her eyes staring at Kenny, daring him.
When she saw me, she started trying to tell me everything was going to be okay, trying to get me to go back to my room. Kenny kept his eyes on her and wouldn’t let her down, so I kicked him. Then, on accident, I called him a sorry-ass pissant motherfucker.
Mom and Kenny froze in place. It shouldn’t have been such a shock. What I hadn’t heard from Kenny I’d picked up from the apartment kids when we were hunting ghosts or making potions out of junk we pulled from the dumpsters.
I
