DAWN
“God Amighty,” Evie said. “There aint no point to that.”
I asked her what happened to Momma’s door. Evie was my age, but her and Momma partied together.
Evie said, “I don’t know. Somebody took it.”
I said, “Took a door?”
Evie said, “I don’t know, Dawn. How would I know? I’m not the door-woman. You want to know where the door is, come home and watch the door. Caint see the door from Tennessee, can you? Caint keep an eye on the door from there.”
I walked off. You can’t talk to high people.
Even though she was half my size, Evie used to take up for me. But by the summer of oh-four, she was a quarter my size. And dwindling. In high school though, she’s the one would fight when people would give me shit about how big I was or how I didn’t listen to the right music, or didn’t act like boys were interesting, or how I let my pit hair grow or whatever. Evie didn’t care. In high school, she’d fight for me over stuff she didn’t like about me herself. But it had been a while since high school.
Evie was also practically my sister-in-law though her and Albert never had been officially married. But between him and running around with Momma and ever other person that “partied,” she didn’t have much time for me. Truth be told, I didn’t much want to be around her by that July, least not what she’d become since she’d been taking pills. She used to be fun. We’d sit in my room at Mamaw’s house and wish warts on stupid girls’ private parts and disfiguring accidents on their faces. We’d steal stupid girls’ shoes. Steal their lunches. Steal their homework. Evie loved to tear up people’s homework. She didn’t care to key a car either. One time Evie stole a girl’s lipstick and used it on a cat’s butt and then put it back in the girl’s purse. That was my favorite.
I did everything with Evie back then. I was the one took her to the ER when she banged her head on the bathtub when she passed out piercing her own nipple with a safety pin. I’m the one huffed keyboard duster with her. Once. Cause keyboard duster will make the sides of your brain so they can’t talk to each other. Me and her would go to hear music every once in a while, always the music she liked. She liked rap and country, which I didn’t. Only person we both liked was Nelly. But we never saw him. I’d go with her to stuff though, just to go with her. But that got less and less after high school and I started going more and more to Tennessee and she went more and more to drugs until we’d got to where we were that summer—her being aggravated at me all the time. And truthfully I don’t know I missed her that much. That’s bad to say and I know it is probably also a lie. I was mad at her to hide how sad I was. It was a loss losing Evie cause she’d been there in a way more than Momma, in a way different from Mamaw, a way I’d needed. So it was sad. But I couldn’t show that, could I? Back then I didn’t think I could. Back then I thought they’d got on drugs just to ruin my life. I thought they’d got on drugs just to break my heart. That’s how stupid I was then.
“Where’s Tricia?” Evie said to Mamaw.
Mamaw said, “Not here.”
Evie said, “She’s sposed to be here.”
Mamaw pushed a spraypaint can into a pile of clothes with her toe and shrugged.
Evie said, “You gonna let us in your college class, June? I aint going to lie to you. I need the money.”
June was teaching a summer art class at the community college. She’d got a grant to pay the students who took it.
June said, “Yes, Evie. Of course.”
Evie said “Starts Wednesday, right?”
“Yes,” June said. “No. It starts this coming Tuesday.”
Evie said, “I’ll be there Wednesday.”
Talking to Evie was like somebody emptying a nail gun into the side of your head. I said, “You don’t need to take that class, Evie. That class is for people who give a shit.”
Evie said, “Why do you care then?”
I headed to the kitchen.
Evie said, “Tricia’s taking it.”
June said, “Taking what?”
Evie said, “Your class.”
That summer Momma and Evie’s shame was so gone you couldn’t have found it with a pack of prison movie dogs. Momma and Evie could have cared less how it would make June feel for them to fart around in her summer class, how it might knock out somebody who might actually want to be in there.
I went upstairs.
GENE
That banty-rooster girl Evie said, “Who are you?” and I said, “Nobody,” cause she come at me like a wad of yellowjackets, and caught me blank.
She said, “I can’t say you aint.” Then she was gone, quick as she come, and that old woman, Cora, looked at me and said, “Now, whose are you?” I told her who my daddy was and she said, “Why you here?” and when I pointed at That Woman, Cora said, “Yeah, I seen you get out of her car, but why have you come here?”
I said, “To mow the yard.”
Cora said, “Well, that aint nothing to be ashamed of, is it?” She looked at Nicolette when she said it.
Nicolette said, “I don’t reckon.”
I’ll just say it—the whole bunch made me nervous. I come from some ruckus-making people, so I try to avoid stir in strangers, and if it was most people, I’d of just cut the grass and not said nothing to none of them, just gone to That Woman for my pay when I was done. But That Woman was a bug zapper and I was the bug. I couldn’t stay away from her nor nothing swirling in the area around her.
Cora said, “What are you looking at June for?”
I pulled my mouth shut and said I didn’t know.
Cora said, “Come with me.” We went through the kitchen to the back door. She took me out in the yard, said, “Is that all you do is mow?”
I said,
She said, “Come here.”
She climbed up the rock steps wedged into the hillside past a flat spot held in place by a low stone wall, could have been a garden spot was it not all growed up. She took me to another stone wall on the far side of the flat spot. The second wall was higher than the first, made of creek rock. The old woman stopped short and I about run into her. She clamped down on my shirtsleeve, made me feel like a field mouse a bird had snatched up out of a field, said, “You see them hydrangeas?”
I said I did.
She said, “Anything happen to them hydrangeas I’ll murder you.”
I said, “Did
