Before we ate, my grandmother asked me, “Do you return the blessing?”
No idea how to pass that test. I froze. Fork stuck in a piece of chicken, heart in my gullet.
“We don’t!” she said in her gruff voice. Jane Ellen and Brother Dick laughed, and we all dug in. She asked more questions, such as why Mom took up with such a bad apple after my father died. I could think of a few answers, starting with Mom having shit for brains, but due to politeness I just said lonesome I guess.
“Lonesome! Nothing lonesomer than getting shackled to a bully-man in his house of spite.” My grandmother looked at Jane Ellen, and for once there was no smile there. I got the idea they’d both done time in the spite house. My grandmother with her snake-handling husband, and as far as Jane Ellen went, who knew. I wanted to tell them it’s not just girls that end up inside four walls of hate and knuckles for breakfast, it can be anybody. Hate comes along and lays out the damn doormat and there you are. But I kept my mouth shut. It’s safer knowing more about people than they know about you.
After dinner my grandmother and Brother Dick smoked cigarettes. His legs and the rest of him weren’t much count, but his hands were amazing. Tiny and clean, the fingernails rounded off, holding the cigarette like a little white bird perched in his hand, singing its song of pretty blue smoke. I tried not to stare. The brother was more like a sister, and vice versa.
They put me up that night in the room with all the clothes, now folded and put away so I could sleep in the bed, which was the size of a ship, with tall wooden posts in all four corners, for what reason I have no idea. Like you might need to run up a flag in the night. The room smelled the same as the rest of the house, like dust and old people, and their doors had the old-fashioned keyholes like in the Peggot house. Maggot and I used to play around with those long iron keys because nobody at all cared if we buried them in the yard for treasure, tried melting them in a fire, or what. Not so here. My grandmother came and looked in on me after I was in bed. Then the door closed, and I heard the key turn and click. I was her prisoner.
But if I could run, where would I even go? Being locked in a room, or living my life in general, no difference. The only roads I knew were full of people that would sooner run me over than help me out. I could end up as dead as my mom and baby brother on any given day. I settled on being glad this was not the day. I had a full belly and wasn’t getting rained on. Tomorrow, another story. Probably the story of getting kicked out due to being a boy.
But this Dick person she doted on, asking for his advice and even taking it. That one I turned over and over. Then remembered what she’d said about people making their water. How he did that exactly, I couldn’t picture. But for sure, not standing up.
27
It took some time for her to make up her mind about me. She was one of these that is never going to be wrong, period. As regards to me: （1） No flesh and blood of hers was getting turned back over to the do-nothings at DSS. （2） She’d sooner shoot herself in the head than raise a boy, so. Getting her way was going to be a problem.
Her opinion on her brother Dick: most people thought he was brainless, but really he was the smartest person they knew. She wanted me to hang out with him, which I was a little scared to do, honestly, due to not knowing how. I asked what happened to him to get in the wheelchair. She said he was born with a spinal type of thing, but that life hadn’t helped his case any either. Whenever they were little, the boys at school bullied him to the extent almost of death. Stuffing him in a feed bag, hiding him in a culvert, stunts like that, just for being so small he couldn’t fight back. Also for liking to read and knowing the answers in school, which everybody knows is asking for it. She was the big sister and got handy at warding off the boys with whatever weapon fell to hand, but their father had other ideas and put him in a home in Knoxville. He didn’t get a lick of schooling over there, so she took him books if they went to visit. The father wanted him out of sight, with people at church saying a cripple was punishment from God. Poor little Dick was there for years, until the rest of the family passed away and she could go get him out.
Damn. I was still nervous to go talk to him, but less so after she told me all that. One no-toucher kid knows another, you have to think.
His room was downstairs for the wheelchair, and usually the door stood open. The first time I went in, he didn’t notice me because of reading a book. Not regular reading, I mean gone. He and that big book were not in this house, nor maybe this world. His room was basically a living room with a bed in it. Chairs, lamps, desk, plus some medical and bathroom stuff I tried not to look at. The desk had a lot going on there, including a kite. Every wall had shelves of more books than I’d seen anywhere, school library included. Some few had the skinny spines and the colors I knew were kids’ books. I’d not seen a lot of those. Somebody one time gave me the one where the boy is hateful and sent to bed with no supper, and in his head he’s a monster and goes to this island where it’s all wild monsters like him, seriously ticked off, making their wild rumpus. I loved that. But preferred comics, which I didn’t see any of at all in Mr. Dick’s room.