Mom drops me off with Joyce so we have a good two days' play. My house was different than hers. Board games, movies, closed captioning, sleepover food. A treasure trove of dress-up clothes. Sexy in heels stumbling over linoleum. Her house seems huge, it's so white. It looks like a hermit. The porch stairs sink with gravitas.
Her grandparents turrn their watery eyes on us as we walk in, oblivious before the invisible banging screen door. Summer wilting in wax cups, our fingers raisin in the white creaks under the dew. The studded yellow shrinks in terror, collapsed so the straws pop up the sides. The door's busted-through stars glare behind us, four pairs of eyes staring us down before smiles spread.
The entire atmosphere smoked a settled ochre gel, her father bulks soft from a distance. He looms gently. The refrigerator is swollen with gallons of juice. "Here," Joyce offers, "this is his cleanse. He has to drink vinegar mixed with cranberry juice." My lips screw up a violent tic on contact, and she pulls the cup away, grinning. "Imagine! He has to," eyes large and lips dropping, "drink this four times a day or he dies."Salami slices from the fridge. Long creaky stairs I envy in mahogany and shellac.
The bedroom is a vision, I think blue. My tunnel vision falls into the drawer she opens, "These are Grandpa's so don't tell," tiny copper BBs beading into each corner, swinging down seams. "There aren't enough," and she runs to bring a milk container she's stolen from the school cafeteria. It's pint-sized, though, and red printed onto white, so I furrow my brow as she sets it down heavily. She peels back the seal into a V, then a diamond. A stream of copper tinkles and scatters. Her tiny alabaster fist grabs a handful surely. Her tiny freckled nose and earnest eyes shine, fervent. Her cheeks light up, pink with excitement. There is after all something her house harbors mine can't boast.
"Here," she thrusts at me, "this salami's yours. Don't eat it. Okay," scrabbling around, coming up crayons, breaking off bits of pink and orange and brown and blue and violet, handing me half of each stash joyfully. "This is his lunch, okay? What you do is you follow me."
"Okay," I nod delightedly. This is gonna be good. Joyce believes this with all her heart. In school she still can't write "I'm in school today." I'm learning idioms. And science. And not all in the deaf classroom, either. Joyce doesn't lipread well and mewls. Her parents sign a little. I interpret.
"See, he loves the BBs. They're his favorites, like candy. Right? The crayons, he nibbles them. He's kinda slow with them. He's gotta find each, okay, and eat all the grouped-up colors. They take a while to disappear. The salami is just, you know, it's to help. It's food." This is gonna be goo-ood. The evisceration of this friendship will earn me an ally on the playground, it's so absurd. Glee tugs my lanky shoulders loose and broad.
Joyce does exactly as she's instructed. She tears each salami slice into thirds, rolls them up and fists them, swallows a huge quaking gust, and slams the door of her bedroom closet open. The shirts and dresses are all there. She throws all the salami at once, slams the door shut and heaves against it, nodding at me. "He's in there! He sure is hungry!" She flashes frightened eyes at me, swiftly turning and knobbing the door open, a fistful of BBs clattering into crevices, a smattering of crayon bits emptying her pocket, the door is clam-tight again, and Joyce almost laughs with relief; she's alive! "Look, not even a scratch! You're gonna see him. He's nice today!"
I gulp and set my jaw, then quaver. The doorknob twirls too easily in my hand, the crystal betraying the bronze, which then reluctantly undimples from the frame. Criink. The bristly brush stripes vast nd white beyond my four-foot frame, the salami slices flung into a murky darkness swallowing blouses and shoes.
"See?" Joyce breathes, breathless. "See him? Blue?"
"Sure. Sure I see him. He's scary...sure!" and she's rapt as she points out: "His mouth is scary. Did you see his teeth?"
"Oh, my!" and I root around for all the BBs I can manage from my pocket. Again with the deep quenching breath, the fear reaching my eyes this time. I think really hard and as the door unhinges, opens, try to conceive the maw with teeth materialized as I finally shriek. Loyal like Joyce, joy erupting through my body. The monster is nice today. He hasn't clawed me yet. I surge power, crayons scraping the far white corner, the monster dormant.
Two years of knowing Joyce. This is her bedroom. We slink downstairs, scared of being caught keeping a monster in her closet. "Shh-hh-hh..." Joyce cautions as she crouches. "Don't want him getting taken away." The Vaseline air wades around her grandparents at the vinyl table, arms resting. Her mother's feathered hair and huge rose-tinted lenses are fresh, framing a tired face and a smile that still lights up the room, beige teeth luminescent within sienna rims. Her cigarettes link gold at the fingered V.
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