Mr. Splitfoot (6 page)

Ruth and Nat were gone in the morning, and it took me a long time, a week or two, to get back into my dull life. Took me a month to forgive El for scaring off Ruth.

But now Ruth is here again, fourteen years later, and she’s different. No Nat. No beauty. No power. No shine. Skinny as death and even older. Thirty-one years old around here usually means a mom with a dirty minivan and a bad job. Ruth’s nowhere near that. She’s hollowed out. Miles and miles of hard road. Someone sucked the life from her face and neck. It takes a minute to get my breath and understand that my aunt is back. “Ruth?”

She nods.

“God, you scared me.” I put a hand on my heart to show her. “How’ve you been?” I’ve only met her once, but I’ve wondered where she is so often, picturing her on a map of America in Delaware, Texas, California, Alaska. Here she is. I step forward to hug her, and she hugs me back like she’s forgotten how to and she’s following an instruction manual: open arms, wrap arms around other person, squeeze.

Something I’ve noticed about being pregnant is that scents land differently. Everything smells like old meat or vinegar or blood. But Ruth hugs me and my face is so close to her, resting on her shoulder, in her hair, and immediately I notice it. Ruth has no scent at all. That’s nice.

“El’s going to be happy to see you. I’m so glad you came back. Last time,” I start to explain. “I’m sorry. I know El has a lot of regrets, and I was so sad when you left. But here you are, and it’ll be better this time.” I smile.

She smiles back.

“El’s really going to be happy,” I say again.

But Ruth grabs my arm. She shakes her head no.

“Huh?”

She shakes her head no again.

“You don’t want to see her?”

More nos.

“Why’d you come?”

She points at me, right at my sternum.

“For me?”

Nods of yes.

“What’s going on?”

She points outside. She points to me. She points to her. She points outside. And it dawns on me that there’s something wrong with my aunt Ruth.

“Can’t you talk?”

No. Folds of skin around her eyes tighten like a person in pain, in labor.

“What happened to your voice?”

Ruth looks right at me, and there it is, the solid fact of silence.

She points outside again.

“You want us to leave?”

Yes.

“Where are we going?”

This time she points straight up.

I look up to the ceiling. “Up?”

No.

“North?”

Yes.

“Why?”

Ruth stares at me again because anything that cannot be explained with a pointing finger or a yes, no, will remain a mystery.

“I have a job.”

More staring.

“Up north? Why? You left something there?”

Yes.

“Shoot. What’d you lose?” And then, “What’s wrong, Ruth?”

Ruth moves in close. She takes my cheeks in her hands as if to kiss me but looks at me instead. She has the smallest smile on her face, and for a moment she’s young Ruth again, all power and light. Like she knows I need to get out of here, away from Lord for a couple of days. I think of my job and feel very little, a dull gray fuzz. Summer’s ending and the closest thing I’ve had to an adventure was a Google search of Baja California. I don’t think of El, not just then. “OK,” I tell Ruth. “I’ll come.”

She smiles wider.

“I’ll come with you.”

She looks down at her hands a moment, nodding yes, pleased even.

“Right now?”

Yes.

“Where are we going?”

No answer.

I suppose I don’t really care where we’re going. Away from here. “Now?”

She nods.

“Right now?”

She nods.

In those years of not seeing Ruth, my imagination had time to do a number on memory. I carved her into something perfect, and even though that’s clearly not true, even though she looks like a dirty junkie, I want her. I want to know what she knows, even if it means following her into places unknown. “One second.”

It’s tough to pack because how long will we be gone? Where are we going exactly? “I need clothes?”

Yes.

“OK.” Comfortable shoes, a soft sweater. I fill a small canvas bag. Some socks, a hair comb, an extra barrette, underwear, one hundred twenty-three dollars in cash from my bureau. I wear two shirts and a hoodie. I think of the baby, but right now the baby has everything it needs.

I consider leaving El a note, but I don’t do it. I won’t be gone long. Ruth opens the front door, and I feel the dark air out there. Lord, bears, all the terrors, and irresistible Ruth cutting through them, unaware of danger, braiding a lifetime of people’s mean looks and cruelty into a smooth path that leads from my door to her waiting car.

The lights of Lackawanna are shutting down as we pass through town, a woman removing her jewels. Electric Avenue to Cazenovia Creek, past Holy Cross Cemetery and Red Jacket, to the outskirts of Buffalo.

“Are we heading to the Falls?” I ask, but Ruth doesn’t look from the road. No answer. Fine. I’m tired and the car is warm. Shut up, I tell myself. Stop asking questions that don’t have answers.

Twenty-five minutes later, the car breaks down north of Tonawanda in a place called Cambria. Not much has happened here since they found a meteorite back in 1818. Something snaps. Chain dragging. Rusting. Rattling. Twenty-seven miles away from El’s house. My phone still has a charge. GPS even.

“What?” I ask. “No gas?”

The car coasts to an efficient end by the side of the road.

“Should I call someone?”

Ruth doesn’t even look under the hood. She’s as calm as if she’d seen the car breaking down in a dream, knew it was coming. She grabs a small backpack.

“What?”

Ruth starts to walk. Turns to see if I’m coming.

“Walking?”

Ruth doesn’t answer.

“Back to El’s?”

No.

My foot is up on the dashboard. “How far is it?” But like the car, Ruth is broken. She’s got her reasons for being messed up. I’ll give her that. Ruth has not had a good life, but what would make her stop talking? Maybe there’s a reservoir of words we get, and hers is empty now. Maybe if we walk, some of her reservoir will fill back up. “What are we going to do?”

And there’s that damn finger again, pointing, pointing. Ruth starts walking down the road away from me.

I spend a hard moment with the dashboard before collecting my things. I follow her. The road is blue as a vein under skin. Ruth and I begin our walk into the blueness, into the black of the coming night.

T
HERE’S MONEY TO BE MADE
talking to the dead. Tonya brings her boyfriend, a kid who aged out a few years back. He lives in a shelter. No more Medicaid and the kid is sick, sick. At the periphery of the basement’s coal bin, the boyfriend stands with his legs spread slightly, his arms crossed over his chest to display his muscles. He coughs like a buffalo every five minutes.

Tonya, Nat, and Ruth find seats on the cold ground. The basement creaks against the soil outside. Minerals grow. “Hello?” Ruth asks the dark basement. “Hello? Hello? Who is there?” But it’s hard to get the dead’s attention under the boyfriend’s scowl. “Can you sit down?” Ruth offers her hand.

“No.” He doesn’t move.

Her arm remains extended.

“I said no.”

Ruth buries her lips.

“This is bullshit,” the boyfriend says. His posture is rigid, eyes straight ahead. “You’re wasting your money, Ton.”

“Uh-uh, babe. He’s for real. He talks to our parents all the time.”

“Oh yeah?” the boyfriend asks, though he doesn’t mean it. “He’s making it up.”

“He knows their names, Trey. He knows things no one ever told him.”

It’s true. Children from the home pay five dollars, a fortune, and Nat talks to their parents. He knows their names. He says what they would say. I love you. I miss you. I’d be with you if I could.

“Bullshit.”

“Well.” Ruth lifts up to her knees, ready to adjourn. “If you don’t believe it, let’s skip it.”

“No,” Tonya says. “We’ve got nothing else to do.”

That is true.

Nat looks to the boyfriend. “You don’t have to believe it. It doesn’t matter. I don’t believe it, but that doesn’t stop it from happening.”

The boyfriend stays standing. “You don’t believe your own shit?”

Ruth sits again, takes Tonya’s hand.

“No.”

“Well, I do.” Ruth calls again into the dark to the ranks of dead people waiting to chat. “Who’s there?”

Nat starts to shimmy. His shoulders twitch. Ruth sways slightly, a humming groupie. Nat feels Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry. “Calamine. Calamine. Calamine. Mine.” He moves his tongue and body, whispering, lashed from side to side. He borrows heavily from the Father’s playbook. Rolling his eyes back, his jaw gets ready to deliver, huffing an exorcism of their boredom. Nat thumbs back and forth over a word that sounds like “prick.” Nat tells Tonya that her mom would be with her if she could be. He tells her that her mom’s name was Cleopatra.

“No. Her name was—”

“Eunice,” Nat fills in.

“Yeah.”

“Nah,” he says. “That’s just what the kids in school used to call her.”

Tonya nods. “Is that right?” and lifts her chin like the daughter of a queen.

Even the prick’s mom makes an appearance. Nat says her name. “Ursula.” So the boyfriend drops to his knees and cries like a hungry calf until Ruth puts her arm across his shoulders and tells him that really, everything is going to be OK, everything’s going to be just fine.

After Tonya, Shauna and Lisa take a turn, the sisters.

Nat’s a bull ready to toss its rider, foaming like a terrifying moron.

“I see your mom roasting a chicken in her pajamas.”

“That’s her.”

“She’s brushing her teeth while talking on the phone.”

“Oh my God. How do you know?”

“She says she’d be with you if she could.”

Nat doesn’t even say hello to some of these kids upstairs, but down in the cellar their mothers’ words are in his mouth. “Miss you” and “Still” and “Soon, love,” and “Remember when.”

Ruth carries a box of tissues into the basement each time they go. She also works security when necessary. The first time Nat contacted Tika’s mom, Tika went ballistic. “Dirty whore! Let me at her!” In his trance Nat kept saying, “I love you. I love you, honey. I’m sorry.” Tika charged Nat, knocking his head back against the concrete floor, scratching at his cheeks. Ruth pulled her off, told her she wasn’t allowed to come back to the basement anymore.

A few days after the sisters, the tiny, quiet Raffaella has her turn, and this is how they move through the months.

Ruth holds one of Raffaella’s hands. It looks and feels like a flipper. Nat takes her other hand. “Yaawwchappa chappa chappa,” Nat yammers in the murk.

Raffaella’s flipper grips Ruth’s hand tighter. It’s the girl’s first time. She thought Jesus wouldn’t like her talking to dead people until Ruth pointed out that Jesus himself is a dead person who came back, talking.

“Choo chug choo chug.” Nat’s pupils are vacant. “Hello?”

Ruth opens her eyes a slit. Raffaella watches Nat, so hungry she’d eat him.

“Jumper. Juniper. Jennifer. Jennifer. Jennifer.” Finding the right ghost is like selecting an entrée off a menu.

Raffaella’s mouth opens. She straightens her spine. “That’s her.”

“Remember that lightning storm? We sat and watched it.”

Raffaella nods, whispers, “I remember, Mommy.”

“I’d be with you if I could.” Every mother says that every time.

Raffaella asks, “What’s stopping you?”

Ruth tilts her head. “The veil between the worlds is hard to pass over.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s hard to come back from the dead.”

“My mom’s not dead. She’s in Miami.”

Ruth’s eyes open. “Miami?”

“It’s
like
she’s dead.”

“Like she’s dead?”

Nat comes to. He rubs his forehead and stretches.

“It’s over,” Ruth tells her.

“OK,” the little girl says. “Well. Thanks.” Raffaella releases their hands. She doesn’t press it. She wants to believe. She pays them to not admit it’s fake. Her footsteps are light on the stairs as she goes. The basement door shuts.

“Her mom’s not dead.”

Nat shrugs.

“I guess there are even more mysteries than I thought,” Ruth says.

“I guess so.” They climb out of the cellar. Nat lets Ruth hold the money.

Breakfast was seven hours ago. Ruth had a half bowl of Crispy Hexagons. Food supplies are low until the State makes its next payment. Ruth drinks water and a dandelion tea the Father brews when food runs out. Hunger’s slowing her down, eating her brain. Hunger darkens her eyes on a young man speaking with the Father on the front porch. His hair’s long as a gypsy’s. His fingers are covered with thick metal rings, stones and skulls, some sort of fancy pirate. There’s a suitcase beside the man, but he’s too old to be a new charge. His pinkie nails are painted black. The Father won’t like that one bit. Homosexual, he will say. The Father doesn’t know anything. Ruth sucks her thumb, wondering if her hunger invented the man.