Paint Me a Monster (9 page)

“You’re too cranky to play with, and you’re supposed to be taking a nap, Rinnie. We have our dance recital tonight.”

“
You’re
not napping,” I say. “Nine-year-olds don’t take naps either.”

“I’m resting,” Liz says.

“I’ll rest with you. Let me in!”

“Go away.”

I slide to the floor, my back scrubbing the door. “It’s lonely out here. I want company! Open the door. Pleeease.”

Liz ignores me, and I stand with the door as my brace. “Liz-zie, Oh Liz-zie,” I say in my sweetest voice. No answer. “Liz-zie.”

“Fine!” I cry. My foot swings forward and flies back. In a minute, Liz stands in the doorway speechless. At the bottom of the door is a splintered hole the exact size of the heel of my shoe.

Liz’s lips scrunch toward one ear. She looks at me and kneels to touch the hole. “Uh-oh, you’re in big trouble.”

“It was an accident.”

Liz looks at me and sighs.

“Sorry.”

“Go take a nap, Rin.” She closes her door.

When Mommy sees the accident, her eyes pop so wide I could fall inside them. When they get small like needles, my stomach trembles. She anchors one hand on my shoulder and holds on tight. The fingers on her other hand wag close to my head. If they were lit matches, they’d singe my hair.

“Do you know how much it costs to replace a door? What is wrong with you? If you
ever
do anything like this again. . . . Stay out of your sister’s room.” Her fingers clamp harder with each word. “Go to your room and stay there!”

“Forever?” I ask.

“Until I say!”

Her teeth grip each other so her jaw doesn’t move. “Why can’t you be good like Liz? Go to your room, NOW. Just wait until your father comes home.”

She releases my shoulder and swats my bottom when I turn around. I want to cry, but I rub my shoulder instead. I know I am bad, but it was still an accident.

Why can’t people sleep with their eyes open?

How does a pebble in your shoe cause so much hurt?

Why doesn’t soap get dirty?

Why does a kid in my class have one green eye and one blue eye?

Why is it “I before E except after C”?

Why are fire engines red?

What is a personality?

Why are some ladybugs black?

Why are some freckles big and others are itty-bitty?

Why does Temple have Sunday school on Saturdays?

“The temperature’s rising.”

That’s code between Liz and me. It means Mommy and Daddy are fighting again. I’m hot, my hands are sweaty. I want to watch TV, but I can’t sit still.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Liz says to Evan and me.

She puts the leash on Croquette, and I help Evan buckle his jacket. There’s no one here to ask us where we are headed. Verna and Emmy don’t work on Sundays. The air is crisp and makes my nose run.

“Don’t cry,” Liz says. “It will be OK.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

She shrugs her shoulders, “I just believe that it will be OK.”

I put my head on her shoulder for a moment, and she strokes my hair.

Evan runs with Croquette ahead of us. Everything is quiet, the carless street, the cold air, the smell of bare branches, and me.

“Well,” I pause, “I believe in you.”

Evan is acting like his seven-year-old self, sitting on the stairs, refusing to put his coat on and get in the car.

“Come on!” The words snap from my mouth like a whip. “Don’t you know Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce?”

Evan doesn’t know what divorce means, but from my command, he knows he’d better move. I don’t know how I know with such certainty, but I do. The car ride is our last one as a family, and no one talks.

“Dad, where are you going to live?”

“Downtown, in a hotel.”

“Is it far away?”

“Not in a car. I’ll miss you though.”

He lifts a box marked “Records.”

I don’t want Dad to feel bad, so I don’t tell him how much I will miss him. I squeeze his hairy hand and walk to the door with him.

“See you next week, on Saturday. Be ready when I pick you up.”

We kiss good-bye. Evan and Liz are outside cleaning his car with water pistols and rags. The white Ohio license plates with scarlet writing are spotless and glow against the silver fenders.

“Come on, buggers,” he says. “Someone open the car door.” Evan gets there first.

“Can I come with you?” Evan asks and moves so Dad can’t shut the car door.

I see Dad shake his head and pick Evan up out of the way. Liz watches on the other side of the car.

“See you Saturday, Dad,” I whisper.

“Now I lay me down to sleep. Pray the Lord my soul to keep. Bless Mom, Dad, Liz, Evan, my entire family, all my friends, and me. Bless Verna, Emmy, Mimi, (even though she hasn’t been here in a long time), and the bad guys because somewhere inside, they have good. Be sure to bless Croquette, my best friend next to Liz.”

I tighten my grip on the velvet box Dad gave me when I first went away to camp and pull it in close to my chest. Safe inside are the good luck and love coins and my angel pin.

I open the box to peek at my treasures. The moonlight bounces off the gold satin lining. It’s so beautiful and cold. It feels like water. I make a wish on the good luck coin. I hope it brings Dad home.

“Please bless Dad an extra lot and tell him to come back. I am scared without him.”

My pillow is wet. I dream the wetness is a river. Dad, Mom, Liz, Evan, and I are pole fishing in the river. Our lines tangle together.

“Don’t worry. We can fix this mess,” Mom and Dad say.

Dad pokes each pole into the soft mud on the riverbank and balances them, so they stand strong and straight. Mom works the strings like knitting needles, over under and over under. Together they untangle the lines and put fresh bait on our hooks. I catch a sunfish, and Dad takes it off the hook and hands it to me. I toss it back into the river.

“It wants to be with its family,” I say and watch the fish swim away.

When I wake up, my pillow is damp, but there is no river or fish—or family together. Just a stream of wetness on my cheeks.

The building is tall and its bricks are the color of dried blood.

“Come on in, look around, I just want to put a few things away,” Dad says as we enter his apartment. It smells like furniture polish and emptiness. I keep my hands in my pockets, close to me and far from the strangeness of the room.

Records sit on a shelf crowded with Dad’s collection of little cars and paintings he made that are the size of the coasters they lean against. He said Grandma Samuels was an artist, and she gave him scraps of canvas to paint. He painted the houses on his block over and over because he wanted to be an architect when he finished high school.

Dad must have used a dinky brush to paint the rows of storefronts and houses with people dashing in front of them. In one painting, a brick movie theater has my name on it and a foot shaped sign above a shoe store says “Liz’s Footwear.” I don’t think there was enough room for Dad to spell Lizzie. Evan’s name is on a grocery store, whose windows are filled with bananas, lemons, and limes. In another painting, the buildings all have names that end with “Gardener.” Most of them are skyscrapers or parking garages.

“Dad has a new TV,” I whisper to Liz. “It’s so small.” Next to it are two photographs. One photograph is of Dad’s parents, the other one of Evan, Liz, and me sledding at Miracle Park last year when I was ten and a half.

“How do you like this big mess?” Dad picks up a box labeled
Golf Balls, Tees, Gloves,
and puts it on a shelf in the coat closet.

Stuffed in the corner is the golf bag that lived in the trunk of Dad’s car.

“I don’t think he’s coming home,” I say.

“He’s not,” Liz whispers, wiping her eyes.

Evan’s folding paper airplanes and crashing them into the tower of records. One after the other, they hit the records and then crash to the floor. I slump into a wooden chair close to the bent-nosed planes and try to kick them back into the air. Without someone to send them off, they are lifeless.

How can Dad live here? It’s not at all like home. There’s no one to send him off to work. No one to make his breakfast, no one to kiss him good night.

“Do you like it here?” I ask.

He shuts the closet door, carefully. His head nods. “Sure, it’s a nice place.”

I make the kind of smile where teeth don’t show, cross my fingers behind my back and agree, “Very nice.”

“Last chance to go to the bathroom before we leave,” he says.

Dad puts his jacket on and makes a call while we wait turns for the bathroom.

Before we leave, I take one long look at the dull brown rug and empty walls and ugly furniture. My eyes stop at the paper planes bent and abandoned.

Mr. Bonatura is my sixth grade teacher. He’s embarrassing me in front of the class again. Mental note for my list of unanswered questions: Why does everyone think Mr. Bonatura is such a good teacher?

“Do I need to give you a microphone, Rinnie? Speak up,” he says. “You’re as quiet as a flea. Maybe Emmy should feed you extra vitamins.”

Last year, when Mr. Bonatura taught Liz, Mom and Dad liked his jokes so much that they invited him to dinner—often. As far as I was concerned, he ate at our home too often. My parents liked him so much they requested him as my teacher. He knows our cook, Emmy, and where we keep the extra toilet paper in the bathroom. I know he likes lamb chops, medium rare, and crème de cacao in his coffee. You’d think he wouldn’t want to advertise that he’s been socializing with a student’s family, but not Mr. Bonatura.

On a sheet of paper, I make a list to add to my book: Four Things To Never Ask A Teacher:

To come to dinner

To come to breakfast

To come to lunch

To ever visit your house

“Rinnie, you may get your project from the closet, and while you’re there, bring me the paintbrushes.” Mr. Bonatura’s directions end my list.

I set my papier-maché horse on my desk and spread out the paints and a cottage cheese container filled with water.

“Do you want some candy?” Patricia Castillo, the girl who sits in front of me, whispers. She opens her desktop so I can peek inside. Scattered in the same place I keep pencils in my desk are rolls of Life Savers.

“No,” I shake my head. What I don’t need is more trouble.

Patricia whirls around and sticks out her tongue.

“Look how thin I can suck them,” she says, whirling back around.

On her return trip, her elbow hits my cottage cheese container. Water drenches the floor by my desk.

“What happened, Miss Gardener? You better clean that mess up. There’s no Emmy here,” Mr. Bonatura says.

I give Patricia the evil eye and dry the floor.
Why are some teachers so awful?
I can’t wait until seventh grade.

Why can’t people sleep with their eyes open?

How does a pebble in your shoe cause so much hurt?

Why doesn’t soap get dirty?

Why does a kid in my class have one green eye and one blue eye?

Why is it “I before E except after C”?

Why are fire engines red?

What is a personality?

Why are some ladybugs black?

Why are some freckles big and others are itty-bitty?

Why does Temple have Sunday school on Saturdays?

Why does everyone think Mr. Bonatura is such a good teacher?

Does Dad miss me?

What does bad look like?

“Rinnn, you’re using too much goo!” Evan watches the stream of red liquid fill the metal mold I’ve picked to make my creepy crawler.

“Well, I didn’t use much green. I need to fill the mold with something,” I answer. “Cockroaches have big bodies, you know.”

“Just because you’re gonna be in seventh grade doesn’t mean you know everything. You’re using too much!” Evan almost chokes on a mouthful of M&Ms.

“I’m using the same amount as you,” I grumble. He snatches the squeeze bottle from my hand.

“Hey,” I say, making snake eyes in his direction. His collection of bruise-colored creepy crawlers blends into the purple-blue countertop.

“Look how much stuff you used to make all of those,” I say. “Please let me make one more. I’ll make something small. A mosquito.”

“You can make one tomorrow,” Evan says. He takes aim and tosses the crumpled M&M package at a basketball hoop on the wall.

“Missed, damn!”

“You’re not supposed to swear, Evan,” I say.

“Damn,” he says again, and tries another shot with a paper cup. “Damn, I was better yesterday.”

“You better not swear again, or I’ll tell Mom,” I say. We both know Mom won’t punish him, not her baby, not the only boy.

“Why don’t you frolic on over to your own workspace?” He opens the woodburning set he got for Christmas and takes out a piece of wood with a picture of a horse burned into it. He irons his nose with the picture, and takes a deep breath.

“Ahhhh, it smells like a campfire,” he says. I sniff the air.

“Better,” I say. “It’s like being inside a roasted marshmallow. May I burn a design in the wood?”

“Tomorrow,” he says, biting into a Snickers bar. “It’s still too new.”

“It’s spring,” I say. “Christmas was months ago.”

Evan ignores me and presses the hot tool into the horse’s tail. A thin golden groove brands the wood.

“Make it darker,” I whisper, standing on my toes, so I can see over his shoulder.

Evan glides the tool along the groove, toasting the tail until it’s black. “The wood melts, like ice in a frying pan.”