House on Fire

Chapter 2

  When Jessie came to live with us, she was alternately anxious and ferocious. She had terrible nightmares, and didn’t like to be touched. I got bite marks and scratches learning that. She was always sorry afterward, but I was careful not to surprise her.

  One night, I woke to find her sitting on my floor, a dark form on the rug. All I could really see clearly was the whites of her eyes, which disappeared when she blinked.

  “Hey, Cory?”

  “What is it? Are you okay?”

  “You won’t never hurt me, will you?”

  “No way. Why?”

  “Didn’t think so. Jus’ wanted to hear you say it.”

  I rubbed my eyes. She was holding that little flower.

  “I like your mom. She smells like vanilla.”

  “She’s your mom, too, now.”

  Sis sat there for another minute and smiled, her teeth bright in the darkness. Then she stood up and walked back to her room.

  The next day we were watching TV and she reached out and held my hand. She smiled at me and I smiled back. Her eyes didn’t look as scared.

  That night Jessie was back at my bed.

  “I hat a bat dream. Kin I sleep wit you?”

  “Um, yeah, I guess.” I scooted over and made room. She pulled my arm around her.

  “Will you keep me safe?”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah, I’ll always keep you safe. I promise.”

  After Dad graduated Wayne State, he got a job as a Deputy Sheriff for Delta County, in the Upper Peninsula. We lived in a big cedar house on a county road north of Escanaba, our home town. This was before the fire. It was just as well that Sissy and I were already best friends, because no other kids lived nearby.

  We were still in sixth grade, so we got Ms. Oathmar’s class. That’s where we met our friends Beth, Jody and Spaz. Beth was nice to everyone. She was sick a lot in second grade and had to repeat, so she was a year older. Jody was really smart and always had her hand up. Spaz liked to give his answers while standing on a chair.

  Next to Sissy, Robert Spaetzerkopff was the person I liked the most on the whole planet. Spaz was almost a year older than me, a blonde-haired Howdy Doody with wide, bright green eyes. He lived with his mom and three sisters. He liked train tracks and limestone quarries. There was always a bonfire to build or a stream to dam, and he refused to recognize that he wasn’t good at climbing trees. He was rough on shoes, on scabs, and on bikes. He only wore flannel shirts and overalls – to school, to church, and even all summer. He was nuts.

  Then there was Janna. She and her younger brother, Harrad, lived in town. Her dad was Dr. Prakesh, the pharmacist at Drugco. Dad said if Janna was his he’d give her away; she was a whiner, which he couldn’t tolerate We let Janna eat lunch with us. I wondered if it made Jessie feel less alone to have somebody else with dark skin around. .

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I guess it’s better then bein’ the only one. But I never fitted in. Back in Detroit I wasn’t one of the sistahs. They di’n’t protect me.”

  Jessie got teased a lot in school. Some of it was openly ignorant and racist. Mom warned us about that. But a lot of it was the way she talked. What was normal in Detroit sounded wrong in Escanaba. It didn’t help that she cursed like it was nothing, even in front of adults.

  Mom rented a video tape of My Fair Lady. The movie’s about a girl who learns to talk differently to fit in with a new bunch of people. Jess picked right up on the idea.

  “You gotta teach me that!” she told the family. She admitted to me that she’d scrub Detroit off of herself with sandpaper if she thought it would work.

  “I wish I had skin and pretty blonde hair like you and Mom.”

  “Then you wouldn’t be so cute, Jess. I like you how you are.” She frowned at me so I smiled until she smiled back.

  Mom made a list of words Sis shouldn’t use, and Jess showed it to me. Wow, I didn’t know Mom even knew those words! Some of them I had to ask Jess what they meant.

  Sis was eager to learn this new language, and Mom made it into games. Sissy practiced lists of words with “ing" or “er" at the end, and would chant, “Mother, I need some of that nighttime, sniffling sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever, so you can rest medicine.” She was smart, and worked hard at it. Within weeks she was starting to imitate the native lilt.

  “It must be like learning a foreign language,” I told her.

  “It’s almost different way of thinking. Like, you guys say thank you a lot.”

  “You don’t think that’s normal?”

  “But Mom thanks Dad for taking out the garbage, and he thanks her for vacuuming. You thank Mom for fixing you lunch. I mean, you do it every day. Ain’t that jus’ their jobs?”

  “Isn’t, not ain’t.”

  “I always forget that one. But doncha ever get tired of it?”

  “Not really. I guess it’s like saying I love you and appreciate you. I don’t get tired of hearing that.”

  “Oh, I get it. Then… thanks for explainin’ that to me.” Her smile was so dazzling that it made me smile back.

  It helped that Mom and Dad talked with us as if we were adults. They were interested in everything that happened in school and with our friends. We’d all do chores together, make supper together, telling the stories of our day. It was fun to get Dad talking, especially after dinner when he’d had a couple drinks. He was funny and could argue both sides of any issue.

  When he wasn’t at work, Dad would just do what a man normally does, and include us in it. He’d have us help fix things like the leaky faucet or a burned-out headlight. He taught us how to clean, how to sew torn clothes, and how to make a bed. Correctly. He said those were the first three things he learned in the Army.

  Dad thought exercise was important; that we work out all our energy, so we played outside a lot, even when it was bitter cold. Indoors, we had contests for push-ups and pull-ups. Jessie always won. Dad taught us the fireman’s carry, so Sis and I lugged each other around on our backs. I got to five minutes once before I had to set her down. Then she had to carry me for five and a half, just to prove she was stronger.

  Another thing that helped Jessie was that they enrolled her in karate lessons. It gave her a healthy way to focus and burn off all that emotional energy. She was fast, strong, and balanced. Mom asked if she wanted to join a gymnastics club, too, but she had no interest in that. She was a warrior.

  Every Wednesday Mom would take Jessie to a therapist, to help her deal with the stuff that happened at the orphanage. Sis asked if I could go with her, but Mom said no. It didn’t matter; Jess told me everything anyway, in vivid detail.

  Mom said Jess might try to work out some of that stuff with me physically, and if she did I was supposed to say no and tell Mom about it. I usually didn’t, though. I was curious, and didn’t want to get Sis in trouble.

  “If I didn’t do it right,” she told me, “Or if I cried, they’d hurt me. They said it was my own fault.”

  “How could you not cry when it hurt?”

  “After a while it was like part of me went away, like I wasn’t all there. Do you love me, Cory?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Those boys said they loved me.”

  “They lied.”

  “I mean, I believed them. I thought that was what it meant.”

  “Love feels happy, it feels safe. It makes you feel respected. Did they make you feel that way?”

  “No, but it’s confusing. I kind of liked the attention. It made me feel special.”

  “You don’t have to do that stuff to be special. Not with me.”

  “I know. But I like when you touch me. That feels like love.”

  “Hug?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  There’s a picture in the hall of the two of us sitting on the couch. If you just glance at it, you see two twelve-year-olds smiling at each other, me with my skinny lips and little t
eeth, and her with that wide, bright smile. But if you study it, the expressions look more like an old couple who’ve loved a lifetime and are content just to be in each other’s presence.

  That would have made perfect sense to Jessie and me. We planned to get married as soon as we were old enough. Mom said we were adorable, and that we were the perfect couple, just destined for each other.

  That was the only thing I ever heard my parents be cross with each other about. Dad’s forehead would gather like a storm cloud, and he would call Mom Emma. He growled that it was wrong to encourage us; that it could only lead to trouble later.

  “Mikael,” she would answer softly, “It’ll be fine. Trust me on this.” Then they would make smoochie-face and he’d call her Dear, and the argument was over.

  As for the fantasy of marrying Jess, I guess it was just a passing phase that never passed.