The Little Giant of Aberdeen County

  Amelia’s mouth fell open. Her little hands were folded in front of her chest, as if she were a victim of frost. For a moment, I wondered if maybe she really did have something more wrong with her than problems talking, but then she burst into applause so enthusiastic, I worried that she’d rip her clothes.

  The next day, she brought me a circlet of twigs she’d bound with rawhide and demanded another Bugaboo story, so I told her about the time Bugaboo made a raft out of wood and sailed a sea so wide, it took her a year to get across it. Soon, I had an entire collection of Amelia’s found objects cluttering up the drawer in the chest between our beds, every day adding something new, until gradually I came to see that I wasn’t entirely alone and that Aberdeen still held some gifts for people like Amelia and me, even if we did have to make them up for ourselves.

  Now that we had bonded, Amelia began tagging after me like a sticky shadow, whether I wanted her to or not. I even started taking her with me when I ventured into town to meet Serena Jane at Hinkleman’s soda fountain on Saturdays—the one day Mrs. Pickerton had decreed that we could visit. Mr. Hinkleman shook my sister’s pearly hand as though she were a highborn lady and gave her extra cherries for her soda, but when it came time for him to push Amelia’s and my drinks across the counter, he never said anything, and he always made sure never to touch our skin when he plucked the sticky quarters from our palms.

  “Bad luck slips off easy as soot,” I heard him telling the pimpled counter boy as he swept the shop in aimless circles. My stomach did a flip-flop, but I ignored it. Without moving my eyes, I lifted my soda and drained it in one greedy swallow, pushing all the sweetness into me at once, letting it fizz good and hard right in the center of my belly. Next to me, swinging slowly from side to side on her stool, Amelia sipped her drink more conservatively, savoring the burn of bubbles in her throat, mixing pleasure with pain until the one became the other. I turned away from her and faced my sister on the other side of me. In public, I never bothered to talk to Amelia. She wouldn’t respond, I knew, just furrow her brow and suck harder at her straw.

  “She talks,” I’d insisted when Serena Jane had made fun of Amelia. “She just won’t do it around strange people.” But Serena Jane had just tossed her curls and sniffed that Amelia was the strange one.

  “What would you rather have on a desert island?” I inquired of my sister now, hooking my feet on the stool’s rungs. “Tools or food?” I was aware of Amelia picking at her cuticles. She seemed to be considering the question, even if she was going to answer it only in her head.

  Serena Jane half shrugged and glanced at the clock. Amanda Pickerton was going to take her to the movies at one. “Who cares?” She tired easily of my games. In her new life, apparently, Serena Jane never had to make choices of any kind. When I’d asked her what she got for breakfast after we’d been apart for the first week, she’d looked at me as if I were from Mars. “Whatever I want,” she’d said. “Mrs. Pickerton just ties on her apron and whips it up. She produces marvelous cuisine.”

  “But what if you wanted both pancakes and eggs,” I’d pressed, trying to imagine Brenda offering that choice and failing. Breakfast at the Dyersons’ was whatever the hens decided to give you. “Which one would Mrs. Pickerton fix?”

  Serena Jane had flipped her hair over her shoulder. “What a stupid question, Truly. Why would I ever eat that much at one sitting?” I’d looked at my sister’s white knees nestled together like a pair of Brenda’s eggs and had the urge, not for the first time, to crack her right open. I wanted to pick her ribs apart until I got to the messy center of her—surely somewhere inside my sister there must be some sort of mess, I thought—and dip my fingers in.

  Instead, I tried to make her make choices. I stuck us on theoretical desert islands, stranded us in dark jungles, dropped us out of smoking planes into cities in which we were the only two people alive. Then I presented some options. Starvation or cannibalism? Escape or befriend the natives? Hunting or fishing? I was the one who ended up doing most of the answering.

  “I’d pick tools,” I said now, “because then you could catch fish and stuff, and make your own food.” I stretched my hand out toward hers a little on the counter. “I’d catch some for you, too. If we were on a desert island, I’d share everything I had.”

  Serena Jane stifled a yawn, then squinted at my overalls. Now that I’d been liberated from the wardrobe clutches of Amanda Pickerton, they were all I ever wore anymore. “Really, Truly,” Serena Jane said, flicking a piece of lint off her cardigan, bored with my fantasies, “you might at least acknowledge that you’re female.”

  I gazed down at the bulging universe of my body. “Why?”

  “Because you are.”

  I spun a quarter on the counter, watching it wobble harder and harder before it fell. I was a lot of things. Bigger than most boys. Stronger, too. But that didn’t matter if you were a girl. All anyone ever saw about me, I thought, were the parts that were missing: lovely clothes, and proper manners, and tidy hair. No matter what Brenda did to it, my hair refused to curl or behave in any kind of reasonable way. Amelia had long hair that could have held promise, but she always wore it tied up in a single braid she wove herself, and that suited Brenda just fine. “Doesn’t matter anyway,” I mumbled, slurping the dregs from my soda. “I’ll never be pretty.”

  Serena Jane sighed. “That’s not the point.”

  “Then never mind.” I smashed my straw down in my glass. But I knew what she was trying to say, even if I didn’t like it. She was trying to make me make a real choice before the world up and did it for me.

  All that winter after my father’s death, Amelia and I learned to play five-card stud and rummy in the bittersweet air of the barn, the pungent odors of horses and hay wavering around us. By the end of January, August had taught us how to twist and throw a pair of dice so that one number, at least, would end up low and we wouldn’t lose our shirts. “That’s what you call evening up the odds,” August said, squatting next to us, the better to assess our technique.

  Amelia fixed him with her clear and steady stare. Only in the barn with her father did her words come clear and easy, maybe because given August’s track record, it was impossible to believe you could disappoint him. “It’s what you call cheating,” she said, and August let loose a great bark of laughter.

  “Who would have thought it?” he said. “A Dyerson on the straight and narrow!” And Amelia scowled.

  “Come on now, girl,” August soothed. “Let’s see what the cards got in store for us today.” In the weathered air of the barn, his breath billowed out in defeated clouds and mingled with the exhalations of the horses. It looked as though halfhearted angels were descending, as though something almost wonderful were about to happen. Amelia and I were at the age where wonderful things sometimes still did happen, but far less often than they used to. August pulled a deck of cards from the sleeve of his coat, shuffled, cut, and then told us to take the one from the top. He took a card for himself, then asked us to pick again.

  “Hold ’em close now. Don’t let me see.” I clutched the pair to my chest, the laminated cards slipping back and forth between my mittens. Amelia looked at hers once, then closed her fist around them and stared at the ceiling. August took another card for himself, then frowned.

  “Now, it don’t matter what color you got or what the shapes on the cards are, all that matters is how many things you got. Are you good at your numbers, Truly?” I shrugged. Miss Sparrow had tried with me, rapping her pointer on the blackboard so hard that she’d sometimes gouged the slate, but I couldn’t seem to keep anything straight.

  “Now, do either of you have a picture of a lady on any of your cards? Or a king?”

  I checked and shook my head. Amelia didn’t answer.

  August paused, then continued his instruction. “Okay, that’s good. So just go ahead and count up what you got.”

  I ran my eyes over the black-and-white shapes on the cards. “Six hearts on one card and eight bla
ck things on the other.”

  “What about you, Amelia?”

  “A king and a queen.”

  August whistled. “Well, now, that’s pretty damn good. I’d stick with that.” He turned to me. “And you’ve got fourteen altogether?” He bent down, and I could see the yellow tobacco stains on his teeth, the crow’s-feet lurking at the edges of his eyes. “The aim here is to make all your cards add up to twenty-one. Royals are ten. Aces can be one or eleven. You can ask for another card if you want, but it might put you over. You still got another seven to go, Truly, so I’d go for it, but it’s up to you.” He straightened up and stood over me like a judge while I tried to make up my mind. I’d never expected that one tiny thing would matter so much.

  “Okay,” I finally announced. “Give me another card.”

  August’s face bloomed into a panoply of creases. “Good girl.” He grinned. “Take that one right off the top.” His thumb slid out another card. But when I took it, drew it to my chest, and peeked at it, I saw that I had the king of hearts, his narrow eyes suspicious as a trout’s, his helmet of curls cut severely along his jaw. My face fell.

  “Now what’s the matter?” August’s scarecrow features filled up the space in front of me. “Are you bust?” His gnarled fingers, one of the tips shorn off, tilted my cards. “Aw, that’s too bad. That gives you twenty-four. Too much. Let’s see what Lady Luck delivers me.” His fingers siphoned off a card. “Damn.” The word drifted from his mouth, a disappointment reluctant to leave the warm nest of his body and become manifest.

  “I got twenty-seven. That’s even worse.” He showed his cards to me. A nine of hearts, an eight of spades, and the pucker-lipped jack of diamonds. I spotted a family resemblance to the king of hearts in the scaly stare, the pompous curls, the shoulders that didn’t look as if they were going to give in to Lady Luck anytime soon. The stamp of royalty, I figured, must make a person successful but cruel. I tucked that fact in the back of my mind to use in one of my Bugaboo stories.

  “Don’t worry,” August said into the brittle air, laying a straw-boned arm across my shoulders. “That’s chance for you. The chips don’t always fall where you want ’em to.” His chin slackened with this admission, then tipped up, the stumps of teeth in his mouth little gravestones swimming in a yellow tide. His way of smiling. “Next time I’ll teach you girls grand hazard.”

  His palm disappeared into his pocket and emerged with a trio of black-tipped, ivory dice. They gleamed in his hand, smooth and round, the way his teeth never had and probably never would.

  At night, I took to sleeping with the deck of cards August gave me slipped under my pillow and hoped that when I woke, the bulbous eyes of the jacks, the haughty lips of the queens, and the ridiculous crowns on the kings would be squashed flat. Every morning, however, they were unaltered, and it was my own face—puffy and moon-sized in its proportions—that displayed all the damage. Week by week, my cheeks grew rounder, my head more elongated. My legs sprouted like vines. Soon, my ankles protruded a good three inches from under my pants hem, and my legs shivered in the raw air, but there were only so many sets of boys’ clothes the Dyersons could afford to buy. More and more clothing piled up on Amelia’s side of the room.

  Serena Jane, on the other hand, was gathering more clothes than she knew what to do with at the Pickertons’. Mrs. Pickerton sewed them for her—dresses with butterfly collars and perfect white blouses with sheer sleeves puffed on them like dandelion fluff. Each week, Elsie, Mrs. Pickerton’s maid, laundered and ironed the garments back into elaborate shapes, ready for their next promenade. They stood at attention in the wardrobe like little tin soldiers. When I went over to visit her, I liked to comb through her closet.

  “How come you never wear this?” I asked, extracting a green plaid kilt. I liked the way it looked with its brutal safety pin—like something for a Celtic warrior. Serena Jane didn’t even look up from her movie magazine.

  “I don’t know.” It was raining, and we hadn’t felt like going to Hinkleman’s.

  I reached into my hip pocket. “Want to see a card trick?” But the only sound was Serena Jane turning a page. I hung the kilt back in the closet. “If it was me, I’d about wear this every day.”

  Amanda Pickerton knocked, then stuck her head around the door. Sentinel—stouter and slower, but no less obnoxious—mewed violently at her heels. Instinctively, I edged away from him. “Serena Jane? Chicken pot pie for dinner.” My mouth began watering, but Amanda curdled her lips into a smile for me. “Don’t worry, dear. August knows to come get you. He’ll be here shortly.” She noticed my hand on the kilt in the closet and shook her head. “Oh no,” she said. “No, no, no. You would be a disaster in plaid. Absolutely.” She shut the door behind her as if she were locking a reptile in a cage.

  I went and flopped on the bed next to Serena Jane, causing the mattress to lurch. She didn’t even know how lucky she was. She had chicken pot pie—hot and bubbling, straight from the oven—whenever she wanted it and a ruffled bedspread that was flecked with snooty primroses. She had pocket money every week, whether she deserved it or not. I nudged my sister with my shoulder, sending the mattress lurching again. “Do you ever miss me?” I kept my eyes pointed straight down, my gaze swimming among the bedspread’s primroses. If anything, I thought, she should be the lonely one. After all, I had Amelia in the bed next to me at night, snoring her funny, snuffly snore. Serena Jane had no one here.

  Serena Jane tossed her magazine on the floor and flipped over to her back. “Sometimes, when I go to sleep. It’s weird without you.” She blinked up at the ceiling, and I pictured her doing that in the middle of the night, her arms raised over her head like wings. I reminded myself that nothing came for free. My sister’s piano lessons and new wardrobe had a price. Maybe it seemed steeper in the dark. Serena Jane rolled back over to her stomach and brushed the hair off her cheeks. “In the morning, everything is fine, though. I’m getting used to it.”

  I pictured her drinking coffee and milk out of Amanda Pickerton’s basket-weave wedding china, spooning fresh fruit out of the crystal bowl, and tolerating the Reverend Pickerton’s rapturous gaze. Whenever I came over, I noticed that he spent a lot of time hiding behind his paper if Serena Jane was in the room. When he was done with the front page, he busied himself with drafts of his sermon and budget forms until Serena Jane left, wafting behind her the unusual scent of tuberose. Once, I watched him sniff the air tentatively, like a dog investigating a new bone, allowing himself one sharp inhalation, one perfumed blast of sin—his rapture for the day.

  If he had been a gambling man—and he wasn’t, not by any means—I bet the Reverend Pickerton would have laid his entire fortune out in front of Serena Jane’s fairy feet just for the pleasure of it, just to watch her lithe arms scoop it all up to her bosom. He was a man of the spirit, but he wasn’t totally ignorant of the ways of the flesh. I bet he would have paid to put himself on Serena Jane’s side of the stakes any day of the week. He wasn’t a fool. He knew that in this world, beauty always comes out on top.

  Chapter Seven

  As the days after my father’s death turned into months, and as January led into February’s dreaded chill, I refused to return to school. Nothing Brenda said to me made any difference, either. “Don’t you miss Serena Jane?” she asked. “Don’t you want to spend more time with her?” I shook my head. At school, Serena Jane had always made it a point to sit as far away from me as possible, and she’d consistently ignored me in recess, flocking instead to the more pleasingly proportioned girls.

  Brenda tried a different tack. “Don’t you want to see your friends?” I snorted.

  “Suit yourself.” She shrugged. “Saves us on gas. You can stay out here with Amelia.” Because of Amelia’s mute spells, Brenda taught her at home. Amelia had never set foot in that schoolroom, and I intended to follow her lead. At the sound of her name, the muscles in my throat slackened as though they’d been given a balm. Amelia. My main companion now. Amelia, who bubbled lik
e a soup kettle when she tried to speak to anyone but me, who glided unseen in the edges of shadows, whose skin was so pale, it seemed as if the daylight might break her in half.

  Not everyone was pleased with my new arrangement, however. Miss Sparrow, for one, was starting to stew in her classroom. What was it about me? she wondered. Why couldn’t I be fenced within the reasonable bounds of educational authority? According to her view of the universe, if ever a creature needed institutional shaping, it was I. And even though she found me absolutely grotesque and personally repugnant, she was still more than willing to have a whack at whittling down the bulk of me.

  She waited until after Valentine’s Day before she paid her first visit to the farm, sparing me the usual flurry of construction paper hearts passing in and out of everyone’s hands but mine. Through the grime of a frosted upstairs window, Amelia and I watched her mince her way from her car toward the rickety front door, her rabbit-skin boots leaving a refined calligraphy in the snow. There was a series of machine-gun raps on the door, and then Brenda answered. Priscilla Sparrow’s eyes raked over Brenda’s thin shoulders and paisley head scarf, and Brenda’s jaw tightened like a bow. Then Brenda’s lips moved and released all the arrows she was hiding in her mouth, piercing Miss Sparrow’s armor of nail lacquer, and hairspray, and Coral Gables lipstick. The nicked wooden door swung closed in Miss Sparrow’s face. Upstairs, I dug a single fingernail into my palm, scratching a line into my flesh to keep score. Downstairs, I could hear Brenda banging pots and pans in the kitchen.

  “Girls,” she crowed, “come on down here and help me set this table.” She clattered a handful of forks together like sabers. “That damn fool woman,” she muttered, slamming bowls of Irish stew onto the table. “Thinks she knows it all.” She ran her eyes over the bumps of my body, then over Amelia’s skinny cheeks, and paused. “She doesn’t know the first thing about us.”