Then they were on the porch and then slopping through the yard to Tommy’s truck. They practically threw themselves in the cab.
“Did you see something?” Tommy wanted to know as he reversed out into the street, spraying water in waves.
Mitch was nearly gasping for breath. “No…no I don’t think so,” he gulped. “But if I did…if I did, I think it’s up on the roof.”
19
Their house was empty, so like Craig Ohlen who lay seething in damp rot not so far away, the Zirblanski twins-Rita and Rhonda, aged eleven-decided that neither snow, rain, nor the gloom of night would stop them from kicking each other’s asses.
Rita started it.
When Rhonda stared forlornly around the wet yard, wondering where their parents were off to now, Rita stomped her in the ass and she went skidding in the water, landing face first. She popped right back up, leaves sticking to her face and launched herself at her sister like a lineman bursting into the pocket for the quarterback. She hit Rita full-bore and they both went down, rolling through the sodden grass.
“Bitch! Ugly, stupid, shit-eating bitch!” she screamed in her sister’s face when she had her pinned down. “What did you do that for? What did you do that for?”
But Rita wasn’t saying, so Rhonda grabbed a handful of wet leaves and mashed them in her face, kept rubbing them in while her sister writhed beneath her, swearing and hissing, globs of leaves working their way into her mouth. Something that Rhonda thought was funny as hell. So funny she broke up into laughter. Rita didn’t think it was so funny, though, and she fought and finally managed to work her sister off-balance. And when Rhonda went to regain her mount, Rita lashed out and slapped her across the face. It was sharp as a pistol-shot and Rhonda’s head jerked to the side with the impact.
Then Rita threw her aside and clamored to her feet.
“Witch!” Rhonda cried out. “You stinking witch!”
As Rita tried to make a break for it, Rhonda grabbed one arm of her purple raincoat, yanking it back savagely. But Rita, well accustomed to the tactics of battle, spun around and when Rhonda gave her coat another yank, it came right off, depositing Rhonda on her ass in the soggy grass.
“You’re stinking rotten dead!” Rhonda told her, getting to her feet.
“Bring it, bitch,” Rita told her, standing her ground now.
They launched themselves at each other, actually colliding in midair with a moist smacking sound and going to the ground again, swearing and scratching and kicking.
All in all, it was just another day in the life of the Zirblanski twins who verbally abused each other on a daily basis and generally got into one or two good fistfights a week. They were both small girls, eleven-years old and still nowhere near five feet, finely-boned, and oddly feminine despite their reputations and demeanors. But nature had been good to them, giving them both their mother’s high cheekbones, full lips, and angular bodies. There was something positively feline about them, hinting at the ravishing beauties they would someday become. Their eyes, which would one day be called fiery and sensual, were now just burning and starkly confrontational. Maybe in the future they would be comely creatures like their mother, but for the present with their assorted battle-scars- scabbed knees, bruises, and scratches-they were the toughest kids at Thomas West Elementary.
And if you didn’t believe that, all you had to do was cross them…or meet those eyes with your own on the wrong day and dare not look away.
So they were into it hot and heavy, rolling and thrashing, drawing blood and somewhere during the process a shrill voice called out: “Girls! Girls! You stop this right now! Do you hear me? You stop this effin nonsense right now!”
Rita and Rhonda finally separated. Caked with leaves and grass clippings, soaking wet, faces streaked with dirt, they pulled away from each other. Miriam Blake was standing on her screened-in porch dressed in an electric blue jogging suit with red piping up the legs and down the arms. She held a Remington pump shotgun in one sallow, blue-veined old lady’s claw.
The gun did not make Rita and Rhonda call off hostilities.
They had grown up next door to the Blake’s and seeing the old lady walking around the yard with a firearm was pretty much par for the course. No, what made them break apart was that regardless of the fact that they were known as “The Twin Terrors” or “Those Little Zirblanski Witches”, they had been raised to always respect adults and though many of those teachings evaporated in the blazing light of their tempers, this one managed to stand the test of time. Rita and Rhonda invariably did as adults told them…at least until said adult backs were turned.
Miriam, the shotgun looking much bigger than she did, just stood there on the porch in her blue jogging suit with the nearly-matching blue rinse in her hair. “Well?” she said. “What in the name of Peter, Paul, and Mary do you think you little vixens were doing?”
“We were fighting, ma’am,” Rhonda admitted freely.
“Yes, I saw that, Miss Sassy Mouth…but why? Good God, you’re sisters! And you’re twins! Mirror images of each other! You should be mad about each other! Simply mad! Not fighting and pecking and clawing like a pair of randy fighting cocks!”
Rita and Rhonda looked at each other when that last word was mentioned. Cocks? Did she just say cocks? Did she just compare us to a pair of fighting penises? They looked at each other, dirty water running down their faces, both hearing the same thing and thinking the same thing as was their way, and trying desperately not to laugh. It was very hard and they pulled their mouths into such tight, severe lines that their lips practically disappeared. But this was just another thing their mother had imparted to them: You do not laugh at adults. Sometimes they don’t make any sense and very often they did not have a clue, but you didn’t laugh at them. And particularly old people who more often than not were confused.
“Where are your parents?” Miriam wanted to know.
“Gone,” Rita and Rhonda said simultaneously.
“I might have suspected.” Miriam looked at the two wayward girls. “Well, come up here then. You heard me! Get up here both of you and make it snappy!”
To emphasize this, Miriam stomped her foot twice on the porch and maybe if that hadn’t worked, she might have clicked her heels and fired a round from the Remington.
Rita and Rhonda sullenly came up the steps and through the screen door, picking leaves from their short, dark mops.
“Come inside,” Miriam told them, stomping her foot one more time. “I’m alone and you girls are alone so we might as well wait together.”
Miriam made them deposit their wet things at the door and noticed with some disappointment that they were not dressed alike. Rita wore jeans and a T-shirt and Rhonda wore a skirt and a pullover sweater. In Miriam’s thinking, twins should always dress alike. It was one of those things you expected from twins.
She sat them on the sofa and fetched them both a hot chocolate which they thanked her for. You could say what you wanted about the Zirblanski twins, but they always remembered their manners.
Rita and Rhonda looked around, taking in framed pictures of old people on the wall and on the mantle shelf, most of them black and white. Which was pretty much to be expected, the twins knew, because old people had a thing for black and white. That’s how they liked their pictures and that’s how they liked their movies. There were also framed medals on the wall which must have belonged to Mr. Blake, because when he was alive he’d always been talking about all the Japs he’d killed in the war. There were a few paintings, too. Neither Rita nor Rhonda could say who they were, just a bunch of old men. Though Rita thought one was a painting of Ronald Reagan who’d been president a long, long time ago. She was pretty sure it was him because they’d made a big deal of it when he’d died and it had been on TV all the time. Just like when the pope died. Rita and Rhonda’s Uncle Johnny said that was ridiculous, because Reagan wasn’t much of a president anyway. He said Reagan had made movies with a talking monkey, if that was any indication of the sort of character he was. Just an actor playing a part, that’s all he
