was the guest of honor.
'Smells good,” I said. 'I washed my hands too.'
She was supposed to tell me how pretty I looked.
'Shush now,' she told me. 'No more nonsense, that’s right.”
She removed three foil-covered plates and a thermos from the wicker basket, setting each item at a corner of the quilt. Then she put herself at the center, like a fat jinni riding a magic carpet (the mesh was off her face; she’d already drawn circles in the air, cursed the bees, clapped her hands, spit).
And then she served me, pulling back the foil, choosing carefully with her mittened fingers.
'A bit of this.”
A sliver of meat.
'Some of this.'
Pound cake.
'Don’t spill a drop, you’ll get nothing else.'
Apple juice.
It wasn’t much. But it was good, as I mentioned. A meager feast. Even after finishing my share, I found myself growing fuller while watching Dell. With the napkin on her lap, she ate directly from the plates -- all that meat, three slices of pound cake, the thermos was her cup.
But I wasn’t bothered, Classique. I was content.
I could hear her breathing, a ragged noise, as her jaws bulged. She wouldn’t look at me. And it was like I didn’t exist. As if I was the ghost. She just chewed furiously, a mitten gripping the next chunk of food-and it seemed she was speaking to herself, talking with a mouthful, grunting.
The shaded lens of her glasses, coupled with the mumbling, made her a pirate in my mind. The Johnsongrass waving in the distance became an ocean. And we were on a deserted island, and this meal was the treasure. 'Argh,” I could almost imagine her saying. 'Aye! Good booty!”
I belched, expelling the meat’s smoky flavor, a pleasant aftertaste. Then I stretched in the chaff and let my eyes close.
Did I fall asleep? I must have. But I awoke to the sound of a quarry boom, noticing that the quilt had vanished. The basket as well. Red ants roamed where the plates had once been, foraging in the grain for leftovers.
And Dell -- there she was, her housedress flapping in the wind, the hood blowing to one side; she bustled with her load toward unknown terrain, the dense mesquite cluster at the faraway rim of the clearing. So I followed, keeping several yards behind. I was a spy, secret agent Jeliza-Rose, trailing Pirate Food Woman. Her name wasn’t discovered until later.
I’m invisible, I thought. You can’t see me. I’m the ghost.
Craggy mesquites sprawled overhead, sheltering a curvy footpath. And I lost sight of Dell, but I heard the happy song she whistled. So I knew she was nearby, further on ahead.
That song.
And I should’ve told you this then, Classique. And this is what I want to tell you now-
Dell didn’t live in a cave. She wasn’t strangled and drowned in a bog, and the queen mother of all fireflies never existed (had I mentioned that?): the light seen in the trees belonged to her home; even during the day the floodlight shone, yellow and bright, above the front door -- more as a warning, I suspected, than a welcoming.
Her house was hidden among mesquites, like some decrepit witch’s cottage in a fairy tale. But the yard had been tended; there wasn’t a single weed. The dirt was tidy too, apparently combed with a rake. And tomatoes and squash grew in beds on either side of a gravel walkway, girdled by odd-shaped rocks.
But, Classique, I saw in the house. And I was careful, tip- toeing along the porch and peeking through an open window -- except it wasn’t that easy. All the windows were covered. The shades were pulled. It was as if sunlight was the enemy. Still, I managed. One shade was askew, crumpled at the bottom, and -- by tilting my head just so -- I could see inside.
Maybe, I thought, maybe you’re a witch. Or a vampire. Maybe that’s why you need the hood, to keep from melting. That’s why you forgot me in the clearing, you were beginning to dissolve.
But Dell hadn’t dissolved. She was in the dining room, or the living room. I can’t remember which. And she no longer wore the hood. And her hands were busy with her hair, bunching it behind her head. Then she took hairpins from her mouth and tucked them into the ball of hair, saying, 'Kill a rabbit yourself because I’m too busy today. Do you think you’re the only person with things to do? I think not. I really don’t think you believe that. I really don’t.'
I couldn’t see who she was talking to at first. In fact, other than Dell, I saw little else. The room was dimly lit -- impossible to make out -- but she stood near the window, fixing her hair beside a table lamp. And I recall thinking that it seemed like nighttime in there, that somehow her clocks must run funny. At night, I imagined, the shades were up and the house glowed from within. Everything was different.
'I can’t kill rabbits, Dell, ‘cause I can’t, you know I can’t.”
She was Dell. I said it to myself. Dell.
And the person who spoke her name -- a man or a boy? I wasn’t sure. The voice was sluggish and high, almost girlish.
'You hear me? If I do that to rabbits I feel bad. I don’t do that.'
A man. He sounded stupid. He sounded like my father, when he pretended to be retarded -- when he dragged a leg behind himself on the carpet, chasing me around the apartment. He contorted his lips, asking me, 'Jeliza-Rose, are you special too? I a special person, Jeliza-Rose. You love me? You be my friend? I think you’re purtty. I your special friend.' I hated when he acted like that. I couldn’t stand his expression, all twisted and silly. Or how his speech changed, how it became slurred and heavy and sputtering. It was creepy.
'I put food in my tummy already,” Dell was saying. 'Am I a maid? Am I a wife? Do I make the sky turn blue? Feed yourself, see. You know how, that’s right. You’re no child, Dickens. I should say not.”
And then he appeared, holding a red candle under his narrow chin. Dell kept her back to him; his long face hovered at her shoulder, wearing blue-tinted swimming goggles. She’d called him Dickens, and a wide scar parted his bald scalp, as if he had a hairstyle fashioned from flesh.
'My tummy is empty,” he said. 'Didn’t leave me a crumb. Did you hear that? Didn’t even leave me a crumb.'
I felt sorry for him. His voice had quivered. He seemed sad, as if he was about to cry.
'Your tummy will get dinner,” Dell said. 'You’ll have rabbit then, see. But not lunch. No lunch. Right, I’ll fill you at dinner, okay? But Momma needs reading to before I kill for you.'
Then she turned, wandering from the room with him in tow, the candle flickering in the space between them. I remained for a while at the window, listening, but they didn’t reappear. And I couldn’t hear them anymore. The place was quiet. So I left and headed home.
And that evening at What Rocks, I lied to you, Classique. I told you Dell and Dickens had invited me inside. I said we danced together and played games with cards and sang songs -- and Nutter Butters were served from a silver tray. All lies. Dell hadn’t fixed the radio, and my father didn’t broadcast a message as the three of us held hands (I wouldn’t tell you what the message was, because I said it was secret). Dell never whispered that I was her best friend. She never did. She didn’t walk me home either. I returned by myself.
But I wasn’t lying about the rabbit-hole. You know that, I suppose. At least I think it was a rabbit-hole, found beneath a mesquite tree, several yards from Dell’s home. I was on the footpath when I spotted it. And the hole was big enough for my head, but I didn’t dare bend over and peer in. Instead I kept a good distance; that way I wouldn’t get sucked through.
'She’s going to kill you,' I told the hole, hoping that if a rabbit was down there it’d hear me. 'For dinner she’s going to get you, you better hide. They’re going to eat you.'
Did I tell you that’s what I said, Classique? That evening, as we rested by my father’s boots, did I mention that I warned the rabbit? Probably not. But I'm letting you know now. And I’m sorry I ever showed you that hole. I really am.
