hovered near my mouth. I raised my head, shutting my eyes, forgetting the map and the dynamite in my fists.
Yuck, Cut ’N Style thought. Yuck.
He thrust against me, gripping my wrists, causing the cot to bump bump bump the wall. And as soon as our tongues met, something crashed on the other side of the wall, seemingly rattled loose by the cot’s repeated thumping; I heard it hit the floor and bounce.
My eyes shot open. Dickens’ head jerked sideways.
'Uh-oh,' he said, his body tensing. 'It’s Momma, I think.'
Then he climbed from the cot, crossing to the door, listening for sounds in the hallway.
'Is she awake?” I asked him.
He turned around, facing me, and the overhead bulb reflected off his scarred scalp. He started to hug himself, but stopped.
'Don’t know,' he said. '‘Cause that never happens but maybe it happens -- so you stay here, okay? If Momma quit dozing I’ll go see if she needs soup.”
But he didn’t move; he just remained at the door, fidgeting, sticking his hands in and out of his pockets.
All of a sudden my heart raced.
'I’m scared,' I told him.
'Me too,' he said.
I imagined him going and not returning, leaving me trapped alone in the witch’s cave.
'If we go together we’re safe.”
He nodded, saying, 'All right, but don’t tell Dell you saw Momma. If you promise then you can go.”
'I promise.”
And before slinking into the hallway like quiet ghosts, I helped Dickens put his treasure away. We hid the dynamite in the stocking. He placed the secret inside the tackle box on top of the false teeth, then shoved the box under the cot and covered it with clothing.
'It's our treasure,” I said.
'It’s bad news,” he said, taking my hand.
After that, we wandered into the hallway, traveling a short distance, entering the adjacent bedroom -- where candles flickered on a dressing table, dripping red and white and purple wax onto an enameled plate, casting the room in a muted glow. Dickens wasn’t holding my hand anymore. He had left me at the table, had gone forward, vanishing. Then a lamp came on -- and there he was, standing by a four-poster bed, peering at the dozer who lay on the sheets.
'Dell says someday Momma will wake,” Dickens whispered. 'She says someday there’ll be a pill or a story or something that all you have to do is give it or say it and she’ll open her eyes again. Except it will be a long time, so until then Momma stays like this. It’s better that way. Because if she gets buried or anything then she’s gone for good. So I hope that pill or story gets made pretty soon.'
Aside from being smaller, she appeared the same as my father, wrapped in a wool blanket like a mummy, reeking of varnish, her silver hair cropped. I couldn’t quite make out her face -- not from where I stood -- and that was fine; the bees had used her for a pin cushion -- they’d stung her cheeks and nose and eyelids. But now she was sleeping. She hadn’t stirred, hadn’t heard or created the crash.
Dickens glanced at me and shrugged.
What had fallen? What hit and bounced, keeping my husband’s tongue from my mouth? What gleamed when I searched the pitchy floorboards? A baseball. I went for it and picked it up, noticing a pallet alongside the bed, fashioned from quilts -- and my mother’s nightgown, folded into a square, sitting on a pillow.
Dell’s napping spot,I thought. She guards Momma from bees.
'That’s not your toy,' Dickens whispered.
He was beside me, lifting the baseball from my hand.
'You can’t play with it.'
Then he turned and stepped to the dressing table. I followed, watching as he carefully set the baseball behind the plate. And what the candles obscured, Momma’s bedside lamp illuminated, if only faintly -- the dressing table was a shrine, an altar of photographs and keepsakes. Among the candles were necklaces, a briar pipe, marbles, a crystal fish, my father’s map of Denmark, a Prince Albert tobacco tin, a silver tray with lipsticks and powders and brushes.
And there, below the mirror, the dead radio.
'That’s my gift.”
'No, that’s Dell’s,” he said, 'that’s hers.”
I was too busy studying the shrine to argue.
Lining the mirror were black-and-white snapshots, family portraits, abstracted faces from the past -- a man and a woman reclining in a porch swing with babies on their knees, a boy hoisting a kite, a girl wearing a hula; those images mixed with pictures of John F. Kennedy and Chekov from Star Trek and Davy Jones from The Monkees and a life-like Jesus carrying his cross -- and my father in his heyday, his guitar slung behind a shoulder, a finger pointing at the camera.
In fact, my father was everywhere. Driving a convertible. Eating a hot dog. Signing autographs. Swigging beer in a white T-shirt. Playing pinball. And who was that with him? That girl with her arm around his leather jacket, or kissing his cheek, or mussing his hair. That girl, in every shot, with blond hair and thick lips. Her mouth to his mouth, her fingers in his jacket or under his T-shirt.
Even without sight Cut ’N Style knew.
It’s Dell, she thought. She was beautiful once, not fat or a pirate. She loved your daddy. She had two good eyes.
Then Dickens and I were all whispers.
'They were kissers,” I said.
'I think so,” he replied. 'That was forever ago, I guess. But Dell is pretty. That was her boyfriend, that was her special friend. He took care of her for a long time.'
'It’s my daddy.'
'No, I’m not sure. No. Your daddy doesn’t look like that boy. I think I’d remember that.”
'But it’s him and that’s Dell -- and they kiss. They do it like we do it.'
Just then I wanted to be kissed. I wanted his tongue wiggling in me. And I told him so.
'I do too,” he said.
My belly tingled.
He took a lipstick from the silver tray and led me to the pallet -- where we sat facing one another, our heads ducked so we couldn’t see Momma, so she wouldn’t see us if she miraculously awoke. And we put lipstick on each other, making our lips red and sloppy. Then we kissed, squishing tongues with closed eyes. His fingers found my panties, and he was tickling me down there. But I didn’t care -- because I was Dell and he was my father -- and we were married and our baby was coming. When we kissed I felt warm and safe, everything inside me crackled like a sparkler; that feeling would continue from now on, I was certain. It would never end.
But it did end, fizzling abruptly with, 'Filthy filth! Evil!”
There was Dell, glowering at us with a menacing scowl, grasping her hooded helmet. Before either of us had a chance to start or speak, she nudged Dickens with a boot, pushing him away from me. And what happened next stifled my breath; she pounded the helmet with a fist, a muffled whapping, which sent Dickens scrambling backwards across the floor, against a wall.
'No, Dell, no, no-'
'Rotten! Rotten!'
She threw the helmet down -- and it spun from the hood, rolling like a tire on its brim toward Dickens, bumping the wall near his right knee, missing him. Then the helmet yo- yoed back across the floorboards, wheeling past Dell’s boots, colliding with a dressing table leg. But it might as well have wounded Dickens: he fell on his side, shielding his face, drawing himself into a ball. His chest heaved and a pitiful moan, punctuated with sobs, trembled out of him.
'Rotten!”
I covered my ears, gazing at Dell’s mesh hood -- which had dropped before me, had landed in a clump by the
