pallet -- but I still heard everything.
'Doing that here!' she was yelling at him. 'Bringing nasty nastiness into our home!” She turned, her housedress sweeping above her boots, and crouched in front of me: 'This is my home! My home, betrayer! Like father like daughter, I’d say. That's right, of course!”
And I was a spy, she said so. I always went where I wasn’t invited, bringing my little friends, my little spies.
‘'Watching in bushes, vile nasty child! You’ll starve, right? No more food for you, not a thing, nothing! ”
'I didn’t do anything!' I said, and began crying. 'I didn’t do anything! ”
'Liar!”
'I didn’t-”
She grabbed my wrist and stared at Cut 'N Style, mocking me, saying, 'I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything!”
'I didn’t-”
Messing where I don’t belong. Me and my friends.
'I’ve seen you do it, spying everywhere!”
On her land and in her home and being filthy with Dickens in Momma’s room.
'You're not welcome here, wicked one!”
Now I'd starve. I’d wither and die. No more me. That’s what she said.
'And no more of these--'
Then she shook my wrist, making Cut ’N Style wobble and fall from my finger.
'No more spies-”
She stood upright, crossing to the dressing table, where she opened a drawer and rifled about inside of it.
'Child, you’re not the only one who lurks-'
Then she returned to me with something planted on a mittened index finger, something sprouting red hair; it was, I was horrified to discover, Classique.
'This is a troublesome creature,” Dell told me, twitching Classique in front of my face so I could see her. 'This is you-!'
'That’s mine,' I sobbed.
'No,” Dell said, 'I think not.”
My guts twisted, my stomach roared with pain, as if Classique had been ripped from me.
'She’s mine and I hate you!' I screamed. 'I hate you, hate you-!”
I hate you!
And hearing my words., Dell’s ferociousness crumbled into a stunned silence; she was taken aback, and -- with Classique curling into a fist -- she lowered her hand.
'What an awful thing to say,” she said, sounding truly hurt. 'What an awful, terrible thing to utter at someone.'
With tears welling, snot dripping, I glared at her vexed, confused expression. just then Dickens’ heels banged the floorboards, his arms flailed. He wasn’t moaning anymore, and, when I looked, he was on his back, convulsing wildly; spit bubbled between his clenched teeth, and his face strained as spasms jolted his body, as he hissed saliva and gagged.
'Look what you’ve done,' Dell said, rushing to him. 'Look what you’ve done!”
She pried his mouth open, forcing two fingers into his throat -- Classique stuck on one of them, disappearing from sight again, lost in another hole. And I didn’t understand why she was doing that, why she blamed me and was choking him with my doll head. All I knew was that I had to escape or next she’d be using those fingers on me, slipping them past my lips. So I sprang forward, grabbing the hood.
Without this you’re dead, I thought. Without this bees will kill you good.
'Evil! Evil!”
And I was fast, much faster than Dell. I was a ghost, sailing around her outstretched arms, her clawing mittens.
'Monster child!'
I don’t remember running from the witch’s cave, or tearing along the footpath, passing the hole where Classique had fallen. I can’t recall Dell’s hood slipping from my hand, drifting to the ground behind me. Or scrambling across the tracks. Or locking the front door of What Rocks. Or crying as I told my father what happened.
But I did cry, weeping for what seemed hours, wetting my father’s quilt with tears. And finally exhausted, I shivered beside him -- the lipstick smeared across my chin, my stomach aching, my legs sore from running-hugging his rigid form, hoping he’d protect me from Dell.
'I didn’t do anything,' I said, again and again. 'I didn’t. Just kissed Dickens, that’s all. I didn’t do anything.”
My poor husband, I thought. Poor Classique, poor blind Cut ’N Style. She got you all. I’m next. She hates me. When she knows the squirrel is gone, she’ll destroy me for sure. She’ll probably hang my head in her living room, or stick me on a shelf in the shed.
But there was nowhere to go. At night, bog men stirred in the attic and in the sorghum with Queen Gunhild. At night, Dell would wander outside, I knew. So how long did I have? How long until nightfall and the bees went to bed? That’s when she’d come for me. Now she was in her cave, perhaps stuffing Dickens with wire, waiting for night. Then she'd arrive with her tools and buckets. She’d crash through the front door, yelling, 'Filthy filthy!”
And lying with my father, I prayed for food and some- where safe to hide. I imagined those cities at the bottom of the ocean, those castles and families -- that’s where I belonged. Classique would probably meet me there, so would Dickens and Cut ’N Style. l/Iy father was already dreaming himself there, I felt certain. And if I could only dream myself there too. If I could shut my eyes and try hard enough, I might find myself waking inside his dream.
If I tried hard enough, if I closed my eyes and held my breath -- if I tried hard enough-
I never heard the breath leave my body. Before sleep, the last sound to fill my ears was the beating of my heart, and I knew I was slipping past the tideland, going beneath the ocean and sinking away from What Rocks. The afternoon light had faded above; maybe the waves had curled high enough to extinguish the sun. And in that far-flung region of my imagination, I tried understanding the exact circumstances that brought me to Texas instead of Denmark, but nothing presented itself. I knew only that I’d been on my own since that first night in the back country, and that I’d fled Los Angeles after my mother turned blue. Then I saw myself swimming through a vast underwater wilderness, going deeper and deeper, like a penny tossed into the Hundred Year Ocean -- or Alice falling very slowly in the rabbit-hole, looking about, wondering what was going to happen next.
22
The end of the world was purple, appearing as an iris or a rose in my dream, blooming with an ear-piercing eruption, the petals suddenly bursting away from the bud like a fire- work. Or was I already half-awake -- having just stirred beside my father -- when the explosions shook What Rocks so abruptly, so violently, that the table lamp beside my bed fell to the floor; the window near the staircase collapsed in pieces, and all the windows downstairs -- I soon discovered -- shattered inward, throwing glass over the floorboards.
Then with astonishing speed, the ruinous aftermath of the blasts unfolded beyond the farmhouse, cacophonous and jarring-the whine of iron wheels sparking on the tracks, passenger cars tipping this way and that, metal striking metal, the ground quaking-then everything was quiet, enveloped in a brown and white dust which rose into the evening sky like smoke.
No, it isn’t really the end of the world, I thought, only the end of the monster shark. But I wasn’t certain, not there in my bedroom or downstairs or out on the porch. I wasn’t certain until reaching the grazing pasture, where the derailment became apparent -- the bus had been smashed beneath a toppled passenger car, another car rested in Dell’s meadow. Waning sunlight cut through the dust cloud, reflecting off the silver-tinted wreckage -- and it
