Authors: S. Walden
She collected the papers and made her way back over to the computer she was using. She saw him hovering about her book bag and panicked. She quickened her step until she was a few feet away from him, snatching her bag from her chair and logging out of her computer swiftly. She prayed that he didn’t see what was on the screen. But he did see, and he said nothing.
“Hey Clara.” Evan stood in his usual position, hands in his front pockets looking happy.
“What are you doing here?” Clara replied. It came out as an accusation.
“What? Here in the Media Center?” Evan asked.
Clara shook her head. “I just meant that it’s Friday afternoon. Shouldn’t you be with your friends or something?” She threw her book bag over her shoulder.
“I’m on my way to Joshua’s house. I just happened to walk by and noticed you in here.”
“Oh.”
Clara remembered the papers in her hand and clutched them close to her chest.
“I was wondering what you’re doing this weekend,” Evan said. It came out casually enough, but his heart was racing. He felt excited and embarrassed to be standing there in front of her—excited because it was her and embarrassed for what he saw on the computer screen.
“I’m working all weekend,” Clara said. She wasn’t working at the clothing store. She wasn’t scheduled. But she would be working. Working on devising a plan to live without electricity.
She knew her face was red. She also realized she hadn’t put on any make-up that morning. She and Beatrice stayed up late watching movies and eating the rest of the popcorn because they didn’t know when they would be able to pop it again. The electricity would be shut off in one day. They both woke up late and Beatrice barely caught the bus. Clara slunk into first period Spanish just before the late bell.
“Do you work a lot?” Evan asked.
“Yes,” Clara said. She hung her face, and Evan wanted so much to touch her cheek, lift her face to his, and make her look at his eyes. His fingers itched to touch her skin. It was flawless skin—smooth and fair with a tinge of pink playing on her cheeks. He wanted to believe he put the pink there.
“Will you be working all next weekend?” he asked softly.
“I have to go,” Clara said. “Excuse me.”
She left in a hurry not looking at him. She mumbled something inaudible over her shoulder once she reached the Media Center doors, and he thought she wished him a nice weekend.
“You too,” he said sullenly and followed behind her.
***
“Did you know this thing was back here?” Beatrice asked Clara. She swung the arm forward. “Option Number Two.” Beatrice beamed at her sister.
“Be careful with those hands, Bea,” Clara said. “Soot.”
Beatrice looked down at her dirty palms. “I’ll clean my hands and then I’ll clean this thing.”
“No need,” Clara said. “It’ll just keep getting dirty. But it’s great you found it. Now we can boil water in the fireplace.”
“And the wood stove for cooking,” Beatrice said. “This’ll be fun.”
Clara grinned. “If you say so,” she replied.
“Look at it like an adventure, Clara,” Beatrice said. “We’re pioneer women living back in the olden days. Baking our bread from scratch and all that romantic stuff.”
“Romantic, huh? And how do you know about pioneer women?” Clara asked walking with Beatrice to the kitchen. She watched as her sister washed the black marks from her pearly skin.
“I learned about them last year,” Beatrice explained. “Can we bake our own bread?”
“No. We’re perfectly capable of buying already baked bread at the store,” Clara said.
“Hmm,” Beatrice said thoughtfully. “Can we make our own candles?”
Clara didn’t think about that. After writing her list and going over it a dozen times, she forgot all about candles.
“No, Bea,” she said. “We’ll get them at the store.”
It was agony for Clara knowing that today the electricity would be shut off. She hoped they would give her a few more days like the gas company. But that had finally been cut off as well. No gas. Soon no electricity.
Clara didn’t know the water heater was gas powered. She jumped in the shower a few days back and noticed the water getting cooler the longer she stayed in. She kept turning the faucet knob to the left, but it did nothing to generate hot water. When Beatrice complained of a tepid shower later that night, Clara knew there was a problem.
She went to the laundry room to investigate. She scanned the large cylindrical heater for any signs or stamped instructions that could help her. Only when she got on her knees to check a square cut-out towards the bottom of the heater did she notice the words, “Caution! Hot Flame.” She squinted, trying to see inside the square, but there was no flame. She surveyed the gray tube running from the square cut-out. It didn’t look like a tube that conducted electricity.
She felt stupid, like she should have known the water in the house was heated by gas. She asked Beatrice if she could handle cool baths for a few days until they worked out their new system. Beatrice was agreeable inventing a ridiculous reason for why the girls shouldn’t take hot showers during the summer months anyway. It was scientifically unhealthy, she explained.
Clara walked throughout the house, switching lights on for no reason except to see them glow one last time. She turned the fans on, felt the cool rush of breeze, watched it play with the ends of her hair and turn up the pages of her homework sitting on the coffee table. She heated lunch in the microwave—bowls of soup—and turned on the oven because she could. Every time she turned a light off, her heart gave out. She was convinced it would be the last time she saw it, but then she would flip the switch and the light would burn yellow all over again. Why were they torturing her?
She and Beatrice worked all night and into the morning to develop a No Electricity System. They called it NES for short. They had no idea how to work the wood stove, but they started practicing that morning, Clara forbidding Beatrice to put anything in it. If someone’s hands got burned, they would be her own. The girls determined that the “window” on the door could be opened to check that the fire never went out.
They knew they would need plenty of firewood and paper. The wood they could find in their back yard. It was littered with tree branches and tiny saplings that Clara thought she could cut down. Once the wood ran out, she would have to set aside money to buy it. The paper was easier. None of her neighbors recycled, but she knew that many did a few streets down. A few streets over was a different world—bigger houses, well maintained with conscientious residents who mowed their lawns and weeded their flowerbeds. Clara decided that late on the nights they set out their recycling bins, she would go down Oak Tower Trail and collect the old newspapers.
“Bea, I need to talk to you about something,” Clara said after a time. She followed Beatrice into her room. She followed her sister around much more often these days, mostly to tell her unfortunate things, but sometimes just to watch her. She liked watching Beatrice. She was such an odd child. Particular. Smart as hell. Funny and quirky in the way she organized her room.
Clara sat down on Beatrice’s bed. “I’ve sent in our application for free lunch. I’m waiting for approval, but I’m sure I’ll get it. We should get the cards in the mail sometime next week.”
Clara dug around the house several days ago until she finally discovered a shoebox stashed in the back of her mother’s closet filled with important documents. The Social Security card was there, and Clara thought that God, if he was out there, was a merciful God.
“Clara, can’t we just get to that when we get to that?” Beatrice asked.
“We’re already there, Bea,” Clara explained. “I can’t afford a grocery bill that includes lunch items.”
“I’m not carrying around that stupid card,” Beatrice said. She stood resolute, her face set and arms crossed over her chest decidedly.
“No one even notices them,” Clara replied. She waved her hand flippantly.
“Don’t do that, Clara,” Beatrice demanded. “Don’t sit there and lie. You’re not even good at it!” She thought for a moment. “Well, except at Open House. You were very good at it at Open House.”
“Bea, I can’t afford lunches. We have to eat the school food. It’s paid for, and I’m not going to forego that because you’re a snob,” Clara said.
“I’m not carrying around that card!” yelled Beatrice.
“Yes you are.”
“You can’t make me, Clara! You can’t! Everyone will know and they’ll make fun of me!”
“So you’d rather starve?” Clara asked.
“Yes!” Beatrice cried.
“Get real, Beatrice. You eat like a horse. You’d make it all of one day.”
“Don’t provoke me, Clara,” Beatrice warned.
“How do you even know the word ‘provoke’?” Clara asked.
“Why does everyone think I’m a moron?!”
Clara smiled and walked over to her sister. She put her arms around Beatrice who was resistant at first then relaxed as Clara stroked her back.
“I don’t want to carry that card anymore than you do, Bea,” Clara said. She cringed thinking of the girls she ran into in the bathroom at school the other day. One looked Clara over and said that she had pretty hair, but Clara was certain she wasn’t being nice about it. She waited for the girl to whip out a pair of shears from her purse and cut all of Clara’s hair off. It didn’t happen, but she was waiting for the day it would.
Beatrice burst into tears.
“I just . . . I can’t hold it together all the time, Clara!” she wailed.
Clara grinned. “Who’s asking you to hold it together?”
“Me! I told you that I’m not afraid!”
“I know you’re not afraid.” She pulled away from her sister and bent down so that she was eye level with her. “I’ll hold it together, okay? You just be ten years old.”
“I’ll never be ten,” Beatrice hiccupped. “I was born an old lady.”
Clara laughed. “Yes, I know. But just try. And Bea?”
“Yes?”
Clara wiped a tear gliding down her sister’s round cheek. “Just please try to carry the card. You can swipe it really fast. People will think it’s a credit card and then you’ll be the epitome of cool.”
“What does ‘epitome’ mean?” Beatrice asked, the sound of a new word distracting her from her tears.
“The best example of,” Clara replied.
Beatrice drew in a long, ragged breath. “All right then. I’ll try.”
Clara left her sister alone to sulk in her bedroom. She heard the mournful sounds of Beethoven being played from her sister’s old CD player. Naturally Beatrice would pick that CD.
Petulant girl
, Clara thought. She forgot that in addition to no lights, there would be no music in the house soon. She walked out back because she couldn’t stand to hear the music in all its beautiful melancholy, pulling on her heart and making it ache with pleasure for its grandeur and pain for its impending absence.
She walked around the back yard of her grandmother’s house observing the mess. They hadn’t cleaned it for months. Once their grandmother passed away in early February, the house went into a state of disrepair, and fast. Their mother would clean the yard in the spring occasionally during her rare fits of mania. She would holler to the girls to come outside and help. They would spend their entire Saturday trimming and edging and weeding until the yard was in pristine condition. And then it would grow over and weed up and become an eyesore all over again.
Clara walked about the yard until she came to the honeysuckle grove. That’s what she and Beatrice called it. It was a corner section of the back yard overflowing with honeysuckle vines, and the girls started a tradition three years ago when they visited their grandmother. Those were the good years when their father was still around, they lived in a house of their own, their mother was working and happy. Their grandmother was still alive. Clara’s family never really had money, so vacations were rare. They went to Florida once, but mostly the girls were packed up and sent off to stay with Grandmom for a week or two. And it was there that they discovered the wonders of the honeysuckle vines.
Beatrice thought the vines held magical powers, that the flowers could grant wishes. The girls agreed on three because they always read or heard of genies granting three wishes. Beatrice said that the vines would grant their wishes but only if they respected the flowers. Say a wish, drink down the nectar. Never the reverse or their dreams would not come true.
Clara sat down among the vines, still green but tinged with yellow and no longer producing the fragrant flowers. She closed her eyes remembering the spring when her mother no longer smiled and was distant and sad.
“Come on, Clara!” Beatrice called from the back door. “Before they all dry up!”
“I’m coming, Bea,” Clara said. “And they won’t dry up.”
She followed her sister out the back door to the overgrown garden on the edge of the property. The honeysuckle vines had crept into the empty flowerbeds and inched their way up the trucks of nearby oak trees. Bees and butterflies danced around the flowers, resting and nursing, then buzzing and fluttering again evoking the quintessential springtime picture. Beatrice plopped down at the edge of a flowerbed overflowing with yellow trumpet-shaped flowers and beckoned her older sister to follow suit. Clara settled herself beside Beatrice and reached for a flower.