Paint Me a Monster (4 page)

“Oh my,” she kneels down in front of me and lifts my chin with her fingers. “You must have wanted this very much to take it without paying for it. Bringing it back must be very hard.”

My head nods up and down and tears fall on the floor with every nod.

“I won’t do it again, I promise and—I’m sorry.”

“I believe you,” she says and hands me a tissue. “How would you feel if someone took something that belonged to you?”

“Mad.”

She shakes her head like she knows.

I think of the Royal dress, the little family waiting in the see-through box, and I feel sad.

“I just wanted something special and perfect,” I say.

She kneels in front of me, and I look at her eyes.

I want to give her a hug, but I don’t. When I come out Mommy makes me open my hands and raise my arms above my head to show I gave the treasure back.

“Monster,” she says.

“Let’s go Mommy, I’m tired. Let’s goooo!”

“Just a few more things to try on, Rinnie. Sit in the corner and tell me if you like the pattern on this blouse.”

I squeeze between Mommy’s shopping bags and the mirror but don’t look at Mommy. Instead, I line up pins that are stuck under carpet fuzz. The plain pins turn into a house with a chimney and smoke. The ones with smooth round tops, like crowns, are kings and queens. They live in the house. It’s a castle-house, and it has a playground.

“Rinnie, move away from the mirror. I want to see if this blouse is too dark for my brown skirt.”

I spread out like a starfish, so she can see over me.

“I want to go home.”

“Do you like the blouse?” Mommy asks. “I do.”

She smiles and twists, first to my side, then the other.

“I like the tiger top you wore here. Zzzipzzippp,” I make the sound of the pants Mommy puts on.

“Houndstooth is a nice change. I’ll take these, too.”

“I’m hungry,” I say and stick the queen inside the chimney.

“Shhh, I can’t think when you whine, Rinnie.” Mommy takes off the barky pants, puts on a pair the color of mustard, and pulls a dark orange sweater over her head. “Hmmm,” she hmmms and wiggles out of the clothes.

“Rinnie, please get up. The floor is dirty.”

“I’m a starfish.”

“Starfish live in the ocean. Are you in the ocean?”

“No, Mommy, you’re silly.”

She puts her tiger top on and tucks it into her brown skirt. “Up, Rinnie. Time to go.”

I wave good-bye to the queens and kings and scramble to my feet. I want to hold Mommy’s hand, but it’s lost under the pile of clothes in her arms. They are the same colors as the leaves on our trees.

“You look like fall,” I say.

At the pay counter, we have to wait for two ladies who are in front of us. Their clothes look like autumn, too.

“How much longer, Mommy? I want to go. I’m hungry.”

“Hush.”

Mommy’s voice isn’t nice. It feels like being stuck by the queen pin. I squat like a jack-in-the box waiting to pop out and count, one, two, three, four. . . . When it’s our turn, the lady behind the counter won’t stop talking, and Mommy won’t stop listening. She doesn’t feel my tugs on her coat, and when I pinch her ankle, her happy blouse smile is gone. The lines between her eyes frown.

“What is it you want? Can’t you be still for a minute? All these pretty things to look at and you have to misbehave.”

“I want to go. I’m hungry.”

“Then go. Find a place to play over there,” she points. I look to see where there is, but Mommy’s talking again.

Across the aisle, a man plays a piano and pushes pedals with his foot. Maybe he’ll let me play. When I get close, he winks and makes his fingers run from one end of the piano to the other, pressing only the white parts. Plink goes the last white note. Plink, plink, plink.

“Can I do that?” I ask and hold up my pointer finger.

“When you get bigger you can take piano lessons, and then you can do this, too.” He zips his fingers across the white keys. “It’s time for my break.”

I watch him zipper past the long dresses. He stops and looks at a tag on one of them. The dress sparkles like a glitter star with a necklace of feathers. This is what the pin-queen would wear if she were real. I squeeze my eyes as tight as I can, hold my breath, and make a wish on the glitter star dress.
I wish I were a queen. Then Mommy would have to listen to me.

I open my eyes. The piano man floats by going higher and higher until he disappears.
Where did he go?
I march behind a wall of clothes and see the moving stairs that floated the piano man away.
Mommy and I rode the stairs when we came to the store.
I take a step before the stair moves too far away and squat on it. I have never done this without Mommy
.
Up I go and then down. And up and down again. I have to show Mommy I found the place “over there” to sit and play. Her pin voice will unstick. On the down floor, I look for the lady at the pay counter.

“Where’s Mommy?”

“Who is your Mommy?” the lady asks. She bends down. The air smells like old oranges and cinnamon.

“She’s the lady you talked to for a long time. She smells like flowers.”

The pay lady holds my hand, asks my name, and makes a phone call. I hear my name run across the air.

“Your Mommy will be here soon. Why don’t you draw while we wait?” She hands me a pen and some paper. I kneel on the floor and draw the moving stairs.

When Mommy comes, her hands tighten white under my shoulders. Up I go, then down. Mommy presses me hard, squishing my head into my neck. When I land, my school shoes pinch my toes.

“But Mommy,” I say when I catch my breath. “I found the over there place to sit and play!”

Grandma Gardener has a fire in her house.

“Don’t go near this, girls,” she says to Liz and me. “It burns up little children like you.”

The fire is in her kitchen, and she calls it the incinerator. The drive to her house is long, but we don’t mind. It’s our last fun summer thing before first grade starts. We count trains, tracks, and bridges, and wave good-bye to Ohio when we cross into Pennsylvania. When we finally arrive, Grandma gives us shiny dimes to stack and spin.

“Thirty dimes for three children, how many dimes do each of you get?” She asks. Lizzie and I make three piles of dimes and count out the dimes and then help Evan make his piles.

“Ten,” we shout.

“Well done,” Grandma says.

Behind Grandma’s house is the School for the Blind. I can see it from the bedroom I share with Liz. At night, the lights in the spooky brick building of the blind school stare at us through the window. I hear the soft music that rides the sky all the way from the blind school to my ears.

At bedtime, Grandma doesn’t say much about the school when we ask. Instead, she hands us each a glass of milk with a piece of chocolate in the bottom and tells us to drink for sweet dreams. Liz and I always drink the milk. Evan is in a different room, but I think he drinks his milk, too.

“Charles, Charles,” Grandma Gardener calls when she wants my father. Everyone else calls him Chuck. Her words are sharp like her laugh, and she mostly talks to Mom when something has to be done. “Rose, bring in the suitcases. Rose, take the children to wash their hands.”

Mommy said one time Grandma visited our house. It was very late at night and she heard Grandma call, “Rose, Rose, I need a towel.” Mommy pretended to be asleep, but Grandma Gardener wouldn’t stop calling, “Rose, Rose.”

Finally, Mommy got up and asked Grandma why she didn’t call her son.

“What, and wake him?” Grandma said.

Mommy got Grandma the towel. “Witch,” Mommy grumbled.

Grandma Gardener looks like the witches in my fairy tale book, with her black eyes, long gray hair, and big curved nose. But I don’t think witches give money to kids.

“Liz, Margo, Evan, this is Ward Brenner. He’s a student at the seminary college. Ward will drive you to school and pick you up. Ward, these are my children.”

“It’s Rinnie, not Margo! My friends call me Rinnie,” I say, bending my neck up as far as it will go to see Ward’s face.

He sticks his hand out to shake mine and a silver bracelet with a fish on it slides to his palm.

“Nice to meet you, Ma . . . Rinnie,” he stutters.

Ward unfolds a piece of paper from his pocket. “Looks like after I pick you three up I stop at the Myer house a few doors down and pick up Marty, Maddox, and Marcie June.”

The Myers have five kids, but the other two are too old for our school. Marcie June Myer is my best after-school friend because she lives so close to me. She wears her hair in a pony, too. Everyone in her family has a name that begins with the letter M, including her dogs, Moses and Max. Even her maid’s name starts with an M. I like that in my family we have different letters for our names, and I get two if I want. One letter for Margo and one for Rinnie.

Today at Gaga’s, Lizzie and I play our special kind of hide-and-seek. We seek what’s hiding in the cabinet above the toilet in Gaga and Pop Pop’s bathroom. The cabinet is built into the wall. It’s so deep I can barely reach the back of it even when I stand on the toilet and stretch my body.

“Be careful to put everything back just where you get it,” Lizzie says as she watches me pick up a handful of hair clips and a ruffled shower cap.

I hand her bottles of nail polish, a used-up emery board, and squares of cotton.

“Maybe Gaga will give us manicures,” Lizzie says.

I shrug my shoulders and move to a higher shelf. There are long stretchy bandages rolled up, boxes of gauze, scissors, a gold razor, egg-shaped bars of soap, and a container of pink perfumed powder.

“Mmmm, smell this,” I say and pass the round box of pink powder to Liz.

“Smells like jelly beans taste,” Liz says.

“How ’bout these?” I hand Liz a basket filled with medicines for stomach discomfort, headaches, and “Loose Stools.”

“No thanks,” Lizzie says. “Looks too doctor-y. Can you see what’s on the top shelf?”

I stretch my legs as far as I can and reach inside. In the very, very, very back under a flattened handkerchief is a package of cigarettes and a silver lighter. I pull them from their hideout.

“Why does Gaga keep cigarettes and a lighter way back in the corner? She can’t even reach them,” I say.

“I’m not sure,” Lizzie says. “But I don’t think we should remember them. Anything else up there?”

“Red mouthwash.”

“Well,” Lizzie says slowly, “like Verna says, ‘if you look hard enough you’ll find what you don’t want.’”

“What’s that mean?” I look over my shoulder at Lizzie and scrunch my lips sideways.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “But it sounds like a good thing to remember.”

The big room at the end of the hall is my first grade room. A sign on the door says
Mrs. Lindermann—Teacher
.
Her nose looks like a chubby crayon, and her lips are cracked like a dry mud hole. Her hair is pulled back tightly. Streaks of gray and brown cover her head like a spider’s web. Her clothes look strict and uncomfortable, and her skirts are so tight she can’t take big steps. There is hardly enough room for Mrs. Lindermann in her clothes. I never stand too close to her. I am afraid she might explode. I want first grade to be over.

There is a girl named Lola in my class. She is almost as tall as Mrs. Lindermann. I can hardly take my eyes off Lola. She looks like a giant peach, all pinkish and pale, and round. There is someone else in the class I watch. His name is Asa Mitov. His house is in back of my Gaga’s house. I like him, and he likes Lola. Their desks are next to each other. Every day, I wonder what I would say to Asa, if he talked to me.

Green cement oozes out of the cement mixer and fills the hole where the front walk used to be. We want to stand by the cement mixer and watch the lumps of thick gunk plop into the long hole between the sidewalk and the house. But Gaga says it isn’t safe. Instead, Evan, Liz, and I lean over the rail of the balcony built above the front door.

“Why Pop Pop thinks we need a green walkway is beyond me,” Gaga says. “But it is pretty isn’t it . . . the color of mint leaves.”

“It reminds me of a shamrock,” Lizzie says. “Maybe Pop Pop will want the house to be green instead of stone.”

We step onto the blue iron curlicues that decorate the bottom of the balcony railing to get a better look. The ivy growing over the blue shutters by the balcony has climbed on the curlicues, too.

“Can we step in the cement?”

“If it were only up to me, you could, Evan, but Pop Pop wants it exactly as it is, undisturbed. He always thinks his ideas are the best.”

“Except when you disagree with him. Pop Pop changes his mind for you,” Lizzie says.

“Yes, he does do that.” Gaga spins her wedding ring and leans on the balcony between us. “Children, there’s something new in the playroom for you. Do you think you can find it? It’s small enough to fit on the bookcase, but too big to fit inside the cookie tin that holds your crayons.”

“Bye cement mixer!” we yell. Past the landing to the second floor, we chase the winding banister up the stairs. It ends near the playroom. The playroom is our make-believe room. It has a carpet we pretend is magic like Ali Baba’s. Around the carpet is the river. It’s made of wood and looks like the floor, but it’s the river. If we step in it, our feet get wet and then we have to take our shoes off.

Gaga told us, “This carpet is from Persia. It’s very good, but very old. If we spill on it we don’t have to worry too much.” I feel the worn-out places with my fingers. I think this carpet is older than Gaga and Pop Pop.

Lizzie jumps over the river and walks to the middle of the room. She looks under the wooden desk in the corner, the phonograph, and a little metal table holding dried-up plants.

“Not there,” Lizzie says. “Where are you, surprise?” she sings.

Evan checks inside the block firehouse he built and behind the heavy curtains. “I found a dead fly,” he says, opening his hand to show us.