When flies die they spin really fast on the floor as if they’re whipping out one last buzz.  They’d drive us crazy in the August heat --- those hordes of flies dying under the white lace of my mother’s curtains.

 We lived in an old house nestled within the Catskill Mountains.  My sister and I weren’t born there, nor were our parents.  We transplanted one day out of the blue when I was six years old.

 “We’re going to go see cows,” said my father.  He packed us up in his champagne --- I learned the hard way to never ever call it pink --- Lincoln Continental. 

 We watched the city blur away and turn into rock walls alongside the highway.  The rocks slowly gave way to trees, which slowly gave way to fields, which did indeed contain cows.  We saw horses too.  The horses had long, white-planked fences while the cows were caged with rusty barbed wire.  I was more fascinated by the vast land they grazed upon, but I made my father happy by squealing, “Oh look I see the cows!”

 We eventually turned off onto a narrow, dirt road.  The road led us to a white crooked house on a hill.  Shale lined the driveway.

 “How do you like it?” asked my father.

 “Like what?” asked my sister.

 “The house.  It’s your new home.  Isn’t it great?”

 Ma flicked her cigarette onto the rocks.  “Come on girls.  Let’s get our shit out the trunk.”  When we stood there dumbfounded, she continued, “Come on. We don’t have all night.”

 “But what about our stuff?”  I whined.  “We didn’t say goodbye to anyone.”

 “We sold it all,” said Ma.  “Don’t you worry; we’re starting off new.  Look at all the space you have to play in.  Anyone who’s everyone to you is right here.  There’s no one you needed to wave bye to.”

 “What about Joe?” I cried.  Joe was my father’s best friend and a frequent diner at our kitchen table.

 “Joe will come visit us,” my father said.

 My sister Donna just stood and twirled her hair.  She was two years older than me.  She had more experience at moving than I did.

 “Claudia, go get your blankets and pillows out of the back seat,” said Ma, “and Donna take my purse.  Go on get inside.”

 To get into the house we stepped up three stone steps, the bottom one was wobbly, then you walked onto a screened-in concrete porch.  The screens were torn as much as an old pair of Ma’s pantyhose.  There was already furniture and a bunch of boxes inside.  My parents must have planned this long before telling us about going to go see cows.

 “Donna, honey,” my father said as he took both our hands, “let’s go upstairs.  Let me show you your new bedroom.”

 There were three bedrooms.  The first one had open walls and beams.  You could see the wires running throughout the place connecting sockets and switches to the home’s central nervous system.  Right across the hall from it was a closet bathroom.  Dad told us that he would finish up the room and it would be the grandest master bedroom ever.

 Donna’s and my room was down the hall.  It was painted bright yellow and white and had a worn gray carpet in the middle.

 “Daddy, this is beautiful,” I said.

 “You like it?  We worked real hard on it.”

 Donna crawled up onto her bed and hugged the dolls that were nesting on her pillow.  “Yes Daddy,” she said, “it’s perfect.” She then curled herself up --- like she often did --- and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

 A few days after our move Daddy traded in the car for an orange blazer with half a key stuck in the ignition.  A month later he finished his and Ma’s bedroom.  It wasn’t grand, but it had a large window that overlooked the front yard.  Ma hung the same lace curtains on it that she hung on the living room windows downstairs.

 Joe, Daddy’s friend, was the only one to come visit us for the longest time.  When he did he always brought boxes of food and things that Daddy and Ma were always happy to see but didn’t always show us.  He usually stayed for a few days.  The room across from ours became his.

 He talked and laughed a lot --- almost always with a cigarette hanging from his lip --- and Donna and I loved him.  We’d sneak into his room to spy on him.  It didn’t matter what time of day or night, he’d always be awake and catch us.  So, we’d just jump on his bed and tackle him.

 “Do you ever sleep?”  I asked one day while snuggling next to him after a tickle fight.

 “Sure-shot,” he said, “I sleep all the time.  I just do it with my eyes open.”

 He called me Sure-shot because I could blow away the center of a milk jug from the same distance my mother used to shoot soda cans.

 Sometimes Joe watched us while our parents went off on business trips.  On scary nights when the sky exhaled fog onto our windows, Joe would put some blankets on our floor and stay until we fell asleep.  He said he was scared, but we knew he was doing it for us.

 “Joe,” whispered Claudia one night, “do you have nightmares?”

 “Sometimes,” he said while staring up at the cracks in our ceiling, “I think dreams are just our way of working things out.  I bet we’re born knowing all the answers to life, but as soon as they slap our behinds we forget.  My guess is that sometimes your brain gives you a jolt to remember something you forgot.  I guess it figures if it’s scary enough you’ll pay attention.”

 “What about the ones that don’t make sense, like the time I got chased by giant tomatoes,” I said, “what’s that supposed to be telling me?”

 “That you better eat your damned vegetables,” he said.

 While he and I giggled, Donna just sucked her thumb.  I wished she would just tell Joe about her bad dreams, but I knew she wouldn’t so I decided to do it for her despite the fact that I promised not to.

 “Sooo, what if we dream bad things about Ma and Daddy,” I asked, but Donna hissed that I’d better stop.  I knew she could jump from her bed to mine if I kept at it, and Joe must’ve known it too because he sat straight up and told us to settle down.

 “Everyone dreams stuff like that about their parents,” he said, “it’s our way of getting even with them for punishing us.  Now let’s get ourselves some sleep.” 

 Donna and I no longer went to public school.  We were now taught at home, so the Thomas boys were a big relief to us --- even when they did things like piss on us to show how far they could ‘shoot’ or throw daddy long legged spiders at our faces.

 Since we spent so much time playing with the boys, Ma asked us if we’d mind if the Thomases took care of us while she and Daddy went on their trips.  The trailer smelled of baked cookies, Lysol and urine, and Mrs. Thomas was always hunched over either scrubbing or stirring something. It felt warm and normal around her.

 I never wondered where my parents went --- it’s just not something you think about when there aren’t other people asking you --- but the Thomas boys were always asking, so their mother told us that my parents sold educational materials to schools throughout the country, which is why we were home schooled.  My parents were intelligent people, she said, who wanted their children to receive the best education.

 I knew better than to tell Mrs. Thomas that our education included target practice, reload drills, and reconnaissance strategies.  Ma taught Donna and me how to sneak out of the house and run into the woods should bad people ever come visit.  She had guns hidden in “safety” trees, and she’d time us on how fast we could snatch them and take our positions.  This was as normal to us as stealing chips out of the snack cabinet.

 Daddy taught us English, math and the secret family language.  “Sometimes,” he said, “people need to say things that other people won’t understand.  Sometimes the bad people look good and we won’t want them knowing we know they’re bad.”

 I guess if we had been raised to say Christian prayers at the end of each day, our family bedtime mantra would’ve seemed odd, but “remember to keep your senses high, your head low, and your mouth shut” was all we knew and we recited it as religiously as another child may have said her Hail Marys.

 Daddy was a fun teacher.  Ma was mostly serious.  He’d take us on walks and play math games in the forest.  We’d count newts and mushrooms and fraction them off. During the warmer months, we’d spend story time by the creek listening to Daddy act out the books we were learning.

 Unlike Mrs. Thomas, our mother rarely baked, but she was an amazing cook.  Our home smelled of garlic and onions sizzling in butter and wine.  The basement was her pantry.  She had rows and rows of canned and jarred foods and a deep freezer that contained a rainbow of frosted meats and vegetables.

 My mother always skittered about --- her hands and eyes constantly fidgeting --- and she had little patience with Donna or me, but in the kitchen she slowly sang and danced.

 We didn’t seem to annoy her there, and we’d giggle while chopping parsley or peeling garlic or shelling our garden peas.  She’d tell us stories about when she was a little girl.  She grew up on a farm.  Her mother, our Nona who died before we were born, grew up in a place called Tai di Cadore.  Her father, also dead before our time, was full-blooded American, which she said meant he had all sorts of nationalities running through his veins.  We never learned about where Daddy came from, but he said his people were no good and it was best we just stay away from them.

 The stories and giggles fizzled once dinner was on the table.  It seemed that our mother’s moods billowed and waned alongside the vapors of her cooking.

 By the time I was eight, Donna, the Thomas boys and I had mowed a path through the forest between their dirt road and ours.

 It had been a long while since our parents had taken a trip --- and even longer since we had been blessed by a visit from Joe --- when my father brought home a rust-colored calf.

 “Daddy, daddy, you bought us a cow,” I yelled while running up to our new pet.  Donna slowly followed behind me and walked up to the calf.  She scratched its snout, looked into its young eyes and whispered, “it’ll be okay.”

 Pets had a habit of disappearing from our yard, but that never stopped me from getting excited over new ones.

 “Why are you guys still here,” he said while looking around the yard. “Where’s your mother?”

 “Sleeping,” said Donna.

 “She was supposed to bring you to go play with the Thomas boys,” my father said.  “Claudia, go wake up your mother and tell her to get out here.  After that I want you girls to run on over to the Thomas place, and don’t come back.  I’ll come pick you up when we’re ready.”

 “But why?  We want to play with the cow,” I begged.

 “It’s not ours,” he said.  “It’s lost, and I’m trying to help it find its home.”

 “Why’d you come here then?”  I asked.

 “Claudia, I said get inside and wake up your mother.  Now!”

 Ma had been sleeping a lot lately.  When she wasn’t sleeping she was walking and smoking in circles.  She snapped orders at all of us, even Daddy.  They no longer sat out in the front porch at night and talked about whatever grownups talked about.  When they did talk it was in harsh whispers, sounding more like angry bees than man and wife.

 The last time I heard them speak in soft tones I heard my father say, “He said it was getting too risky.  They were watching him.  Remember?  I told you.  I promised him that you could quit, that all we needed to do was raise a little more.”

 “I remember,” said Ma, “and we did quit.  We’re fine.”

 “We’re not fine! He wouldn’t just quit like that.  It’s not like him to not even get a message to us.”  And then I heard my father’s voice crack.  “Cat, I think he’s gone.”

 “Baby,” she said.  “I’m so sorry.”

 I blamed Ma for the thick air that invaded our home, so I shook her roughly and she almost smacked me.  “Daddy said to get your butt out of bed.”

 “Watch your tongue little girl,” she said while using her clenched fists to hoist herself up.  Her face had pillow tracks all over it and it looked like she had been crying, but my mother never cried so I assumed that she was just hot from the August heat.

 “You were supposed to drop us off,” I said feeling mighty brave in front of the woman who I knew could knock me off my feet.

 She rubbed her eyes and looked past me through her window.

 “Oh shit,” she said when spotting the calf on the lawn.  “Claudkins, I’m sorry I forgot.”

 She hadn’t called me Claudkins in a very long time.

 “Give me a minute and I’ll take you two over.”

 Loving my mother again, I said, “no it’s okay.  We can walk.  Daddy says he needs you.”

 When Ma came outside, she brought Donna’s and my favorite flavored Popsicles.  She handed them to us, tucked our hair away from our faces and told us to have fun at the Thomases.  We didn’t want to ruin her good mood, so we kissed our parents goodbye and took off.  As soon as we got out of sight, Donna pulled my shirt.

 “We have to go back,” she said.  “There’s something you need to see.”

 I smacked around a sweat bee that kept sniffing me in search of my water.  It was hot, the Popsicle would only attract more bugs, and by the time my insides were cooled down by it I’d be back to sweating.

 “We’ve got a long walk,” I said.  “Can’t you show me later?”

“No,” she said.  “They’re going to kill the baby cow.”

 “Why would they do that?”

 “For food, silly,” she said.

 “That’s crazy.  They can go to the grocery store for that.  You’re being mean.”

 My sister pulled my arm and forced me to look at her.  “Claudia, when was the last time you went into a store or anywhere with them?”

 “Not since the city, but there’s nothing out here.  Let go of me.”

 Before her grip softened, she made me promise that I would not yell or run toward our parents.  “They don’t go into the grocery store,” she said, “because I don’t think they can.  Joe brings us stuff, but he hasn’t been here for a long time.”

 “Why are you saying this stuff?”  I snapped back at her.

 “Because I’m tired of knowing alone.”

 And then we heard the gun shot smack across the trees.  My sister told me to keep quiet and follow her.

 We hid behind the brush alongside the garage.  Our parents hoisted the calf upside down onto our swing set.

 Flies swirled around my mother’s head as she sliced the dead animal’s throat.  She didn’t even flinch when its blood began to pour.

 I know I had to, but I don’t think I breathed the whole time we watched.

 “Come on,” Donna whispered.  “We better go.”  I realized what she must’ve already known; that they’d eventually move the carcass onto the wheel barrel, and then into the garage to do the necessary butchering, wrapping, and storing in the basement freezer.

 We snuck off into the woods, but instead of heading toward the Thomas place Donna veered off the path toward the murky pond we used to snatch tadpoles from.

 “Donna, we’re gonna get caught.”

 “I just need to sit and think,” she said.  So, we found a softening log to sit on.  I watched the dragonflies swoop down to the water, take a few sips and shoot back up into the woods.  I didn’t want to think about our swing set.  Even though I knew they’d clean the mess and replace the calf with our plastic swings, I could never play there again.

 I was expecting Donna to cry and complain about not being able to save the cow, but when she spoke it wasn’t about the cow at all.

 “Joe’s dead,” she finally said.

 “What.”

 “I dreamt about him a few weeks ago,” she said.  “He was all bloody, and he whispered to me, ‘Baby, it’s okay.  Go back to sleep.’”

 None of us liked it when he went away alone.  Ma’s mood swings would stay on the bad side --- even in the kitchen --- and Donna and I would be extra careful not to set her off.  All of us watched the clock slowly turn from one day to the next.

 We snuck off to bed early just so there’d be room to breathe.  Donna read a book while I looked out our window.  It had been little over a week since they slaughtered the calf, but I was terrified that its ghost would come yell at us for not saving it.

 At first I was mad at Donna for showing me what she knew, but I forgave her because we had no one but each other to share our secrets with.

 Fireflies twinkled outside our window.  I wanted to go outside and light a mason jar with them.  Instead I looked down at my hands and said, “Donna?”

 “Do you think Ma killed Joe?”

 When he called us back inside he seemed almost happy again.

 “Girls, we’re going to go see Jamaicans,” he said.  “Your mother and I are going to take a little vacation while you two spend a week with the Thomases.”

 We went near the creek to pick pussy willow from its banks.  Mrs. Thomas loved willow and wildflowers.

 “Sometimes things happen that you’re told aren’t right,” said Daddy.  “I know this might not make much sense to you now, but you need to know that a body will do just about anything for love and meat.  All anybody ever really wants to do is protect and feed his family.”

 Donna stared at the rocks under the water ripples.  I studied her.

 “Sometimes that means doing what you don’t like but doing it because it’s the only thing you know,” he said.  “You girls already know lots, and I want you to promise yourselves to keep learning all sorts of things so that you can pick how you’ll feed and love your children.”

 I watched a tiny family of orange seahorses hide within the creek’s pebbles.  Donna was watching them too.  Normally, we’d swoop down to catch them because seeing them was a rarity, but somehow we knew that Daddy needed us to sit still.  I wondered whether the seahorses thought they were hiding from us.

 “The Thomases are good people,” he said.  “You’ll have fun with them, and you know they could teach you a lot.  So listen to them.”  He watched the water with us for a bit and then almost whispered, “Well, girls, I guess we better head back.”

Ma had everything packed.  “Come on girls,” she said.  “Let’s get our shit in the truck.”

 “Claudia, we’ve got to go to the house.”

 “Why?”

 “When I dreamed about Joe, he was sitting in his room with his eyes closed.”

 I took a deep breath.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the details of her Joe dream, but I knew she needed to tell.

 “The house was bleeding too,” she said, “and he just kept sitting there so calm.  I asked him why he closed his eyes.  He said, ‘I’m looking with them shut.  You go tell you sister that sometimes you see more this way.’”

 “What did he mean?”

 “I don’t know, but then I told him we needed to get out of the house because it was bleeding, and he said not to worry because it wasn’t my blood to wash.  Claudia, we’ve got to go.  Something’s wrong.”

 Donna started to get as fidgety and frantic as our mother did when Daddy was away too long.  I told her to calm down while I ran for Mr. And Mrs. Thomas.

 Mr. Thomas didn’t want to, but when he saw how upset Donna was he packed us up in his truck and brought us to our house.  Mrs. Thomas said she’d brew some hot chocolate for when we got back.

 “I’ll be damned,” he said as he slammed on the brakes and stopped the truck right in the middle of the road.  Smoke and fire feasted on our home.  Bits of my mother’s lace fluttered past the windshield.

Donna and I ran onto our front lawn.  We could hear Mr. Thomas stumbling over himself trying to get to us.

 Our house exhaled its last breath, and the bottom step wobbled in the wake of its heat.

 We heard a distant buzzing noise.  I knew then that there’d be no more Jamaicans or cows or Daddy’s lessons by the creek.  I wondered whether our parents were out in the woods somewhere spinning around madly whipping out their last sound, or were they hiding and still being seen?

 Donna took my hand, looked at our blistered lawn and said, “it’ll be okay.”

The ash caressed our faces while Mr. Thomas gently guided us toward our next batch of tomorrows.

 

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