Ratty Girl
It was a lantern, a three-sided golden bucket
with windows and tracks of golden lines traveling through
the glass. There was nothing in it.
“Can I touch it?” I asked.
Grandma smiled wisely and mysteriously, and walked over to
the organ. Her white legs had some blue lines in them like
tiny streams of water. She picked up the lantern by its golden
handle and reached underneath it with her other hand. Her
hand twisted the base of the lantern. Suddenly, a slow, somber
tone began to play. I thought of all those sad and angry moments
at our house that I no longer wanted to remember but couldn’t
help remembering.
“Like it, Carly?” grandma asked,
placing the object in my small hands. I am tiny like grandma.
We have hands to match, but we are different in other ways.
Where grandma is quiet and thoughtful, I am loud, like a big
horn that doesn’t know when to shut up. The lantern continued
its sorrowful tune until, slowing down, it stopped.
“What is it, a music box?” I asked.
Grandma smiled again, reached for it, and placed
it back on the organ next to the potted plant. “Of sorts,
Carly,” she said, “of sorts. I received it at my
wedding.”
I thought the fake lantern a pretty strange
gift. “Who gave it to you?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know if I rightly
remember,” said grandma, but your grandfather loved it—he
loved it a lot. And well, I thought it was time to get it
out.”
“From where?” I asked.
“The attic.”
Grandma looked sad then and I wished I hadn’t
asked about the funny lantern. After that, when grandma was
way down the hall in the kitchen, I went into the room with
the organ and the potted plant and pick it up. I’d twist
it as she had. I’d place it by my ear. The melody quickened
my heart and took me back to the place I lived.
It was a nice place, all shuttered and painted,
with floral pillows, plain green rugs, and pictures of our
family on the walls. My mother liked it—when daddy was
nice, when he did the dishes instead of hitting her; when
he called her honey instead of ratty.
“This is such a ratty place. Why do we
have all this ratty furniture? Why don’t you fix your
hair? It looks…”
Ratty. Ratty. Ratty. My father loved that word!
The word kept him going to work, my mother said. The word
kept food on the table and a coat on my back. But I didn’t
believe it. How could a word do that?
I remembered the word now as I listened to
the somber tone coming from the fake lantern. I realized it
was fake because I couldn’t see a wick inside. And what
was the funny thing on top? It looked like a little drain
pipe or something.
I placed the lantern on the organ and went
to find grandma. She was peeling potatoes. “Want to help?”
she asked.
“Do you think my hair looks ratty?”
I asked. Today, grandma had fixed my hair in a nice ponytail
with a crisp red ribbon. It was already falling out.
“Ratty? Where did you hear a word like
that?”
I didn’t know what to say. All I knew
was that mother, after hearing that word from daddy, would
walk calmly into the bedroom, close the door as softly as
possible, and cry herself to sleep. Later, in the quietness,
when I was supposed to be asleep, I’d hear her speaking
to God.
She’d tell him about “getting out,”
about helping her to be more “kind.” She’d
say to God, “Please, I don’t know what to do,”
and sometimes my eyes would get wet because daddy, after saying
that word in the room with the flowered cushions and the nice
green rugs, would hit her. The word had to be bad if it did
things like that.
Still, grandma only smiled. “Your hair
looks fine,” she said.
I smiled back at her and took the extra peeler
she handed me.
That night we ate potatoes in gravy, hamburgers
and green beans. Grandma asked me about school, about my new
class, and if I’d made any new friends yet. I hadn’t.
“Do you think it’s because…”
“Your parents are fighting? Oh, no, dear,”
grandma replied, even though I was going to ask her if it
was because the kids thought I looked ratty. “In fact,”
she said, grinning over at me, “your parents will be
here in the morning.”
“Both of them…together?” I asked.
“Well, yes,” said my grandmother.
I couldn’t believe it. Everything was
perfect here: grandma most especially, and the food and the
quiet, and even the funny lantern. I couldn’t go back,
I wouldn’t go back. Grandma couldn’t make me.
I jumped from my chair, and ran outside thinking
of the ugly ratty word, and daddy hitting mother. I thought
about the pretty house that mother had made for us, and how
father didn’t care. I thought about my mother crying.
I thought about all the times we didn’t talk at the dinner
table; all the times daddy wasn’t there, all the times
mother wondered if daddy was coming home.
When I got to the creek I was still angry.
But then, I began to listen to its bubbling voice, and it
calmed my fast beating heart. I took off my shoes and socks
like before, and sat quietly on the side of the narrow bank,
dipping my toes into the cool water; I remembered the fish
about the size of my foot that swam by the last time grandmother
and I were together. I screamed, but grandma only laughed.
“That happens sometimes,” she’d said.
Today there wasn’t a fish but in moments I noticed that
grandma had sat down beside me and was taking off her own
socks and shoes. She began to sing songs of the old days,
about the old gray mare and about the frogs that went a courtin’;
later we were dipping our entire feet and walking up and down
in the shallow depths. When grandma pointed up at the sky
I knew it was time. But I didn’t want to go in. I wanted
the sky to be dark forever. But grandma was motioning me to
pick up my shoes and socks.
We walked across the grass. She held my hand
and it was warm.
Once inside, grandma walked with me into the
bedroom, a room for guests. Now I was her guest. I put on
my pajamas and slipped into the cool sheets. Grandma bent
down and kissed me on the forehead. “Now, don’t
let the bed bugs bite,” she said.
I never did. After she left, I made sure the windows to the
room were locked, and tucked the covers around me ever so
tight. Then I tucked my head under and tried to sleep. But
it was harder tonight.
I thought about my daddy yelling, about his
breath smelling sweet, but not like chocolate, and mommy crying.
Once or twice there were funny red marks on her face and arms
when I got up at our house and another time she was taken
to the hospital. I remember the cool sheets wrapped around
her small body as she told me a bedtime story, although she
was the one in bed. And I thought of daddy, frowning at her
from the hallway but never coming in. I hated him for that,
though I think, perhaps, he thought mother and me, “ratty.”
The next morning, after I’d dressed and grandma had made
me breakfast: a slice of fruit, waffles with strawberry syrup,
and toast with butter, she took me over to the lantern. She
took me into the room with the potted plant and the fake lantern,
picked it up, wound its metal bottom, and placed it by my
ear like I had done so many times before.
“Carly, I don’t want you to fret.
I want you to remember the good times.”
“I’ve had loads of good times here,
grandma.”
Grandma smiled. “I’m glad,” she
said, “but that’s not what I meant.”
She placed the fake lantern into my hands. We walked to the
window and she told me to look out.
“What do you see?” she asked.
“Lots of trees and grass.”
“What else?”
“The creek.”
“Ah, the creek. Do you know the first time
I saw that creek?”
“No.”
“Well, grandpa and I were very young then.
We’d just married.”
I giggled.
“It was no laughing matter,” grandma
said. “Your grandfather and me, well, we’d looked
very hard for a place that struck our fancy and nothing seemed
right, until we came here and saw the little creek.”
I looked up at grandma. A small tear was running
down her left cheek.
“I loved your grandfather especially then,
before the drinking began.”
“Did he like Sprite?” I asked.
“I suppose so; Carly, but your grandfather
didn’t keep Sprite in this container, just alcohol.”
“And would he play the music, too?”
“Sometimes.”
I took the thing in my hands and traced the
golden lines with my fingers. “It’s gone,”
I said, smelling the funny spout for the first time, but I
couldn’t smell anything.
“Like your father, your grandfather drank
alcohol until he’d say and do things he normally wouldn’t
do.”
“Is that why my mommy and daddy are fighting?”
Grandma leaned down, her face close to mine,
her wet cheek cooling my own. “See that creek?”
she said. “Whenever you feel sad or upset I want you
to think of all that nice clean water running through your
toes. I want you to think about how beautiful it is and how
much you love it.”
“And the fish, can I think about that?”
Grandma hugged me. She picked me up, and together
we carried the golden lantern, that really wasn’t a lantern,
back to the organ.
