THE POLICEMAN HAD A GUN BUT HE DIDN’T KILL US. HE was nice as a policeman and liked children, but said it was dangerous to drive cars inside a store. He called Jessica’s mother on the telephone but she wasn’t home and then he called my house but Jeffrey answered and said it was the wrong number. So the policeman said we could go if we promised to go straight home, and when we left I heard the old man in a suit say, “Is that all, you’re letting them go just like that?” and the policeman said, “Weren’t you ever a kid, mister?”
The sky was just gorgeous, which is what my mom says when I come home dirty, it was gray like dirt and drizzling. The streets were shiny from the water and you could see your breath. We walked back.
I followed Jessica to watch her. We passed Maxwell’s on the other side coming back. The big clock outside the bank said four o’clock.
We didn’t talk anymore. We were silence all the way back to Jessica’s house. In the driveway were two cars, a station wagon and a little one, in back. I knew the little one was Jessica’s father’s car. Jessica opened the side door of the house and went in but I didn’t want to. I waited outside until she said to come in. I went in.
The lights were all off, nobody was home, no pets even. Jessica took off my mom’s coat and hung it up but I left mine on. Someone was in the pocket, Monkey Cuddles, he was sleeping. Jessica went through the hall to the living room. She didn’t talk. She sat down on the sofa sideways and put her feet on it which made dark spots where they got it wet. (But you shouldn’t put your feet on the furniture, it ruins it, said my mom, and you have to give it away. Once my grandfather sold all the chairs in our house without telling anyone. A man came and was loading them in a truck when my mom got home. She yelled at the man. She said, “What can you say about an eighty-year-old man who doesn’t know the value of furniture?”)
I stood in the hall and looked at Jessica. In the corner of the living room was a grandfather’s clock. Captain Kangaroo has one that dances, but Jessica’s didn’t, he didn’t even have the face, just a thing on the bottom that went back and forth back and forth.
Next to the sofa was a table with doilies, which are cloth snowflakes, and coasters. (I enjoy coasters as items, you don’t have to wind them.) Jessica looked out the window behind her and bounced one foot up and down up and down.
Outside was Mr Moon. In Music we had a song,
Oh Mr Moon, Moon
Bright and Silvery Moon
Won’t you please shine down on me.
Oh Mr Moon, Moon
Bright and Silvery Moon
I’m as blue as I can be.
I’m going to shoot that possum
Fore he starts to run
Going to shoot that possum
With my possum gun.
Oh Mr Moon, Moon
Bright and Silvery Moon
Won’t you please shine down on me.
“Do you see the Man in the Moon?” I said. The clouds went over the moon and made it go on and off. And once I was standing on my front porch looking at the moon and my mom came out and tried to show me the Man in the Moon, but I couldn’t see him. I have never been able to see him.
Jessica didn’t say anything. I sat down on the sofa. Outside the rain stopped. On the edge of the sky it was red. Everything in the house was brown. In winter it gets dark early and you turn the clocks backwards. The sky is where God lives, I have prayed to him there. I prayed for Jessica’s father to not be dead, but God didn’t help me. When I was little I used to think that night was when clouds covered the sky.
“You got the sofa wet,” I told Jessica. She looked at me and said, “When my daddy died my mom covered everything with sheets so the company wouldn’t spill on it. She only uncovered it yesterday. She said it was time to stop being sad, but she cried all night.” Jessica looked at where it was wet. “She should have left it on.”
I looked out the window, and put my nose on it and breathed out donuts. I said, “Look, Jessica, donuts,” but she was looking at something else, by the stairs, hanging on the bannister, a purse.
Across the street a porch light went on. It got darker outside. I looked for the moon but it was gone now. A dog went down the sidewalk, a man walked him. An airplane went over, the noise was behind it. Down the block somebody yelled, “I’ve got to move the car,” and Jessica stood up and walked into the hall, she looked at the purse, and said, “That’s my mother’s purse.” Then she looked up the stairs. Then she walked up the stairs.
I sat on the sofa. There was a candle on the table on the doily but it wasn’t lit, it was off. The refrigerator in the kitchen hummed. The grandfather’s clock rang five times. And outside the sky turned dark blue with no stars. I folded my hands up in my lap and waited, but Jessica didn’t come back down.
I got up. I walked into the hall. It smelled like Jessica. I looked at the purse.
I listened. There wasn’t any noise. I put my foot on the first step. It had carpet on it. I was standing on the stairs.
I walked up the stairs. When I got to the top I looked around. I could hardly see. I waited for my eyes to get used to it. There was a bathroom. Next to it was a bedroom with a big bed for two people. Next to it was a closet, I opened it and it had sheets and towels in it. Then I looked down the hall. At the end I saw another room, the door was open and Jessica was inside, sitting on her bed sideways looking out the window, her feet hung over the edge.
I walked up to her doorway and stopped. She didn’t hear me. I stood and watched her just. Her face was lit up from outside and her eyes had diamonds in them. I waited and waited and soon she started to sing a little song.
Kukaberra sits
In the old gum tree
Merry merry king
Of the bush is he
Laugh Kukaberra
Laugh Kukaberra
Gay your life must be.
I listened. I watched her lips open and close open and close. She leaned on three pillows. One was pink, one was checkered, one was plain. Her feet dangled over the side of the bed. I watched.
In the corner of the room was a wood horse that was really a chair. On her ceiling was a lamp with clowns on it, and hanging from her wall over her bed was Jerry the Puppet.
Jessica pushed off her shoes and they fell on the floor. She pulled her legs up on the bed, she had on knee socks still, folded on top and smooth and soft. Then she said something.
“Peter Pan is a girl.” She was looking out the window still. “They made her look like a boy but she is a girl, they just cut her hair short and made her wear a tight brassiere.”
(I saw it too, on television, and it made me want to fly so I made my dad call up the television station to find out how they did it, but Jeffrey said there wasn’t anybody on the other end, that my dad lied to me.)
“I’m not old enough to wear a brassiere,” said Jessica. “But I have one, my mom gave it to me, for when am.”
She went into her closet and took it out. She showed it to me, it made me feel funny. It was wrong. I’m not supposed to look at them. But then I did something, I took it and put it on myself, only backwards. “Look, Jessica,” I said. “I’m a camel.”
It surprised me that she laughed. She laughed like I never heard before, it was like singing. I put the brassiere on my head and jumped up and down and she laughed more and I put it on my face and then she fell on her bed laughing.
“Knock knock,” I said (it was a joke).
“Who’s there?”
“Boo who?” said Jessica.
“You don’t have to cry about it,” I said.
Jessica looked at me. “I’m not,” she said.
“No, see. You don’t have to cry about it.”
“I’m not, Burt.” She stopped laughing.
“No, it’s a joke.”
“What is?”
She just turned around to the window again, because she didn’t understand.
“Jessica, it’s a joke,” I said.
But she wouldn’t turn back around. I watched her back, it made little humps, she was crying.
“Jessica.” I said her name but she just put her head down on the bed and her shoulders went up and down up and down. I didn’t know what to do, so I walked next to the bed.
I tried to show her a magic trick, you pull your thumb off it looks like, but she wouldn’t look.
“Maybe we can pretend, Jessica,” I said. “Something. So you won’t be sad.”
“No,” she said. “That’s for children. I don’t want to be children anymore.” She said, “I hate it,” and hit her bed, and said “I hate it” again and hit her bed, and again, she made noise with her voice like an animal. “I hate being children!” she screamed and put her head inside her arm and layed down on the bed and cried.
I didn’t know what to do. I stood and watched and was angry. Because I am children too. And I hate it too.
My mom told me that someday when I was grown up I would love somebody and it would mean I would want to stop everyone from hurting her. I used to think it was Shrubs. But it wasn’t. It was Jessica.
I sat down on the bed next to her and put my hand on her hair on the ribbons, and I pulled one of them, and it came undone and fell on the bed. And the other one. I held it in my hand. And I put it on my cheek, because it was softness. Like Jessica.
When she looked up at me her hair was in her face. I pushed it back with my hands and it was wet too but not from outside but from crying. I picked up a tear on my finger and put it in my eyes.
I put my arms around Jessica like Daddy does when I cry and did this to the back of her head. She rolled over and leaned on me with her side on me, it was warm. I took off my coat and someone fell out onto the bed. Monkey Cuddles. I put him on the window sill looking outside, to keep guard over Jessica Renton and me.
And I looked at her crying and I said something real soft. “I won’t let anybody hurt you. I won’t. I’ll make it so we won’t be children anymore.”
And she looked up at me with her eyes and pushed down on me with her head on my stomach and I pulled her to me tight and it was warm on me. Outside I saw it started to snow and Monkey Cuddles watched it in the wind but we were warm inside. And suddenly something happened. I saw the streetlights go on. They lit up and shined on us. Jessica put her face against my stomach and said, “You are my friend,” and her eyes had diamonds in them.
I put my chin on her hair and she put her face up on mine, it was soft as blankee and she put her mouth on my face, she pulled on my shirt. She rolled over and her dress went up over her arms that were around me and she went back on the bed and pulled me on top of her and I felt her hands in my pockets, they pushed down over my legs, over me. I felt an airplane under my tummy, with rubber bands that wound up tighter and tighter. Jessica held my tushy and made it go up and down up and down. In front of her, where I felt her, she had a little tushy on her, and it was soft like kissing. And suddenly I heard a noise, from very far away, coming to Jessica’s house. Running down Seven Mile Road. Hooves. A horse running with nobody on it. Blacky. Louder and louder past all the stores. And then I heard something else. A bike with cards in the spokes, next to Blacky, coming, with nobody riding, racing louder and louder, to me. Under my tummy the airplane wound tighter and tighter and I held Jessica and her legs were around me and I said, “Don’t be scared anymore,” and she said, “I’m not now, I’m not now. I’m not now.” The noise got louder and Blacky and the bike were nearer and I knew they were coming, the rubber band was tighter and I thought I was dying too, I was almost dead. And then I flew. I flew over the house and the street and Maxwell’s, over Lauder and school, over everything, down to Jessica. I saw I was almost there. I was almost there. And then I was there.
Somebody screamed, “Oh my God.” The light went on. She pulled me off the bed and threw me against the wall and blood came out of my face. I slid to the floor. All I saw was her purse and she grabbed Jessica and I screamed, “Don’t you touch her don’t you touch her,” and slammed her with my fists but she threw me down again and I couldn’t stand up.