Gladys
One thing about sprouts: they took your mind off everything else. Sprout-care was all about right now, this minute. No matter what disasters were going on in your life, you had to feed them and change them and make sure they didn’t die from ingesting toxic substances or running into traffic. In the case of Mateo, you had to endlessly soothe him as he cut a tooth and fussed nonstop.
That afternoon, not even Mama could get Mateo to nap, so Gladys volunteered to take him for a walk. Sophie begged to come, which meant using the double stroller. Gladys set a saucer-shaped green velvet hat with a short veil on her head, tossed a lemon-colored chiffon scarf around her neck, loaded up the diaper bag, buckled the kids in, and set off.
Motion soothed unhappy sprouts. They seemed to believe life would be better somewhere else, if only they could get there. Within a block, Mateo quieted down. Sophie narrated, pointing out a red house, a white house, and a house with a car on the front lawn. When they passed a house with plywood over the windows, she wanted to know how it could see.
“Houses can’t see,” Gladys said.
Sophie considered this. She picked at her boogery nose. “But they can hear,” she said.
“No.”
“Did you ever hear a house talk, Sophie?”
“Mommy says, If these walls could talk, the things they could tell.”
“If, she says.”
“When Daddy and her have a fight, she says that.”
“TMI, Sophie, okay?”
The stroller weighed a ton and the sidewalks were uneven and soon her arms were ready to fall off. Mateo slumped into a sleepy heap, but Sophie twisted around to look up at Gladys.
“I have to poo,” she said.
“What? Now?”
“Right now!”
“You can’t wait?”
“I need to poo! The poo is coming!”
Great. Just great! Gladys unbuckled Sophie, who leaped out and started to pull down her shorts.
“Not here!” Gladys yelled. “Behind that bush!”
Her third-grade teacher lived on this street, and as Gladys stood guard she prayed Mrs. Marsh wouldn’t look out her window. Though really, why were dogs allowed to poop in public but not preschoolers, who were just one step above animals themselves? Though then she’d have to carry around poop bags, which, please no. Sophie gave a loud grunt followed by a luxuriant sigh. Gladys considered handing her a tissue, imagined Sophie handing it back, and decided against it. As Sophie tugged up her shorts, her face brightened.
“I spy a doggy!”
She pointed down the block to a house with a chain-link fence. When Gladys looked, she saw a shaggy creature pacing behind the fence.
“Can we pet it? Please, Gladys, please?”
Glady meant to say no, but an invisible force drew her closer. The yard was small, dominated by a pine tree tall and straight as the mast of a ship. In its shade sat a doghouse. Tied to it with a length of wash line...could it be?
“True Blue!” Gladys cried.
The dog disappeared inside her house.
“This is where you live?” Gladys’s heart leaped around. “I’m so happy I found you!”
The yard was dotted with pine cones and dog turds, which looked a lot alike. A dirt track was worn from the doghouse almost to the fence. There were two bowls, both turned upside down. Gladys eyed the human house, where all the curtains were pulled tight. A couple of empty lawn chairs sat in the driveway.
“Remember me?” She put her face to the fence. “You do, I know you do.”
True Blue poked her head out, but she averted her eyes. Sprouts did the same thing when they were afraid. They thought if they couldn’t see you, you couldn’t see them. Gladys rummaged in the diaper bag and found one of Mateo’s teething biscuits.
“Why’s she tied up?” Sophie demanded. “Where’s her mother?”
“Hush!” Gladys put a finger to her lips.
The fence was the same height as she was. When she hooked the toe of her sneaker in a link, the dog turned, beautiful eyes shining.
True Blue.
The house’s curtains stayed shut as Gladys climbed the fence.
“Your bowls are empty. Are you hungry?” She held out the teething biscuit. “You are, aren’t you?”
Did the woman leave her outside all the time? Being homeless would be terrible, but having a home and being shut out of it? That was even worse. Gladys kept softly calling, gently coaxing, leaning over the fence. Her arm began to prickle from holding out the biscuit, and the fence’s top rail dug into her ribs, but she didn’t give up. She couldn’t give up. Of all the places she might have gone for a walk, she’d come here. Something had led her to True. There was a bond between them, something powerful and meant to be.
Wriggle wriggle—the dog inched out. Her sweet face, with its fur like a spill of milk. Her middle, her hind paws, and finally her funny, crooked tail. She took a few steps, then thought better of it. By now Gladys’s arm was numb but she held it steady, determined not to scare True, who needed to know someone cared about her. Not everyone in the world was as heartless as her owner.
“It’s not your fault,” she whispered. “You deserve to be loved.”
She felt that space open inside her, dark and echoey as a cave. A chill went through her, but she held firm, because even as the hollow inside gaped wider, True edged closer. The wash line went taut till at last she couldn’t come any nearer. Digging the tips of her shoes into the fence and gripping the railing with her free hand, Gladys stretched herself as far as she possibly could, and then maybe a little farther. Now True stretched, too. Her cold, wet nose grazed Gladys’s fingers. Lifting her head, she took the biscuit as delicately as a princess at a tea party.
Gladys was so happy, she lost her grip on the fence and tumbled forward. Her hands scrabbled for the fence but came up empty and now she was falling, falling...
“Gladys!” Sophie screeched.
She lay on the needly ground, and where the dark space had been, she now had a terrible, chest-burning pain. She rolled over to find True looming above her, mouth open, tongue lolling. The jaws of a furry crocodile! Her breath was meaty and her gums were spotted and her teeth were not teeth at all but fangs. Breaking out in goosebumps, Gladys understood, this was an animal.
“Are you dead?” Sophie cried.
The front door flew open and the woman charged across the yard.
“Good God!” She kicked an empty dish out of her way. Now she loomed over Gladys, too. “You? You again!”
“The witch!” Sophie stumbled backward into the stroller, which woke Mateo, who commenced screaming as if someone had dropped a snake on his head.
“You little demon!” The woman yanked Gladys to her feet. “Now you’re teasing a dog?”
“I wasn’t. I’d never!”
The woman’s face was splotchy. Strands of hair stuck to her cheeks. She’d been crying, Gladys realized, though what could make someone like her cry?
“Don’t lie to me.” Her fingers dug into Gladys’s arm. “I saw you with my own eyes.”
“You’re not nice to her!” Gladys said. “Why do you even have her?”
“Mind your own business, you brat!” Her eyelashes stuck together in spiky clumps. Her breath was sour with cigarettes.
“Let her go, witch!” Sophie rattled the fence. “There’s no such thing as you! Go away!”
Mateo’s wailing reached fever pitch. True Blue had something dark green in her mouth, Gladys’s hat! It must have fallen off when she tumbled. True dropped it and began to bark.
“Pookie! Shut your trap!” Letting go of Gladys, the woman lunged toward the dog who yelped and dove back inside her house.
“We don’t say shut your trap!” Sophie said.
“You think I’m a witch?” The woman spun around. “You’re right. Bother me or that dog again and I’ll boil you in my pot! No. I’ll eat you raw!”
Gladys scrambled over the fence, grabbed Sophie, set her in the stroller, and shoved it down the sidewalk with strength she didn’t know she had. But when she looked back, she saw True Blue had come out of her doghouse and gotten helplessly tangled in her rope. The woman ignored her. She stood beneath the tree, trying to light a cigarette, flicking her lighter again and again with shaking hands.
Mateo wailed as if his tiny heart was breaking. It was heartbreaking. It was infuriating. That dog, the woman said. Not my. A person who loved her dog would never talk that way. Plus—Pookie? What a humiliating name. Once when Gladys had complained to her mother about her own archaic name, Mama replied, “‘A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.’” What people called a rose made no difference to the rose, so this was a false comparison. Gladys despised lazy thinking!
“I want my mother,” Sophie said in a tiny voice. “I want Mommy.”
Out of breath, Gladys stopped at the corner. She should go back. She’d let True down. She’d made things even worse, because True had trusted her, at least for a moment, only to be disappointed and abandoned by yet another human.
“I want Mommy.” Tears rolled down Sophie’s cheeks, and Gladys wiped them with the hem of her shirt.
“It’s okay.” She smoothed Sophie’s hair. As she fastened the stroller straps, she said, “It’ll be okay.” This was what you promised sprouts, whether you believed it or not.
When Gladys began to push the stroller again, Mateo quieted. Babies and dogs—they had no words. They depended on you to figure out what they needed, then to help them get it. Gladys bent her weight to the stroller. She was angry, but some other feeling was slipping around inside her, too. She tried to name it—what was it? Her phone dinged with a text.
You are the best of the best of the best, wrote Mama, followed by a zillion hearts. Hurry home—cold lemonade waiting.
Mama! She insisted every bad contained good and if you looked, you’d find it. Though Gladys could not think of one single, solitary good thing about True’s owner, she could still see her face, shiny with sorrow. Why was she crying? Was it possible that somehow, somewhere inside her, a heart was still trying to beat?
Who knew why Jude’s stricken face rose in her mind now?
It would be a long walk to his house with a stroller the size of a small boat. And it wasn’t as if Jude had shown any sign of wanting to see her again in this lifetime or the next. Yet how could she turn her back on True? She needed to do something, though she wasn’t sure what, and maybe Jude would have an idea. Maybe he’d want to help. Or maybe he wouldn’t want to, but she could persuade him to. Gladys had great faith in her own powers of persuasion.
She re-wound her scarf, put her head down, and pushed.