Little Bird of Heaven Page 14

  Or, Hell Jacky, you’re an animal too, right? Once he laid his big meat-hand on my arm like it was an accident but I pretended not to notice. The worst thing, Krista, I try not to think about—Zoe’s son Aaron was the one who found her. He’s a sad kid anyway, takes after his father with that look of Indian melancholy—‘heavy-heartedness’—a kind of blunt hatchet-face like mixed-blood guys have—first look you have of them they’re ugly and hurtful just to see, next look you have they are kind of—well, good-looking, sexy. I mean even this kid, who’s just a kid. ‘Cause he’s tall already, like a man. Or almost. They said Aaron came over here around nine that morning—it’s a Sunday—kids get up early, I guess—he hadn’t seen his mother in a while he said so he came over here, he’s not old enough to drive so he walked, two-three miles it must be, the front door is unlocked so he pushes it open, walks inside and—he says—right away he ‘knew something was wrong’—‘could smell something bad’—he stood downstairs and called for Zoe and there was no answer—he thought she might be asleep, if she was there at all, so he went upstairs…Dear God, imagine finding her! Imagine, if you were Zoe’s son! A few hours later it would’ve been me, walking into Zoe’s room…She used to say how guilty she felt about Aaron, it wasn’t really meant for her to be a mother so young, she’d dropped out of high school and married Delray who was older than her by six or seven years but still a hotheaded kid himself. Not that Zoe didn’t love her baby but she never felt she’d been meant to be a mother just then. Like Delray wasn’t meant to be a father. Del had these two Seneca Indian cousins he got in tight with and spent time in the juvie facility up at Black River, that Zoe said she didn’t know anything about except what he told her, that wasn’t the entire truth, see—one of Del’s cousins was in for manslaughter second degree which off the rez might’ve been murder second degree but they don’t give much of a shit for what a drunk Indian will do to another drunk Indian, it would be a different story if one of them stomped a white man to death, right?—so Zoe was always kind of wondering about that, to what degree Del was involved in that manslaughter and it scared her, for sure—when a guy drinks and has that background, you don’t know what direction it will take him in. ‘If I’d had a singing career first, then I could have a baby, right about now when I’m in my thirties I’d be fine with that,’ Zoe used to say, ‘but being a mother when you’re just a kid yourself gets in the way of your life, you know?’ and I said, ‘Well, Zoe—I wouldn’t know.’ I laughed to show that I wasn’t hurt, hell I wasn’t hurt, I said, ‘Maybe if my baby had lived, my life would’ve turned out better,’ and Zoe grabbed me and kissed me saying, ‘Oh Jacky, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to say such a thing. But Jacky, who knows?—maybe your life would’ve suffocated you. No baby ever saved anybody’s life that I ever heard of.’ I’d known Aaron when he was just a baby—dark-skinned and kind of fierce-looking with this coarse dark hair like some little rat—he’d cry so hard and get purple-faced but without actual tears just bellowing like a baby calf and kicking and you’d think If that baby had teeth, he’d bite. And Zoe laughed saying Aaron sucked so hard when he was nursing, he’d near-about knock her over, and it hurt. Almost any baby you see it’s a beautiful baby in some way but not Aaron until he was older—four or five—his face wasn’t so squished-together as he got older and his eyes not so crossed-looking. I didn’t know Zoe too well then but I think there was some trouble about Aaron starting school—he had some ‘reading disability’—dixlia? Took after his father with that short temper and thin skin like he’s the one insulted or hurt, not you. ‘It’s the Krullers,’ Zoe said. ‘Not just Del’s mixed-blood relatives but all of them. Like a clan. Don’t give a damn for how they trod over your feelings but the least thing you say to them, like Excuse me! I hope I am not bleeding on your new clothes! they take offense and flare up. Or they are hurt, their damn heart is broken and they need to break your heart, to even the score. They need to punish you.’ It was a surprise to me to see Aaron Kruller in February, when he was at the police station same time I was, Jesus!—he’d grown so tall, and looked a lot older than his age. That’s like the Senecas—you see a girl who could be eighteen, turns out she’s ten or eleven. It isn’t breasts they grow but muscles, and they’re built like fire hydrants. Aaron isn’t an easy boy to like, I have to say. I feel damn sorry for him and offered to make him some supper but he said no thanks not even looking at me. I’m kind of scared, this big kid hating me. Like all the Krullers hate me, like I am to blame for Zoe leaving home. Because Zoe and me, we’d go places together, in my car. When Zoe was desperate about Del, and this married man she’d been seeing kind of shook her off, or she shook him off, that was a bad time for Zoe and she came to me and what would I do, turn Zoe away? Zoe was my heart, I would never.”

  In a rush of words Jacky DeLucca spoke, so agitated she seemed almost to have forgotten me. And now she wiped her smudged eyes and stared at me. “‘Krista’—‘Krissie’—you said—you said—you are his daughter—Eddy Diehl, I mean—yes? It must be a sign, you’re here—you came here, to see me—”

  Quickly I said that I had to leave. The florid-faced woman with the dyed-beet hair frizzed about her head was exhausting to me as if she’d sucked all the oxygen out of the air between us.

  “No, sweetie—wait! Not just yet.”

  Jacky heaved herself to her feet, teetering. She smiled a sweet-goofy-lopsided smile at me as if about to swoop over me and kiss me but with panicked dexterity I eluded her. The man’s flannel shirt gaped open, Jacky’s enormous milky-white blue-veined left breast nearly swung free like an extra appendage, alarming to see at close range. I did not want Jacky to hug me, to feel those big breasts like foam rubber. “Krissie, stay still. You’re the sweetest kid, you are polite and you listen. There is somebody coming today—I think—he might be here at any time—you could help me, Krissie, you could tell him ‘Jacky is not here right now,’ you could tell him ‘Jacky is staying with her sister now, in Port Oriskany.’ Can you do that for me, Krissie? Sweetie? He won’t try to come inside, he’ll just be at the back door here, if he sees you inside, what you can tell him is you are my niece—and your mother is upstairs—can you do this for me, Krissie? Please!—for Zoe’s sake, too.”

  I was frightened, the urgency in Jacky’s voice. So all this time she’d been waiting for someone—that was why she’d wanted me with her—her hot damp skin beaded with oily sweat, her pleading eyes. The smell of rum was powerful, heady. I wanted to flee Jacky yet at the same time had an urge to press into her arms, press into the foam-rubber body. I stammered again that I had to leave, my mother would miss me and worry about where I’d gone. “Thank you for the hot chocolate, it was delicious,” I said, “—and the cookies!—the cookies were delicious. Good-bye.” Running for the door as in clumsy haste, surprisingly agile once she was able to get to her feet, Jacky tried to embrace me. “Krissie! Just a little hug, sweetie! We’re friends now, aren’t we? Sure.” At the door Jacky managed to grab hold of my arm, my skinny upper arm, I had not been quick enough. Her fingers were strong as a man’s fingers, I thought. I did not try to wrest away, I knew she would hurt me, in the flesh of my skinny upper arm there would be the imprint of Jacky DeLucca’s fingers. With a loud laugh—a sad, reproachful laugh—Jacky kissed the top of my head, and released me.

  “Promise you’ll come back to see me, Krissie? Your friend Jacky DeLucca.”

  Somehow, I promised yes.

  In the alley, half-running. And then running! Through mud puddles where black-feathered birds had been splashing and bathing, along the alley littered with trash, in the fresh damp air of spring where even tossed-out garbage rotting underfoot smelled good.

  “KRISTA? What is that stain on your sweater?”

  Guiltily I looked down—was it a hot chocolate stain? Or a smear—a smudge—from something greasy in Jacky DeLucca’s kitchen? Something like a dirty flower, my mother pointed at with a look of disgust.

  “I hope it isn’t blood. Did you cut yourself
somehow?”

  “No! I—”

  “It looks like blood. Oh, Krista! I can’t trust you, old as you are. Come here.”

  Forcibly my mother led me to the kitchen sink where she dabbed frantically at the front of my sweater with a wetted towel, fussing and scolding. I saw how the part in her hair was crooked, how there were gray hairs especially near her scalp, nothing like Jacky DeLucca’s dark-dyed glamour-hair. And Mom’s smell—a harsh prim Dutch Cleanser-smell—was nothing like Jacky DeLucca’s. In these weeks following my father’s moving out of our house and the disruption of our lives my mother often behaved unpredictably with Ben and me, flaring up in anger and disgust, weeping over our flaws, or, unaccountably, clutching at us as if we were precious to her, and vulnerable. “Well—I guess it isn’t blood, it’s coming out. At least you didn’t hurt yourself, Krista, wherever you were all afternoon.” With exasperated tenderness my mother hugged me—stooped over me, and hugged me—lightly kissed the top of my head—in the very place that Jacky DeLucca had kissed me, less than an hour before—and for a long moment held me tight in her tremulous arms.

  Friends now aren’t we Krissie.

  Promise you’ll come back to see me, Krissie. Your friend Jacky DeLucca.

  15

  “EDWARD DIEHL? We need to speak with you.”

  These grim-uttered words that would change my father’s life forever.

  The ruin of my father’s life that was a wholly ordinary American-male life of its time and place, indistinguishable in its externals from how many hundreds of thousands of other American-male lives, none of us who loved him would have wished to think.