HUNGER by Lindsay Fitz-Gerald

See this edge of road named for Saint Germaine. It is lined with trees that have self-amputated, discarded limbs on crumbling pavement. The houses are pale under the sun. The roofs are black and speckled with wrens. You can’t see them, but bees nest in hives beneath the shingles. Once or twice a year they surge in a pack, screeching furiously, swarm around a child’s head and send him to the hospital swollen and toxic. No one knows why the bees do this. No one prepares. It is simply the way of things, as unquestioned as the heat of July.
See the smallest of the houses, the one at the end, mint green with a rusted pick-up truck in front. The orange cat sleeping on the porch railing is called Pup, and Pup will fall in a moment, topple into the garden below. There are no flowers to catch him. Poking from the dirt are weeds with poor posture, chewed popsicle sticks. The head of a baby doll is jammed on one of the sticks. It stares out at the neighborhood with blue glass eyes that have forgotten how to blink.
In front of the porch steps, a boy quivers, thrashes on the grass. His stringy yellow hair flaps in his eyes, his limbs twist, his face contorts and colors red. Can’t breathe, he says. Can’t, can’t. Spittle comes from between his lips, runs down his chin. The boys around him step back.
Old Bat from next door opens her window, yells, What are you doing! Help that child! She disappears from the window and opens the door. She lurches forward on her walker, laboring across the porch. She is wearing slippers and a sleeveless housecoat. One of her breasts, flat at the top and full at the bottom, like a half-drained water balloon, comes through an arm hole. She stops at the top of the steps. She has not made it down them without help in some years.
The children ignore Old Bat as the boy shakes harder, his limbs flailing wildly. They are impressed.
The front door of the mint green house opens, and a teenage girl shouts, Hey!
The children look up at her, mouths open. She is the no-tits older sister who paints pictures all over the dirty house, on cabinets and mirrors and walls; she is the one who busted Dumptruck Harry’s nose nearly right off his face because he swung her cat by the tail, wound it in the air over his head and let go. The children scatter, yell, C’mon! They run toward the road, toward houses on other roads.
The boy stops shaking, sits up and wipes the spit from his face. I win! He yells at the children’s backs. You hear, motherfuckers, I win!
The children are not his friends, they pass by occasionally and fight with him, rouse him from his solitude. He is sad to see them go.
The sister taps a foot, crosses arms over her midriff hiding beneath the concert T-shirt of a Christian rock band.
The boy ignores her. He glances at Old Bat at the top of her porch steps, looking stricken and confused, wobbling.
What’s happened? Old Bat asks. Her scalp from beneath sparse puffs of hair is coated with sweat. Her mouth hangs open, trying to suck in oxygen, but the air is sluggish with wet heat.
I’m okay, the boy says. He makes a thumbs up and stands, brushes the grass from his shirt and backside. We was just playin a game and I won. You think I did a good job at that seizure?
Old Bat nods vaguely.
Those turds owe me a buck now, says the boy. I told em I could be a epileptic retard and I was.
Old Bat stares.
You better get back inside, he says. It’s awful hot out here.
The sister from the mint green doorway says that he better get inside before she comes out there. Her foot has stopped tapping. She means business.
The boy turns his back on her and looks at Old Bat. See ya, he says, one corner of his mouth creeping upward into a sunburned cheek. It is a rare expression on him, this hint of a genuine smile, different from the violent grin he makes at his sister and neighborhood children, teachers who bark orders. He invented the grotesquery as a smaller boy, found it the afternoon he ran down the driveway and stomped on a nail. Blood rained onto the dirt and spread into a muddy crimson pool. He tried to pry the nail from his heel but it wouldn’t come. He vomited. Daylight darkened to dusk and finally from a distance a neighbor child noticed him lying in the driveway, flat on his back watching clouds disappear. The neighbor asked if he was some kind of queer, mooning over the sky like that. The boy grinned, his only protection, grinned until the neighbor left him alone with his nail.
Now he lifts his hand in a wave. Old Bat’s hands are braced on the walker and she mumbles something nonsensical.
The boy nods as if he’s understood and picks up the rocks, pocket knife and rubber salamander that fell from his pockets while he humped the lawn. He trudges up the porch steps.
The sister grunts. You were makin a racket. A racket. I’m trying to get things done in here.
The boy slumps toward her, mutters, I won the game.
Whippee for you.
She ushers him toward the door, painted with the face of Jesus. It was her spring project for youth group, her manner of witnessing. A write-up appeared in the paper. The headline read, LOCAL TEEN BRINGS JESUS CHRIST TO LIFE. Photos showed her slouching with hands stuffed in blue jean cut-offs, posing startled by Jesus’s mournful, empathic face, nearly as long as her body.
The boy scoots past her and mock punches Jesus’s jaw.
The girl makes a hissing sound and the door closes.
Still sprawled on the railing, Pup’s tail twitches. He starts at something in his dreams and tips into weeds. He scampers out and looks around, shakes his head, licks his back end.
Old Bat has forgotten to go inside. She stands on her porch, hands shaking around the bars of the walker, her face and arms frying under the sun. Her housecoat is soaked with sweat, plastered against drooping skin. Through the neighbor’s open window she hears the boy say to the girl, We gonna have grilled cheese for lunch? and the girl say, We’re outta bread. Have Fruit Loops.
Old Bat tries to remember what just happened, why she’s out on the porch listening to the children, but the memory has left her. She slowly turns and makes her lurching journey back inside toward dusty, whirring fans, plastic plants with candy wrappers hidden in the soil, framed photos of faces she sometimes remembers having touched.
Saint Germaine is quiet now but for the burblings of a lone television a few houses down, talking at an empty living room.
Inside the mint green house, the boy stands with his hands on his hips. I’m sick of Fruit Loops, he says, but no one hears him.
Look now at the sun blisters rising over dirty freckled cheeks. Watch the eyes narrowed, searching, then flat. See him staring at a blank strip of wall, standing motionless in the center of the hot, hot kitchen. Hear his breathing, quiet like the fleeing of small winged things. Feel the air around him grow wetter, heavier, slow to a halt.
Do you recognize him?
He is you. It is the hottest weekend of July, it is your eleventh year.

* * *

You want to go to the Little River. Your sister shoots a look and continues to write on the special paper sprayed with perfume. Everyone knows that boys who swim at the Little River alone go missing but you like to suggest it anyway, once or twice a week to see if you can rattle her. You lean against the counter and watch her compose a letter to her boyfriend, Lloyd F. Sherman, whom she has never met. She found him while flipping through Cousin Princess’s yearbook. There he was, sharp cheekbones, sad eyes, long brown hair, like her Jesus on the door, but prone to acne. According to the yearbook, he is part of woodworking and archery teams. She has been writing to him since spring, just after your father left, and he has not written back. If asked, she tells the kids at school that her boyfriend goes to school two towns north, he is seventeen and tall. She carries the yearbook with her, in case anyone wants proof, but no one has taken her up on it except Fanny Robinson, and no one cares what Fanny thinks.
At first you wanted to taunt her, make her feel pathetic. Then you realized she already feels pathetic.
She tells you to quit spying and quit crushing Fruit Loops under your hand because once they’re all gone, that’s it, no whining. Quit! Or else.
Or else what, you say. Or else she’ll cover your body with honey while you’re sleeping and dump ants in the bed. You remember the last time she did this, so you quit.
You go outside and stand on the lawn, look to see if Old Bat has left her windows open, if she’s forgotten to put underwear and pants over her private part that looks like a fuzzy fish mouth.

* * *

Later, your sister says it is time to go food shopping, and you get to go with her because she can’t carry everything in the basket on her bike. You don’t cause a fuss because occasionally she lets you buy something, sparklers or novelty worms you light with a match and watch grow. And you’re hungry, very hungry for something that isn’t Fruit Loops.
You pedal past Old Bat’s house. You lag behind because her front door is open. She is hunched over her walker and looking at a hanging bird feeder. I told you no, she says. I told you NO. You leave those little buggers alone. They’re HUNGRY. A crow gazes back at her, holding her gaze for a defiant moment, then turns and pecks at the hummingbirds’ juice. Stop, I said. Mongrel. Stop.
The bird ignores her and she glares at it, trembles. You look away because watching her frustration hurts, as much as a nail in the heel.
You pedal faster to catch up. It is an uphill ride, two miles, and you push against heavy pedals and heat, but the ride back will be smooth.
Three trucks and a lone car are parked in front of the convenience store. Your sister leans her bike against the building and pauses before going inside, counting the money in her change purse. The roll of bills your father left in his sock drawer is getting smaller. You don’t talk about it. You have caught her at night sitting on the edge of the bed, counting, counting. She looks old then, slumped and grim-lipped.
C’mon, high tail it, she says, and you follow her inside the store. There is a country western song on the radio, a woman singing through static. Canned soda, beer, potato chips rise in towers around you. A group of men sits at the only booth, drinking coffee. Two of them smoke and talk and one of them flips through a newspaper, muttering, Can you believe this bullshit?
An eight-by-ten color photograph of a smiling blonde girl rests on the counter, in between lighters and Beef Jerky. The edges of the photo are yellow and curling, there is ink smudged on the girl’s cheek. You read the sign, though it’s been there for three years and the girl is probably dead by now, or cured. In round forceful letters, the sign implores: SAVE BETH ANNE. HELP HER GET A BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT. You eye the change in the container under Beth Anne’s photo but the cashier is watching you from behind the register, biting into a meaty sandwich. Your stomach growls.
Hey, you say, following her, watching her gather the week’s food in her arms. Can we have hot dogs?
No.
The men glance up from their conversation as your sister walks past them. The man with the newspaper continues to point angrily at a headline and the man across from him nods, while another sucks a cigarette with thin yellowed lips and looks at her in a way you have not noticed anyone looking at her before.
You look to see what has stopped the man with the yellow lips from talking, what he sees as his eyes skim down her hair, brown with a silvery dullness like the ashes from his cigarette. You follow the cross hanging around her neck, falling between sweat-damp breasts small and round like the yolks of fried eggs, the shorts skimming her thighs that seem nervous in their sweaty smallness.
The man nods to her, says, Hotter’n hell, huh?
Sure is, she says, walking past him, her arms full.
The store has gone quiet except for the singer on the radio, who worries about whose bed her lover’s boots have been under.
So, the man says, looking at the backs of her calves and scratching his neck. Your pop come back yet?
Everyone in town knows that your father has been gone since spring.
You watch her in profile, watch her stiffen. He’s coming soon, she says finally, in a low voice.
Well, he says. You just let me know if I can help you kids with anything till he gets back. I’m just up the road.
She says okay but she does not look in his direction. She puts her things on the counter and hands money to the cashier. Her back is straight and her head held level, but her eyes are cast down, focusing too intently on cans of fish bait beneath the glass counter top. The cashier tells her she’s a dollar fifty short. She starts and fumbles in her change purse and you can see that it holds only nickels and a few pennies. She says she’s sorry and she doesn’t want the package of sliced ham after all. The cashier sighs and the man from the booth is beside her, dropping two dollars on the counter. You watch the man’s eyes, certain of their right not to blink or look away from her. He smiles, a small upward lifting of lips into moustache. There is something wet about it. You be good, he says.
She is still for a long moment, not turning in any direction, not moving her eyes. You can see the pulse point at the base of her neck twitch. Finally she nods and picks up the paper bag.
When you get to the bikes you say you’re starving, you’ve got to eat something to get you home. You grab the bag from her and pull out the ham. But you hesitate.
She reaches for it, says quietly, Gimme that.
She throws it into a dumpster around which flies swarm and you are filled with a kind of lust, a shaking need to stick your arms inside, hunt for it and rip open the package, stuff the pink meat in your mouth. You swallow the need, get on the bike and follow her.
You ride in the middle of the pavement as a caravan of two, and only one car passes you, honks for you to get out of the way. She lifts her feet from the pedals and coasts down hills. Her hair flaps behind her, like dark birds flying at your head. You think you hear her laugh. You laugh too, and you don’t know why.

* * *

She has gone to church, an all-day affair with two services and choir practice and youth group in between. You hate church, church people. They are all liars, fake smilers, they talk about you and your house and your dad, you can tell. They think you’re going to hell and even though she thinks they have accepted her, maybe even like her and her Jesus on the door, you know they judge her too, wait for her to date a man with beer breath and a big loud truck, wait for her to show up to church with a black eye and a baby-swollen belly. You know there are only two good things about church. Communion, because the blood of Christ grape juice is served in tiny cups that look like shot glasses, and the body of Christ bread is fresh baked, you can grab a hunk of it and no one will complain. Offering, because everyone’s heads are bowed, and if you are careful while the plate passes from hand to hand, you can drop in some change, and pull out a five- or ten-dollar bill. Once you pulled out a twenty but the deacon caught you and shot you a look of such fury you slipped down in the pew and hid.
Your Sunday will be spent trying to keep cool. You suck a sugar cube and stand in the driveway, digging a hole in the dirt with your foot. You get on your knees and dig deeper until you are satisfied, then pull Old Bat’s hose across the lawn and fill the hole. You sit in it. The water isn’t cold but it feels good against your skin. It has turned to mud but you don’t care. Pup slinks next to you and drinks, dips his paws in and licks them. You pick burrs out of his tail.
The Devlin sisters are in the distance, on their bicycles, Legs in back and the Hunchback in front. They are fourteen and fifteen. Legs is older, she is in your sister’s class but they are not friends. Legs rides like she’s about to lift into the sky. You watch her pedal and her red hair float, and you would be bored if you didn’t remember you were supposed to be excited, like the older boys. The older boys say they get wood when they see her, and you’ve tried to make wood yourself, but it doesn’t work. Supposedly all you need to do is look hard at a girl like Legs and wood happens. You worry that something is wrong with you because down there you are always soft.
You expect them to ride past you and on down the road, but the Hunchback is speeding toward you like a rocket. She is grinning a mean grin and her eyebrows slant up. You don’t move and you squint to let her know you’re not going to be scared by a hunchback on a rusty banana seat bike. She comes closer and Pup bolts into the bushes. She is almost upon you. You roll and flop just out of her tire’s reach.
Pussy, she says, riding into the puddle, and grins so her big teeth take up her face.
Legs floats to a stop beside her. She looks around then glances toward you, says hello. Her voice sounds pink, pinker than cotton candy. She makes a vague smile at you and you try to look down casually to see if there’s any wood there, but nothing.
The Hunchback drops her foot off the pedal and into the puddle, splashing you both. You’d like to say something mean but your words have run away so you stand up muddy and look her up and down. Don’t you look at me, she says. Did I fucking give you permission? She yanks her shirt down hard over her belly, bottom. You often watch girls do this, watch them pull sweatshirt sleeves down over their hands, watch them push hair over their eyes, watch them suck in stomachs and hunch shoulders in or push them back depending on the size of the breasts they do or don’t have. You like to pretend these gestures are ridiculous, but a tiny hidden part of you, no bigger than your tiniest toe, and so hidden it is secret even from you, recognizes these are their versions of your grotesque grin.
The Hunchback wants to know what kind of jackass sits in a puddle of mud with a cat named after a dog.
You say a smart jackass and where are they going.
They’re just riding around, there’s nothing else to do, maybe they’ll go get a soda, and what’s it to you anyway.
If they give you a buck they can have two cans of your orange soda.
The Hunchback snorts. Legs says she likes orange soda.
You get them two sodas, risking that they might not pay up. They want to know where your sister is, and what’s up with the Jesus on the door anyway, they’ve never stood this close to it.
You tell them it’s complicated. Legs sits down on the steps and crosses one long long leg over the other and drops her chin into her palm. She looks at the sky as if waiting for something to happen there. She asks if you have cigarettes. The Hunchback says that’s enough bitching about the goddamn cigarettes.
You say you don’t have cigarettes.
Well, can she take that truck and go get some?
The truck doesn’t work and is missing a tire, you point to where it’s jacked up. Does she even know how to drive?
She could figure it out if she had a truck that worked. Can’t be that complicated.
She stands up and says she’s going to go get cigarettes. The Hunchback says she doesn’t want to ride that far. She’s staying here.
You’re not staying here, you say.
She asks what you’re so afraid of, do you think she’s going to rape you or something?
Yeah right, you say, forcing out a loud strange laugh. Picture that.
Legs says she’s going to ride to the corner store, she’ll be back.
You watch her straddle the bike and ride down the driveway, and remember something one of the older boys said about her tasting good but you have a hard time imagining a person tasting good.
The Hunchback sits down where her sister just was. You got anything to do? she asks.
Like what?
She shrugs, asks if you’re always this exciting.
You ask if she wants to see something.
She sniffs. As long as it’s not your dick.
You manage to grumble, You wish.
You open the front door. She watches you. What, you ask, you waitin for an engraved invitation?
She squints, flares her nostrils, and you imagine fire rumbling deep inside them.
Inside, you start up the stairs. You look back at her, say, I don’t got all day, you know.
At the top of the stairs you stop and face a wall that was once a cracked white and is now painted with scenery. There wasn’t money for more of your sister’s art paper so she began to court walls and tables. You expect that she will start on the kitchen tile next, eventually work her way around the entire outside of the house. And when she is done with that, you will find house paint, maybe you will steal it from the housewares store, and you will help her paint the house clean so she can start over again.
The Hunchback is standing close, following the detail. The mural is of your neighborhood, each of the houses in a row. The life-size yellow-haired boy standing in front of the green house looks at you both. His eyes stare from beneath long limp bangs. His lips curl in a monstrous grin. There is something vastly sad about it. You have gotten in the habit of avoiding it when nearing the top of the stairs, of turning your head. Standing face to face with it fills you with a kind of quiet terror, one you will never admit but which prevents you some nights from leaving your room to go down the hall to the bathroom.
The Hunchback doesn’t say anything, just examines the wall, and you regret showing it to her, wonder what made you do that. With a pang you think that she might be considering the best way to insult it. If she does, you will slug her.
You better go, you say, I don’t got all day to lollygag with you.
It’s somethin, she says.
Somethin? You make fists.
Yeah. Somethin.
You know, not everybody can paint like that. Bet you can’t.
I said it’s somethin.
She pokes you in the ribs, hard, turns her finger as if drilling a hole.
That your room?
She walks toward the door and opens it.
You say hey, that’s none of her business. She looks around, steps over crumpled underwear and a science fiction magazine that claims on its cover, The truth is out there and we have found it.
She says, You wanna see somethin?
Depends.
She turns, facing away from you, lifts her shirt and releases the snap of her bra. You are stunned by this and stare at her back rounded and spindly, with vertebrae like door knobs. It is not as terrible as you had imagined, and this is disappointing.
She says, You wanna touch it?
No. Well, maybe.
Then hurry it up. I don’t got all day to lollygag with you.
You place your hand at the top, near the base of her neck, and slide it down in an arching slope. You expect to be kicked in the palm by  raging vertebrae. The horror of it is softened by something warm that licks up your sides.
She shifts, asks, You done?
She pulls down her shirt and sits on the bed. She opens the drawers of the night stand, picking up a flashlight and shaking it, aiming the light at the wall and turning it on and off, opening a pack of gum and putting a piece in her mouth. You like to think that before you would have socked her one, but now you feel oddly permissive. You’re not sure why.
You sit down, far away from her at the end of the bed.
So, she says, trying to blow a bubble. You like my sister?
Not really.
That’s good because she’s fifteen and can have anybody she wants. When she turns sixteen she’s getting a car and moving to Florida.
Why?
Disney. She’s going to be Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. They dress you up in some queer ball gown and you ride around in a pumpkin carriage. Once in a while you get out and talk to little kids. It’s pretty good money.
You gonna go with her?
Nah.
A fly buzzes.
She half turns toward you, says, I won’t kiss but if you want to fuck we can.
She stands up.
You imagine you feel a rash spread over you, but when you look down it is just plain sunburned skin. You say, Have you done it before?
Sort of.
How much?
Just trust me.
You stand, facing her. She is taller than you by half a head.
You don’t know what to do. You have seen dogs do this, you have heard neighbors late at night and in the morning, you have seen pictures. Once, when you sneaked to the Little River through the woods, you saw two men, a teenager and an older man. The teenager was lying on his belly and the man was behind him. You watched for a minute, thrilled and disoriented, but ran away before they caught you.
She clears her throat because you are doing nothing but gawking and pulling on your ear.
You think you should apologize, then you feel angry at her for making you feel that way.
Get undressed, she says. She kicks off flip flops and pulls down her shorts and underwear, shirt and bra, in that order. You feel you should turn away but she doesn’t tell you to. She crosses her arms, then uncrosses them and looks toward the center of your head, like a blind person, or someone bored with your conversation, trying to pay attention but thinking of better things. She nods her head at a poster on the wall, asks, You like the Beatles?
I dunno, you say, your voice squeaking. I never heard em. I just like the poster.
She keeps her head turned, and you take this as her granting of permission for you to look her over. You do, and since this is the first live naked girl you’ve seen – other than Old Bat, who doesn’t entirely count – you think you should start from her toes and work your way up, but you can’t seem to move your eyes from her breasts. They are spaced far apart, almost beneath her armpits, and something about them looks confused. It is hard to tell where her nipples begin because the skin is so pale. You feel a delicious alarm and continue to examine her as carefully as you would a fish or frog cut open on a rock. The top of her stomach is small and the bottom is wide, bulbous. There is something comforting about it, and you are startled by the feeling of comfort. You take a breath before looking at the outside of her genitals, partially hidden beneath curling red hair that seems like it wants to be yelling.
She senses that you have had a long enough look, and turns her head back toward you.
You know you have to take off your shorts. You grip the waistband and pull down. They are stiff with dried mud. She itches her elbow so long and hard you think she will scratch it raw. She takes her time, considering all of you, the birthmark across your ribs, the pale hairs down your legs, the cut on your knee, the mud crusted on your toes.
She looks at your penis. It hangs quietly.
You feel filthy. You like this feeling, it is a different kind of filth than you are used to.
She continues to examine you, and you have never felt so breakable. It is as if she could kill you just by looking. You reach down to cover yourself, but she sends you a sharp cutting of eyes, says to knock it off.
She steps toward you and takes your penis in her hand, her fingers firm but her face dubious, as if it is a tiny eel or squid that might wiggle out of her fist.
You are the only one who has ever touched it, and when you do, not a lot happens. You have rubbed and pulled and it has grown a little, hardened slightly as it does sometimes in the mornings on its own, but you haven’t known what to think of specifically, and your mind tosses around and calls up images you don’t know what to do with. You don’t know why, but you often picture Old Bat and that kid Gummer who beat you up last fall, and you try to redirect to think of Legs, or that woman who turns the letters on the Wheel of Fortune, or the neighbor with the red lipstick who winks at you. But nothing. It always goes away, shrinks and folds up as if it’s going to burrow inside of you and hide forever.
In her hand it isn’t so stubborn. She doesn’t rub or pull, but skims it with the tips of her fingers. She frowns in concentration and you look down to watch, stunned, as it grows and stands up entirely.
Okay, hurry, she says. Before it goes away.
She flops back on the bed and opens her legs.
You stare at her, then slink to the bed and climb over her, lie down beside her, watch her face.
She says to do it before it’s too late. She explains that her mother says you’ve got to move quickly on these things.
You lie on her. It feels good, even if you are much smaller than she is and about this you feel awkward, as if she is a mighty raft upon which you are sprawled and clutching, panting and seasick. You lie like that, motionless, her far apart breasts hugging the edges of your ribs, and you sweat. You stare down at the moon white skin of her face, startling in its perfect pale color. You wonder, from far away, how you can notice something beautiful at a time like this. She wiggles, taps your shoulder and nudges you to move down lower. You lean back a little and she wrinkles her mouth, says, Honestly. She frowns down at your penis and takes it in her hand, says Help me out here, huh?
You aim tentatively toward the growth of hair, hoping you will launch it in just the right place. It occurs to you that there is more than one avenue and you are scared of putting it in the wrong one. She tries to help you line it up but you are overcome with something – like a fist full of tears at the back of your throat – and you feel yourself shrinking in her hand, trying to fold up and away from her. She watches this happen and your entire body pulses hot then cold with instant shame.
You roll onto your back and cover your eyes with an arm. You steel yourself for her insults, wait for them to jab at you.
After long minutes, you peek. She appears to be studying the ceiling. You’re not sure if you should cover her up with a blanket or smother her with it, if you should fan her, if you should tell her to go home and never talk to you again.
She turns her head toward your face, still hiding beneath an arm, says briskly, I still won’t kiss you. But if you want I’ll hold your hand.
You can’t answer so she takes your fingers in hers. Both of your palms are slick with sweat but she manages to keep them entwined.
She says, Did you know that during the Depression they used to throw babies on the train tracks right next to this house? They couldn’t afford to feed them all. That’s why sometimes at night you can hear wailing babies all along the road and even near the Little River. Did you know that?
You peel your arm away from your eyes, swallow. No.
Well. She looks at you earnestly. It’s true.

* * *

You sit on the porch steps in the dark, looking out at the road. It is sweltering even after dusk. Evening church will be done soon and your sister will be dropped off by one of the families, wearing a look of guilt for sins she did not realize she committed until reminded again tonight of the importance of shame, of starving.
You hope she will not be able to sense what happened with the Hunchback. She will likely glance around quickly to make sure you haven’t burned anything, burned yourself, broken anything. She will zoom past you with her Bible, kicking off pumps and peeling nylons down her legs. She will huddle with paper and pen and write to Lloyd, and you will sense that she feels the most guilt about this, as if the habit of craving him, of lusting after the notion, is one she should give up.
You watch Pup snap his mouth open and closed to catch darting mosquitoes, but they elude him.
You try not to think about the Hunchback. It occurs to you that after this evening you should think of her by her real name but you’re not sure you can bring yourself to it – naming her feels like a concession. When she left, in a clumsy hurry because Legs would be back soon, she said, See ya. You had the urge to shake her hand, be a man, but she was gone too quickly.
You snap at Pup, Quit tryin to eat them bugs! and he gazes at you with round eyes, startled by the attack. From the blackness, you notice Old Bat’s porch light go on and off, on and off. It is probably nothing, but it feels like an SOS, a desperate call into the night. Like a moth you are called across the lawn to her porch.
The front door is open and you press your nose to the screen door, trying to see inside, but it is too dark. The place smells of wet trapped towels and overripe bananas.
You tap the door, say, Hello?
You listen for rustling, for labored breathing.
There is silence.
You knock again, ferociously this time. Hello?
You try to open the screen door but it is locked. You run down the porch steps and around to the living room window. It is open partway but too high. You drag a large ceramic lawn ornament, a leftover Santa Claus from Christmas, step on it. You grip the window ledge and the Santa gives way beneath you, cracking down the center. You fall and get up, run up the porch steps with a rock. You make a hole in the screen by jabbing at a tiny tear and reach in, unlock it and step inside. You say Hello, anyone here? Are you okay? and grope the wall for a light switch. Light fills the room and you sweep your eyes from left to right over dusty stained furniture, knowing you will find her crumpled on the floor, bones broken, heart stopped, her walker fallen beside her. Sickness swells in your stomach and you look for death. You can smell it, you can feel its fingers toy with the hairs at the back of your neck. You run toward a bedroom, knowing now you will find her flat on her back, eyes open, breath gone.
Then you hear it, a noise from the bathroom, the splashing of water. You open the door.
She is trying to stand, holds on to the handle bar outside the shower door, gripping it with all her might. She is naked but for the underwear tangled around her ankles. Her walker is against the wall. She stares at the faucet longingly.
At the sound of you she turns her head. Honey? she says, looking you in the eyes. Frank, help me.
This is not your name. You don’t know anyone named Frank.
It’s so hot, she says. I need to cool off. But my legs are tired. Tired.
She wobbles.
You reach for her, wrap skinny arms around her stomach from behind. She is clammy against you, and the skin of her stomach is so loose you think your arms will be swallowed by it. Her long breasts droop over your forearms and she smells at once decomposing and sweet. She sinks against you gratefully, heavy in your arms. You think your knees will buckle under the weight and send you both crashing.
You tell her to keep holding on to the shower. You reach for her walker, touch it with the tips of your fingers. You close your eyes, will the thing to leap into your hand. It doesn’t. You stretch until you think your arm will come out of its socket and pull the walker toward you. She reaches for the bars and you hold her tightly.
I’ve got it, she says, and you are doubtful but slowly let go.
She starts to labor forward and you tell her to wait a moment. You unwind the underwear bunched around her ankles. You walk behind her, ready to catch her. In the center of the living room, she pauses, says, Why hasn’t it rained?
You tell her you don’t know.
You nudge her to keep moving forward into her chair. She wheezes, eases back into it.
It’s just so hot, she says. I’m baking up inside.
She picks up a piece of rope from the side table and worries it between her fingers. Naked, sucking her lower lip, she reminds you of a newborn, with skin too tender to be in open air.
You look around for something to cover her with, pick up a throw. You drape it across the front of her and she shoves you with a strength you would not have expected, says, I told you it’s too hot. Don’t put that on me.
You stumble from the shove and right yourself.
She stares out the window, at air so heavy, impenetrable, it could be a wall.
You sit down in the chair facing her and look at that same air.
There are car lights pulling into your driveway. Your sister steps out and you hear her say Thank you so much, see you next week.
She goes inside.
Old Bat is pulling at the frayed seam of her rope. She stares down at it, her chin resting on her chest.
You stand and she looks up at you. Time to go? she says.
I’ll be back.
She looks at you with eyes suddenly sharp. You have the feeling other people have said this to her, have smiled as they lied and left.
You run down the porch steps, across the lawn and into your house.
I need help, you say. She is kicking off her pumps, putting away her Bible. She opens her mouth to object but you say, Please.
You grab one of the kitchen chairs and move quickly. She follows and as you put it in the center of the lawn, stick the legs into the grass, she asks what the devil you’re up to but you say again, Please.
Old Bat is sitting where you left her.
C’mon, you say.
Where are we going? she asks, but is startled out of resisting your hands under her armpits, pulling her up.
Your sister is suspicious, wants to know where you’re taking her, and you look at her, at a loss to explain. Something is exchanged in your silence and for once she seems to be really looking at you, she doesn’t put up a fight. She helps you and between the two of you, you manage to get Old Bat onto the porch and down the steps, across the lawn.
When you get to the chair stuck in the grass you ease her into it. By the porch light’s glow you see her stare up at you. She asks, Are you going to hurt me?
No.
You get the hose and turn it on, close your fingers around its mouth so you can control the release of water.
You hold it in the air and a fine spray arcs.
Old Bat raises her face, startled, watches the drops hang above her in the moonlight before falling onto her forehead. They descend upon her gently, course down her naked body.
Yes, she says in a small voice. She opens her lips, hesitantly, allows the water to slip into her mouth.
You stay like this for many minutes. Your sister is quiet beside you, making no attempt to stop you. She stands on wet grass in stockings and her Sunday best.
When you finally move the hose away, Old Bat says, No, more.
It is then you notice a group of neighborhood children gathered like ghouls at the edge of the lawn, staring with open mouths.
But they say nothing, and when you are finally done, they have vanished into the night, and Old Bat is saying Thank you, Frank.

---

Lindsay Fitz-Gerald’s fiction has appeared in Santa Monica Review and in Women on the Edge, an anthology of stories by L.A. women writers.