Granite :
Susan Yount
BETTY HITELLA LIVES in the poop-green rental, two houses down on Ray Road. She is old enough to be in fourth grade but she is in the same grade as me. We ride the school bus together. Betty's long stem neck holds a jittery, pumpkin-sized head blooming with straw-blonde hair. She wears plastic parachute pants and glittering ice cream colored T-shirts. Barbie is her favorite game. She has Dream Date Barbie, Sun Gold Malibu Barbie, Barbie's Corvette and Barbie's Pool. She says her real mom gave her all the Barbie stuff before she moved here.
Betty has an older sister named Tina and so do I. Betty's sister Tina has boyfriends and so does mine. The rental, squeezed between two rows of overgrown shrubs, is often the hangout for Betty's sister and her boyfriend of the week. Last month, Betty and I counted five different guys. Robin was Tina's townie boyfriend from the month before until he found out that she also liked Shawn. Shawn didn't last long. He was shy. Betty and I joked, he must be a virgin. After Shawn, Tina laid around the house with some no-name-blonde that rolled his own cigarettes and said "yeah man" a lot. He lasted till the weekend and when he didn’t call, she called Gabe. We thought Gabe was real nice but Tina said he broke the microwave so now she is seeing Mark. Mark spits tobacco on the sidewalk and Betty says he looks a whole lot like a grunt hog. From the woods yesterday, we watched him kick the skinny neighbor dog.
"Our house is not in the red light district," my mom says, "no friends over when adults are not at home." She tells me and Betty this like we don't know where we live. I tell her, "Our house is in Underwood." She smiles and says, "That's right, Sister." Mostly, it is just me and Betty alone anyway. Mom really doesn’t know where we are till she gets home.
Betty hates the poop colored, wood-paneled rental house with the solid snot roof. When they moved there, last year, Betty's father re-shingled it for about two months rent. Then, he got hired second shift at the plastics factory. He works with Betty's stepmother now and I guess that’s why he never puts away the rusting, yellow hay-bail conveyor. It stretches from the weedy yard to the dingy house gutters. The conveyor had once lifted the snot colored shingles to the roof and now, it just leans there—rusting.
Betty has about five dogs. Some of them were dump offs and everyday, they drag the most bizarre things into the lawn. This Monday, it was a rotted baby deer that looked like its fur had been peeled off, a white plastic trash bag with about a dozen crushed Bud Light cans clanging in the bottom and a half burned-up, steel toe boot. Betty picks up the lawn crap every morning before the bus comes.
After school, I get off the bus at her house. We live so close that the driver doesn’t make me carry a note. My sister says John isn’t supposed to do that and if anything happens he'd be in trouble. She just says that cause she is supposed to be at home watching me—my sister Tina times it so she gets home about twenty minutes before mom.
When we get off today, I notice a Betty sized T-shirt all chewed on, streaked with blood and lying there with the maggot infested remains of that baby deer—it looks like the dogs must have dug it back up—the tan one growls licking tiny, bony hooves. Betty just walks by as if it isn't even there. I ignore it too.
We sneak into her sister's bedroom. Her sister Tina has a black tape player and a zoo stacked next to it:
Pink Floyde ~ The Wall
Ratt ~ Out of the Cellar
White Lion ~ Pride
Def Leppard ~ Pyromania
White Snake ~ White Snake
Danger Danger ~ Danger Danger
Her sister's closet door stands wide open. I wish I had her really hot pair of black leather, pink striped, zippy parachute pants crumpled on the floor. Hot pink and teal Jelly shoes scatter and her lacy black bra dangles over the edge of the laundry basket. Black plastic holds delicate, satin, stringy panties, sour terry towels and a tart, perfume sprayed blouse. Black fishnet panty hose, halter tops and short, short cutoffs sprawl the floor along side her bed. Gees. I still wear cottony-pink, daisy panties with little yellow eyes and my sister's stupid 70's hand-me-downs.
Tina and her boyfriend, the grunt hog Mark, stroll into the bedroom. Betty tries to dodge past, but the grunt hog grabs her shoulder. "What's this? Baby wants to be my girlfriend too?" the grunt hog says.
"Stop it! Let go."
"I don't think so, Baby, why don't you give me another kiss?"
With oversized hands, the grunt hog pulls Betty close to his body and Betty sticks her arms out and out to push him off. His mouth smacks sloppy kiss sounds over and over. Their lips are too close and she scowls smelling his beefy breath. The ugly grunt hog takes Betty's hand and puts it on his crotch, "Feel that?" he says. "That’s my big cock and he's cock-a-doodle-do for you." I see his tongue push into her mouth. Betty gags-like squeezing red neck flesh in her bony fist.
"Stop that!" Tina says. "Get out—both of you!"
The grunt hog winks, "We were just playing around. Besides, she's old enough."
Behind us, Tina slams the door.
I follow Betty. She jerks Dream Date Barbie off the sofa and marches out the door into the jungle. Betty hops onto her Pink Huffy and I launch onto my yellow three-speed. With Dream Date Barbie strangled in her hand, Betty wipes her mouth about a thousand times on her sweatshirt. "Promise not to tell," she says to me and crams the dreaming Barbie into her basket. Red and yellow leaves chatter like skeleton teeth down the road; a marble sized tear swells in the corner of her eye.
"Tell what?"
We ride our bikes about two minutes down the crunchy leaf road to my house. The last of my mother's garden flickers orange, yellow, purple and green squashes. Inside, the brick house reeks of cinnamon potpourri. It always makes Betty sneeze. She searches for tissues while I nab mother's record, Jesus Christ Super Star, and open the wooden, casket-sized stereo. I turn the player on and Betty says, "Not that shit again." She blows her nose.
"I like this shit."
Betty says, "Fine."
I gather-up some blonde Barbie-rip-offs and a couple Ken-a-likes into the living room. Betty picks the dark haired Ken-a-like out of the pile. "Lets call him Dick," she says.
I wobble the redhead around and say, "He'll be Prick, then."
She grabs dreamy Barbie and I take the Barbie-rip-off. Betty goes into the kitchen to pull a chunk of aluminum foil from the stenciled drawer and I skip to the bathroom to wet down rip-off's frizzy hair. When I get back, Betty says, "What do you think?"
"It looks like a knife."
"Right! We're gonna play Murder Dick."
Prick and Rip-off kiss by the base board. Dick crams his too fat fingers down Dream Date Barbie's polka-dot bikini. She crosses her legs, “Stop that!” Dreamy squeals. Betty gives her the foil knife and Dick slaps her against the baseboard. His pants come down and Dream Date Barbie screams. The Stereo plays, "Everything's alright, yes everything's fine." Dreamy stabs and stabs and stabs Dick. Rip-off starts kicking Prick in the balls. Betty stands up and kicks the dolls. "Stupid dolls—don't know anything," she says. I pull out my sister Tina's purple mousse from the Barbie case. Betty sits back down and blond-Barbie-rip-off becomes Purple Punk Trash.
I say, "It's four thirty."
"Shit!"
The stereo says, "No wait! We need a more permanent solution to our problem."
Betty gathers the dolls. I turn off the record player and close the lid. I watch Betty snuggle Dream Date Barbie and Purple Punk Trash together in my case and that means we are going to the creek. We wheel out of the driveway and take the gravel road down Radical Hill. Betty's Pink Huffy tosses a ribbon of dust in my face and rocks crunch under our tires. Horses swish the last of the bluebottles off their twitching hides and the black dog follows.
"Go home Buddy," I say. The dog stares at me through dust. "Go home!" I shout. He turns around and sulks slowly back to the farmhouse. Betty and I finally spurt into the crunchy grass at the bottom of the hill and lay our bikes down next to the bridge. Betty picks-up a handful of rocks and slides down the thistly, queen anne's laced bank to the creek. Yellowed poison ivy covers one side of the bridge and graffiti covers the other. Betty pitches rocks at the words. The squiggly spray paint rainbow screams:
Jesus Saves
Fuck You
I love Kathy
Who is my mother? Where is my mother?
My God! My God! Why have you forgotten me?
Kathy was here.
Fuck you over again.
Betty pelts all her rocks and we leave our shoes on the bank. The water in Ox Creek feels warmer than the air. For about a hundred years the creek has been collecting trash. Big tread tractor tires, a weighty washing machine where we pretend to do laundry, blue glass bottles and assorted beer cans claiming to be frost brewed and lite hide in the horseweeds. Mom forbids me to come here. She says it is too dangerous. I might catch tetanus. I told her once that Betty comes here alone to the creek. Mom blames Betty now when she has to look for me and finds our bikes by the bridge.
Once, Betty caught impetigo and her stepmother blamed me. She said we couldn’t play Barbie's anymore. My mom says that Betty's stepmother shouldn’t listen to everything stupid doctors say. She says I just had a really bad case of Poison Ivy. Betty got to stay home from school and I had to go.
Betty says, "What's this?" With a long knobby stick, she pokes at a wiggling black trash bag. I wade over to it and rip it open. Gross.
"One's still alive," I yell and pick up the matted fuzz ball, gray kitten half the size of a beer can, "What should we name him?"
"How do you know it's a boy?" Betty asks.
I dangle the fuzz ball in the air, spread its legs and push back its tail.
"Stop it!" Betty screams.
"It's a boy," I say.
"Granite."
I sit on the bank drying matted kitten fur with my flannel shirt and Betty balances on a rock in the middle of the creek poking crawdads with the knobby stick. "Want him?" I ask.
"Can I?"
"Sure"
Betty holds out her hand and I pass her Granite. She says, "He needs food. We should take him home." We splash through the creek, run up the crispy bank, slip on our shoes and pluck our bikes from the ditch. Betty unties the hot-pink bandanna covering the split in her Pink Huffy seat. She wraps-up the kitten and plops him in the basket. Dark, olive sized eyes peer up at her from the wobbling bundle. She loves-on the damp lump and then we walk our bikes up the hill.
The cornfield has just started to yellow. Thick golden ears poke through the tops of browned husks. Last winter, I left the bridle on my horse when I let him into the field for exercise. When I called him back with a bucket of grain, it was gone. Mom saddled Lucky. She let Betty and I trot and giggle all through the field searching for the red bridle. We never found it. When we got back, mom made us hot chocolate. Betty said thank you and sorta hugged my mom with one arm. Her other arm slopped hot chocolate on the floor by the kitchen sink. She cleaned it up herself. Mom likes Betty because she rinses out her cups and takes her wet shoes off on the rag rug in the hall.
"Are you staying for dinner, Betty?"
"Can I?"
"Sure."
We skid into Betty's driveway. Her sister's car is gone and my sister drives by honking and waving. We wave back. My sister drives a used Oldsmobile my father found in his friend’s car lot when Tina turned sixteen. The bumper is covered with stickers that say:
Clergy
My son is an honor roll student at Finley Elementary
Jesus Saves
Peace on Earth
Tina never tries to peel off the stickers. She says it gives her car character. We think it makes her look like a stupid old lady.
In the kitchen, Betty finds a shallow bowl, places it on the floor next to the refrigerator and pours it full of creamy milk. As if the kitten is like some kind of shiny new marble, she opens her palm like one finger at a time. Granite finally finds the floor; trembles, meows, meows, meows, meows.
"How come he won't eat?" Betty asks.
I squat, drag the kitten close to the dish and push his chin into the milk. Betty yells, "Stop it!"
"It's OK," I say, "look, he's eating."
"Cool."
We watch the kitten lap milk till its belly bloats like a water balloon. Then, Betty scoops up Granite and we move into the living room where she turns on the T.V. Little House on the Prairie is on again and Laura Ingles fights with Nellie Olson.
Nellie: Willie told me all about your class project. How's yours coming?
Laura: I haven't started it yet.
Granite curls-up on Betty's belly and Betty tells me to get her a Coke. I get myself one too and we watch Laura and Nellie have it out. Last weekend, Betty stayed over and we watched Reading Rainbow. It was Betty's favorite story, The Last Unicorn. She says that in the book, the prince said, Shit. He says, Oh Darn in the cartoon version. I think it is my favorite movie.
Nellie: I see. It must be very hard tracing all your relatives. Names and everything. Have to spend all that time in the forest or wherever it is you're from.
Laura: It's called the Big Woods and I'll manage thank you.
Nellie: You know the Olson family goes all the way back to royalty. We come from
heads of state and titles for most of my relatives.
A woman with two large suitcases slings the screen door open. Stumbling forward, she struggles with the heavy front door but her black pointed boot pushes it the rest of the way open. The bottom of her slim, acid washed jeans fray, a black belt pinches her waist and a denim shirt wraps around each breast exposing her collar bone. Her long, dark hair is spackled with gray. A sky blue, chiffon scarf pours from her neck and the ends gently fall to a bare shoulder. She blows into the room like a sudden gust of wind.
Laura: Like Nero and Ivan the Terrible?
Betty: Mom!
Betty stands up and the kitten tumbles to the couch.
The Woman: Where's Tina?
Me: Your real mom!?
Betty: I don't know.
Granite: Mew.
The Woman: Hurry-up, we don't have much time.
The woman thrusts a suitcase at Betty and totes the other. I pick up Granite and follow Betty to her bedroom. The woman tells Betty, "Pack all you can in the suitcases." My jaw drops as Betty yanks the chest drawer and starts dashing panties and socks into the hard case. The woman opens the closet door wide and gathers armfuls of clothes. She shoves them, still on hangers, into another hard case.
"Get trash bags now, hurry," and Betty runs into the kitchen. I hear her kick the milk bowl across the yellow linoleum. She comes back with a roll of black plastic bags. The woman stretches and rips one bag off. She pulls the bedspread, pillow and sheets off the twin and shoves them into a bag. She hands it me.
"Put this in the car, now."
With Granite in one hand and Betty's bed sheets in the other, I dart out the front door to the golden car parked in the drive. I open the back door. On the floor, I notice a map of Indiana. There's a McDonalds bag and some pictures of Betty and her sister running down a beach; smiling, waving. I toss the trash bag into the backseat and slam the door. I race back to Betty's room. All the drawers are open and empty like fresh graves. The woman pops the curtains and the rod off the wall. She bends it into half and crams them into another trash bag. Betty piles her stuffed animals, Barbie dolls, Barbie Pool, and Barbie Corvette on top. She crawls under the bed and drags out a dusty box filled with old Valentines, poems and notes.
The Woman: Do you really need all that?
Betty: Yes.
The Woman: Fine. I wish I knew where Tina was.
Me: She was just here.
Granite: Mew.
The woman hands me the bag filled with curtains, Care Bears and Barbie Dolls. She says to hurry and Betty slams the hard orange suitcase. The woman snaps down another with airline tags still attached. I follow them to the golden car. The woman opens the trunk with a key and slings the suitcases and black trash bag into the trunk. The car has temporary tags like my sister Tina's when she turned sixteen.
My mom drives by honking and waving. Betty and I wave back.
The Woman: Who was that?
Betty: Sarah's mom.
Me: I have to go home.
The Woman: Get in, Betty. We're going home, too.
Me: What about Granite?
I suddenly pull him out of my flannel shirt pocket and he bares his claws hissing and spitting.
Betty: Don’t hurt him!
Me:
The Woman: We don't have time for that, Betty.
Betty: Please! Please!
She cradles him in her two hands like he is a fallen star and puts his gray cloud of fur up to her cheek in a snuggling dream.
Me:
The Woman: Don't fight with me now. We've got a long way to go and no time to take care of a half starved kitten.
Betty pushes Granite away from her face and back to my hands. Fat tears fester in her eyes. She swallows hard.
Betty: Fine.
Susan Yount (aka Sissy) was born and raised on a 164-acre farm in Southern Indiana where she learned to drive a tractor, harvest crops, feed the chickens and hug her beloved goat, Cinnamon. She received her BA from Indiana University in Photo-Journalism, and attended Kent State University as a guest graduate.She is the Editor of Arsenic Lobster and works (for pay!) at the Associated Press in Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in several print and online magazines including Can we have our ball back?, Elixir, Bathtub Gin, Wicked Alice, Verse Daily and The Chaffin Journal. Susan is a 2003 recipient of The Lynda Hull Memorial Scholarship in Poetry.
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