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Authors: Dot Hutchison
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room.
When I walked in, dragging my things behind me into the entryway, she was nowhere to be seen. I heard her, though. “If you’re a rapist, I’m all dried up, don’t waste your time! If you’re a thief, I have nothing worth stealing, and if you’re a murderer, shame on you!”
I followed the sound of her voice and finally found her in a small family room with narrow walkways between all the stacks of stuffed animals. She was in an easy chair wearing a full-body tiger-print unitard and a dark brown fur coat, chain-smoking as she watched The Price Is Right on a seven-inch television whose picture wavered and frequently fell to discoloration.
She didn’t even look at me until the commercials. “Oh, you’re here. Upstairs, third door on the right. Be a good girl and bring me the bottle of whiskey on the counter before you go.”
I got it for her—why not—and watched in amazement as she poured the entire bottle into small dishes and bowls in front of the dead cats and dogs lined up on a couch that would have been hideous under the best of circumstances.
“Drink up, my beauties, being dead is no treat, you’ve earned it.”
Whiskey fumes quickly filled the room, joining with the musty scent of fur and stale cigarettes.
Upstairs, third door on the right led into a room full of so many dead animals they tumbled out when I opened the door. I spent the rest of that day and all that night hauling them out and finding places to stick them so I could bring up my things. I slept curled up on top of the biggest suitcase because the sheets were so gross. I spent the next day cleaning the room top to bottom, beating the dust and mouse droppings—and mouse corpses—out of the mattress, and putting my own sheets from home on the bed. When I had everything arranged as close to home as I could manage, I went back downstairs.
The only indication Gran had moved was her unitard, now a bright, shiny purple.
I waited until the commercials and then cleared my throat. “I’ve cleaned out the room,” I told her. “If you put any more dead things in there while I’m living here, I’ll burn the house down.”
She laughed and slapped me. “Good girl. I like your gumption.”
And that was moving in with my Gran.
The setting changed, but life didn’t. She had her groceries delivered once a week by a nervous-looking boy who got a tip almost as big as the grocery bill purely because that was the only way he’d come to our neighborhood. It was pretty simple to call the grocery store and have new things added to the staples. I was enrolled in a school that taught absolutely nothing, where the teachers wouldn’t even take attendance because they didn’t want truancy to stick them with these kids for another year. There were supposed to be some really good teachers in the school, but they were few and far between and I never got any of them. The rest were burned out and just didn’t care anymore as long as they got a paycheck.
The students certainly encouraged that. Drug deals went down right there in the classrooms, even in the elementary school, on behalf of older siblings. When I went up into the middle school, there were metal detectors on every outer door but no one gave a shit or investigated when they went off, which was frequently. No one noticed if you weren’t in class, no one called home to check up on students who’d been gone for several days in a row.
I tested that once, stayed home for a full week. I didn’t even get makeup work when I went back. I only returned because I was bored. Sad, really. I left everyone else alone so they left me alone too. I didn’t leave the house after dark, and every night I fell asleep to a lullaby of gunshots and sirens. And when Gran’s lawn guy came twice a month, I hid under my bed in case he came into the house.
He was probably in his late twenties, maybe a little older, and always wore jeans that were too tight and too low, trying to make the best of a package that
When I walked in, dragging my things behind me into the entryway, she was nowhere to be seen. I heard her, though. “If you’re a rapist, I’m all dried up, don’t waste your time! If you’re a thief, I have nothing worth stealing, and if you’re a murderer, shame on you!”
I followed the sound of her voice and finally found her in a small family room with narrow walkways between all the stacks of stuffed animals. She was in an easy chair wearing a full-body tiger-print unitard and a dark brown fur coat, chain-smoking as she watched The Price Is Right on a seven-inch television whose picture wavered and frequently fell to discoloration.
She didn’t even look at me until the commercials. “Oh, you’re here. Upstairs, third door on the right. Be a good girl and bring me the bottle of whiskey on the counter before you go.”
I got it for her—why not—and watched in amazement as she poured the entire bottle into small dishes and bowls in front of the dead cats and dogs lined up on a couch that would have been hideous under the best of circumstances.
“Drink up, my beauties, being dead is no treat, you’ve earned it.”
Whiskey fumes quickly filled the room, joining with the musty scent of fur and stale cigarettes.
Upstairs, third door on the right led into a room full of so many dead animals they tumbled out when I opened the door. I spent the rest of that day and all that night hauling them out and finding places to stick them so I could bring up my things. I slept curled up on top of the biggest suitcase because the sheets were so gross. I spent the next day cleaning the room top to bottom, beating the dust and mouse droppings—and mouse corpses—out of the mattress, and putting my own sheets from home on the bed. When I had everything arranged as close to home as I could manage, I went back downstairs.
The only indication Gran had moved was her unitard, now a bright, shiny purple.
I waited until the commercials and then cleared my throat. “I’ve cleaned out the room,” I told her. “If you put any more dead things in there while I’m living here, I’ll burn the house down.”
She laughed and slapped me. “Good girl. I like your gumption.”
And that was moving in with my Gran.
The setting changed, but life didn’t. She had her groceries delivered once a week by a nervous-looking boy who got a tip almost as big as the grocery bill purely because that was the only way he’d come to our neighborhood. It was pretty simple to call the grocery store and have new things added to the staples. I was enrolled in a school that taught absolutely nothing, where the teachers wouldn’t even take attendance because they didn’t want truancy to stick them with these kids for another year. There were supposed to be some really good teachers in the school, but they were few and far between and I never got any of them. The rest were burned out and just didn’t care anymore as long as they got a paycheck.
The students certainly encouraged that. Drug deals went down right there in the classrooms, even in the elementary school, on behalf of older siblings. When I went up into the middle school, there were metal detectors on every outer door but no one gave a shit or investigated when they went off, which was frequently. No one noticed if you weren’t in class, no one called home to check up on students who’d been gone for several days in a row.
I tested that once, stayed home for a full week. I didn’t even get makeup work when I went back. I only returned because I was bored. Sad, really. I left everyone else alone so they left me alone too. I didn’t leave the house after dark, and every night I fell asleep to a lullaby of gunshots and sirens. And when Gran’s lawn guy came twice a month, I hid under my bed in case he came into the house.
He was probably in his late twenties, maybe a little older, and always wore jeans that were too tight and too low, trying to make the best of a package that
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