1.

I'm not sure how these things work, but after the man from the city left, Marco told me he'd said we would have to move out. The house, he said, wasn't good to live in because of all the leaks and because it leaned over so much. He said you could see it from the alley, the way the house leaned over like it would fall down. But I knew it didn't lean and I knew it would never fall over. The house needed some painting but I knew it was good to live in. My Grandmother lived there before she died. Even after grandfather left with the lady at the beauty parlor Grandmother went to on Sunday afternoons, Grandmother stayed in the house. When she died she left me the house. I was always the favorite grandchild. 

My mother hurt a lot when I was born because I weighed eleven pounds, which I heard is big. I don't know much about babies though. I dropped out of school before they got to babies. I left school on my seventeenth birthday because Mrs. McLew was telling me about computers and ones and zeros. Seemed pretty stupid to me that anyone would have to know how one computer talked to another computer so I walked out and did not go back. I had an uncle who died a few years back. He quit school too because everybody laughed at him one day. Later mom told me he was an alcoholic. That was before her and dad moved to Florida. Or Georgia. It was a state that ended in an uh. Me and my family never talked much after Grandmother left me the house. I was always the favorite grandchild.

2.
It was just after the man from the city came by and told Marco we would have to leave when we found Hester. We didn't know her name and she wouldn't talk so we named her Hester. Hester was my Grandmother's name. Marco said he found her sitting against one of the big orange dumpsters in the alley. She wouldn't say a word to him there so he helped her up to the house. She was dirty and her hair was tangled and clotted with mud. She'd been out during the thunderstorm last night probably. Her right eye was swollen shut and puffy with a bruise. Her dress was ripped and stained from the dirt in the alley. Marco told me to get her some water and call the police about her because he had to go to work. Marco washed dishes at the nursing home three blocks over. He liked taking care of old people. I didn't have a job just at the time. I mowed lawns when it was warm. Nothing much grows in the winter. 

I had a lawn mower out in the shed in back of the house. It worked good enough and I kept the blades sharp enough to cut grass nice and smooth. Grandmother had left me that too. She didn't even tell me about it, just one day I found it. There was a lot of rusted cans in a bag behind the mower but we threw those away. Marco was always on me about being clean. Marco bought food and gave letters to the postman so the toilet and the lights would stay on and I let him live here for free. It was good to have a house and food. I tried to keep the house clean since Marco worked all the time.

3.
Hester still wouldn't talk and when Marco got home that night she hadn't said a word. He was mad because she was here but we didn't have a phone and I didn't have a quarter for the pay phone two blocks over. I didn't have much besides a house, a lawn mower and food, but that's a lot if you think about it. It was late so Marco said Hester could spend the night. It was kind of weird sitting around in the room with Hester when Marco was in the shower. She looked at me sometimes like she wanted to talk but couldn't. Once she started to cry but stopped after about a minute. I remembered this girl named Heather I knew in the third grade. Hester reminded me of what Heather would have grown up to look like. Heather died of leukemia when I was thirteen. I guess Heather was thirteen too. 

Hester still hadn't spoke when Marco got out of the shower and went to bed. I stayed up and looked at her some more and wondered why Heather and me had never even said hello to one another. That night I tried some more to talk to Hester. She would not even nod or blink. I fell asleep and when I woke up the next morning Hester was still sitting in the corner of the room, her back straight as the wall. She had good posture. Mom always used to get on to me about slouching over, but I bet Hester's mom was always telling her what good posture she had. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her arms were wrapped around her legs. Her dress was too short for her to sit like that because you could see her panties between where her legs came together. Her panties were stained from the mud. I didn't like the feeling I got from looking down there. It made my stomach feel like...well, once when I was eight years old I was playing at my mom and dad's old house before they moved to Georgia. Or Iowa. And it was raining. There was a mud puddle below the porch and I jumped off into it. When I landed in the water I heard this noise like a burp. And at the same time it was like a popping sound. When I dug around in the mud puddle to see what that noise was, I found this kind of warm lump. When I pulled it out of the water it was a frog that was flattened out. My stomach made me feel like I was lying to someone or cheating at a card game. I didn't like that feeling at all and here it was again. 

4.
I am writing this down now. What I wrote about first was stuff that already happened. That's why I used words like "was." When I was fifteen I failed my English class because my teacher said that in a paper I was supposed to write everything in now tense, like it was happening right then. She said some other stuff too but that is mostly what I remember. Seemed kind of stupid to me that I was supposed to act like stuff that had already happened was just now happening when I was writing it. How can you write just when something is happening? You can't write that fast because so much happens so fast. By the time I wrote that last sentence I already thought of new things to say but now I can't remember them. When I remember them I will write them in past tense because that is how they happened. Or is it "that was how they happened?" See, that is why I don't like writing. I am never sure the difference between what has happened then and what is happening now. I know, but I don't know when to stop writing about stuff in the past and start writing about stuff now. Anyway, everything that I wrote earlier I put in the past because that is when it happened by now. Everything I am writing now is happening now unless it happens faster than I can write it. Hester is asleep right now so I can keep up with what is happening. Things happen slower when it is just you awake in the house. Marco is at work and Hester is asleep. I am writing this sentence. Oh, I guess I should tell you that the things I said in past tense really were in the past. Hester has been here three days. 

Marco was mad. Marco is still mad now as far as I know but he isn't here right now. He's at work. He washes dishes at the nursing home. I think this is the first time that Hester has been asleep since she got here. She might have slept some when I was asleep but I couldn't write about it because I was asleep. I am awake now. I got Hester to drink some water yesterday. She still didn't talk. She hasn't talked yet. I think Hester smells funny because she is so dirty and I think I will ask Marco if we can give her a bath. Marco has helped give people baths before because he works at the nursing home and sometimes the nurses need extra help. Should I put that in past tense or now tense? (He used to work there but he still does.) I don't know much about how these things work. I might give Hester a bath before Marco gets home and he won't know. You can't really see what is going on when you aren't right there. I don't know how anyone can write anything in now tense for very long. There are too many places you are not at. 

5.
You can't write things down while you are trying to give people a bath so I am going to use words like "was" when I tell you about the bath I gave Hester. You just have to remember everything like it was when you go to write about it. I found out why Hester smelled bad. Sometime during the night she peed herself. And it wasn't just a little bit. She peed all over herself and the carpet beneath her bottom. When I went to help her up, she got up easy and walked with me to the bathroom. That was when I saw the dark spot on the carpet. 

I started running some water and she just looked at the faucet like something scary was going to come out of it. But I ran the water plenty hot and then I started to do something I had never done before. I unzipped her dress and spread the collar of it out over her shoulders. She didn't act like it bothered her. I never helped a girl get undressed before. I have seen pictures of girls without any clothes on and they were pretty but it isn't the same as having a girl in front of you breathing and alive and everything. Something about a girl being undressed in front of you is prettier than seeing a girl in a magazine already undressed. Hester had scratch marks all on her back (she still does right now when I am writing this) and she also had a tattoo just above that place on a girl where her back starts to turn into her butt. It was a blue sun. Like the sun we see every day but it was blue. (It still is blue.) 

But then she was naked right in front of me except for her panties. She was not wearing a brassiere. I didn't want her to turn around because then I would see her...well, them. I felt like it would make me sick like I was going to throw up. I started to feel, you know, down there, like I did when I saw those girls in those magazines except it was different because she was right there with me. I figured her panties needed to be washed anyway so I didn't take them off. 

I put her down in the water and I really wished Marco was there because he knew how to give baths right. Water was spilling over the edge of the bathtub whenever I tried to wash her real good. She had hair under her armpits and on her legs. The water was turning brown as mud. I soaped her up all over except for places where you aren't supposed to touch a girl. I didn't wash them. I tried not to look at them either but I did. They were pretty and the pink things were big. I felt really sick. I washed the mud out of her hair with soap. Her hair was brown when it was clean too. When Hester was all clean her eye didn't look like it was swollen up as much as it was. After that I cleaned up the rug where she peed.

6.
Marco just walked in while I am writing this. I was writing about giving Hester a bath when he came in. He just asked if Hester had taken a bath and if she had talked yet. Hester is asleep again. I think Marco wants to talk to me so I will write about it in a little while. 

He wanted to talk and he's really mad. He said it was bad that I had given her a bath but I told him I hadn't touched them. Then he was really mad. He's smart. I wish I knew as much about perverts and lost girls as him. He said I was a pervert for washing her like that. He said she was a lost girl and that people were probably looking for her. I think since somebody left her at the dumpster in my alley they knew where to find her if they wanted her back. I liked the way it made me feel down there when I saw them. I like her being here. 

Another thing Marco said was that we need to start looking for another house to live in or an apartment. He also told me that I would have to get a job for the winter too, when the grass isn't growing. They don't have any jobs at the nursing home which is too bad because it would be good working with Marco. He is my best friend. But I don't know, I like Hester too. I wish she would talk. I talk to her a lot. I wonder what we would talk about if she talked back. I bet she is a lot like Heather would have been if she had not died. Heather died, but Hester didn't. Writing is stupid sometimes because the words won't let you say what you mean. You sometimes means me and she can either mean Hester or Heather sometimes.

7.
Marco says we have to move out of the house by the end of the month. I am not sure what day it is. I think we have about five or six weeks before the end of the month. I don't want to get a job and I don't know why I have to move out of my house. It is my house. My Grandmother left it for me. I was always the favorite grandchild. 

8.
I woke up this morning and Marco was already at work. Hester wasn't on the couch where she has been sleeping or in the corner where she usually sits. I went into the kitchen and she was eating our cereal. I asked her if this was the first thing she had eaten since Marco brought her here but she didn't say anything back. I watched her eat and when she finished, she started to walk around the house and just look at stuff. She walked into Marco's room and started spinning a globe on his desk. When it stopped spinning I realized something that I want to write about. I heard in school that America was the West and China was the East. When I was looking at China, I saw how it could be East or West of anywhere. You could go either way and get somewhere. It just depended on where you were looking at the globe from. That is how things are in a circle...that is what the globe is, a circle in lots of directions...one thing can be anywhere and in any direction from anything on a circle. That means East and West don't mean anything and so there must not be any directions you can go on a circle.

9.
Now Marco is really mad. Wait, he was really mad. (I think he still is.) We were talking about where we were going to live and he said that he wished I would help him look. I told him I didn't know which streets to look on because I didn't know where any houses were that we could live in. I like living here because we have food and lights and a bathtub. We have everything. We even know where all the leaks are in the ceiling so we have cups and pans sitting out just so the water will drop into them. If we moved to a new house we wouldn't know where to put all the pans and things. He gets so mad at me sometimes he rubs his eyes with his hands and just walks away. I wish I knew about enough stuff so that I could rub my eyes like that. He looks smart when he does it like that and I can tell that he is thinking that he is smarter than me. 

10.
I am thinking about this so I will write it down. When I was talking earlier about the globe and how it was a circle I was thinking how everything didn't have a direction. And now I am thinking that Marco and me and Hester make up a circle like the globe. We are on this circle because I have a house and Marco has food and so he gives me food and I let him live in my house. And it is a circle but I don't know where Hester is. She has to be on the circle somewhere because it is a circle. She might just be in the house which is on the circle. Somewhere she is on the circle because everything is on the circle and you can't help but be on the circle somewhere. That is just how it is with the house and the food and me and Marco. 

Marco is watching me write this and he says. Wait, no, he said that he wished I would stop playing like I was writing a novel and start looking for a house to live in. He said we have to leave my house in two days. I wonder if anyone from the city ever tried to make Grandmother leave my house back before it was my house. The end of the month is not as long as five or six weeks or five or six weeks went really fast. Things happen fast when there is a lot going on. When you are helping a girl as pretty as Hester take a bath and helping her get undressed then things are pretty fast. I wonder if we are going around the circle at different speeds and how can we go at a speed if there is not any directions we can go in. I think it would be good for Hester and me to talk about it sometime. 

11.
Marco is putting all our stuff into boxes. Even the pans and cups that catch the water. He must be really mad because he keeps rubbing his eyes like he always does when he is smarter than me. He said that he found a place a few blocks over where he can live at. He told me I could sleep on his floor for a few days but then I would have to go. I don't know where he wants me to go because he said that I couldn't come back here because they would lock it up. I told him that I had a key to my house but he just rubbed his eyes. I wish I was that smart. 

Hester is sitting with her back against the wall. She is straight up and down. She puts her legs up sometimes and I can see down there where her panties are. I don't feel sick anymore when I look down there. I wish she would get dirty again so I could wash her again. I would wash them this time. Marco wants me to help him carry some boxes to the new apartment. (He wanted me to.) (But he still wants me to right now.) (When I read this again he will not want me to anymore because it will have already happened unless I read it again right now.)

12.
I am just about to carry more boxes. The new house is not as good as my house. There is only one room and a bathroom. I don't even know where we will have to put the pans down. Hester followed us over and then followed me back here. Marco stayed there and told me to bring another box while he puts our things up. I don't like carrying the boxes because they make my arms hurt. I don't want to leave my house. I bet if I tell the people from the city how my Grandmother left me the house they will let me stay here. Hester can stay on the couch like she is now and nobody will make us leave and pretty soon she will talk to me and I can tell her about Heather and about my Grandmother and how I was the favorite grandchild. Somebody is knocking on the front door.

13.
I am writing this right now at the new house which is an apartment. Hester talked! The knock on the door was the man from the city except there were three policemen with him this time and they told me I had to leave. Right when they said that, Hester walked out on the front porch and she looked at the house. She said it looked like it would fall over. I wanted to tell her about Heather and my Grandmother and how I was the favorite grandchild and about the frog and how my mom and dad were in Georgia or one of those places that ended with uh, and how we were all in a circle, and how sometimes now tense and past tense get all mixed up, and how sometimes she is Heather, but it seemed like things were happening too fast. One of the policemen took Hester over to his car and it didn't seem like I had time to say anything. 
 
 

Copyright © 1997 Marcus Todd Heldt 
 

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