You cannot control the things people say. That much I had learned.
Despite Rose blasting Lynyrd Skynyrd on her stereo upstairs, and despite the never-ending shhhh, I heard the initial group of trick-or-treaters drawing near that first Halloween after our parents were gone. More than other years, I had good reason to worry about who might show up at our door. But I tried not to think about that. When I opened up, three girls stood on the stoop. Short skirts rustling in the wind. Torn fishnet stockings. Glittery tops. Ample lip-gloss and eye shadow. At the mouth of our driveway, smoke plumed from the muffler of a station wagon, headlights illuminating the old well and the dirt patch where Rose’s rabbit cage once stood. Those girls couldn’t have been much younger than me, so my voice should not have sounded motherly when I asked, “And what are you young ladies supposed to be?”
They burst into laughter, shrieking out their answer in unison so that it mashed into a single word, “Hookerscantchatell?”
I felt relieved that they had come for candy and nothing more. As I dropped peanut-butter cups and mini candy bars into their sparkly purses, I noticed something shiny down by their heels. Before I could get a closer look, one of the girls began cooing, “Ooh, ooh, ooh! I’ll do anything for an Almond Joy! I mean anything!”
I gave her extra. After all, it wasn’t every day a junior high student showed up on our step pretending to be a candy-addicted prostitute. After I watched them totter back to the station wagon, I bent and picked up a bowl covered in foil.
Once, sometimes twice a week, Rose and I returned home to find foil-wrapped offerings on our doorstep. Casseroles. Lasagnas. Chocolate cakes. Never once did they come accompanied with a note, so we had no idea who left them. As a result, no matter how hungry or tempted, we felt too suspicious to eat them. Instead, Rose shoved all the food on the counter to take out to the trash later.
I carried the bowl into the house and lifted the foil to find a Jell-O mold with walnuts and tangerine slices beneath the surface, like insects embalmed in amber. As usual, no note. I considered sticking my finger in and tasting it anyway.
“What are you doing?”
I turned to see my sister coming down the stairs. Black cape. Pointy hat. Face slathered with green makeup. I’d been so preoccupied with those make-believe hookers and the bowl that I’d failed to notice her music go dead above me.
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing.” Rose reached the bottom of the stairs, took the bowl from my hands, peeked beneath the foil. “What the hell is it?”
Beef bourguignon, I wanted to say. “Jell-O.”
“Did you see anyone leave it?”
I shook my head, which made me think of Louise Hock, the haggard-looking assistant district attorney who attended our meetings with Rummel at the police station. Lately, Louise had begun telling me I needed to get in the habit of speaking my answers, since there would be no nodding allowed when I was questioned in the courtroom come spring. “I didn’t see anyone,” I told Rose.
“Well, I hope you weren’t about to eat it.”
“Seems like a lot of effort just to do us in. By now, whoever it is must realize it’s not exactly working, seeing as we’re still alive.”
“Maybe it’s a slow poison. Or maybe the freak is waiting until we get used to stuffing our faces with these innocent ‘donations’ before sprinkling in Drano. All those goodies down the hatch then—wham!—the unsuspecting Jell-O mold does us in.”
I stared at her, blinking.
“What?” she said.
“Or maybe someone out there feels bad about our situation and is being nice.”
My sister gave the bowl a wiggle, then sniffed the slick red surface before holding it out to me. “Okay, then. If you’re so brave and determined. Help yourself, Sylvie.”
I hesitated, waiting for her to retract the bowl. When she didn’t, I reached two fingers in and scooped out a blob. The walnut inside made me think of those embalmed bugs once more. I opened wide, my breath causing the Jell-O to wiggle on my fingertips, and then, at the last second, said, “I can’t do it,” and tossed it back.
Rose set the bowl aside. “Thought so.” She fussed with the knot on the collar of her cape while telling me about a warehouse party she was going to two hours away in Philly. Normally there was something impenetrable about my sister’s face, but in contrast to all that green, her eyes looked red and tired, her teeth smaller, more yellow. The effect was not scary so much as gloomy.
“You know, Sylvie, it wouldn’t hurt you to act fourteen instead of forty for a change. Throw a sheet over your head. Go out with your friends.”
“I don’t have friends,” I told her.
“Yes, you do. That girl with the weird name and the other one with the weird face.”
“Gretchen moved when her dad got a job in Cleveland.”