That’s what I first believed anyway.
But those thoughts gathered in my mind only for a moment. In the next, I noticed my mother’s necklace, gold instead of silver, tight around her neck. The loose bun she wore to church not held up by bobby pins, but staples. My father’s blazer may have been brown, but his pants were black and torn beneath one knee. His shirt, white rather than the mustard yellow he favored, was splattered with a substance meant to look like blood but too bright to be the real thing. The lenses of his glasses were popped out; without the usual smudges, I had a clear view of the cold, unfamiliar eyes beneath.
No longer was it enough to call me names in the halls.
No longer was it enough to knock down our mailbox.
No longer was it enough to toss rag dolls on our lawn.
Where would it end? I wondered. What would it take for them to leave us alone? Scream, slam the door, crumble to the floor—any of those reactions seemed possible until all that I’d read about my parents’ childhoods returned to me. I thought of the way people mistreated them each time they offered a glimpse into their inner worlds. What good did it do my father to let his family know of the things he saw? What good did it do my mother to confess her ties to those ruined birdhouses? And then I thought of the kindness they always showed people, and I resolved to do the same. Those boys may as well have dressed as bums or superheroes, I offered the candy basket no differently.
“Go ahead,” I said as they stared at me, expecting something more.
After some hesitation, the boy dressed as my mother reached out his large, knuckley hand and foraged through the basket, coming away with a couple of Charleston Chews. The boy dressed as my father did the same, grabbing Milk Duds and Sweet Tarts. My gaze shifted over their shoulders to the end of the driveway, where reflectors moved round and round, glimmering like the eyes of a demon out there in the dark. More boys on bikes, I realized. All the while, the Hulk licked and chewed her bone, not bothering to offer up so much as a growl.
“Can we see the doll?” my father, or the one dressed like him, asked.
“No,” I told him.
“Where is she?” This question came from the one dressed like my mother.
I thought of Penny in the basement, slumped inside her cage, the sign written in my father’s handwriting attached to the door: DO NOT OPEN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES! Abandoned down there all these months, the spiders had likely made a home out of her, crawling across her moon face, stringing webs between her floppy arms. “She’s at the bottom of the well,” I told those boys, a lie hatched out of old wishes.
“The well?” this version of my father repeated.
“We put it down there with all the others you and everybody else throw on our lawn. Go get it and the rest of them if you want.”
With that, I slammed the door. Standing there in the dark, flashlight in hand, I listened to their feet thump down the steps. I went to the window and watched as they shoved off the plywood, same as I’d done a few nights before. I knew from experience they’d never see a thing in the absolute blackness below. Soon, the boys realized it too, because they gave up and headed to the street, where their friends still pedaled in figure eights. The boy in the dress tugged off his wig and dropped it among the cedars before picking up a bike by the curb. The boy in the blazer climbed on the back before they pedaled away into the night.
Once they were gone, my hands, my body, all of me began to shake. In an effort to make the trembling stop, I roamed the living room, dining room, kitchen, moving aimlessly through the shadows. I pictured my parents the last time I saw them. Snow gathering on the shoulders of my father’s wool coat as he stepped from the car. Wind gusting my mother’s hair when she got out too. Then I remembered stepping inside that church, where the air was so still, so absolutely frigid, it stung my lungs with every breath. Something smoky mixed with the faint trace of incense. It took time for my eyes to adjust, but once they did, I made out three silhouettes near the altar.
“Hello,” I called out, the word pluming in the air like a question: Hello?
To distract myself, I located the diary Boshoff had given me. I forced myself to think of some other memory, to put it down in order to keep so many others at bay. That night in Ocala came to mind, and I started writing and did not stop or bother to even look up until the Hulk barked outside.