And we stood like that in absolute silence, for a minute or more, and then he closed the door and went into his room.
The next day I found a book slid under the mattress of the bed, sandwiched in between the patchwork quilt and a scalloped dust ruffle: A Children’s Guide to Insects and Spiders. I knew it was from him. When Joseph went to work, and Matthew and Isaac disappeared down the street, joining the other kids at the bus stop, those kids who heckled them and called them names, I sat on that bed of mine and devoured the book.
Momma had sent me to school back in Ogallala, and that school had taught me to read, and Momma used to make me read to her every night before bed, everything from her fashion magazines to the Julia Child cookbooks to the mail. I was a good reader. I wolfed down that book from Matthew on the very first day, and then slipped it back into his room, under his bed before he and Isaac, or Joseph, got home. I learned everything I could about earwigs and mantids, cicadas and damselflies. I learned that horseflies live for thirty to sixty days, that queen bees hibernate in the dirt in winter, that periodical cicadas only appear every thirteen or seventeen years.
A few days later, a new book arrived: Sea Anemones. I read how they looked like flowers, but really were not. Instead, they were predators of the sea. They didn’t age like others plants and animals. They had the ability to live forever, to be immortal, the book said. That book taught me how the sea anemone injected venom into its prey, and how that venom paralyzed the prey so the sea anemone could swoop fish, shrimp and plankton into their carnivorous mouths.
I didn’t like those sea anemones one bit: so pretty and celestial, and yet assassins. Would-be murderers in delicate, angelic bodies. It didn’t seem fair. It was a trick, a trap, an illusion.
A few days later: Rocks and Minerals. And then another book, and another. Nearly every week Matthew was slipping another book from the school’s library under my mattress: Charlotte’s Web and The Diary of a Young Girl and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I read in the moments that I wasn’t cleaning house or bathing Miriam, or making tuna salad sandwiches for dinner.
Every now and again, Matthew would pause by my bedroom door in the middle of the night, along the way to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a glass of water. I got to know which footsteps were Matthew’s and which belonged to Joseph. Matthew’s footsteps were light and airy as they moved down the hall, then hesitant as he closed in on my room, as if not knowing whether or not they should pause by my bedroom door. Joseph’s, on the other hand, had their minds made up. They were coming to my room, right through the white door without a second thought or a moment’s hesitation.
Matthew pulled the door open carefully, so it wouldn’t squeak, while Joseph flung it straight open, never mind if its bellowing woke someone in the house. Matthew stayed a couple seconds, at best, and would offer some tidbit of information that really, I didn’t give two shits about and chances are he didn’t, either. I came to understand it wasn’t about the information itself but the exchange: a pact, a bond.
I was not alone.
One night: “Did you know a crocodile can’t stick out its tongue?” And another: “Did you know nothing rhymes with orange?” and I admitted that no, I didn’t know that, and spent the rest of the sleepless night trying to come up with something to rhyme with orange. Something so that I could tell him about it the next time he passed by. Porange. Yorange. Florange.
Nope. Nothing.
“Did you know Venus is the hottest planet? It’s surface can be 450 degrees Celsius. That’s over 800 degrees.” And I kind of just stared because really, I didn’t know much about Celsius or Fahrenheit, and in all honesty, I was starting to forget all about Venus. It had been so long since I’d sat in a classroom back in Ogallala and learned about the planets and weather and all that. The next day there was another book: a book on astronomy.
One night Matthew passed through and said to me, “Did you know my folks get almost twenty bucks a day to foster you?”
“What?” I asked. I’d never heard of such a thing. “From who?” I wondered if the money was coming from what little money Momma and Daddy used to have, or if my caseworker was paying my fare.
But in the near darkness, Matthew shook his head and said, “From the good ol’ state of Nebraska. That’s who.” He stood in the doorway, in the plaid pants he wore every night to bed, and a white undershirt with yellow stains down the front, two inches too short for his lanky body.
“Lily, too?” I asked, wondering if Paul and Lily Zeeger were making twenty bucks a day to care for Lily.