Hide & seek

Curious fingers combing overgrown Missouri grass with skin stained by bitter berries, ripe and dirty. Wash my hands with dandelion milk, scorch them with cigarette ash. Scraped knees, scabbed elbows, and swollen mosquito bites cover me like trophies of summertime. 

“Come inside, sweet pea,” Mimi whistles through her gapped teeth. I join her in the kitchen. She’s got a fresh strawberry shortcake for me, it’s in a fancy crystal dish. “How big a piece do you want?” We cut a slice and I take a few bites, grinning. This is the only product of her cooking that I ever eat, but I don’t know that it’s actually store bought.

On the wooden front porch you can see the whole green world. The only other house in sight is a small white square when you squint and everything else is rolling earth. I like sitting out here in the mornings when breaths are wet with dew. Mimi and Uncle Joey try to hide their cigarettes behind their backs but I can see the smoke coming off them. The smell of cigarettes and bacon frying makes me remember this place.

The air in the garden is so humid that its thick to cut through with running legs. Uncle Joey takes me and Arty out to pick what’s ripe. 

“A tomato is ripe when it’s red and little squishy, like this,” Uncle Joey squeezes a red tomato on the vine. “If it’s green, it’s still growing.” He shows me the strawberries, which also grow green and ripen red. 

“Watermelons are tricky, ‘cause they’re always green on the outside. You can tell if they’re ripe by knockin’ on ‘em” he knocks on a watermelon and tells us it’s not ready. “You gotta listen closely.”

My dad lived here when he was in high school. The farmhouse they used to live in collapsed so Mimi and Pops bought the double trailer and parked it next to the chicken coop. Before he died, Pops built the porch so they could sit and smoke and watch their old house fall in. Uncle Joey tells me it’s haunted, Dad says the ghosts are nice.

Arty and me love playing card games with Dad, he’s really good but sometimes he lets me or Arty win and he’ll laugh wink at me because I’m smart enough to be able to tell. 

“Why don’t we play a game of Go-fish with Arty,” he says after I beg for another game of War. I sigh and nod, I like how excited Arty gets when he’s got a pair. 

“Got any eights?” I ask him.

“No, go fishin’ Eleanor!” Arty grins, so enraptured that we have to keep telling him not to stand on his seat. 

After a few rounds of Go-fish we peel the playing cards off the sticky plastic tablecloth and Mimi rings the supper bell. I help by getting ice glasses for the Cokes. Everyone files through the kitchen, filling their plates with baked and boiled food. I poke at my cornbread, uncomfortable at the dinner table. 

If Mom were here, she would take me and Arty into the living room and put cartoons on while Dad and the rest of the family stayed at the table. She would help us make it look like we ate a lot and promise a happy meal later. 

After supper, Mimi and Uncle Joey go outside to smoke and Arty and me help Dad clear the table. The wall phone rings, but Dad just continues piling dishes in the sink.

“Aren’t you going to pick up?” I ask.

He looks outside like one of the other grown ups out there smoking might answer for him, but he looks back down at me and says, “Why don’t you and Arty go catch some lightning bugs?” so we gallop outside. 

I forget that the stars are always above me, even during the day, until we come to the farm and can see them all on a clear night. Dad says there’s too much light pollution in Chicago to see hardly any of them. I love them, I wish they wouldn’t hide behind light. 

I look up to see the stars but the sky is cloudy. Arty is behind me and the two of us scramble around in the field trying to cup the lightning bugs in our hands. They flash their tails in the dark to help us find them. I make sure Arty is so gentle with them, and lets them fly away when they want to. I almost can’t even feel them in my hand, if I closed my eyes I probably wouldn’t even know I was holding one. Arty cries for me to see when they light up in his palms, but by the time I look they have flashed off. 

Pops used to warn us of the creatures that prowl through the tall grass at night, that they’d think we were trespassing on their territory. I’m scared of the snakes that might be ankle-high, but I can’t imagine coming across a coyote, even though I know they live in the woods behind the garden. 

“Hey, your dad says it’s about y’all’s bedtime,” Uncle Joey calls from the porch and we follow him inside.

After supper and a smoke is always the grown ups’ game of Hearts. Laying cards down, their muted voices overlap and the iced Cokes sweat rings of water on the gingham tablecloth.

Arty is bathed and put to bed and then it’s my turn.

“Good night, babygirl,” Mimi kisses my face, “Sweet dreams.”

“Don’t let the mosquitos bite,” Uncle Joey hugs me with one arm.

Dad takes me to the bathroom where the orange shag carpet floor switches to tile, and we run my bath and pick out my bath toys. 

“Good night, Eleanor,” Dad says, closing the door behind him. 

I think about this bathroom often, the bathtub is the size and shape of a blow-up kiddie pool, and there are mirrors around half of it. After Dad leaves, I’m left alone with six images of myself gazing blankly back at me. The sounds I make splashing in the water sound almost fake echoing off the mirrored walls. The toilet has a shaggy rust-colored seat cover, matching the carpet outside the door. 

I can hear the voices of the grown ups in the other room, but in this bathroom I feel isolated and alone. The water is getting cold, so I pull on the drain and wrap up in a towel. There are two more mirrors above the two sinks in this bathroom. I pick the mirror over the sink with perfume and hair pins next to it to comb my hair in. The other sink’s got cologne and aftershave around it from before Pops died. 

I pull on a nightgown over my head because I only ever wear nightgowns when I’m here. Mimi thinks I like them, and she collects them for me, but they all itch and irritate my skin. 

Me and Arty sleep in the big bedroom that’s next to the bathroom, so I creep in and close the door behind me. I crawl underneath a scratchy quilt and try to fall asleep without saying goodnight to Mom.

I wake up to oil sizzling and the smell of bacon cooking in it. Arty is always up before me, he’s already on the couch watching cartoons. My bare feet pad into the living room to greet everyone.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Uncle Joey drawls over his cup of coffee. I’m surprised he’s already here, he doesn’t live here and usually doesn’t make it here for breakfast. 

Dad is sitting in Pops’ old recliner scowling over the newspaper. I jump into his lap.

“Do you think we could go to Kansas City today?” I ask him. We hadn’t left the farm since we had gotten here a few days ago, and I knew that Kansas City was just a short drive away. 

He folds up the paper and tucked it behind the chair before answering.

“No, Eleanor, you know, I think Uncle Joey has a project for you and Arty in the garden, today,” he nods at Uncle Joey. Me and Arty both turn to Uncle Joey expectantly.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Uncle Joey clears his throat. “I’m gonna need you guys to help me out today.”

“With what?” Arty peels the last of his attention off of the television, sticking it to whatever we are talking about. 

Uncle Joey runs his hand through his dark hair, something he does often. “Oh, you know, we’ll feed the neighbor’s horses.”

“Really?” I say. I love watching those horses, they have names I’ve given them that I can’t remember. 

“Yeah, really,” Uncle Joey smiles. His teeth and breath are yellow from coffee and cigarettes. 

The sizzling sound stops which means breakfast is ready. Dad piles his plate with flapjacks, he’s eaten these for breakfast since he was my age. Arty takes Mimi’s bacon, which is always burnt, but I fill a cereal bowl with cold watermelon from the garden that we cut up yesterday. I don’t trust Mimi’s cooking because she spits when she talks and she never stops talking, most of the time just with herself. 

We all sit around the table, under Mimi’s collection of novelty gold and copper cake pans. Hummingbirds feed from the nectar Mimi leaves hanging outside the screen door,  the green world outside is waking up, too. 

“Mimi, Uncle Joey’s taking us to feed the neighbor’s horses today,” I say.

Mimi looks up from her plate and adjusts her bifocals. “I heard, sweet pea, that’s somethin’ exciting.”

“Y’all better promise to be careful around those horse’s mouths, though, you’d be surprised at how hard they can bite,” Uncle Joey says. He thinks this is funny, but me and Arty’s faces express our anxious reactions. 

“Uncle Joey thinks it’s funny to scare y’all,” Mimi whacks Uncle Joey’s chest with the back of her wrinkly hand. “Shut up, Joe, what would their mama say?” 

Dad coughs and Uncle Joey spills hot coffee on the table. The spill expands across the checkered tablecloth and the grown ups all toss around napkins trying to contain it. Arty and me just sit there.

We decide we are too scared of getting bit to feed the horses, so Arty and me play hide and seek with Uncle Joey in the garden. Uncle Joey hides in obvious spots, he probably thinks we couldn’t find him if he actually tried hiding himself well. But Arty and me, we know all the best hiding spots. Dad showed them to us when we visited the farm last summer, he said he was always better at hide and seek than his brothers because these spots where his secret weapons. 

“All right, hide yourselves,” Uncle Joey says and covers his eyes with his hands. Arty laughs and we take off in opposite directions. “One, two, three, four, five,”

I sprint to the front porch and pull at the bottom right corner of the wooden lattice just like Dad showed us. It leaves just enough room for someone my size to crawl around it and hide in the shadows under the porch. 

“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Ready or not, here I come!” Uncle Joey calls. I can’t see him, but I’ll be able to hear if he gets close. I expect it’ll take him a while to find me, I only hope Arty’s spot isn’t better than mine. 

I can hear Uncle Joey walking through the grass, then across the gravel, then padding around in the dirt. He rustles crates sitting around and shakes the branches on trees. A car pulls up, the wheels crunching on the gravel driveway. I think it’s probably Uncle Bobby’s van or Uncle Wayne’s truck, I think Mimi said they were coming over for supper later. 

“Good morning, officers,” I hear Uncle Joey’s voice carry across the yard. 

There are voices I don’t recognize that speak after Uncle Joey. I’m too surprised to make out what they ask him, but Uncle Joey responds, “Sorry, officers, I don’t know where they are.”

One of the voices asks about his brother. “When was the last time you seen him?” 

“Gee, I don’t know, not for a while,” Uncle Joey says. I imagine him running his hand through his hair. 

“Isn’t that his car, that blue Toyota?” one of the strangers says. I think they are talking about Dad’s car, it’s a good blue for a car. Not too dark and it’s faded a little from sitting in the sun. 

“Oh, yeah, huh. Maybe he is here, I just got here myself, haven’t gone inside yet,” Uncle Joey says. 

“Cut the crap act, Joe, where are they?” a lady says. She sounds like my mom. In the shadows under the porch, I wonder if my Mom could be here, too. 

“Meg, is that you back there? How are you?” Uncle Joey asks. Hand through the hair. 

Car doors slam and Uncle Joey starts shouting. I come out from under the porch and see a two officers standing in front of a police car and standing next to them is my mom. 

“Mom!” I say. The grown ups don’t hear me from over here, not over Uncle Joey’s shouting and kicking up dirt. “Mom!”

Mom’s head cocks, wondering if she heard me call her or if she had maybe imagined it. She had been imagining it pretty often since we had been missing. She turns around anyway, though, and sees me standing next to the double trailer. Arty comes out from a pile of tractor tires, realizing our game of hide and seek is over. Dad comes out from inside the house, knowing it, too.