When I was thirteen, Winnie decided to adopt two children from a woman who lived in a seedy motel. A four year old girl, and a two year old boy. What an idea! Two adorable children to run and fetch for us! Two wonderful little slaves! Apart from enslaving them we changed their names. We called them Quack and Beetle. Quack was beautiful, with bright blue eyes and fine wispy white hair. Beetle had green eyes and golden curls. Quack meowed for the first year or so, and Beetle didn’t talk until he was five. And even then, the only thing he said was “stupid idiot”.
Quack was the daughter my mother never had. She was fair and sweet and completely devoted to her. Not mouthy and robust like the rest of us. She even looked like Winnie. Beetle was Lucy’s little prodigy, he was the little boy she never got to be.
Beetle was very enterprising as a child. He was a lover of insects and animals alike, dead or alive. When he was eight he started catching gigantic moths. He would kill them, then sell their corpses to the children who passed in front of our house on their way home from school. He would charge $2.50 per carcass.
It occurred to Winnie that something wasn’t right when she had taken Beetle to the grocery store one day, and realized she had forgotten to bring her purse. She was astonished to find him produce a wad of cash three inches deep and say “Don‘t worry Mom, I‘ll take care of this.” By this time it was too late to make him give refunds, so with the rest of the money, she and Beetle purchased a small bird farm, which included, eight geese, three ducks four chickens and a plethera of homing pigeons. Winnie thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to teach Beetle, accountability and the importance of caring for God‘s little creatures.
By the end of the second week, Beetle’s fowl farm was reduced to two geese, one duck, no chickens and three homing pigeons. He couldn’t account for the severe loss of life! It wasn’t the weather, it wasn’t that they didn’t get enough food, and it wasn’t’ that they were purposely being snuffed out by anyone. Pap said one day as he had gathered up an arm full of feathery remains from the back yard “That kid’s killed more birds than that comet killed dinosaurs.“ The birds didn’t just die on our property. For days we had a continual stream of neighbors bringing corps after coprs and saying “Is this yours?” or “I found this on the hood of my car“ or “I don’t know how the thing got into my tool box, but here it is”.
It was obvious that Beetle failed miserably in the ‘caring for God’s little creatures’ department. After that he wasn’t allowed to take care of anything. If we ever caught him refilling Headcold’s bowl of food we would say “Oh no Beetle, I’ll do that, you go out and play!”
When Quack was young she would disappear for hours and hours at a time. It never seemed to bother Winnie, I would say “Have you seen Quack, I can’t find her anywhere!” She would reply “Oh, I’m sure she’s here somewhere.”
One Saturday afternoon, Winnie and I were cleaning the kitchen and I opened a cupboard that was scarcely used to find what looked to be the miniature dwelling of a homeless midget. “So, what’s this all about?” I asked her. “Oh that’s Quack’s secret place.” It was not the garbage heap it appeared to be at first glance. On
closer examination it was clear that someone had strategically placed each and every item. There were pictures of a hamburgers and fashion models taped to the walls of the inside. There was a jar filled with bottle caps, piles of National Geographic’s, and at least thirteen empty tubes of lipstick.
By the end of the day I had uncovered four more of Quack’s secret nesting holes. One at the back of the coat closet, one under the bathroom sink, one in the bottom right hand corner of Winnie’s curio cabinet and one behind the easy chair in the family room. And each one filled with coupons, stacks of old phone bills, newspapers, fortunes from fortune cookies, empty pill bottles, Monopoly money and candy wrappers. Quack has continued the practice of nest building to this day.
Their mother Missy even came to live with us at one point. She looked much like Quack. She was sweet but had a head full of cotton candy. She devoured every salacious, dirty, violent book ever printed. She would ride our bicycles, jump on our trampoline, and eat only the junkiest of junk food.
By the time she was twenty five, she already had six children with four different fathers. When she was twenty eight her boyfriend pushed her in front of a garbage truck that flung her thirty feet in the air. She survived, but was in a coma for over three months, then later did her recuperating at our house. In her room she would put stickers on every piece of furniture, including the television set. When she was still in her wheelchair, she would have me roll her over to her dresser to she could arrange and rearrange her belongings. She had numerous troll dolls, grocery store silk flowers, an ugly brown teddy bear with a fat red heart on his stomach that said “I luv u” and several Guns N Roses, Nazareth and Black Sabbath tapes.
She began using a walker about four months later. The accident seized Missy with an unreasonable paranoia and she was forever imagining people were talking about her. I was fairly demented after a while. She would screech at me, accuse me, whine, thrash and push me to the point of lunacy.
One evening we were sitting at the table after dinner, Winnie having retired to her room to escape the sound of our voices, when Missy said, “I know you and Ben were talking about me, I heard you!”
“No you didn’t.” I retorted calmly.
“I did, I heard what you said and I think you’re horrible!”
“Nope” I said spooning ice cream into my mouth.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I wasn’t looking at her.
“Like what?”
“I just saw you! You were just scowling at me! You’re always giving me dirty looks!”
“Missy, I wasn’t even looking at you!”
“I’m telling Winnie that you and Ben are picking on me again!” Ben wasn’t at home at the time… he was out signing autographs. Just as she was about to reach for her walker, I took the opportunity to grasp it and hurl it down the stars. She watched in horror as it bounced down the stairs, onto the landing then out of sight. She immidiatly dropped to her knees and crawled her way down to Winnie’s room howling. I know very well that I’ll burn for that, but it’s done and it’s too late to make amends now.
By the time she was thirty two she was dead. Overdosed. I really did care for her and now that I’m older, sometimes I’m filled with regret and sadness.
Her funeral was much like her life. ZZ top played ‘She’s got legs‘, her cracked out mother who had an outstanding resemblance to an overweight drowned Barbie doll, gave a pathetic, yet mercifully brief eulogy. She only mentioned once or twice how proud Missy had been to have such a “beautiful mother”. The absolute absurdity of the situation made my flesh quiver with laughter.
After some remarks given by a member of the clergy, one by one we filed to the front to take a last look at the departed. My best friend Egg, Sue and I all approached the casket, not to find our sweet Missy but what looked to be a dead, French eighteenth century mime! Her face was a vaporous white, her lips were the color of grape fruit juice, and the wicked perpetrator, whoever they were, thought it necessary to paint a small flesh colored mole on Missy’s cheek black… not only to paint it black but to enlarge it eight times it’s original size. We all three gasped! This can’t be! We stood gazing, unable to remove our eyes. When at last I mustered the courage to look at Egg, she did not look back, her eyes were fixed, but she knew I was looking at her. I glanced at Sue who was furiously biting her lip. Then it happened! Egg let out a muffled little giggle. That did it! I felt the upsurge fill my chest, and come up through my lungs and was on the verge of having a hysterical fit of laughter when Sue jerked my arm, and I accidentally swallowed it and began choking. We immediately turned and walked away briskly .
Yes, yes, I know very well that I’ll burn for that too. But my only comfort is that Sue and Egg will be burning along side me.