94
I)AR.TISAN REVIEW
Still, I hesitated. What if Jeanie's grandmother came downstairs, and
she wasn't wearing her dark glasses, and I saw her, and her eyes were all
white and bloody, like someone had scratched them out?
But then, as if she'd read my mind, Jeanie said, "My grandmother's
not home. My mother took her to the doctor." So when she turned
and walked down the sidewalk, I followed her.
At home there was an old brick house a few blocks away that the
neighborhood kids said was haunted . Supposedly if you walked past it at
night bats would £ly out and get tangled up in your hair. But J eanie's
house made that house look tame. The windows in the back were
boarded up, the front porch listed off to one side, and the yard was lit–
tered with weeds and trash. My father complained about it all the time.
Once he even got the city inspector to come out. But all J eanie's
mother had to do was replace a few missing sh ingles on the roof.
We followed a path in the dirt aro und an o ld li on-clawed bathtub
that sat in her backyard and went in through the kitchen door. The sink
was full of dirty dishes and there was a pot caked with dried-out
spaghetti on the counter. Flies hovered over the trash. The house smelled
moist and musty, like overripe fruit: J ean ie's smell.
Past the kitchen was a room that I supposed was meant to be the
dining room, on ly it didn't have any furniture, just brown cartons taped
shut and stacked three or four high.
It
looked like somebody was mov–
ing in or out, except the boxes were covered with dust, as if they'd sat
there, undisturbed, for years. I followed Jeanie through a narrow
pathway that ran between them. I imagined her grandmother feeling her
way along the path, her thickened, yel lowed nails scratching along the
sides of the cardboard, her slippered feet shuilling across the floor.
Beyond that was the front room of the house . T he windows were
closed, covered with heavy brown curtains that let in on ly a pale, murky
light. The air was thick and sti£ling and smelled of stale tobacco. Most
of this room was full of boxes, too. But they'd left enough space along
one wall for a couch with carved trim, an armchair, and a small round
table. The table was covered with a stained ivory cloth that hung to the
£loor.
J eanie knelt next to the table, picked up the cloth like a skirt, and
pulled out a cigar box. She held the box so I couldn't see, rummaged in
it for a while, then shrugged, and held it out to me. I crept closer and
looked in. A dead bird. A broken piece of green glass . Some rocks with
bits of quartz in them. A Kennedy fifty cent piece. Junk.
"This is it?" I said. "This is what you dragged me over here to see?"
I shook my head; I cou ldn 't believe she cou ld be so dumb. ''I'm going
back," I said.
"Wait." J eanie slammed the lid shut on the cigar box. "There's
