18 \\ COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT “One got away. How will it live?!”
continued from Page 17 pouch. The possum hid her new passel behind a wheelbarrel in the corner. Once, she saw the rubbery tail of a baby clinging to its mother’s back. Teryl would lay very still to watch the mother measure out bites from the paper plate with the same efficiency that Ber doled out a frugal dinner the night before DewDad picked up his salary check. “Sometimes she squawks at me,” Teryl reported. “Fear turns to rage, especially if she’s protecting her babies. Mamas are unpredictable,” Beryl replied. Like mine, thought Teryl. They drop you off with the vow to retrieve you, then they don’t.
Teryl pushed open the screen door for a better look.
AUGUST 2021
“Jack or jill went on a great adventure, and it will grow up to have babies who won’t trust human beings.” “It’s an orphan, like me,” she cried. Ber rose from crouching. “Your mama is saving up money with your daddy out there somewhere, plus you got us. You are a long road away from being an orphan.” It was already too late to shield Teryl from the hurt Cheryl had infected her with. But she could equip her with the skills to break, if not a heart, something else in retribution. “Dry your tears, sweet potato. You said Mr. Sturdivant had fish tanks? Let’s go kill something he loves” was her dark suggestion. “It’ll be our secret.”
They went to a ragged animal book bought for a quarter at a rummage sale. Teryl flipped through pages the color of a used teabag until she recognized what Ber called a possum. Without a raccoon’s bandit mask to redeem them, they “sure are butt-ugly.” Ber tried to pronounce marsupial. “Just don’t get close to it. It’s got ticks and maybe rabies.”
“Don’t go no farther than your yardball.” Ber was referring to the red gazing ball in their front yard. Teryl was fond of staring into the mirrored world, curved and crimson. Sometimes she pretended she had a lookalike, trapped within. Mr. Sturdivant’s thickly muscled arms strained his shirt and sleeves. The long sideburns that bent like an L toward the corners of his mouth made him especially unapproachable. The two movers were transporting a rolling cart with several filled aquariums. Water sloshed out. Teryl dashed across O’Leary behind the truck as a pool table clattered down the ramp. She peered in the back. A lawnmower and a stepladder had been brought forward. They were next off, bound for the garage. Nothing would dislodge the possums during daylight hours, Teryl knew, but she hurried to skim white rock from the foundation plantings under the garage door into its dark recesses. She listened for stirring. Mr. Sturdivant signed forms and waivers. The empty moving truck rumbled away. He pushed the lawn mower toward the garage. Teryl ran. By the time Mr. Sturdivant took the garage door above his broad shoulders, he was shouting, “Holy smokes, what a stink!” Teryl heard the gnashing sounds of distress that intuited imminent death. “Goddamn tree rats!” he howled.
“He beat and cut up the pasel and the mom didn’t protect them!”
Ber gritted her teeth. “That doesn’t make her bad, just scared.” CVIndependent.com
Ber had secrets,
too. A summer camp accident was her first diversionary fire. She would never have coined such a phrase, nor comprehended it, but the result was the same.
The three days of recreation had been a Red Cross initiative to benefit World War II and to free parents for weekend volunteerism. Four girls were assigned to a tent, two older to watch over two younger. Supervised co-mingling between boys and girls occurred once in an afternoon of outdoor games, nothing too roughhouse. Beryl was hopeful that after the hayride she would be the girl chosen to perform a round of Frere Jacques with a boy. She had every expectation, since she knew the lyrics. When Nils was selected, her heart leapt. He was sixteen and had walked her home several times. When Evangeline was chosen to sing with him, Beryl’s heart fell. Why the girl, breasts already mounding and cheekbones emerging from baby fat, who shared her tent? Evangeline sounded like the beginning of a poem. Beryl was something that was rolled out for a polka. Afterward, their chaperone turned the kerosene lamp to a soft glow so the younger ones wouldn’t be scared by shadows on the tent. Beryl plotted. How to humiliate Evangeline? Ants in her pants? Give her a hot foot? Beryl had heard about this in a W.C. Fields movie but didn’t know what it involved except someone hopping. She decided on a sleepover fallback: the warm rag. Evangeline would hold it as she slept and release her bladder’s contents. She’d awaken with her nightgown soaked.
until it was saturated. She enclosed it in Evangeline’s hand. But she didn’t sigh, relax and pee. Her hand spasmed and knocked over the kerosene lamp, alighting the tent in flames. Beryl bleated “Fire!” then rushed out the two terrified little girls and helped her nemesis to her feet. She grabbed the washcloth before the tent collapsed in flames while other campers screamed. At breakfast assembly, Beryl was scared she’d be uncovered as the instigator, but she was publicly praised for her quick thinking and got a roll of Lifesavers. She also learned that confusion can make bad look good through the power of a diversionary fire.
In the storm shelter, Teryl reached around halfempty paint cans DewDad refused to discard and returned to Ber shaking the lighter fluid. “It’s almost empty.” “We only need a dab. Take this Clorox.” Teryl watched Ber grab their rattan picnic basket, lay in the bleach, lighter fluid and matches, then clap it shut. Like everyone, they occasionally spent a sunny afternoon with the basket on land just beyond town known as The Manor. Most of its fences were easily scaled and the No Trespassing signs easily ignored. The Manor was owned by a wealthy Catholic family Ber called The Richeys, the name pinned to anyone of affluence who knew the difference between French dressing and Catalina. Teryl and her grandmother took a walk to the end of O’Leary, then around the block. They passed Mrs. Mechem, pulling a wagon of glass bottles. “Where y’all picnicking?” she inquired. “We’re taking a casserole to a sick friend over on Kyger,” Ber said. They strolled down an alley, onto Mr. Sturdivant’s property, to what Ber called the outbuilding. Several windows had been smashed by kids. The door had a latch for a padlock, but no padlock. Inside, the contents looked a lot like DewDad’s workshop: vises, a table saw, scraps of latticework and wood pegboard. Ber placed a single drop of lighter fluid, no bigger than a thumbtack, on piled wood scraps. The young fire, a pale orange, was impregnated by piles of sawdust and birthed by a sudden breeze that tucked under the door.
Ber had secrets, too. A summer camp accident was her first diversionary fire. She would never have coined such a phrase, nor comprehended it, but the result was the same.
A kettle had been left outside for the leaders’ coffee. Beryl quietly tilted the spout, holding the cloth under the water
goddamn hose?!”
They walked swiftly to the corner of the block. In a disguised voice that sounded a little like Tony the Tiger, Grandma Ber yelled, “Mister! Mister! It’s on fire! Fire!” Mr. Sturdivant came running out of the house and saw the smoke and that some spots of dry grass had ignited, too. “Someone call the fire department!” He didn’t know that the hub was across town and that the battle would be his alone for several minutes. He soared across yards. “Do any of you hillbillies own a
This was clandestine, thrill and trepidation. They flattened themselves against houses, then raced, suddenly over