JUMP

Rowena De Shields

This is an excerpt from an unfinished semi-autobiographical novella titled “I Is, I Am, I Are.”

“What are you doing here?” Standing defiantly, tiny hands and skinny arms akimbo, perched above small hips and long, reedy freckled legs. Whorls of red hair halo her pale face, bright eyes above a discontentedly puckered mouth.

“I’m here to help your mom move,” I say while edging around the small child, wary of her face twisting up. Thankfully, a familiar voice saves me from this sunshine child, whose frenzy radiates from her disheveled dress and curls.

“Mckenna! Get back in here!” Her mother peers out disapprovingly and familiar blue eyes rest on me with a smile. “Rowena! Please come in. I see you’ve met Mckenna, my crazy daughter.” As she places her hand on the girl’s tousled head I inwardly wince, stupidly anticipating her to draw back with a burn. Instead, she lovingly smooths back the hair, encouraging the girl to give me a grudging “Hi, nice to meet you Miss Rowena,” before launching into the house, screeching and slapping a hand along the walls.

“She’s a little shy,” her mother says. She looks worn, with sweat just beginning to ring her collar and dampen the nape of her hair. Tiredness curling beneath her eyes. The hand that reaches to touch mine looks like it belongs to a much older woman, gnarled and spotted with freckles and small cuts. Her oversized shirt is stained and ripped, piling shapelessly around her. She, who has birthed a small, defiant fire, seems nearly extinguished herself.

Her visage belies the large and cheery yellow house behind her. Its porch is crowded with lawn ornaments, butting into a well-manicured lawn like outsized teeth. The house seems rounded at the corners, sloping

into a graceful arch that complements the surrounding Crepe Myrtle trees, which sway and tap gracefully against the picture windows. Through a large bay window, I can see Mckenna perched upon a cluttered table. She’s looking at me, hiding when she catches my eye.

“Please come in!” The mother, Kath, beckons while leading me inside. “I’m embarrassed about the house. Tom hasn’t really helped and the kids -” She breaks off when there are a series of crashes from the other room. We both watch Mckenna’s small foot dart out to kick myriad objects off of the table she’s sitting on. She’s determined and nothing is spared; a balsa wood replica of Davinci’s flying machine, several children’s books, and a small potted plant all go soaring, propelled by her feet and resentful stare.

“My bed’s been packed in the pod but I still have my Dream House!” She cries and points.

And there it is. The Dream House. Resplendent in purple and pink, outfitted with a pool, garage, and grand staircase, complete with a tiny plastic chandelier detailed with hearts. Barbie and her privileged friends peer expectantly from the Dream House’s bedrooms and kitchens, through us and by us and beyond. They seemed perturbed somehow, gasping behind painted on pearly whites and impossibly blue eyes. How can anyone be anything but happy, I wonder, sheltered beneath pink shingles with curlicues and a heart-shaped chandelier? The Dream House has more furniture than the yellow house it lives in - most of the humansized furniture had already been packed away, except two chairs from a dinette set (“Tom’s taking the other two”), a beleaguered sofa (“I’m giving that to Tom.”) and a piano (“Tom plays.”). Wisps of dog hair line the floorboards and corners, with boxes and children’s toys strewn about chaotically. Despite the mess it is a nice house, full of natural light with large windows overlooking a lush backyard. I see a blue trampoline out the back window - a child’s dream.

“You have a beautiful home.” I say, feeling foolish afterward. Why compliment someone on a house that’s already been sold, a house that won’t be a home for much longer? Looking at the furred baseboards and

the towering Dream House, the boxes alternatively labeled “Tom” and “Kath”, I think it must not feel like home at all.

“Thanks. I didn’t get to enjoy it as much as I would’ve liked.” Kath comments, looking about. “But I guess it is pretty nice.” ***

Kath gives me “adult apple juice” i.e. alcoholic ciders, to sip on as we wrap ceramics in moving paper and pack the kitchenware. Every piece seemingly has a story. The cracked Zoloft mug heralded the “tough times”and the mug shaped like an old hag’s face was a gag gift from Tom many years ago, brought all the way from Salem, Massachusetts (“Now I look like her,” she joked, swiping at an errant hair. She doesn’t - still attractive, especially when she smiles). And the well-seasoned skillet, warped and brownish with age? It represented the need for separation. “I realized I needed to divorce him when I started to wonder what sound it would make against his skull.”

Mckenna peers in intermittently, venturing closer and closer to me every time. She seems encouraged by our easy chatter, taking up residence in the corner where the cabinets meet. Her mother, seemingly unaffected by her presence, rambles on about everything from her dearly departed sex life to the “Lake House.”

I’d been hearing about the Lake House for months. Whenever she spoke of it Kath gleamed, chattering on about its gray color (“much better than yellow”), it’s rotting dock which crumbled into the water, the yard crowded with shining Holly trees (“easier to look after than Crepe Myrtles”). It was a fixer upper she’d bought for her and Mckenna to land, a place where they’d be free to reestablish.

“Will Daddy come visit the Lake House?” Kath’s eyes come to, glancing over the yellow walls, the chaos strewn about, and, finally, her daughter.

“No,” she says in a measured tone, carefully dosed. “Daddy won’t be coming. He doesn’t like the water, remember?”

The dissolution of a thirteen year marriage. Admittedly, before meeting Kath I hadn’t given much thought to divorce. Marriage isn’t really something I’ve envisioned for myself, and I’m part of the happy few who have well-suited parents, still in love after thirty-seven years. Previously, I’d no real reason to wonder how two people dissolving a thirteen year marriage would act. Not until observing Tom and Kath.

Absurdly, the first thing that comes to mind seeing him is “he doesn’t look like a monster.” After a year of hearing Kath describe him - his moodiness, persistent inattention, stinking feet, the large and weeping hemorrhoids - I was expecting a split tongue, hooves, red skin and a tail. Instead, there is Tom. Tom, with the pale, sad eyes (like his daughter’s, but flat), pleasant smile and perfect manners. Tom, who offered the good beer in the fridge Kath obviously didn’t want to share. Tom, who hugged his daughter and sniffed her hair. Tom, who lets his daughter go with a sigh before facing his (soon to be) ex wife.

They’re of a height, pale eye to pale eye, both strewn with colored tattoos. Hers are a Star Wars theme, and his pay homage to cult horror films. Right below his deltoid I can make out “Kath” written in amateurish and fading script.

“Tom. I think we will need more boxes.” Kath says, fiercely wrapping a chinked bowl.

“Okay. About how many? What size?”

“I don’t know. Can you walk through what’s left and try to figure it out?”

“I think you’re trying to put too much stuff in one box. You’re cramming it, that’s how stuff breaks.”

“That’s why I need more boxes.”

“If you put that bowl in there it will probably break -”

“I need 10 boxes of each size.”

“Kath that bowl is gonna break -”

Mckenna and I both jump when Kath slams the bowl into the box and roars “Good thing it’s my bowl to worry about then!” ***

Somehow it grows hotter, darker, as the sun winds around us. The heat begins to rise through the floorboards, causing sweat and mugginess to seep unpleasantly. Mckenna winds around us as well, seemingly fascinated by me, the stranger who is allowed to touch all of Mommy’s ‘special things.’ She unleashes a barrage of questions, staring longingly as I pack away the clown-shaped whiskey decanter (family heirloom - astonishingly ugly) and the tin music box shaped like a church. Foreign things she could only dream of touching now, but longed to inherit one day. It makes me smile. I remember how I wanted to touch the clutter in grown up spaces, clutter long since declared ‘junk’ in my adulthood.

“How do you know Mommy?” She asks, watching avidly as I teach her how to assemble a cardboard box.

“We work together.” I answer absentmindedly, trying to pick the end of the tape off the roll. “She’s always been very nice to me.”

“Do you work with Daddy too?”

“No,” I reply, still picking furiously. “I just met him today. He seems very nice too, just like your mom.” And it’s true. They both are nice. Perfectly nice, to strangers even. Nice to strangers but seemingly incapable of civility towards each other. I can hear their voices floating from outside to where we are sitting straddle-legged in a valley between mountainous heaps of boxes. “That’s got it!” I exclaim, pulling tape noisily from the roll.

“You did it!” She shrieks, taking a strip from me and slapping it on her box. She does a happy dance and high kicks around the room, showing unladylike flashes of her graying underwear.

“Mmmhm. Are you excited to move to the Lake House Mckenna? With your own dock right there by the water?” Her leg slaps down to the floor.

“I don’t know because we’re moving to the Lake House and Daddy’s moving all by himself into an apartment because he can’t take care of us

with Mommy anymore and I’ve never lived near a lake and I’ve never seen the house and what if there isn’t a place for my Dream House?” It all comes out in a rush and she breathes deeply before continuing, bunching her skirt over knobby knees. “I told Mommy we have to bring the trampoline. Daddy always says he wants to jump on it with me but hasn’t yet. So if we bring it he will come jump with me at the Lake House.”

As I look into her pinched and hopeful face I can’t help but naively think - ‘can’t thirteen years be salvaged for her sake?’ I hadn’t witnessed the decay of their marriage, but she had lived it (perhaps, I thought darkly, even heralded it). She was old enough to comprehend the separation, yet not old enough to discern an ugly clown decanter as junk, or that the argument about boxes wasn’t really about boxes at all - but the latest in a series of small and not-so-small rejections: disappointments cemented beneath cruel and uncertain words. I wonder, with her childlike capacity for understanding, who is more sad right now? She, who is living in this reality? Or myself, who has the perspective and maturity to understand it as an adult?

Suddenly, Mckenna crawls over to the window to glimpse her parents, arguing in front of the big blue trampoline. ***

Slowly but surely, the house disappears into a tumble of cardboard boxes, packed away. The graying dog hair is swept up alongside the toys, and both are discarded without a thought. Eventually, we come to the Dream House. Barbie and company stare up resentfully from the bottom of their box, piled head-to-toe and toe-to-head. Silently screaming as we dismantle their purple and pink mansion, breaking off the ionic columns, removing the curlicue roof, plucking off the garage. The pool snaps off with a click and its plastic water is static and dully shiny, scratched from hundreds of “pool parties.” Mckenna and I lower its pieces carefully into a large box on top of the screaming Barbies. I let her tape the box closed and she kisses the top when we finish, whispering “I’ll see you at the

Lake House.”

The real trouble comes when we have to pack up the trampoline. Kath and I spend nearly an hour dismantling it with Mckenna clinging, swinging from post to post and crying.

“You’re killing it! You’re killing it! Daddy and I are going to jump! You can’t kill it!” Childless and with no younger siblings, I don’t have the experience to reason with an enraged child. If I’m honest, I’m intimidated by this fierce fire girl - feeling strangely as if her sole attention would singe me, burn me. So I fake interest in one of the springs and let Kath deal with it.

“Sweetie, we’re not killing it,” she reasons amiably, simultaneously wrenching savagely at a leg that refused to pull apart from the frame. “we’re just packing it up for the Lake House.”

Still, the fiery girl persists, wrapping herself in the tarpaulin and hugging a trampoline post desperately, screaming NO! in a register heretofore unknown to the childless. Sweat runs in rivulets down her tiny forehead and tears stripe her cheeks as she continues to howl, squinting her burning eyes. Despite this, Kath and I manage to dismantle the trampoline, all the while feeling Tom’s conspicuous absence. He was hiding away somewhere in the cheery Yellow House, oblivious to his child’s distress.

“Daddy wants to jump!” Mckenna screeches, rolling in the discarded tarpaulin and kicking her feet.

The real real trouble comes when we find out the trampoline won’t fit into the shipping pod, no matter how desperately we jam or strategically we pack it. The pod is simply too full, and the trampoline simply too large.

“We’ll just have to leave it,” Kath whispers, stricken and pale, eyeing the little girl wrapped in tarp eyeing us hatefully.

“Maybe she won’t notice if you get an identical one as soon as we

get down there?” I suggest.

“She’ll never leave until she sees us pack it up. Besides, I can’t afford a new one right now.” Bravely, Kath squats down to tell Mckenna, whose face reddens alarmingly, distorts, and then splinters. Fat wet tears stain her shirt collar, watering the embroidered flowers. I can see flies pinging off her soiled cheeks, her matted hair, crawling over the fingers clutched in blue tarp.

“Daddy!” she hollers. “Daddy come jump! It’s the last chance to come jump!” She screams and sobs while Kath looks on, looking through the girl to the big House behind. Big, cheery and yellow - large and yet too small for two people who have outgrown each other, shed one another like an old skin. Even a world apart would be too small.

Speechless, I go into the house to take refuge from Mckenna’s terrible screaming and her mother’s stare - only to run into Tom. He is busy separating his and Kath’s boxes, piling his neatly along one wall while leaving hers haphazard on the floor.

Thirteen. Thirteen. Unlucky Thirteen. The number won’t leave my head during the ninety minute drive home and neither will that disappointed face, the memorabilia carefully packed away - treated with more care than a living and breathing being. I can’t help but think of the trampoline lying discarded for someone to find and take, crowded out of the pod by knickknacks and furniture deemed more necessary. ‘It’s possible the trampoline would not have fit in the Lake House yard anyway,’ I think, attempting to assuage my guilt. ‘She’ll be just fine without it.’ After all, the Lake House will probably be a child’s wonderland. Mckenna’s wonderland. Surrounded by trees she can peer imperiously from, looking for visitors from far-off lands. She’ll have the water beneath that crumbling dock, host to all manner of interesting insects and maybe even fish, content to let her poke and prod and slap barefoot through the shallows. Best of all, she will have a bigger room for her Dream House - one with windows

where the dolls can oversee the earth’s rotation and little fire girls playing below. It will all be fine.

Still, when I get home I find myself looking at trampolines online - wondering how you affix a price to something that becomes immaterial, a dream.