This is a city we live in now, it’s a big city and far away from where we used to live. Mommy says nobody will follow us here, and nobody will know us here.
Mommy says don’t talk to neighbors. Ever.
Mommy says don’t talk to anybody at school. Any more than you need to talk. Understand, kids?
Mommy smiling at us. Mommy’s eyes shining she’s so happy.
Nothing was ever proved against Mommy.
Mommy says, Know why? Because there was nothing to be proved.
When Daddy rode away the last time in the pickup we saw from the front windows. We saw the red taillights rapidly receding into the night. We were meant to be sleeping but we never slept, the voices through the floorboards kept us awake.
Later there was Mommy running outside where a car was waiting. Whoever came to pick her up, we didn’t know. They drove away and later I would think maybe I had dreamt it because Mommy said she had not left the house and how do you know what’s real and what you have dreamt? When they asked me I shook my head, I shut my eyes not-knowing. Calvin told them Mommy was with us all that night. Mommy slept with us, and held us.
I was only five then. I cried a lot. Now I’m six, and in first grade. Calvin is in fourth grade. Calvin had to be kept back a year, for learning disability. That’s all right with him Calvin says, he doesn’t get picked on so much now. He’s one of the big boys now, nobody better pick on him.
Whoever came to question my brother, if it was the nice social worker lady bringing us oatmeal cookies she baked herself, or the sheriff calling us by our names like he knew us, Calvin would say the same thing.
Mommy held us all that night long.
The cellar. That is forbidden to Calvin and me.
Mommy says nothing is down there. No rabbits! For Christ’s sake will you stop, both of you. There are no rabbits in this house.
The cages are still in the cellar, though. There are some outside in the back yard almost hidden by weeds but there are more in the cellar, rabbit hutches Calvin says they are. Mommy has called about the cages in the cellar, and the smell in the cellar, and the cellar walls that ooze oily muck when it rains, and the roof too that leaks, and Mommy starts to cry over the phone but the man hasn’t come yet.
The cellar! I wish I didn’t think about it so much. In the night when the rabbits cry for help it’s because they are in the cages in the cellar trapped.
Let us go! We don’t want to die.
In our other house built on a concrete slab there was no cellar. Then Daddy moved into a mobile home as he called it, that was on just wheels. Here the cellar is like a big square dug in the ground. The first time Mommy went away and we were alone in the house, we went into the cellar giggling and scared. Calvin turned on the light — it was just one light bulb overhead. The steps were wood, and wobbly. The furnace was down there, and a smell of oil, and pipes. In a corner were the rabbit hutches, Calvin called them. Ugly old rusted wire cages stacked together almost to the ceiling. We counted eight of them. The cellar smelled bad, especially the cages smelled. You could see bits of soft grey fur stuck in the wires. On the concrete floor were dried rabbit turds Calvin said they were, little black pellets. Oily dark stains on the concrete and stains Calvin teased me about saying they were blood.
A smell down here of old musty things. Muck oozing through the walls after a heavy rain. Calvin said, Mommy would kill us if she knew we were down here. He scolded me when I reached inside one of the cages, where the door was open, saying, “Hey! If you cut yourself on that, if you get tet’nus, Mommy will give me hell.”
I asked Calvin what tet’nus is.
In a sneering voice like he was so smart, because he was in fourth grade and I was only in first, Calvin said, “Death.”
I was afraid Calvin would see, I had scratched my arm on the cage door. I don’t know how, it just happened. Not a deep cut but like a cat’s scratch, it was bleeding a little and it stung. I would tell Mommy I’d scratched my arm on the sharp edge of a packing crate.
It was then I saw something move in one of the cages farthest back in the corner. A shadowy furry shape. A gleam of small close-set eyes. I gave a little cry, and grabbed at Calvin, but he shook off my arm.
Calvin made a scornful snorting noise he’d got from Daddy. When Daddy would say drawing the word out like he liked it — Bull-shit.
I told Calvin that almost you could see a rabbit there. You could see the other rabbits in their cages. Almost.
Calvin called me a dumb dopey girl. Yanking at my arm to make me come with him, back upstairs.
Lots of times now Calvin calls me worse things. Nasty things to make me cry. Words I don’t know the meaning of except they’re meant to be nasty like words Daddy called Mommy in the last days Daddy was living with us.
Saying now, “If she finds out we’re down here I’m gonna break your ass. Anything she does to me, I’m gonna do to you, cunt.”
Calvin doesn’t mean it, though. Calvin loves me. At school where we don’t know anybody, Calvin stays close to me. It’s just that words fly out of his mouth sometimes like stinging wasps. Like with Daddy, and Daddy’s fists.
They don’t mean to hurt. It just happens.
Now Daddy is gone it’s so strange to us. Mommy plays his music.
Daddy’s music she complained of. His CDs. Heavy metal mostly, Calvin calls it. Like somebody kicking kicking kicking a door. Low and mean like thunder.
Now Daddy is gone Mommy buys bottles like Daddy used to bring home. One of them has a mean-looking wild boar head on it Calvin says is a giant pig living in a swamp that’s been known to eat up a little girl alive and kicking.
Now Daddy is gone Mommy has his guitar, picking at the strings and trying to strum chords. Daddy’s old guitar he hadn’t touched in years he’d left behind when he moved away. One of the strings is broke but Mommy doesn’t care. Mommy gets loud and happy singing on the banks of the O-hi-o and yonder stands little Mag-gie, suitcase in her hand. Mommy has a way some nights in the kitchen straddling the guitar across her legs and strumming it and moving her head so her long beet-colored hair ripples to almost her waist. Songs Mommy doesn’t know the words to she sings anyway. Yonder stands little Mag-gie, suitcase in her hand, little Mag-gie was made for lovin’, cheatin’ another man another man man man! Calvin says Mommy can’t play that old guitar worth shit but Mommy’s so pretty now her face is mostly mended and her hair grown out, nobody’s gonna notice.
In school I’m so sleepy my eyelids keep shutting. My head falls onto my folded arms on my desk top and there’s a woman asking is something wrong. I don’t recognize her right away then I see she’s my teacher, leaning over me.
I can’t remember her name. She smells like erasers not like Mommy who smells so sweet and sharp when she goes out.
“Ceci? You can tell me, dear. If there’s anything you wish to confide. If…”
I shut my eyes tight. It’s like wood smoke in my eyes, how they burn and sting. I feel myself freezing like a scared rabbit.
“… there’s anything wrong at home. Every morning you look so…” My teacher pauses licking her lips. Not knowing what she means to say. When Daddy went away, and we were told he would not be coming back you could see in people’s eyes how they didn’t know what words to use. They could not bring themselves to say Your father is dead. They could not say like Calvin Daddy is dead. Dead-daddy. My teacher can’t bring herself to say Every morning you look so haunted for this is not anything you would say to a little girl whose father has gone to Hell to dwell with his own cruel kin.