Grandma makes tea. She puts a white cloth, two mugs and a jar of honey on a tray.
‘Why are there bugs in the honey?’ I ask her.
‘They’re not bugs,’ she says, ‘they’re special mushrooms for adults. But I’ve got something special for you kiddos too,’ she says, and she pulls out a tin of long cookies with a chocolate middle. She asks me how many I want and I say, ‘Lots.’ She puts one cookie in each ice-cream cup and hands me the ones left over. Ana gets all jealous. She hates it when I get presents and she doesn’t.
‘I’ll give them to you if you tell me where the emperor’s castle is,’ I say to her.
‘Done.’
I give them to her and she whispers in my ear, ‘You’ll never reach it, because it’s at the bottom of the lake.’ Then she sticks her tongue out at me and walks off with my cookie tin. Pina sticks her tongue out at me too, just because.
When we go out with the dessert, Emma gives us a round of applause and my mom sings a song she really likes about a donna, which is Spanish for doughnut. Except it’s not in Spanish.
‘What language is that?’ asks Pina.
Mom says it’s Italian and then we all teach Pina the song. Turns out it’s not about a doughnut as I always thought, but about a woman. My mom keeps on explaining all the words but I’m not paying any attention to her because I’m thinking about something else. I’m thinking of how my ziplings and I are always hiding to drink a drink that is actually made of poop.
*
Ana and Pina go watch their TV series in one of the bedrooms. They bought it yesterday in Penny Saver and it has a zillion new episodes and it’s all they ever talk about. I don’t want to watch it because, even though they say it isn’t scary, I’ve seen vampires on the cover, so it’s scary.
Grandma asks me if I like hammocks. I tell her I do and she takes me to the front terrace, where her old truck lives. Our rented car lives there too, but not today, because the boys took it with them. And the little path that connects the house to the highway is there too. Plus some muddy shoes, some chairs, umbrellas, and a giant ball of threads hanging from the roof. Emma unravels it and it turns out the ball is the hammock. She ties it between the two posts of the terrace.
‘Porch,’ Emma corrects me.
‘I thought the porch was at the back.’
‘That too. You’ve got your front porch and your back porch.’
‘And your middle porch,’ I say, but she doesn’t laugh.
I climb into the hammock and she says, ‘Lift your head,’ and when I do she slips a cushion behind it.
‘I never used a pillow on a hammock before,’ I tell her.
‘It’s the civilized version,’ she says.
‘I’m not sleepy.’
‘I know. It’s to make you more comfy.’
‘Will you rock me a little?’
Grandma rocks me for way too little before she stops and says it’s going to rain.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because the dragonflies are out.’
She goes into the house and comes out with some paper and a can of pencils. Then she kisses me, and when she’s gone I take my foot off the hammock and push myself on the edge of the table until I’m really, really rocking. Every now and then I have to take my foot off and do the pushing again so it’s not so boring. I liked Grandma before, but I don’t like her anymore because I feel like she brought me here to get rid of me. I bet she wants to talk about adult things with my mom. She doesn’t know that at home I always hear everything anyway and nothing bad ever happens. I try to reach the can of pencils with my toes so they make an avalanche but she left them too far away. I think I want to go back to the front porch, or the back porch. I don’t know which is which anymore. Then I think I’ll go when the sun stops shining on my feet, because it’s really yummy. The sun that passes through the threads of the hammock draws shadows on my legs. The shadows are like eyes, and they can see everything I’m doing and everything I’m thinking.
I guess I do fall asleep a little bit in the end because when I wake up the eyes are gone and I’m cold and it’s raining. I want my mom, but when I go inside the house I see Cleo on the sofa, and maybe it’s better if I lie down there because there’s a blanket and because Grandma will find me here and feel bad for leaving me outside with so little on. But I can hear them laughing outside and I fall asleep again before anyone comes and finds me.
When I wake up again it’s almost nighttime. Cleo and two of her brothers are asleep on the rug next to my sofa. I can’t hear the adults, so I make myself into a caterpillar with the blanket and go out onto the porch to find the grown-up girls. Just like I found the trumpets. The table is covered in dirty plates, but there’s no one there. I hear voices and run toward them. It’s not raining anymore but the grass is wet. I find Emma sitting by the biggest pond. The ledge is made of bricks but she’s stroking it like a dog.
‘Who are you talking to, Grandma?’
‘To her.’
I look around.
‘Her who?’
‘Emma.’
‘You’re Emma.’
‘You too.’
I laugh, but I don’t really feel like laughing. I ask her where my mom is. She leans her head to the right, pats the side of the pond and says, ‘I made it.’
‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘You told us this afternoon already, and yesterday, and the day before that.’
‘What a pretty wig. Purple really is your color,’ she says.
She’s speaking like she was asleep. Maybe she’s sleepwalking. She has her hand over the water, palms facing down, and she’s moving them slowly, as if she was waving.
‘And Mama?’ I ask her again.
Emma points to an orange carp and says, ‘There she is!’
‘In the pond?’
‘Yes! Your mom turned into a fish.’
I don’t believe her. Plus, she’s laughing.
‘It’s true, honey; ever since she was a little girl, once a month your mom turns into a fish.’
She nods her head saying, ‘It’s true, it’s true’, which makes me doubt her.
‘Which one?’ I ask, to try to prove her wrong, and she points to an orange carp, but I can’t tell if it’s the same one as before. It swims off and hides among the lilies.
‘How can you tell?’
‘Because her eyes shine differently,’ she explains, ‘like a mammal’s.’
I can feel my lips start to quiver.
‘Don’t you worry now, she always comes back.’
‘Don’t be a liar,’ I tell her, but my voice is very small like a flea so I run off.
‘Come back,’ says Emma, but I don’t turn around and she doesn’t follow me. I want to get lost in the trees, and I want a wolf to come and bite me so that when Grandma finds me she feels really, really bad about lying to me. But I’m too scared to go into the grove. It’s dark between the trees. Scaredy-cat! You spent the whole morning in there! I run back into the house from the side with the terrace and the hammock, and go straight to my sister’s room. Ana and Pina are sitting in the dark in front of the TV. There’s a girl on the screen who’s half green and her head is spinning around and around like a carrousel.
‘Is this your series?’ I ask them. But Ana screams, ‘Get out! It’s not for kids!’
I don’t like it when she shouts at me. I throw my blanket at them and go to Mama’s room. It was her room when she was a little girl. There’s a patchwork quilt and instead of a door it has a woven curtain in different colors which Mama washes when we come. She washes all the curtains in the house every time we come because Grandma doesn’t really care about the dust. Sometimes it makes Mama nuts that Grandma lives camuflashed between the trees and the dust. I pick Bedtime Bear off the floor and we climb onto her bed. It’s made of iron and my mom says it’s a princess’s bed, but I don’t think princesses’ beds squeak this much. Ana and I always used to sleep here but this summer she sleeps with Pina in the TV room. A bunch of airplanes hang over me and Bear: wooden planes Mama made with her dad when she was a little girl, before they moved to the lake, and before her dad shacked up with Emma.