Glimpse - A Novel Part 20

Daddy looked along the length of the snake. Its head lay just inside the front door.

"Did you kill it, Jenny?" he asked. This only made her cry harder. She'd thought the snake was more of a toy than a live animal.

Daddy chucked an empty beer can at the snake. The can struck the creature's body, then rolled across the floor and stopped against the far baseboard, where it would remain for several months. The snake didn't respond to this insult.

"Stay here!" Daddy said. He stepped over the snake's body and crossed to the fireplace, where he fiddled with the rack of fireplace tools. Jenny saw his right hand, the one that had slapped the rattle from her. He had only touched her for a second, but that was enough to give him bleeding blisters all over his palm.

He took the fireplace shovel, walked to the snake's head, and stabbed down through its neck. The shovel bit into the hardwood floor. He sc.r.a.ped the snake's head forward, separating it from its body. Dark blood leaked onto the dusty floorboards.

Jenny drew her knees to her chest and kept sobbing. She felt guilty. She'd made Daddy mad. And she felt bad for the snake. She shouldn't have touched it.

Daddy sc.r.a.ped up the snake's head onto the shovel and carried it outside. Then he came back for the body.

He looked at Jenny and sighed. He looked tired, and a little pale and sick. Jenny couldn't stop crying.

"Gonna be okay, baby," he said. He ran to the kitchen and washed his hands, and poured some of the icky brown stuff for sc.r.a.pes onto his open sores, the sores he'd gotten from touching Jenny. He sighed in relief. "You just stay where you're at and don't go nowhere. Stay!"

He went into the back of the house, where the bedrooms were, and returned wearing a long-sleeve orange Clemson s.h.i.+rt and cloth gardening gloves. He shook out his red cloth mask and slid it down over his head. It had only two tiny holes for eyes, and one tiny hole over his mouth. It was his Cuddle Mask.

He helped Jenny put on her own fuzzy pink cotton gloves. Then he shook out her little yellow Cuddle Mask and slid it slowly down over her head, taking care not to tangle or pull her hair. He straightened the mouth hole so Jenny could breathe, and then the eyes holes so Jenny could see.

Now he could pick her up and set her in his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and she buried her face in his s.h.i.+rt, listening to his heartbeat, smelling his stale sweat. Her sobbing finally began to subside.

"See, Jenny?" He rubbed the back of her head, through his glove, through her mask. "It's okay now. That was a diamondback rattler, a big one. You got to stay away from snakes, especially the rattling kind. Okay? They're poisonous."

"What's poze-nuss?" Jenny asked into his chest.

"When something bites you and it makes you sick. Some things are poisonous if you just get too close to them. Like poison oak."

Jenny lifted one small, fuzzy-pink-gloved hand and looked at her fingers.

"I'm poze-nuss," she said.

He took a long, deep breath. He kissed the mouth hole of his mask against the crown of her mask.

"You ain't poisonous to me, Jenny."

"Yes I am! I'm poze-nuss all over!"

"You just got to stay careful."

"Never touch people," Jenny whispered quickly, like a student who'd learned by rote.

"Not with bare skin," he said. "And never, ever play with snakes!"

"Never play with snakes," Jenny repeated, adding this one to her catalog of "Nevers." Like: Never touch people. Never talk to anybody but Daddy.

Daddy lifted her from his lap and set her down beside him on the couch. He picked an open beer can from the table and shook it next to his ear. A little liquid sloshed inside, so he drank it down. Then he lit one of his Winstons.

"I wish your momma was still alive," he said. "I don't know what the h.e.l.l to do with you. Little snake-killer."

CHAPTER TWO.

With her dad's guidance, Jenny managed to make it through kindergarten and the first two months of first grade without a big incident. Jenny kept herself apart from the other kids, never touched them with bare hands, avoiding their hands and arms if they reached toward her. As long as she didn't talk to people, and refused to play any games at recess, most people would just leave her alone.

It hurt to watch other kids play sports, or just thoughtlessly b.u.mp into each other in the hallway or lunchroom, and give each other high fives or hugs. She was different. No other kids made people sick just by touching them. Jenny kept a wide s.p.a.ce around her and stayed quiet and wary at all times.

The incident happened in early October. Jenny was in her usual place at recess, on the little sloping hill by the playground, where most people only went for a quick break in the shade. She sat cross-legged in dirt and pine needles and watched other kids play freeze tag.

When two squirrels chased each other around a tree above her, Jenny started watching them instead. She loved how careless they seemed, even running at breakneck speed along a high electrical wire or hurtling from tree to tree, always landing in the right place without any effort. Once, in the thick woods around her house, she'd seen a squirrel leap from one treetop, sail across twenty or thirty feet of open s.p.a.ce, and land in the lower limbs of a distant tree. The squirrel hadn't even stopped when he landed, just kept on running.

She'd been watching squirrels a lot more since she learned they could do stunts.

The three girls that approached her were the ones that "owned" the big wooden bench in the corner of the playground. If they weren't playing with the other kids, they were on the bench, braiding each other's hair, whispering, or doing those games where girls sang a rhyme while clapping each other's hands.

The three of them whispered and snickered as they pa.s.sed the freeze-tag game, heading straight for Jenny. Jenny pretended not to see them coming. She closed her eyes and hoped they would go away, but she heard their shoes crunch through the pine straw and stop right in front of her.

Jenny opened her eyes. The three girls stood over her, looking down with their arms crossed. They wore bright, wide smiles. It was a look that would grow ever more familiar to Jenny in the coming years of school, the one that was extra friendly and sweet to hide the cruelty lurking behind it.

They were Ca.s.sie Winder, a short, freckled, red-haired girl; Neesha Bailey, a black girl who was really into pink camouflage pants; and the leader, Ashleigh Goodling. She was the daughter of Dr. Goodling, the preacher at the white Baptist church. Ashleigh stood a few inches higher than anyone in cla.s.s, and she was the only one who was already seven. She stared at Jenny with her gray eyes, which were the color of rainclouds and impossible to read. Like the other two girls, her hair was twisted into three or four giant braids, which they'd given each other.

"Hey, Jenny Morton," Ashleigh said, with a too-wide smile. "Whatcha doing, Jenny Morton?"

Jenny just looked back and kept her mouth shut. She felt suspicious, and a little panicked, and didn't have any idea what to say.

"Why you always up here alone, Jenny Morton?" Ashleigh asked.

"I don't know," Jenny said.

"You think you're better than everybody?"

"No."

Ashleigh planted her hands on her hips and leaned forward, putting her eyes closer to Jenny's. "You think you're so great. Then why's your hair so stupid and weird, huh?"

Ca.s.sie and Neesha snickered behind their hands.

"Do you cut your own hair, Jenny Morton?" Ashleigh asked.

"No. My daddy cuts it."

This was too much for Ca.s.sie and Neesha, who burst into laughter. Ashleigh didn't laugh but wore a small, tight, satisfied smile.

"Y'all go away," Jenny said.

Ashleigh's smile vanished all at once. Her eyes narrowed, and her voice became low and hissy.

"You don't tell me what to do, Jenny Morton! My daddy says your daddy's just a dumb drunk redneck and he shouldn't even have a kid!"

Jenny's face turned hot. Jenny was stunned at how the words felt, like a hard slap deep inside her face, the pain not instant but suddenly appearing a few seconds later, then spreading fast.

"Well," Jenny said, "My daddy says your daddy's nothing but a carnie-booth crook!" Jenny wasn't entirely sure what it meant, but she was pretty sure she got the words right when it came to her daddy's opinion of Dr. Goodling.

"Everybody likes my daddy!" Ashleigh said. "That's why everybody gives him money. Everybody likes my mommy, too. You don't even have a mommy. Prolly cause you're so ugly! She died cause you're so ugly!"

"Shut up!" Jenny screamed.

"You shut up!" Ashleigh countered.

"You're stupid!" Jenny said. "Leave me alone!"

"Leave me alone!" Ashleigh mocked Jenny's voice, but made her sound extra scared. Her two friends laughed behind her.

Jenny's fingers dug into the pine needles beside her, looking for a rock, but instead she found a large pine cone with a lot of pointy tips. She picked it up, reared back, and threw it as hard as she could at Ashleigh.

It struck the dead center of Ashleigh's face, between her gray eyes, p.r.i.c.kers jabbing her forehead and upturned nose. Ashleigh just looked shocked at first, but then her face reddened and she shrieked.

She jumped on Jenny, knocking the smaller girl onto her back in the pine straw, then started slapping her with both hands, back and forth, again and again.

"Stop!" Jenny screamed. Her hand flailed out and found Ashleigh's face, and she raked her fingernails across it.

"Ow!"Ashleigh seized a fistful of Jenny's hair and pulled hard, ripping strands out by the roots. Jenny grabbed one of Ashleigh's big braids and yanked it, making her scream again.

A sudden shaking, coughing fit ripped through Ashleigh. Ashleigh kicked away from Jenny and rolled over to her hands and knees. She crawled away, wheezing, struggling to breathe.

Neesha and Ca.s.sie stepped in front of Ashleigh to protect her, as if they expected Jenny to continue the fight. Instead, Jenny crawled back from them, stood up, and then backed away some more.

She watched Ashleigh coughing on her hands and knees, and she felt fear deep, deep inside her gut. She'd broken the biggest "never" of all-never touch another person.

Then she realized that the rest of the cla.s.s had abandoned their games of freeze tag and kickball. They all stood on the edge of the playground, watching and pointing at the fight on the slope while jabbering at each other. Mrs. Fulner, the first-grade teacher, made her way through the crowd of kids.

"Just what on Earth are you children doing?" she demanded.

"Jenny Morton hit Ashleigh!" Ca.s.sie said.

"Oooh..." Ashleigh groaned. She lay on the ground now, hands covering her face.

"Is this true, Jenny?" Mrs. Fulner asked.

Jenny couldn't think of what to say to make all the trouble and attention stop. So she stuck with what she knew: mouth closed, eyes on the ground, until they left you alone and went away.

Mrs. Fulner eventually did turn away, to check on Ashleigh.

"Ashleigh, honey?" She stood over the girl. "Sit up. Let me see you."

"No," Ashleigh groaned.

"Ashleigh, up, now!" the teacher snapped.

Ashleigh sighed. She rolled up to a sitting position, and she dropped her hands from her face.

Mrs. Fulner, and most of Mrs. Fulner's cla.s.s, let out a pained gasp. Jenny felt a sickening, falling sensation.

A thick red rash of swollen pustules covered Ashleigh's face, hands and arms. One big b.u.mp high on her cheek burst and leaked a fat teardrop the color of Elmer's Glue.

"Ewwwwwwwwwww!" a dozen kids squealed from the playground.

"She's got chicken pox!" a boy yelled from the back.

"It's from her!" Ashleigh screeched, pointing at Jenny. "She gave me pox!"

"She gave you Jenny Jenny pox!" Ca.s.sie said. pox!" Ca.s.sie said.

"Jenny pox!" one kid shouted, and others took it up: "Jenny pox! Jenny pox!"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Mrs. Fulner said. "Ashleigh, let's go visit the nurse, honey. I'll call your mother." She walked Ashleigh up the gravel path to the school building. She reached out a hand, nearly touched Ashleigh's shoulder, then thought better of it and pulled back. The teacher shot a glare over her shoulder at Jenny.

The crowd of kids chanted "Jenny pox! Jenny pox!" until Mrs. Fulner and Ashleigh were inside the building. Then all of them turned their heads and stared at Jenny.

"What?" Jenny asked.

The whole cla.s.s ran away from her, screaming, to the other side of the playground.

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