Scorpio x 10

Part Three

Polly and Memo had taken advantage of the time they had together after Polly’s return to the states to go house hunting. They’d found a three-story house in a residential suburb of Philadelphia with a yard and a garage and, best of all, a cellar that had been converted into a kind of entertainment den. Polly and Memo were partiers and loved to entertain. In their own cellar, Memo could drink as much as he liked without having to worry about driving home.

They settled in, bought a second car, and became commuters, each heading off to their appointed hospitals in the city every morning. Polly was on the verge of giving birth again and not long after they moved in, her second child, another daughter, was born. Annie was 14 months younger than Mouse, whose growth been less than vigorous, and Annie caught up to her sister, size-wise, in no time. Polly dressed them as twins, enjoying the attention she garnered.

As the girls grew, playground equipment was added to the yard, a small swing set and a slide. Help was hired. Memo handled the interviews. Many were called but the position was finally awarded to a stunningly beautiful black woman named Marjorie. Mommy made out a very explicit set of directions, complete with a time schedule for Marjorie to follow with regard to “the girls” activities and meals throughout the day.

One day, however, the established schedule had to be abandoned.

Down the street from their house there lived a troublesome boy of about 10 or 11 years old. He’d pass their yard every day on his way to and from school and would sometimes yell nasty things at the girls whose skin tone was more like their Cuban father’s than like their Germanic mother’s. One day, though, he took things a little farther.

Annie had been inside, napping. Mouse was doing rounds on the sliding board, running, and climbing, and sliding as fast as she could just to see how fast she could go. The boy came by, as he always did, and shouted slurs at her. Used to his behavior, Mouse ignored him, and he continued on his way.

Not long after, though, he returned, and this time, perhaps having seen that she was alone, he was carrying a knife. It was a sharp knife, the kind that a person might use to carve a roast. He opened the gate and walked right in as if he had every right to.

Mouse, who’d been just at the base of the ladder, turned and ran to what looked like her best option for escape. The kitchen door was way too far away and up a few stairs, but the garage door was only a couple of yards away. She was closer to the garage door than he was to her; she fled, got in and locked the door behind her. Then she ran as far away from the door as she could, searching for any of the many tools that she knew her father kept in the garage that she might be able to use as a weapon, but all the tools were locked in a big metal case. The sounds of the boy rattling the door were unnerving her.

She spotted a tin can sitting on the workbench. It had been opened with an old-fashioned can-opener, the sort that was like a very sharp hook with a handle that you had to rock back and forth to cut the metal. The lid of the can had been pushed back inside it as was often done to prevent someone from getting cut by the jagged edges… but, she thought… “If I could get that lid back out… I could cut him.” Thinking no further than that, she jammed her right thumb, as hard as she could, to push past the lid so that she could hook it — so she thought — in the crook of her thumb and pull it out, forgetting, in her panic, that it was bound to cut her just as badly as she was hoping that it would cut him… and it did. Blood gushed out and her thumb was going nowhere, the ragged metal had locked into her, bone deep.

Knowing that things couldn’t get any worse, she headed for the door and the mean boy that stood outside of it. He’d been waiting. But when he saw the blood, he turned away and ran as quickly as he could out of the yard.

Mouse then, with her good hand, unlocked the door and headed, as fast as she could go, shouting for Marjorie, towards the kitchen door. Marjorie had heard her screaming and the moment she saw what had happened, she ran for the phone leaving Mouse to let herself in.

By the time the police arrived, Marjorie had wrapped Mouse’s hand — tin can and offending lid still intact — in a towel, hoping to quell the flow of blood and had, as well, bundled up a half-asleep Annie. The policeman got them all into the back seat, not bothering to ask what had happened. The amount of blood everywhere and the mental state of both Marjorie and Mouse was apparently all he needed to know. He flipped on the siren and took off like a life was dependent on it.

Mouse had passed out by the time they reached the emergency ward and the staff moved in a full-speed symphony of motion. The only thing Mouse would remember afterwards was that someone had told her that she was going to see Mickey Mouse as a large black mask descended towards her face. The next thing she knew, she was home in bed, and it was the following day.

The mean boy never came back and shortly thereafter, they moved house.