It

Marsh could think of. Losing a child or finding out you had cancer didn’t hold a candle to it. You could be poor; you could spend your life doing what she called ‘scratchin.’ But at the bottom of everything, below even the gutter, was a time when you might have to go on the county and drink the worksweat from the brows of others as a gift. This, she knew, was the prospect that now faced Cheryl Tarrent.
‘Once you got the win dows washed and take the trash out, you can go and play awhile, if you want. It’s your father’s bowling night so you won’t have to fix his supper, but I want you in before dark. You know why.’
‘Okay, Mom.’
‘My God, you’re growing up fast,’ Elfrida said. She looked for a moment at the nubs in Beverly’s sweatshirt. Her glance was loving but pitiless. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do around here once you’re married and have a place of your own.’
‘I’ll be around for just about ever,’ Beverly said, smiling. . Her mother hugged her briefly and kissed the corner of her mouth with her warm dry lips. ‘I know better,’ she said. ‘But I love you, Bevvie.’
‘I love you too, Momma.’
‘You make sure there aren’t any streaks on those windows when you’re done,’ she said, picking up her purse and going to the door. ‘If there are, you’ll catch the blue devil from your father.’
‘I’ll be careful.’ As her mother opened the door to go out, Beverly asked in a tone she hoped was casual: ‘Did you see anything funny in the bathroom, Mom?’
Elfrida looked back at her, frowning a little. ‘Funny?’
‘Well . . . I saw a spider in there last night. It crawled out of the drain. Didn’t Daddy tell you?’
‘Did you get your dad angry at you last night, Bevvie?’
‘No! Huh-uh! I told him a spider crawled out of the drain and scared me and he said sometimes they used to find drowned rats in the toilets at the old high school. Because of the drains. He didn’t tell you about the spider I saw?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. Well, it doesn’t matter. I just wondered if you saw it.’
‘I didn’t see any spider. I wish we could afford a little new linoleum for that bathroom floor.’ She glanced at the sky, which was blue and cloudless. ‘They say if you kill a spider, it brings rain. You didn’t kill it, did you?’
‘No,’ Beverly said. ‘I didn’t kill it.’
Her mother looked back at her, her lips pressed together so tightly they almost weren’t there. ‘You sure your dad wasn’t angry with you last night?’
‘Bevvie, does he ever touch you?’
‘What?’ Beverly looked at her mother, totally perplexed. God, her father touched her every day. ‘I don’t get what you — ‘
‘Never mind,’ Elfrida said shortly. ‘Don’t forget the trash. And if those windows are streaked, you won’t need your father to give you blue devil.’
‘I won’t
(does he ever touch you)
‘forget.’
‘And be in before dark.’
‘I will.’
(does he)
(worry an awful lot)
Elfrida left. Beverly went into her room again and watched her around the corner and out of view, as she had her father. Then, when she was sure her mother was well on her way to the bus stop, Beverly got the floorbucket, the Windex, and some rags from under the sink. She went into the living room and began on the windows. The apartment seemed too quiet. Each time the floor creaked or a door slammed, she jumped a little. When the Boltons’ toilet flushed above her, she uttered a gasp that was nearly a scream.
And she kept looking toward the closed bathroom door.
At last she walked down there and drew it open again and looked inside. Her mother had cleaned in here this morning, and most of the blood which had pooled under the sink was gone. So was the blood on the sink’s rim. But there were still maroon streaks drying in the sink itself, spots and splashes of it on the mirror and on the wallpaper.
Beverly looked at her pale reflection and realized with sudden, superstitious dread that the blood on the mirror made it seem as if her face was bleeding. She thought again: What am Igoing to do about this? Have I gone crazy? Am I imagining it?
The drain suddenly gave a burping chuckle.
Beverly screamed and slammed the door and five minutes later her hands were still trembling so badly that she almost dropped the bottle of Windex as she washed the windows in the living room.
5
It was around three o’clock that afternoon, the apartment locked up and the extra key tucked snugly away in the pocket of her jeans, when Beverly Marsh happened to turn up Richard’s Alley, a narrow walk-through which connected