No Grace Allowed
A short story.
The day my creepy cousin and her mother moved into our neighborhood, my mother called me into the kitchen and said, “Go over and say hello to your cousin, Ivy.”
“Cousin Ivy? Who’s that?”
“Do you remember my cousin Violet?” my mother asked. I shook my head, even though I’d heard my mother talking on the phone, saying, “Vi’s back…I knew that as soon as Millie moved into the nursing home, we’d suddenly see Vi again…she’s hardly said a word to anyone in the last ten years.”
“Oh,” I said, “Is Ivy the crack baby?”
“Don’t ever say that in front of her,” Mom said.
My mother told me that Ivy was about my age and that I should be nice to her because she wouldn’t know anyone in this neighborhood—when Ivy was three they disappeared, living out of state somewhere. No one in the family heard from Violet after that, not even after they’d moved back to Minneapolis and into a duplex on Cedar Avenue, a parade of derelict homes with plywood nailed to the windows and orange flyers taped to the doors. Ivy was an “underprivileged child,” my mother said, using a phrase I heard all the time on TV.
“Go on over there,” my mother ordered, “be her friend.” I walked over to the house on Hayes Street that had belonged to my great-uncle John and his wife Millie, a tiny house of white stucco with green trim built sometime in the twenties. In the yard, there was a gravel driveway, a garage that leaned, and a bean pole with clotheslines that were slack with disuse. The top floor was two alcoves and a crawlspace, and the staircase was nothing but bare, creaky wood. The living room had a dingy green carpet and in the kitchen was an old-fashioned refrigerator with a chrome handle. A trapdoor led to the cellar.
Ivy had long, wavy blonde hair that reminded me of D.J. Tanner, only it looked like Ivy never brushed hers. Her lips were peeled back from her gums in a not-quite smile, like one of those old German dolls with teeth.
“I’m Grace,” I said. “We’re cousins.”
When she didn’t reply, I started counting the seconds of silence. Finally, she said, “Hi, Grace.”
Eight seconds.
Ivy and Violet had already moved in all of their things, and Violet asked if I’d help Ivy clean out the crawlspace. Her room was tucked into one of the attic alcoves, and in the back of her room, there was a narrow crawl space. There were boxes of old jewelry, musty hats, old posters, and even a moldy carton of Lucky Strike cigarettes. I thought we might find something valuable, like a collection of Indian head pennies. Instead, we found a cigar box full of old photos. An American Girl doll, paralyzed on its little bed, watched us as looked through the photos.
There was a photo of my granddad, George, as a young soldier home from war sitting on the back of a pickup truck next to his brother (and Ivy’s granddad) John.
“Who is this?” Ivy asked. I looked over her shoulder as she pointed to John.
“That’s John,” I said.
Ivy breathed with her mouth open, and I could hear the wet sputtering in her lungs, like a bottle of Elmer’s glue that was almost empty. I could see the question forming in her jelly eyes and waited for it to come out of her mouth. A breeze rustled the curtain. It hit my spine and I shivered. “John?” Ivy asked.
“Your mother’s father,” I explained. “My great-uncle. Your grandfather.” Then I added: “Don’t you know anything?” I wondered if she’d ever even met her grandparents.
We found more photos of our grandfathers as young men in uniforms, in suits with brides in tulip skirts and lace-edged veils. There were photos of Ivy’s grandmother Millie. Millie was thick-waisted with flame-colored hair so striking that even in a black-and-white photo you could tell she was a redhead. Her smile shimmered behind cherry red lipstick. Ivy looked a little like Millie—Ivy’s dark blond hair had a hint of Millie’s autumn red, and she had Millie’s large breasts and puffy fingers.
There were photos of Violet posing with my mom in stiffly starched Sunday school dresses, photos of Violet sitting on a cement dinosaur, in a high school gymnasium, in a prom dress. As I looked through the photos, I noticed that Ivy’s mother didn’t look like either John or Millie. At the bottom of the box, I found a photo of a young woman in a belted fur coat and tango shoes, holding a pair of driving gloves and wearing a bored expression on her face.
“Whoa,” I muttered aloud, “she looks just like your mom.” The woman in the photo had the same thin top lip as Violet and the same narrow nose. I rummaged through the box to find the photo of Violet and my mother in church and held it next to the portrait of the woman in fur. In the photo, my mother smiled at the camera, while Violet’s eyes slanted toward something outside the frame. I glanced at the back of the portrait, looking for a name or a date, but there was nothing.
“…she does?”
I thrust the two photos at her. “Can’t you see it? She has the same eyes, the same mouth.”
“Do I look like her?” she asked.
I squinted. Ivy had frizzy hair, shadowy eyes and dry, flaky lips. “No,” I concluded.
Just then, a small marmalade kitten appeared in the doorway.
“Come here, Kitty,” Ivy cooed and patted the bedspread until the cat leaped up and sat next to her. Ivy curled her hand around the cat’s tail, made a tight fist and without letting go she flicked her wrist as if she were cracking a whip. The cat’s legs stretched out stiff as Ivy flung the cat into the air, still gripping the tail. The cat splayed its toes and tried to dig its claws into the bedspread, but the cloth ripped as Ivy played crack-the-whip with the cat’s tail three more times. The cat cried, its tiny voice full of notes of confusion. When Ivy finally let go, the cat bounded down the stairs. Ivy smiled. Her eyes were shiny and motionless.
“I have to go home,” I said and walked out of the house. I didn’t realize until I got home that I still held the portrait of the unknown woman in my hand. My mom was in the kitchen scrubbing a splotch of raspberry jam off of the tile floor when I showed her the photo and asked her who the woman was.
“How should I know?” she grumbled.
I changed the subject and said, “Ivy is weird. She’s mean.”
“Come on now,” my mother chided, “she can’t be that bad.” She went on scrubbing.
A few days later, I went to visit a friend who lived on Ivy’s block. Her name was Tina, and she and I had been friends for a while. Her dad knew my uncle, and she had all the latest battery-operated dolls that I saw in commercials, like the one that crawled at the push of a button, and the blonde one with the magnetic mouth that would suck peas off a little plastic spoon. Tina even had a pregnant doll. You took the stomach off and there was a baby inside.
Before I went over to Tina’s house, my mom suggested I introduce Tina to Ivy, but when I got to Tina’s house, Ivy was already standing there in the backyard with Tina, talking. Ivy grinned when she saw me, and Tina grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me towards the door. I told Ivy that we’d be over to her house in a little bit and that she should wait for us there. Once inside, Tina whispered to me, “She was looking in the window. I was in my bedroom and I looked out the window and I saw her with her face pressed up against the screen. She was staring at me.”
“She was a crack baby,” I explained.
Tina and I decided to play a joke on Ivy. We wrote a questionnaire, using a purple felt marker and lined paper, asking questions about babies and how they are made. We stuffed it into her mailbox, and the next day she showed it to us.
“I can’t believe it,” she grumbled, her arms crossed over her chest, “someone’s asking me about my sex life.” Tina and I exchanged a glance and I suddenly had this feeling that we’d gone too far.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said to Ivy, “they just want to know what you know. They just want to know that kids understand this stuff.”
“Yeah,” Tina said, “I got one too. I filled it out.”
After Ivy left, we looked at her answers to the questionnaire. Under “Where do babies come from?” she’d written, “Butts.”
A month later, we had a birthday party for Millie at the nursing home where she and my grandfather both lived. My mom and I decorated with streamers and crepe pineapples that we found in the nursing home’s storage closet. We ordered a sheet cake with blue frosting and got a big tray of chow mein from Jung’s on Johnson Street. Jung’s chow mein was just celery and little chunks of ham suspended in a gluey sauce, but as Mom pointed out, it was Millie’s favorite.
I decanted Hawaiian Punch into little Dixie cups while my mother and Aunt Marjorie stabbed the cake with little yellow candles.
“Where’s Vi?” Marjorie asked. My mom shrugged.
“She called last night and asked us if we could give Ivy a ride.”
“She can’t come to her own mother’s birthday?” Marjorie tore the plastic wrap off a box of candles with her teeth and spat.
“Oh, you know Vi…she keeps herself busy,” my mother chuckled.
Marjorie glanced at her watch. “I’d better go finish helping Millie get ready,” she said.
“Aunt Marjorie, wait,” I said, fishing the photo of the woman in the fur coat out of my Lisa Frank Trapper-Keeper, “Do you know who this is?” Marjorie held the photo close to her face and squinted.
She flipped it over and looked on the back side before she handed it back to me and said, “No clue. Where did you get this?”
“Ivy’s attic,” I explained.
A few minutes later, Aunt Marjorie brought Millie in. Millie wore a yellow sundress and a yellow pill-box hat to match. “John bought me this hat for my birthday in 1951,” she told me. Her smiling lips trembled under waxy pink lipstick. The room swelled with relatives, old friends and nursing home staff. Artie Shaw’s clarinet crackled on an old turntable.
The record ran out and as I went to change it, I passed the table where Ivy sat. She was talking to Millie.
“What grade are you in?” she asked Ivy.
“…sixth.” Her gaze hovered somewhere to the left of Millie’s ear.
“I thought you were thirteen?”
“…I am.”
She was left back, I thought to myself as I slipped a Sinatra album out of its sleeve. Sinatra was my granddad’s favorite. After the needle dropped, Granddad summoned me to his side. He turned his cheek to be kissed. I obeyed and he put a shaky arm around me.
“What do you think of Violet?” he asked in a low whisper. He pointed his cane at Ivy’s mother. Ivy’s mother had arrived late after we’d cut the cake. You could tell she had just had her hair dyed—a sort of dark reddish color that matched her lipstick. She wore a short red skirt with a black T-shirt and a denim vest.
“I don’t really know her,” I replied, “but Ivy is weird.”
He laughed and said, “When John found out, he pertner hit the roof.” Before I could ask him what John found out, Grandpa said, “What’cha got there?” indicating the photo in my hand.
“Do you know who this is?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She doesn’t look like anyone in our family.”
I didn’t mention that I thought she looked like Violet. He flipped the photo over and asked, “Where’d this come from?”
“Ivy’s,” I replied.
“Hm,” he muttered. “That’s differ’nt.”
After we’d packed up the leftovers and taken down the streamers, we said goodnight to Grandpa and Millie and drove home. Alone in my room, I set the portrait of the mystery woman on top of my dresser and tried to copy her pose and her chilly expression.
The phone rang, and seconds later I heard footsteps in the hallway. I hid the photo and opened the door. My mom handed me the phone.
“Who is it?” I asked, hoping it would be Tina.
“It’s Ivy,” my mom replied. We’d only just dropped Ivy off at her house. Violet had left before the end of the party.
“Hello?” I said.
“My cat ran away,” Ivy said, flatly.
“Oh,” I replied, remembering how I’d seen the kitten trembling under the couch when I left Ivy’s house. “Do you want me to help you find it?” Even as I said it, I knew I wouldn’t let her bring the cat back to her house.
“No,” she grumped, “I hope that stupid cat gets hit by a car and dies.”
I hung up the phone.
Tina announced she was moving to Spring Lake Park. I helped her pack her things, carefully arranging her As Seen on TV dolls into a clear plastic bin.
“Do you want to stay for dinner tonight?” Tina asked as she searched under her bed for the pregnant doll’s tiny rubber baby. “My dad’s going to order from Pizza Hut.”
“Stuffed crust?” I asked. She winked and held her hand up to her mouth and pretended to eat a pizza backward.
“Crust first,” she muttered.
That evening, Tina and I sat on the couch watching reruns of “Full House” while we waited for the pizza to arrive.
“I love Uncle Jesse,” Tina sighed as the young Greek actor who played the soft-hearted Harley-riding uncle sauntered across the screen and tossed his black mulleted mane. “Hey,” she said as she turned to me, “did you ever find out who that woman is in that picture?”
“No,” I shook my head, “nobody knows.”
“So maybe she’s not your ancestor.”
“But then why does she look so much like Violet?”
Tina grinned. “Maybe you’re not related to Violet either?”
I smiled and bit my lip. “That would mean…I’m not related to Ivy.”
Tina lifted her plastic cup of root beer into the air. “A toast to…whatever her name was.”
“Samantha,” I declared, “she looks like a Samantha.” I tapped my plastic cup against hers and sipped as the young girl on TV sat on the edge of her bed and cried. Just as the canned violins began to whine, the doorbell rang.
“Pizza!” Tina exclaimed as she sprang up from the sofa and went to open the door. I heard the tones in Tina’s voice suddenly become dissonant, and I got up from the couch to see what was going on. Standing in the doorway was not a delivery boy pulling pizza boxes out of a red food warmer bag, but Ivy.
“What are you doing here?” Tina asked. Ivy showed her teeth but didn’t reply. “Well, I’m sorry, but we’re having dinner and you’re not invited,” Tina informed flatly as she slammed the door in Ivy’s face.
I followed Tina back to the couch. On TV, the end credits rolled.
“What was that?” Tina’s father asked.
“Nothing,” Tina replied. “I was just getting rid of an unwanted guest.”
“Tina, go over to her house now and apologize.”
“But Dad, our pizza will be here any minute,” Tina protested. Another “Full House” rerun started. I kept my eyes focused on the TV screen as the smiling TV family raced over the crest of a sundrenched hill.
“No pizza until you apologize,” ordered Tina’s father. Tina sighed, and I followed her to Ivy’s house. On the backdoor, a handwritten sign was taped to the glass window pane: “NO TINA ALLOWED.”
Tina laughed. “Fine by me! Come on, Gracie, let’s go eat.”
As I turned to go, I cast a glance over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Ivy’s eye, peeking through the sliver of glass between the window frame and the edge of her sign.
I glared back at her. Cat killer crack baby, I thought.
Tina’s family moved out on a Friday morning. By afternoon, Tina’s house was cleaned out completely. Through her front windows, I could see clear to the back ones.
On Saturday, while my mom was buying pork pinwheels at the butcher shop and my dad was putting in overtime at work, I stood in front of the mirror that hung on the back of my bedroom door, watching myself pose. A second face appeared on the smudged surface of the glass, half obscured by the leaves of the mock orange outside my window. It was Ivy. Through the mirror’s blur of fingerprints and lipgloss, I could see the sheen in her eyes. Her gaze didn’t meet mine in the mirror but hovered somewhere off to the side. Through a parting in the leaves, I could see a portion of her half-peeled smile.
I ran outside. Ivy was still peeping through the window, staring at her reflection in my mirror.
“Ivy,” I said, and she finally turned, her expression unchanged. Her lips were like the underside of a dried-up orange rind.
“I have a surprise,” she said.
“You do?” I asked and searched my brain for an excuse to keep her from coming inside. She blinked and then nodded.
“It’s at my house.”
I followed Ivy over to her house and into her half-an alcove where, at the foot of her bed, was a Plexiglas cage. A tiny white rabbit with crimson eyes curled up in the corner.
“You got a rabbit?” I asked.
Ivy grinned. As she reached into the cage, I remembered the marmalade kitten and imagined Ivy grabbing the rabbit by its ears and swinging it around, volleying it over the limp clotheslines in the backyard, or shaking it until its heart stopped.
“Can I hold it?” I asked as I reached into the cage and snatched the rabbit. The rabbit’s warm body trembled in my hands as I gently stroked the soft fur. “Where did you get it?” I asked.
Ivy’s eyes were fixed on a spot on the wall, so I didn’t think she heard me, but she replied, “My mom’s boyfriend gave it to me. Because of the cat.”
I bit the inside of my lower lip and curled my hands into fists. It all flashed through my mind then: the kitten’s splayed claws, NO TINA ALLOWED, Ivy’s face in my bedroom mirror, the Full House cast running uphill. My heart raced.
“They got you a rabbit after what you did to that cat?” I could feel the rabbit’s heartbeat as I held it close to my chest.
“Stupid cat,” was all Ivy said.
“You’re not really related to me,” I said.
Her eyes moved slowly from the spot on the wall, scanning for shadows that I couldn’t see, before settling somewhere near my face. Her brow wrinkled.
“John and Millie aren’t really your grandparents,” I continued. “They just say they are because they feel sorry for you.”
“…why?” Her white lips curled under and her eyes hardened like shiny coal.
“Because your mom smoked crack.”
I watched her face twist. Her mouth formed a dark, overturned crescent. Her hands gripped fistfuls of bedspread. I clutched the rabbit to my chest, careful not to crush it, as I sprang up from the bed and ran down the stairs. As I dashed out the front door, I heard her. By the time I got to the end of her block, I could still hear her, a throaty roar that ran in long pulses, like a train whistle. I ran home and collapsed against my bedroom door.
I turned on my CD player and put on the Barenaked Ladies to drown out the sound of the jangling telephone. Even over the sound of the music, I could hear a mangled voice demanding the return of the rabbit each time the answering machine picked up.
I held the rabbit up to my cheek and felt its soft fur against my skin. I decided to name the rabbit Samantha.
A car door slammed and I knew my mom was back from the butcher shop. The phone stopped in mid-ring this time. I held my breath as the last track on my CD faded out. Footsteps approached my door. I thought about stashing the rabbit under my bed or in the closet, but instead, I sat on the edge of my bed, held Samantha on my lap, and waited for my mother to come into my room.
“Grace,” she said when she saw Samantha, “where did you get that rabbit?”
“Ivy gave it to me,” I lied.
Mom crossed her arms. “She did not.”
“Mom,” I explained, “you should have seen how she treated the kitten she had. She grabbed it by its tail and flung it around.”
“I don’t care,” Mom said. “That’s Ivy’s rabbit. Besides, we don’t need an animal in the house. Take it back.”
“But Mom—” I protested.
“Take it back.” She turned and walked out of the room.
I trudged back to Ivy’s house, but when I got there, there was another sign taped to the backdoor. This time, hot pink letters screamed “NO GRACE ALLOWED.” I searched for any pieces of a face on the other side, peering eyes or part of a sneer, but for once, Ivy wasn’t watching. I pressed my face into Samantha’s fur before I set her on the ground in a bed of creeping Charlie. I rang the doorbell and ran down the alley.
“What the matter?” a neighbor asked as I walked by.
Tears ran down my face. I muttered, “Nothing.”
Author’s note: An older version of this story was published in Paper Darts magazine. Check out my story, Final Notice, to read about life from Ivy’s perspective.