Chapter 4
They wanted the sprinkler.
“What you need the sprinkler for, wait ten minutes, is going to rain,” Leticia told them.
But Cady Lewis had come over in a pair of shorts and her swimsuit because Donna had promised her the sprinkler, not a rain
shower. They jumped on the couch and yelled while Van tried to watch Laff-A-Lympics.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Van shouted. “The Really Rottens are cheating again and I can’t even watch the end of my show!”
“I don’ need to hear about Jesus H. Christ from you, young man,” Leticia said. “When I want to hear about Jesus H. Christ
I go to mass.”
But Leticia knew when she was beat. She led the girls across the yard, unspooling about a mile of hose, to get them away from
Mrs. McBride’s bougainvillea. Their house was a three-story Florida McMansion with gables and balconies and a tiled porch
that went around two sides, set in a few green acres of professionally landscaped lawn. Nice—but not as nice as the estate
they moved to the following autumn, after Donna’s father inherited the family business from his father and took over the operation of five local newspapers and two local television stations.
Leticia set the sprinkler on the grass and rolled out the yellow banana, a rubber mat twenty feet long. They could make all
the noise they wanted out here, down by the hip-high stone wall, the pretty, narrow, residential street just beyond.
It was a stormy-looking day, the tops of the palms thrashing in a wet-warm wind.
Once in a while a warm spritz of water would fall—just a few drops of rain to bring out the spicy smell of wet concrete.
The sprinkler flashed back and forth, tittch!
tittch!tittch!, and when Donna cocked her head just right she could see a prismatic dance of colors in the flying drops.
Leticia brought the laundry out in a hamper to fold it on the porch, where she could keep an eye on them. The girls took turns
jumping through the swaying sheet of water. Donna thought if you jumped fast enough and then looked back, you would see a
girl-shaped hole in the spray, just like the coyote-shaped hole Wile E. made when he ran through a wall. They jumped and looked,
jumped and looked. Both agreed they saw it, saw the girl-shaped hole in the world, but Donna was lying, and maybe Cady was
lying too.
“I told my dad I want a swimming pool for Christmas,” Cady said.
“It isn’t Christmas for months.”
Cady shrugged. “I just wanted to give him the idea. Last year I told him I wanted an Irish setter in October, so he’d have
time to find one, and that’s how I got Maisy. You have to give them time to do their Christmas homework. Besides, if he was
going to have one done by December, they’d need to start digging soon. Anyway, after I get the pool, we can still play with
your sprinkler. For old times’ sake.”
“We might get a swimming pool too,” Donna announced. They had a tennis court, and a fountain with a stone baby in the center—water
trickled from his little pee-pee, which was so. Gross.—but no pool. The beach was only a short walk, and when they wanted to swim, Leticia always took them there.
Cady shrugged, to show how little she rated that possibility.
Donna added, “Even if we don’t, I’ll still have the yellow banana. You love the yellow banana.”
Cady looked at her pityingly. “But we’ll have a slide at one end of our pool.”
That deflated her, though she didn’t let it show.
“You can’t go fast on those little slides,” Donna said. “Not like this.”
She took a run at the yellow banana, threw herself at it, hard, and slid. She slid so fast and so hard, she shot right off the end, and her knee found a stone. She cried out, rolled away holding her leg.
“Leticia!” Cady called.
Leticia came to look at her knee. “It okay.”
It didn’t look okay to Donna. There was a big red scrape on it and blood. She rolled this way and that, gritting her teeth.
“I’m get you some rubbing alcohol and a Band-Aid.”
Donna hopped a few steps across the slippery wet grass. She wanted to slide on the yellow banana again and prove she wasn’t
hurt and didn’t need the rubbing alcohol. Rubbing alcohol was the worst. But Leticia caught her hand and began to lead her
back to the house.
“You can stay off the bananya until after we clean up your knee.”
Van appeared in the front door. “Jesus H. Christ! Leticia! It’s Mom! On the phone! Right during the ending of my show!”
Leticia let go of Donna’s hand at the bottom of the steps to the porch. “Sit here. I don’ want you on the bananya, getting
blood on it.”
Donna sat on the bottom step. Cady called from the far side of the yard.
“Watch, Donna! Just watch! I’m about to make a girl-shaped hole in the world!” She leapt through the sprinkler and for one
heartbeat Donna saw it: a dancing wall of glittering spray and the girl-shaped spot where Cady had jumped through to the other
side.
“I saw it, Cady!” Donna yelled. “I saw it!”
Someone else yelled Cady’s name, a moment later. There was a van on the far side of the road, on the other side of the low
stucco wall. Donna didn’t know how long it had been there. She thought it was blue, although sometimes she remembered it was
green. It was filthy with road dust and it had bubble windows in the back that were tinted black, or maybe no windows. It
was a Ford Econoline or maybe a Chevy. The driver’s-side window was rolled down and a man’s arm hung out. He was brown, like
a Mexican, or maybe just tanned. Donna saw his profile, his big beak of a nose and shaggy gray eyebrows. Or maybe she didn’t
see his profile. Sometimes she thought she wanted to see his profile so much she had imagined it.
“Cady?” shouted the man in the driver’s seat.
Cady took a step toward the wall. “Yes?”
“Hey, girl. I work with your daddy. Cady—Maisy got hurt. Your mom backed the car into her. Your parents took her to the emergency
vet.”
“What?” Cady cried.
He waved a hand at her. “Come on. We’ll get you over there.” He said we, which was maybe why, later, Donna came to believe there had been a second man in the van.
Cady looked back at Donna. Cady was already crying, her eyes bright with shock.
“I have to go!” she cried in a pinched voice. “Will you come with me, Donna?” She spun back on her heel and shouted at the
van. “Can Donna come?”
“Yes,” he said, with a Spanish accent, or maybe not. “Bring Donna.”
Donna got up. She felt sick to her stomach. Maisy was always poking her cold wet nose in people’s butts, but she was a happy,
inexhaustible dog, a dog who would chase a tennis ball for an hour and then throw her head in your lap and drool on you while
she snored. Donna thought she should go with Cady, only when she thought of seeing Maisy, her fur shampooed with blood and
dirt, she felt dizzy and weak. Also, Donna’s knee stung when she stood up, and when she looked, she had watery blood down
her shin, and she thought she should get a Band-Aid before she went anywhere.
“Let me ask Leticia. I’ll go in and get her.”
“We better go, Cady,” said the driver. “Maisy might not last long. Anyone comin’ better come. We got to roll.” He clapped
his hand against the side of the door, and later Donna wondered if he talked Black, if there was something Black in the way
he said we got to roll. She sometimes remembered actually his arm had been a Black man’s arm, a creamy shade of brown.
“Okay!” Cady cried. She tossed a frantic look at Donna. “Are you coming?”
Donna wondered if Maisy had literally been run over, if a tire had thumped over her midsection and split her stomach open, and all her guts had squished out. A bubble of nausea expanded in her throat.
“I better wait till Leticia fixes my leg,” Donna said.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Cady said. “Just stay here then.”
Cady ran across the road to the far side of the van in her bare feet, left her sneakers behind. A door slammed. The van hiccupped
away from the curb in a couple of jerky leaps and something thudded inside. Later, Donna thought that was the sound Cady Lewis’s
head made as someone smashed it in with a wrench. The van jerked away from the curb, hitched to a sudden stop, then rolled
sedately away and out of sight.
Donna sat on the bottom step while the sprinkler went tittch! tittch!
Thunder grumbled. Donna’s swimsuit was cold and clammy on her skin. She felt sick about Maisy and rotten about letting Cady
go alone and glad she hadn’t gone with her. She hated to think of something small and helpless in pain, something that had
been irreparably mauled by the world.
Leticia emerged with the first aid kit.
“Where’s Cady?”
“She had to go. Her mother backed over poor Maisy.”
Leticia put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God!” She sat on the top step and squeezed Donna’s head to her bosom. “Is Maisy going
to be all right?”
“She’s at the vet,” Donna said.
“Good. When I was little, we had a cat with three legs, but he could still jump on the kitchen table. He always jump on the
kitchen table at breakfast. We set him his own place an’ he eat with us.”
Donna felt so ill, she hardly noticed when Leticia put the alcohol swab to her scraped knee. Cady had left her shoes at the
bottom of the steps, and in a different version of her life, Donna pointed to them and asked Leticia if they could drive them
to the emergency vet and check on Maisy.
In that version of Donna’s life, Leticia said Yes, all right, we go now, and she went inside to call the Lewis house, to find out which emergency vet they had gone to.
In that other version of Donna’s life, Leticia heard Maisy barking cheerfully in the background when Cady’s mother answered the phone.
In that other version of Donna’s life, there were police cruisers on the interstate in minutes, police cruisers swarming the neighborhood.
The van was pulled over ten blocks away, and two scuzzy Mexicans were pulled out, thrown against the side.
A policewoman applied a cold compress to Cady’s bloody head.
An ambulance siren shredded the overcast afternoon.
You’re going to be all right, the policewoman said to Cady.
Your parents are on the way. In that other version of Donna’s life, Cady’s parents rode to the hospital in the back of the ambulance with their daughter,
and she got the swimming pool she wanted, and the slide too.
But in Donna’s real life, no one realized Cady Lewis was missing until nearly seven in the evening, when her mother called
to see if Cady was going to sleep over with Donna. In Donna’s actual life, Cady Lewis was never seen alive again.