Affairs
The night the Bloody Mother took control, all the children in the city woke at the same instant.
Most soon slid into sleep again, tucked back into bed by their parents. But others stayed awake, hearing the slap of rain against the windows, the rumble of thunder following lightning across the sky. Something was different. Something was wrong.
Some children heard a voice—mother, father—reminding them to be careful. Someone who had died, still trying to help, still warning about danger.
Janira Pangborn knelt on her bed, peering through the rain-washed window. The city lights were blurred by the wind-swept rain. Lightning-flash showed her the tossing trees across the street.
The bedroom door opened all the way; Grandpa came in, hand outstretched to shut the bedroom window.
Well, now,
he said when he saw her.
He checked that she’d closed the window tight, then bent to straighten her sheets, the night light showing her his nice grandpa face. Came in to make sure you hadn’t been blown right out of bed. Woke you up, did it?
He patted her back down into bed, smoothed the covers over her. That lightning was close—bet it almost knocked the Dutchman right off his pedestal. At least his light’s out.
Really? Janira sat back up and craned to see through the window. Yes, there was a dark spot in the city skyline where red lights usually blinked under the Dutchman’s feet at the top of City Hall.
Well, you go back to sleep now.
Grandpa lifted the covers so she could slide in, then smoothed them over her again.
I thought something blew up,
she said. Because that had been in her dream: the bright flash of something being destroyed.
Her grandfather froze and looked at her for a heartbeat, lightning flickering over his face. Then he smiled. I was just thinking about having a little glass of milk,
he said. You want one?
Up at two a.m. on a school night? Sure!
Downstairs looked disappointingly normal, and the milk was ordinary, even though it was two o’clock in the morning, when she’d never been awake before. But the thunder sounded softer, maybe because it wasn’t directly over her head.
Used to have storms like this when I was a boy,
her grandfather said, sitting down at the table with his own glass of milk. When I was a little guy, I used to think the thunder was coming right through the roof at me.
He smiled. Your great-uncle used to wake up and find me hiding under the bed.
Under the bed? It was hard to think of Grandpa ever being small enough to fit under the bed. She took a sip of milk. Did Daddy get scared of thunder?
she asked.
"Oh, he’d sometimes come over to your grandmother’s and my bedroom, just making sure we were all right." He grinned and winked at her, to let her know he was joking.
Daddy scared of thunderstorms! He wasn’t scared now—he wasn’t scared of anything, because he was a soldier. Soldiers weren’t afraid of anything. She wasn’t scared, either. Not really. Not of anything like thunder. It was just that this thunderstorm—
Do you— Do you believe in ghosts?
she asked.
He drank some milk and looked at her for a moment. Did you hear something that worried you?
Not heard. But she wasn’t sure how to explain, so she shook her head.
I’ve never seen a ghost,
Grandpa said. You’d think we would, with that cemetery right across the street. But even when I was a little guy growing up in this house, I never saw any ghosts. And I looked for them, because the thought of ghosts always made me kind of nervous.
He smiled. Did I tell you about Jonesey’s ghost?
Huh uh,
Janira said. She loved Jonesey stories. He’d lived right next door when Grandpa was a little boy, and they’d been best friends. Grandpa had a lot of funny stories about their adventures.
We sneaked out,
Grandpa said, "late one night, after everybody else’d gone to bed. Fog coming off the river; everything kind of misty and wet and mysterious. We weren’t going to do anything; we were just walking around scaring each other in the dark. We were walking right beside that fence at the other end of the cemetery, and Jonesey said he saw something moving in the cemetery, out of the corner of his eye. Well, I looked, but I couldn’t see anything in the fog; and he looked, and he couldn’t see anything in the fog; but then I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye, too. Probably because he put it in my mind that there was something in the graveyard."
He stopped and took a sip of milk; and Janira drank some milk, too, not actually tasting it. She was thinking about the darkness and the fog and the headstones and not being able to see something clearly. She wished he’d get to the funny part of the story.
So,
he finally went on, we were walking along that fence, kind of worried because nothing should be moving in that graveyard; and then we heard Officer Diller coming along. Police officers still walked a beat around here in those days, and Officer Diller was walking his beat, keeping an eye on the neighborhood. We hid when he came by, because he’d take us home and wake up our parents, and then we’d be in real trouble. We were huddled up in the bushes right beside the cemetery fence. And Officer Diller went by us, and we kind of relaxed; and just about the time the sound of his footsteps went away, Jonesey grabbed me. I never saw him so scared.
Grandpa smiled at the memory. Janira looked at him anxiously. Was this the funny part?
Jonesey was scared,
Grandpa said, "but he managed to pull me away from that fence, and he whispered, ‘Grabbed me. It grabbed my leg.’ And I looked, but I couldn’t see anything in the darkness and the fog, and there wasn’t anything like a stick or anything that would have been grabbing him through that fence. But, you better believe I wasn’t going to stick around where ghosts were grabbing people; and we started for home; but then we heard Officer Diller’s footsteps coming back, down the other side of the street. He was checking the shops there, making sure nobody had broken in. The fog was so thick, we couldn’t see him, and he wouldn’t have been able to see us, but I didn’t think of that, and I dragged Jonesey back to the fence. And then he made a squeaky sound and jumped and pointed down, back at the fence; and I looked down, and I could just see that something was coming through that fence, clawing at Jonesey’s leg, something I could barely see, even with the streetlight.
"I was about to run across that street, even if Officer Diller would get us in trouble, because ghosts were scarier even than my father. But then the ghost made a mrowr sound, and I thought, ‘That’s a cat.’ And it was. Mrs. Johansson’s big cat wandering through the night and the fog. It liked us and was trying to get our attention. He chuckled.
It sure did get our attention—just not in the way we wanted."
Okay, this was the funny part. Janira’s laughter was part relief that the story hadn’t turned into something that Grandpa thought was funny, but was actually scary. Sometimes his stories were like that.
I don’t really think people come back from the dead, especially if it would worry children,
Grandpa said. I think most people’s ghosts are like Mrs. Johansson’s cat. I have seen some strange things: all police officers see strange things. People totaling their cars and coming out without even a bruise. Children finding their way out of a burning building without being hurt. And there was a drive-by shooting where bullets hit cars and buildings and even sacks of groceries people were carrying, but they didn’t hit a single person.
She loved this story. And Gabriel Lightning,
she murmured. It was a wonderful name.
I tell this story a lot, huh?
Grandpa said, smiling. Yes, I was interviewing witnesses, and asked if anyone had seen or heard anything besides the bullets, and a boy said, ‘Just Tasha hollering
Gabriel Lighting, help us! ’ Tasha was eight years old. Just her pet name for an angel, I guess.
He looked at the clock on the kitchen stove. Oh, hey, we need to get back to bed,
he said. You’ve got school tomorrow.
He peered at the clock again. "Today. You’ve got school today."
Suddenly Janira was tired—so tired she could barely drag herself up the stairs to bed.
Guess we can open the window a little,
Grandpa said.
Outside, the thunder was now just a muttering in the distance, and the rain-washed air smelled clean.
How comfortable her bed looked! Janira snuggled down and closed her eyes as Grandpa tucked her in. ’Night, Grandpa,
she murmured.
’Morning, you mean.
His voice had a laugh in it, and she smiled.
Outside, a car went past, its tires hissing on the wet street. On the other side of the wall, her grandfather’s bed creaked as he got into it. Out in the dark hallway, the old clock steadily ticked and tocked. Comforting sounds. Normal sounds.
But something kept Janira from sliding into sleep. Something that— She had to check.
Dragging herself out of her comfortable bed was almost painful, but she had to look, had to make sure.
She peered through the window at the rain-shiny street. The Dutchman’s statue still stood in darkness. The streetlight made the wet leaves on the oak tree in Mrs. Coiner’s front yard glitter like little stars.
Janira felt herself relax. The sidewalk was empty. There was no one there now, no figure walking up and down, misty in the darkness.
The figure that had been there before, when the dream woke her, was gone: her mother, in her Army uniform, patrolling with her rifle on her back.
Her mother’s ghost, patrolling in the darkness.
Getting-up time came, and Janira’s body felt heavy as concrete. School? Already?
Then her brain said, Daddy; and suddenly she was wide awake. Sometimes Daddy called before breakfast. In the part of the world where he was deployed, it was supper time, and few people were using the telephones.
Outside, the world shimmered in the bright sunlight. Fistfuls of leaves were scattered on the sidewalk.
Downstairs, Grandpa was scraping butter across toast. His coffee smelled dark brown and delicious.
As she sat down, Janira looked at the old-fashioned landline hanging on the wall near the table. It didn’t ring.
You have to drink orange juice this morning,
Grandpa said. Somehow we ran low on milk last night. Can’t imagine how.
He grinned slyly at her as he cut the toast into triangles.
Can I have some coffee?
she asked automatically, half-listening for the phone to ring.
No.
Can I please please please?
she asked, as she always did.
"No-o-o-o," Grandpa said, as he always did.
"Why-y-y-y?"
Because it’ll stunt your growth.
Grandpa sat down, glanced at the unringing telephone, and picked up his World’s Greatest Grandpa
mug of coffee, inhaling the aroma with a little smile.
Did you ever know anybody who did that?
Grandpa blinked at her. She’d never asked that.
No,
he admitted. He thought for a minute. Well, maybe Jonesey. He was really short. I think he drank coffee.
I thought he smoked cigarettes,
Janira said through a mouthful of toast. Jonesey was usually Grandpa’s don’t smoke cigarettes
story.
That was later. While he was going to law school. Don’t talk with your mouth full.
"If I drank coffee, could I be a lawyer?" she asked. The phone still wasn’t ringing.
Being short isn’t a requirement for being a lawyer. Though with Jonesey I think it helped. He wasn’t good at fighting with his fists, so he learned to fight with his words.
He glanced over at the unringing phone. You might be a good lawyer, though, ’cause you do like to argue.
Oh, he was being silly.
And, oh, the telephone was being stubbornly silent. In a few minutes, she would have to go to school.
Then, to Janira’s surprise, Grandpa dipped a spoon into his coffee and tipped it into her mouth.
She swallowed automatically and then lunged for her orange juice. Ewwwwww!
Oh, that’s nasty!
It tasted like sour dirt. She took another big gulp of juice. Grandpa was laughing. "How can anybody drink that?" Another swig of juice drowned most of the coffee taste.
It’s something adults like,
said Grandpa.
They could have it. Won’t it stunt my growth?
asked Janira.
Not a little taste like that. I just didn’t want it to become some forbidden fruit that you just had to try. Now you know what it tastes like, so you don’t have to go sneaking in bags of coffee beans to try up in your room.
Sneaking in bags of … She laughed at him, and he grinned back.
Grandpa looked at the clock and then at the unringing telephone. Well,
he said with a sigh, I guess we got to get going.
Janira’s heart sank. The telephone still didn’t ring.
Go get your stuff.
Grandpa started clearing the table.
Janira glared at the silent telephone and dragged her feet up the stairs.
Backpack. Make bed. Bed was quick: she tossed the covers over the rumpled sheets and the crumpled pillow. Then she pulled on her sneakers, efficiently left tied when she’d pulled them off the night before. Backpack was under the bed; she conscientiously checked to make sure the homework she’d almost finished the day before was inside—also, the overdue library book.
Thumpety-tumped down the stairs. Stopped dead on the landing at the bottom of the staircase. What was—?
On the wall at the landing was a large mirror, convenient for people putting on their coats to check how they looked before going outside. But something—
Janira turned and looked at the mirror. Hadn’t there been—just for an instant—something moving in that mirror—a shadow where there shouldn’t have been …
Well, nothing there now, and Grandpa sounded impatient on the porch.
She took his hand when they reached the street. There wouldn’t be anything there on the sidewalk—surely there wouldn’t be anything other than people. Living people. It was just that—
"Damn."
Janira looked at her grandfather, shocked. He didn’t swear.
Except she’d never seen him this angry. He was glaring at the corner post on the front porch. Someone had tagged it with dark-blue marker, right on the light-green paint. Right on their house.
Those—
Grandpa sputtered. He took a breath and seemed to calm himself. Well, at least there’s paint left over.
Are you going to arrest him?
she asked.
Not me,
Grandpa said. But I can maybe let some of my friends on the force know—maybe keep an eye out.
He smiled down at her. Don’t you get all worried. We watch out for each other in this neighborhood.
She smiled back, but the little sick feeling in her stomach didn’t go away completely. It was just a jagged squiggle, but she felt as if someone had walked up to her and written it on her face. This was her house. What kind of person would scrawl on somebody’s house like it didn’t matter that people lived there and wanted it nice? And— She gripped Grandpa’s hand a little tighter. And what might they do that might be worse?
School was school and sometimes boring. A lot of people talked about the storm: a tree had fallen on Hannah’s parents’ car; lightning had struck a house on Roman’s block. During Current Events,
Ms. Hart talked about the Dutchman’s statue, which had damaged by lightning.
"Who was Willem Van Wyck, and why is his statue on City Hall?" she asked.
He made the city,
said Carla, who sometimes seemed to know everything.
That’s right. He bought the land from the Lenape who were living here, for twenty dollars worth of beads and an iron kettle.
That was cheating,
said Henry, who seemed to have an opinion on everything.
Well, that’s what people did in those days,
said Ms. Hart. The Lenape didn’t understand what the Dutch had in mind.
They were stupid,
said Henry.
No,
said Ms. Hart. They had different customs. The Lenape thought the Dutch were paying for the right to use the land alongside them, not for the land itself.
Like I said: stupid.
Henry wasn’t giving up.
Ms. Hart’s face got that expression that meant she’d had about enough of Henry. She got that expression quite a lot. "Like I said: different customs."
Out of the corner of her eye, Janira saw Henry shrink in his chair. He knew that expression, too.
The Lenape didn’t have the concept of treating the land like an object that someone could keep others from using. It would be like buying the air and not letting someone else breathe it,
Ms. Hart went on. Does anybody know what Willem Van Wyck’s statue holds in its hand? Someone besides Carla?
No one besides Carla did know, so Carla got to answer: A crystal ball and a belt.
Well,
said Ms. Hart, It’s a round piece of quartz, but it’s not exactly a crystal ball.
My aunt has a crystal ball,
said Stephen, whose aunt was a pagan with a lot of interesting possessions. She keeps it in a black bag and only takes it out at full moon. She says quartz is for healing and for helping people focus, and that’s why she’s saving up for a real crystal ball made of real quartz. It’s expensive.
Yes, that’s very interesting, Stephen,
Ms. Hart said, though I do wish you’d remembered to raise your hand first. Willem Van Wyck’s statue holds a round piece of quartz in its hand because—
Did he wear it?
asked Alice, who liked to know things.
Ms. Hart blinked at her for a minute. Ms. Hart seemed to blink at Alice a lot. Wear the—
Did he wear the belt?
asked Alice.
"Oh, the wampum belt! Ms. Hart looked relieved.
No, it’s not that kind of belt. It looks like a very wide belt, but you don’t put it on. It’s made of shell beads strung together and woven in a long strip. The beads make a picture. The Lenape gave the belt to Willem Van Wyck to remind him of their bargain. That’s why the statue has a wampum belt draped over its hand—because it symbolizes the bargain. And I wish you’d remembered to raise your hand, too. Ms. Hart smiled at them. Then she seemed to remember something.
Oh, yes! And, the piece of quartz! The Lenape gave Willem Van Wyck a quartz pebble to symbolize the land. So the statue also has a piece of quartz in its hand, though the real Willem Van Wyck had the stone mounted on the hilt of his sword. Unfortunately, they’ll have to replace the piece of quartz when they fix the statue, because it disintegrated when lightning hit the statue last night."
Cool!
said Alice.
Wow! Janira thought. She pictured lightning striking the crystal ball and blasting it into pieces. A million pieces. Really cool.
It would be fun telling Grandpa about it—she didn’t often have something interesting to tell him about.
But he had a surprise for her.
A cell phone. For her. Her own cell phone. It was blue—a really pretty blue, like the evening sky when the first stars were coming out.
Your father and I thought you were old enough to handle one of these,
he said. They were cheaper when you paid in advance for the minutes. Prepaid—that’s what it is. Do you like it?
Did she—? Oh, of course she liked it! It folded in half, which made it not one of the best ones, but the best phones didn’t come in blue. And look how the keys lit up; and it could take pictures; and she really liked that wallpaper; and she could download others; and it was shiny and new (and blue); and just listen to the ring tones—well, maybe not that one—and there were these games, though not the one with the flying pigs dropping bricks on the rabbits—
How’d you find that so quick?
Grandpa asked. I still can’t find the games on mine. See mine? It’s the same one, but in black.
Oh, yes, it was really nice. But—really—blue was just so much prettier.
I put my number on yours and your number on mine, so we can call each other,
said Grandpa.
So she called him, to practice; and they heard each other really well, which was easier because they were only a foot apart; but they could still hear each other when she went into the kitchen and whispered.
I can call Daddy!
Janira said after they’d hung up.
No,
said Grandpa. You know he can’t talk to you just any time. But I sent him your phone number on the computer, so he can call you. And your Benton grandparents have it, too.
They could call her? It was wonderful to have her own phone!
I can text Simone!
She flipped open the phone and found the texting app and was trying to remember Simone’s number when her grandfather’s hand closed firmly over her phone. I think it’s time for a little math lesson,
he said.
This math lesson wasn’t as much fun as math lessons usually are, because this one was mostly subtraction: start with this amount of money that Grandpa had paid into the account; and subtract this amount of money for each text message and this amount for every phone call and this much to buy ring tones or wallpapers or for anything at all to do with the internet—
But you can put more money on,
Janira said reasonably. See? It’s easy. See, you can—
No, I can’t,
Grandpa said firmly. I’ve budgeted this much, and there isn’t any more money in the budget to put in a cell phone account. I can pay this much every three months, but once it’s gone, there won’t be any more until the next quarter.
But—
But, everything was so expensive. She knew people who texted all the time; was this what they were paying? It was a lot.
Budgeting isn’t fun,
Grandpa said, but we have to do it anyway. I do like knowing I can call you when I want to, and you can call me when you need to, and you can call 911 in an emergency.
But it was so unfair. Some kids texted all the time; and Henry was always showing people funny stuff on the internet; and she couldn’t even call anybody.
And I especially like knowing that I can trust you not to use the phone unless you need to,
Grandpa went on. Not playing around with it like those kids who run up their parents’ bills.
All right; all right; she got the point. She gave him a wry smile; he gave her back a knowing, Grandpa smile. It was still unfair.
Did I tell you about your father?
he said to her, leading her into the kitchen to start supper. "About the time he was sending letters back and forth with a boy in Australia and then he called him on the phone and talked for an hour and a half? That messed up the budget for about six months."
Janira ate supper with her cell phone on the table, where she could look at it.
So, what did you learn today worth knowing about?
Grandpa asked, as he always did.
Ms. Hart talked about the Dutchman’s statue. Did you know it had a rock in its hand? It got blasted into a million pieces last night by lightning.
A million pieces. Still pretty cool.
Yes, I did hear that they couldn’t find any of the pieces. Though I’m pretty amazed that a rock that size could just disintegrate like that. I saw it once. It was about the size of my fist.
He made a fist to show her.
"You saw it?" she said.
Grandpa got a little smile. When I was fresh out of the Academy, they had me working downtown during the summer. I was always having to answer the tourists’ questions about that statue, so I talked one of the guards at City Hall into taking me up to the top of the dome one evening after everybody else was gone. They were cleaning the statue, so we could climb right up through that scaffolding they had up around it. I looked Willem Van Wyck right in the eye and patted that wolf sitting behind him on the nose,
he said with a grin. You get a really good view from up there: you can see all over the city and all down through the park. Even that statue of his friend—the Indian man.
Grandpa laughed. "It’s always looked to me like Van Wyck is holding that stone out to him, trying to give it all back.
I suppose,
he went on, getting up to scoop ice cream for dessert, they’ll set scaffolding up again, to fix the statue and the dome. Lightning tore a hole right through the roof.
He paused thoughtfully with the ice cream scoop in his hand. "I wonder if I know anybody who can take us up there, so you can see it?"
Uh— That’s okay,
Janira said. She really didn’t want to be that far up off the earth.
Well, they do take people up to the platform at the base of the statue,
Grandpa said. They do tours.
Hmm,
she said politely. She really didn’t want to be even that far up off the earth.
Well, we could see after school lets out for the summer. Won’t be long now.
Just next week—she could hardly wait.
You have homework?
said Grandpa.
A little bit,
she admitted.
So she did her little bit of homework and then played a game on her new cell phone and took pictures with it of
