Free The Evolution of Alice by David Alexander Robertson Page B

better, you’d think Jayne was just any other normal five-year-old girl. I mean to say, you’d never guess by looking at her what she’d been through in her life. She didn’t look altogether sad, unless you looked real deep into her eyes, and she was done up just like I liked to see her, like a girl her age liked to dress. She was wearing one of her dress-up princess gowns, Cinderella I think, and she was wearing it as nice as a real princess. Better, even.
    “Oh, she’s making
arrow
-planes.”
    “
Aira
-planes!” Jayne snapped, suddenly joining the conversation.
    “Oh, right,” Kathy said with a snicker.
    “What’re you building those for?” I said to Jayne.
    Jayne got up with the paper airplane in her hand and looked it over with a whole bunch of pride. Then, with a smile kind of filled with wonder, she pinched the bottom of the plane between her thumb and pointer finger and started flying it around the room, even making airplane sounds here and there, the typical kid sounds for machines and such. You know, it coulda been the sound of a tractor for all I knew, but it was nice to see her make-believe. And I liked that she was flying the plane around the room, too, because it felt a bit like she was dancing and twirling like she used to. Even her feet were up on their chubby little toes. Those toes were so cute, you just wanted to play this little piggy with ‘em.
    “I jus’ felt like makin’ aira-planes,” she said as she flew her clumsy contraption.
    I thought about the big pile of them outside the window and wondered why she was throwing them away, because she seemed to like them a lot just to get rid of ‘em. I don’t know, maybe she was trying to make the perfect one and she hadn’t quite made it yet. They were all, like, prototypes or whatever. I figured if she eventually made the perfect one I could pick up the others when I left so they didn’t litter the whole rez. Lord knows, there was enough junk layin’ around here and there, mostly in the ditches between the highway and our houses. Like old broken tricycles or blown-up car tires or Tim Horton’s coffee cups or other shit like that.
    “Yeah, but what’re you
doing
with them, Jayne?” I said.
    She stopped spinning and held it out in front of me like it was a treasure she found. I think I let out an “oooh” and an “ahhh” to make her happy.
    “
Ooooh
… she’s doing something real smart with them, I can tell you that much,” Kathy said in a real snotty tone.
    “Shut up, Kathy, you don’ even know,” Jayne said.
    “Sure I do. You’re writing little notes down on them and chucking them away,” Kathy said, all matter-of-fact.
    “Well,
yeah
, but that’s not what I’m
doing
with ‘em!”
    “What in the heck else could you be doing then? Littering, that’s all!” Kathy said.
    “I’m not littering!” Jayne shouted, and she started to cry real hard, and the airplane dropped to the ground like a leaf falling in autumn, rocking back and forth like Alice’s tire swing out back. Jayne dropped to her knees and buried her head deep into her lap, and her body started to sob in time with her crying. That just about broke my heart. Truth was, I’d never seen her cry yet, not since Grace died. I think it took Kathy by surprise too, because just as soon as she was tellin’ Jayne off, she was over beside her little sister, her arms wrapped all the way around her. I went over to Jayne too, me, and I took them both into my arms. We ended up like one of them Russian nesting dolls, and just like we were connected, after Kathy started to cry, I found there were a few tears running down my cheek, too. And just like Jayne, well, I’d never cried yet neither. We stayed like that for a few minutes until arm by arm we let go of each other. We ended up sitting cross-legged in front of each other in a crude little circle, and the airplane Jayne made was in the middle.
    “I’m not littering,” Jayne said again, this time with a bit of a