Free The Geranium Girls by Alison Preston Page B

she said.
    There was Kenny Mathes two doors down. Kenny and he had managed some games of soldiers and catch for part of one summer, but Boyo stole one of Kenny’s Dinky toys and then lied, pretending the tiny dump truck was his own. Kenny grew tired of Boyo’s lies. When he heard him telling a new kid on the block that his own name was Kenny Mathes it freaked out the real Kenny so badly that he didn’t want to play with Boyo anymore.
    And Mrs. Snider, across the back lane, caught Boyo snipping the whiskers off their cat, Peppie. She forbade her boys to play with him after that and spread it around the neighbourhood that he was bad.
    Boyo had been looking for hair to glue on his doll, to glue on its private parts. The cat’s whiskers seemed a good idea. But after Mrs. Snider yelled at him and told his aunt on him, he settled for pulling his own eyebrows out and using them. What did you need eyebrows for, anyway?
    It was after that that Hort threatened to give him away. She frightened him with words that conjured up the blackest, deepest hole he could imagine. The hole folded in on itself, over and over, till it was a size that he could swallow. So he did swallow and he held it down, along with his shame, his guilt, and his fear; along with burning rage and hot desire and all the tears he wasn’t allowed to shed. It lived dark and hard inside the slimy home provided by his tender gut.
    Her death happened on its own, without his help. Her heart had been weak, he was told, after the autopsy. Still, she was young to suffer a heart attack, they said, just forty-eight. They were sorry; he wasn’t.
    Even after all these years he is still glad. He’s thirty-four years old now and his gladness hasn’t wavered.
    Hortense even looked surprised in death, he recalls now, until he managed to shut the eyes. Her head rested, face up on the wide flat rim of the bathtub.
    He remembers what that felt like, touching her eyes.
    The eyeballs themselves first, just to see what they felt like. It might be his only chance to do such a thing, or so he thought at the time. And then he touched the paper thin lids, cool by then. They wouldn’t stay closed.
    He went out to the back alley and got two stones to weigh them down, to keep them from flipping open.
    And then he phoned the funeral parlour. He figured since she was already dead there was no point wasting money on an ambulance. But the funeral parlour people didn’t see it that way. They told him he had to phone somebody other than them — like 911 — they even offered to do it for him, figuring he was upset, he supposed. He asked them then if he could drive the old lady over himself but they seemed aghast at that suggestion and assured him they wouldn’t receive her if he did.
    He was tempted just to bury the old crow out in the yard with the bones of her stupid budgie birds. But he knew he’d be suspected of foul play if he did that. God, why did it have to be so complicated? Where was a good solid ice floe when you needed one?
    The water in the bathtub was yellowish with her piss. Bits of cloudy shit muddied it further. He let the water out, putting on a rubber glove to do so, not wanting to touch the Hort soup that she had made.
    He decided not to cover her up before the paramedics came; he wanted her exposed. With his rubber-gloved hand he adjusted one bony knee, spread her skinny legs ever so slightly to give her a disgustingly wanton air.
    When everyone had left, he opened Birdie’s cage. She was the latest in a long line of budgies who had all been named Birdie. Boyo reached in and wrapped his hand around the green-hued bird. He took it outside to the back stoop along with Hort’s old meat cleaver. And under the bright July sun, with one swift motion, he took Birdie’s head off. Then he turned on the hose and cleaned up the mess he had made, flushing both parts of the budgie into the flower bed. It felt good, like a celebration.
    Boyo fumbles in his closet now for a clean