Sneak Peek

When it's a Monday night and time for my writing group at Lowell Arts, I'll be reading from a current work in progress like this one.

[Excerpt from The Dogs of Devon Place © Noel A. Seif]

On the seven-house street of Devon Place, a sultry summer evening slipped into shadow against an orange sky. In the spindly trees that grew in the scrawny patches of dirty grass at the curb, a warm wind rustled the leaves and whispered through the overflowing garbage cans, sending newspaper and food wrappings skittering in the gutters. Box fans whirred in the windows of these narrow crooked homes, televisions boomed, angry voices flared and died away, interior doors slammed, and dogs barked. At the end of the street in a big old house with a sagging wraparound porch, a porch light flicked on.

Inside Pendilla Eastwell peered out the door’s side window and smelled the stinky dust accumulating in the old lace curtains. She awaited the arrival of a cousin and an aunt she had never met. Upstairs she heard her grandmother groan and the bed squeak as her grandmother turned over. Her poor gumama. She was headed to the hospital the next morning for an operation. Her aunt and cousin were coming to stay with her while her gumama was away. Pen had lived all the ten years of her life in this house since her mother died. All that time her grandmother had cared for her. Now she was caring for her grandmother.

Seeing that no one was coming, she raced up the staircase not minding the squeaky spots and into her grandmother’s bedroom. “Do you need anything, Gum?” she asked out of breath.

Her grandmother half smiled, half grimaced. “Maybe some water with a little ice, Miss Pen,” she said, gesturing lazily with her hand at the empty pitcher on her nightstand.

Pen smiled to hear her grandmother talk. “Coming right up,” she said. She grabbed the pitcher and raced out of the room. The ice maker in the fridge had stopped working earlier in the week, but she would get the water at the sink as cold as she could.

She stopped at the narrow front door window and peered out. The lone streetlight in the middle of the block came on. She spotted a dog rooting in the trash of upended garbage can three houses down. It was too dark to see if it was one of the wild dogs that lived around there. She wished it would go away before their company came.

In the kitchen, she let the cold water tap run for a minute and then filled the pitcher. She was half way up the stairs when the doorbell rang three times. It rang three more times before Pen reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Coming,” she called while the water sloshed in the pitcher she carried.

She no sooner opened the door when a tall skinny woman with lots of jingly bracelets pushed past her. “Girl,” she said, “outta my way. There’s mean dogs out there.”

Half the water spilled out of the pitcher and onto the visitor’s sandals. The woman shrieked and jumped back. “Idiot!”

“Sorry,” Pen mumbled. “I was taking this to my—”

“You’re sorry all right.” She bent down, pulled off her dripping sandals, and threw them in Pen’s direction. “You can clean these up.”

“You can clean them up yourself,” Pen said. She wasn’t used to being talked to in that way. “You bumped me—”

“Is that how you talk to your auntie?” the woman demanded. “I quit my job to come here and take care of your snotty self!”

“Where’s your luggage? Where’s Tina?” was all Pen could think to say.

“Is that you, Junebug?” came her grandmother’s excited voice. “Come up here and let me take a look at you!”

“Coming, Mama.” Her auntie was suddenly all smiles and pleasant sounding as she mounted the stairs. “Now go get Tina from the car,” she whispered fiercely to Pen. “And bring in our bags.”

Pen grabbed her grandmother’s cane from the umbrella stand and ran outside. The dog had disappeared. Only a trail of trash in the street remained. Pen ran to the car that was parked and idling at the curb. She knocked on the window. “Tina?”

The window slowly came down. “It’s me, your cousin, Pen! It’s safe to come out. I’ve got a cane, just in case.”

A girl with her short hair all up in high pigtails climbed across the console to exit from the driver’s door.

“Hi,” the girl said. “Y’all got something to eat? I’m starving.”

“Sure,” Pen said after a moment. She was calculating how she could get her cousin something to eat, grab the bags, and fight off any dogs, all the while thinking that her aunt was not at all what she had pictured. “Here,” Pen said, handing the cane to her cousin. “Where’s your luggage?”

The girl looked at her with large soulful eyes.

“Your stuff,” Pen said. “is it in the trunk?”

“The bags? They’re in the back seat.” The girl looked away.

Pen peered through the back seat window and was shocked to see brown paper grocery bags piled almost to the ceiling. Some were tipped over with the contents falling out, blouses, belts, shoes, gold chain necklaces, chipped china dishes, lipsticks, shampoo bottles, half used tubes of toothpaste, a frying pan, and a sparkly evening purse.

“Your mom wants these inside. Help me, will you?” Pen didn’t know what else to do except get busy. She began hauling the bags out, one at a time handing them to her cousin. They took turns running the bags into the house. By the time they were finished, it was completely dark. At the corner, the neon sign in the party store’s window had been on for a while. Near to the last bags being removed, the idling car had grumped a few times and then fallen silent.

In the kitchen, Pen was making her cousin a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when she heard her aunt shriek and then let fly a volley of curses. She burst into the room, her eyes flashing. “My car is parked the wrong way on this stupid street!”

Pen looked at her, not knowing what to say. At the table, her cousin seemed to shrink and back away.

“And now it’s out of gas, you nitwits!”

Pen saw the cords in her aunt’s neck bulge and her face so contorted with rage that her eyes were barely visible. Pen stopped what she was doing. “I’m eleven years old,” she said quietly. “I don’t know anything about cars.”

Her aunt fished some crumpled up dollar bills out of her cutoffs and threw them on table. “I don’t care where you go,” she said in a low quivering voice, “or how long it takes but you will go out, find me some gasoline, and bring it back here so I can start my blasted car.”

Pen wasn’t really paying attention to what her aunt was saying. She was pondering with what and how quickly she could spring to her cousin’s defense if her aunt came after them. Her cousin started to cry.

“June Antoinette, they will do no such thing.” Behind her aunt, Pen could see her grandmother wobbling on two canes, her long white hair flowing over her shoulders. Pen had never seen her grandmother’s face look so fierce. “It’s their bedtime, and Tina must be exhausted. Go up to bed, girls.”

“But your dinner, Gumama,” Pen protested. “I haven’t made it.”

“Don’t you worry,” her grandmother said in a breathy voice. “I have to fast for my surgery anyhow.” She stood gripping her canes with white-knuckled hands as the girls walked past her to the stairs. “And welcome, Tina.”

Tina smiled quickly and kept walking. They passed all the bags they had brought in, many of them tipping over and disgorging their contents on the floor.

“You can make the den into your bedroom,” Pen heard her grandmother say. “The couch is a pull out. And bring all the bags in there. Why’d you bring all this stuff anyway?”

“Mama, you said yourself that you don’t know how long I’ll be needed here. I can’t be running back and forth to Ohio for my things.”

Her grandmother grunted. “True enough, I suppose.”

“And what about my car?” June whined. “I can’t afford a ticket.”

“Nobody is going to give you a ticket when you’re here to take your old mother to the hospital. You’re not blocking anyone.”

Pen could hear the canes stump back across the floor. “We have to be to the hospital at 7 in the morning. We will take a cab.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Up in her room, Pen closed the door and leaned against it with a sigh. “No offense or anything,” Pen said to her cousin who had plopped herself down at her desk. “But is your mama always this mean?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Tina said, looking off. “She can get a whole lot worse than this.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Pen said. “But I’ll take your word for it.” Pen went over and turned on a small fan. It squeaked a little every time the fan changed direction. “I’m sorry there’s no A.C.” She went and sat on the bed.

“I’m used to it,” Tina said with a shrug.

Pen tried hard not to stare at her cousin but mostly didn’t succeed. Tina was not as tall as Pen and had muscular arms and legs. She had a small heart-shaped face and a mouth that looked like it didn’t do a lot of smiling. Her eyes were dark and indifferent or maybe it was just sadness. Pen couldn’t be sure. In all the time Pen had lived with her grandmother, she had never heard her grandmother talk of her Aunt June or her cousin Tina. She wondered now if it was because of her aunt’s bad temper.

“How come we don’t know you?” Pen asked after a moment of quiet.

“I dunno,” Tina said. “Maybe because we’ve lived so far away. And Mama says your mama was always grandma’s favorite.”

“No way,” Pen said.

“How come you’re here then?” Tina asked.

“Because my mama died,” Pen said matter of factly. “I never knew her. You at least have your mama.”

Tina snorted. “I think I’d trade you.”

“I don’t blame you,” Pen said playing with a tuft of fabric on the worn chenille bedspread. “But I’ve always wanted a cousin to play with, and I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Thanks,” Tina said, stifling a yawn.

“You can sleep in my bed tonight, and I’ll sleep on the floor,” Pen offered. “But I should warn you. I read aloud every night before bed, but I’ll try to whisper.”

“Why? Can’t you read faster reading to yourself?” Tina looked confused.

Pen let out a loud sigh. “I pretend that my mama is reading to me. Gumama used to until she got all crippled up.”

“Whatcha reading?” Tina asked.

“Treasure Island. Do you like it?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Really?” So Pen read aloud to her cousin starting back at the beginning so Tina wouldn’t miss out on any little thing.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Pen woke to the sound of her grandmother calling her name. She rose quietly and stepped out into the hall. The house smelled a little funny; something maybe from downstairs had wafted up the stairwell. Then she remembered her aunt. Maybe she liked incense or smoked or something. She knew her grandmother would not be pleased.

“What is it, Gumama?” she asked at her grandmother’s bedside. The streetlight coming through the curtains cast a pale silver sheen over the bedspread and onto the floor.

Her grandmother reached out her hand, and Pen took it. “I wish your mama was still here, Miss Pen,” she said with a rasp. “I don’t want to leave you and Tina, but the milk is spilled so you’ll have to mop it up.”

“Yes, Gumama.” Pen really had no idea what her grandmother was talking about. “Don’t worry about us.”

“I will worry. Every day.” Her grandmother reached under the covers. “But I have something I want you to have. You keep this in a safe place and if you ever need to, you’ll know what to do.”

Then she handed Pen a small velvet rectangular box. “I was going to wait until you were a little older, but the future isn’t promised.”

There it was, that nagging little fear that she’d been carrying around in the back of her head ever since she learned her grandmother would have to have surgery. “Don’t scare me, Gumama.” Pen leaned over and kissed her grandmother’s warm dry forehead. “Everything will be fine, and you will come home soon.”

“Yes, Miss Pen.” Her grandmother rolled over on her side when Pen reached the door. Inside her own door, Pen paused to look inside the box. A ring and other shapes glittered darkly in the low light. Pen closed the box quickly when she heard a creak of the hallway stair. A minute later, when she had returned to her blanket on the floor, she heard footsteps approach her door. Several long minutes passed before Pen heard the footsteps retreat back down the hallway.

After the footsteps retreated, Pen pulled out her flashlight and opened the box again. Inside she found a three-stone emerald and gold ring with one of the stones missing, a pair of dangle pearl earrings, and tear drop opal pendant on a dusky gold chain. Did her grandmother intend for her to sell these things if she needed money? Up the street and around the corner was a pawn shop where her grandmother once bought her a ukulele. The place bought and sold jewelry too. Pen liked looking in the lighted glass case with the pocket watches and the jade letter openers and engraved silver baby rattles. Once she saw a diamond crusted lighter so bright it was almost hard to look at.

The pendant was displayed on a raised felt platform and when Pen lifted it to see how long the chain was, a folded piece of paper dropped out from underneath. Pen put the jewelry back in the box and unfolded the paper.

Dear Mrs. Eastwell, the typewritten letter began, I have been deployed again, this time to Afghanistan. How is it possible that with all modern medicine has to offer, it couldn’t save your daughter? How is that possible? I can’t wrap my mind around her being gone all of a sudden. Snuffed out that quick. Like some in my platoon last month to an IED. But April was right there in the hospital. She had doctors and everything and they didn’t save her? And now a baby girl after she told me that she had lost it early on and that I should get on with my life? I don’t know what to say or do. I am sorry. You can reach me at my brother David’s house in Dollar Bay. His address is 410 Hughes St., Dollar Bay, Michigan. Richard. P.S. She called me Rickydoo.

For a moment Pen couldn’t breathe. She reread the letter just to make sure she understood it correctly. She had a father named Richard. Her mother was dead, but she had a father named Richard. She lay there in the dark, her ears buzzing. Her grandmother had told her that her father, a soldier, had died somewhere half way across the world. All this time Pen had never thought to ask his name. But maybe he was still alive. Otherwise why would her grandmother have kept this? She thought she should go ask, but she decided against it when she heard loud snoring coming from her grandmother’s room. She put the letter inside the band of her pajamas, put the box under her pillow, and eventually fell asleep.