Little girl soul did not question much about her life. She knew it didn’t seem fair and she hated living in fear. Nothing ever seemed to feel comfortable to her. She was afraid of being at home when Gnashing Teeth was near. She didn’t understand his anger and wrath. Gnashing Teeth was mad most of the time. He never had good days at work, and everything was wrong when he got home. He accused the soul kids of doing things they didn’t do, and if they did do something bad, they were afraid to say they did it, so they would lie and then gnashing teeth would be really mad. Little Girl Soul was always worried and scared. Sometimes her stomach churned; sometimes she felt a crazy kind of wired feeling run through her arms and legs. Sometimes it felt like her brain was going to explode, and sometimes she felt like she would die. Sometimes she wished she could die.
She thought about death a lot; mostly because she wished Gnashing Teeth would die. Little Girl Soul had never heard of death until one morning when she and the soul kids went out to play. The front porch was always their favorite place to play “house”. There on the porch that morning laid Tipper the dog. Most of the time Tipper wasn’t around, and Mother had warned the soul kids never to bother him. Tipper might bite so everyone was afraid of him. But this morning Tipper was still. His eyes didn’t move, his mouth didn’t move and flies were all over him. Something was wrong with him, so Little Girl Soul ran to her mother and described the way Tipper looked. Mother came out and declared Tipper dead. She told everyone to stay away from him and not to touch him or they could get a disease. Little boy soul asked what a disease was. Mother said it was really bad, a terrible kind of sick. Nobody touched Tipper. Mother removed him from the porch in the little wagon which made Little Girl Soul worry that the disease would be on the wagon and it would get it on the soul kids. She asked her Mother what she did with Tipper but she only said Gnashing Teeth would bury him later. Little Girl Soul wished that Gnashing Teeth was still and dead like Tipper. Then he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.
It was scary the first time Little Girl Soul knew death for real with a person. Gnashing Teeth’s best friend Mr. Boyd died of something called cancer. Little Girl Soul loved “Rollie” and she did not understand why Gnashing Teeth and her mother would not let her see Rollie when he got really sick. It was early autumn because leaves were falling from the trees, and the breeze was cool. The soul kids all had to sit in the car while Gnashing Teeth and their mother went to visit Rollie. She watched Gnashing Teeth cry the last time they went to the Vet’s hospital to visit. The soul kids got quiet watching him and stared at him. They rarely saw Gnashing Teeth show any emotion but anger. It must have made him angry to have all of his kids staring at him because he stopped crying and became mad. Even Mother didn’t talk to him. She was sad too. Everyone knew Gnashing Teeth was just sad and not really angry with them. Then there was the day of the funeral. Little Girl Soul stuck with her Grandpa and Grandma, Gnashing Teeth’s parents. When they were walking into the church, she heard two old ladies in front of her talking about how “green” Rollie was. They said it was the cancer that made him look green. “He was a heavy smoker you know, and it was lung cancer”, one of them said. Grandma told Little Girl Soul to be brave when they walked by his body, but she didn’t have to look if she didn’t want to. She panicked at this. They kept walking closer and she didn’t know what to do. She saw a fancy box, and something inside her knew Rollie was in it, but she didn’t want to see him green, and she was scared, but she looked anyway. He didn’t look green to her. He looked like he had colored powder on his face like old ladies wore, and he didn’t look right. They stuck some glasses on him that she had never seen before. Why was he wearing glasses if his eyes were closed? Grandma scurried Little Girl Soul and her brother along saying it wasn’t polite to look at the body too long. Why did she keep saying “the body” when it was her friend Rollie in there? Why couldn’t she call him Rollie anymore? All through the funeral Little Girl Soul got sad thinking she would never see Rollie again. He always took Little Girl Soul to the grocery store after school and bought her orange slice candies or whatever candy she wanted. He would talk to her while he worked at the book bindery where Gnashing Teeth worked too. Rollie pounded on the books a lot with a hammer and pressed a pedal on the floor that made two bars squeeze the book. He asked Little Girl Soul lots of questions about her day at school. He made her smile. Little Girl Soul was shy but Rollie always made her feel good. She felt loved by him. He talked a lot about his son Jim, and his daughter Nancy. Nancy was studying to be a nurse and someday Jim was going to be a doctor. Rollie smiled when he talked about his kids. He asked Little Girl Soul what she wanted to be. She wanted to be a Mom. She wanted to have 4 kids. Rollie laughed and asked what she would name all of those kids… and so the conversation went on and on. He never ran out of questions or smiles. Then Gnashing Teeth would come up front and everything got bad again. She knew she would have to hurry and get to the car so she wouldn’t be scolded about being a clod for being slow, or a goddamn beep for being stupid about something. She always worried about doing the wrong thing around him. She didn’t want Rollie to hear how stupid she was and it was embarrassing to have Gnashing Teeth to yell at her in front of all of the people at the bindery, so she did the best she could to be a good girl. Now she would miss Rollie and his talks… and his smile that warmed her heart and made her feel good for a little while.
Her second meeting with death was her Grandpa; gnashing teeth’s Dad. Little Girl Soul was 13 years old. There was a blizzard that day and by the time Gnashing Teeth got home from work the roads were closing. The whole family sat down for a fried chicken dinner. Little Girl Soul was always very hungry and she loved the mashed potatoes and gravy that accompanied chicken dinners. There was frozen corn from the garden too. Corn was her favorite vegetable. The little house smelled good and was toasty and warm from Mother’s cooking. The phone rang and Mother looked funny after she answered it. She handed it to Gnashing Teeth who listened a bit and said he was on his way. Mother told us Grandpa had a heart attack after he and Grandma had come in from feeding the cats in the barn. She said he walked in the house, took a deep breath and fell to the floor, exhaling with a scream. It must have been the temperature change, coming in from the cold into the warm house that caused his heart attack Mother said. The soul kids had a lot of questions but mother was in no mood to answer. She said she didn’t know anything. She told us to eat, but who could eat when you just found out your Grandpa had died? Visions of Rollie’s powdery colored face crept back in Little Girl Soul’s mind, and she remembered how sad she was when Rollie was gone and she didn’t see him at the bindery anymore. Now she wouldn’t have Grandpa anymore. Her stomach felt horrible, and she cried and cried. Even when Grandma came to the house that night to stay with them Little Girl Soul couldn’t be comforted. Later, when Gnashing Teeth returned home, Little Girl Soul heard him talking about how bad the roads had been and how a snow plow had to cut a path on the highway to get the ambulance to the farm and then plow a path back to the hospital. He talked about them cutting into Grandpa’s chest, and the blood, and no response. He was mad at the doctors who were idiots. He was mad at the nurses. Grandma had come to spend the night but she didn’t say much. She said she would sleep in the chair. She talked in hushed tones about where Grandpa died on the kitchen floor and how horrible the scream was that came from his lungs. She said she tried to get the nitroglycerin pill under his tongue but his teeth were clenched. Little girl soul pictured the place in the kitchen where he fell, and the scream played in her mind a million times over and she tried to picture him with his teeth all tight together. She didn’t know if she could go back in the farm-house knowing Grandpa died there on the kitchen floor. It all seemed too creepy and scary; especially the scream.
For the next 3 days Little Girl Soul cried. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t eat. She prayed that God would bring Grandpa back. She tried to bargain with God. She listened to Grandma telling her she had to eat to stay strong, but Little Girl Soul didn’t care. Food had always been a comfort and a joy. Now it only made her feel ill. She wanted her Grandpa back and she couldn’t eat. Her stomach hurt. The night they went to see Grandpa after they “laid him out” Little Girl Soul hurt even worse. She just knew she saw his chest move. Maybe he wasn’t dead, or maybe he was doing it just for her? She was confused. Grandpa looked fine to her. Not like Rollie, who had powder all over his face. Maybe he WAS green under all of that powder and they did it to cover up the green. Everything was confusing to Little Girl Soul. Then Gnashing Teeth began to cry and cry and cry. He cried like a baby with deep coughing and sputtering. He wailed out loud and threw himself over Grandpa. He kissed Grandpa and then told the soul kids they needed to kiss Grandpa on the forehead one last time to tell him goodbye. Little Girl Soul didn’t want to kiss Grandpa. She was afraid of the disease Mother talked about when Tipper died. She looked at Mother for help and Mother finally told Gnashing Teeth not to make the soul kids do anything, that he was scaring them. Finally, Gnashing Teeth settled on having them kiss Grandpa’s hand. Little Girl Soul didn’t want to, but she didn’t want Gnashing Teeth to get mad at her either. In a way she felt sorry for him. She had never seen him so sad before. She was worried for a long time that she would get that disease Mother had told them about. Luckily, none of the soul kids got it, whatever it was.
The day of the funeral Little Girl Soul was numb. She had cried so long that nothing came out anymore; at least not until they got out to the cemetery. There weren’t many people there because the snow and wind kept most of the roads impassable and another snow storm was brewing. The burial was at an old country cemetery miles from town. They all got to ride in a big black car with lots of room for everyone including Grandma. A big road grader plowed the way down the gravel road but the wind whipped the road shut right behind the procession. At the grave site everyone gathered around and huddled close. It was freezing and the wind bit sharply. Little Girl Soul trembled under her fuzzy brown fake fur coat. The minister said a few words and it was over. Little Girl Soul was sad thinking Grandpa was going in the cold, hard ground where he would be forever. Grandma said he would sleep until the Lord came to call him on Judgment Day. On the way to the car the third girl soul asked, “Don’t we get to see him get buried?” This sent Little Girl Soul back to tears. What a gruesome question to ask? What was wrong with her? Little Girl Soul wiped her eyes and saw blood on her hands. Her lips were chapped and bleeding. Mother gave her a tissue and she dabbed at it. Then she looked at her hands. Her knuckles were cracked and bleeding too. What a cruel day… what a cold, bitter end to her Grandpa. He was loving and gentle. A man whose son turned out nothing like him. When Gnashing Teeth got in the car he saw the blood on the tissue and gruffly asked, “What in the hell is wrong with you?” Mother interjected with an explanation. Little Girl Soul worried that she might look stupid or even worse had done something so stupid as soiling her dress with her blood. Sometimes he didn’t explain what she had done to upset him, he just gave her that “look”. A mean look was always better than having to hear what poured out of his mouth. Little Girl Soul just looked down at her lap. That way she didn’t have to see his ugly, mean face… and he didn’t get to see her tears.
Sometimes Little Girl Soul thought about her own death. She looked at herself in the mirror with her eyes mostly closed and her hands folded in front of her. That’s the way Grandpa and Rollie were “laid out”. That is what she would look like dead. Gnashing Teeth would be sorry then. He would cry like he did when Grandpa died. And she would never have to see his gnashing teeth, or hear his yelling, or look at his mean eyes, or feel him spit on her face while he was yelling. He could never hit her or spank her again. Little Girl Soul knew deep down though, that God probably wasn’t going to let her die. Mother said everyone had a purpose in life and that we couldn’t die until we had done everything we were supposed to do on earth. Little Girl Soul supposed she would live a long time. Most people did. She didn’t know what her purpose was, but she hoped she could figure that out when she moved away from Gnashing Teeth. When she got out of school she was moving far away and never coming back.
The Paper Shade Closet 