Tiny Dancer 

I hadn’t seen Busha for a year, since Jaja died. Before that, it had been two years—since Mom’s funeral. Busha is Mom’s mom, and she’s from Europe, maybe Poland or Russia. She and Dad didn’t get along too well, so after her house caught on fire and she asked to move in, things were a bit awkward. “Why does she have to live here?” I asked. 

The house didn’t totally burn down, just the laundry. The fire started there and climbed up to part of the roof. Dad said it was a “happy surprise” the house was insured. It turned out that Jaja had prepaid five years’ premiums before he passed. Busha loved that yellow house so much that she sprayed the flames with her garden hose until the fire department arrived. They doused it in five minutes and saved the day. Anyway, she’s sleeping in my bedroom while they fix her house, so I’m stuck on the couch. 

*   *   * 

A commotion in the kitchen wakes me. Dad curses and Busha mumbles something. They’re at it again, bickering back and forth and sounding like the adults in a Charlie Brown special. I cover my head with the pillow and try to go back to sleep. Dad says Busha thinks she’s special because she danced ballet and acts funny because she doesn’t want anyone to know her and Jaja were DPs, whatever that is. Busha can be a real pain, but she’s the only family I have left on my mom’s side. 

“Just get your stuff together!” Dad hollers. The back door slams and the quiet afterward lingers. I should get up and get ready for school, but my body sinks deeper into the couch. I hear Busha in the kitchen humming a song that sounds familiar. I squeeze my eyes tighter and think about a song she used to sing to me when I was much younger, when I was just a kid and Mom was still around. 

Sleep, my sweet, little one. 

Tuck yourself into bed so tight. 

Or else an old grey wolf will come 

And bite you on your side. 

He'll snatch you up with his teeth 

If on the bed's edge you sleep 

And drag you to the forest deep. 

I liked Mom’s songs better. 

As much as I try, sleep won’t let me back in. I get up, use the bathroom to dress, and walk into the kitchen. Busha is sitting at the table. 

“Dobroye utro, Nicholas,” she says. She holds up a can of beer like a toast, and then she takes a sip. 

“Morning,” I say. 

She looks at me as though she wants to say something else. I stand there for a moment, wondering if she wants me to answer in Russian. I shrug and turn to the fridge. I get some juice and a hardboiled egg out and sit down. 

As soon as I sit, Busha stands up, belches, and puts the empty can in the trash. 

“Yaaaa,” she says and she stretches her thin arms over her head and yawns. She slaps her cheeks with both hands, like she’s tapping down any future yawns. She looks at me again and inclines her head toward the back door and walks out. All she’s wearing are pink slippers and a calico housecoat. She shuffles along the walk and digs out a pack of smokes and lights one. She blows the smoke up into the air as I watch her through the back window. I crack the egg, peel it, and give it a sprinkle of salt. Mom liked pepper on hers. 

I take a bite of the egg and think about Busha. She looks small out on the walk in the yard. The housecoat hangs off her shoulders, and her chicken legs look barely enough to hold her. Maybe she feels small living in our house. It’s got to be rough to be old and have to sleep in your grandson’s bed. And since Jaja passed, I guess she’s lonely too. I take another bite of egg and think about her and Mom. According to Dad, he was the reason things fell apart between them. Then I thought about her home. The yellow house is what Jaja left for her, and she almost lost it. Something tightens in my chest as I take the last bite of egg. I have trouble swallowing. I get it down eventually and wipe my hands on my jeans. 

Outside, a sanitation truck roars up and squeals to a stop. A wiry guy in stained coveralls grabs our can, bangs it out, and crushes the garbage with the iron jaws at the back of the truck. The hydraulics whine and the steel squeals over the rhythm of the diesel engine. Busha’s face twists with the noise as she watches him work, her hands on her hips and a cigarette dangling from her mouth. The guy looks up, sees her, and waves. 

 “Shumnyye ublyudk!” she yells. She repeats in English, “You noisy bastards!” Then she flips him the bird, double fisted. The garbage man laughs, hops up on the running board at the back, and bangs on the side of his truck. The driver revs the engine so black smoke billows from the exhaust. The truck backs up and leaves Neptune Street. 

She takes the last drag off her cigarette, drops it, and twists it out with her pink slipper. She glances back at the house. I finish off my juice as she meanders toward the end of the street. Lately, she’s taken to climbing up on the seawall where our street dead-ends. I told her she’s going to twist her ankle climbing up on the rocks, but she waved me off. She told me that I should be more respectful of my elders, and that I should do more with my life than ride a skateboard and read comic books. 

I grab my lunch and skateboard and head off to school. It’s too gritty—sand and pebbles—to ride on Neptune, so I have to walk to the end of the block. When I reach Johnson Road, I look back and see Busha standing on the seawall. Her housecoat ripples in the breeze. I stop for a second and think she might jump into the Lower Bay, but that’s just silly. I drop my board onto the pavement and push it down the three blocks of sidewalk to school. 

*   *   * 

During the first week Busha stayed with us, I cleaned up a bit of Neptune to ride, but the area wasn’t big enough to skate on for all the effort I’d put in, and it was back to normal by the next day. Busha came out and watched me sweep. 

“Is this your next job? Street sweeper? Your mother would be so proud.” 

She stood and stared at me like I’m an idiot. I started to get angry. Anyone would. I also didn’t like that she mentioned Mom. 

“You may as well empty the ocean with a paper cup,” she said. 

“I could use some help.” 

“Nobody in this world loves you like I do, but no,” she said. 

“Just as well,” I said. “If people saw you with a broom they’d worry about their children being kidnapped and made into stew.” 

“How horrible you are. Where do you get such ideas?” 

“From that story you read to me as a kid. The last time you were here.” 

She nodded. “Yes. I remember.” 

“It gave me nightmares for years.” 

“Yes. Good story then.” 

*   *   * 

Pully is waiting for me when I get to school. He looks like he should be in a root beer commercial, the one with the bear. They both have the same belly and like to wear orange. 

“What’s up, fartknocker?” 

“Nothing, pud-pounder.” 

We’re best friends, even if he smells like Vienna Sausages. Pully yanks a bloody handkerchief from his pocket. “Want to see what I found on the sidewalk on the way to school?” 

I pause and he takes that as a yes. 

He unfolds the rag and reveals a thumb. His thumb, but it’s made to look like someone else’s. He’s got a rubber-band wrapped around it so it’s turned kind of blue, and he’s added some ketchup to the mix to make it look gross, but it’d only scare someone if they didn’t look at it too closely. It might work on girls, maybe a woman teacher, but not on Coach Hall. He’d laugh in Pully’s face and make him run laps. 

“Whatcha think?” he asks. 

“Nice,” I say. Then I imitate a news reporter. “This just in: A poor hitchhiker is missing, and all that’s been found is his thumb.” 

“Mr. Farr. Mr. Pullman. Let’s get going.” Vice Principal Phipps shoos us off to class. 

“Later, douche bag,” Pully tells me. 

“Smell you later, fart-face.” 

I go to my locker, get my book, and head to first period, History. Mr. Gordon talks about World War Two. The Great Escape with Steve McQueen is my favorite war movie, and The Guns of Navarone is a close second. But Mr. Gordon doesn’t talk about any of that. Instead, he talks about Give ’em Hell, Harry. I want to hear about the atom bomb they dropped on the Japanese, but he goes on about speeches and stuff. I think about Busha on the seawall this morning, and my stomach starts to turn. Part of me worries if she made it back inside okay. I tell myself if she could get up there, then she can get down. But there’s another part, something else I can’t pin down. 

“The Displaced Persons Act of 1948,” Mr. Gordon says, “allowed two hundred thousand Europeans displaced by the war to have permanent US residence.” 

I hear this, but don’t pay any attention until the next thing he says. 

“The first DPs arrived in 1948 in a ship with over eight hundred passengers. Two hundred DPs found new homes right here in New York City,” Mr. Gordon says. “While this was a great humanitarian effort, not everyone was happy about it.” 

“Why’d they have to come here?” the kid next to me asks. 

“A lot of people asked that. Some thought DPs were bringing diseases.” 

“Why’d they call them that?” another student asks. 

“Dee-Pees,” he says. “Displaced Persons. They were displaced by the war. There was nowhere for them to go. They were homeless, so to speak.” 

I think about Busha and Jaja and keep my mouth shut. 

*   *   * 

During lunch, Pully tries to gross out some third grade girls with his bloody thumb, but they laugh at him. His face is red and I’m sure he’s going to do something stupid, so I holler his name across the cafeteria. He sees me and walks over. 

“Stupid girls,” Pully says. “They don’t know a good gag when they see it.” 

“Maybe they would if they saw one.” 

Pully glares at me. “That’s it, dingus,” he says and pulls me into a headlock and gives me noogies. I try to twist out but can’t. I reach around and dig for the back of his underwear, pull hard, and give him a wedgie. 

Someone screams “Stop it!” Before we know it, Phipps has us both by our necks and is steering us to the principal’s office. 

Pully starts to blubber when the woman in the office says she has to call our parents. His mom uses Hot Wheels track to spank him when he’s bad. I don’t worry too much, though, because I know they can’t reach Dad at work. And what would Busha do? I thought about that again. What would Busha do? 

Dad’s hours are long at the sorting center—he works for the Post Office—so I do whatever I want after school, or at least I did. I started getting good on the skateboard. I learned to do an Ollie, and I met Kelly, a girl who lives two streets over. She’s in seventh and is very cool. But since Busha’s moved in, everything I do is under a microscope. I don’t have my bed or bedroom anymore, I have to stay on Neptune or in the house after school, and she makes me take a bath three times a week. “You smell like pig. A filthy pig boy,” she tells me before she runs the bath. She’s worse than Phipps. I realize Busha could do worse. 

After school, I walk back to Neptune. Phipps took my skateboard when he caught me riding it in the hallway when last period let out. “We are going to have a conversation about your behavior, Mr. Farr. I expect to see you in my office in the morning before school starts,” he said. 

When I reach Neptune, I go to the seawall instead of going inside the house. I don’t want to know if Busha answered the phone when the school called. I wonder why Phipps didn’t say he wanted my dad there in the morning. I guess he knows I’m going through some stuff. But what’s really bugging me is Busha standing on the seawall this morning. It haunted me all day. When my mind drifted off during class, it’s what came into my head. 

When Kelly came over, before Busha had to move in, we hung out on the seawall, our feet dangling over the water as we tossed rocks into the bay. She has a great laugh and her legs were smooth and tan. My stomach tumbled every time they brushed against mine. Busha hanging out where we did was just weird. My mind wouldn’t let it go. 

I climb up on the first rock and the next until I reach the top of the seawall. The water laps below and seagulls squawk in the air. I like this spot because it feels like I’m on the edge of something. I’m between the sky and the water, and I like it. 

“Nicholas!” 

“What the fu—udge?” It’s Busha. I lose my balance but catch myself. 

“Nicholas, you need to be careful up here. You could fall. And watch your language. I know what you were going to say.” She steps from the last boulder and onto the seawall next to me. Some days it seems she can barely manage a shuffle from the couch to the bathroom, but today she’s like a mountain goat. 

I look at her and try to read her face. I look for the signs of disappointment, of anger, but they’re not there. I’m sure she’s about to tell me that Phipps called, but she turns and looks out over the water. “Your mother would’ve wanted you to be careful, but she would’ve liked that you were up here, too.” 

We’ve hardly mentioned Mom in the six weeks that Busha has been staying with us. I figured it was a deal she and Dad had made before she moved in. I don’t want to talk about her, and when Busha or Dad bring her up something inside me closes down. But Busha makes me curious. “What do you mean?” I ask her. 

“She picked the house because of this place.” 

“Seriously? Dad’s never said—” 

“He doesn’t know. She didn’t want him to know. Men are funny about things when it comes to wives. It must be just so with them, and if it’s not, well—you know.” 

Dad gets angry like anyone would. Once, Mom didn’t pick up the cleaning. Another time she cooked a ham instead of a turkey on Thanksgiving. Dad really blew up on that one. Then I remember another time. They were going out to dinner and the sitter was already there, but Mom took forever to get ready. He walked into their bedroom and found her dancing to the radio. The yelling was so bad the sitter left and they didn’t go out. 

And then another memory creeps in. It’s a woman dancing, the wind blowing her hair and the sun rising behind her. She’s far away and looks like a shadow puppet as she spins around on tiptoes with arms over her head. It feels real. The sudden memory almost crackles in my head when I realize that it’s my mom dancing on the seawall. It feels like I discovered a new room in a house I’d lived in for years. I also understand why Busha on the seawall this morning had stuck in my head all day, like the memory itself wanted to come to back to me. 

“I had to tell you this before I go.” 

“Go?” Too many thoughts flood my head. I had been thinking about how annoying Busha is, but also about History class and how she and Jaja had been homeless. I thought about how I hated sleeping on the couch. But for some reason, when I hear her say the word “go,” I feel something in my chest and it is hard to inhale. I feel pulled in two different directions. Maybe it’s because Busha makes me angry but also reminds me of Mom. 

“Builders called and house is all done,” she tells me. 

“Already? Does Dad know?” 

“Of course. Told him this morning.” 

“Why was he mad?” 

“He wasn’t mad. I offered to stay. Maybe surprised. Maybe I surprise him.” 

I hadn’t thought about her staying. I had been crossing out the days on the calendar since the first week, wishing she would go. But now that seems wrong. 

“Your father needs help but won’t ask. He thinks he’s okay.” 

“So the beer?” 

“I want to celebrate good news with a beer. So what it’s early, still good to celebrate. Anyway, he worries about you. When men don’t know what to do with worry, they get angry.” 

She reaches out and puts her hand on my shoulder. Her fingers grip my arm and she looks at me. “Your mother loved you very much, and God was cruel to take her away from you. Sometimes you will feel that pain, sometimes not too bad. When it’s bad, you come here—right here—and talk to her.” 

*   *   * 

Dad and I help Busha pack up after dinner, and a car service comes to takes her home. They load all her stuff in the back and save room for her in the front passenger seat. She looks nervous, but she actually smiles. They drive off with her thin arm raised out from the window. She waves and before we know it we’re waving back. 

“That woman,” Dad says. “She drove your mother crazy. Busha wanted your mom to be a dancer like she was, and she didn’t think I was good enough for her. But I’m damned if she didn’t love her.” 

Dad’s words ring in my head as I try to go to sleep. I have my bed and my room back. It stinks of cigarettes and baby powder. I can’t say I miss Busha—she’s only been gone a couple of hours. Just the same, the hole in our home has become bigger. I want to push those thoughts of loss away, but they feel like the only thing I have left to hang on to. 

PENN STEWART

Originally from Rye, New York, Penn Stewart lives, writes, and teaches in Wichita Falls, Texas. His latest flash fiction appears in Iron Horse Literary Review. His longer work is available online at Waccamaw, and he is the author of the collection The Water in Our Veins and the novel Fertile Ground.