Chapter 3. The Basement
Chapter 3. The Basement
A close call.
Chapter 3. The Basement
Marlie has sent Samantha to the basement to refill their large rice jar. Demetrius ducks under the stairs.
Above him, the door bursts open. A bare bulb near the sink clicks on. Demetrius shuts his eyes at the sting of the light, then slits them to peer up through the steps.
A furry black and white shape descends onto the top step. Another follows. His blood freezes. Dogs!
The animals hop down a couple of steps. A ghostly column rises from one, then the other. Demetrius blinks in confusion, then realizes he’s looking at a child’s pale skinny calves. She’s wearing puppy slippers, man, he scolds himself. Get a grip! Silently, he lets out his breath.
From beneath lowered lids, he watches her dim silhouette step down onto the concrete floor. As she veers toward the sink, he sees she carries a large stuffed animal–a rabbit, judging from its long, dangling ears.
“This is our root cellar for the boarders, Georgina,” he hears her say, evidently addressing the toy bunny. “But we don’t have any roots yet.” After a silence, she says, “Uh-oh.”
Demetrius’s stomach turns over.
“Look Georgina, the water’s running.”
Shit, he thinks. In his panic, he hadn’t shut the tap.
“Oh, well.” He hears the squeak of the handle being tightened. “It was probably me that did it. We won’t tell Abue, okay? She’s already worried about all the water and money leaking out from our poor little Rainwood House.” There is a soft thumping sound—the girl affectionately patting the sink.
Hinges creak—the cabinet door opening. Noise of a bag crackling, her scoop crunching into the grains, then the whoosh as they pour out, first loud, then fainter as the container fills. He hears a squeak as she screws the jar lid on.
Now she is coming back. If she were to look through the stairs...
He can’t bear to imagine it. Through lowered lids he glimpses her shadowed face move toward him. She’s gazing down at the heavy rice jar and at her stuffed rabbit, cradling them like twin babies. Before she reaches the stairway, he closes his eyes to hide the whites. He concentrates on fusing himself with the darkness.
She mounts a couple of steps and pauses. Demetrius slits his eyelids and meets the black button eyes of the puppies. He could reach through to pet them.
“We can give some rice to the hobos, like Kit’s mom did in the American Girl story, right, Georgina?” She climbs another step and stops. “Wait, Abue says we don’t say ‘hobo’ anymore.” Two more steps, another pause. “Let’s say, ‘poor people who come asking for food.’”
His aching muscles can’t hold the awkward crouch any longer. In a moment, he’ll fall over and all will be lost.
The stairs creak—music to his ears—as she starts up again. The top step gives a squawk as she steps through the door and shuts it, leaving the light on. Before he can react, the door bangs open again, the light snaps off, and black velvet darkness blankets him. He shifts to ease his sore limbs, but remains under the stairs, savoring his relief.
When Demetrius finally crawls out and creakily straightens up, he notices the child has left the cabinet door open. “Mice will get in,” he scolds her in his head.
Granny Gus has a running battle with mice. He remembers following his grandmother’s cloud of white hair as she led him on a detailed tour of her house the day he came to live with her when he was eight. She opened her metal cabinet, very much like this one, to show him the bags of flour, sugar, oats, and other things he’d need for cooking. “Mice know every trick but chewing through steel,” she informed him. “And they’re probably studying up on that one, too.” He had laughed, imagining the mice sitting around her cabinet at night, making notes.
This cabinet is up on a wooden pallet. Damp basement, he thinks absently, peering inside, hoping for something edible, even plain sugar. He sees only half-full sacks of lentils and dry beans, held shut with clothes pins. And the rice bag, which the girl has left open.
He reaches in, pinches a few grains, and tosses them in his mouth. He grinds and swallows them with effort, clips the bag closed, and soundlessly shuts the metal door.
A loud growl startles Demetrius. He freezes, but a twist in his gut and another gurgle inform him the culprit is his stomach, annoyed at getting raw rice after so many hours of nothing. Granny Gus’s voice says, “You made it this far, Tree, dear. Now what?”
Demetrius creeps back to the bag of hardened cement. No easy chair, but kind of familiar by now, and somewhat safe, concealed by the furnace and its convoluted pipes. He does a few awkward stretches, then lowers himself to sit and think.