Grubs

Isabel McGuinness Torrence

She eventually manages her way into my house. We have at this point been friends for a year and a half, since the 9th grade. I try to usher her through the rooms and out, but, as if to spite me, she seems determined to take her time; she's fought her way into a secret and will explore it, discover why it is so tender.

Who is that? She points to a hung picture of Claire as a baby.

That’s Griffin, I say.

So he’s always been cute, she says.

I say yuck.

Do you ever turn the lights on, she says in the living room.

Never, I joke, and flick the switch.

At least open the blinds, she says, and does.

In the kitchen, she says what's that? She points to the floor, a particularly worn and pale splotch in the thin-paneled yellow hardwood, the gloss all rubbed off, where Griffin and I used to spin on our bottoms or press down on the handlebars of Claire’s wheelchair so her front wheels went in the air and turn her in tight axles on the back two, all of us dizzy and delighted, rubber drilling hotly into the wood – just keep it contained to that spot, mom had requested.

What's what, I say.

She bends down and picks something up between her pointer and thumb. I’ve reached the room’s exit already and she is in its middle, so I cannot see what it is she holds up to her eyes, an inch from the bridge of her nose.

It's a grub, she says, and I cross over and look, and yes, it is. A little dried husk of a former-grub, anyway. Deep red-brown and delicate. The disgust is apparent in her expression, and I attempt to mimic it.

There's another, she says, pointing to the ledge under the dishwasher, and she moves onto her hands and knees, inspecting the crevices at the room's borders. I follow behind, collecting each grub, saying, woah, huh, that's four, that's five, wow, how did these get in here, and things like that. When she gets to seven little dried husks she stands up and looks at me, and I feel she is not being mean but really trying to understand something about me, and I try to give her what she wants in the look on my face.

This is a two-story house, she says. Your mom is a lawyer.

Thanks, I say as answer. Which makes her laugh. The truth is stuck in me. A moth in a glue trap. The truth has expired beyond its own telling.

Do you guys have, well, where do you keep your broom?

Let me, I say, but she won't hand it over.

While she cleans, I stand in the worn little circle on the floor where we used to spin, Griffin and I on our butts and Claire in her wheelchair, testing how blurry we could make the room.

I stand there until she’s done everywhere but where I am and sweeps at my toes, the sharp plastic bristles tickling like hurt.

She says, finally, Scram.