Do You Know Georgina

Do you know Georgina?

I didn't. Not really. I knew the shape of her, the way you know the shape of a word you've seen a thousand times but never had to spell out loud. She was the woman at the end of the cul-de-sac with the red door that needed painting, the one who kept her blinds drawn and her radio tuned to a station that played nothing but old soul. On summer nights, when the air got thick enough to chew, you could hear it through her windows. Etta James. Otis Redding. Sam Cooke asking somebody to cup him a little water. My mother used to say Georgina had been beautiful once, the kind of beautiful that made men stupid, and I remember thinking that was a strange thing to say in past tense, like beauty was something you could lose the way you lose a earring.

I was nineteen that summer. Home from my first year at a college I couldn't afford and wouldn't be returning to, though I hadn't told my mother yet. I spent my days working the register at the Sunoco on Route 9, and my nights on the porch, watching the cul-de-sac do what cul-de-sacs do. Nothing. The occasional cat. A car pulling in too fast. The streetlight that flickered like it was trying to send a message in Morse code.

Georgina's house was the last one on the left. It sat slightly lower than the others, like it had settled into the earth a long time ago and decided to stay. The yard was a wreck of wild roses and weeds, and there was a birdbath out front that had cracked down the middle and never been fixed. Somebody had put a ceramic frog in it, which I guess was supposed to be charming. It wasn't.

The first time I spoke to her was a Tuesday. I know it was Tuesday because Tuesday was the day the garbage truck came, and I was dragging our cans to the curb when I saw her standing at the edge of her driveway, staring at a box.

Not a big box. A shoe box, maybe. Brown cardboard, the kind that gets soft when it rains. She was holding it in both hands like it might bite her, and she was crying. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind, where your face just does it without asking.

I stopped. I had the garbage can lid in one hand and a bag of trash in the other, and I stopped because I didn't know what else to do. She looked up at me. Her eyes were green, a green that didn't seem possible in a face that old, and she wiped her cheek with the back of her wrist.

"You're Loretta's boy," she said.

"Yes ma'am."

She nodded, like that confirmed something. Then she looked back down at the box.

"You want me to take that to the curb for you?" I asked. "Garbage day."

She laughed. It was a short, ugly sound, like a cough.

"This isn't garbage," she said. "This is my husband."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't think of a single thing to say. She stood there holding a shoe box that supposedly contained her dead husband, and I stood there holding a bag of trash, and the garbage truck turned onto our street with its brakes squealing.

"He died in '89," she said. "But they only just sent me this. They found it in a storage unit in Delaware. Can you believe that? Delaware."

I still didn't say anything. The garbage truck was getting closer. I could smell it.

"You want to know what's in here?" she asked.

No, I thought. But I said, "Sure."

She lifted the lid. I leaned in, because she wanted me to, and because I was nineteen and stupid and curious. Inside the box was a single tooth. A molar, yellowed at the root, sitting on a square of velvet like it was jewelry.

"That's it," she said. "That's all they found. One tooth. After all these years."

She closed the lid. The garbage truck rumbled past us, and the men on the back didn't even look. They just grabbed our cans and threw them and kept going. Georgina watched them like she was waiting for something. Then she turned and walked back up her driveway, holding the box against her chest.

I went back inside. My mother was at the kitchen table, doing a crossword puzzle with a pen, which always annoyed me. She asked me what took so long. I told her nothing. I didn't tell her about Georgina. I didn't tell her about the tooth. I don't know why. Maybe because it felt like something I wasn't supposed to have seen.

That night I lay in bed and listened to Georgina's radio through my open window. Sam Cooke again. "A Change Is Gonna Come." The song that always made my mother cry, though she'd never admit it. I thought about the tooth. I thought about Delaware. I thought about how a person could disappear and all that would come back was one small, hard piece of them, and how that piece could sit in a box for thirty years without anybody knowing.

I didn't sleep. I got up around two and went out to the porch. Georgina's light was still on. I could see her shadow moving behind the blinds, back and forth, like she was pacing. Or dancing. Hard to tell.

I sat on the steps and lit a cigarette I'd stolen from my mother's pack. I wasn't a smoker. I just liked having something to do with my hands.

The next morning, Georgina was in her yard, pulling weeds. She had on a straw hat and gardening gloves that were too big for her, and she was working the dirt like she was mad at it. I watched her from my window for a while. Then I went outside.

"Morning," I said.

She didn't look up. "You smoke?"

"Sometimes."

"Your mother know you steal her cigarettes?"

I felt my face get hot. She laughed that same ugly laugh.

"I'm not gonna tell her," she said. "I just think it's funny. You think you're sneaky. You're not."

She pulled a dandelion out by the root and shook the dirt off.

"You wanna help me with this?" she asked. "I'll pay you."

I didn't need the money. I had a job. But I said yes anyway. I don't know why. Maybe because I wanted to see what was behind those blinds. Maybe because I wanted to understand how a woman ends up with a tooth in a box and a radio that plays dead men's music all night long.

She handed me a trowel. The handle was warm from her grip. And that's how it started, I guess. With a trowel and a dead husband's tooth and a woman who didn't seem to care what anybody thought of her.

I didn't know then that she would change everything. I didn't know she would be the reason I stayed in that town when I should have run. I didn't know she would teach me what it means to hold onto something, even when it's gone. Even when all you have left is a single tooth and a song.