A Knot of Frogs

Patty sat in the hard desk, the backs of her bare legs sweaty and sticking to the worn wooden seat. It was the cusp of summer in Fuquay; by the end of the school year, a kid or two would keel over from the stifling air and the nurse would have to come, hoist their limp bodies onto wobbly legs, and guide them to the office to call home. She’d heard the teachers grumble about the promise of a new building with AC, but that would never happen she knew. Not in her lifetime. Her mother and grandmother had attended the low slung, flat-roofed Fuquay Junior High—maybe even sat in the same desk she felt chained to now. She could feel the dampness accumulate into two slush pools just below the line of her jean shorts and panicked at the thought of the sweat stains beginning to soak into the fabric of her new t-shirt. She thought if she casually widened her elbows across the desktop to bring some light between her armpits she might make it through the day without some measure of meanness from The Girls in her grade.

It was the last period before lunch. Patty watched as her biology teacher leaned against the solid black slab of the lab table behind her, looking as if she too might faint, all the while tapping a clipboard and scanning the rows of faces before her. Once Patty had gone in for help during lunch and found her toothless, two pink gums with perfect white teeth protruding sitting on a paper towel along with a Fresca and tuna sandwich. The woman had gummed what sounded like Ask me in class and pointed to the door. Patty had made a vow that day never again to go to bed without brushing her teeth again. As far as Patty could tell, toothless Mrs. Jones’s main concern was how to get out of teaching. Every day it was the same—Read the chapter on Stream Life and answer the questions at the end of each section. Define all the words in bold. And projects, she loved a good project Anything to keep them busy, quiet, and sweating.

At last Mrs. Jones spoke. “Your final project for the school year is due June 15th. It can be on any topic we have covered this year, and you may work with one partner if you’d like. Put your project idea by your name on the clipboard before the end of class today. Make sure to include your partner’s name as well.” She placed the clipboard on the first desk of the first row.

Patty thought about choosing dental hygiene, making a set of dentures out of playdough, but then thought better about it. She needed to keep her A.

 “Now open your books to page 246 and outline the entire chapter. Do you have any questions?” No one moved or raised their hands.

Patty ran through the options, dentures not included, as she watched the clipboard pass from desk to desk. She assumed she’d work by herself. She was never anyone’s first pick to work on a project. Having friends, being part of a group of girls you could count on to call you up for fun – the skating rink, a sleepover party, a basement movie night – wasn’t in the cards for her. She was plenty smart, which made her popular before tests or when someone needed to copy her homework, but no one was going to ask her to partner up. And she was fine with that. Which was why when Candace slid over to her desk and asked in an easy if not dismissive voice, Wanna work together, she about died.

Trying not to seem too excited, Patty had done her best impression of a shoulder shrug in answer to Candace. But deep down she was flying. Candace. She was everything Patty was not—tall and bendy and blonde. Patty had watched Candace move through the halls of Fuquay with that sultry, languid disdain for anyone and everything she was so good at projecting. She even gave the teachers The Look. And she had a boyfriend from the high school across the street. One day last October Patty had watched Candace sneak over the two-lane street and median strip to meet up with him. They’d leaned against one of the great sycamores that lined Market Street, their bodies pressed against each other in a way that made Patty’s stomach tilt in her belly. Last week Candace had shown up to school with a hickey and been sent to the office during Algebra class. The closest Patty had come to a hickey was kissing her pillow in the dark of her room at night and feeling herself down there. She must want me to do her project for her, Patty thought. It was the only reason she could imagine being chosen by The One.

When the clipboard landed on Patty’s desk, she looked over at Candace and smiled. She’d written “Patty” next to her name but had left the topic up to Patty. Patty filled in the blank space and passed it to the next desk.

“So what are we doing?” Candace asked as the bell rang.

“The human skeleton,” said Patty.

“What, like a hand or something?”

“No, the whole thing. All two hundred and sixteen bones!” Patty said, trying to tamp down the delight in her voice. Handing Candace her phone number on a torn corner of notebook paper, she shrugged her shoulders the way she’d seen Candace do. “I mean so we can get together and make, like, whatever.”

“Cool,” was all Candace said as she took the slip of paper from Patty and turned away, flipping her long hair behind her shoulder before walking out the classroom door.

Patty went home that same day and made a plan: coat hangers, fishing wire, tin foil, some clay and plaster of Paris to fashion the bones. They could attach the bones with wire and then hang them from a hook like the skeletons in the doctor’s office – the ones on wheels in the corner you had to stare at while the nurse got your shot ready. She imagined the days to be spent with Candace. The A+ they’d both get. All the girls, the boys even, would clamor to work with her next year. It wasn’t a hickey, but it was close.

Then nothing. Every day in class Patty would try and get Candace’s attention, try to find a way to break the ice and bring up the project. She’d started to think it was some kind of game, some trick to embarrass her. Maybe she’d forgotten. Maybe she just didn’t care. It was the Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend, and Patty had decided to do the project herself, put both their names on it, and turn it in when the telephone rang. It was Candace, her voice low and sleepy. “Hey Patty, I guess we should probably start that science project.”

“Oh that thing, yeah,” Patty slung her voice, imagining the unhurried pace of molasses from the jar while her free hand fretted like a nervous spring, coiling the phone cord around and around her fingers. “I totally forgot about it. We probably should get it done. It shouldn’t take much time, you think?”

“Nah, I bet we can get it done this weekend. How about you come over tomorrow, and we can work on it a little then hang out at my pool?”

Patty stood stunned in her paneled kitchen, her feet glued to the linoleum tile. Her boring, uncool kitchen where her mother made meatloaf and drank Tab, always peeved at someone or something, with her hard face and sharp eyes. The kitchen where she had to say grace before every meal and watch her grandparents read the newspaper and drink Sanka in the mornings. They’d moved in last summer to help out with the bills and keep an eye on Patty. They watched her every move. Always asking, Where are you going? And, Have you done your homework? And, Is that skirt a little short for school? And, and, and. It was in this drab kitchen with these drab people that she had been invited to Candace’s house. To hang out. At the pool. “That would be great. Give me your address and my granddad can drive me over. I’ll bring the supplies.”

“Cool. See you tomorrow.”

The next day Patty’s grandfather dropped her off at the bottom of Candace’s driveway with three bags of plaster, as many metal coat hangers as she could find, her grandfather’s wire cutters and fishing line, a tub of clay, and a roll of tinfoil from the kitchen. Patty decided on wearing her new terrycloth rainbow bikini with the risqué keyhole cut out on one side of the bottoms she’d purchased in secret with her babysitting money and not the kettle cloth one her mother had sewn her from a Simplicity pattern that covered her belly button. She’d tried on the contraband suit the night before, standing in front of the mirror and sucking in the pooch of her belly. She didn’t think she was fat, but the boys climbing the gym rope would sometimes shout out Fatty Patty when she ran the bases for indoor kickball if the teacher wasn’t close by, and her mother had started suggesting she eat cottage cheese for breakfast instead of Frosted Flakes, that a girl her age needed to start “watching her figure.” Just because she felt the skin bunch on her sides a little when she bent down to pick up her pencil and the uncomfortable roll around her belly when she wore new jeans didn’t mean she was a cow or something. She promised herself that tomorrow, she would try the cottage cheese.

Candace answered the door in a pink halter top and long blue jeans that hung on the fragile wings of her hip bones. “Come on in,” she said. “Don’t mind the dark. My mom’s trying to sleep.” Candace held her fingers up in air quotes and rolled her eyes.

Patty followed her through the dim foyer and darker family room into the kitchen. A cute guy, clearly much older, was sitting at the table eating cereal. “That’s Dave,” Candace pointed. “He’s home from college. Don’t talk to him. He’s a jerk. Want some tea?” Candace poured two big glasses without waiting for an answer. “So what’s in all those bags?”

“Supplies.” Patty pulled out each component of the skeleton and laid them on the kitchen table trying not to crowd Dave’s bowl of cereal. “I wasn’t sure what we were going to do about the head, so I brought this,” pulling out the Styrofoam form her mother kept her wig on in the top of her closet. She didn’t wear the wig often, just to parties and such.

“Oh my,” Candace’s eyes got big and her brother started to choke on his cereal. “That’s – freaky.”

Patty stuffed it back in the paper bag. “We don’t have to use it, I just thought—”

Candace leaned against the kitchen counter as if deep in thought. “No, cool. But we better get busy. I don’t want this to take all day.”

After an hour at the kitchen table they’d fashioned what was going to be the ribcage out of wire and foil. The last step was to mix the plaster. Candace read from the plaster packaging. “It says not to mix too much because it hardens right away.”

“We’ll need a bucket,” Patty said.

“I’ve got one in the garage, come on.” Patty followed her through the laundry room and into the garage, which was more like a mini-apartment than a place to store the lawnmower and a bunch of junk like hers was. There was a desk, two twin beds, lots of books scattered about and a few random tools. Candace climbed over a stack of magazines to grab a bucket in the corner.

“So, does someone live here?”

“Yeah, my dad. He stays out here when my mom goes nuts on him. Which is like every other day so—”

“Oh. Okay.” Patty wasn’t sure what to say. She understood crazy but not fathers. Her father was a once-a-year post card and check kind of dad, not a living in the garage kind of one.

“It’s cool. He’s a really cool guy. An engineer. Makes all kinds of crazy shit out here.”

They filled up the bucket in the kitchen sink and put down newspaper so as not to mess up the floor. Patty was ready to pour the plaster powder in when Candace said to hold on, she’d be right back. When she returned, Candace had a rolled-up cigarette pointed at both ends behind her ear.

“We need to get high before we do this.”

Patty had never smoked pot, never smoked a cigarette even. “Uh, isn’t your mom home? And your brother?” She looked at the empty chair where Dave had sat just an hour ago.

Candace laughed. “My mom is in her bedroom sleeping like the dead,” pantomiming drinking from a glass, which Patty took to mean alcohol. “She won’t care anyway.” Candace slid the whole joint into her pursed lips and back out again. “Come on. No one cares. Unless you like – don’t smoke.”

“No sure, I just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t get in trouble, that’s all.” Patty watched Candace light the end, the paper burning bright for a second, then the pot inside catching the heat and glowing a dull red. Candace drew in a long breath and held it, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. And when Patty thought, she has to breathe soon, Candace let all the air out of her lungs and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. Then she passed the joint to her.

Patty put it to her lips and drew a small breath in. She felt like her lungs had been punched from the inside out and coughed out the smoke.

“Don’t waste it man.” Candace coached her. “Take it nice and slow. I thought you said you got high?”

“I do, I do.” Patty tried again, refusing to choke, holding the harsh smoke in with all her might before passing the joint back to Candace.

She’d like to say she felt something after the first inhale, but she didn’t. Candace on the other hand had. All of sudden everything was funny. She touched Patty’s hair and put her arm around Patty’s neck like they were best friends. After a lot of talk from Candace about how cool it was that the body had bones, they finally made the plaster, and just as Patty began to dip one side of the rib cage into the wet glop, she noticed that something felt off. Then in a few more minutes, as the lopsided rib cage hung heavy over the bucket, everything felt off – like the room was electric and her hands abuzz. She started to laugh.

“Whoa, you’re dripping on the floor.” Candace took the sloppy and sagging ribcage from her. “Let’s take it outside to dry.” Patty followed her through the patio door and watched as Candace hung the bowed ribs over the clothesline. “Wanna take a break?”

Patty wasn’t sure she would make sense if she opened her mouth, so she just nodded her head. Candace pulled out another joint from her back pocket. “If one is good, two is better,” she laughed and danced the joint in Patty’s face.

A happy lightness took over Patty’s body, which she felt sure was coming from the drug. She suddenly didn’t care that she was breaking the law or that her grandfather was going to pick her up or that she couldn’t walk a straight line to his car. She was sitting on a lounge chair on Candace’s patio by Candace’s pool getting high with the most popular girl in Fuquay Junior High.

She took the joint from Candace and mimicked her long slow lick. Took the lighter from Candace’s hand and lit up. It was easier this time, and she didn’t have to wait for it to kick in. Halfway through the second joint, they couldn’t stop laughing. Tears were streaming down Patty’s face. She hadn’t laughed so long and so hard in her life. She watched as Candace took the crooked ribs down from the clothesline and held them up to her side, pretending to wrap her arms around them in an embrace. A word, no—a sentence, came to Patty’s mind—fuck the project. She had never said that word aloud or in her head, no matter how angry she’d been, in her life. It felt wicked and delicious.

She had an idea. “Wait!” she said, running back into the house and grabbing one of the bags. “You need to sit down for this.” She turned her back to Candace and pulled out the Styrofoam head before spinning around. “Voila! Our project is complete!”

Candace fell off the lounge chair and rolled around on the patio screaming “My sides! My sides!” and then everything got quiet. Candace sat up as if stone cold sober and driven by a mysterious new purpose. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

They made fried bologna sandwiches with mayo. Patty ate three. Her mother could shove the cottage cheese. “Make me another one,” she said, pretty sure no other day in her life would top this one – not graduation, not her first kiss, not s-e-x, not even the long white dress at the altar.

“You should spend the night,” Candace said, a tiny swipe of mayonnaise clinging in the corner of her mouth.

“Really? I mean, I could call my grandma. She’ll be easier to convince than my mom.’” Patty paused. “Are you sure your parents won’t mind?”

“They won’t even know you’re here,” Canace said, handing the receiver to Patty. When she smiled at Patty it was all she could do not to reach out and take the dribble of mayonnaise from Candace’s lip – some sudden need to protect and comfort.  

Patty’s grandmother wanted to talk to Candace’s mother but was finally convinced that it was all okay, that they still had a lot of the project to do and the woman was in bed with a headache and did she really want Patty to get her out of bed when she was sick with a migraine? Patty put on her most serious voice and promised they’d been working all day. Her grandmother made Patty promise to call right away if Candace’s parents changed their minds. She felt guilty lying, but how was she going to go home now anyway. She was stoned.

Patty found Candace draped over a lounge chair in her bathing suit. It was yellow and held together with string. It hurt Patty’s stomach to see how delicate and vulnerable Candace looked lying there, so thin and pale in her tiny suit. She stifled the part of her that all of a sudden wanted to cry. “They’re picking me up tomorrow at 10.”

“Did you bring a suit?”

“Yeah, I just gotta—” she struggled to pull down her jean shorts without pulling off the suit bottom too. She tugged first at one leg then the other feeling like Alice in Wonderland when she’d grown to the size of a house – her arms and legs sticking out the windows and doors. Finally free of the denim, she folded her shorts and stuck them under the headrest of her chair.

“Aren’t you hot? Take off your shirt.”

“Oh yeah,” Patty peeled the shirt over her head and stuck it under her shorts.

“You’re so lucky. You have boobs.”

Patty pulled at the top of her suit, wishing she’d kept her shirt on. “I’m just fat.”

Candace slapped her arm. “You’re not fat. You’re just,” she paused, “squishy.” Then she laughed like it was the funniest thing she’d ever said, rolled over onto her side in the chair and poked Patty in the stomach.

Patty covered her eyes with her arm to shield them from the sun and her embarrassment. “Yeah, squishy. That’s me,” she said, and laughed with her. 

They fell into a dreamy stupor, the afternoon sun still warm, their bellies full and heads hazy, when a voice called out from the patio door. “Hey Candace, I need you for a second.”

Patty arched her head to put a face to the voice. “Who’s that?” Her throat felt thick with sleep.

“It’s my dumb brother.”

“Another one?”

“Yeah.” She held up her hand and spread the fingers wide as if to study the sunlight that filtered through to her face. “Here’s the lowdown,” she said, touching her thumb. “There’s Allison. She plays the violin and wears glasses and studies German.” Moving to her pointer finger, she added, “Then there’s Beth Ann who’s married and lives in Asheville.” Tapping each subsequent finger, she rattled off the names. “Then there’s Dave, you met him – the cereal boy. And then Jack, the weirdo. And then me.”

“Wow that’s a lot of people. In my house there’s only,” Patty held up her hand and pointed one finger to the sky, “me.”

“I wish.”

“What’s so weird about Jack?”

“You’ll see.”

“Where does he go to school?”

“He doesn’t. He has some tutor come to the house.”

“You mean he stays home and goes to school?”

“Yeah, something like that. He kinda got in some trouble.” She pointed her finger to the side or her head and made circles. “Coocoo.”

“Candace, come on. I need your help,” the boy’s voice returned, an urgent and insistent whine.

She slid from the chair and stood. “Come on. He’ll never let up unless we do what he wants.”

Patty grabbed her shirt and pulled it over her head. “I need some water.”

“Cotton mouth,” Candace laughed.

“What is it now Jack?” Back in the house, Patty felt for a moment blinded, the house too dark after the brightness outside. Candace’s brother had already retreated down the hallway. Patty followed close behind Candace who followed Jack. They stopped at a bedroom door, Jack’s room. Patty hung back. She had never been in a boy’s bedroom before, and she could see now that Jack was older than he’d sounded out by the pool. Like 16 maybe.

Patty took in the room, the boy’s room, a room so alien to her she had to suppress a desire to run – get out of the house, get out into the sunlight and air. Get home. This boy’s room, this Jack’s room, was filled floor to ceiling with aquariums. She could see some had fish, some lizards, one large tank a snake as fat around as her arm and twice as long. But mostly there were frogs. Everywhere. Green frogs, blue frogs, yellow frogs, old fat toads—all enclosed in glass.

Jack squatted over a carboard box on the floor. “I need a nurse,” he said to Candace. “I can’t operate without a nurse.” Then he paused and looked at Patty. “Who’s that?”

“A friend. Patty. Patty meet Jack, my crazy brother.”

Patty waved from the doorway. “Hi.”

“Are you gonna just stand there? Come on in,” Jack said.

Candace was kneeling over the box and reaching her hand in as Patty inched her way into the room, coming up behind Candace to look over her shoulder. The box held a large green frog. Across the side of the box written in black magic marker were the words: Frog Hospital. Patty thought it was funny and started to laugh. A frog hospital.

Candace gave her a sharp look like she had broken some kind of rule, so she shut up.

“What’s your plan?” Candace said, picking up the frog and cupping her free hand over it to prevent it from escaping.

“I’m going to take out the liver. Well, part of the liver, and see if it will live. I think the liver regenerates.”

Patty felt her hands go clammy. “I don’t feel so hot. I think I’m going to get some water and hang outside of it’s okay.” They were serious.

“No stay. Hold on.” Candace left Patty with Jack and the frogs. She came back with three beers. Popped the top of one and handed it to her. “Doctor’s orders.”

She knew she was in over her head. She wanted to call her grandfather to pick her up, take her to Dairy Queen to get a Mister Misty, and go home to lay on the floor in the living room and watch the Three Stooges or Gunsmoke or Green Acres. To listen to her grandmother’s whistling breath as she shucked corn or snapped peas. Not drink beer (something else she’d never done except one taste at a picnic last year from her uncle’s Miller High Life) or assist in a frog operation. But she was not a little kid anymore, she told herself. She was going to stay and have fun. Drink beer and smoke pot. Eat bologna sandwiches. She was going to be Candace’s friend. Take out the liver.

She drank the beer as fast as she could, hoping it would calm her insides. She watched as Candace’s brother soaked a piece of cotton in a liquid from a small brown medicine bottle, opened the frog’s mouth by squeezing its jaws at the hinge and place the cotton just inside. “To knock him out,” he said to no one in particular. Once the frog stopped moving he pinned him upside down to the lid of a Styrofoam cooler. He had a scalpel, and some small sewing scissors, some tweezers, and a needle and thread ready. “I’ll open him up and you take those straight pins and tack back the skin.”

Patty watched the scalpel slice through the thin yellow underbelly of the frog. Candace placed four pins through the skin and into the Styrofoam. You could see everything. Organs like people have. And a heart that was beating.

“See that, those three brown blobs? That’s the liver.”

“It’s huge.” Candace put her hand out as if to touch it.

“Stop! You’ll contaminate the area.”

“Oh, Doctor Kildare is in the house.” She looked back at Patty and rolled her eyes.

“Now I have to be careful,” he said as he lifted one of the lobes with the side of his scalpel. He took the scissors and snipped at the root of the lobe. The piece fell away.

“I’ll get it.” Candace took the tweezers and lifted the dark flesh from the abdomen and dropped it to the side.

“I think we are done here.” Candace’s brother looked up at Patty. “Sew him up nurse.”

“Me? I—”

“Come on,” said Candace. She handed her the needle and thread. Patty’s hands were shaking as she tried to thread the needle. She missed the hole twice and had to lick the end of the thread to get it finally through the eye. “How much?” She held up the tail of the thread.

Jack eyed the thread from end to end. “That should be sufficient.”

Candace moved back and let Patty get close to the sleeping frog.

“Short stitches.”

Patty tried as best she could. She knew to make a stitch stay closed you had to loop it back around, make a sort of slip knot with every stitch. She was afraid the skin would tear if she pulled too hard. But she did it. She sewed the belly up from the legs to the throat.

Candace’s brother pulled the cotton from the frog’s mouth with the tweezers. “Now we wait.”

The three of them looked down on the still sleeping, perhaps dead, frog. 

Candace finally broke the trance. “Come on, let’s so swimming.”

Patty followed her back down the hall leaving Candace’s brother intent on watching his great experiment.

“Last one in is a rotten egg!” Candace yelled as she dove into the water.

Patty took off her shirt and dove in after her. They swam a few laps, played Mermaid and Marco Polo, until seemingly without warning, the sun began to fade behind the trees and they both started to shiver. Candace got out first and grabbed two towels, the terry cloth still warm from the sun. They plopped down on the lounge chairs and curled up under the towels hoping to catch the last heat of the day.

“Come over here.” Candace slid her tiny body to the far edge of her chair. “I’m cold. Seriously, come here,” her voice pleading. “Here.” She patted the empty side of the chair and rolled over.

Patty slid into the space Candace had left for her. She had to turn sideways to fit and when she did Candace did too, pushing her bony back into the curve of Patty’s soft belly. Candace nudged her again with her backside a few times until Patty put her arm around Candace’s tiny waist and drew her in. She closed her eyes and thought of the poor frog lamely sutured by a nurse high on the job, thought of the E they were going to get on the project, thought of Candace’s scary brother somewhere in the dark and brooding house with a scalpel, thought of the first lie she’d told the only people who truly cared about her, thought of cottage cheese and bikinis and migraines and missing fathers, what it felt like to bury her face in Candace’s stringy blonde hair. It smelled like chlorine.