“Turn Me Home” by Christina McCabe

My house had three rooms—four, if the galley kitchen counts.  From where I stood by the coffee pot I could see its entirety: the living room with its threadbare couch, end table stacked high with papers and books; my bedroom, where blankets fell in a cyclone from my still warm bed; and the storage room. Sometimes I called it the office, sometimes the second bedroom—it housed a camp bed, a fake Christmas tree still adorned with ornaments from months before, and a sea of paperwork. Really, it was hardly a house. The rooms were barely large enough for a bed and sometimes I, at five foot five, felt the need to duck under doorways. And, it was tacky; machine pressed logs made up the exterior, a cheap and pseudo-rustic cabin. It was an in-between dwelling—not quite a trailer and not quite a house.  

It was supposed to be an interim dwelling for our first year of marriage, the only thing we could afford straight out of college. We’d planned to build it when his gravel business took off, which it did.  But he built his dream house with somebody else and left me with the fake cabin and the land which, considering they’d both been paid off, wasn’t a terrible deal.  

The land was the only reason I stayed in the tiny house. I wanted something larger, more permanent; but in order to build I would have to get an actual job—one that allowed me to save and not just stay afloat. The construction would make a mess of everything, too, which wouldn’t go well with my business. I loved everything about my little parcel, like the way the seven a.m. sunlight bathed the birch trees and made them glow; the way the earth peaked ever so slightly in the middle which funneled runoff away from the house and garden; and the birds—eastern bluebirds, tufted titmice, ruby-throated hummingbirds, red-tailed hawks, Baltimore orioles. They nested in the trees and visited the feeders I dangled over the perimeter fence darting out, startled, when I opened the sliding door each morning.

I stayed in the tiny house for the dogs. They had free reign of my fully fenced-in acre when I was home, though they mostly stayed close to me. They were attached to me. I was their guardian and protector, the one who rescued them from their wretched lives and let them be dogs again. They were so finely attuned to my movements that each morning, without me announcing myself, the dogs knew when I was approaching the cushy, temperature-controlled barn where they slept. I’ve never been sure if it was the light, the smell of me or of my coffee, the chirping birds, or the soft thud of the sliding door, but they knew I was coming and whined until I got there.

Their squeals and yelps of excitement, once I was in the enclosed barn with them, tickled my eardrums and woke me more quickly than the coffee did. One by one I scooped food into metal bowls and opened the pens of the dogs I was boarding—Biscuit, Martha, Duncan, Shirley, and Chip. I scratched behind their ears as I lowered their food bowls into their pens, but none cared; they were wiggling, barking, craning their necks towards their breakfasts. I did the same for the dogs in the pens on the opposite side of the barn, my foster dogs.  

Some of the fosters had been found. They were strays—not microchipped, no tags. Some were surrendered. About half of the found dogs were actually surrendered, the owners too embarrassed to acknowledge it. They thought I couldn’t see the way the animals looked at their former humans or that I couldn’t hear through the dogs’ cries as they left. Few of the dogs came with names and by that summer I was running out of ideas. I turned to fruit—Kiwi, Piper, Mango, Archie, Berry, Lola. These dogs, the foster dogs, were why I did what I did. I took boarders and trained puppies for easy money, but my heart was in the rescue work. I spent hours with each new dog, learning about its trauma and quirks, before I set out on fixing them. I took detailed notes on what each one required and kept a routine as much as I could: Kiwi only ate if her food floated in water, Berry slept in a thundershirt, Lola had to be hand fed. By the time she’d picked up her last painstakingly slow bite from my palm, the other dogs were begging to get out and run. I opened the door to the yard and let them out one by one, Archie following as quickly as his hind leg wheelchair allowed, Lola at a slow stroll. 

The dogs zoomed around the yard barking, kicking up clods of dirt and grass with their toenails, wrestling over toys, burning through their burst of morning energy. I picked up their crap with a shovel, careful not to get in their way; last summer I’d got a bone bruise on my knee when a foster knocked me over. They followed me, whimpering and waiting, tennis balls in their mouths. I threw some as hard as I could for the big dogs and tossed some for the smaller dogs. Lola, the shuffling senior pug, just wanted to lie in my lap and have her ears rubbed. These were the fun parts—when all the dogs got along, when they all wanted my attention and love, when the shelter dogs started to come out of their shells. But it wasn’t all great, there were hopeless cases—there were dogs that snapped at everyone and everything; dogs that bit and attacked; dogs that I knew would never find homes.

And then there were the people. I often said that if I liked people, I would work with them; but I liked dogs, so I worked with them. People, sometimes through no fault of their own, accepted more than they were capable of handling when it came to dogs. They were indignant about dogs being dogs or they wanted to adopt one but all of mine were too old, too mixed, too imperfect. A mother and young daughter who arrived halfway through my lunch that day favored the latter reason.

I knew from looking at the sparkling minivan, chemically straightened hair, and luxury athleisure wear that the pair would not be leaving with a dog that day, or any day.  The mother would more than likely want a retriever pup, something that could trot alongside her as she pushed a double stroller. For a fleeting moment, I thought of myself while I looked at her, of the woman I thought I would be when I moved out here, married. Right away she wanted to know which dog was the youngest and what mix each dog was. She frowned slightly when I told her that her daughter was petting Mango, the eight-year-old pit bull. I sprinkled in my usual language—forever homes, fur babies, God’s creatures—but it didn’t help. Just as I thought, the pair ended up leaving after only a few minutes with no adoption application or business card.

As the minivan pulled away I heard another, much louder car somewhere near the end of my winding drive. Pings of gravel rang out as pieces hit the vehicle’s low underbelly, the engine whined at the mild grade, and soon I watched my mother come around the bend and up to my house. Her ’87 Ford Escort was a rarity now at thirteen years old, and the dent in the hood from when she hit a deer three years earlier only added charm. She put the car in park and smiled, too wide, tilted her head and raised her hand as if to say, “Surprise!”I held up a hand in shock. My mother lived much closer to the city—just outside of Pittsburgh, where I’d grown up. We didn’t talk frequently, and when we did, it was not by way of a spontaneous visit. 

She wasn’t as old as she looked—I had to remind myself of this as she heaved herself out of the car. Her bad knees and her weight problems, which began shortly after my father’s very public affair with another woman, often made her look beyond her years. I was watching her check her immovable mess of white-blonde curls in the mirror when the passenger door opened. Underneath it I saw little feet wrapped in Velcro tennis shoes touch the gravel drive, followed by a duffle bag. The boy, my sister’s seven-year-old son, picked up his duffel bag and followed his wobbling grandmother to the front porch where I stood, rooted and silent.

“Laurie, darling, you remember Lloyd,” she said in a syrupy voice that I’d never heard before.

I’d only met Lloyd once, at his baptism. The christening was, according to my mother, the only thing my sister did right by that child. I couldn’t remember who Lloyd’s father was: the guy locked up in Toledo for selling dope or the guy locked up in Cincinnati for stealing cars. They’d lived around Ohio for the boy’s whole life—Lloyd, what a stupid name—and I got updates through the grapevine or by way of sloppy letters without a return address.  

Our family started out normal: mom, dad, two daughters. Dad cheated and we moved towns; but when Dad cheated again, we crumbled. I often wonder if we would have become what we became had there not been any family drama to begin with—would I have become a recluse, would Mom have chosen to take better care of herself, would Deb have turned into a tornado that tore through our lives in a vortex of trauma, addiction, and deadbeat boyfriends?

I shook my head like I was shaking off a fly. I looked down at the freckles that littered Lloyd’s face and the haircut that my mom probably gave him, and smiled. “Of course I remember you, but you don’t remember me.  We met when you were a baby.”

Lloyd didn’t smile or move. I stared at him, studied his face and saw my sister,  saw myself.  We all had the same light brown hair, easily turned blonde by the sun. His horrible haircut revealed disproportionately large ears, which perhaps came from whoever his father was. He was short, but he was also seven, and I wasn’t sure how tall they were supposed to be.

I ushered the pair inside when I saw my mom begin to shift her weight around, trying to calm her angry joints. The boy sat at the table and I dropped a glass of tap water and a full box of Oreos in front of him. But neither the cookies nor the collection of dogs that he saw and heard through the open windows, seemed to interest him at all. 

The sickening sweetness appeared once again in my mom’s voice as she told the boy that we were just stepping outside to talk. When we did, my tone was much different.  

“What the hell?” I asked, ignoring the dogs that gathered around my feet and my mother who was struggling to avoid them. A tennis ball rolled between my ankles. “Are you just dropping him off here? You didn’t think you should call first? Why the fuck do you have him in the first place?” The questions came to mind quicker than my mouth could issue them. They backed up, and I ended with a sort of frustrated grunt before I sat at the chair beside hers.  I glanced inside; Lloyd hadn’t moved.  

“Your sister said she told you,” my mom said, spreading out her fingers on the chair arms. Her knuckles were swollen; they looked like knots on a tree, their branches the indigo veins that erupted on the backs of her hands.

“Deb called me six months ago from her apartment in Cincinnati,” I said, voice flat. 

My mom sighed. “Well, three weeks ago she ran out of money.  She came home. It seemed like she was doing okay otherwise, you know,” my mom said, as though not saying “heroin” would make the story any better.  “But then she got picked up for possession,” she whispered. “And I bailed her out.”

“Why?” 

“She’s got to be a mother to her kid,” she said, wide eyed. “And because she agreed to go to rehab, without the judge even telling her to.”  

I shut my eyes to refrain from rolling them. Beside me, the dogs were loud, panting, their hot breath on my legs. I picked up the tennis ball one of them had dropped on my chair.  There was a mad scramble off the deck when I tossed it into the grass.  

“Anyways, she told me that she talked to you and told you what was going on, and that you would be able to help with Lloyd while she was away.”

“And you believed her? When is she getting out? What rehab?”

“She never went to the rehab and I don’t know where she is. Gone two weeks.” 

My mother said this as though it were as simple as announcing the time. She had a history of doing this: your father cheated, your father is dead, I can’t make it to your wedding, your sister stole all my cash. I’ve done it as well: I moved to Zelienople, I got divorced, I quit my job and I’m building a barn so I can board and foster dogs.

“Have you called her friends? Put ads in the paper? Called the police? Hired a private investigator?”

“You know I can’t afford a private investigator,” she said.

I slammed my foot on the deck and scared the dogs that had gathered there, waiting to play. “The other options are free mom, but you don’t do those, you bring me this kid and make it all my problem! What am I supposed to do when school starts in a few weeks and he’s still here? What do I do if Deb’s dead?”

She stared at me with the intensity of a dog who wants dinner. “I can’t do it, Laurie. My knees are bad, my heart is weak, and I can’t handle a little boy. He’s a handful. He needs stability.” 

When I understood that she was making the boy my responsibility, she left, declining the offer to stay for dinner. Lloyd hardly moved from the kitchen table. He didn’t ask for anything—not to meet the dogs, not even for the restroom. I briefly wondered if my mom forgot to tell me that he was deaf or had some kind of disability. I couldn’t see the “handful” of a child that she was talking about.  

I picked up his gym bag from beside his chair. With no objections from the kid I zipped it open and began dumping out the contents onto the floor, already strewn with dog collars and paperwork. There was nothing helpful—just PJs, t-shirts, jeans, socks with holes in them, and a nondescript baseball cap.  

“Not even a toothbrush?” I asked.  

Lloyd turned his head to look at me, but remained silent.

Evening twilight was setting in as we drove to WalMart. Lloyd sat buckled in the back, hands folded, looking out the window. We drove through maturing cornfields; the falling tangerine sun ignited the silk atop the stalks and made the field glow golden.

“Is this a town?” Lloyd asked.

“It’s called Zelienople,” I said. I almost forgot to respond, I was too shocked at hearing his voice. “It’s a funny name,” I added when I heard the quiet from the back seat. “People call it Zelie, for short.”

“People call Cincinnati Cincy,” he said.

“That’s where you lived, right?” I asked. But he was done talking.

We drove over the Connoquenessing Creek and along its banks, by the ramshackle homes with smokehouses and canoes in the backyard. We drove through town where there are churches, bars, and banks, a hunting store and a diner, where there are signs for live bait and for live girls on the same block. I had been so put off by it all at first. I wanted the city, the cramped housing and shortage of green space, and the general city rancor that I was so used to. I traded it for deer season and taverns with mounted elk heads and old skis on the walls and bearskins on the floor. At night, an otherworldly quiet blanketed the area, pierced by howling coyotes and shrieking hawks. It was normal to stop my car for deer or lines of waddling geese that seemed to forget about their wings. All of this would be new for the boy, I thought. But then again, there was no way for me to know.

My first stop at Walmart was almost the payphone. I didn’t know what he needed.  Toothpaste, shampoo, vitamins—did he need mouthwash? Deodorant? But I couldn’t call anyone with these questions—not his mom, and not my mom who had sent him along without a toothbrush. I thought about calling Anne, from my old job; she had kids and we talked every few months. But her number was in my address book which was at home.    

I slowly began to fill a shopping cart. Applesauce, bread, vegetables, pasta, a few Disney videos, new socks. I bought bedding—I didn’t have anything extra—and a quilt embroidered with little baseballs and bats. Lloyd didn’t pick his bedding out. He didn’t pick the videos or what flavor ice cream we’d have for dessert. In the toy aisle, I waited for him to make a move. These were things other kids longed for, things that flickered across televisions in colorful advertisements or teased from the glossy pages of catalogs. Lloyd did nothing. I decided on two sets of Legos: one cowboy, one pirate. I bought some books and an action figure, a board game, a baseball mitt, and a deck of cards. His eyes widened at the checkout when I began to pile things onto the belt; mine widened when I saw the price. I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know what I needed or how long he would be with me.

That night, after a dinner of pasta and vanilla ice cream, I dealt with the dogs as he watched from the comfort of the back deck. I asked if he was afraid, but he had no answer. I thought, however, I might’ve seen a smile as they ran across the yard chasing a ball, a disorganized pack of legs and fur. 

He rubbed his eyes as I stretched his new bedding across the camp bed. While he got ready, I dragged boxes of papers into the living room to make room on the floor for his new things. I had no extra furniture, not even an empty drawer for his clothes.

“I’ll be right next door, okay?” I said when he was in bed. He nodded. “I know you met me today but I’m your aunt and I’m happy you’re here,” I said. There were long pauses between my words—I was searching for something helpful. “But I love you,” I blurted out, even though I didn’t know if I meant it. I winced at my own cruelty. The kid was my nephew, of course I loved him.  His eyes were tired, lolling, but I could tell that he was scared. I shut the door only partway and kept the lights on in the rest of the small house. 

I sat on the deck with an Iron City in one hand, cordless phone in the other, and the address book open on my lap. A rhythmic buzzing from unseen crickets and cicadas filled the air; moths fluttered around the fixtures above me, sending waves of fleeting darkness across the cluttered pages of addresses in different inks.

I called my sister first; the last number I had for her was from when she called six months ago from Cincy. It rang four times, then five, eventually ten. When I hung up and called again, someone named Don answered. There was no Deb Guzik at the apartment, he said.

I took a sip of my beer and tried again to remember who Lloyd’s dad was. Jacob Williamson. That was his name. But I couldn’t remember what he looked like, or what his crime was, or if he was out of jail.  But Jacob didn’t live there anymore, either.  A dead end after two phone calls.  I dialed the operator and got the numbers for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Cincinnati Enquirer, both of which I would call in the morning and order ads. 

It was late by the time I crawled into bed. I’d tried to move silently around the house, putting things away, organizing work papers and personal bills, and hauling the mess into my bedroom. I washed the sweat from my face and lay in the dark for a while; each time I felt on the verge of sleep I remembered there was a kid in my house. There wasn’t anything concrete for me to worry about, so I worried about all of it—lawyers, school, courtrooms, funerals, dead parents, addicted parents, former parents—and eventually drifted off to sleep.    

When I woke, the kid was asleep on my floor, wrapped in his comforter.

He didn’t say or do much during the first week. He was like a shelter dog, hiding in his room, skittish and afraid. In the second week, when I walked into his bedroom for the remainder of my work things, he was on the floor with the cowboy Lego set. He had half of the wagon assembled and appeared to be working on a bank that the cowboys were robbing. His eyebrows were pinched together as he read the directions to himself. He uttered no complete sentences and was barely audible to me but whispered to himself; it was more than I’d ever heard him say.

“One flat black piece,” he whispered. “One gray block, two gray blocks—okay, lots of those, the walls.”

When he saw me, he dropped what he was holding. Around him sat the things that I’d bought at Walmart—the Legos, books, videos, and action figure, fanned out so he could look at them. The Lego box had been opened with expert precision, peeled open where the glue had been. The bags of plastic bricks were popped along the seams as though they were bags of chips.

“It’s okay, buddy,” I said, stepping over the half-assembled wagon. “I just came to get this box.  Do you want help?”

He looked up at me, irises floating towards his forehead, the deep blue of them absorbing the lamplight. Finally, he nodded. I mostly sat with him. I looked for the pieces that came in the next step, he did the assembling. Sometimes, I talked. I told him about the dogs: who was staying for a short time, who was being fostered. I told them about their names and about where people had found them, or who brought them to me. I told them if they liked to be pet, or play, or about their quirks and needs.

*********

The phone rang. I jumped up and made for the kitchen, heart pounding, but it was only Mom. More than two weeks had passed since I put ads in the papers and not a single person had called; Deb wasn’t a patient at any of the rehabs or hospitals in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania or Hamilton County, Ohio. My mother hadn’t heard from her, either. She was only calling to say that she wouldn’t be able to make the drive on Saturday to visit the boy.  

He’d become accustomed to the other visitors, the people looking to adopt dogs or to pick up their own. He feared the doorbell at first. He’d stop what he was doing and stare, or retreat to his bedroom.  But eventually he’d sit on the deck and watch puppy classes, one-on-one training sessions, or playtime with all the dogs. Lloyd had been with me for about three weeks when a woman came to my door with a yellow lab, an animal rarely seen in foster situations due to their popularity. 

“I can’t keep him,” she said. “He’s a sweet dog, but he has something wrong with his stomach and he needs this special food that’s too expensive. If he doesn’t have it, it’s…bad.”

I nodded as though I understood.

“He gets ear infections all the time,” she said.  

“All labs do,” I said.

“It’s just too much. With three kids, too much,” she said.  

Again, I told her I understood. I took the leash and a paper bag of toys and vet records.  The woman had tears in her eyes when she left, and the dog pulled on his leash to go with her.  When I turned to go into the house, Lloyd was pressed against the window by the door, watching.

We sat on the floor in the living room. The dog, only nine months old, was calm. All dogs had the ability to be smart and intuitive, but labs were something else. They always seemed to know what was going on. The dog rested his head in Lloyd’s lap; he picked up one of its ears, which began twitching immediately. Lloyd dropped it, smiling.  

“His name is Neville.  He has some problems but he’s nice; I’m not sure how long he’ll be here.”

Lloyd stroked Neville’s head with his narrow fingers. “Is that why I’m here?” he asked, hanging his head.  

My mouth opened. The more I got to know him, the more questions I had, and they were mostly things I didn’t feel that I could ask. Not yet, anyway. I wanted to know what he’d seen, what he’d felt, what he’d missed. I wanted to know about my sister and the life she was able to give him. I wanted to ask if he was afraid, if he wanted to stay here. I wanted to know the ways that he’d been hurt and let down.

Instead, I just put my hand on his shoulder. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you, honey,” I said, feeling an ache in my throat and a sting in my eyes. “I love you, and your mom loves you, and your Grammy loves you.”

Lloyd nodded.  He leaned on me, and on Neville.  He exhaled deeply and so did the dog.  Neville, at least, would likely forget his previous owners. Whatever stood before him would be the only life he’d remember.  

The following morning I unearthed the phonebook from the mounds of things I’d moved around the house while trying to make space for my new life.  As Lloyd slept on my floor, I flipped through the pages of attorneys, searching for keywords like “family” and “custody.”  I knew nothing of lawyers, or how to find one, or whom I might call for advice on the subject.  I picked one with a large advertisement on the page, a picture holding a handful of lawyers who were posing like Charlie’s Angels without the finger guns. I left a message with the secretary.

I started to cook breakfast and wondered what he liked in his pancakes but didn’t want to wake him, so I made one of everything: blueberry, chocolate chip, banana. Every room of the house, all of which I could see from the stove, contained something related to my nephew by that point. He’d drawn pictures of the dogs which I’d hung on the refrigerator. Legos spilled out of his bedroom, his action figures were lined up on the coffee table. And there was his dog.  Technically, I hadn’t made any decisions about Neville yet. But when I saw him sitting on the deck, staring into the house, I thought of him as Lloyd’s. When I let him in, Neville licked and nudged Lloyd’s face until he woke up.     

A month passed. Five remained before abandonment could be claimed in Pennsylvania, according to our lawyer. I enrolled Lloyd in second grade at Seneca Valley. I bought him more clothes to fill his new dresser, which sat next to the dog bed in his room. But Neville didn’t sleep in it, he slept with Lloyd. At night, after homework and dog duty, which Lloyd was starting to help with, we watched Disney movies or the Cartoon Network. I learned that his birthday was November second, and hoped he’d have friends to invite to the party I was already planning on throwing.

At the lawyer’s request, more ads were placed in both papers. I began holding my breath when the phone rang, and held it to my face delicately like a bomb that might go off. I asked “hello?” so tentatively I might have been talking to an infant. It was ecstasy, the relief that flooded my body when the voice of my mom was on the other end of the line, or the secretary at the dentist’s office, or a kid from Lloyd’s class. He was mine for another day. He would be mine still when I tucked him into bed that night; he would be mine when I dropped him at school the next morning, too paranoid to let him take the bus. He was mine as he walked through the double doors into the main lobby, remembering before they swallowed him up to turn around and smile and wave goodbye for the day.

Featured art: “Valley Storm” by Gun Urrainn

Christina McCabe earned her MFA from Emerson College in 2018 and her MAT from the University of Pittsburgh in 2021. Her fiction has appeared in Juked, Five on the Fifth, Another House, Glassworks, and Chautauqua; her poetry has appeared in Headline Poetry & Press. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, with her fiancé and golden retriever, and she teaches high school English.

Gun Urrainn is a photographer based in North America. They source expired 35mm film and prefer to let fate determine the texture of their shots.