Time of Death by Shirley Kennett

checked the items, which were in plain sight. “Size eighteen shirts, thirty-five inch sleeve. Arlan was a big guy, wasn’t he?”
    As they were leaving, Schultz asked about the presence of men’s clothing. Fredericka was prepared with an answer, having seen them go into the room.
    “Arlan stopped in to shower and change sometimes. Work sites can be awfully dirty.”
    No doubt he needed someone to scrub his back, too. In an old-fashioned way, of course.

Chapter 7
    DEAR DIARY,
    These are things that happened to me, cross my heart and hope to die.
    “Lazy bones, crazy bones,” my sister chants. I press my fingers into my ears and pretend not to hear. She sees that our parents are busy in the dining room getting ready for Christmas dinner. She comes over and punches me in the stomach.
    “Ow! I’m gonna tell!” I say, and my face screws up with pain. The punch is not quite hard enough to leave a bruise. Oh, no, she never leaves a bruise.
    “Go ahead, crazy bones,” she says. “You know they’ll believe me over you. You might as well not even try. They’ll punish you for telling lies again.” She pinches my shoulder, hard. “You better save me your dessert and all of your cookies from the farm, or you know what will happen to you tonight.”
    I shiver thinking about it. I’m eight-years-old and skinny. Spaghetti legs, Mom says, spaghetti arms, all I need is some tomato sauce to make a good dinner. Mom must think that’s really funny because she says it a lot.
    My older sister is very strong. She can hold me down and pour salt water in my mouth, or cover my face with a pillow until I absolutely can’t last another second without dying.
    I hate Christmas dinner because my jerky relatives from Chicago are here. Grandpa Marshall, who gives me the creeps with his cold hands and beady eyes and I never want to be alone with him in a room again, is sick and can’t travel. Maybe he’ll die.
    A good part about Christmas is the farm cookies. Dad picks them up every year. They come in a cardboard box tied with red string. Butter cookies shaped like reindeer, round cookies with cherries or nuts in the middle, cookies that are half-chocolate, cookies that look like half moons, gingerbread men. Mom never makes anything like that. Some old farm woman bakes them. If I’m fast enough, I can get some in my pockets before my sister sees me.
    “Where’s your new doll?” my sister says in her bully voice.
    I close my eyes. Mom and Dad finally gave me something I want for Christmas, probably by mistake. My sister saw the happy look on my face. I wasn’t fast enough hiding it. Big mistake.
    “I don’t know. I guess I lost it,” I say, trying to keep my voice from showing that I still have it. “You don’t like dolls anyway.”
    “You little shit!” She talks like that when Mom and Dad can’t hear. “Gimme that doll!”
    “No! You have presents of your own. You don’t need mine. You don’t even like dolls!”
    She comes right up next to me, so I have to look up to see her face. I look right up her nostrils. They don’t look any better than mine, I’ll bet.
    “Listen, you freak,” she says, “Don’t you ever talk to me like that. I’ll have to tell Mom and Dad how bad you are. Maybe they’ll send you off to live with Grandpa Marshall!”
    She sees the fear shining in my eyes and knows she’s got another thing to tease me with. So far I’d hid that from her real good, that I was scared of him and his big, scratchy hands. He wouldn’t think of putting those hands on her, no, of course not. He’d get in trouble if she said anything. With me, he knows everybody will think I’m making things up again.
    “Hah, hah, hah, you’ll go live with Grandpa Marshall,” she sang. “Then I’ll have everything to myself the way I did before you were born. Everything was so much better before you came along, crazy bones.”
    I’ve heard that a thousand times. A thousand times a thousand. What makes it so bad is that