Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [51]
I walked upstairs to Natalie’s room and pounded on her door. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”
She answered the door wearing a sheet toga. “What time is it?” She yawned.
“Late.”
“What’s the kitchen like?”
“Agnes washed a plate,” I said.
She yawned again. “Oh.”
“I guess we should get to work on it,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. Then she turned around, holding the sheet against her chest and began hunting through the mounds of clothes on her floor for her skirt. Natalie wore the same skirt every day. It was red with golden feathers on it. She’d sewn it herself. The edges were beginning to fray from so many washings. Somehow she was able to slip into both the skirt and a black tank top without ever removing the sheet.
We spent the rest of the day shoveling debris out of the kitchen and carrying it outside behind the barn. It took dozens of trips. But by evening, the kitchen was free from rubbish.
“Let’s get these dishes washed,” Natalie said.
So we created our own assembly line of two. Natalie washing, me drying. All the commotion had caused the roaches to retreat deep into the walls so Natalie hardly screamed at all.
When we were finished, standing in the now clean kitchen, Natalie commented on the new ceiling. “It’s weird how it seems even darker in here now.”
It was true. Although there was no longer a low ceiling hanging over our heads, the blackness that stretched up was even more depressing.
What we needed was a skylight.
Natalie phoned her dad at the office and he told us he’d give us a hundred dollars to install a skylight. Natalie told him a hundred dollars wasn’t enough; that we’d need at least a hundred and fifty. After ten minutes of pleading, he finally agreed to give us a hundred and twenty-five.
“So we can use a hundred for the window,” she said, “and the rest we can spend on beer.”
This seemed like a good plan to me. “But are you sure we can buy a window for a hundred dollars?”
“We don’t need to buy a window,” she said. “We can take the window out of the pantry and use that. Then we can just block that up with wood. Nobody looks out that window anyway.”
Over the next few days, we worked with uncommon focus on our project. It proved challenging to remove the window from the pantry. It had been installed with surprising accuracy. But by using an axe we found in the barn as well as a hammer and a rock, we were able to free the window from the wall. The hole that remained created a refreshing cross-ventilation that made it easier to breathe in the dusty kitchen.
Far more difficult, however, than removing the window in the pantry was creating the hole in the roof for the new skylight.
“You wouldn’t think it would be so hard,” Natalie said, as she tried to gnaw her way through the shingles with a hacksaw.
We were sitting on top of the roof. The sun was high in the sky and we were both wet with perspiration. I’d applied Hennaluscent conditioner to my hair and combed it straight back. I’d also talked Natalie into letting me henna her hair. I’d applied the pasty mud and then piled her hair on top of her head, securing it with a tight wrapping of aluminum foil. And now she was starting to complain.
“My head is so fucking hot,” she said.
“Well, just try not to think about it. The sun will really help your hair take the color.” The color we’d chosen was red.
“Well, this fucking foil is driving me nuts.” The foil was sliding down her forehead and she was constantly pushing it back up.
“So take it off,” I said.
She slid the foil off her head, balled it up and threw it off the roof. Her hair was mud-caked and slapped against her shoulders. With the motion of the hacksaw, her hair moved as one thick sheet.
Eventually, we were able to saw a nice hole in the roof, between the rafters.
“Hi, Agnes,” I said, sticking my hand down through the hole and waving into the kitchen.
“What in God’s name?” she said, looking up.
Natalie poked her face into the hole. “Can you go to the store and get us some food?” she said.
“What do you want?” Agnes asked.
“I don’t know. Something.”
“You two better fix that,