Scarecrow

1.
Sister and I built you out of spare parts. An ironing board for your torso, a plunger for one arm, a broomstick for the other. We used mops for legs, tucked the fringe into a pair of dad’s old rain boots. An overturned metal bucket became your head. Eyes, a nose, and a red mouth were cut from fashion magazines, pasted in the right places. We glued two brown breasts from National Geographic onto your flat chest. The sacred heart from a Jesus painting that used to hang over grandmother’s bed went in the middle. Pipe cleaners were twisted into corkscrew curls. We put you in a green raincoat, stuffed the arms with the soft insides of couch cushions. A necklace braided from yellow dandelions went around your neck.
2.
Dad told us to put you in the yard, to scare away the communists next door. Grandma said you were the pile of shit mucking up her garden. We weren’t sure what to call you because underneath the coat, you weren’t exactly a boy or a girl. We clapped our hands, expecting you to come to life. We named you.
3.
It looked like rain on your third day in the yard. We pulled the hood of the raincoat up and went to school. When we got home, we looked at your face. Your eyes and nose were watery, but still attached; your cherry lips from the advertisement were gone. Later, we weren’t surprised when you came to life. We had prayed for that every night. We weren’t sad that you were gone, but we touched your boot prints in the mud, leading from the garden out into the road, and we felt sorry we’d sent you into the world with- out a mouth. Sister cried. But I didn’t.