Banished

by Sophie Littlefield

  But when Milla struck the vault, momentum carried her into the side, and the impact sent her flying backward. She fell on her back, and I winced at the sound her shoulders made as they struck the springboard—that had to hurt—but then there was another thud and a reverberation I could feel through my feet on the hardwood gym floor, as her head bounced off the edge of the springboard.

  The two girls at the front of the line jumped back with little shrieks, and then there was a second when no one moved as Milla rolled gently to a stop at the base of the springboard, her arms flopped out at her sides.

  Someone screamed.

  Ms. Turnbull and Mr. C came running, but I got to Milla first. I didn’t even know I was moving until I was crouched by her side, reaching for her hand, but Ms. Turnbull slapped my hand out of the way.

  “Don’t touch!” she screamed, even though Mr. C bent down and picked up the same hand I’d been reaching for.

  I backed away, but I didn’t want to. There was something inside me, some roiling force, that was making my fingers itch to touch Milla, that was sending the blood in my veins surging through my body with hot insistence. I wanted—no, I needed—to help, to put my hands on Milla. Even as I realized how bizarre my impulse was, I had to fight not to act on it.

  I stepped back into the silent crowd of kids making a circle around the vault. Ms. Turnbull and Mr. C talked in hushed voices, feeling for a pulse and waving their hands in front of Milla’s eyes, which were open but unblinking. Ms. Turnbull put her face close to Milla’s as though she was going to kiss her on the lips, but then she turned away.

  “She’s breathing,” we all heard her say.

  “She’s unconscious,” Mr. C said in a panicked voice. I saw the flyaway ends of the hair he combed over his freckled scalp trembling as he crab-walked away from Milla’s body like she was on fire, and I realized he had no idea what to do, despite all the years he’d taught us basic CPR.

  “I’m going to go call.” Ms. Turnbull scrambled to her feet and sprinted toward the gym teachers’ office.

  In the seconds it took for me to break away from the crowd of kids and rush to Milla, there was not a single sound in the gym. No one spoke, or coughed, or called my name. No one tried to stop me. But when I picked up Milla’s cool, limp hand with its ragged fingernails and rough calluses, I stopped hearing anything else anyway.

  At least, I heard nothing in the gym. Inside my head a strange whispered chorus started up, a murmured chant that made no sense.

  A second later, my vision went. I don’t think I closed my eyes, but everything else disappeared and it was as though I was looking into time going forward and backward at once, like I’d jumped off a cliff and hovered somewhere in black empty space.

  “Milla,” I whispered. I felt my lips move, so I was pretty sure I’d actually spoken, and then I had that same blood-rushing feeling again, like every bit of energy inside me was being pushed to my fingertips, where it dissipated into Milla’s body.

  I let go of her hand and my fingers moved over her neck and face until they found her scalp, which was hot and damp, the hair plastered across a long bump that swelled under my touch. The rushing sensation intensified, and my own heart seemed to slow and falter, and I started to sway, but somehow I couldn’t let go, couldn’t stop touching Milla’s injured body. Just when I felt like I had exhausted the last of my will, something shoved me hard and I fell onto my shoulder. My vision and hearing returned instantly.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ms. Turnbull screamed, her face purple and her hand raised high as though she was about to hit me. Maybe she would have, except that Milla, lying at her feet, rolled over and threw up.

  It turned out to be a good thing because Ms. Turnbull forgot all about me. Milla sat up, wiping her mouth against her sleeve, hiccuped a couple of times and looked like she was going to cry, but as Ms. Turnbull shouted questions at her she answered them, in a voice too low and mumbly for the rest of us to hear.

  I retreated back into the crowd of kids. A couple of them started to ask me what had happened, but then the door to the gym burst open and Mr. Macklin, the vice principal, came in and started yelling at all of us to go to the locker rooms and get dressed for next period, that everything was under control and none of our concern.

  I went with the rest of them, but I couldn’t help glancing back over my shoulder at Milla, who was trying to stand up even while Ms. Turnbull pushed her back down to the floor.

  Milla was watching me. The look she gave me was hard to understand: fear battling contempt, with barely a trace of gratitude.

  The only emotion completely absent from her face was surprise.

  CHAPTER 2

  THAT AFTERNOON I walked to the grocery store rather than riding the bus. I needed to walk; my mind was unsettled because of what had happened in gym. I couldn’t stop playing it over and over in my head: the sound Milla’s head made hitting the floor; the way her skin felt under my fingers; the blinding, swirling feeling when I touched her.

  When I got home, carrying grocery bags the last mile, Rascal bounded across the yard to meet me. He was part blue tick, part beagle, part something else. Gram got him from one of her customers after some stray got through a fence and impregnated a prize hound. The customer was going to drown the whole litter, but Gram took a shine to Rascal. For a while, anyway—she got tired of him when he wasn’t a puppy anymore.

  He nuzzled my hand, then slipped in the door and went straight to Chub, who was sitting in front of an open kitchen cabinet, playing with the pots and pans while the lids rolled around on the floor.

  “Russo!” Chub exclaimed, clapping his hands and throwing his arms around Rascal.

  “Russo” was one of Chub’s better words. He called me Hayee, and he could say “wah” for “water,” and “chah” for “chair.” Other things he had his own special names for, sounds that had nothing to do with the actual word, like “shoshah” for “flower” and “bobbo” for “truck.” Most of the time, he didn’t make words at all, just hummed, sounds rising and falling like a song only he could hear.

  I knew that there was something wrong with Chub. I tried to figure it out by doing research on the Internet, but there were so many causes of developmental delays, I didn’t even know where to start. I knew that eventually the social workers were going to demand he be tested, but I wasn’t anxious for that day to arrive because I was afraid they’d put him in some group home for kids like him. And I didn’t want Chub to go. Ever. Besides Rascal, he was all I had to love.

  When Chub first came to live with us, Gram changed. She spent time with him every day, murmuring softly to him while I did the chores, holding up toys and flash cards and trying to get him to talk. Those were good days. If Chub did something new, if he crawled toward Gram or reached for the shiny blocks she held up, she felt like celebrating; she turned off the TV and didn’t drink as much and even complimented me on whatever I made for dinner.

  But when he had a bad day, when he wouldn’t repeat the sounds she made, or ate dirt from the yard, Gram seemed to sink a little lower in her chair. As I got more and more attached to Chub, I realized that Gram saw him as a project, an experiment. And when she couldn’t fix what was wrong with him, she lost interest.

  Within a couple of months, she was back to spending her days in the chair, watching TV and smoking. She began drinking earlier in the day and barely paid any attention to Chub, but she kept cashing the checks the state sent for his care, and he became mine to look after just like Rascal had.

  “You git my cigarettes?” Gram wheezed from her chair. She asked me that every time I came home from the grocery, as though I’d ever forget. She went through a pack and a half a day. I handed her the four packs of Marlboro 100’s along with the receipt and a few coins. The cigarettes cost almost half what I’d spent at the grocery, but I knew better than to suggest Gram cut back. The one and only time I’d tried, she’d slapped my face so fast and hard it took my breath away.

&nb
sp; Gram was mean, but she was also weak and sick most of the time, so I could stay out of her way if I tried. She woke in the morning coughing up nasty stuff and spitting into the sink, and she fell asleep drunk in her chair most nights. She ordered me around like a servant. I didn’t mind the housework so much—I had kind of a thing about keeping the house clean, and I would have done it even if she didn’t tell me to. And she paid me, even if it was a fraction of minimum wage.

  I unpacked the rest of the groceries and got to work making sloppy joes. Sautéing the frozen peppers and onions, the ground beef, stirring in the tomato sauce—I’d done it a hundred times before, but it still brought me a sense of calm, especially with Chub playing at my feet and Rascal dozing in the corner of the kitchen where I kept a stack of old blankets for him to sleep on.

  Gram, laughing at something Tyra Banks said on her show, farted loudly, and I thought for the thousandth time how glad I would be when Chub and I left this house for good. I knew you weren’t supposed to feel that way about your grandmother. Grandparents were supposed to be over-protective and hopelessly out of touch, but you were still supposed to love them. They were supposed to listen to your troubles and offer you advice from all their years of experience.

  “Something weird happened at school today,” I said as I stirred the ketchup and onion soup mix into the skillet. Gram had never given me a single piece of advice worth remembering, and as I started to speak I already knew it was a mistake, but I had to talk to someone about Milla. “Milla Swanson got hurt in gym.”

  “Uh-huh,” Gram said without taking her eyes off the television.

  “I mean, like hurt pretty bad. I think she was unconscious for a while. A head injury.”

  “Mmm.”

  “But I … well, I think I might have … um. The thing is, I just wanted to help, you know? Because Ms. Turnbull went to call and—”

  “What did you say?”

  Gram’s voice, sharp and shrill, startled me. I set the spatula into the pan and looked at her. To my surprise she was struggling to push herself out of her chair, grunting with the effort.

  “Just that Milla fell off the vault and hit her head.” I went to help Gram. She seized my hands and pulled herself up, her back cracking.

  “Was there blood? Skin cut? Bone showing? What did you do?”

  Gram’s questions had an edge to them, an urgency I had never heard from her, and I wondered what she knew that I didn’t.

  “It wasn’t really any big deal. Just a bump.”

  “You said she was unconscious.” There was excitement and accusation in her voice, and her eyes were bright and intent.

  “Well, maybe for a minute.”

  “And you touched her?”

  “Um … yeah.”

  “On her head?”

  “Well, yes, I mean, first her hands and then, I guess, mostly on her hair.”

  “What did you say?”

  “What did I say?”

  “It’s not a hard question, Hailey. What did you say when you were touching her?”

  “I didn’t—I don’t know. I mean, I might have said her name, and something like, ‘Don’t worry,’ or, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ I really don’t remember.”

  But as I answered Gram something stirred in my mind. There had been … something. A strange sound track, whispered nonsense syllables, barely audible over the rushing of my blood.

  “That’s all? You didn’t say anything else?”

  “No. Nothing else.” I was a little frightened by Gram’s intensity, especially when she closed one of her clawlike hands around my forearm, her long fingernails digging into my flesh.

  “Have you done this before, Hailey?” she asked, leaning close enough to me that I could smell her breath, a foul combination of cigarettes and rot. I had to resist the urge to pull my arm away.

  “Done what?”

  Her burning eyes searched mine, and I felt like she was looking for signs that I was telling the truth—and for something else as well, something I couldn’t understand. We stood that way for what seemed like a long time, and I felt fear unwind inside my gut, fear that fed on my confusion and the high emotions of the day.

  “I think you know,” Gram finally hissed, squeezing my arm with a strength that surprised me. “You know what you done. All this time I been waitin’ on you, I finally gave up, and now you gone and done it.”

  I yanked away from her, my heart pounding hard. “Dinner’s going to burn,” I mumbled. I picked up the spatula and stirred the mixture in the pan, my face hot in the rising steam.

  I could sense Gram standing behind me, watching. She was scariest when she was thinking. I’d rather have her hit me or yell at me any day than stare at me like that, when I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking about.

  “It don’t change nothin’,” she muttered, so softly I almost didn’t hear her.

  By the time I dared to turn and look, she had shuffled back to her chair, and her eyes were half closed as she watched a lawn-care commercial. I made three plates of food and got Chub set up at the table with a paper napkin and a glass of chocolate milk. I took Gram her plate and a fresh beer and set it on her TV tray. She barely grunted a response, but I kept an eye on her as Chub and I ate dinner. She ate carelessly, bits of ground beef falling to the tray or the floor, where Rascal would find them later. After a while she rubbed her napkin across her mouth and tossed it on top of her half-eaten dinner, and I breathed easier, hoping she’d forgotten the confusing conversation.

  She was expecting customers that night. While I did the dishes she muttered to herself, now and then raising her voice as though she was having a conversation with someone. I was passing by her chair on my way to put Chub down, when she shot out her gnarled, yellow-nailed hand and grabbed my wrist.

  “You know you’re the future, Hailey,” she said, lips twisted in a grin that revealed the gaps where she’d lost teeth. Gram wouldn’t see a dentist, so her teeth were gray in places and several were missing. “You’re the one who’s gonna carry on the legacy.”

  I tugged my wrist back, but Gram held on tight. She’d said things like that before; it was nothing new. Years ago I’d asked what she meant, and Gram had got all coy and winked and said I’d know soon enough. It gave me the creeps, the way she stared at me with her milky eyes bright, almost hungry-looking.

  “You got titties now, girl, don’t you,” Gram said.

  Instinctively I covered my chest with my hand. It was barely even true. I was still skinny through the hips and it was clear I’d never be curvy the way Jill Kirsch and Stephanie Lee were, the way that caught the boys’ attention as they walked down the school halls.

  But it was horrifying to think that Gram had noticed, that she had been looking at me … that way.

  “And your monthlies,” she continued, wheezing and coughing into her sleeve.

  I hadn’t made an effort to keep it a secret. When I got my period a few years earlier, I knew what to do from eavesdropping on other girls at school, and I stored my box of tampons in the bathroom medicine cabinet. But hearing her say the words made my stomach roil, and I jerked my hand so hard that her fingers bounced off the arm of her chair as I backed away.

  Gram only laughed, a croaking sound that sent spit flying, some of it landing on me. I couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

  “What’re you so shy for, Hailey?” Gram wheezed. “Your mama was sure hot for it. Wa’n’t right in the head and couldn’t talk sense, but that didn’t keep her from sashaying around like a cat in heat when she got grown.”

  That stopped me cold. Gram never talked about my mother. All I knew about her was that she had died in childbirth and that she wasn’t “right in the head.” I thought maybe that last part was why Gram wouldn’t talk about her, some sort of grief that had got all twisted up into ugliness and silence—Gram wouldn’t even tell me her name, and there were no pictures of her in the house.

  “What—what—” I stammered, and Gram’s lips curved up in smu
g satisfaction. She had me. I hated her for it, but she had me.

  “Oh, so now you got time to talk to me,” Gram said. “Yes indeed. You don’t need to know anything about your mom other’n she was ripe as an August peach and lookin’ to get picked. Got knocked up with you soon’s the fellas come around sniffin’ at her, that one did.”

  “Who—” I started, and then I licked my dry lips, hating myself for the question I was about to ask. I’d asked often enough before to know that she would never tell. “Who was my father?”

  Gram’s laughter turned into a coughing fit, but the tears she wiped from her rheumy eyes were full of mean amusement. “That—” she began, then gasped her way through another round of coughs. “That’s quite the question, ain’t it? Could be anyone.”

  I had learned a few things about Gram, living with her for sixteen years. I didn’t miss the narrowing of her eyes, the way she drew her lips in. Gram was lying to me. Only, I didn’t know why. What was she hiding? Sometimes it seemed like we weren’t even related to each other—she was so frail, as though her body was just waiting to die, and I had never been sick a day in my life. But she also knew me better, in some ways, than I knew myself. I hated that. I couldn’t help thinking of the conversation earlier, the way she’d asked all those questions about Milla, as though she had some secret knowledge about what had happened. One thing was sure, though: nothing would make Gram tell me anything she wanted to keep secret.

  It was pointless to keep talking to her. I tried to walk away, but Gram stopped me.

  “What’s your hurry, Hailey?” she said. She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray I’d already emptied twice that day, and held out her arms. “We got callers. Here, git me up.”

  Only then did I hear the sound of a car in the yard. I did as she asked, seizing her hands and pulling harder than necessary, so Gram stumbled as she stood. I let her lean on me as she cracked her knuckles and worked her neck one way and the other.