Banished

by Sophie Littlefield

  Na anam an corp cara ár comhoibrí

  Did my lips move? Did I speak out loud? Did the words carry on the chilly spring breeze, across our ruined yard, out to the street, down to Trashtown, where frightened girls hid behind grimy windows, girls who knew more about me than I knew about myself, girls who cursed me? I don’t know, but as the words mixed with the urgent need, I sensed that it was all connected, that what I was doing was not of my own making, that it came from a source that bound us all in some way. And as the rushing slowed and my senses returned with a prickly sharp sensation, I tried to push back the nagging feeling that I was in over my head, that I was invoking powers I couldn’t control.

  And then none of that mattered, because Rascal’s body twitched. A small hitch, just a tiny jerk of his paws. I blinked sight back into my eyes and saw that his lips were curled away from his teeth, but under my fingertips I felt his heart beat faintly—a weak and irregular pulse—and I realized that he wasn’t dead.

  I hugged him, as gently as I could, and then I sewed him up. Thinking of it now, I can’t believe I found the courage, but I fetched the sewing basket from the back closet, easing past Gram without waking her from her afternoon nap. I washed my hands and squirted Bactine from the bottle I kept in the bathroom. I got a carpet needle and strong waxed thread and I lined up the edges of the tear in Rascal’s body as well as I could.

  I apologized before I took the first stitch. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I know this is going to hurt.” But Rascal never twitched or showed the slightest sign of pain. He didn’t look at me, his eyes still unfocused, and I made a neat row of overcast stitches, knotting them off at the place in the soft white fur on his chest where the wound began. I dribbled more Bactine onto the ragged stitches, and when I was finished, I carried him inside to the mound of blankets in the kitchen, where it was warm.

  I talked to him some more, and even then I think I knew something was wrong. He didn’t look at me, he just lay there, though his breathing was even and strong. I cleaned up the blood on the porch with rags and Windex, and then I carried the rags and my bloodied jacket to the burn barrel out back and stuffed them into the bottom, into the ashy remains of the last fire.

  Back inside, Chub was waking up from his nap. He must have had a nightmare, because he blinked hard and started to wail and pulled at the blanket I’d covered him with. He was getting big, too big for this kind of thing, but I went to him and he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me hard. Slowly, his sobs diminished to whimpers, and he pressed his face into my neck, his tears mixing with Rascal’s blood.

  CHAPTER 8

  RASCAL SPENT THAT NIGHT lying on the linoleum floor, close to the front door. In the morning I examined his stitches. The pink line of his scar was so faint that it was practically invisible, punctuated by the bits of thread I’d used to stitch him. Even more amazingly, fur was already growing over the area. How could flesh heal that fast—how could fur grow that fast?

  Earlier, in the moments before my alarm went off, it had flashed through my mind that I had dreamed his injury. Now I was really starting to wonder. But the black threads were proof that it had happened.

  I went to the front door and called his name. He got up obediently, without any stiffness or pain that I could see, and trotted outside and did his business, then came back in and returned to his blankets. I got Gram’s embroidery snips with tiny pointed blades, and a pair of tweezers. I said, “Rascal, come,” and he followed me to my room, where Chub was just beginning to stir under his mound of blankets, yawning and humming softly.

  Rascal sat when I told him to, his pose show-dog perfect, erect and still. When I gently pressed on his shoulders he lay down, exposing his scar. He didn’t complain as I cut the threads and tugged them out with the tweezers. It was almost as though he didn’t feel it. I wondered if somehow the accident had damaged his nerves, had taken away his feeling without hurting the rest of him, and I prayed that he was healing on the inside as well as he was on the outside. I gathered up Gram’s tools and threw the bits of thread in the trash, then shooed Rascal out of the room.

  Behind me, Chub coughed and then mumbled sleepily. “Hayee. Mockingbird.”

  I turned around, Rascal forgotten in my amazement. Chub had said a word—one he’d never said before, three entire syllables as clear as a bell.

  “What did you say, Chub?” I asked slowly, my mouth dry.

  “Mockingbird,” he repeated.

  “You—you want me to sing? Sing you the mockingbird song?”

  He rubbed at his eyes, nodding. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe he hadn’t said “mockingbird” at all but some other word.

  But strange things were happening. Milla, Sawyer, Rattler … nearly losing Rascal … the money and plane ticket in Gram’s room … the things I had done without even understanding what I was doing. As I lifted Chub out of his crib and hugged him tight, the words from the pages played in my head, a whispered sound track that seemed almost like it had been running, the sound turned down, all my life.

  But Chub wanted me to sing. So I lay down on my bed and held him and rested my chin on his downy hair and sang his favorite lullaby until he had enough and wiggled out of my grasp and ran out of the room to find Rascal. And then I lay there a few minutes longer, wondering what was happening to me, to us.

  At school I skipped lunch to go to the library and use the Internet. I’d gotten pretty good at doing research online, trying to figure out what was wrong with Chub. Not that it helped much; there were so many things that could be wrong with him, I felt like the more I read, the less I knew.

  I didn’t have much more luck when I tried to research what was wrong with Rascal. I didn’t know exactly what to search for: “fast healing” brought up natural remedies and health-food sites. Searching on Rascal’s symptoms brought up “catatonia,” which involved repetitive movements and ignoring external stimuli, but that didn’t seem to be exactly what was wrong with him.

  I gave up and unfolded the piece of paper on which I’d copied a few lines from the pages I found in the closet. I smoothed it out and entered the words in the search engine. Soon it became obvious that the words were Irish, and after poking around in an online Irish-English dictionary for a while I had a pretty good idea of what the lines said:

  I commend to this magic

  The souls and bodies of our poor countrymen

  Heal this withered flesh

  These torn and cursed limbs

  This tainted blood

  I wished I had copied the whole page. I had no idea what kind of magic the author meant, but I felt a strange excitement building inside me. Healing: could it really be a coincidence that I’d found the words after the thing that happened to Milla in the gym … and right before Rascal had been hit by the truck?

  Before I left the lab, I looked up the airport code from the ticket I’d found in Gram’s room. DUB stood for Dublin … Ireland. How could the words from the pages in the closet be related to what was happening now, to the plans that Gram was making in secret?

  I didn’t know who had written those words or hidden the pages in the closet. I didn’t know what Prairie Clover meant, but it still felt like those words held the key. I had to find out more, even if the one person who could help me hated me for reasons I didn’t understand. There had to be a way to make her talk to me.

  I waited until school was nearly over. When the last bell rang I bolted out of class and ran down the hall to the lab, because I knew Milla had science last period. When she shuffled out of the classroom, head down, at the end of the stream of kids, I stepped in front of her and blocked her path.

  I opened my mouth to ask if we could go somewhere to talk, but her expression changed from wariness to recognition, her eyes widening and her lips parting in surprise.

  “Where’d you git that?” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “The necklace.”

  My fingers went to the red stone pendant. I hadn’t taken it off since I foun
d it in the closet. I’d kept it under my shirt at home so Gram wouldn’t see it, but at school I’d let it hang in front.

  “I—I found it.”

  “Did your grandmother give it to you?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. If I could have thought of a lie that would keep her talking to me, I wouldn’t have hesitated. But I had no idea what she wanted, what would hold her interest. All I could think of was to ask her if she’d go somewhere to talk to me, somewhere private. “Look, could you, could we—”

  Milla shook her head, already backing away. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “But I have to talk to you. To someone. I’m—I don’t—I’ll give you—I’ll give you money if you want, I don’t have a lot but I can get more.” I could sense that in a second she would turn and run down the hall away from me. “The necklace! I’ll give it to you.”

  “Don’t take it off,” she snapped. “I don’t want that thing anywhere near me.”

  I wasn’t sure what it was, what it could do, but it clearly had an effect on Milla. I held the stone delicately between my finger and thumb and twisted it in the light coming through the high windows. The sun bounced off the stone and danced across Milla’s face in bloodred streaks. Her expression went from wariness to resignation.

  “You won’t let it drop, will you,” she sighed. “So let’s git this over with.”

  We went to one of the practice rooms by the band room, a musty space with old acoustic tiles lining the walls, and music stands and a scarred piano. There was only one chair, so we sat on the floor, our knees pulled up, the sound of someone practicing scales on a cello reaching us faintly.

  I didn’t tell her everything. I told her about the men in the car, about my fears that the authorities would separate me and Chub. I didn’t tell her about Rascal—I didn’t want her to think I was crazy. I told her about the men who came to the house, the deals Gram did out of the basement.

  When I talked about Rattler, Milla dropped her gaze to the floor and went still.

  “What is it?” I demanded, frustrated. “What is it with him?”

  Milla didn’t answer for a moment, but when she did, her voice was so flat and quiet that I could barely hear it. “Seems like you might know.”

  “Me? Why? I’ve never done anything to him—”

  She jerked her head up and there was anger in her eyes. “It ain’t about what you done. Don’t you git that? Ain’t any of us Banished got any say in things. It’s all laid out.”

  “Banished? I don’t—”

  “That necklace you’re so proud of,” Milla said, jabbing a finger at me. “Might interest you to know that it ain’t the only one. There’s three of them come over and they’re all cursed. How do you think your grandmother got the way she is? Anyone who wears it’s cursed too.”

  I touched the stone protectively. I couldn’t say why, but it seemed to me the opposite was true, that the stone was a charm keeping even worse things from happening to me. “I don’t believe you,” I whispered.

  “Really? Well, your mom had one of them, and look what happened to her. That one you got’s probably hers. Your grandmother traded hers, is probably the only reason she’s still alive. Only one missing is your aunt’s, and who knows what happened to her?”

  “My … what?”

  “Your aunt, Hailey. Come on, don’t act stupid.”

  “I don’t have an aunt—”

  “You know you do. And I don’t have to sit here and listen to you sayin’ whatever comes into your head like you think I’m an idiot, like you think I’ll believe whatever you feel like sayin’—”

  “I—I know you’re not stupid,” I said quickly, placing a hand on her arm, trying to calm her down, but she jerked away from my touch. “I don’t mean to, you know, make you feel bad or whatever, but I really don’t have an aunt. My mom died in childbirth and I—”

  “Stop!” She wrapped her arms tight around herself as though she was cold. “Just stop. Your mom went crazy and killed herself and you know it. Bad enough your grandmother got the taint, and now ain’t no one supposed to so much as say your name. Don’t you get it? It would be better for everyone if you had never been born, Hailey.” Her voice had gone cold and nasty. “You think you’re a Healer, but who knows what you done to me? You probably cursed me.”

  “My mother didn’t kill herself,” I whispered. I could have said a dozen different things, but that was what came to my lips. “She … died. Having me.”

  Milla stood and pointed a shaking finger at me, her lips twisted in rage.

  “I can’t—” she started, and then she backed away from me. “If you really don’t know, ask your grandmother. She’ll make you believe it.”

  “Wait, wait! Ask her what?”

  “Ask your grandmother,” Milla said, and then she flung the door open and ran, and I was alone with only the mournful sounds of the cello for company.

  CHAPTER 9

  WHEN I GOT HOME, there was a car parked in the yard.

  It wasn’t the dark-windowed Lexus or Rattler Sikes’s truck. It was a beat-up brown Volvo, and I knew from experience that was a whole other kind of bad news. A car like this—well maintained even if it was old, boring but socially responsible—screamed social worker.

  The Department of Social Services, Family Support Division, sent people out to check on us from time to time. In theory they were supposed to visit every month. In truth I never knew when to expect them, so I could never prepare for their visits.

  I bolted across the yard, ignoring Rascal, who was sitting on the porch. I let myself in the front door and hurried to the kitchen. It was worse than I feared: Gram hadn’t bothered to do anything with Chub, and he was sitting on the floor wearing only a diaper that looked like it was about to burst, crusty bits of lunch on his cheeks. When he saw me he jumped to his feet and came running, throwing his strong little arms around my legs and pushing his face into my thigh, saying, “Hayee, Hayee,” in his happy voice.

  Gram hadn’t bothered to ask the social worker if she’d like some tea or coffee. She had her cigarettes in front of her, and judging by the butts in the ashtray, she hadn’t stopped smoking since our visitor arrived.

  Last time one of the social workers came, she made a big deal out of Gram’s smoking. I thought it would be a bigger issue that we still didn’t have smoke detectors, and the porch stairs were still just a nail or two away from collapsing; that Chub was still barely speaking and wouldn’t use a toilet, and Gram was still refusing to let him go to preschool.

  It was time for damage control.

  “Hello,” I said loudly, pulling Chub’s arms away from my legs. “I’m Hailey Tarbell.”

  The woman seemed to tense at the sound of my voice. She had shiny dark brown hair that came to little below her shoulders—no one I’d seen before, but that wasn’t unusual. They came and went from this job all the time.

  She pushed her chair back and stood up and turned toward me and started to speak. Then she stopped and we both just stared at each other.

  The face looking back at me—it was my own.

  I don’t mean her face was a mirror image of mine. But she looked like me if I was older and had money for nice clothes and makeup and a good haircut.

  She had eyes like mine—more gold than brown, tilted up at the corners. Her eyebrows were high and arched like mine, though I’d bet she paid good money to get hers done in a salon.

  She had my mouth, thin top lip and full bottom lip. She had the high, sharp cheekbones and the wide forehead I have.

  My aunt—this had to be the aunt I never knew I had!

  After staring at me for a few seconds, she did something that surprised me even more—she turned back around and smacked her hand down on the table so hard Gram’s ashtray jumped, spilling ashes and butts. It had to hurt her hand, but she curled it up into a fist. For a moment I thought she was going to hit Gram, but instead she just squeezed her fist so hard her skin turned white. I realized I had stoppe
d breathing the same instant that she put both her hands flat on the table and leaned down until her face was inches away from Gram’s and said in a low and threatening voice:

  “If you ever lie to me again, Alice, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

  Then she turned back to me and all of the anger drained from her expression, leaving her looking sad and tired.

  “My name’s Elizabeth Blackwell.”

  Gram tipped her head back and laughed, an awful hacking laugh that showed her long yellow teeth. We both stared at Gram. Finally she ended on a skidding series of gasping coughs and wiped at her eyes with her hands.

  “Now who’s lyin’,” Gram said.

  The visitor blinked once, hard. Then she took a deep breath like she was trying to get her courage up to jump off the cliffs over Boone Lake.

  “Okay,” she said in a voice so soft I knew it was meant just for me. “I’m not—who I said. My name’s Prairie, and I’m your aunt.”

  My throat went dry. Prairie.

  Clover.

  “What was my mom’s name?” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  “What?”

  “My mother. Your sister. What was her name?”

  “Clover,” my aunt said. “Didn’t Alice ever tell you that?”

  Suddenly my head felt both tight and dizzy. The words on the wall, the way they felt under my fingertips, the invisible pull they had on me … It was my mother’s name there. I wondered if she had carved the letters herself. The dizziness escalated into something more, like my whole self had lost its moorings and gone drifting away. “I’m going to get some air.”

  I went out the back screen door. For some reason, when I heard her following me, I wasn’t surprised.

  She stayed a couple of steps behind me while I walked toward the woods, away from the road where Rascal and I had walked together just yesterday. A short path met up with the crisscrossed web of trails through the woods that connected the farms out past the creek to Trashtown in one direction and Gypsum in the other. I went straight and in a few minutes I was at the creek. It was nearly dry—we’d had little rain or snow over the winter—and there was a flat rock half submerged in the lazy flowing water. I’d come here to sit on the rock a hundred times, thinking and tossing pebbles into the water. I went there now, dangling my feet over the edge.