I’m quiet for a long time, thinking about this. I’ve been sitting alone in a dark room with a box of Honey Buns for so long that it’s nice to talk.
“Why don’t they do something? Why don’t we do something? We could all leave here—every last one of us—and go look for something better.”
“It’s not that easy,” Judah says. “The Bone is in our marrow. It’s complacency and fear handed down from generation to generation.”
Judah stops at a food truck and studies the menu. I wait for him under the stubby metal awning of the bus top, trying to stay warm. The guys behind the window seem to know him. They step out of the truck to bring him his bag of food, which he sets on his lap when he wheels over to me.
“Dinner,” he says.
I sit awkwardly as he doles out tacos and chips onto napkins he puts on our laps. There are little cups of bright red salsa to go with everything, and a large fizzing cup of Coke. It’s the first time someone’s bought me dinner.
The rain is a fine mist tonight, but it’s not overly cold. If Nevaeh is outside—hurt or something—she won’t freeze. I hate that I’m thinking that.
“Where could she be?” I ask, gingerly picking up a chip. “This is a small town. Hardly any strangers even come through here.”
“Maybe she ran away,” Judah says. His mouth is full of taco. I can smell the cilantro and meat. “You know how little kids are around here. I used to want to run away once a week when I was her age. I probably would have if I had the legs to do it.”
I shake my head. “No, she’s not like that.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m just trying to make myself feel better.”
I nibble on the chip I’m holding, crunching it between my two front teeth like a gopher.
“Did you know her?”
He hesitates. “Yeah…” He licks the sour cream from the corner of his mouth and continues eating.
I try to think of all the ways he could have come in contact with Nevaeh and come up empty. Nevaeh didn’t live on Wessex; she lived on Thames Street, two down, one over. She went to school, she caught the bus to her grandma’s, she played on her street, but never wandered farther than the end of the block. How does a crippled, college-aged man know a second grade girl?
“Why aren’t you eating?” he asks.
Because I don’t want you to think I’m fat.
“Not that hungry, I guess.” I am so hungry.
He sets his taco down and stares at me. Pieces of lettuce tumble off his lap and onto the ground. “If you don’t eat, I’m not eating. And then you’ll be responsible for starving a cripple.”
I unwrap my taco, smiling a little.
“Where do you work?” I ask. We are finished eating, wrappers disposed, hands dusted on our pants. I step down from the curb and then turn back to help him over a patch of bad street—cracked and rippled. I know he takes classes in Seattle because three times a week his school sends a white van to pick him up. Though I don’t know what he’s studying.
“At my job,” he replies.
“Okay, smartass, what are you studying?”
“Elementary education.”
I am surprised by his quick answer, when he’s been dodging the other for so long. Though something about him being a teacher fits. It’s glove-like, appropriate.
“Is that how you knew her? Know her…” I correct myself.
“Yes,” he says. And that’s all he says. And even though he bought me dinner, I have the urge to reach out and smack the back of his head. I’m a hypocrite, I realize. I don’t like intrusive questions either.
I feel as if I’ve known him for a very long time.
I SKIM TEN DOLLARS from the floorboards to buy myself a new pair of shoes from the Rag. I have seven work checks, made out in my name, and no bank account in which to deposit them. I need picture identification to open a bank account, and so far I haven’t even been able to find my birth certificate. I asked her for it once, and her eyes got bleary before she walked away without saying a word. I have a social security card, Margo Moon and a nine-digit number that tells the world I’m a valid American. Since I don’t have a photo ID, Sandy had to take my word for it when she hired me.
All seven of my checks sit inside my worn copy of Little Women. I wear Delaney’s rain boots to work in the meantime. Judah says his mom won’t even know they’re missing, but I’m not in the habit of stealing rain boots then parading them around their owner.
Sandy looks me up and down when I walk in. “It ain’t even raining,” she says. “And those are happy boots. You ain’t happy.” I shrug. Sandy just got braces. It’s hard to take an adult with braces seriously.
Before the store opens, I find a pair of red Converse with minimal wear in the teenybopper section. I switch them out with the rain boots and put my seven dollars in the register. I’ve never had a pair of Converse before. Just sneakers from Wal-Mart. I feel like a million bucks—or seven, depending on the way you look at it. When Sandy sees my new shoes, she gives me a thumbs-up. I do a moonwalk across the Rag’s floor. I don’t know why I’m so good at moonwalking. Sandy tells me that I’m a white girl with a gift, as she eats a bluffin from the gas station and bops her head to “Billie Jean.” I stay late at work, helping Sandy sort a late delivery, and I almost miss the last bus of the night. The driver frowns at me when I pound on the doors just as he’s pulling away, but he lets me on and I give him my biggest smile. By the time I climb off at my stop, I’m so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open. I carry the rain boots to Judah’s house and prop them against the front door. Most of the neighborhood is sleeping already—even the crack house. I am creeping away when he calls out to me. I can’t see him. He must be sitting in the dark at the window that faces the street.
I walk quickly toward his voice and crouch down, trying to see him through the screen.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.” His voice is different.
“I brought back your mom’s boots,” I say cautiously. Then, “Why are you sitting in the dark?”
There is a long pause. I can hear his breath moving in and out of his lungs.
“I was waiting for you to walk by.”
I look over my shoulder, at the dead night, the dead street. Not even the frogs are singing tonight. I make a decision.
“Can I come in?” I whisper.
His head moves up and down, but just barely. I go to the door and open it slowly. No creak escapes from the hinges, and for that I am relieved. The last thing I want is Delaney coming out of her room to find the prostitute’s daughter creeping around her living room. The house is dark except for a candle that is burning in the far corner of the room. It smells of cinnamon.
Judah’s chair is pulled right up to the window. I wonder how often he sits there watching the world from his chair. His shoulders are curled inward, his head drooping from his neck. The chair is wearing him tonight, I think. I go to him, kneel down, and put my hands on his knees. I’ve never touched him before. Never dared. His knees are frail, thin. Not like the rest of him. Judah was born to be big, and tall, and powerful, and life stole that from him. How heavy is that burden? His head comes up a little, just so we can exchange looks. He seems … tired.
“Judah,” I whisper. “Why were you waiting for me?”
He blinks slowly, like he’s in some kind of trance, then he looks back out the window.
“I always have.” There is such utter dejection in his voice, I draw back.
He lifts his arm and points across the street. “There, where the blackberries grow in summer…”
I look to where he’s pointing. There is a thicket of bushes across the street. No one ever trims them back so they grow wild around an empty lot.
“I saw you there for the first time, picking berries with your mother. I mean, you’d lived here your whole life, and so had I, but that was the first time I looked. You were real little—missing teeth, scraped knees little. Your hair was ratty and so blonde it looked white in th
e sun.”
I search for this memory. Blackberry picking with my mother. Yes. She used to make pies. We’d take bowls and fill them up, staining our lips with the purple juice as we ate and picked. She would tell me stories about how she used to do the same thing with her mother. Before she tried to drown her, that is.
“Your skin gets real tan in the summer,” he continues. “In the winter you’re like the snow, but when summer comes you look like a Native American with spun gold hair.” I look down at my arms. It’s too dark to see the color of my skin, but I know he’s telling the truth. I don’t know where he’s going with this. He’s not himself.
“You know what I thought when I saw you? She’s going to fight. You’d reach into those thorns to get the best berries for your mom; it didn’t matter if you got all scratched up. You saw the one you wanted, and you did what you needed to do to get it.”
“Judah…?” I shake my head, but he shushes me. Puts two fingers right over my lips and presses softly. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a kiss.
“I was already in my chair by that time. I couldn’t do that. Not even if I wanted to. It’s funny,” he says, ”it took the wheelchair for me to see you … to see a lot of things actually.”
The candle is dancing, swinging light gently around the room. I study his face, wanting to hurry his words and savor them at the same time.
“I’m half a person,” he says softly. “I’ll always have limits, and I’ll never have legs. Sometimes it makes me want to … quit.”
I swallow his “quit” because I too wanted to “quit,” on many occasions. Namely when I am paralyzed by the thought that there might not be any more to this life than the Bone. A deep hollowness overtakes me, and I have to tell myself that I’m too young to know for sure. Give it a few more years before you quit, Margo. Right now, the thought of Judah quitting makes me panic.
“So what?” I say.
He looks at me. Waiting. I’m waiting too. I don’t want to tangle my words—say something flippant. I’ll never be good enough for Judah Grant, so I want my words to be what he’s thirsty for. Meeting a need makes you feel more rooted. How do I know this? Because I buy my mother cigarettes? Bring her tampons and saltines from the drugstore?
“I have legs, Judah, and I don’t know how to use them. Your life walks, and you’re going to walk out of the Bone and be something. The rest of us, and our working legs, are going to live and die in the Bone.”
“Margo…” his voice cracks. His chin dips to his chest, and I’m not sure if he’s crying until I hear the sniff. He grabs me, before I can grab him, and he holds me tight.
“Margo,” he says into my hair. “I’ll save you, if you save me.”
I nod, the words caught in my throat, sticky with emotion. That’s the best deal life has ever offered me.
“DON’T YOU FEEL LIKE WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING?” I say to Judah a few days later. “Like really just jump up and do something.” He is sprinkling green leaves onto a sheet of thin, white paper. I watch, transfixed, at the nimbleness of his fingers as he licks, then rolls.
“Like what?” he asks. “Start our own investigation?”
“Maybe,” I snap. He finishes one joint and sets about rolling another.
“Let me try,” I say, pushing his hands aside. He leans away from the table, an amused expression on his face. My knees press against the wheels of his chair. My fat, bulging knees. I hope he doesn’t look down and notice. The wind picks up, and I can smell the tang of his skin—sweat and cologne.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” I say. I don’t like the way Judah’s smell makes my body react.
“No, it isn’t.”
He’s watching me closely. It makes me self-conscious. My hair is shaggy, and my skin is stained red from the sun exposure. My fingers fumble, and I spill flecks of green across the table.
“Easy there, Slim.” Judah picks up a few pieces and drops them back onto the paper. I glance at him briefly to see if he’s angry, but he’s not even looking at me anymore. He’s watching the trees across the street.
This morning, I got up early and met with one of the search groups scouring the woods on the east side of the Boubaton River. They gave us doughnuts and coffee and neon yellow vests to wear over our clothes as a safety precaution. Some of the police officers brought their dogs—great big German Shepherds wearing vests that said POLICE in bright yellow lettering down the side. We walked a straight line through the woods, looking for anything that might be out of place—a piece of ripped clothing, blood, hair. I grew more breathless with each step I took. Wondering if I would be the one to find Nevaeh.
Children went missing every day, with one percent of those cases making it into national news. People hurting kids. When it’s a kid you know, one who rides the bus with you, and walks down the same shitty streets you’ve been walking down your whole life, it feels black. Evil was allowed to pick us off one by one, starting with the weakest.
“My joint sucks,” I say, holding the fail between my fingertips. It’s baggy. Some of the grass falls out one end and blows off the table when the breeze kicks up. He plucks it from my fingers and begins again.
“You are helping,” he says. “You’re searching the goddamn woods. What more could you do right now?”
“Find her,” I say. “She’s somewhere, right?”
It’s the look on his face that sets me off. He tries to cover it with what I want to see: hope or something equally as pathetic. That’s what I am, I guess—a pathetically hopeful human who wants to believe that a little girl is still alive. And even if she were, what condition would she be in after all this time? I shake my head, and my voice quivers a little when I say, “You don’t have to look at me like that. Like I’m stupid or something.”
“That’s the last thing I think you are, Margo. The last. She’s been missing for two months…” Has it really been two months? I think back to the last time I saw her. It was June; the sun had started to consistently shine. School had just let out, and all the children in the Bone had a wild excitement on their faces. Nevaeh had told me that her granny had given her two dollars for every ‘A’ she’d earned on her report card.
Ten dollars! She’d boasted proudly. I’m going to save it and buy something really good.
She never got to spend her money, I’m fairly certain of that. It was probably still in that little Hello Kitty wallet in her book bag, stuffed behind packets of Gushers and the purple teddy bear she kept hidden at the bottom. She’d called it Bambi.
I can’t just leave her at home, she’d said, her little voice ringing sweet and vulnerable. She goes where I go.
I walk off, suddenly sore with grief, and leave Judah to smoke his blunt. Let him use his grass to curve the sharp edges. I would rather take them—feel the pain—because that was more real. What a hypocrite I am; I spend my whole life reading books that allude to happiness, when I refuse to experience it.
Sadness is an emotion you can trust. It is stronger than all of the other emotions. It makes happiness look fickle and untrustworthy. It pervades, lasts longer, and replaces the good feelings with such an eloquent ease you don’t even feel the shift until you are suddenly wrapped in its chains. How hard we strive for happiness, and once we finally have the elusive feeling in our grasp, we hold it briefly, like water as it trickles through our fingers. I don’t want to hold water. I want to hold something heavy and solid. Something I can understand. I understand sadness, and so I trust it. We are meant to feel sadness, if only to protect us from the brief spiels of happiness. Darkness is all I’ll ever know; maybe the key is to make poetry out of it.
I find myself in the woods, touching the knotty bark of the trees and rubbing a leaf between my fingers. I think about Lyndee Anthony, Nevaeh’s mother. I’ve seen her a few times standing on her porch, looking out at the street, her eyes darting to and fro, mimicking the movement of her brain. She is a thin woman, her dark hair cropped close to her scalp. She’d look almost childlike, except
her features are sensual and full. Sometimes, when I used to see them together in town, I’d think that Nevaeh looked more like the adult than her mother. Nevaeh, with her all-seeing, soulful eyes. The steady movements of her body. Lyndee’s eyes were hollow and bored. They reminded me of puppy eyes.
Ever since Nevaeh went missing, Lyndee’s face has been on the front page of the Harbor Bone, drawn and sad. I started collecting the articles, the varying shades of Lyndee’s sadness spread out on the covers with headlines such as: ‘Mother pleads for information about her missing daughter;’ ‘Mother gives police new leads about missing girl.’ Nevaeh’s father never showed during the first weeks of the search. It was rumored that when Lyndee called to tell him what had happened to their daughter, he asked for a paternity test. When the local news stations picked up the story, he changed his tune and began doing a series of teary-eyed interviews, claiming that Lyndee never let him see his daughter, and that would change as soon as they found her. I never for a second bought into his damp-eyed pandering for attention. And when the case died down a few months later, so did his act.
I walk out of the woods and approach the eating house from behind. The weeds tickle my calves as I trudge through the overgrowth of the yard. The line my mother once hung our wet clothes on has snapped free of its pole. I pick up the loose end and examine it. I look up to see my mother’s drapes parted, her face staring down at me. We catch eyes for a moment before I look away first. When I look down at my hand I realize I’ve rubbed a hole in my leaf.
AUGUST IN THE BONE is summer’s hot breath, mixed with the cinnamon sweet smell of the nootka roses. The claustrophobia gets to you. It makes you feel like you can’t breathe, and then you do something loony like Velda Baumgard over on Thames Street, who skinned the family dog and fed it to her family because she was tired of his barking.
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