by Mary Rickert
“Peter told me what you said, Rachel, about how I should have had an abortion, and I want you to know, that sort of talk is not allowed in our house. I really don’t even want you playing with Peter anymore. Not one word about abortion or dead mothers or anything else you have up your sleeve, do you understand?”
Rachel nods. She is looking out the window at a house decorated with tiny white icicle lights hanging over the windows. “Where’s my dad?” she asks.
Mrs. Williamson sighs. “He’s been delayed.”
Rachel is afraid to ask what that means. When they get to the Williamsons’ house, Mrs. Williamson pretends to be nice. She asks Rachel if her book bag is too heavy and offers to carry it. Rachel shakes her head. She is afraid to say anything for fear that it will be the wrong thing. There is a big wreath on the back door of the Williamsons’ house and it has a bell on it that rings when they go inside. Mr. Williamson and Peter are eating at the kitchen table. The house is deliciously warm but it smells strange.
Mrs. Williamson takes off her raincoat and hangs it from a peg in the wall. Rachel drops her book bag below the coats, and stands there until Mrs. Williamson tells her to hang up her coat and sit at the table.
When Rachel sits down, Mr. Williamson points a chicken leg at her and says, “Now listen here, young lady—” but Mrs. Williamson interrupts him.
“I already talked to her,” she says.
Rachel is mashing her peas into her potatoes when her father arrives. He thanks Mr. and Mrs. Williamson and he says, “How you doing?” to Peter, though Peter doesn’t answer. Mrs. Williamson invites him to stay for dinner but he says thank you, he can’t. Rachel leaves her plate on the table and no one tells her to clear it. She puts on her coat. Her father picks up her backpack. He thanks the Williamsons again and then taps Rachel’s shoulder. Hard.
“Thank you,” Rachel says.
They walk out to the car together, their shoes squeaking on the snow. The Williamsons’ house is decorated with white lights; the neighbors have colored lights and two big plastic snowmen with frozen grins and strange eyes on their front porch.
“What did you say to that policewoman?” Rachel’s father asks.
He isn’t looking at Rachel. He is staring out the window, the way he does when he is driving in Boston.
“Miss Engstrom didn’t do it,” she says.
“They seem to think I hurt you, do you understand—” He doesn’t finish what he is saying. He pulls into their driveway, but instead of getting out of the car to open the garage door, he sits there. “Just tell the truth, Rachel, okay? Just tell the truth. You know what that is, don’t you?”
“I did,” Rachel says. She feels like crying and also, she thinks she might throw up.
“Who did that to you, then? Who did that to your arms?”
“The bones.”
“The bones?”
Rachel nods.
“What bones?”
“You know.”
Her father makes a strange noise. He is bent over, and his eyes are shut. Praying, Rachel thinks. The car is still running. Rachel looks out the window. She cranes her neck so she can see the Sheekles’ yard. They have it decorated with six reindeer made out of white lights. The car door slams. Rachel watches her father open the garage door. She watches him walk back to the car, lit by the headlights, his neck bent as if he is looking for something very important that he has lost.
“Dad?” Rachel says when he gets back in the car. “Are you mad?”
He shakes his head. He eases the car into the garage, turns off the ignition. They walk to the house together. When they get inside, he says, “Okay, I want all of them.”
“All of what?” Rachel says, though she thinks she knows.
“That bone collection of yours. I want it.”
“No, Dad.”
He shakes his head. He stands there in his best winter coat, his gloves still on, shaking his head. “Rachel, why would you want to keep them, if they are hurting you?”
It’s a good question. Rachel has to think for a moment before she answers. “Not all the time,” she says. “Mostly they don’t. They used to be my friend.”
“The bones?”
Rachel nods.
“The bones used to be your friend?”
“Jack,” she says.
He doesn’t look at her. He is angry! He lied when he said he wasn’t.
“Rachel,” he says, softly, “honey? Let’s get the bones. Okay? Let’s put them away . . . where they can’t . . . bones aren’t . . . Jesus Christ.” He slams his fist on the kitchen table. Rachel jumps. He covers his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ, Marla,” he says.
Marla is Rachel’s mother’s name.
Rachel isn’t sure what to do. She takes off her hat and coat. Then she walks into her bedroom and begins gathering the bones. After a while she realizes her father is standing in the doorway, watching.
Rachel hands her father all the bones. “Be careful,” she says. “They killed Melinda.” He doesn’t say anything. That night he forgets to tell Rachel when to go to sleep. She changes into her pajamas, crawls into bed, and waits but he forgets to kiss her. He sits in the living room, making phone calls. The words drift into Rachel’s room, “bones, mother murdered, lies, problems in school.” Rachel thinks about Christmas. What will she get this year? Will she get a new Barbie? Will she get anything? Or has she been a bad girl? Will someone kill her father? Will Mrs. Williamson come to take care of her, and then lose her the way she lost the baby? Will Santa Claus save her? Will God? Will anyone? Will they get white lights for their tree or colored? Every year they switch but Rachel can’t remember what they had last year. Rachel hopes it’s a colored light year, because she likes the colored lights best. The last thing she hears before she falls asleep is her father’s distant voice. “Bones,” he says. “Yes that’s right, bones.”
The next morning, Rachel’s father tells her she isn’t going to school. She’s going with him to Boston. “I made an appointment for you, okay, honey? I think you need a woman to talk to. So I made an appointment with Dr. Trentwerth.”
Rachel is happy not to go to school with the nasty children of Stone. She is happy not to have to sit in the classroom and listen to Mrs. Fizzure, who never dresses like a Puritan and doesn’t put anyone in the stockade or jail. Rachel is happy to go to Boston. They listen to Christmas music the whole way there. Rachel’s appointment isn’t until ten o’clock, so she has to sit in her dad’s office and be very quiet while he does his work. He gives her paper and pens and she draws pictures of Christmas trees and ghosts while she waits. When it’s time to go to her appointment, her father looks at her pictures and says, “These are very nice, Rachel.” Rachel actually thinks they are sort of scary, though she didn’t draw the ghosts the way a kindergartner would, all squiggly lines and black spot eyes. She made them the way they really are, a lady smiling next to a Christmas tree, a baby asleep on a floor, a cat grinning.
Dr. Trentwerth has a long gray braid that snakes down the side of her neck. She’s wearing an orange sweater and black pants. Her earrings are triangles of tiny gold bells. She says hello to Rachel’s father but she doesn’t shake his hand. She shakes Rachel’s hand, as if she might be someone important. They leave her father sitting on the couch looking at a magazine.
Rachel is disappointed by the doctor’s office. There are little kid toys everywhere. A stuffed giraffe, a dollhouse, blocks, trucks, and baby dolls with pink baby bottles. Rachel doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. “Be polite,” she remembers her father telling her.
“You have a nice room,” Rachel says.
“Would you like some tea?” the doctor asks. “Or hot cocoa?”
Rachel walks past all the baby toys and sits in the chair by the window. “Cocoa please,” she says.
Dr. Trentwerth turns the electric teakettle on. “Your father tells me you’ve been having some trouble with your bone collection,” she says.
“He doesn’t bel
ieve me.”
“He said the bones hurt you.”
Rachel nods. Shrugs. “But not all the time. Like I said. Just once.”
The doctor tears open a packet of hot cocoa, which she empties into a plain white mug. She pours the water into it. “Let’s just let that sit for a while,” she says. “It’s very hot. Whose bones hurt you, Rachel?”
Rachel sighs. “Cat bones, mice bones, chicken bones, you know.”
Dr. Trentwerth nods. “Your father says you moved to Stone after your mother died. What was that like?”
“We were both really sad, me and Dad. Everyone was. We got a lot of flowers.”
Dr. Trentwerth hands the mug to Rachel. “Careful, it’s still hot.”
Dr. Trentwerth is right. It is hot. Rachel brings it toward her mouth but it is too hot. She sets it, carefully, on the table next to the chair.
“Tell me about where you live,” the doctor says as she sits down across from Rachel.
“Well, everyone is a witch,” Rachel says. “Okay, not everyone, but almost everyone, and one time, a long time ago, there was a woman there named Wilmot Redd and some people came and took her away ’cause they said all witches had to die. They hung her and no one did anything about it. Miss Engstrom, she was my teacher, got taken away too, and Melinda, my babysitter, died, but that’s because she stole the bones and now my father has them and I don’t want him to die but he probably will. Mrs. Williamson is this lady who sometimes takes care of me and she looks real nice but she loses babies and she lost one and no one even is looking for it. If my mom was still alive she would rescue me.”
“And the bones?”
“They used to keep me company at night.”
“Where would you be when the bones kept you company, Rachel?”
“In my room.”
“In your bedroom?
“Mmhhm.”
“I see.”
“But then they stopped being nice and started hurting me.”
“Whose bones, Rachel?”
“My dad has them now.”
“Where did your dad’s bones hurt you?”
“They were still mine then.”
“Where did the bones hurt you, Rachel?”
“On my body.”
“Where on your body?”
Suddenly, Rachel has a bad feeling. How does she know Dr. Trentwerth isn’t one of them too? Rachel reaches for her mug and sips the hot cocoa. Dr. Trentwerth sits there, watching.
The moon is not a bone. Rachel knows this, but when the moon stares down at her, like an eye socket, Rachel wonders if she is just a small insect rattling around inside a giant skull. She knows this isn’t true. She’s not a baby, after all. She knows this isn’t how reality works, but she can’t help herself. Sometimes she imagines flying up to the moon, and climbing right through that hole to find everyone she’s ever lost on the other side. She doesn’t care about Melinda but she cares a lot about her mom and dad.
Rachel no longer lives in Stone and she no longer lives with her father. A lady and two policemen came to school one day and took Rachel away. She was cutting paper snowflakes at the time, and little bits of paper fluttered from her clothes as they walked to the car. Now Rachel lives with the Freemans. Big plastic candy canes line the walk up to the Freemans’ front porch, which is decorated with blinking colored lights. A wreath with tiny gift-wrapped packages glued to it hangs on the front door. (But there are no gifts inside; Rachel checked.) The house smells sweet with the scent of holiday candles. Mrs. Freeman tells Rachel to be careful around the candles and not to bother Mr. Freeman when he is watching TV, which is most of the time.
Rachel’s bedroom is in the back of the house. It has green itchy carpet and two twin beds and a dresser that is mostly blue, with some patches of yellow and lime green, as though someone started to paint it and then gave up on the project. The curtains on Rachel’s window are faded tiny blue flowers with yellow centers and they are Rachel’s favorite things in the room. Lying in her bed, Rachel can look out the window at the moon and imagine crawling right out of her world into a better one.
On the first night, Mrs. Freeman came into the bedroom and held Rachel while she cried and told her things would get better. In the morning, Mr. Freeman drove Rachel to school. He walked with a limp and he burped a lot, but before he left her in the school office he told her she was a brave girl and everything was going to be better soon.
“The Freemans are nice,” the lady who took Rachel away from Stone told her. “Mrs. Freeman was once in the same situation you are in. She understands just what you’re going through. And Mr. Freeman is a retired police officer. He got shot a few years ago. You’re lucky to go there.”
But Rachel didn’t feel like a lucky girl, even when the Freemans took her to the Christmas tree lot and let her choose their tree, or when Mrs. Freeman put lotion on Rachel’s chapped hands, or when they took her to an attorney’s office, a very important woman who acted as if everything Rachel said mattered.
Rachel doesn’t feel lucky until the day Mr. Freeman says, “Rachel, the lawyers think you should go back and live with your father.” Mrs. Freeman cries and says, “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, how can they do this?” But Rachel is so happy she almost pees in her pants. When the lady comes to pick Rachel up, Mrs. Freeman says, “I have half a mind not to let you take her.” But Mr. Freeman says, “Rachel, get your suitcase.” Mrs. Freeman hugs Rachel so tightly that for a second she is afraid she really isn’t going to let her go, but then she does. The lady who waits for Rachel says, “This isn’t my fault. This is hard for all of us.” “It’s hardest for her,” Mrs. Freeman says and after that, Rachel doesn’t hear the rest. Down the street the Mauley kids are building a snowman. “I hate you, George Mauley,” Rachel screams at the top of her lungs. “What did you do that for?” the lady asks. “Get in the car.” But Rachel has no idea why she did it. As they drive past the Mauley children, Rachel turns her face toward the window, so her back is to the lady. She sticks her tongue out at George Mauley, but he is busy putting stones in the snowman’s eyes and doesn’t notice. “I want you to know, you are not alone,” the woman says. “Maybe things didn’t work out this time, but we are watching. You just keep telling the truth, Rachel, and I promise you things will get better.”
It starts snowing. Not a lot, just tiny flakes fluttering down the white sky. Rachel remembers the snowflake she had been cutting when the lady took her away from Stone. What happened to her snowflake?
“Here we are then,” the lady says. “Don’t forget your suitcase.” They walk into a big restaurant with orange booths along the wall and tiny Christmas trees on the tables. The waitresses wear brown dresses with white aprons and little half-circle hats that look like miniature spaceships crashed into all their heads. A woman is standing in one of the booths, waving and calling Rachel’s name. The lady walks toward her. Rachel follows.
The woman wraps her arms around Rachel. She smells like soap. When she lets go of Rachel, she doesn’t stand up but stays at Rachel’s level, staring at her. Pink lipstick is smeared above her lips so she looks a little bit like she has three lips. Her eyebrows are drawn high on her forehead, beneath curls that are a strange shade of pink and orange, and she wears poinsettia earrings. “You remember me, don’t you, honey?” she says. Then she looks up at the lady and frowns. “You can go now.” She pulls Rachel close; together they pivot away from the lady. “Here, let me take that.” She leans over and takes Rachel’s suitcase. Rachel looks over her shoulder at the lady who is already walking away. “You don’t remember me, do you? It’s me. Grandma.”
“Where’s Dad?”
The Grandma sighs. “Are you hungry?” She guides Rachel into the booth and then slides in across from her. “This has all been expensive, you know. The lawyers and everything. He’s at work. But he’ll be home by the time we get there. Do you want a hamburger? A chocolate shake? What did you say to those people? Okay, I promised I wouldn’t talk about it. Don’t touch the litt
le tree, Rachel, can’t you just sit still for five minutes? It’s just for looking.”
Rachel’s stomach feels funny. “Can I have an egg?”
“An egg? What kind of egg? Don’t you want a hamburger?”
Rachel shakes her head. She starts to cry.
“Don’t cry,” the Grandma says. “It’s over, all right? If you want an egg, you can have an egg. Were the people mean to you, Rachel? Did anyone hurt you?”
“Fried, please,” Rachel says. “And can I have toast?”
“You can tell me, you know,” the Grandma says. “Did anything happen to you while you were gone? Did anyone touch you in a bad way?”
Rachel is tired of the questions about bad touch. She is tired of grownups. Also she is cold. She just looks at the Grandma and after a while the Grandma says, “We decorated the tree last night. Your father hadn’t even bought one yet. But don’t worry; I set him straight about that. After everything you’ve been through! Well, he just wasn’t thinking clearly. He’s been through a lot too. Blue spruce. It looks real nice.”
The waitress comes and the Grandma orders a fried egg and toast for Rachel and the fish platter for herself. The waitress says, “Rachel?”
Miss Engstrom! Dressed as a waitress!
“Do you know each other?” the Grandma says.
“I used to be Rachel’s teacher,” Miss Engstrom says.
“In Boston?” asks the Grandma.
Miss Engstrom shakes her head, “No, in Stone. How are you, Rachel? Are you having a good holiday? Do you like your new teacher?”
“Wait, I know who you are. I know all about you.”
“I wish you would come back,” Rachel says.
“I forbid you to speak to my granddaughter, do you hear me? Where’s the manager?”
Miss Engstrom’s face does something strange, it sort of collapses, like an old jack-o’-lantern, but she shakes her head and everything goes back to normal. She smiles a fake smile at Rachel and walks away. The Grandma says, “She’s the one who hurt you, isn’t she? Where’s that social worker when you need her? Why didn’t you tell them about her, Rachel? Could you just tell me that?”
