by Nikki Loftin
“What are you doing, Mom?” I asked, soft so I wouldn’t startle her. I couldn’t see her face at first, so I didn’t know if she’d been crying.
“Just making sure her things are all still nice,” Mom said after a long enough pause that I wasn’t sure she’d heard me in the first place.
“Nobody’s been in here,” I said. “It’s all just like it should be.”
“Shut up,” Mom said, turning even further from me. “You shut up talking like that.”
“What?” Mom never said shut up. I wasn’t even allowed to say it in front of her, unless I wanted a slapped face. Mom thought it sounded tacky. What had I said that had set her off, made her forget her own rule? Then I realized. I’d told her everything was like it should be. “I didn’t mean it that way, Mom. I just meant . . . nobody’s touched anything.”
Mom held up a handful of ribbons. The light filtered in through the dusty window, and made the glittery pink ones shine. Pink had been Raelynn’s favorite, but she’d had hair ribbons in every color. Mom had French-braided them into her hair every day for school. I didn’t think it was so much that Mom cared what her daughter’s hair looked like. I think she’d done it just so she could feel it. Raelynn’s hair had been reddish-yellow and superfine, like a baby’s.
Mom set the ribbons back into the top drawer and slid it shut. “Go set the table, would you?” she said. “I need a moment.”
I should have gone. But I’d spent the whole day being put off talking about what I’d wanted to say, so I kept at it. “Mom,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “I need to talk to you about Gayle.”
Mom didn’t speak, so I went on. “I think she’s not being taken care of. I think . . . I think she’s getting beat on some. By Jeb, and maybe even Mrs. Cutlin. She has marks on her face.”
“She always has marks on her face,” Mom said, her voice far away and dreamy. She laughed. “Never can eat an ice cream without dripping on her chin and her shirt, too. I swear that girl is worth her weight in laundry powder.”
It was no use. She was talking about Raelynn again. I turned to go, but Mom’s voice stopped me.
“Little John, you take care of her now, you hear? Those boys at school give her any trouble, you pop ’em, right in the mouth. I won’t let your daddy punish you for fighting. You keep her safe.”
She still meant Raelynn. Mom and I both knew I hadn’t been able to keep my sister safe. Well, Mom knew it on her good days. But I was thinking about Gayle. I could take care of her. And I would.
“I will, Momma,” I promised as I left, still remembering Gayle and the red mark on her cheek. I had to figure out a way to get her safe. “I’ll take care of her.”
I went out to set the table, hoping Mom would come out of Raelynn’s room before Dad got back from the store. Hoping Dad wouldn’t spend all the week’s money on beer, too. Rent was due next Friday, and from what Mom said, that week’s paycheck, added to her savings, would barely cover it.
Of course, I should have learned not to hope by now. Dad came home with a twelve-pack, three steaks, and three bottles of Jack Daniels. I never knew steak could taste like ashes. But with Mom crying at the wasted money, and Dad ignoring us, hammering back the beers in front of the stupid TV that barely had any channels anyway, I knew it didn’t matter what we ate. It would all taste ruined, anyway.
Dad stayed drunk most of Saturday. Mom locked herself in her room, coming out every so often to scream at Dad about money. He yelled back. I knew everyone on our street could hear them; the windows were open to let in a breeze. I went to my room and stuck a chair in front of the door. Most of the day, I stayed on my bed reading one of my Audubon books out loud, trying to drown out the sounds of them crying and fighting, and looking for a picture of a nightingale. But I only had North American birds, and there weren’t any nightingales that I could tell.
At church on Sunday, I sat next to Mom. Dad never came with us anymore. He was still sleeping off the booze, anyway.
I heard a shushing noise behind me about halfway through the prayer of confession. Mom had her head tucked low, praying as hard as she could for something. Probably for Dad to sober up. I opened my eyes and peeked back. It was Isabelle, sneaking away from her family, not very quietly. She tiptoed into my pew and sat right next to me. I peeked behind me at Ernest; he rolled his eyes and shrugged. I smiled and shrugged back. Isabelle was like a force of nature; there was no trying to hold her back when she decided on something.
When we stood up for the next hymn, Isabelle yanked on my arm. I leaned down, pretending to sing. “What?”
“You missed the funeral,” she said, her eyes wide as ever.
“What funeral?” Then I remembered the bird. “For the chick?”
“Yes. It was beautiful. We dug the biggest hole you ever saw, with rocks on top so the cat wouldn’t be able to dig it back up, and we had fourteen hymns and a eulogy longer than Pastor’s sermons! And,” she paused, then continued more softly when my mom shot her a look, “we made a casserole for the bereaved.” She pulled the last word out long and low, like it was a magic spell.
“A casserole? For the birds?”
“Yes.” She giggled. “Out of night crawlers and dead crickets all mashed up! It was awesome.”
Next to us, my mom cleared her throat, so we both waited until Pastor Martin had gotten into his sermon—to one of the loud, shouting parts—to whisper again.
“Why didn’t you stay?” Isabelle said, so soft I almost couldn’t hear. “We missed you. Ernest misses you.”
“Couldn’t,” I answered. “I had to work.”
“But,” she said, then stopped. She swung her white patent leather shoe back and forth under the wooden pew for a few seconds, then went on. “But you’re just a kid. Why do you got to work?”
I knew the answer to that, even if I wasn’t going to say it out loud. I thought about it all through the sermon, though, even while I was playing hangman on the side of the bulletin with Isabelle.
I’d heard enough women gossiping in the fellowship hall after services, talking about my dad and the rotten oak he’d let stand. Raelynn’s oak. I knew the church people blamed Dad for Raelynn’s death.
I was glad they didn’t know it was really my fault. That’s why I worked so hard. I had to try and make up for what I’d done to the family, my family. Even though I never could fix it.
I peeked up at the big wooden cross at the front of the sanctuary. My dad had cut down the tree for the wood the year I was born. It was maple, with a burled pattern near the top that looked a little like the face of Jesus, if you stared hard enough.
I stared at it now, wondering for the millionth time why God would let Raelynn die.
And then, why a kid like Gayle had so many bad things in her life. It wasn’t right.
I didn’t know if I believed in prayer, but I squeezed my eyes shut and said one anyway, for Gayle, and that I would be able to find some way to get her away from the Cutlins, for a few hours at least. Which was going to be hard, considering I’d need some money to pay her with, and I had exactly twenty cents to my name.
I had just finished my prayer when the minister called the ushers up for the offering plates.
Mom always told me God answered prayer. I never thought He would be so quick about it, though. I mean, that had to be it, right? The offering plate passed in front of us, right at the very minute Isabelle’s mom had obviously had enough of her daughter’s loud whispers, and walked up the aisle to retrieve her. Isabelle jumped up so quick—as she should have, what with the look in her mom’s eyes promising all sorts of spankings if she didn’t hop to it—that she knocked against the plate, and a bunch of bills flew out. I picked all of them up, I thought, and passed the plate on.
But then, a few seconds later, I saw one that had flown under my feet. A ten-dollar bill. I looked around. Had no one else noticed? Mom was praying hard, her eyes sh
ut. The usher was waiting for Mrs. Herrington to tear a check out of her checkbook. The organist was playing almost as loud as my heart was beating. All I had to do was move my shoe over the bill and not look down, not draw any attention to it.
Guilt twisted at me. The money was for the needy, I knew. But Gayle was the neediest kid in town, right? So I said to heck with guilt, and slipped the bill in my pocket after the prayer of thanksgiving.
“Thanks,” I whispered to the cross. “I’ll use it right.”
That Monday, Dad was still so hungover when we got to the Emperor’s, he didn’t even complain when I ran off to get Gayle. Mrs. Cutlin answered the door, her hair hanging all down her face. She hadn’t bothered to put any clothes on, just some sort of thin nightgown that looked worn bare in spots. I looked away—I didn’t want to embarrass her by seeing something I shouldn’t.
Or embarrass myself, for that matter.
Mrs. Cutlin didn’t beat around the bush. “What are you doing back here?”
“I came for Gayle.”
“That ain’t her name, kid. Don’t encourage that. She’ll end up in the loony bin.” She opened the screen door and leaned out to spit, right next to the welcome mat. I stared at the gob of spit while she spoke.
“Suzie, you mean. Well, she didn’t come back with money last time. Probably never got paid to begin with. I’m not letting that rich man take advantage of her. Now you run off, leave her be.”
I fumbled for the ten-dollar bill in my jeans pocket. “He gave me this to give straight to you,” I explained. Her fingers snatched the bill out of my hand as soon as it had cleared the denim. “He said it was for the whole week.”
“Mr. King said that? How many snails does he got in those beds?” Mrs. Cutlin sounded suspicious. I didn’t blame her. I just shrugged.
“You know how it is with rich folks. One snail, and they think they’ve got a thousand. She’ll probably find three a day.” I hazarded a peek at her face. She wasn’t even looking at me; she was staring across the yard toward Mr. King’s, with an expression I’d seen on my dad’s face the whole week before. Disgust.
“You got that right, kid,” she said. “Spoiled is what they are. More money than sense, and not a lick of neighborly kindness.”
I nodded, wondering what Mrs. Cutlin thought she had done to deserve any “neighborly kindness.” In the distance, a chain saw started up. “Mrs. Cutlin?” I interrupted her black thoughts about Mr. King and his money. “Is Ga—um, Suzie ready?”
Mrs. Cutlin smiled, and I realized I preferred her frowning. Her smile looked nasty, showing her cracked front teeth. “She will be.” She shut the screen door in my face, and I waited for about three minutes. When Gayle came skipping out, Mrs. Cutlin wasn’t there. “Hey, Gayle,” I said, soft enough no one inside would hear the name. “Why in the world are you wearing that?”
She had on a long-sleeve, brown-and-pink-plaid flannel shirt with her shorts. I thought I remembered the shirt—Isabelle had worn it practically every other day a couple of years before. Probably it had been donated to the church clothes closet, and the pastor had brought it out with the other used clothes. She hugged my waist, then ran past. “Go on,” I said, “find a T-shirt, would ya!”
She just turned around, stuck her tongue out, and kept on going.
“You’re going to burn up in that,” I hollered at her back as she ran off ahead of me. “It’s going to be over ninety degrees today!”
We spent a couple of hours poking around the garden, which pretty much had no snails at all that we could see. Well, that I could see. Gayle mostly spent her time picking thin strands of grass and sliding fallen rose petals onto them like they were beads. She ended up with a whole bunch of bracelets that looked like those Hawaiian leis—completely covered with petals. She slid them up her arms and tried to get me to wear some, too, but they were too small.
“That’s not right,” she said, looking at the bracelet in her hand like it had done something wrong. “Tree needs flowers, too.” She raced off and made larger ones, making me put them on my arms and head—even around my neck—until I probably looked like something in a parade.
A twig cracked behind me. “You look stupid.” The voice didn’t scare me—I’d heard it too often. But my heartbeat sped up anyway—getting beat up all through elementary school by the kid with that voice obviously had left a mark, at least inside. “Playing baby games?”
“Hey, Jeb,” I said, and stood up. “Yeah, you know me. I’m just a little baby.” I crossed my arms, trying to pretend getting caught covered with flower petals wasn’t as embarrassing as it felt. I was glad school was still more than a month away; maybe he’d forget this by then, wouldn’t tell the whole world what I was wearing. “What are you doing over here?”
He stepped closer to me, crushing a pink flower under his foot. I thought he’d done it accidentally, but then he ground his heel into the mulch, like he was putting out a cigarette. “My mom asked me to talk to the Emperor about something.”
“About what?” Was it about Gayle? I didn’t want Mrs. Cutlin finding out that he hadn’t asked Gayle to do gardening after all—then she’d be stuck in that house all day.
Or worse, he’d offer the money to Mrs. Cutlin, who I knew could use it, and my plans for the five hundred dollars would be so much dust. Of course, Mr. King had said Mrs. Cutlin wasn’t “receptive” to discussing Gayle. Had something changed?
But that wasn’t it at all. Jeb made a motion toward the fence line with one hand. “She wanted to know if he’d take that tree out.”
I looked. He was pointing at Gayle’s sycamore. “That one?”
“Yeah, told him the roots were tearing up the fence.” He stopped, like he was thinking about something. But he was just working up a gob of spit. He let it go, and it landed on a nandina shrub. I wondered if his mom had taught him to do that, to spit right in the middle of talking to someone. “But really she just wants to put a garden in there.”
I thought about that. It was pretty much the only spot on the Cutlins’ property that would work for a garden—the rest was boggy. It wasn’t a bad idea—and the tree was already starting to go, what with the rotten branches and all. “Sure,” I said softly. I might have thought it was a good idea, but I didn’t want Gayle to hear that.
“So,” I said, “why don’t you go ask him?”
“I just did. He said he’d talked to your dad about it. And decided not to bother.” He gave me a look that said he obviously thought my dad wouldn’t know any better than a kindergartner about trees. I took a step toward him, so he would remember who was bigger now.
“My dad would be the one to ask. It’s his job,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest so the muscles I’d worked up hauling limbs would bulge up.
He watched them, and swallowed. Then he stepped back, shrugging. “Sure, whatever.” He made a fist down at one side of his pants. “I thought I heard Suzie out here. Hey, Suzie? Where you hiding?”
I turned around. Sure enough, Gayle was gone. Had she climbed back up in her tree?
“Maybe she needed to go to the restroom,” I said. “I’ll tell her you were looking for her.”
He laughed, and cracked his knuckles. “Don’t bother. I’ll see her at lunch.” He said it like it was a threat.
I thought about going after him, picking a fight just to make myself feel better, but I didn’t. He was right. She had to go home to his house, not me. And if I got Jeb any madder than he was, she’d suffer for it.
“Is he gone?” Gayle whispered from behind me. I whirled around. She’d been hiding under a shrub, so small and brown she’d disappeared against the mulch. So quiet I hadn’t even heard her breathe.
“Yeah, he’s gone.” I took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Want to go get some lunch?”
“Not at the Cutlins’,” she said, her eyes darting to the house beyond the fence.
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“Nah,” I said. “Forget what Jeb said. I meant, in the truck. I brought an extra sandwich.”
I hadn’t really. I always ate two. But she didn’t know that, and I could get more that night. “Ham and cheese,” I teased, when she complained and said she was going to stay and make more flower crowns. “And half a Snickers bar.”
She threw the flowers to the ground like so much confetti, and ran in front of me. “Race you!”
I let her win, of course. She claimed my whole Snickers bar as her prize. I didn’t fuss; she was so skinny it hurt to look at her. After she’d eaten my second sandwich, she sat on the tailgate and watched while I helped Dad, clearing cut pecan limbs.
An hour or so later, Dad and I were both soaked to the skin with sweat, and I was daydreaming about a world made out of ice and Popsicles. Dad threw me a water bottle from the cooler and said I could take a break while he drove into town to pick up some more sealant. As soon as the truck roared off, Gayle came running back—she’d lit off when Dad had started in again with the chain saw, complaining that she couldn’t watch her “friends” get hurt.
I sat down to rest, my back up against one of the pecans. The shade felt good, and even if it was still hot there, staying in one place was better than working in the sun. The hum of the cicadas almost made me want to take a nap.
Gayle, on the other hand, couldn’t stop moving. She flitted around from tree to tree, touching them all, singing the whole time. I closed my eyes, letting the sounds wash over me.
When I opened them, she was sitting next to me, her back leaned up against my side.
“Tree?” she said.
“Little John,” I reminded her, but the bees around us were buzzing the same sort of song she’d sung, a lazy, warm, sunny tune. I wasn’t really mad. “What?”
“You won’t let your dad cut down my tree, will you? I heard some of what Jeb said . . .” Her voice caught. “It’s the only place I have.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to lie to her. If the Emperor changed his mind about cutting it down, or if the Cutlins had the money to pay Dad, which I doubted, there probably wasn’t anything I could do to stop him. “What’s the big deal about that tree, anyway?”
