Precious

by Sandra Novack

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Three

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part Four

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgments

  Reader’s Guide

  Excerpt from Everyone but You

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Carole

  Although a few events in Precious are based very loosely on incidents from my personal life, this story is, and always has been, a work of fiction. Events have been altered and radically changed to fit within the context of the story, and so, in their finality, bear no resemblance to truth.

  Sissy is too old to be telling anyone she dreams of Gypsies. She is too old to speak of women who crawl through the window to snatch her from bed, too old to be frightened by their long faces, their pellucid eyes and wrinkled, drawn skin. Baba, they call. Little doll. Come with us, Baba, they insist. The Gypsies sing: Child, you are ours. They linger at the brink of her waking, at the border of her dreams. Sissy is too old to confess that she wakes with a sharp start still, or that when she awakens, she calls instinctively for Eva, and then waits and waits yet a moment more before turning on the light atop her bedside table. Hunched down in the sheets, she imagines the mist that hangs outside her window, phantom shapes that emerge from darkness. Her mind races over the always-present dream.

  In the moment Sissy awakens, there are no clutching fingers but the disconsolate hurtling of a black bird against the window, the sound of beak hitting glass and then a flutter of wings. Sissy knows this is wrong, that birds and Gypsies have no place together. But, between her dreams and her waking, they are still there—bound. Then, suddenly, nothing: magically, both bird and Gypsies vanish.

  Sissy is nine—an unlucky number—and she is too old for such nonsense. She knocks five times, a bumpity-bump-bump rhythm, a language she and her sister, Eva, share through the walls at night.

  Where are you? the knocks urge. Can you come here?

  It happens in a small town in Pennsylvania, one known for the predictability of its days, in a neighborhood with faint yellow light and tree-lined streets curved like crescent moons. Here the houses are spotted with roses around the mailboxes and peopled with working families who tend to crabgrass on weekends and gather afterward on front lawns for idle talk and an occasional cookout of burgers and franks, Miller and Bud. This happens in a time when peeling burns, shiny knees and flip-flops are preferred to practical shoes and sunscreen, and children practice Travolta Grease moves in the driveway—a little hip, a little lip. In the evening hours, these same children roam the streets with flashlights in hand, playing lightning tag and hide-and-seek in the neighbors’ hedges. Years from now, the remnants of their days will still speak through the markings on tree trunks and pledges of love and forever. It happens on a Tuesday in late June, during a summer of abysmal heat, a summer when, after a thirteen-year silence, cicadas crawl out of the ground and set about their buzzing, shrill hums and calls from trees. You can hear them everywhere you go, drowning out the robins’ chatter. Here, in this town, aboveground pools litter backyards. Flowers scent the air.

  The first girl who goes missing: Vicki Anderson, known to Sissy Kisch but hated after the horrible incident involving Precious. Vicki: ten years old with braces and a clever, round face, a girl with a habit of twisting a curl of cropped hair around her index finger. Last seen wearing mustard-colored slacks and a white shirt embroidered with bees.

  She vanishes only four blocks from Ellis Avenue, where her house is the third on the left, a yellow house with a picket fence lining the yard. On the day of her disappearance, Vicki is just leaving the park down the street from her house. She has just freed her bicycle from the bike rack, kicked back the stand, and mounted the Desert Rose for home.

  Vicki: thin-boned, boyishly tall, with a sloped nose like her mother, Ginny’s. It is Ginny who, suddenly concerned with the time and a cooling dinner, drives her paneled station wagon down the skinny road that leads to the park. In an hour or so the sun will turn red and set. Neighbors will draw the curtains. Porch lights will burn and fireflies luminesce, and crickets will sing. The cicadas will cease their calls, their tymbals silenced. Now the sky appears not lustrous but a dull blue, throwing off a shade of lavender, a trace of pink.

  The park is much like any park you might find in a small town: cracked, dusty asphalt; a basketball court, its metal fence curling back like a question mark; the tennis nets grown haggard from use and sagging in the middle. Swings line the playground, the ground packed solid beneath them. To the right, a baseball field. When the boys and girls slide into home, clay and dust float through the air, and their screams and laughter carry to the bleachers. Behind the field, the dark shapes of trees rise up— cypresses, maples, birches, pine—tearing through the sky. Quick cur-rented, Monocacy Creek cuts through the woods and winds through town, the steep banks ridden with ferns and cattails and limestone.

  Ginny looks around. “Vicki!” she calls. The smell of tar drifts up to her, the paved surface below still holding the day’s heat. As she walks, she feels the tackiness of her sandals against the ground. She finds Vicki’s Desert Rose lying on the asphalt, the wheels stopped, the wicker basket adorned with plastic flowers still holding the scraps of the day’s journey. Indecipherable to Ginny: a twig shaped like a slingshot; a rock with a depression in the center, as if a finger worried it there.

  Alarm shoots through Ginny as she indulges, first, the worst of all possibilities. She calls out again and tries to calm herself with thoughts of her foolish child, her unpredictable, headstrong child. Vicki is the type of child, Ginny tells herself, who instead of coming home might walk off with another girl to go to another house, or go in search of more treasures: a penny with a worn patina left lying on the pavement, an arrowhead nestled in the dirt, a sprig of laurel. This is the child who, after all, jumped from a tree branch ten feet high and sprained an ankle, the child who, on a dare, pushed her own fist through a window and then tried to hide the jagged lashes on her knuckles and wrist. “Daredevil stitches,” Ginny remembers explaining to the doctor, a young man with reddish hair and a careful walk. His stare pierced through her, as did his questions. He noted her responses, dressed the wounds. “Be careful,” he advised, looking more so at Ginny than her daughter. How angry Ginny was. She didn’t speak to Vicki for the rest of the day and sent her to bed early, without television. Now she glances toward the long line of swings and tells herself that Vicki is the type of child who might leave her bike without concern. She’s the type to get a good yelling at for worrying a mother so. Thirty years ago (when such a thing was acceptable) Vicki would have gotten a good thrashing for this, which is just what Ginny’s own mother would have done to her.

  “Vicki!” she yells, irritated that her daughter might play a foolish game at her expense. A breeze moves the swings and sets the chains squeaking. She calls louder as she walks by the slides and monkey bars. She jogs toward the tennis courts. There she sees the Kearnses’ sons, from down the street. Tall and muscular, courteous and smart, these high school boys make honor roll. They make prepubescent girls blush. They hire themselves out for yard work and give bored wives a quiet pleasure, a secret thrill and recollection of their own lost youth.

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nbsp; The boys swing their rackets back and forth, their faces stern with effort. The ball lets out a sharp pucker. A solid stroke from Brian, the older boy. Agile, smooth movement from Josh, his normally feathered hair plastered against his face and sweatband. Vicki often fawns over Josh and lingers around the courts, though this is something Ginny has not learned from her daughter’s lips but from her diary, the countless entries strewn with chain-linked hearts. Ginny can pick the lock with a bobby pin.

  She calls to them, her voice shaky. Sunlight hits her chestnut hair, highlighted with streaks of blond. “Boys,” she says. “Boys, have you seen Vicki? Has she been here with you?”

  When Josh glances over, he misses the ball and curses under his breath. He adjusts his sweatband, positions it higher on his forehead. Mrs. Anderson lives a few blocks away from his house; she once paid him twenty dollars to paint her fence, a task that took two days and left a sunburn on his legs and arms. Her daughter leaned against the porch rail, her hands propped against her chin. “You’re gorgeous,” she said. Then, embarrassed, she laughed and ran into the house. He didn’t see her the rest of the time he was there, nor has he seen her today.

  “Well?” Ginny asks again. Her face is pinched and sharp, etched with worry. She remains, to all who see her, a lonely but attractive woman, someone once pretty in those years before her husband’s death, in that time before gin in the afternoon and cigarettes that have dulled her skin. She wears black shorts and sandals, a red tank top with loopy ties at the shoulders that show off her arms.

  Josh ambles over to the side of the court, lifts his thermos, and takes a long drink of Gatorade before approaching her. When he does, he notices her glassy, bloodshot eyes, the thin lines that spread like small fingers around her mouth, the faint sourness on her breath. He laces his fingers through the fence, determined to look Mrs. Anderson in the eye and not be ashamed for her.

  “It’s time for dinner,” Ginny explains carefully. She leans forward, as if she is going to whisper a secret, but Josh rights himself. Gradually, so she won’t notice, he inches back. She tries to stay calm but is aware of a frantic quality in her speech, a slur, a certain pointedness that cuts forth, accusing, though she knows these boys would do her daughter no harm.

  Josh runs a hand through his hair. “Haven’t seen her all day.” He squints from the sun. He adds, “Mrs. Anderson, are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay,” she says. “It’s just that she’s late, and you know Vicki. My God, that girl, if you don’t have an eye on her, she just does what she wants, all the time.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, and he is. “But I haven’t seen her.”

  She lets Josh’s statement register. Does this mean the boys have been here all day and Vicki hasn’t walked by the tennis court? Or that she might have walked by, and the boys, engrossed in their game, didn’t notice? But Vicki, seeing Josh, would have surely stopped and lingered; she surely would have sought this boy out. Still, both boys have been here all day and have not seen Vicki. And yet, the Desert Rose lies on its side, the red tassels fanned out against the ground.

  Her thoughts run as dry as the baked pavement. Brian looks at her strangely, and she feels suddenly ashamed by her inattentiveness. Ginny’s gaze moves beyond him, beyond the tennis court to the woods, to the rows of cypress and Scotch pine, slippery elm and black oak. “Thanks,” she says. She walks and then sprints across the scorched grass, the sharp blades scratching against her sandals. The air presses down on her skin, thick like metal. Beads of sweat form on the nape of her neck and brow. When she reaches the ridgeline, blackbirds scatter from the canopy of branches, and, panting, Ginny peers into the dense underlay where mountain laurel grows. She smells earth and pine. She bends for a moment. She places her hands on her knees.

  Ginny threads through the maze of trees. At the place where the cypresses give way to oaks, at the place of the brambly bushes and the swimming hole that children have dammed over the past decade, she stops. There the current swirls, and dense trees rise up on the other side of the creek, the brush and ferns more difficult to navigate. She scans the woods. There on the banks, wet leaves smell of rot and mud. The sound of trickling water floods her ears, washing over everything. The cicadas hum—shrill, resolute.

  She did not want this to happen. She did not want to come out this evening. She did not want to leave her home already snookered, nor did she wish to face the boys and see in them that dread that made her ashamed.

  What those boys must think, what they must tell their mother. They must have so many stories, so many lies, passed from house to house.

  She did not want to be out searching for Vicki. She wanted nothing more than to feed her daughter dinner and feign interest as Vicki showed her the treasures of the day: the rock, the twig, the flowers already wilting from the heat. “Guess, Mom,” Vicki might say, turning her head, pushing a stray curl behind her ear. “Guess what each means.”

  “I don’t know,” Ginny might respond. “You tell me.”

  And Vicki would smile wryly, keeping from her mother the significance she placed on each, turning over each item in her hands as if they held magic. Ginny might have felt good then as she settled back and flicked on the news, the voice of the anchorman spilling out into the room: the threat of layoffs at the steel plant, the union workers picketing; a lawsuit filed against the company for pollution; the plumes of smoke rising above the south side. The world would all be so distant then, with her daughter sitting on the floor, Indian-style, happy enough despite everything. She did not want any problems at home, and now even her stomach betrays her. The world spins. Light-headed and dizzy Ginny feels the weight in her legs like stones. She sinks to earth, falling upon it on bended knees. She grips at leaves that break apart in her fingers. The light filters through the branches overhead and then down through the water. The algae-covered rocks catch a floating leaf. A dragonfly touches down on half-submerged debris. It flutters to the creek’s edge, a buzz of translucent wings.

  Victoria, her girl with a sweet face and a grizzly bear’s courageous heart, is gone.

  By the end of the evening, Ginny will call her neighbors: Milly Morris, Edna Stone, Matt Brandt, Ellie Green, and Jenny Schultz, despite the rumors she knows this will instigate. “Have you seen Vicki?” she will ask dumbly. “Did she stop by your house, any chance? No, I don’t know where she is; that’s why I’m calling.” Within days, police cars will frequent her driveway. A sturdy-looking officer with a crew cut and glasses that pinch his temples will file the official report. When they see flashing lights, neighbors will emerge from their homes to check on mail that has already been retrieved. They will linger on their sidewalks. Concerned, Frank Kisch will call late at night, after work. “Are you okay, Ginny?” he’ll ask. “My God,” he’ll say, “is there anything I can do for you, anything at all?” Police will search the park and will find a lone clog in the dirt, a piece of rope, a strap that might belong to the Desert Rose. They will scour the woods, search the old stone house at the corner of the park property, the one built during the Revolutionary War. Eventually neighbors will organize a community search, Matt Brandt and Edward Morris deciding to take matters into their own hands. The children will mimic with their own search, a game, flashlights in the bushes, tales of woe. “Vicki,” they’ll say in a whisper, “are you there? We’re coming for you!” Canines will track scents. There will be rumors of a bark, an alarm call, a half-mile trek through the woods, the dogs alert to a smell, and then—suddenly—nothing.

  This will mark the first disappearance, in a town in Pennsylvania where nothing ever really happens. This will mark the beginning of fear.

  But now, with the Desert Rose piled in the back of her station wagon, Ginny speeds along her street.

  The Morrises, who own a purple house—”that eyesore,” people say behind their backs—are sitting on their front porch tonight. Milly notes Ginny’s speed and glances over at her husband in a knowing way. She leans forward, causing two rolls of flesh t
o appear in her midriff. A mass of short gray curls hugs her broad face. She tells Edward, “That woman could kill someone, driving like that.”

  “We’ve no need for gossip, Missus.” Edward feels as easy and calm as the night itself and loves the stillness of evening, the stars that form a wide canopy above them—Orion, lazy on its daggered side. “Does the gossip really matter?”

  “Oh, I’ll say it does.” But even so, Milly laughs a little foolishly.

  They look out to the street. For the first time in the town’s nearly two-hundred-year history local officials have issued water restrictions; hoses lie coiled like green snakes against the houses, limp and useless. The lawns have turned gold and then brown. No one is to wash their car, but Edward snuck out in the middle of the night, bucket and sponge in hand, laughing like a teenager. Even in the near dark, his Ford gleams, the gray smokiness catching the moonlight. He stands up and checks on the potted marigolds that he bought as a gift for Milly “Dry,” he says, and heads into the house.

  She calls in, “I’m just saying that maybe that woman should lay off the liquor.”

  “As if the poor woman hasn’t been through enough,” he calls back.

  Milly shakes her head. “I’m just saying that if she doesn’t watch it, she’ll have a death on her hands.”

  Three days after the disappearance of Vicki Anderson, and the June heat settles over everything—the tree in the Kisches’ backyard, the stifled song of the ice-cream truck as it passes down the street, cranking out a jaunty melody. Children flock around, money in their fists; they purchase Creamsicles and Nutty Buddies that melt as soon as the paper is torn off. They laugh and drop sticky napkins onto the sidewalk, pitch some into a nearby yard. The heat resonates and throbs, creating a yellow glare, a pulsating tenor.

  Three days, and life pushes on, despite. In the afternoon, Eva and Sissy are left alone while Frank Kisch goes off to work the three-to-eleven shift, first gathering his lunch pail and then making his way out the back door. Today he tells Eva to make sure the dishes are washed and dried and put away. He tells her to pick up her clothes and to vacuum the rug. Standing in the kitchen, he delivers these instructions in a voice that is perhaps sterner than he intends. At the doorway, Eva lingers, her dark hair falling over her shoulders. She’s seventeen and almost always ignores him, and there is, between them, a tension he cannot bridge or fix. Frank regards her and thinks again how Eva is like her mother, right down to her temperament, her slight frame and hair. And that look she gives him now—her expression crestfallen, a crease forming between her eyes—is so much like Natalia’s. He doesn’t know when Eva managed to grow up, when his once ungainly child stretched in the arms and legs.