Every Bone a Prayer

by Ashley Blooms

  A mountain rose along one side, rocky and steep. A woman stood atop it, looking out at something that Misty couldn’t see. She wore a long dress and held one hand out in front of her where a flame burned in the center as though she conjured it herself. She held a staff in her other hand, and the look on her face wasn’t sad or afraid, but like she knew what was to come. It was like the story Penny and William had told in the barn about Caroline’s sister, who took to the woods searching for her after her death.

  But all Misty could see when she looked at the card was her mother searching for the green light in their house. Their mother, alone.

  “The Wanderer,” Sam said. “This can be a lonely card, but it’s not always bad. I like to think that it means you’re about to take a journey that will teach you a lot of things. But it’s something you have to do on your own.”

  “On my own,” Jamie repeated. “So it’s happening. She’s cheated. If it’s Conner Roark, I’ll never survive. The shame will kill me right here on the spot. Jerry, hold my hand.”

  Jerry rolled his eyes and took his brother’s hand.

  Sam flipped over the final card. A man stood with a rifle in his hands. The ground at his feet was strewn with four other rifles as though there had been a battle there just before the card was made. Two other men walked away in the distance. The ground was bare dirt, but there was water in the direction that the men were walking. The sky was light and a few clouds drifted through it. Sam said that it was a card of endings, of separation. The battle was over and Jamie might never find closure but he had to learn how to let go.

  Jamie fell back onto the carpet and covered his eyes with his hands. Penny crawled over to pat his shoulder. The longer Misty stared at the cards, the harder her heart beat. They all seemed so sad. So lonely. The woman falling from the tower and the woman searching through the dark and the man looking back on the people who were walking away from him. A card of endings. Of separation. Tears welled in her eyes and she brushed them away.

  “What’s a matter, Little Bit?” Sam said.

  Everyone turned their heads toward her, and Misty looked away. She didn’t want them to see her crying. She didn’t want to ruin their evening.

  Jamie leaned forward and touched Misty’s ankle with a single finger. “You ain’t got to cry for me. I know it’s sad but I’ll be all right.”

  “It’s not that,” Misty said. “It’s…Mom and Dad. They’re…separated.”

  “Well, who the hell told you that?” Sam said.

  Jerry winced. “I thought she knew. Penny knows! Why wouldn’t Misty know?”

  “Because she’s little, you ignorant swine.” Sam wrapped his arm around Misty’s shoulder.

  “Mom don’t even know that I know,” Penny said. “I heard Jem talking about it and made her tell me. They don’t want either of us to know.” She crawled over her cousins until she was sitting in front of Misty.

  “Wait a minute,” Jamie said, rising to his knees. “I just want to set the record straight. Somebody did something wrong, and…it wasn’t me?”

  Jerry punched his brother. “I’m sorry, Misty. I swear I thought you knew or I would’ve never said a thing.”

  “And it’s not that bad,” Sam said. “Mom and Dad have fought like this before. Mom went and spent a week at Jem’s once. Left us at home with Dad. We ate spaghetti out of a can every night and had fudge rounds for breakfast every morning. Come to think of it, that might have been the best week of my life.”

  Misty smiled a little and Sam squeezed her shoulders.

  “And Jem’s divorced,” Penny said. “So the worst thing that could happen is that Mom ends up like Jem.”

  “Lord help us,” Jerry said. “One Jem is about all this world can handle.”

  “Don’t cry,” Penny whispered, and it was like they were alone for a minute, their faces just a few inches apart. Misty hadn’t known the truth for two hours before she broke down in tears, but Penny had known for much longer and she’d never said a word. Penny wiped her hand across Misty’s cheek and then frowned.

  “I got your snot on me,” she said, and Misty laughed.

  “What can we do to make you feel better?” Jerry asked.

  “You should take advantage of this,” Jamie said. “We owe you now. Big time.”

  “Something sweet might help,” Misty said, and the boys jumped to their feet.

  They spent the next few hours finding things to cheer Misty up. Sam cast a spread for Penny, predicting great changes in her life and great battles to face. She got a faraway look on her face, the kind she’d gotten before she kissed the green glass man, so Misty asked if they could catch lightning bugs together like they did when they were small. Jem gave them old mason jars with holes cut in the lids. She sat on the porch and watched them as they ran back and forth, filling the jars with dozens of bugs. When they were done, they all retreated to the porch, setting the jars here and there, the bugs blinking out of rhythm. They passed the plate of brownies around until Misty’s belly ached with sweetness and she lay flat on her back on the wooden boards of the porch, watching the stars shimmer in the sky.

  When they released the lightning bugs at the end of the night, Jem told them to make a wish because the bugs would carry it away with them. Misty wished that it could always be like this. That her family could be together, be close, always. She didn’t think of the statue or of the garden or of William. They never even crossed her mind.

  Sixteen

  Jem’s bedroom walls were covered in framed photographs of Misty’s family. New pictures of the cousins were mixed in with pictures of Misty’s grandparents as she knew them—white-haired and wrinkled—but also pictures of them when they were younger. Misty’s mother stared down at her from a tarnished frame. She must have been about Misty’s age when it was taken. She sat on a fence, her body tilted back to look behind her as though someone had just called her name. Black-and-white photos mingled with colored photos, weddings and funerals, birthdays and candid moments—there was no discernible order. When Misty had asked why the photos were so mixed up, Jem told her it was because this was how she saw their family all the time. She saw her great-grandmother in Misty’s smile and their great-uncle Story in Jamie’s quick temper. So having the pictures this way felt more honest. More true.

  Misty lay in the very center of Jem’s bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. She and Penny had slept in the trundle bed beneath Jem’s bed the night before. Misty had been awake for at least an hour, but she hadn’t wanted to leave just yet, so she’d crawled into Jem’s bed where the sheets were soft and the pillows piled just right. Outside, the voices of her cousins and her aunts drifted by. Inside, she heard the whispers of Jem’s furniture, most of which were hand-me-downs from family or bought secondhand. The dresser’s voice creaked like a rusty hinge, and the headboard sighed and scolded the curtains, which were eaten up by moth holes on one side. The side tables shared a story back and forth about the day they came to Jem’s, but neither of them remembered it quite the same way.

  Misty’s stomach growled and she shuffled into the kitchen, leaving the warmth of Jem’s bed behind. Jerry sat at the kitchen table with a ruler in one hand and a biscuit in the other. When Misty asked what he was drawing, he just shrugged and kept frowning at his paper. Jamie ran in from the living room, slung open the fridge door, and drank milk straight from the gallon, his throat working hard.

  “Hey, Jamie, you want to go riding again?” Misty asked. “Mom usually don’t come ’til after ten.”

  “No time today, Little Bit,” Jamie said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I gotta get up with Charles Ray before he leaves.”

  “No time for a cup, either,” Jerry said without looking up. “You know, nobody wants to drink your germs.”

  Jamie snatched the biscuit from Jerry’s hand as he walked by. “You’d sure hate to know what I did to your toothb
rush then.”

  “Jackass,” Jerry muttered. And then, “Did you really do something to my toothbrush?”

  The screen door slamming was his only answer.

  “We could still go riding, Jerry,” Misty said. “Like last night.”

  “Sorry.” He got up from the table and shoved his papers under his arm. “I really have to finish this. Maybe next week, huh? When you come back?”

  Misty stood in the kitchen alone. Everyone seemed to have forgotten what had happened the night before, how sad she had been and how sorry they’d all felt for her. Sometimes it seemed that if Misty never cried, no one would ever notice her at all. That the only way her family saw her was when she was wounded, bleeding, sobbing. Only the sound of her hurt was loud enough to cut through the noise of their lives and make them turn toward her instead. But the minute the wound was stayed, they all turned away again.

  She missed the crawdads, suddenly, fiercely. She was closing her eyes to reach out for them when Penny shouted her name from the porch. Misty followed the sound outside where the wind chimes were clamoring and singing.

  “What?” she said.

  “Get your stuff together. Mom’s on her way.”

  Misty gathered her things from Jem’s room. She went back to the porch and sat in a rocking chair beside Penny. Gubby came up from the yard and leaned his big head against her bare feet until Misty scratched his ears.

  “What’s that?” Misty asked, pointing to a plastic bag by Penny’s feet.

  Penny pushed the bag out of sight. “Sam gave me his old casting cards. They’re not like the ones he used last night, but they’re good to practice on. He said he’d help me learn.”

  “Could you tell my future?”

  “Maybe,” Penny said. “I had a really nice time here. Didn’t you?”

  Misty nodded.

  “It’s so different here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I like it better than at home.”

  “What do you mean?” Misty asked.

  Penny shrugged. “I just mean that if something happens with Mom and Dad that we don’t just have to be with them.”

  “But I want to be with them.”

  Penny rolled her eyes. “You want to be chasing that stupid green light all over the walls? Or waiting for Dad to lose his temper? You want to stay there with that creepy statue of Earl’s and Earl lurking around?”

  “There are other things.”

  “Not enough of them,” Penny said. “I’m just tired of being stuck there all the time. It don’t have to be like that.”

  Misty’s heart pounded in her chest. Even though he’d been gone for a while, it felt like she’d just lost her father the night before, and now Penny was smiling and staring at Jem like she had a plan to fix everything. But there was nothing to fix their family except being together.

  “What’re you going to do?” Misty asked.

  Penny sighed. “Nothing right now. But I was thinking of asking Jem if we could stay here with her for a while if things don’t get better. Don’t mess it up for me, all right? She won’t take just me. It’ll have to be both of us or nothing.”

  Penny grabbed her backpack from the porch as their mother’s car lurched over the hill and rattled into the driveway. She threw her arms around Aunt Jem and then crawled into the back seat beside the only window that would roll up and down all the way. Misty waited until their mother honked the horn before she slid from her chair and followed.

  Seventeen

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

  The statue, the garden, William kissing her in the woods, Penny kissing the statue, their parents separated, Penny moving in with Jem.

  Misty was supposed to learn how to speak her family’s names. She was supposed to build a bridge between them all—a place where no one could lie, no one could hide. A place where they could be honest and safe. It would bring them all back together and they would be happy and no one would leave.

  But everything was all mixed up now. Everything had changed.

  Misty fought back tears as their mother pulled onto the highway. Penny had turned around in her seat to watch Jem’s house until it faded. She was still turned that way, her head tilted against the back of the seat.

  “Turn around, Penny Lee,” their mother said, and even she seemed distracted. Her hand kept fluttering from the steering wheel to her throat to the dial of the radio. She touched the drooping fabric on the ceiling of the car, and her fingers left a faint imprint in the foam underneath that slowly sank as the fabric fell away again.

  Penny flopped back into place and crossed her arms over her chest. “I miss it already,” she said so low that only Misty could hear.

  “You’re not really going to go, are you?” Misty asked.

  “Shh!” Penny hissed. She looked up at their mother but their mother wasn’t paying attention to them. Her eyes were locked on the road. She traced the buttons on the radio with her fingernail, back and forth, up and down.

  Misty swallowed. Her throat felt thick, like it was full of all the air she’d ever breathed, like she could suffocate on it. “Just tell me.”

  “You’re going to get us in trouble,” Penny said. She turned to the side so her back was facing Misty and pressed her face against the window.

  Misty tried to reach out to the garden, but without a name, it was impossible to find. She could barely feel the bottom where they lived—it was a faint trembling in her chest but she couldn’t hold on to it long enough. She couldn’t even concentrate on the crawdads, couldn’t remember all the pieces of their name. Everything felt so far away. Everything slipping between her fingers.

  And if Penny left, there was no way Misty could put them back together.

  There would be no coming back.

  “Mama,” Misty said.

  Their mother pulled her eyes from the road as though it took a great effort. She looked at Misty through the rearview mirror. “What, honey?”

  Misty felt the words sitting in her throat like briars. They stung her skin, they burrowed in, and she didn’t want to rip them out. She didn’t want to say them. But she didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t let Penny leave so she said, “I saw Penny kiss the green glass man.”

  There was a long beat of silence as Penny lifted her head from the window and looked at Misty. Their mother’s hand slipped, and the car veered onto the side of the road. Gravel pinged against the metal, and the car rumbled under Misty’s feet as though it were laughing at her.

  Their mother’s eyes were wide as she looked at Misty again. “What did you say?”

  “She snuck out of the house,” Misty said, and the words tumbled out as though once they’d been freed there was no way to stop them, and she told their mother everything she saw the night she followed Penny outside. The chair Penny had stood on and the way the light swam on her skin and how she’d pressed her lips to the green glass man’s face.

  Beside her, Penny grew very still and very pale.

  Misty expected her sister to scream or to lunge across the seat. She thought Penny would fight, would kick, would lie, would do anything to keep their mother from believing the truth.

  But tears welled up in her eyes instead until one ran down her cheek.

  Their mother turned around in her seat but she didn’t stop driving. The car drifted over the double yellow lines this time as a curve loomed ahead. “Penny Lee, is this true?”

  Penny refused to answer. She just kept staring at Misty.

  Their mother glanced back and forth between Penny and the road. “Answer me,” she said. She reached back and took hold of Penny’s knee and shook her once, but Penny didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  Misty fell against the door as their mother jerked the car into their holler. She’d never driven this fast, and plumes of golden dust rose behind them like storm clouds. Pen
ny kept staring at Misty all the while, and Misty wished that she would do something, anything.

  “I’m sorry,” Misty whispered.

  And there was something in the words that seemed to break Penny loose in a way that nothing else had. Her face tightened, contorted, and she lunged at Misty, smacking at her face and chest. Penny’s fingers tangled in Misty’s hair and Misty pushed back, trying to grab hold of her sister’s hands. Penny shouted as she swung at Misty, but the words were garbled—I hate you and I hate this place, I hate it, I hate it. The car jerked to the side and slung Penny against the car door, breaking the girls apart.

  “I hate you!” Penny shouted again, and her anger dissolved into tears.

  Behind her, in the window, the garden flashed by in a blur of green. The car skidded to a halt on the grass and more dust flew into the air. Something gold glinted in the garden, something new.

  A second statue had grown beside the green glass man.

  Misty could only make out a long, slender shape before their mother unbuckled her seat belt and glared back at them. “Into the house. Now.”

  Misty opened her door but Penny kicked at her, sending her stumbling to the ground, and Misty whirled back at her. “You shouldn’t have done it!”

  “You shouldn’t have told! You’re just as bad as I am. She’s been playing spin the bottle in the barn with William!”

  “So have you!”

  “She kissed him!” Penny shouted.

  Their mother’s door slammed, and then Penny’s door was yanked from behind her. She almost fell backward onto the grass.

  “You can’t just whip me,” Penny said. “It’s not fair. She’s done the same as I have!”

  “That is enough.” Their mother reached over Penny and unbuckled her belt and pulled her from the car.

  The dust settled enough for Misty to finally see that they were not alone outside. Earl stood by the garden, and the preacher from their church stood beside him. Shannon was on her porch and she reached out her hand for William, who had been standing on the steps. He put his hand in hers, and she led him quickly back inside their trailer.