Misty nodded. Penny walked across the yard without asking her to follow. When she opened the front door, noise rushed out—a dozen voices chattering, a pan rattling on the stove, the roar of the television. It fell quiet again as the door clicked shut.
A crawdad chimney swayed by Misty’s foot. A little piece of the base had been kicked away so the top wobbled in the breeze. She knelt beside it. She’d spoken to the crawdads for as long as she could remember, had felt the weight of their shells on her back, the rush of the water inside her skin. She’d known them digging and climbing, buried and lost, known them gone. Now she needed them to know her again.
Misty closed her eyes. She thought of her mother handing her a cookie that was half-light and half-dark, her mother dancing in the bottom, her feet pounding against the grass, her eyes cinched tight; a sea of green strings taped to the ceiling and the walls, swaying in the breeze; Penny’s hand gripping the sheet in their bedroom, about to pull it away; birds screaming in the dark; a crawdad skittering over her thighs, resting on her belly; Jem’s face bent down toward the garden, a hoe in her hands; corn bread crumbling in her mouth, soaked in sweet milk; a ring of coal dust around her father’s neck after work; William’s face running behind her through the trees, chasing her into the open; a burrow leading deep, deep underground; white roots in dark soil; casting cards laid out from knee to knee, her future spread before her; the itchy feeling of her clothes too tight against her skin; the clink of her bones against the pavement; the barn doors looming ahead of her; Jerry’s face knit tight in concentration as he drew a picture of Misty on her palm, and Jamie dotting her freckles, and Sam giving her a field of flowers, and Penny adding the crawdad, all of them adding the things that she loved best, that they loved best about her; the whisper of skin sliding free of bone; the whisper of skin sliding back into place.
The air grew warmer around her and the sky filled with the sound of birds calling. When Misty opened her eyes, the bottom was full. Redbirds and bluebirds and starlings and crows perched along the roofs of the trailers and the barn, crowded the branches of the trees, their feathers ruffling and settling, all of them drawn close to her.
She’d been so afraid that what happened in the barn would be there in her name and she’d have to watch it over and over for the rest of her days. That maybe honesty meant keeping nothing for yourself and she’d have to give all her secrets away in order to speak her name.
And it was there, in its way. The barn. William’s face.
But the world didn’t need to know what happened to Misty in order for her to be honest. She just had to know for herself, to be okay with herself. It was still her choice who she told and who she didn’t.
Beneath her, the crawdads called back.
The ones who were closest to the surface pushed through the earth and into the yard, and the ones furthest away turned their weary claws toward the surface and began their long walk back. Some of them had miles to crawl, and for days crawdads would appear in the yard, surfacing from small holes and trudging, slowly, toward the creek.
Misty flexed her fingers and her skin stayed in place, her body attached to her at least for the moment. She led the crawdads back to the creek, taking careful steps as a long line formed behind her, dozens and dozens of crawdads with their dark shells glinting in the sun. Their voices like leaves skittering in her head, all of them happy, so happy, to hear her again. The crawdads crawled over her bare feet as she walked, the tap of their claws tickling her skin as she led them back to the water.
Shift / Shed / Grow / Shift / Shed / Grow
Misty will forget.
Already she is forgetting as she leads the crawdads back to the creek, her chest humming with their names.
Two weeks after her mother wakes up, Misty’s mother will file for divorce, and she and Penny and their mother will move into their grandmother’s old house beside Jem and Dolly. Their cousins will come over for breakfast on Saturday mornings. Jem will plant wildflowers in their yard that bloom so full and so fast that there’ll be no place to step without touching them, and Misty will lie on her back and roll through them with Penny at her side.
Earl will move. No one will know where or why, and no one will ask many questions. The trailers remain where they always were, their roofs slowly falling in, the windows cracking. They will be home to birds and mice instead of people.
With Jem’s help, Misty will buy a memorial for Caroline—a slick gray stone with her name in bold letters and a dogwood tree etched beneath. They will set it there in the garden, which will grow a little more green, a little more full every year. Jem will talk about Caroline more often, and so will Dolly, and so will Misty’s mother, and Caroline’s stone will become a place for women to lay their burdens down. They will visit her in the dark of night before they move or start a new job or end a marriage. They will press their hands against the leaves of her tree and they will know, somehow, that things will be okay.
William’s face will fade.
Misty will forget the exact color of his hair and the gap between his teeth. By some other kind of magic, some kindness of chemicals in her brain, she will forget the way that Shannon screamed when she came home to an empty trailer. She will forget the look on her face, like an old house that had sunk into itself, and the way Shannon clawed at the garden like she had known that what was left of William was there, somewhere, beneath the earth. She’ll forget the way Shannon’s body slumped to the side when she found her golden earring buried in the dirt.
She’ll forget the barn and the weight of William’s hand on her hip and the shape of the toy car in her hand.
She’ll dream about the crawdads now and then and spend most of her summers down by the creek at Jem’s house with a vague feeling in the back of her mind like she knew the taste of that water, knew every crook and bend to follow, like she could never get lost as long as she was near it.
Every year she’ll speak less and less to the world around her, finding it harder and harder to remember the names she’d learned. She’ll tell herself it was all a dream, a fairy tale she’d told herself to make up for how lonely she had been as a kid.
Then, when she’s seventeen, the boy she likes will lean over the armrest of his car just a little too fast and kiss her just a little too hard. Misty’s panic will be fierce and immediate.
Her body will remember a barn.
Her body will remember a boy.
Her body will remember, this time, to run.
She’ll push the boy away until the back of his head thumps against the window. Her throat will feel like the size of a straw, and she won’t recognize the sound of her own breathing. She’ll stumble outside to get some air, just a little more air, and when her palm touches the passenger door, the car will stutter to a start, the engine revving once before it dies. The boy will leave her there, alone in the parking lot of a movie theater. She’ll watch the back of his blond head until he disappears around a curve.
Misty will sit there for an hour with the soft glow of neon lights flickering over her shoulders and the taste of cold earth in her mouth. She’ll wait for Penny to pick her up, and while she waits, she’ll slide a ring on and off her finger and feel the bone slide beneath it, feel a cold bloom in her skin, a numbness. She’ll think of the barn and of William, of cold creek water and green strings and the particular music of her bones. She’ll wonder, for the first time in years, whatever happened to Earl.
The truth will come back to her that night and never fully leave again, but it will be a muddied truth, a blurred and bending truth that she more feels than remembers every time she shuts her eyes.
The summer and William and the barn and the names.
She’ll wish for those years of forgetting, wish for a time when she didn’t remember her body like this. But the memories will keep surfacing in dreams and in shudders. Every touch will be his touch again, her body remembering over and over,
stuck in a loop that she’ll have to find a way out of again; even after all of the work she did as a girl.
She will return to the bottom, to the creek. She will sit by Caroline’s stone, rooting out the weeds, clearing off the space so the inscription of Caroline’s name shines beneath the sunlight. The trailers are still there, but they are rusted, sunken, empty. The barn is falling to pieces, its roof half-gone, its door unhinged. Rats nest in its corners, snakes lurk in its shadows.
Sometimes Penny will come, too.
And when Misty asks her what she remembers about that summer, Penny will shake her head, her hair cut short now, her hips wide like their mother’s. She’ll say, “I remember being angry all the time. And you cried all the time.”
“I did not.”
“Did so. You were always getting me in trouble.”
“Until you hung that sheet up in our room.”
“What? Oh yeah. I forgot all about that. God, I was terrible. That whole summer was terrible. And then I felt even worse when you told me, you know. What happened in the barn.”
And Penny will wait until Misty stops crying before she holds out her arms and Misty will crawl into her sister’s lap and they will sit that way until nightfall, until Penny whispers, “You were so strong. I never saw it when we were kids, but you were, the whole time. You are.”
And Misty will remember the sheet, her sister’s bloody ankles, the casting cards laid out in a half circle in front of her, telling her future.
Sometimes her mother will come.
She will hold Misty’s hand in her own hand, which is older and wrinkled and soft. She will take a long breath and say, “I thought it was a sign from God. That green light. I thought if I could just keep it out, if I could just find it, then nothing bad would happen to you girls.”
“But it did,” Misty will say.
And her mother will hang her head. “You were so quiet after. Even when we moved. I thought maybe you’d never be able to forgive me for not being there. You even stopped playing with the crawdads.”
“The crawdads?”
“Don’t you remember? They used to crawl all over you like you was their mama or something. You loved them. They loved you.”
And Misty will remember the feeling of the crawdad’s feet across her own as she led them back to the water, and the burrows in the yard, the way Earl’s trailer canted to the side, the green light deep underground.
Sometimes Jem and Dolly will come.
They will sit on either side of Misty like two great bookends there to hold her together. They will straighten out their long denim skirts and sigh when Misty asks what they remember.
“I remember that eggplant,” Jem will say. “Thirty-five pounds the day that my former sister over there cut it from the vine.”
“It was sucking the life out of my tomatoes. Something had to be done.”
“There’ll come a day when I get to cut a cord on you, and we’ll see how kind I am.”
Misty will laugh, and then laugh harder. Laugh until something shakes loose inside her and tears well in her eyes. Dolly will get a frantic look on her face, but Jem will grow calmer.
“I remember how little you was,” Jem will say. “I remember how hurt you looked all the time, and me wishing I could do something about it.”
“And looking for you in the woods. I was so scared. I never knew how much room you took up in my heart until I couldn’t find you. Do you remember? She was gone, and then she was just back, and everything was different. You looked different.”
Jem will start to cry and so will Dolly and so will they all until it passes and they load into Jem’s truck and then into her house. They will eat fried chicken until their stomachs hurt and sit on the porch listening to Jem’s stories until her voice grows hoarse.
And Misty will remember William standing in the woods, Penny pushing him to the ground, the white glow of her bones in the dark, her body lying in a shallow grave that she dug for herself, and the feeling of her skin slipping over her bones.
She will call Sam, whose voice is deeper now, but his laugh will have the same staccato rhythm. He’ll promise that he’ll visit soon, and he’ll tell Misty that he remembers the night they caught lightning bugs in the yard, how it was the last time he could remember playing together. He has one tattooed on his arm, always glowing. “It reminds me that there are good parts of home, too. Things to come back for.”
When Misty visits Jerry and Jamie’s apartment, Jamie will answer the door with a textbook in his hand and coal dust around his neck. He’ll lead Misty to the kitchen table where Jerry is threatening his life if he doesn’t sit down and study for his finals like he’d promised. Jerry’s art sits in frames all around the walls, pictures of Cora Beth as a tree, of his mother surrounded by the flowers she grows, of Jamie leaning out an open window, laughing, and of Misty, too, standing side by side with Penny. They will all be there in Jerry’s careful lines.
“I remember drawing on your hand that night,” Jerry will say when Misty asks about that summer. “Remember? We was all crowded in the back room there. The next morning my legs was covered with bug bites.”
“Oh yeah,” Jamie says. “You looked like a plague victim. That’s the night Misty went missing. I thought Mom was going to tear the world apart to find you.”
“The drawing helped,” Misty will say, and she will smile when she says goodbye to them and they each kiss the same spot on her forehead.
And she will remember the image of herself inked on her palm. She will remember Caroline, an ax raised in the air, the way the ground swallowed her whole. Lying on the dark ground with her arms wrapped around herself.
But even with all that she will remember, there will be other things, so many things, that she forgets. Misty will struggle with knowing that something terrible happened to her, to feel the phantom weight of a hand on her hip, but not to know for sure what it was. She will hate piecing herself together through other people’s memories, but she will keep trying, keep asking, keep telling the truth again and again until it’s there.
Her name.
Longer now, and more twisting now, and heavier than it has ever been.
But the world will be there, too, crowding at her feet, the birds circling above her, the bugs wrestling free of the ground, the trees stretching their roots, the crawdads hurrying from the water, because they missed her, this girl. Because they remember her, too.
Reading Group Guide
1. Misty’s idea of inner names includes memories and sounds, things remembered and lost. What does that mean to you? Can you think of anything that would be a part of your name?
2. Compare Misty’s and William’s home lives. How are they each coping with the challenges of their families? Do they understand each other?
3. Misty thinks her family only notices her when she’s sad or hurt. Have you ever felt like that? What did you do?
4. Why do you think Misty decides to tell her mother about Penny kissing the green glass man? Was there another choice she could have made?
5. Do you think that corporal punishment is ever justified for children? Besides the physical pain, what does Misty notice and remember about being whipped with the switch?
6. How does the environment interact with Misty’s emotions? Would that relationship still exist without her empathy? How might it be different?
7. Throughout the book, Misty and Penny reach out to each other but always seem to miss. What prevents them from supporting or helping one another?
8. Misty encounters several dangers when she takes off her skin. What are they, and how does she eventually overcome them?
9. Caroline explains that she thought she could punish Earl and move on, but she might only get one of those things. What kind of justice do you think she gets in the end? Is it what she deserved?
A Conversation with the Author
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sp; How did your experiences as a Kentuckian shape the setting of the book? What do you think people overlook when they think about Appalachia?
I think Appalachia has often been a useful tool and talking point for those in power, which is something Elizabeth Catte talks about far more eloquently than I can in her book What You’re Getting Wrong about Appalachia. It’s a book I recommend every time someone asks me a question like this. And I think Appalachia still exists as a monolith to many people, which often means they overlook things like the sheer existence of and therefore the contributions of black people and other people of color in Appalachia (take the Affrilachian poets, for example), or the long history of social, economic, and labor activism, or rural queerness, or the fact that Appalachia is an incredibly large place that includes cities and various religions and far more complexity and nuance than it’s often depicted with (check out Roger May’s photography series Looking at Appalachia to get an idea of the scope of the region). I know all these things to be true about my home. And when I write about it, I try to hold as much as I can in my work, and to write with honesty and conviction and with magic, too.
What draws you to fantastical storytelling? How do you think elements like Misty’s empathic abilities and the statues in the garden contribute to the story you’re telling overall?
Part of this answer is simple: I’ve always been drawn toward the fantastical and frightening. Even from the early stages of writing this book, I knew that Every Bone a Prayer would have a kind of magic system and that this system would be fundamental to the way the world worked. That’s just part of who I am as a writer. But the other part of this answer is more complicated. Like a lot of my work, this book deals with trauma and its impact on people and families and its impact on how our identity gets made and remade. I’m influenced by my own experiences as a survivor, as someone who grew up in a violent home, as someone with PTSD. Trauma, and our responses to it, can be incredibly surreal. Flashbacks can thrust you back in time. Dissociation can numb your body, fog your thinking, make it feel as though you’re watching your life like a movie on a screen. Memory loss is common, which means whole parts of your life can be lost. So when I try to capture or re-create the experience of trauma on the page, the tools of the fantastical, the strange, the surreal, become some of my best options. Those tools help me get closer to the lived, embodied experience of trauma, the way that it feels to be going through such big, frightening, often sudden disruptions. So there’s this strange way that creating a realistic portrayal means using the most unrealistic elements.
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