Cousins

by Virginia Hamilton

  “I don’t feel anything about it, one way or the other,” she said, airily.

  Andrew had seemed worried about her, she didn’t know why.

  But things built up and fell down on her. The worst of anything was having to sit and see that desk. Each kid in homeroom had to bring a streamer of crepe paper. The teacher said it could be any color, as long as it was pastel. Soft colors, like pink or baby blue, even yellow. If a kid had a mind to bring in purple, well, it had to be a real pale purple. Cammy wouldn’t know where to get a pale purple, anyway. Ms. Wells, the teacher, said she’d contribute the black crepe streamers to make the border.

  So the way it was, Cammy got a roll of white crepe paper from the variety store. That had been all they had. She had most of the roll left over because she only needed one long strip. She wondered what she would do with it all.

  I’ll wind it around my neck and pin myself to the donkey with it, she thought, and then wondered why she’d thought that. She didn’t feel right, though, somehow, inside.

  But she had to admit Patty Ann’s desk did look well decorated when they had finished it. Patricia Ann! When they’d all done it just as Ms. Wells directed them, it looked out of this world, Cammy thought.

  “Just like Jesus might sit there,” Elodie said. Cammy wished she’d thought to say that, even though kids snickered and looked mean at Elodie. Because all the kids agreed even if they wouldn’t say so. Cammy could tell they did. The desk was now a sacred place. It scared them a little because they knew nothing on earth was good enough to sit in the seat with its black, black border.

  The desk looked heavenly. It was like a prayer—if I should die before I wake—from all the children. None in Patty Ann’s class had attended the real memorial service.

  Yet, having to see the empty, decorated space all the time made Cammy’s head start to hurt. After a couple of days, lots of kids got sick to their stomachs. Maybe it was the flu flitting from one to the next one of them. Maybe it wasn’t.

  Cammy stayed home sometimes. “I can’t take school,” she told her mama. “My tummy just turns over and up and down.”

  Andrew and her mama gave one another long looks, it seemed to Cammy. But she had to keep her eyes closed a lot of the time. Her head wouldn’t stop aching. It felt like it was going to float off by itself. And it seemed as if she looked through a cloud when she tried watching TV.

  Her mama took off from work half days to be at home with her. One time, Maylene also made a trip to school. She came home and told Andrew about it. Cammy had been lying on the couch with her bedspread over her and heard the whole thing.

  “Why, the idea of it!” her mama said. “I told them, Patricia Ann’s desk shouldn’t be made into a centerpiece for a costume party, like some carved Halloween pumpkin. And the little kids sitting around all dressed up and having punch and cookies. Staring at that desk. Can you believe it? No wonder they’re all getting sick. And it’s ten days after the fact.

  “Helen Wells told me Effie Lee was there, too, today,” her mama told Andrew. “Said my sister thought it was real kind of the children to do such a thing. Considering none of them attempted to save her beloved child when doing something special and brave might’ve meant something, Helen said Effie said. Said my sister had a few choice words for the one adult who had been present that day. And she, of course, would be Ms. Devine, Helen said.

  “They say Ms. Devine is leaving town.” Maylene’s voice sounded less angry now and more serious. Saying that folks had made it so uncomfortable for Ms. Devine. They talked about her being big and fat. “They called her a coward for not ever even trying to reach Patricia Ann, herself,” her mama said.

  Cold jitters jumped along Cammy’s shoulders and down her spine. She felt Patty Ann come up close to the couch.

  “They were calling Joyce Devine a fool, and worse, over the phone late at night,” her mama said, “for allowing those children to go near that swollen Little River in the first place.”

  Then, things started getting worse and worse for Cammy. She had thought that the new school year, with new clothes and all, would be just cool for her. Yet, things went very wrong for her. But not as wrong as they went for Eloise Odie.

  Naturally, everybody’s meanness slowly came to rest on Elodie, who Patty Ann had saved. Elodie kind of shriveled up after she and Cammy and their classmates decorated Patty Ann’s desk. When Cammy did manage to come to school once in a while, she could tell Elodie had really changed.

  She always was a strange kid, anyway, Cammy thought. But now, Elodie had stopped eating. Her face went blank and gray. She lost a lot of weight; she looked skinny, like Patty Ann had. She walked around in a weakened state. And she was all bent over, just like Patty Ann had been.

  Kids said the ghost of Patty Ann visited Elodie one night and got inside her. Kids wouldn’t talk to her anymore, wouldn’t sit near her. They ran away every time she got close to them. Ms. Wells had a time. Kids would scream and vomit when Elodie came into class.

  Cammy didn’t know what it was nor how to stop it. But she, too, got sick to her stomach every time she looked at Elodie. She went home and stayed there.

  Patty Ann started coming to Cammy’s room at night. “Hi, enemy.” Made Cammy scream. She knew Patty Ann was trying to get inside her, too.

  “Effie is just the worst for keeping the children riled up,” Maylene said. “Hollering and fainting and all, and tearing her hair in public. She won’t let it alone.”

  They were in the kitchen. Even though it was hot late fall now, her mama had wrapped Cammy in a blanket because Cammy said she was cold all over. She did feel cold, too, her mama commented.

  Cammy was draped across her mama’s lap. Her head rested on Maylene’s shoulder; her face was buried in her neck.

  Andrew was there. He always was at evening time, since she had been sick. “She came in, making sure the desk was still decorated and it’s been more than three weeks,” Andrew said. Talking about Aunt Effie. “She always manages to come when Ms. Wells is in the teachers’ room for her lunch. Just walks into the school.”

  “Well, they’d better start locking the doors against her, if they want the children to stop being hysterical,” Maylene said. “Anyway, they shouldn’t leave the school wide open the way they do. The way the world is, anything could happen.”

  Her mama and Andrew thought Cammy was asleep. They talked quietly, so as not to disturb her. She knew this. And she was either asleep or awake or in between. Most of the time, she was in between, feverish.

  “Anyway,” her mama said, “it was my own sister, Effie Lee, who started that awful business about her Patricia Ann’s ghost walking inside L-O-D.”

  Words came and went in puffs of sweet powder. One of the puffs was written, “Walking inside me.” Cammy moaned with its aching.

  “I never wanted her to die.”

  “Hush, baby.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Yes, but hush. Nobody blames you.”

  Moaning, “They blamed L-O-D.”

  “That poor, poor child. As though not having a family wasn’t enough. Then she has to get saved by the most loved and envied child in town, who gets drowned herself.”

  Cammy didn’t know how she found out. She felt always in a dream. And in the dream, Elodie was moving out of town. Elodie’s mom came and got her and Elodie would have to migrant labor in the camps with her mother. She wouldn’t stay at the Christian Shelter anymore. It wasn’t a dream at all. It was real.

  “Awful,” her mama said. “Lord, if I could take her in, I would. But I don’t think it would do Cammy any good. That would just bring it all back.”

  “It hasn’t ever gone away,” Andrew said. “If Cammy could just remember seeing Patty go down, I think that would complete it.”

  “Do you, Andrew?”

  “Sure. If she could admit she saw her cousin drown, then she could admit Patty was really gone forever.”

  “I never saw it! I didn’t. I didn’t!”


  “It’s okay, Cam, seeing it doesn’t make you guilty.”

  “I never saw. I never, I don’t remember!”

  “’Drew, leave her alone about it,” someone said.

  “What? Who’s that?”

  “Cam, it’s our dad come to see you.”

  And then, a long kind of time when she folded up like a wood chair against a blank wall in an empty room. She slept for days and days, she felt. She ate a little food. She ate a tablespoon of oatmeal, half a fried egg. She had chili, which she loved. She would eat a bowl of that whenever they gave it to her.

  Somebody really strong sat there in Patty Ann’s place. Somebody came around lunchtime and afternoon, until Maylene got home.

  “She should be in school,” somebody said.

  “You needn’t stay with her. Andrew will stay,” her mama said.

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean, she would get better quicker if she had other things to think about.”

  “Not as long as my sister keeps up the business.”

  “Andrew says they’ve locked her out.”

  “Yes,” Maylene said. “I wonder what she will do next? It’s been six weeks.”

  Cammy woke up and the man was rocking her in the rocking chair. Her legs were so long, they nearly dangled to the floor.

  “I’m not a baby,” she told him.

  He smiled. But she got up anyway. Stood there, with her back to him, looking out the window. Somebody was peeking in through the window. Then, somebody started hollering and banging away on the door.

  “Aunt Effie,” Cammy said, finally. “Mama? Mama?”

  “What is it?” Her mama came in the living room.

  “It’s your sister,” the man said.

  “Are you my daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want me to go stop her?” he said to Maylene.

  “Better you than me,” Cammy’s mama said. “No telling what I might do to her if I lose my temper.”

  Cammy heard what Aunt Effie was saying. She just didn’t listen to it. She let it go inside her with Patty Ann.

  “Nobody is going to forget!” Aunt Effie shouted. “Nobody is going to forget! You think just because L-O-D is gone—my baby isn’t gone. She’s inside this house. You won’t forget what you done. None of you will forget.”

  Her dad went to the door.

  “I want you off this property right now,” the man, her dad, said. “You leave the child alone. She didn’t do anything.”

  And then Effie Lee lashed out at all the things Cammy had done to Patty Ann, especially the day of the rain, when Cammy had run from Aunt Effie’s house.

  “I don’t want to hear it. She’s a child,” her dad said. “They are all children. Your mistake is to mix in with their childishness. We all sympathize with you and your terrible loss. Believe me. But you are a grown woman. Act like it.”

  Effie Lee hollered, “But they want to forget. They leave me nothing!”

  “If you don’t go right now, I will call an ambulance to take you to the hospital,” said the man who was Cammy’s dad.

  Instead, Maylene called Andrew, who brought Richie. Richie had been cold sober since his little sister died.

  “Mom?” he said. “Mom, come, let me take you home.” That seemed to quiet her somewhat. But she kept on crying. Cammy could tell that she was going away from the house, down the sidewalk.

  “Why’s my dad here?” Cammy wanted to know.

  “To help us out,” Maylene said. “I can’t take off so much time. He likes coming to see you.”

  The man came back into the house. The only noise now was inside Cammy’s head. He sat down in the chair. She was standing next to the big old rocker, rocking it with her hand. She wondered if Patty Ann was sitting in the rocking chair. She didn’t think so; she couldn’t see her there. But you never know, Cammy thought.

  “Do you feel all right?” the man asked.

  “You’re my dad,” Cammy answered. She thought, I feel all wrong. But there were things she wouldn’t say.

  “I’m afraid we haven’t had a chance to know one another very much. My fault,” he said, and smiled.

  Big, sandy man, Cammy thought. Sandy hair, sandy skin. Sandy shirt and khaki pants. Light brown buckskin shoes. “Why’d you all quit?” she asked him, curious. She glanced toward the door her mama had gone through. She could smell food cooking.

  “What? Oh. You mean your mom and me. Why, I blamed her, I guess, and she blamed me. Either way, we couldn’t get along.”

  “I’m the blame,” Cammy whispered. A moment passed and tears rolled down her face. She went over to the man and leaned her head on his shoulder.

  “I made you cry. Cammy, I’m sorry.”

  No. She tried to stop the tears. And her face turned red. Shaking her head. Everything was so wrong and sad.

  The man understood. He nodded, saying, “I know. We often hurt the ones we love.”

  “But I didn’t mean to hurt her. Oh, it’s my fault. But I didn’t mean it!”

  “No. No, Cammy. You didn’t do anything. It was an accident.”

  “No it wasn’t. She wanted me to be sorry. And I am!”

  Cammy cried and cried.

  He held her, smoothed her hair. “You are my daughter. I’m your dad and I say you’re not to blame. No child drowns to hurt somebody.”

  Finally, Cammy said, “I think Patty Ann did, to make us hurt for her.”

  “Oh, Cammy, I don’t think so. I think it was an accident.”

  “You didn’t see her face,” she said. Then Cammy covered her eyes. She couldn’t stand up any longer.

  “Maylene?” he called. Her mama came and picked her up. Struggled with her up the stairs.

  “I’ll take her,” he said. But Maylene said no. Wouldn’t let Cammy go. Cammy clung to her for dear life. She hated going upstairs to be all alone in her room. Such awful things happened in her room now.

  Cammy felt as if she lived only snatches of her days. Pictures and snap shots. She remembered some things. At last, she felt well enough to go back to school. But before she did, two things happened.

  8

  THEY WENT ON a long car ride. She and her mama, Andrew and the man who was her dad. Her dad drove the car. Andrew sat up front beside him. Her mama and she sat in the backseat. The car belonged to her dad. It was the prettiest place inside that car. The seat felt like a cloud under her. Cammy ran her hand along the deep plush of it.

  She didn’t ask where they were going. Andrew told her, turning around in his seat. “We’re going to see your cousin.”

  Cammy ducked her head and closed her eyes.

  “Andrew, for heaven’s sake,” her mama said. “We’re going to see L-O-D today, honey. Isn’t that nice?”

  Cammy didn’t say much. She was glad Elodie was the cousin she was going to see. Migrant child laborer. She’d heard that somewhere. It didn’t tell what Elodie was, really. Elodie was really somebody with part of somebody else inside her. The way Cammy had part of the same somebody else inside her.

  When they got there, they stopped in front of a little house. It didn’t look too migrant to Cammy. It was in a little town. Seemed that Elodie’s mom could live there until the spring. Cammy saw Elodie after such a long time, and the back of her mind woke up. She felt more herself than she had in weeks.

  The house was stuffy, although the day was cool outside in the fall air. So they sat on a wood bench on this back stoop. There was a narrow piece of yard with no grass, just caked, hard ground. There was a clothesline with nothing on it. It was early Sunday morning, when they got there, just time to go to church. So all was quiet around the many little houses like Elodie’s.

  “You look nice,” Elodie said to Cammy.

  “So do you, too,” Cammy said back. Elodie had on new Goodwill clothes. They were both dressed for Sunday, although they wouldn’t go to church.

  “How’s school?” asked Elodie.

  “Okay, I guess. I haven’t gone much,” Cammy said.
/>   “I’m so behind because of the work,” Elodie said, “I might as well quit.”

  “Try to stick it out,” Cammy said. And wondered at herself for saying that.

  “Maybe,” Elodie said.

  “You look a lot better,” Cammy said.

  “I get about as much potatoes and beans as I want,” Elodie said, seriously. “We picked a lot of apples. I love my mom’s applesauce. At the Christian Shelter we ate cow’s tongue. It made me vomit.”

  “This fall? You pick a lot of apples now?” Cammy asked, interested.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind, picking things?” Cammy said.

  “I don’t mind it,” Elodie said, after a pause. “I get to be with my mom and her friends. There’s some few other kids. But they are tough busters, so I stay away from them. There’s a recreation place that they let us go to if we behave. I take off my shoes and go barefoot on the slick floors there. I behave, me and another kid, so we get to go. I stay away from water, though. Streams and things like that.”

  “That’s good.”

  “But kids still make fun of me because I’m a picker. They laugh at me and my mom,” Elodie explained.

  “They should be ashamed,” Cammy said. She found out that she felt for Elodie, that she liked her a lot. She liked looking into her face. That was the way you looked at Elodie. You had to peer into her, it seemed like. Slide deep into her eyes that were shiny and black. Cammy didn’t think she’d ever looked that closely at Elodie before now. Elodie had been the one peering at her. It was nice to have a cousin again you could look straight at, Cammy decided.

  Before they left, after eating lunch and talking to Elodie’s mom in the small kitchen, Elodie said just to Cammy, “I’m okay.”

  “Me, too,” said Cammy, although she knew it wasn’t the truth. Shyly they smiled at one another. “Hope you can come home next summer,” Cammy added.

  Elodie’s chin quivered so much, she couldn’t speak.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Cammy said, finally. “She wanted to save you, so she did.”

  Elodie nodded. “But I thought she’d save herself, too,” she said.

  They locked arms, walking a ways around the little house. They were like true friends. “I’ll come to see you again sometime, if I can,” Cammy said.