She’s right about that—there’s no one around to call it but us. “We better name it before someone else comes along,” I say.
“I saw it first so it should be the Emma River.”
“We can’t call it the Emma River. That’s stupid.”
“I’m calling it that.”
“I’m not.”
Then there’s quiet where I can tell she’s wondering how strong a hold she has on the name since it won’t be much of a name if she’s the only one to use it. I know I can wait her out.
“What about the Toast River?” she says. I have to think about it a minute. It’s really not much of a river since the water moves just a bit faster than a drippy kitchen tap.
If you laid five encyclopedias down on the ground and jumped over them with room to spare, you’d see how wide our stream is. The bucket doesn’t go halfway down ’fore it hits bottom, but it fills up pretty quick so Momma’ll be happy.
“I’ve heard worse,” I say. “What about Sparkly River,” I call up to her.
While I’m filling up, Emma’s balancing herself on the slippery rocks up the hill a spell. Like on the fence she doesn’t even hold her arms out, she just naturally keeps herself upright.
“You look like one of those storybook fairies,” I tell her. And she does. Those fairies that live in the woods and crawl out from mossy kingdoms and dance in the moonlight in sparkly dresses. Not that Emma wears sparkly dresses. Her pants are torn on one side from the time she climbed out onto Forsyth’s roof and was about to jump off to prove she could land like a cat when she slipped and skidded to the edge and then hung there until Mr. Phillips fetched his ladder to carry her the rest of the way. Her shirt’s stained from tomato sauce or syrup or berries or some other kind of food item. And her hair’s still matted in the back, like it always seems to be.
“Or Diamond River,” she calls back to me. “That’s it! Diamond River. That’s the name.”
“We got to get back,” I tell her after the bucket’s full.
She jumps off the tallest rock she’d climbed and takes up behind me on the trail, which doesn’t seem so long on the way back as it did on the way there.
“Your momma’s looking for you,” Richard growls at us when he catches sight of us coming out of the clearing between the trees. Like dogs, neither of us look him in the eye. Me and Emma, we haven’t talked about what all happened out back of the old house, but it’s like we know if we look at his eyes he’ll attack. Or he could. And that’s good enough reason to stay away for good. I wish I could make it all up to him like I’m going to do with Momma, but with Richard there’s no telling what’ll make him happy. Today, it’s hearing hawks and I don’t think we can top that. Emma doesn’t seem to think about that kind of thing since being good’s never paid off for her before, but I remember from Daddy days that it can work.
* * *
“Caroline Louise Parker, come over here this minute,” Momma called out in her angry voice. I followed the sound and wound up in the middle of the kitchen facing Momma and Daddy both.
“Yes, ma’am?” I said, but just looking at them made my eyes sting with tears.
“You have something you need to get off your chest, Caroline?” Daddy said in that voice that never got used by him.
“What, Daddy?” I was just buying time, I know. I started to cry but that didn’t change a lick about the look on Momma’s face. It melted Daddy’s.
“Your teacher called over,” Momma said. “She told us what all happened today in social studies….”
Momma’s voice was getting harder and louder but Daddy interrupted her. “What happened, Butter Bean? Why’d you do something like that?”
The answer is, I don’t know. I got a pass to go to the bathroom in the middle of us drawing pictures of the Indians who lived here before all of us did. I was the only one in the whole bathroom when I got there and the next thing I know I had it in my hand.
“It’s disgusting’s what it is,” Momma was saying. “I cannot believe I gave birth to a child who’d do something like this. I don’t know how I’m going to show my face in town anymore, I’ll tell you what.”
Daddy’s eyes looked about as sad as mine were, only without the hot tears.
“Didja just get some on your hands? Were there no towels or toilet tissue around?” Daddy asked me like he really wished he could understand.
I shook my head, but the minute I did, I wished I could have gone along with the story he was painting for me. That would have made sense. I went number two and wiped it on the walls of the washroom ’cause there wasn’t any toilet tissue. But that wasn’t the truth.
“You are in deep deep trouble, lady girl,” Momma said. “Your trouble’s deeper than the Yadkin River.”
“You mind your momma.” Daddy’d given up on me trying to explain what he knew I couldn’t.
He walked out of the room and my ears listened to Momma’s plan for me making it up to school, to her, to Miss Hall, but my heart left the room with Daddy.
I never did something like that again but I never forgot it, either.
From that moment on I dedicated myself to being the best little girl Momma ever laid her turtle-green eyes on. I swept the kitchen out after she finished her weekly baking, making sure all the flour dust made it neatly into the dustpan. I took apart the black iron trays that fit together on top of the stove like they’re puzzle pieces and cleaned each one by hand. I beat the front-room rug over the porch the way Momma liked, watching the flecks of leaves and hair and dust catch wind and float away in the beams of sunlight that hit. I tried to do everything right so Momma would kiss me on the forehead at night before bed just like she used to.
It took a while before I could face Daddy, but it wasn’t too long before he was calling me “Pea Pop” again and patting his lap for me to climb up.
So making things up to people works. Just not, probably, with Richard.
* * *
I’ve been trying real hard to keep the water from sloshing out of the pail but I tripped on a root and didn’t count on the ground being so springy so I lost some of it on the way in. There’s still enough in there to clean with so I think we’re okay. My fingers have formed to the hollow wooden section at the top of the handle that is s’posed to keep the metal part from digging into your hand. My fingers went from hurting real bad to having no feeling in them at all many many steps ago. When I set the bucket down on the porch outside the front door my hand opens just a breath, just enough for the handle to fall out. It’s in the shape of a claw, my hand. Opening my fingers one by one is like pushing a heavy door when it hasn’t been pushed in a while, they creak with each bending try.
“Where have you been?” Momma flies out from the outline of a screen door (it’s an outline since the screen isn’t there anymore, just the wood that holds it remains). She doesn’t wait for our answer, she just grabs the bucket handle and, making it look like it isn’t heavy at all, carries it inside the front room, which looks about the same as it did when we left, only I’m squinting now that I know it’s dark inside the house.
“You need to be cleaning up these windows now that you’re back from your little nature walk,” she says, and a bristle brush splashes into the pail. “Soak the glass first with water, use this wet rag on the bar of soap to clean it, and then take the bristle brush and get all that dirt off. Mind you work on the crevices. Get busy.” And she’s gone.
“What’re cre-vic-es?” Emma whispers to me, sounding out the word.
“Beats me,” I say. “I guess we best scrub the whole window frame down while we’re at it—that way we’re covered.”
Every once in a while Momma breezes through. She starts to unpack a box and disappears for a spell and then reappears mopping her way out of the kitchen into the front room where we’re finishing up the last window. Richard clomps around upstairs,
no doubt unpacking all they brought with them. He took a can of beer up there with him and hasn’t been back down for another so I reckon that’s a good sign.
I wonder about school and where Emma and me will go out here in the boonies like we are and then it hits me. Momma said before we don’t need to worry about schooling and so that’s what I start doing. Worry.
“Momma? What’re we going to do about school?” I say over my shoulder. I felt her come back into the room from the front porch, the air sucking past us like it did.
“Don’t you be thinking about school,” she says. “I see a streak in the upper right corner of that middle one.”
I back up to take a look and there it is. My rag rubs it out like it’s a mosquito needs to be killed.
“But where’re we gonna go?” Emma asks.
“Don’t start,” she says. And she’s gone again.
Some days are talking-to-Momma days, some days aren’t.
* * *
“Leave her be, child,” Gammy is saying, “just leave her be.”
Daddy’s away again selling carpet and Momma’s door’s closed up good-n-tight. My grandmother—we call her “Gammy” on account of the fact I couldn’t pronounce “Grandma” when I was a bitty child and the name Gammy stuck—is staying with us for a while.
But she’s not good with tears. Daddy told me that before he left town. (“You be good, Butter Bean,” he said, squatting down so he could look me square in the eye, “and remember, your Gammy’s not good with tears so you better dry up and mind your Momma, all right?”) Daddy’s good with tears usually, but this time they didn’t stop him from leaving. Momma’s door had been staying closed for a while before he left, even.
“I want my Momma,” I’m saying, but I cough since I’m trying too hard to keep the tears back and some of them fall inside my nose, not outside like they should. “Momma? Momma, can I come in? Momma?”
“I said leave her be.” Gammy’s hands are at my back and I can tell if I don’t move away from the door on my own those hands’ll get a lot stronger. “Now, go on outside and play.”
“Momma!” I try one last time, but Momma’s door isn’t budging so the hands show me where I’m supposed to go.
That’s when I learned there are not-talking-to-Momma days.
* * *
By the time we finish cleaning up the downstairs windows Emma and me hug the walls and pick our way up the broken staircase to look at our Nest upstairs.
“Hey! The mattress fits!” Emma says. She makes it up the stairs much easier than me on account of her ability to balance.
Sure enough, the mattress is waiting for us across the small room, fitting perfectly between the two walls on either side with a bit of room to spare. I can even fit my stamp collection on my side of the bed so I can look at it anytime I want. There’s a pile of sheets folded up at the foot so I unfurl them and crawl up to the top of the bed where our heads go, to tuck the corners in underneath. Emma takes the foot of the bed and before we know it we’ve got ourselves a place to sleep!
“Let’s try it out,” Emma says, crawling herself up to where she’ll be laying in a few hours.
“The ceiling is much higher than before,” I say. It’s cozy in our room. My eyes trace the shapes the peeling paint has made up over us. “Hey, squinch your eyes almost closed and look at the ceiling—doesn’t it look like it’s clouds above us?”
“Yeah,” Emma says.
The sheets are cool underneath us. Nothing better than cool sheets on a hot day, Momma says. And she’s right.
* * *
“Why don’t you leave well enough alone?” Momma says it more than asks it—in a low voice outside our door. I blink all the way awake.
“What did you just say to me?” his voice isn’t near as low. There’s no light coming in from our half window—no telling how long we’ve been asleep.
“Can’t you see she’s tired?” Momma answers back. I turn my head slightly to look at my baby sister, who just got stuck up for by Momma for the first time I can think of. But then the sounds move farther away, words bumping down the stairs angrily. A few make it to our ears and when they do I know we won’t be leaving our airless room. The heat’s trapped itself in here so we’re lying on top of the sheets with our arms and legs spread as wide as they can get without overlapping onto one another, so what little air there is can move all around us. My nose is stopped up, even though it’s far from the time of year when that usually happens. My mouth is open and I soon realize I am panting like a dog.
“Emma? You awake?” I barely whisper, in case she isn’t.
“Yeah,” she whispers back.
“What do you reckon we’ll be doing about school? It’s weird how Momma didn’t say where we’d be going.”
I’m picking at my nails again. Bad habit. I don’t need Momma to tell me that. I chew on my nails, but then they get so short there’s nothing left for my teeth to work on so I go to the skin around the nails. Whenever Momma’s around you can bet you’ll hear “stop it” now and again. If I don’t pull my hand away from my mouth right then, Momma yanks it so when I hear her, I stop right away. Even Emma’s had enough. Lying on the sheet that’s now sweaty, she hisses at me to stop, so I do. For a second.
“I don’t want to go to a new school, anyway,” she says. “Fine with me if we just stay here.”
“Yeah, I s’pose,” I say. But I don’t really agree with her. Like I said, I was hoping to be the popular one at my new school. Plus, who’re we going to play with out here in the boonies like we are?
Then, just like that, we fall back to sleep. Hot sleep where you turn over and you’re cool for a second and then you realize you’re just baking on the other side. No position’s comfortable for very long. It’s the kind of sleep that’s just filling time until daylight.
* * *
“Hey there,” says the woman carrying something square with a dish towel draped over. “Orla Mae, stop that scuffling—you’re kicking holes into my legs with all them rocks flying, I swear to Sunday,” she says to the girl who’s walking a few steps behind her.
“Your momma home?” she calls out to me and Emma.
“Yes, ma’am,” we say at the same time, and Emma pushes past me to go get her, spitting the word “jinx” out on the way. I run after her. I want to see for myself what Momma thinks of the friendly lady and her daughter.
“Be right back,” I say to the two of them, standing at the foot of the front stairs, trying not to look like they’d love to come on in.
“Momma!” Emma’s calling out through the house. “We got company!”
Momma comes out from a back door I don’t remember noticing yesterday. She’s wiping her hands on her apron and pushing the pieces of hair that’ve fallen in her face back behind her ears. “All right, all right,” she’s saying to us. “Here I come. Now, go on upstairs and make yourselves presentable.”
Richard cut boards the size of stairs and nailed them on top of the broken ones so it’s easy to get to the second floor now.
“Hurry,” Emma’s saying to me, pulling one leg out of the ripped pants she’s still wearing from yesterday and reaching over into a pile of our clothes that’re all mixed up in a heap at the foot of the bed. “Come on.”
“Don’t! That’s mine.” I grab her hand just in time—she’s trying to make off with my yellow button-up shirt. “I’m wearing it.”
“Fine. Jeez-um.”
We race back down the stairs to get a good look at this Orla Mae who kicks stones when she walks. They’re out on the front porch with Momma.
“It’s just down a ways, no more’n a mile and a speck…” the lady’s saying. Now Momma’s holding the square dishcloth-covered pan. “Take him maybe ten minutes on foot ev’ry day.”
“Come on in, why don’t you,” Momma say
s when we open the screen door frame. I can tell from the tone in her voice she doesn’t want them to take her up on it.
“Oh, no,” the lady says. “We’re on our way. Orla Mae here was dying to see who kindly moved in. We see your truck and car drive through town yesterday and ev’ryone’s wanting to put out the dog for you.”
She looks down at us and shoves her daughter in our direction. “This here’s Orla Mae.”
“Hi,” I say. Emma raises her hand like a wave. She gets shy with new people sometimes.
The way Orla Mae looks us up and down makes me realize not everyone wears their pants until they’re sugar-soft and high up above their ankles. She makes me feel funny about the fact that my toes are peeking out from the tips of my shoes.
“Want to see our stream?” I ask Orla Mae. She nods and follows us down the stairs and over to the trail by the side of the house.
“Well, I guess you best come in then, looks like they’ve taken a shine right off,” Momma’s saying to Orla Mae’s mama.
“How old are you?” Emma asks her while we jump our way on the cushiony ground to the Diamond River.
“Seven,” Orla Mae says.
“What’s your family name?” I ask her.
“Bickett.”
“You go to school?”
“Of course I go to school,” she says. “I go to Donford. That’s where everybody from round here goes. How old are you?”
“I’m eight, my sister Emma’s six,” I say.
“I’ve got a baby sister,” Orla Mae says. “And four older brothers. They work up at the lumberyard where my mama says your daddy’s gonna work. I ain’t never to see them, though. They’s much older. My sister’s two, though. Ain’t no fun to be around, just cries all the time. I helped her be born.”
“First off, he ain’t our daddy, he’s our stepfather, our daddy’s dead, and second of all, what do you mean you helped her be born?” Emma says all in one breath.
“I’s at the foot of the bed with the lady who came to help Mama. I pull her out.”
“Did not,” I say.
Me & Emma Page 14
