Daughters of the Wild

by Natalka Burian

  Sil found them almost right away. He scooped them up in his truck on an access road off Route 9. He was rough but quiet, almost as if he’d known exactly where they’d be. “Where’s the baby?” he asked, his face grim and hard.

  “Over where the creek meets the road,” Cello said softly.

  The drive back was so quick it was like they’d barely left. Joanie didn’t seem to care about the inevitable punishment—her feelings were elsewhere. Even the baby’s stirring and fussing couldn’t pull her back into the truck. Cello saw it in the radiant anger of her gaze when Sil pulled her down out of the truck bed. Sil had ruined everything, and she was furious. He pushed Joanie toward the light of the trailer, but held Cello back by the arm. “We’ll let Letta have her turn with the princess here.” Joanie slipped up and away, into the glow of Sil and Letta’s trailer, and Cello buzzed with worry.

  Letta knew how to hurt people, but not in the way that Sil did. Sil used his arms and legs, branches and belts. But none of that was as bad as the harm done by Letta. She could wrangle the darkest thoughts into a person’s head and make them believe, believe, that they deserved nothing, or worse, that they deserved everything. People who walked away from a conversation with Letta were always a little bit worse than they’d been before. Cello worried far more about Joanie inside the trailer with Letta than he worried about himself outside with Sil.

  Cello understood that he and Joanie could expect the most harm that both of their foster parents could give. He only hoped that Letta and Sil were the only ones who knew what they had done.

  “Where’s that worthless grub?” Letta growled out into the darkness.

  Sil poked between Cello’s shoulder blades, hard, but it wouldn’t leave a mark. Saving his strength for the real thing, Cello thought. Letta stood in a pool of light streaming from the trailer’s open door. She wore a long, blue dress, and a gold barrette clipped at her temple. “Betrayal in our own home,” she said. “I didn’t believe it—wouldn’t believe what the Vine showed my own eyes and ears. How could you two?” She tossed her head in an exaggerated shake. “Give it back,” she said, terribly quiet.

  Cello reached for the bundle of cuttings that scratched against his chest and set it on the ground. Letta lifted it into her arms quickly, holding it like a swaddled infant. “Well, Sil, you found them so quick I think as a reward you should decide what’s next for our Cello.” Letta glared down from a full, glittery face of makeup. “What do you want to do with this ungrateful, skinny shit?”

  “We could kennel him for the rest of the night.” Sil swung an arm around Cello’s narrow shoulders.

  Letta nodded and smiled so that Cello could see the gilded fronts of her overlarge teeth. “I don’t think that’s quite enough. You know what you need to do, Sil. Just remember, the boy has to work tomorrow.”

  “If that’s what you want,” said Sil.

  It began out in the still-hot grass beyond the trailer. Maybe there was blood; definitely there would be bruises. Sil finished up with the face, but only a few knocks—again, being practical, Sil aimed for Cello’s cheeks and chin, leaving the boy’s cranium alone.

  Cello could feel Sil slowing down, could tell where he was trying to take a break, where his older body was beginning to argue with the exercise. When Cello fell against the grass for the last time, he breathed in the smell of earth and sun, still holding on to that feeling of being alone with Joanie, away from everyone.

  “Now Joanie,” Letta said, lighting a fresh cigarette.

  “You sure?” Sil called. He didn’t usually hit the girls, and never because it was his idea. Sil was sweating hard—Cello could smell it on him.

  “I’m sure, honey,” she said. The smoke fell to the ground around her in a gust of wind. “Come on now, Joanie,” she said. “Your turn.” Letta pointed to where Cello had collapsed, struggling to breathe evenly. Sil had knocked the wind out of him, and now his lungs pushed and pulled and stuck.

  “Maybe tomorrow, Letta,” Sil panted. “I wore myself out on this one already.” He gave Cello one more smack on the back as he said it.

  “No. It has to be tonight. Now.” Letta pushed Joanie forward into the dim wash of light coming from the other trailers’ windows.

  “I don’t know, sweet pea,” Sil called. “She’s too old.”

  “You’re never too old to be put in your place,” Letta said. “You—” she pointed at Cello’s curled, exposed back “—move.”

  Cello shuffled to the side, but watched Joanie walk toward Sil. The waist of her jeans had slipped down low onto her hips, and the skin Cello saw there—smooth and moonlit—made him shiver.

  Joanie stood in front of Sil and pulled her shirt over her head. Cello watched where it fell on the ground. “Go ahead,” she said.

  Sil turned his eyes up and away from her body, like he thought it shouldn’t have been out in the dark like that. They all knew that Sil didn’t think it was decent. Letta knew, but it was Sil’s job to keep them at the garden—to keep the garden safe—and he needed his punishment, too.

  “Before morning, Sil,” Letta called, her voice flat and bored.

  “I’m just working up to it, alright? Well, turn around, girl!” Sil hollered. “Have a little shame.”

  Joanie turned her back to Sil, and closed her eyes, waiting. Sil paced the yard in front of the trailer, his body lit and then hidden each time he walked past the open door. Cello didn’t look at Letta, or even at Joanie. He only watched Sil.

  Sil rubbed at his chin, and then ran his hands over his sun-wrecked face.

  “Alright,” he muttered, clapping his hands in a single smack of palms. He strode toward the nearest tree—a maple—and chose an impressively gnarled branch.

  Cello hated his powerlessness. He hated that all he could do to help Joanie was endure the beating beside her. He wished that he was different and bolder—that he could be useful—instead of slouched in the grass beneath Joanie’s struggle to stay silent.

  * * *

  “Oh, Sil,” Letta said, shaking her head. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  “Come on, Letta, I’m wore out,” Sil pleaded.

  “What, you want me to do it?” Letta’s tone shifted to its familiar scattershot, flinty rage.

  “Of course not. Give me a minute.” Sil lowered the branch and tilted his neck from side to side.

  “Hurry up,” Letta said, lighting a new cigarette off the burning one between her lips.

  Sil cleared his throat and began again, this time harder. Cello cast a glance at Letta, who was finally smiling a real smile. It would be over soon at least.

  Letta’s last satisfied look pried out an unexpected realization. Cello understood that they’d done him a favor. If he and Joanie hadn’t been caught, if they’d been successful and escaped out into the world beyond the garden, Cello knew that Joanie would eventually peel off and away from him. That’s how Joanie was. He wouldn’t see it coming, either. Joanie loved secrecy, silence. If it weren’t for Sil and Letta’s intervention, and even the punishment, Cello would have been alone, and away from everything he understood. He had nothing outside of the predictable world of the garden and its inhabitants. Certainly, he had nothing to give to Joanie.

  Cello felt sick as that combination of gratitude, disgust and anger mingled in his body.

  “Now,” Letta called from the trailer’s low, steel steps. “I think you’ve done enough. Off to bed with you two. I better not hear any more about this. And keep it to yourselves. I don’t want a soul to know the nonsense you tried tonight.”

  Sil, out of breath, dropped the branch and brushed his hands down the sides of his shirt. “Jesus, Letta,” he said, hollering. He held his palms out to her like a surrendering man. “I got blisters now. Hope you’re happy you got your way.”

  Sil disappeared into the dark and Letta turned, slamming the door to their trailer
shut.

  Joanie and Cello were left in the heavy night air, not looking at one another. They walked back toward the trailer where the kids were asleep, their eyes on the grass.

  “What would happen if she told Mother Joseph?” Cello asked.

  “She won’t,” Joanie said. “She can’t.”

  Back in the kids’ trailer, Cello and Joanie had to lie in bed on their stomachs. The stuffy air inside was filled with the night sounds and smells of the others. The kids had slept through everything; they gurgled and snored, and the tang of urine hung thick in the air—Miracle had wet the bed again.

  Cello saw Joanie’s open eyes stare out at nothing, definitely not at him, and tried to sleep. The baby cried out, and Joanie went to him. “I’m sorry,” Joanie said, smoothing his little back. “I’m so sorry.” Cello fell asleep to the sound of her low humming; the scent of the Vine and the earth he’d packed around it still clung, like a reproach, to his skin.

  4

  The next day, Letta behaved as if nothing had happened, though the other kids were unusually quiet. Sil and Cello walked in silence down the hill, and around the perimeter of the plot he and Marcela had started. Sil pulled a robust sip from the can of Crown Light held low by his side. Cello understood that Sil was prone to the same tides of emotion as anyone. He didn’t always blame Sil for his spates of violence. They didn’t seem personal, the way Letta’s did. Sil just aimed to hurt—it was like the violence was still a part of him, just a fist, attached to an arm, attached to a man, attached to a heart. Letta aimed to hurt surgically, specifically—without emotion of her own.

  “This looks good, son,” he said, slapping Cello on the back. Cello winced as the force of Sil’s friendly pat collided into what remained raw from the blows from the night before. Not that Sil noticed.

  “Couldn’t’ve done better myself. Mow this here, maybe three-quarters of the way up that slope, see?” Sil gestured ahead. “We don’t need this much space on both sides. Shouldn’t need it, if we do things right.”

  “Okay.”

  “And if you got time tonight, run the rototiller over it. I’m gonna see how the east plot’s getting on. Make sure Marcela and Sabina pick up the scraps. I want those for compost.”

  “I’ll be fine on my own,” Cello said, brushing a fly from where it had landed, lapping up the sweat on the side of his throat.

  “I know you will, but Letta wants the girls out here today. I’m sure they’ll stay out of your hair. Just bring them back in with you before dark.”

  Sil paused, rolling the can of Crown between his hands. “I know it wasn’t your idea, son, but what you and Joanie did put us all in danger. Mother Joseph’d kill every one of us if she knew. Think of the little kids. What’d happen to them? We depend on Amberly Joseph for everything—I’m not saying I like it, but that’s just the truth. If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t have a damn thing. No farm, no roof over our head—nothing. You know that, don’t you?”

  Cello nodded quietly.

  Sil slapped a hand against the side of his leg. “Let’s get to work, then. Make sure the girls help you, like I said. It’s what Letta wants.”

  * * *

  Cello worked evenly—not too slow, not too fast—and thought about what Sil had said and how the conversation had been a kind of apology. Cello knew he’d get nothing like that from Letta. He understood that Letta’s punishment hadn’t been meted out yet, and the wait made him itch.

  As the afternoon slipped into evening, the air cooled. Cello hitched the tiller to the little tractor and noticed Marcela and Sabina under a low stand of pines. Their figures were dark shadows half-swallowed by the trees’ deep green cover, straightening the piles of brush they’d moved out of the way. “Marcela, Sabina! Come help!” he called, surveying the rest of the broken branches and clumps of debris across the plot that needed to be cleared before tilling.

  They didn’t hear him, or pretended not to. As Cello strode toward them, he wondered what it would be like to talk to someone who shared the same blood with you. Maybe that person understood better. It seemed like that sometimes, with Marcela and Sabina. He walked into the midst of their conversation, noticing how naturally they hovered near one another like blossoms on a branch.

  “What’re you thinking, Mar?” Sabina smoothed her sister’s hair back where it had fallen in her eyes.

  “I’m thinking I need to get out of here,” Marcela said, squatting down by the pile of rubble they’d collected, hiding, maybe, from Sil’s eyes or Cello’s. “I mean,” she corrected, “we need to get out of here.”

  “Why does everybody keep saying that?” Sabina asked. “It’s really not that terrible.”

  Marcela rolled her eyes. “You’re only saying that because you’re still one of the little kids.”

  “I am not!”

  “That’s how they all treat you. It’s still safe for you. But look how Letta shipped Joanie off and what happened to her. She was my age when she got sent away.”

  “Letta wouldn’t do that to you,” Sabina said. “You aren’t like Joanie.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Marcela crossed her arms over her chest.

  “It’s just...you’re not trouble, like Joanie is.” Sabina’s voice was low, soothing. She cooed at her sister in the way she’d perfected over the years. Sabina could recalibrate her sister’s emotions with a few words, and bring her back from the obviously dangerous idea she’d been circling.

  “But I am trouble,” Marcela said. “Maybe even more trouble than Joanie. I hate it here more than she ever did.”

  “I don’t know—you don’t always seem like you hate it.” Sabina looked down at her hands.

  “Well, I hate it now, and once they stop treating you so soft, I know you’ll hate it, too. You heard what Letta said—I’m a young lady now. She could send me to Mother Joseph’s anytime. I’m not forgetting what Joanie was like when she came back. Is that really what you want? Is that what you want for us?” Sabina didn’t speak, waiting for her sister to finish. “I just want us to be ready. We got to make sure we have some money in case we need to leave quick. Letta’s not selling me to the Josephs. I don’t care what I have to do.”

  “Okay, Mar. Of course not. I’d never let that happen.” Sabina looped her arm around her sister’s waist and tucked her head against her shoulder.

  Cello left them alone. He didn’t want to ask anything of them right then—it didn’t feel right to interrupt. So he kept on alone. The sun slowly disappeared behind the tree line. Cello breathed in the humid, grassy scent of the fresh soil he had turned up—the familiar smell undercut with a dense but comforting warmth. Despite the day and the night before, Cello couldn’t resist the satisfaction he felt when finishing a job. It bloomed through him—not happiness, definitely not that—something more basic, like quenching a thirst.

  He called out into the near-night for his foster sisters, and they packed up.

  * * *

  When they got back, everyone had already eaten dinner. Cello could see it in the way their listless bodies were sprawled around the trailers. The little kids lay on their backs in the grass, and Letta and Sil sat propped against their trailer sipping from sweating tallboys of Crown. Even Joanie was out, cooing at the baby propped up on her knees.

  “Y’all are late,” Sil said, flushed from the heat and the day of drinking. Cello didn’t begrudge him any of it, really. The night before had done something to all of them, moved things around.

  “Yeah, sorry. I wanted to finish up,” Cello said.

  “Did you?” Letta’s voice poured out, caustic, like she hadn’t spoken for days.

  “Yeah.”

  “And what about you two? You do what Cello told y’all?” she asked the girls, rumpled as a pair of barn owls.

  “Of course,” Marcela said, and then yawned.

  Cello stared as Joanie slipped back in
to the kids’ trailer to put down the baby. He watched the door until she returned, her arms crossed, and sat on the step.

  “We could’ve used your help here sooner,” Letta said. “Feeding everybody dinner.”

  Emil nodded and lifted his tiny fingers into the air, tracing something only he could see in it. He dipped and turned his palm in the dark, a pink tip of tongue pressed into his nearly toddler-size lower lip. Cello felt a stab of tenderness for Emil. He felt that way about all of the kids, even Marcela. Leaving Letta and Sil would have also meant leaving behind the kids.

  “Cello, go clean up the dinner things,” Letta said. “Inside.” She rapped the wall of trailer behind her, and it rattled a little. “I want to talk to you alone.”

  Cello felt a fresh layer of sweat bleed out through his skin. His punishment from Letta was coming.

  Cello went immediately to the tiny sink, scrubbing the pans that soaked there. Letta leaned against the enamel-topped, miniature dining table and lit another cigarette. Her head tipped back when she exhaled. Cello tried to keep his eyes on the pans.

  “I thought it would be good to clear the air,” Letta said.

  Wash, wash, wash, Cello repeated in his mind, trying not to listen too carefully to what Letta was saying.

  “You’re such a trusting boy,” she continued. “Shame, since it makes you so dull.” She paused, and Cello could hear the tap of her finger as she ashed her cigarette. “I don’t really blame you. I mean, I blame you some, but it’s mainly Joanie. She can be convincing. Probably told you she loved you, wanted to be with you forever. Maybe get married again. That’s what she said, right?”

  Cello didn’t speak—he kept washing. Wash, wash, wash. He felt her approach, felt the shape of her scrawny body bump into his own. She stroked the back of his neck, like she was appraising the length of his hair. “Is that what she said, Cello?” He felt her file-tapered fingernails dig into the skin at the base of his skull.