Ink and Bone(53)

“Hush, now,” said Momma. “You’ve always been such a hardheaded little thing ever since you were a baby.”

She unlocked the chain on Penny’s ankle, and it felt so good to be free from it as it fell to the floor with a clatter.

“That’s better,” said Momma.

She stood and held out her hand. Penny moved back, all the way into the corner.

Bobo could be mean. And Poppa filled her with dread and disgust. But she didn’t fear either of them as much as she did Momma—though Momma had never laid a hand on her.

“Please,” said Penny.

“She’s waiting,” said Momma. “Come now.”

If she didn’t go, Poppa would come and carry her. If he had to do that, any number of bad things might happen afterwards. So Penny slowly, reluctantly got up. She let Momma take her hand, and they walked outside into the semidark and growing cold. Penny still didn’t have any shoes, and her clothes were threadbare. Her ankle was more swollen, more painful than it had ever been. It was an ugly black and blue and didn’t even look like her other leg. Still, she kept up with Momma as she walked past the house, and out through the gate, Penny shivering.

On the dirt road, Momma let Penny’s hand drop and Penny followed obediently behind her. Now? she wondered. Should I try to run now? But how fast could she go with her leg like that? Then, she heard a sound behind them and turned to see that Bobo was following. He stayed back, hiding behind the trees, then running to catch up.

Not yet.

After a while, they turned off the road and onto a path Momma had worn into the brush. Penny’s feet were so calloused and her calves so scarred that she barely even felt the hard ground or the branches whipping around her ankles. But every step sent a rocket of pain up her leg. There was no choice but to ignore it, keep moving.

The trees whispered singsong. Penny started to cry a little; she couldn’t help it. The place where she was going, all that trapped sadness and despair, all that loneliness and helplessness, it leaked into her bones like a chill in the air. Would she ever be warm again, safe and loved? Weak, puppyish whimpers escaped her though she tried to swallow them back.

“Hush, now, little Dreamer,” said Momma. “We’re almost there.”

But it wasn’t true. This walk was endless; maybe it was miles and miles. She had no sense of time or distance; she never had. How long until the cookies are done, Mommy? Penny used to ask. About the time it would take you to watch an episode of Scooby-Doo, her mommy would say. That made a kind of sense. But here, the hours, the days, the minutes, the miles had no beginning and no end.

Bobo trailed behind, a white spot in the dark. His pale hand was a starfish on the bark of a tree; his face a moon around the bend. He wasn’t supposed to come, and he knew it, but Penny was no tattletale.

The moon was climbing high by the time they got where they were going, Penny growing sick from pain and fatigue.

The little church had been recently restored. It stood as white and stoic as the moon among the trees, with its black shutters and bright red door. It was a new thing in a place that was very, very old. The stones, which used to tilt at the heads of graves long overgrown and forgotten, had been righted. Where the names and dates of the departed had been worn away by time and weather, little plaques had been placed beside, naming the dead. Penny didn’t know how she knew this, but she did.

She could see them, all the little girls who had been buried here. Some of them played together, some of them sat and cried. Some of them were babies, and some were teenagers. One of them was on fire, and one of them was always wet, hair in filthy ringlets, skin blue.

Lately, there were three new ones, older, who lingered on the edge of it all, watching, sometimes laughing cruelly. One of those older girls never took her eyes off Penny.

“Where is she?” asked Momma. Her eyes darted around desperately. Penny knew that Momma couldn’t see what she could see. No one ever could.

“Over there,” said Penny.

Real Penny sat by the old oak tree. She was slouched and pale, her hands resting palms up on the ground, her head tilted to the side like a doll’s. She didn’t belong here anymore, but she stayed because of Momma, who couldn’t let her go. Penny knew this like she knew all the things she shouldn’t know. Things no one had ever told her or helped her to understand.

Momma knelt beside the tree and stared. “How is she?”

“She’s happy,” Penny lied. “She misses you, but she’s happy.”

The first time Momma brought Penny here, Penny was so stiff with fear that she could barely talk. Even when she was another girl, with another name, she’d had strange dreams and seen people who weren’t there. But nothing ever like this place.

“Tell her to let me go,” Real Penny had begged her the first time. “Please tell her I can’t stay here anymore. She won’t let me leave.”

But when Penny told her that, Momma had fallen to the ground weeping, and when she recovered herself, she took a hold of Penny and brought her face in very close, so close that Penny could see the deep lines, the clumps of mascara on her lashes.

“You’re a liar,” she said. Her breath was hot and rancid. “A sick little liar.”

And in the blankness of the old woman’s face, she saw such fear and sadness, that Penny just lied from that day forward. She made up stories about Real Penny, how she loved to garden, and rode horses every day, how she ate all the ice cream and pizza she wanted. How she had friends and was with her grandma. And Penny knew these were the things Momma wanted to hear, even though she didn’t know how she knew them. And as long as she told Momma things that made her smile, Penny knew she’d be okay.