Ink and Bone(82)

It was moldy, the dust tickling her nose, a sneeze threatening. She buried her face in her jacket, plugging her nose. If you hold your sneeze in, her brother had warned, you’ll explode your eyeballs. For the longest time, she’d believed him.

She waited and waited, until finally she got up painfully from her crouch and quietly moved toward the door. The hallway was empty, the stairs waiting to lead her down and out the door.

She didn’t know where Poppa was, or Bobo. But she knew she had to go. She didn’t have to listen to the voice. She only had to listen to her mommy, and she was sure that her mommy would tell her to get out of that house and run the way Poppa had told the clean man to go.

The door squeaked a little, but not too loudly. She crept down the hall, trying to be quiet in those boots. At the top of the stairs, she paused, listening. If she tried to tiptoe down the stairs, they’d creak. If he heard her, he’d trap her upstairs. She had to run and burst through the door, and then head straight for the gate and then keep running. She took a deep breath and got ready.

“What are you doing in here, girl?”

An electric shock of fear spun her around to see Poppa standing behind her.

“You think you’re the only one who can creep?” he asked, his smile mean.

She had no words. She stared at his sunken blue eyes, his white hair wild. His hands she knew were rough and hard. He was so skinny that his face looked like a skeleton and she could see all his bones. Behind the fear, another feeling vibrated. Hatred. She hated him. She wished he were dead, that he’d rot and the bugs would eat his flesh. She lifted her chin at him.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

She stepped down a single step and he reached for her arm, but she slunk away, down one more step. He inched slowly toward her, as if she were a bird he was afraid to startle.

He laughed a little. “Who said so?”

“Momma said I could leave.”

He frowned, his jaw working. He was missing a tooth on the side of his mouth, and it made his smile ghoulish. She’d never seen an adult with a missing tooth. Plenty of kids had big gaps in their smiles and that was normal. One of the doormen in her old building had a gold tooth. And she always stared at it when he smiled at her. Good Morning, Little Rose! he’d say when he saw her before school. Her name wasn’t Rose, but he made her wish it were.

“No, she didn’t,” he said.

“She said I couldn’t help her anymore,” she said. “She needs a new Penny.”

She moved down a few more steps, and he came slowly after her. His smile broadened. She could smell his scent, like grass and wood.

“Was Penny your daughter?” One more step.

“Shut up, girl,” he said. “Mind your business.” It sounded like “yer.”

“Did you hurt her?” she asked. “Like you hurt me.”

It wasn’t right what he had done, what he was still doing. Real Penny wanted him punished. The voices in the trees wanted that, too. He was a pain giver, someone who hurt and wasn’t sorry.

One more step down, the wood creaked loud and long. She was standing on her bad ankle, and the pain was so bad she was seeing those white stars again. The door stood open, a cold draft snaking up the stairs. She wobbled a little, knocking one of the picture frames from the wall. It fell and shattered on the stairs, littering the floor with broken glass.

“Did you touch her?” she said. “She told me you did. You weren’t a good daddy.”

His smile didn’t waver.

“She started a fire because she wanted to kill herself and you, and Momma for letting you hurt her. You’re a bad man,” she said. She took one more step down. “That’s how she died.”

Bobo’s wailing voice carried in from outside, sounding like the call of a dying animal. Just as Poppa lunged for her, she ran down the stairs. The old man lost his balance and came tumbling after her, crashing down with a series of grunts and then a hard landing. The walls rattled.

She burst through the door onto the porch. Bobo was moving up the road she needed to be on, staggering, his flashlight shining. As Poppa came roaring out the door, she ran back toward the barn, the opposite of the way she needed to go. She knew that there was a path that led back into the woods. She headed for that, her mind going blank with panic.

She ran and ran until she had to stop, a big stitch in her side, breathless, her leg screaming with pain. Sobbing, exhausted, she kept moving forward. Everything had gone quiet. No one was chasing her; the lights from the house behind her were no longer visible.

There was no way to know how long she walked, or why Poppa and Bobo didn’t come after her. Maybe Bobo told Poppa that Momma was hurt; maybe they went back to help her. She’d almost forgotten that it was snowing. It accumulated on the path, not much, just a dusting. She looked up and watched as all the zillion little crystal flakes fell. The next thing she knew she was on her knees, overcome. She bent down and started to cry.

One of the girls she’d known here had been the fastest girl in her school. But she wasn’t that girl. She was lost and afraid and she wanted to go home. She let herself rest on the cold, hard ground. Real Penny and Zoe weren’t afraid, she reminded herself. They wanted to go wherever it was they were going, to whatever was waiting after. Wherever it was, it had to be better than here. She heard the sound of her very own name whispered in the leaves around her. You are home, the voices said.