A Lily in the Light(4)

“So it doesn’t just sit there?” Lily pulled wrinkled clothes from Esme’s dance bag. A pile of tights collected at her feet, Lily’s pet snakes.

Esme pointed to the black leotards. “Clean.” She pointed to the pile of tights and leg warmers. “Dirty.”

Lily gathered the pile and walked it to the hamper, dropping it into the wicker basket. Esme was surprised Lily didn’t press her hands together over her head and sing her snake charmer song, hoping Esme’s tights would lift themselves out of the hamper like cobras.

“It can move?” Lily asked again, still fixated on the orange thing.

Even though Esme liked this game, she had a test the next day, and her leg was aching. She balanced an ice pack on her knee, a heating pad on her shoulder, and an open textbook across her lap. Her stomach rumbled. And it was her night to cook dinner. Why, why couldn’t her mother just go to church once a week on Sundays like everyone else?

“Yes, but it just sits there when I see it.”

“But sometimes it can move, right?” Lily put the clean clothes back in Esme’s dance bag.

“Sure,” Esme mumbled. She skimmed her textbook for words in bold. The Emancipation Proclamation stared back at her. Jim Crow, Union, Confederate States, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee. Her shoulder throbbed. The ice pack was melting. Water trickled over the side of her knee and onto the bed. The wet spot spread.

“Maybe it can float away and come back when it wants to. Maybe it’s a fish named Marley, and it has a tail you can’t see.”

Lily crawled onto the bed. Dark hair fell over her face in tangles, and her weight shifted the ice pack until it fell. She stumbled into Esme’s textbook. The words blurred, and she lost her page.

“Lily, I have to study.”

“After?”

“Yes, I’ll tell you after.” Esme sighed.

“No, study after you tell me.” Red spots rose on Lily’s face. Her fists balled. Lily’s heat pressed against Esme’s thigh.

“No,” Esme insisted, lifting Lily from the bed to the floor. “Later—go play. Or go get your book and read next to me, but you have to shut up for a little while. No talking.”

Lily kicked the side of the bed once, twice.

“Stop it,” Esme warned, but on the third kick, Lily stubbed her toe against the metal bed leg. She shrieked.

“I warned you.” Esme pressed her eyes closed.

“Oh my God, shut up!” Madeline burst through the bedroom door, glasses balanced on her head, PSAT book thrown over her arm. Her face was still flushed from running, pink dusted from mile after mile with her long black ponytail chasing behind her like a lost shadow. Even her cheekbones looked pushed back and chiseled from wind against her face. Unstoppable. People told her she looked like Jessica Biel from 7th Heaven, the pretty one, which seemed especially unfair because Madeline didn’t care about being pretty. At least I’m the graceful one, Esme thought as Madeline thumped across the room.

“I can’t concentrate!” Madeline whined. Lily screamed louder.

“What do you want me to do?” Esme yelled over Lily, face flushing. “I’m studying too.”

Madeline pointed at Lily, still wailing and holding her toe. “Well, now no one is!” Madeline pulled Lily by the arm into the living room and slammed the door, leaving herself and Esme alone inside the room. Esme forced herself back to her book. She was breathing faster. States in rebellion. The whole house felt like a state in rebellion on the nights Cerise went to stupid church.

Madeline flopped onto the bed, stomach down, her shirt riding up to uncover her lower back, the same place she wanted a tattoo of a root chakra one day. “Why the hell can’t Mom deal with her? Why is this our problem?”

Lily quieted. She knocked on the door. Esme softened at the sound of Lily’s whimpering and got up to let her in. “Maybe she’s over it,” she said.

“Doubtful,” Madeline mumbled, attention drifting back to the text in front of her. When Esme opened the door, Lily was watery eyed and holding two books. She’d coiled her hair around her thumb and was sucking it again, which Cerise said she wasn’t supposed to do anymore, but Esme didn’t say anything.

“You can come back in, but you have to be quiet.”

Lily nodded, but her eyes narrowed toward Madeline.

“No baby stuff.” Madeline glared back.

The whimpering stopped. Esme settled back on the bed and adjusted her heating pad, the ice pack, and her textbook back into place. A page turned. Lily inched closer to Madeline’s bed, running her hands over the purple comforter, pulling herself forward slowly. Static popped on Lily’s striped skirt and her green butterfly tights. For a moment, there was silence. And then Madeline screamed.

“She spit on me!” Madeline wiped the slick spot on her face. She sprang off the bed and after Lily. A flash of Lily’s blue striped skirt disappeared into the living room. Esme held back a giggle.

“What is wrong with you? You’re an animal!” Madeline shrieked. “The devil child!”

Lily screamed, a sonic, angry blast, full of everything she didn’t have words for yet. If Esme went out there, she could pick Lily up, turn her away from Madeline. She could make Lily stop crying, tell her Madeline was being a bitch, set her up with books or something to color, but she didn’t feel like getting up.