Before We Were Yours(23)

When I come up again, she’s fighting like crazy, kicking and screaming and growling. Her arms and legs flail as the policeman holds her away from his body.

The guys in the motorboat throw their heads back and laugh like drunks at a pool-hall fight.

It takes three of them to get my sister in the boat and two to hold her down once she’s there. When they pull up to the Arcadia, they’ve got Camellia pinned on the floor. They’re muddy and mad because she smells like the bottom of an outhouse, and she’s gotten it on everybody.

The officer on the Arcadia stands himself in the doorway, crossing his arms and leaning like he’s comfortable there. “You get your clothes changed real nice now…out here where I can see. We’re not gonna have anybody else running off.”

I’m not about to get dressed in front of him, so I take care of Gabion, Lark, and Fern first. Finally, I just put my dress on over my nighty, even though it’s way too hot for that.

The policeman laughs. “All right, if that’s the way you want it. Now you come on real sweet and quiet, and we’ll take you to see your mama and daddy.”

I do what he says and follow him from the shanty, pulling the door closed behind us. I can’t swallow, or breathe, or think.

“Good thing the other four weren’t so tough,” one of the policemen says. He has Camellia stuffed to the floor of the motorboat with her arms pinned up behind her. “This one’s a wildcat.”

“Smells more like a wild hog,” the other officer in the boat jokes. He helps us settle in, lifting Gabion and then Fern and then Lark in and telling them to sit on the floor. Camellia gives me a wicked look when I do the same.

She thinks this is my fault, that I should’ve fought back and stopped it somehow.

Maybe I should’ve.

“She’ll like these, all right,” one of the men hollers as the motor kicks up and pushes us away from the Arcadia. He puts his big hand on Lark’s head, and she ducks away, crawling up against me. Fern does the same. Only Gabion doesn’t know enough to be scared.

“She likes the blonds, don’t she?” The officer who came on the Arcadia laughs. “Not sure what she’ll do with li’l stinky there.” He wags his chin at Camellia, and she hocks up a wad of spit and sends it at him. He lifts a hand like he’ll swat her, but then he just laughs and wipes the mess on his trousers.

“To the Dawson Warehouse lot again?” the man running the motor asks.

“Last I heard.”

I don’t know how long we’re on the water. We travel across the river, then toward the channel where the Wolf pours into the Mississippi. When we round the tip of Mud Island, Memphis comes into full view. The big buildings stretch toward the sky like monsters waiting to swallow us whole. I think about jumping out into the water. I think about making a run for it. I think about fighting. I watch boats pass by—tugs, and paddle-wheelers, and fishing boats, and barges. Even a shantyboat. I think about yelling and waving my arms and calling for help.

But who would help us?

These men are the police.

Are they taking us to jail?

A hand settles on my shoulder, like someone’s been reading my thoughts. It stays there until we finally dock. Up the hill, I can see more buildings.

“You be real good now, and keep your brother and sisters out of trouble,” the officer from the Arcadia whispers against my ear. Then he tells the other men to hold the wildcat back a minute, till she’s seen the four of us.

We march up the boardwalk in a line, me carrying Gabion on my hip. The clang-clang-swish of machines and the smell of hot tar catch me, and I lose the scents of the river. We cross a street, and I hear a woman singing, a man yelling, a hammer striking metal. The loose fluff from cotton bales floats in the air like snow.

In a scrappy bush at the edge of a parking lot, a cardinal sings his sharp song. Weep, weep, weep.

There’s a car nearby. A big car. A man in a uniform gets out and walks around to the back door and opens it so a woman can heave her way out of the seat. She stands looking at us, squinting against the sun. She’s not a young woman or an old woman but someplace in between. She’s thick and heavy, her body settling in rolls inside her flowered dress. Her hair is short. Some of it’s gray, and some of it’s brown.

Her face makes me think of a heron bird. That’s the way she watches while the policemen line us up. Her gray eyes move quick and jerky, tracking everything that’s going on. “There should be five,” she says.

“The other’s coming, Miss Tann,” one officer says. “She was a shade more trouble. Tried to get away in the river.”

Her tongue clicks against her teeth, tsk, tsk, tsk. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?” She fingers Fern’s chin and leans down until they’re almost nose to nose. “You wouldn’t be a bad girl, would you?”

Fern’s blue eyes go wide, and she shakes her head.

“What a lovely little bunch of foundlings,” the woman—Miss Tann—says. “Five precious blonds with curls. How perfect.” She claps her hands and folds them under her chin. Her eyes crinkle at the corners, and her mouth presses tight, so that she’s smiling but her lips are gone.

“Only four.” The officer nods toward Camellia, who’s coming up from the river with a policeman holding her by the scruff of the neck. I don’t know what they’ve told her, but she’s not fighting anymore.