Before We Were Yours(36)

I pull the covers over Fern’s head, hope she won’t wake up and move just now. It’s still pretty dim, that same faint light coming through the window. Maybe he won’t notice Fern’s not on her cot.

When I turn my head, I can barely see him from the edge of my eye. He’s big, taller and fatter than Briny by a lot, but that’s all I can make out. He’s a shadow, standing there. He doesn’t move or say anything. He just stands and looks.

My nose runs from all the crying, but I don’t wipe it or sniffle. I don’t want him to know I’m awake. Why is he here?

Camellia rolls over in her bed.

No, I think. Ssshhhh. Is she looking at him? Can he see whether her eyes are open?

He moves into the room. Moves, then stops, then moves, then stops. He bends over Lark’s cot, touches her pillow. He stumbles a little and bumps the wood frame.

I watch through the narrow slits of my eyes. He comes to my cot next, looks down for a minute. The pillow rustles near my head. He touches it twice, real light.

Then he stops at the other cots and finally leaves and closes the door.

I let out the breath I’ve been holding and suck in another one and catch the smell of peppermint. When I throw off the covers and wake Fern, there’re two little white candies on the pillow. They make me think of Briny right off. When Briny hustles money at a pool hall or works on a showboat that’s docked up, he always comes back to the Arcadia with a roll of Beech-Nut Luster-Mints in his pocket. They’re the best kind. Briny plays little riddle games with us, and if we get the answers right, we get a candy. If there’s two redbirds up a tree and one on the ground and three bluebirds in a bush and four on the ground and a big ol’ crow on the fence and an owl in the barn stall, how many birds on the ground?

The older you are, the tougher the questions get. The tougher the questions get, the better the Beech-Nut candies taste.

The peppermint smell makes me want to run to the door and look out and see if Briny’s here. But these peppermints are another kind. They don’t feel right in my fist when I scoop them up and carry Fern to her bed.

By the door, Camellia pops hers into her mouth and munches it.

I think about leaving the peppermints on the little kids’ pillows, but instead, I decide it’d be better to pick them up. If the workers come, I’m afraid we might get in trouble for having them.

“Stealer!” Camellia talks for the first time since the bath line last night. She’s sitting up in her bed, the shoulder of a too-big nighty sagging halfway down her arm. After the baths, one of the workers rooted through a pile and handed us these to wear. “He gave us each a candy. You can’t have ’em all. That ain’t fair.”

“Ssshhh!” She’s so loud, I half expect the door to swing open and we’ll all be in a fix. “I’m saving them for everybody for later.”

“You’re stealin’.”

“Am not.” Sure enough, Camellia’s back to herself today, but like usual in the morning, she’s in a mood. She don’t wake up easy, even with peppermints. Most times, I’d square off with her, but right now, I’m too tired for it. “I’m saving them till later, I said. I don’t want us to get in trouble.”

My sister’s bony shoulders sag. “We already got trouble.” Her black hair falls forward in mats, like a horse’s tail. “What’re we gonna do, Rill?”

“We’re gonna be good so’s the people will take us to Briny. You can’t try to run away anymore, Camellia. You can’t fight them, okay? If we make them mad, they won’t take us.”

She stares hard at me, her brown eyes squinted into slits so that she looks like the Chinamen who wash river town laundry in big, boiling kettles along the bank. “You think they’ll take us, for sure? Today?”

“If we’re good.” I hope it’s not a lie, but maybe it is.

“Why’d they bring us here?” The question chokes her. “Why didn’t they just leave us be?”

My mind scrambles around, trying to figure it out. I need to explain it to myself as much as to Camellia. “I think it’s a mistake. They must’ve figured Briny wasn’t comin’ back to look after us. But Briny’ll tell them soon’s he finds out that we’re gone. He’ll tell them this is all somebody’s big mistake, and he’ll take us home.”

“Today, though?” Her chin quivers, and she pushes her bottom lip up hard, bolts it the way she does when she’s about to pick a fight with a boy.

“I bet today. I bet today for sure.”

She sniffs and wipes snot with her arm. “I ain’t lettin’ them women get me in that bathtub again, Rill. I ain’t.”

“What’d they do to you, Camellia?”

“Nothin’.” Her chin pokes up. “They just ain’t gettin’ me in there again, that’s all.” She stretches a hand toward me, opens it. “If you ain’t gonna give them candies to everybody, let me have ’em. I’m starved.”

“We’ll save the rest for later….If we get to go outside where the kids were yesterday, I’ll pull them out then.”

“You said Briny was gonna come later.”

“I don’t know when. I just know he will.”

She screws her lips to one side like she’s not believing it for one minute, then turns herself toward the door. “Maybe that man can help us get away. The one who brung us the peppermints. He’s our friend.”