Before We Were Yours(56)

I worm away and watch out the window as long as I can until the white house with its big columns is gone.

Nobody in the car says a word. Fern crawls back into my lap and we all sit still as stones.

On the way back to Mrs. Murphy’s, I look for the river. A little dream finds its way into my mind while Fern hangs on around my neck, and Lark rests against my knee, and Stevie huddles between my feet, his fingers squeezed over the buckles on my shoes. I pretend that when we pass by the river the Arcadia will be there, and Briny will see the car.

In my daydream, he runs up the banks and makes the driver stop. Briny opens the door and pulls us out, all of us, even Stevie. When Mrs. Pulnik tries to get in his way, he slugs her in the nose, just like he would if someone tried to steal from him in a pool hall. Briny kidnaps us the way Huck Finn’s daddy does in the story, but Huck’s daddy was a bad man, and Briny is good.

He goes back to the house and gets Gabion away from Miss Tann and carries us to a far-off place.

But my dream isn’t true. The river comes and goes. There’s no sign of the Arcadia, and soon enough, the shadow of Mrs. Murphy’s house covers the car. Inside my skin, I’m empty and cold, like the Indian caves where Briny took us camping one time when we hiked up over the bluffs. There were bones in the caves. Dead bones of people who are gone. There are dead bones in me.

Rill Foss can’t breathe in this place. She doesn’t live here. Only May Weathers does. Rill Foss lives down on the river. She’s the princess of Kingdom Arcadia.

It’s when we’re marching up Mrs. Murphy’s sidewalk that I think about Camellia. I feel guilty for imagining that Briny rescued us from the car, that he took us away without Camellia.

I’m scared of what she’ll say when I tell her we haven’t got Gabion with us—that I hope he’s coming later on. Camellia will say I should’ve fought harder, that I should’ve bit and scratched and screamed the way she would have. Maybe that’s right. Maybe I deserve to hear it. Could be I’m just too chicken, but I don’t want to get the closet. I don’t want them to put my little sisters in there either.

Dread steals over me when we get inside. It’s the kind of dread that comes on a swolled-up river when the spring melt happens and you see an ice floe headed straight for the boat. Sometimes, the ice is so big that you know there’s no chance of pushing it away with a boathook. It’s about to hit and hit hard, and if the edge slices the hull, you’re sunk.

It’s all I can do not to shake off the babies and turn around and run out Mrs. Murphy’s door before it closes behind us. The house stinks of mold, and bathroom smells, and Mrs. Murphy’s perfume and whiskey. The smells grab me by the throat, and I can’t breathe, and I’m glad when we’re told to go outside because the kids haven’t come in for supper yet.

“And the clothes are not to be soiledt!” Mrs. Pulnik hollers after us.

I look for Camellia in the places where I told her to stay, the safe places. She’s not at any of them. The big boys don’t answer when I ask where she is. They just shrug and go on playing a game of conkers with the buckeyes they pick by the back fence.

Camellia’s not digging in the dirt, or swinging on the swings, or playing house in the shade under the trees. All the other kids are here, but not Camellia.

For the second time in one day, my heart feels like it’ll bust out of my chest. What if they’ve taken her away? What if she threw a fit after we left, and she got herself in trouble?

“Camellia!” I holler, and then listen, but there are only the voices of the other kids. My sister doesn’t answer. “Camellia!”

I’m headed for the side of the house, for the azalea bushes, when I see her. She’s sitting on the corner of the porch with her legs pulled tight to her chest and her face buried. Her black hair and her skin are gray with dirt. It looks like she’s been in a scrape with somebody while I was gone. There’re scratches on her arm, and she’s got a skinned knee.

Maybe that’s why the big boys wouldn’t tell me where she was. Probably they’re the ones she tangled with.

I leave the little kids by the persimmons and tell them to stay right there and not to wander, and I go up the stairs and walk down the long porch to Camellia. My stiff shoes echo against the wood, clack, clack, clack, but my sister never moves.

“Camellia?” Sitting would get my dress dirty, so I squat down beside her. Maybe she’s sleeping. “Camellia? I brought you something. It’s in my pocket. Let’s go out on the hill where nobody can see, and I’ll give it to you.”

She doesn’t answer. I touch her hair, and she jerks away. A little gray cloud puffs out as my hand slides toward her shoulder. It smells like ashes but not like a fireplace exactly. I know the smell, except I can’t place it. “What’d you get yourself into while we were gone?”

I touch her again, and she ducks her shoulder in but lifts her head. She’s got a bump on her lip, and there are four round bruises on her chin. Her eyes are puffy and red, like she’s been crying, but it’s the look inside them that bothers me most. It’s like I’m staring through a window into an empty room. There’s nothing inside but the dark.

The smell comes off her again, and all of a sudden, I know it. Coal ash. Whenever we tied up the Arcadia near railroad tracks, we’d gather up coal that’d fallen off the trains. Heating and cooking. Free for the taking, Briny always said.