Before We Were Yours(57)

Has Briny been here?

As soon as I think it, I know how wrong I am. I know how wrong this is. Something terrible happened while I was gone. “What’s the matter?” I drop down to the porch, too scared to care about my dress. Little splinters poke my legs. “Camellia, what happened?”

Her lips hang open but don’t make a sound. A tear squeezes from her eye and cuts a pink river through the coal dust.

“Tell me.” I lean down to see her better, but she turns and stares the other way. Her hand is knotted in a fist between us. I take it in mine, pry open her fingers to see what she’s holding, and the minute I do, all the cookies and ice cream from the party come up in my throat. Dirty, round peppermints are stuck so tight to my sister’s palm, they’re melted into her skin.

I close my eyes and shake my head and try not to know, but I do. My mind drags me kicking and screaming to Mrs. Murphy’s cellar, into the dark corner behind the stairs where ash coats the coal bin and the boiler furnace. I see thin, strong arms fighting, legs thrashing around. I see a big hand closing over a screaming mouth, the dirty, oily fingers squeezing so hard they leave four round bruises.

I want to run in the house, yell, and scream. I want to smack Camellia for being stubborn and going over by the azaleas when I told her not to. I want to grab her and hold her close and make everything better. I don’t know exactly what Riggs did to her, but I know it’s bad. I also know that, if we tell, he’ll make my sister fall out of a tree and hit her head. Maybe he’ll even do the same to me. Then who’ll take care of the babies? Who’ll wait for Gabion to come back?

I grab my sister’s hand, slap away the peppermints, and let them bounce onto the porch and fall into the flower bed, where they disappear under a trumpet vine.

She doesn’t fight when I pull her to her feet. “Come on. If they see you looking like this when the dinner bell rings, they’ll think you been fighting, and you’ll get the closet.”

I drag her down the porch like a tow sack of wheat and haul her to the rain barrel and, little by little, pour the water over her skin and wash her off, best I can.

“You tell them you fell off the swing.” Even though I’m holding her face in my hands, she won’t look at me. “You hear? Anybody asks about the skinned places, you say you fell off the swing and that’s all.”

Over on the steps, Fern and Lark and Stevie wait for us, quiet as mice. “Y’all stay put…and leave Camellia be,” I tell them. “She ain’t feelin’ good.”

“Yer tummy hurt?” Fern sidles closer, and so does Lark, and Camellia pushes them away hard. Lark looks at me, confused. She’s usually the only one Camellia does like.

“Let her alone, I said.”

“I see London. I see France!” one of the big boys hollers from halfway across the yard. They always start wandering in about now, so they can be first in the supper line. I don’t know why. We all get the same thing, every single meal.

“You hush up, Danny Boy,” I hiss, and pull Camellia’s dress down over her knees. The workers call him Danny Boy on account of he’s Irish. Red hair and a thousand freckles, just like James had. He marshals their pack now that James is gone. But Danny Boy is mean to the core.

He wanders closer, props his hands on the rope that’s holding up his too-big britches. “Well, ain’t you fine and fancy? Guess even them purdy clothes couldn’t getcha no new mama and daddy.”

“We don’t need a mama and daddy. We got one.”

“Who’d want ya, anyhow?” He catches sight of Camellia’s scratched-up arm and leg, pushes in closer to see. “What happened to her? Looks like she’s been fightin’.”

I step up to Danny Boy. If I have to get the closet to protect my sister, I will. “She fell down and bunged herself around a little. That’s all. You got anything to say about it?”

The dinner bell rings, and we line up before anything else can happen.

Turns out that evening it’s not me getting the closet I need to worry about; it’s Camellia. She’s quiet through supper and doesn’t eat her food, but when it’s time for the bath, she comes alive and throws a wild-eyed fit. She screams like an animal and scratches and kicks and leaves long, red fingernail marks on Mrs. Pulnik’s arm.

It takes three workers to hold Camellia down and drag her to the bathroom. By then, Mrs. Pulnik has me by the hair too. “You are not to speak. Not one wordt, or you will see the consequence.” Fern, Lark, and Stevie cling to each other against the wall.

In the bathroom, Camellia roars and squeals. Water splashes. A bottle shatters. Scrub brushes clatter. The door shakes in its frame.

“Riggs!” Mrs. Pulnik yells down the stairs. “Come with my rope. Bring my rope for the closet!”

And just like that, Camellia’s gone. The last thing I see of her is a worker hauling her off down the hall, caterpillar-wrapped in a bedsheet so she can’t kick or hit.

That night, we’re just three. I don’t take out our book to read it, and my baby sisters don’t beg for more of the story. Lark and Fern and me curl up in one cot together, and I hum one of Queenie’s old songs until my sisters fall asleep. Finally, I drift away too.

Sometime before sunup, Fern wets the bed for the first time since she was two and a half. I don’t even holler at her for it. I just clean it up the best I can and open the basement window the little crack it’ll go. I roll up the wet blanket and Fern’s drawers and stick them under the bushes where hopefully nobody will find them. I’ll sneak through the azaleas later and spread them out so they’ll dry before tonight.