Florida(13)
* * *
—
In the morning, the older girl took out her sister’s braids and the little one’s hair fluffed out into a beautiful dark cloud.
They took the only knife, a steak knife, and whittled points into the ends of sticks, and they went into the chilly shallow water to fish, because they’d have to find food soon. But the water was so nice and the fish were so little that they abandoned the spears and swam all morning.
They painted their fingernails with polish they found in Melanie’s medicine cabinet. Then they painted their toenails, then tattoos of hearts on their biceps, which made their skin itch until they scratched the hearts off.
They found a candy bar in a nightstand, then a dirty magazine under Smokey Joe’s bed. A woman was licking a pearl off another woman’s pink private skin.
Yuck, the older sister said, and threw the magazine, but the younger sister made the noises the mother made when she was in her bedroom with her boyfriends. Then she started crying. At first, she only shook her head when her sister asked her why. Finally she said, I miss the dog.
Nobody could miss that dog, the older sister thought.
How could Melanie leave him? the little sister said.
Then the older sister thought, Oh.
Let’s go on a dog hunt, she said.
They took the steak knife, binoculars, an old whiskey bottle with the last of their boiled water, and a giant panama hat they’d found in a closet, which the older sister wore because she burned to blisters all the time. They took the rest of the crackers and sprayed themselves with the last of Melanie’s Skin So Soft bug spray.
The little sister was happy again. It was early afternoon. There was no wind, and the heat of the clearing cooled when they went into the forest. They sang the dog’s name, walking. The older sister nervously scanned the branches for monkeys.
The pond held a great gray heron, unmoving, like a sculpture. There were cypress knees, like stalagmites, in the shallows.
On the far side of the pond, there was a small wooden rowboat turned upside down. It was a flaking blue. The older sister kicked it, wondering how to drag it through the forest toward the cove and the dock. Then she wondered how she would make sure, once they’d launched it, that they floated toward land and not into the deep-blue sea. Maybe it was best just to wait for the lady Melanie was supposed to send.
When she looked up, her little sister had vanished. Her heart dropped out of her body. She called her sister’s name, then screamed it over and over.
She heard a laugh from below, and her sister slid out from under a lip of rock that made a shallow invisible cave. That was so mean, the older sister yelled, and the little sister shrugged and said, Sorry, though she wasn’t.
There could’ve been snakes there, the older sister said.
But there weren’t, the little one said.
They walked all the way across the island and found a yellow sand beach on the other side. Their dresses were soaked with sweat when they got back to the pond and filled the whiskey bottle up with green water.
Back in the fishing camp, the dog was waiting on the steps. The girls poured out unboiled water for him, and the dog lapped it up, watching them with his angry black-button eyes. Even though the little sister sang softly to him in her voice that their mother always said would knock the angels out of heaven, the dog wouldn’t come near, and backed into the forest again.
* * *
—
The girls’ clothes were so dirty that they put on Smokey Joe’s last two clean T-shirts. They swept the path behind the girls like ball gowns when they ran, flashes of red and blue through the green-gold forest.
The little sister carried her bucket all the way back from the pond without complaining.
They caught three crabs under the dock with their hands and boiled them, and the flesh tasted like butter, and the water they boiled the crabs in they drank like soup, and afterward they felt full for a little while.
Then the rest of the food was gone. The bananas on the tree, Smokey Joe had said, were not ripe yet and would make them sick if they tried to eat them. The older sister had heard of people eating bugs and there were plenty of cockroaches everywhere, but the thought of the crunch under her teeth made her feel ill.
They ate cherry ChapStick. They opened an unlabeled can they found in the back of the cabinet, mandarin oranges. They ate strange red berries from the bushes, though the mother had always said never to do that.
I’m hungry, the little sister said.
Once upon a time, the big sister said, there was a boy and a girl whose family had no food at all. You could see their ribs. The mother had a boyfriend who didn’t like the kids. One day, the boyfriend told the mother that they had to get rid of the kids and that he was going to take them for a hike and leave them way out in the woods. The girl had heard the adults talking that night, and in the morning, she filled her pockets with cereal.
They weren’t starving if they had cereal, the little sister said.
The girl filled her pockets with blue pebbles from the fish tank. And when the boyfriend led them out into the woods she dropped the pebbles one by one by the side of the path so that when he vanished they could find their way back. The boy and the girl followed the stones home, and the mother was so happy to see them. But the boyfriend grew angry. The next day, he took them out again, but he’d sewn up their pockets so they couldn’t leave a trail. He left them, and they wandered and wandered and found a cave to hide in for the night. The next morning they smelled woodsmoke and followed it to find a little cabin out in the woods, made of cookies and candy. So they ran over and started taking bites out of the house because they hadn’t eaten in a long time. A lady came out. She was nice to them, and she kept giving them cake and mini pizzas.