If You Find Me(29)
“It’s not mean. It’s love. If the mama kept bringin them food and they stayed in their comfy little nest, they’d never be brave enough to learn how to fly or to venture out into the world.”
Jenessa takes in a ragged breath, thinkin it over. I play with her hair, waitin’.
“The baby birds are just like us. Right, Carey?”
“How do you mean?”
“Brave, like us. Our mama isn’t here. Does that mean we’re flyin’, too?”
I give her a squeeze. She doesn’t know it, but she’s my wings.
“You bet we are, baby. In our own way, we’re flyin’, too.”
I wonder if the chipped water jug is still there, and the kettle. I think of the key in the hollow hickory. What if someone else finds it?
I hate Mama. HATE her. What kind of mother forgets the age of her child? What kind of mother can’t even keep a birthday straight?
“Hey, you.”
My father stands above me, blocking the sun. He nudges my cowboy boot with his work boot.
“I’m sorry, kiddo. I don’t know why she would’ve lied to you, unless it was to keep you two disguised.”
“Or she forgot.” I don’t look up. “Jenessa’s still six, right?”
“Yes. She got that right.”
I hug my knees to my chest, my arms aching, I hold on so tight. We share the silence for a bit—six minutes, according to my wristwatch—and then he fixes to go back into the building, stopping after a few paces to turn back to me.
“Don’t you go anywhere, you hear? I don’t know if you’re thinking about running, but your sister needs you here.”
I look up at him, my face swollen and tear-stained.
“I need you here. And Melissa would skin me alive if I came home without you. She’s pretty attached to you two, if you don’t already know it. She’s expecting me to bring both her girls home.”
I swallow my emotions in an audible gulp. He walks back over, nudges my foot again.
“Are we clear?”
I nod, as mute as Jenessa. Then I watch his feet walk away, although it still feels like he’s walking toward me in all the ways that count.
I wonder, in the darkest puzzle piece of my heart, if he’d say those words if he knew, really knew, about the white-star night.
Jenessa would never tell. It had sucked the words right out of her.
I carry the secret close as skin or breath or pee. It rode in the truck with me as surely as those three garbage bags. Even with hours and miles between us, the truth hunkers down fat as a tick tucked into the moistest, darkest place.
Quick as the rabbits I used to shoot for breakfast, I sprint across the asphalt to the bushes and let my breakfast fly.
“You have a bird’s stomach,” Mama says, none too pleased. “You have to get those nerves under control, girl. Why you so scared? No one here but your Mama.”
She was barely there, the last year, and still not there, when she was. And that’s not counting the times she was there and a person wished with all her might she wasn’t.
[page]7
It’s been three weeks since we arrived at our father’s farm, and yet it feels like a year in some ways.
Looking at Jenessa, you’d never know she was the same little girl. Her body, kindling thin and all angles upon arrival, is now pinker and rounder, with the start of little dents Melissa calls “dimples” in her cheeks and at the back of her knees. Her huge, haunted eyes are as sweet as they’ve always been, but the edges of worry have crumbled away, not all of it, but most. Those eyes sparkle brightest when she’s with Shorty, and there’s many a time we sit and watch them play, her company melting years off the old hound, “undoing the gray,” as my father likes to joke.
Last week, Melissa took Ness into town for a haircut, and my sister came back with her blond curls brushing her shoulders, framing rosy apple cheeks. In her new shirts, jeans, chinos, dresses, shoes, slippers, and nightgowns, she looks like a girl, a normal little girl, not the forlorn soul huddling over a tin cup of never-ending beans.
I haven’t fared as well, with so much on my mind. I haven’t gained more than five pounds, if I’m lucky. It’s the bird nerves, like Mama said.
At breakfast, I eat my bacon but pick at the eggs. I’m snug-warm in a pale blue terry-cloth bathrobe, a gift from Melissa. And yet, I’m keening fierce for the campfire, for the early-morning bird chatter launching the sun into orbit as I shiver and poke the sleeping coals awake, the morning not just a vision but a feeling, a scent, a taste that enters your pores and coasts through your veins until it fires up your very soul.
Melissa interrupts my daydreaming, her back to me as she pours herself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the kitchen counter.
“I think it’s your turn, Carey. We need to get you some new clothes. Not just for school but to keep you warm and comfortable, too. Winter’s coming. At the least, you need a new coat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It’s impossible to say no to Melissa (especially when she’s talking up a new winter coat!), but not because she’s bossy. More because her intentions are always in the right places.
Melissa waits until my seat belt clicks before she turns the key and proceeds down the driveway. She waves to my father, who’s chopping firewood, and to Nessa and Shorty, who are playing fetch out front.