Burn Our Bodies Down(48)

There’s nothing left to say. I hang up. And I wait for a long time on the porch. For my heart to slow down. For everything to make sense. For this to hurt less. But that never happens.





seventeen





gram is in the kitchen when I go back inside, steam billowing around her face as she leans over the water boiling on the stove. She’s making dinner. Steamed potatoes and some kind of casserole. My stomach turns over at the thought of it.

I wind up outside the twins’ room without meaning to. Half of me sure I never want to see it again, and the other so desperate for any clue to my mother and her life here that I could climb into her bed and never move.

I open the door gingerly. The air’s gone dark, the sun too low to reach inside the room. That makes it easier to take my first step in. The floorboards groan, and I’m sure Gram hears it. I’m sure she knows where I am.

Carefully, I sit on Mom’s bed. She always sleeps on her left side, and in this room it would put her facing her sister. The Bible, Katherine’s Bible, is on Katherine’s bed. I reach across the gap and brush the cover with my fingers. Alive or dead? I can’t be sure. And Gram’s lied to the police over and over, lied as many times to me.

The thing is, I have to believe someone. I have to pick an answer and call it the truth, because sitting here, drowning in doubt—it’s not doing me any good. That was real grief in Gram, when she asked me to let it go. Real mourning for a real death. Even Connors seems to believe that Katherine’s dead.

He doesn’t think it’s the whole story, though, and I don’t think it is either. And there’s someone who can tell me more of it—Katherine. After all, Mom kept proof of her old life in her Bible. I wonder what Katherine hid in this one.

I ease it into my lap. When I open it, dust rises from the cover, and the spine nearly splits in half. It’s been well loved, this one. Nothing like Mom’s. I flip past the message from Gram and turn the pages one by one, their gilt edges slippery against my fingertips. There are scribbles in the margins of some pages just like there were in Mom’s. Gram must have made them take Bible study, or taught them herself.

I’m into Exodus when I see the first one. Tucked between two lines of Scripture, so small I can barely read it in this light. I fumble on the nightstand for the lamp switch, and when it flickers on, a handful of moths dart into the air, hovering before they land again on the lampshade.


do you think we can ask the romans to crucify mom next



Next to it, in different pen, there’s a tiny smiley face with Xs for eyes. I catch on a laugh, and an image slips into my head: Mom and Katherine, sitting on the porch, Gram pacing in front of them as she lectures them about Scripture. Katherine writing a note to her sister, and Mom reaching across when Gram’s not looking to draw her response.

A family, together and together.

There must be more. More like that, little conversations and pieces of the past that I can take for my own. I flip through more pages, another, another. Please, I think. Just a sentence. Just a phrase.

I get more than that. Nearly a third of the way through the book, scrawled in blue ink across passages about burning cities. Katherine is talking. To someone, to God, to herself, and I push them out of the way. Katherine is talking to me.


i remembered it today which is weird because i feel like if it was really that important it wouldn’t have been so hard to find but i was sitting there in bible study (hence the bible) and mom was going on and on and on and i was staring out the window at the apricot grove and i was so so hungry like i don’t know how they didn’t hear my stomach just going absolutely batshit but i was staring out at the apricot grove and i remembered me and her out there together

we must have been like four or five. or six? i’m not good with ages and stuff like we could talk and walk so how old is that

we were walking out to the grove and it would have been after church because we were wearing those dresses mom always used to put us in (and still does i mean look in the mirror) and she was ahead of me because she always goes first even though technically i’m older

she loves that grove and i get it i do because it’s not the house and that counts for something and mom never goes there anymore which counts for a whole lot more but i remember just feeling

i don’t know

she climbed this tree that’s the important part she climbed the tree and i went up after her and i remember asking her to come back down because we were walking and talking but we weren’t grown

but that didn’t matter to her and i don’t remember a lot about the in between just grabbing hold of the branches and trying to follow her and the look on her face when she pushed me down

that’s how i broke my arm

mom always said it was an accident on the farm which is technically true i guess but i’m looking at my sister and she’s looking at me and i can see that expression on her face like “get out of here, get out of this place that’s mine” and she’s not making it now but that’s because she’s in her bed reading valley of the dolls and i’m in mine “reading my bible and writing my thoughts about jesus because i have so many thoughts about jesus yes i do”

mom must know that’s how it happened she must know but i’m not supposed to and i don’t think mini is either but i wonder if she remembers and i shouldn’t ask her