Lies We Bury(52)

There’s barely room for the four of us! Mama said in her high voice. Twin mumbled But it could protect us and Mama just said It’s time for geography lessons.

“Girls.” Mama Rosemary stands in the doorway without a door. “I need you to choose one toy to take with you. Can you do that, please?”

When we were five years old Twin asked Mama Rosemary How come we call that doorway between this room and the bed room “a doorway”? There’s no door. The only real door is the front door above the stairs that the man always uses and we’re not allowed to use. So why is that a doorway? She looked at her and said Be quiet please.

Both me and Twin get up and go to our toy crate. Mama calls it a toy box but it’s not a box. There’s no lid. We each pick out a toy and hand it to Mama. I choose Petey the Penguin my Christmas gift two years ago.

“Thank you, girls. Now hurry up and get dressed for bed,” she says.

“But whyyyy?” Twin asks.

“Because I said so, please.”

I run and put on the long-sleeve nightgown Mama made from one of Mama Nora’s old T-shirts. The nightstand is moved against the wall because Mama kicked it. Twin comes in the bed room and tugs the nightgown off my shoulder. “I was gonna wear that!” she whisper-yells. It sounds like a whisper but her face is yelling.

“Well, I got here first,” I whisper back. I push her hand off me and finish buttoning up to my neck. The nightgown hangs all the way down to my knees and I feel like I’m in a big bag of cozy.

Something heavy knocks my head and I see white spots. I look around for a brick but only see the words book that Mama Rosemary makes us memorize sometimes. I touch where it hurts and my skin goes bump bump like the clock’s little hand. Twin stands away from me her face all angry.

“Mama Rosemary,” I yell. “Twin threw the . . . the dictionary at me again!”

“Hey.” Mama Rosemary pokes her head in. “I need you two to behave. Now and after we leave here if we want to stay together. Do you want that?”

“Yes. But I didn’t do anything!” I say.

“Then hush now.” Mama Rosemary disappears.

Twin only makes a face like she might cry. Her eyes get all big then they snatch around the room looking for something. She goes to the top drawer of the nightstand but Mama hasn’t made us all nightgowns yet. Twin pulls out a regular shirt and loose shorts that we have to tie with a rope that Mama Rosemary taught us how to braid. She fiddles with the rope then climbs into bed. I climb in beside her careful not to touch the brown stain that peeks through a hole in the sheet.

Footsteps come from overhead near what I know is the front door. The real doorway. Then the door song begins and I realize that’s what Lily was humming earlier—the up and down sounds of buttons being pushed from outside and upstairs. Mushed together they sound like a song. Beep beep beep beep beep-beep. I hum it back to myself. Hum hum hum hum hum-hum. Twin kicks me beneath the covers and my head goes bump bump again.

Voices come from the front room. Mama Rosemary says something in a low tone.

“We’ll get to that. I want to see them,” the man says.

The man breathes through his mouth when he steps into the fake doorway. He smells like the whiskey Mama says makes people not themselves. I don’t understand that. And he smells like the time Mama Rosemary forgot about our toast and the bread burned in the pan and smoke filled the front room. Both rooms smelled awful for days.

My heart beats in my chest like a scared bunny and I shut my eyes tight.

“Sleeping already?” he says.

He never comes into our room. When we do inspections it’s always in the other room.

When he comes to visit we stay asleep or pretending to be in bed while he and Mama Rosemary pull down the Murphy in the other room. The Murphy squeaks and makes groaning sounds like when I jump on the mattress. Then the man leaves. Why is the man not leaving? Why is he standing over us? He’s closest to me and my stomach squeezes. My heart is so loud I think it might wake Lily who’s lying between me and Twin.

Footsteps move. The man walks to the other side of the bed. To stand over Twin. I open my eyes just a little.

His face is covered in gray hairs—like old people I’ve seen on the television. His head hair is cut like Barbie’s boyfriend Ken and his eyes are brown like mine. He reaches out and pulls the blanket from Twin’s shoulder. I stop breathing. His fingers hover over Twin’s arm uncovered in her T-shirt and move down her skin like he’s painting. She shivers and we don’t have to be real twins for me to know what she’s feeling. I look at his face again then my stomach twists and I feel sick.

“Ready?” Mama Rosemary’s voice comes from nearby and it sounds mean. Not her voice she uses with us. I shut my eyes again.

No one talks. No one moves. Then the footsteps walk back slowly toward the doorway. The Murphy creaks down. And it begins to squeak.





Twenty-Two

My phone vibrates, clatters, dances from the surface of the moving box I’m still using as an end table and falls to the floor with a bang. I move from my kitchen, coffee in hand, and scoop up my phone just in time to swipe right. “Pauline, hi.”

“Claire? We need you down in Northwest as soon as possible.”

Instinctively, I look through the blinds of my window to my car. The windshield is free of any threatening notes. “Sure, I can do that. What happened?”