The Almost Sisters(97)
Cody said, “Put it in the side. Then scrape it up and down on the inside, like brushing her teeth. Except on her cheek.”
“I heard you explain it not three minutes ago,” I told him. I did what he said, inserting the stick and scrubbing it up and down with some pressure. “How long?”
“Forty-five seconds, and I got a timer going on my watch,” he said. I kept scraping, and Wattie made affirmative-sounding noises, side-eyeing Birchie encouragingly with her mouth stretched wide into the most plastic smile I’d ever seen. I realized she was boiling with it, too, this deep purple desire to make it all stop. Yet here we both were, helpless to stop helping. After what felt like twenty years, Cody said, “That’d about do it.”
“There, now, that was nothing,” Wattie said as I took the stick out and showed it to Birchie. It was bloodless and not in the least upsetting. It was only a wet looking stick.
“You see there? That’s all. Wattie did it.” Threats of labs and hair pullings had rolled off her, but I remembered how Wattie would use recipes and the regular beats of her real life to call her home. Now I used them against her, saying, “Wattie wants y’all to plant the pumpkins today, and if we don’t, you are going to have store-bought pumpkins on your porch come October. Is that what you want?”
That got her mouth open, but only to berate me. “Leia Birch Briggs, I would sooner have no pumpkins at all! Did you know last year half those ones in the Pig were not even from America?”
“Well, do the stick, and let’s go plant. June won’t last forever,” I said, though no matter how this all came out, Birchie would not be here to pick those pumpkins come October.
Birchie eyed the stick, mistrustful, but Wattie gave me a little nod, almost imperceptible, encouraging me.
“It isn’t ladylike,” Birchie said. At least she was talking to me now, the pinhole gone. “Look, it has her spittle on it. Her human spittle, and there you stand holding it in the parlor.”
“It gets put right away,” I said. I muscled Cody aside and picked up the little bag with the plastic zippered top. I held it where she could see, then I put the stick in and zippered it shut. “You see? It gets sealed, even. Let’s do this. No fun in the garden until this is done!”
It was my first try at Unbrookable Mother. I tried to sound like Rachel telling Lavender to clear the breakfast dishes. I tried to sound like Birchie herself had sounded on all my childhood summers, telling me I had to put away my coloring supplies before I could go out and play on the square. It felt wrong to be using it on one of the very women who had taught it to me, but I found I did own this voice after all. To my mingled rage and sorrow, it worked. It unmothered her, turning her into the child.
“Goodness, no need to make such a fuss,” Birchie said, sulky, and she opened up her mouth like a baby bird.
I got out of Cody’s way, super fast, before she forgot that she’d consented. He stepped in, smart enough to keep his own mouth shut for a minute. I lurked behind him making hyper-encouraging eyebrows as Cody tore open a new box and made a big show of putting on clean gloves. Wattie leaned in, whispering a soothing list of all the seeds they needed to get into the ground now—sweet potatoes and lady peas and melons—while Cody took the sample. It was such a long minute that Wattie was reciting their winter planting schedule before he finished. But then the stick was out and he was popping it into the bag, and thanks to us nobody was stabbed or broken. Thanks to us the state had everything they needed to ruin us.
Frank pantomimed a fast Whew, and I smiled back, but wry. This was not a victory I could celebrate.
“Now, was that so hard?” Cody said, holding up the plastic bag for her to see.
She put a hand to her chest, distaste registering in her turned-down lips and lowering eyebrows.
“Really?” I said quietly behind him. “Because when she slaps that out of your hand, I am going to laugh my ass off. And good luck getting another sample. Can’t wait to hear you call Ms. Tackrey and explain—”
But he was already setting the bag in the bottom of his briefcase, saying, “Okay, okay, okay,” over me until I stopped talking. “I was only showing her,” which was crap. He’d been trying to bait her. He was the same bully he’d been in childhood. Instead of growing out of his worst traits, he’d only gotten big enough to do real damage with them.
Birchie dropped her eyes, hands folded, back in demure mode.
“Now what?” I asked as Cody fished in his shirt pocket for a pen to fill out the label on the sticker.
“Now I box it up and drop it off straight to the lab,” he said, checking the dusty briefcase and then feeling in his back pockets for a pen that wasn’t there.
I think, if I had a plan at all, it happened then. Not even a plan. More like a noticing, a logical click of understanding much too fast to think in words: there was a little bag full of cells sitting in the dusty bottom of his briefcase. Cells I’d helped gather, though they could put Birchie into prison. There was another little bag full of cells, anonymous, identical, in my hand. Cells that wouldn’t help the cops or Regina Tackrey at all.
“I have one,” Frank said, holding out his own pen. Cody turned toward the fireplace to take it, blocking Frank’s view of the briefcase. He was turned away for a second, maybe two. Not enough time, if I had thought about it. But I didn’t think. My body had been ready, waiting, filled with pent-up purple action this whole time. My body moved, setting my little bag down, picking his up. Boom and done.