Dreamland(64)
The kitchen was filled with smoke, fueled by even more smoke rising from the pan. The odor of burned and charred food made Beverly rush toward the stove, instinctively reaching for the handle. It was white-hot agony as her skin audibly sizzled. Beverly screamed and dropped it, the pan crashing back to the stovetop. Tearing through one of the open drawers, she sent dishrags flying while reaching for an oven mitt. Slipping it onto the hand with the cut finger and trying to ignore the pain, she removed the pan from the heat. In another life—one where she didn’t have to account for every morsel of food—she would have simply run the pan under the faucet to stop the smoke and then dumped the remains into the garbage, but instead she set the pan back on an unused burner. From the cupboards, she reached for a plate, hoping she could somehow salvage the chicken. She tried to find a set of tongs to grab the drumsticks, but it was tangled with other utensils, and when she tugged it from the drawer, spatulas joined the dishrags on the floor. With smoke still pouring from the pan, she had to peel away the drumsticks, each with one side black and the other raw, and place all of it on a plate. Only when she’d removed all the food did she bring the pan to the faucet to douse the smoke, the surface sizzling as water hit it.
It was then that she felt again the agony of her burned hand, the pain coming in sudden, relentless waves. Blisters were already forming on her palm and fingers. She moved her hand under the faucet, but the cold water hitting her skin amplified the pain, and she jerked it away. Despite the smoke, she could still smell the stench of the burned chicken, the odor almost sickening. There was no way that Tommie could eat any of it, which meant they had even less food to sustain them while they escaped. With one burned hand and the other with a gash in her finger, how would it even be possible to get anything done? It was yet another failure in a long line of failures that made her wonder how she’d ever allowed herself to believe she was fit to be a mother.
Beverly spent the next hours doing nothing. She barely remembered drifting to the front porch, numb to everything but the dense blue fog that seemed to poison every thought. Her hand and finger throbbed, but, lost in a growing sense of melancholy, she barely felt either of those things.
I need to see Tommie was all she could think.
Only then would things be different; only then would the blue fog go away. Dimly, she was aware that he’d become her lifeline, and she needed to see his serious little face as he stepped off the bus. She wanted to smooth his cowlick and tell him that she loved him. Rising, she peeked through the window toward the clock on the wall and knew the bus had to be coming soon. She left the porch and walked toward the road, uninterested in black SUVs or men in pickup trucks or farmworkers who might be watching her. There was only one important thing.
She took a seat on the stump, pain from the burn forcing its way to the forefront of her consciousness. It occurred to her that she should perhaps wrap her hand or try to find some medicinal cream, but the thought of missing Tommie’s arrival filled her with anxiety.
The clouds had continued to thicken, gray thunderheads forming. Leaves in the trees murmured with the changing weather. On a fencepost across the road, a cardinal seemed to be watching her.
Beverly stared up the road, waiting. The pain rose and sank and rose again, making her wince. She opened her hand, allowing the breeze to caress it, but that made it feel even worse, so she closed it again. The cardinal flew away, growing smaller in the distance. Beverly could feel the dark-blue fog all around her, wrapping her in its tendrils.
The bus didn’t appear, and she continued to wait, then waited some more. Eventually, farmworkers loaded into the beds of pickup trucks, and the trucks left the fields and turned onto the road, vanishing from sight. The sound of distant thunder rolled across the fields. But there was still no bus.
She returned to the porch to check the time through the front windows. The bus was either half an hour or an hour late, but she couldn’t remember which. She walked back to the stump, curiosity slowly giving way to irritation and then to concern as more time passed. When fear finally took root, the blue fog began to clear, though it revealed no answers, only more questions.
Where was the bus?
Where was her son?
Beverly felt short of breath as she realized the obvious. She walked, then ran, toward the house and burst through the door. She tried not to think the worst but couldn’t help herself; she needed to figure out what to do. Did the bus break down, or did Tommie miss the bus? Was he still at the school? She’d have to walk or hopefully catch a ride. She suddenly wished there was a neighbor nearby, a sweet old lady who brought over a pie to welcome them when they first arrived, but no one had come….
If the bus had broken down, she had to know. If Tommie was still at the school, she had to go get him. She tripped on a pile of detritus from the cupboards and went sprawling, her knee coming down hard on the linoleum floor, but she barely felt it as she scrambled upright again. She thought about the disguise she needed to wear, even though putting it on would take time she didn’t have.
She limped up the steps to her room and froze in the doorway. Her room was trashed, clothes strewn all over the floor, closet doors open, even the bed linens on the floor. She blinked, trying to make sense of it.
Had she done this? Yesterday? When she was searching the house? She could remember cleaning out under the sink and the pantry and the closet and the back porch, but by the time she went upstairs, she’d been in such a frenzy that her memories were fuzzy. She’d cleared out the linen closet, but had she done this, as well? She supposed it was possible, but she didn’t recall, and if she hadn’t…