Run(39)

“But,” Mrs. Dickinson continued, “friends do help each other out, don’t they? And we ain’t had heat almost all winter. I’m just pointing out that they could help us, since y’all are so close now. A hundred bucks or so could go a long way. And that probably ain’t nothing to y’all, Agnes. With the store doing well.”

I just stood there, not knowing what to do or say. Nobody had ever asked me for money before. Not even in this roundabout way. Where we lived, we grew up being taught never to ask for things like that. Never to put people on the spot. You waited until it was offered, and even then, you were supposed to say no at least once. I wasn’t sure why. That was just the way it was. It was a rule everyone followed.

Everyone but Bo’s mama, apparently.

“You oughta go to bed,” Bo told her. “You seem tired.”

That’s when it shifted. When the ledge Mrs. Dickinson had been teetering on crumbled.

“Are you telling me what to do?” she yelled.

Bo, who’d moved to stand next to me, flinched. “No. I’m just trying to help, Mama.”

“Bullshit! Don’t you act like you’re taking care of me. Why’re you trying to get rid of me, huh? You embarrassed?”

“Mama—”

“Because I’m the one who oughta be embarrassed,” she hissed. “You think I ain’t heard? I know you been whoring around town, Bo. I ain’t stupid. I’m the one who oughta be embarrassed of my slut of a daughter.”

Bo’s hand closed around mine. “Let’s go, Agnes.”

“Wait a minute,” Mrs. Dickinson said. “Is that why she’s here? You f*cking her, too? Gone through all the men in town, so you gotta start sleeping with girls, too?”

“Come on,” Bo said to me. She tugged my hand and started leading me away, down a hallway I hadn’t even noticed before.

“Don’t you walk away from me!”

There was a loud thud and the sound of glass shattering behind me.

Close behind me.

Bo yanked me harder, and we started running toward the trailer’s back door.

“You leave, you better not come back tonight! You hear me, you little dyke?” Mrs. Dickinson hollered just as Bo threw open the back door and we tumbled out, down another set of cement stairs, with Utah at our heels.

Bo didn’t even bother shutting the door behind us, so we could still hear her mother yelling as we ran, fast as we could, into the woods.

Our shoes slapped against the frozen ground and the December wind stung our faces as we bolted through the woods. We didn’t stop until we reached the clearing, the place where Bo had come across me lost in the grass the day my parents drove Gracie to college. So much had changed for Bo and me since then that it felt like a lifetime had passed, not just a few months.

Bo let go of my hand and I slumped against a tree, panting to catch my breath. It was light out, but the sky was overcast and gray. Still, I could see Bo standing a few feet away, unmoving, arms wrapped around herself while Utah sniffed at the ground around us.

We were quiet for a long time, just standing there, shivering. I felt like I ought to say something, but I wasn’t sure what. I had lots of questions, lots of concerns about Bo and her mom, but it felt wrong to ask. Still, the quiet was getting to me. So I said the first thing—the only thing—I could think of.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

She hesitated, and I wondered if maybe she’d get mad at me for trying to start our game at a time like this. But after a second she said, “You first.”

“Um … Sometimes—not too often, but sometimes—I trip people with my cane on purpose, then act like it was an accident, like I didn’t see them, so they can’t get mad at me.”

She chuckled. Just a little. Short and quiet.

“I did it to Isaac Porter last week.”

Her laugh was a little louder this time.

“In church.”

She really cracked up then. It only lasted a second, but her giggle filled me with relief. And I told myself it was gonna be okay. As long as I could make her laugh, make her smile, everything would be okay.

“You’re going to hell,” she teased.

“What? No. Don’t you know? Poor little blind girls never go to hell. We’re all angels.”

“Oh, that’s right. I must’ve forgot.” She walked over to the tree and leaned against the large trunk, her shoulder brushing my arm. “Guess it’s my turn now, huh?”

I nodded.

“I … have been in foster care before.”

I turned to look at her, surprised. “Really? When?”

“Summer before eighth grade. Mama got arrested. Possession, I think. Don’t really remember. But social workers came and got me in the middle of the night. I begged them to take me to my dad, but they said they didn’t know where he was at. I ain’t sure how hard they really looked, but … they took me to this house about an hour from here … I was only there a couple weeks, until she got out on bail, but … it was awful.”

I felt the dull ache of dread in my stomach, and I groped for her hand, squeezed it. It was bare and felt cold, even through my glove.

“There were a lotta kids there. Some, like me, were only there a few days. Some had been there for years. There were a couple babies, too. They cried all the time. And the older kids were always fighting. I saw one of them pull a knife on the other. But the foster parents didn’t do nothing about it. They wanted nothing to do with us. Well, except the dad. He was always walking in on the girls while we were changing or …”