Me & Emma (12 page)

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I inch forward into a crawl and try to move toward the hole, but Emma’s holding my ankle so I can’t get very far.

“Three!” Just as she says three she’s down squatting again. This time she’s pushing the rocks in and away from the hole and before I can back up her arm is in and her fingers are gripping my arm! “Get out here on the double!”

Emma lets go of my ankle and I’m dragged by five fingers up to the beginning of the hole. She knows she has to let go for me to fit my way back on through, and I do, after taking a huge breath in for courage.

I cain’t see her face as I pull myself through but I can imagine it’s all twisted up in surprise. For someone who thinks a Billy is coming out from under the porch, a Caroline is quite a surprise, I bet.

“Good Lord in heaven,” she says out loud. When I look up from the dirt I see she’s gripping her housecoat even tighter at the neck.

“What in God’s name? Is that Libby Culver’s child ?” She asks this with her nose all crinkled up like I smell bad. Then she looks back under the porch. “Anyone else in there with you?”

Here’s the tricky thing: do I tell her yes and risk her hauling Emma out or do I lie and say I’m alone and let Emma go on by herself? Jeez-urn. What do I do?

“Answer me, girl!”

“Urn…” But before I can say anything else I see that Mrs. Godsey is looking back at the hole for herselfi She’s not going to wait for me to answer. Oh, Emma.

“It’s just me!” I try but I’m too late. Emma is at the edge of the hole looking out at the way things are going to have to go.

I feel colder than frog toes. Mrs. Godsey isn’t saying as much but

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I know she’s mean and mad and that’s not a great combination in a lady like Mrs. Godsey.

“I don’t know whether to box your ears myself or just let your momma do it,” she says. I cain’t bear to look at Emma, since I know she’s going to want to make a run for it and I don’t know if I can do that right about now. I’m tired and those little licks of peanut butter didn’t exactly quiet my stomach.

“Git on up to the house so I can call your momma,” Mrs. Godsey says.

“It’s okay, we’ll just head on back, Mrs. Godsey,” Emma says in a voice I don’t recognize.

“Oh, will we?” she says, trying to get her voice as high as Emma’s.

“Yes, ma’am, we’ll go right back on home now,” Emma says, “we

were just playing hide-and-seek.”

“Hide-and-seek?”

She’s never going to buy that.

“Yes, ma’am,” says the squeaky-high voice. “But it’s over now so we’re heading home. Sorry to bother you.”

“Where’s my dog’s bowl of food?” Mrs. Godsey is bending her fat body in half to try to see under the porch stairs.

“I don’t know,” Emma lies. And then she takes off running. Mrs. Godsey is staring after her when I run off, too, and we’re free again.

I thought I didn’t have it in me to run, but as soon as I start I forget how tired I am so we keep going until the Godsey farm is a distant memory. Emma finally stops but she’s panting so hard she might as well still be running.

“Oh, my gaw, I thought we were done for,” I say between gulps of air.

ME & EMMA

“Me. Too.” She’s breathing so hard she says those two words like they’re two separate sentences.

“Where do we go now? You know she’s going to call Momma and Richard,” I say.

Emma is breathing regular now and is looking out at the woods in the distance. She doesn’t say anything, she just points so that’s where we’re heading right now, into the woods. I’m not talking about the kind of woods where little baby deer nibble on moss and rabbits thump their feet while they talk to skunks. I’m talking about the kind of woods that make the sunniest day look black and the hottest day cool. These woods are the kind that take hold of your shoulders, spin you around, shove you in the direction you think you were going in and laugh when you don’t get there. Momma always warned us not to go into these woods and we pretty much listened to her. The trees aren’t any good for climbing, anyway, they’re tall with spindly branches that have lots of needles attached.

“I told you I’m not going back,” Emma says.

“I know, I know. Jeez, give me a break. I’m not going back, either, just so you know.”

“You want to, though, I can tell.”

Well, there isn’t anything I can say to that so we both stay quiet until we get to the edge of the woods.

“You think we’ll be okay?” she asks me without looking away

from the darkness ahead of us.

“We’ll be just fine,” I lie.

She knows I’m lying, though, so it isn’t much use.

“Let’s get on then.”

The first thing you notice when you go deep into the woods is how

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soft the ground is. The layers of pine needles are so deep it’s like we’re walking on a pillow.

“You figure this is what’s it’s like when they walk on the moon?”

Emma asks.

“I bet.”

“Tell the truth, do you think they’ll find us?”

Honest to God, I don’t know how to answer this question so I don’t say a word.

“Carrie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think they’ll find us?”

“I really don’t know.”

“What were you thinking just then?” she asks me, slowing down her springy steps so she can hear me better.

“I was thinking about Richard’s guns, if you want to know the God’s honest truth. I bet he comes looking for us with that shotgun he keeps in the garage.”

Now it’s Emma’s turn to be quiet.

“You asked what I was thinking about!”

“I know, I know,” she mumbles back through the bad mood that’s been building up in her. “Richard and his damn guns.”

“I can’t believe you just said that word!” Emma never swears. In fact, she always used to tell on me ill said “darn” because she thought that was a cussword.

“Who cares. So you think he’ll bring the shotgun?”

“I bet he will ‘cause Momma will be too busy looking for us to notice,” I tell her. “He loves that shotgun, that’s for sure.”

Emma is balancing on a tree trunk that’s cutting across the path we’re taking. ‘Course it isn’t a path so much as it’s just space between

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trees. But this tree looks like it fell a long time ago since it has moss growing over it like it’s being swallowed back tp into the ground.

“What I don’t get is why he cleans it all the time if it stays in the cabinet,” she says, jumping off the trunk and springing on the needles again.

I just shrug my shoulders ‘cause I don’t know the answer any better than she does.

“Why’d Momma marry him, anyway?” she asks me, crouching down and picking at a little mushroom growing on top of a moss-covred rock. She’s just filling the air up with words since she knows I have no earthly idea what Momma ever saw in that man.

I’ll tell you what,” Momma said to me, standing in front of the television blocking the Sunday morning cartoons, “you are too lazy to hit a lick at a snake.”

Deputy Dawg! My favorite!

“Caroline! You better get on up and get ready for church or your daddy’s going to beat you to a pulp.”

But Daddy didn’t look like he’s ready for anything of the sort. He was coming down the stairs smiling at Momma and rubbing his glasses with a tissue.

“You better do something about your daughter if you want a seat,” she said to him, heading for the kitchen so she could fiddle with something in the refrigerator.

“Caroline Clementine, listen to your momma and turn that off.” He came over with a tickly look in his eye. “Or you’ll have to stand up front with Bobby Bolker and help him light all the candles.”

That’s enough to get me to do just about anything. Bobby Bolker

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is worse than baked possum. He has white stuff caked in his ears and greasy hair that’s combed down and clammy skin that looks like it’s got dirt on it from when he was three and pretended anywhere he sat down was a sandbox.

“All right, all right,” I told Daddy, who was already pestering Momma for a kiss in the kitchen. She was swatting him off like he’s a hungry mosquito.

I practice remembering other things about Daddy. How he used to smile all the time when he was around Momma. And how he used to pretend to spank me when she told him to but really he’d smack the bed alongside me and I’d holler like it was really hurting and then he’d wink at me and leave me alone in my room to think about what I did to deserve the spanking. Momma never knew about it. It was our little secret.

Plus he smelled good. And Momma said he used to take me along on days the carpets were put in because I liked to do somersaults in the middle of the room when they were done, before furniture was put back in. I think I remember that but to tell you the truth, I’m not sure. To this day, though, I love the smell of new carpet.

Momma didn’t leave her room for a long time after Daddy died. I had to pull a chair from the living room into the kitchen so I could reach the cabinets and get food because she didn’t cook a speck during that time. Her door just stayed shut like old Mrs. Streng’s mouth stayed closed tight when she saw me in the country store in town picking penny candy out of the glass jars when Daddy gave me a quarter. And the food I could reach wasn’t the taste-good kind. It was cereal— which didn’t have milk to soften it up; flip-top cans of baked beans— which we ate cold; and a bag of sugar that I poured on the dry cereal 110

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but ended up eating straight from the bag after everything else was

gone. I didn’t care. I used to love sugar, but now I don’t like it one bit. Her room smelled like sweaty socks.

“Momma?” I always talked to her. Just because she didn’t talk to me didn’t mean she couldn’t hear me, I figured. “Momma, it’s me, Carrie.”

Her body looked so little under the covers. The only thing peeking out was the tippy-top of her head.

“Just wanted to say hey and show you the frog me and Emma caught.” I didn’t bring Buttercup into the bedroom, not knowing how Momma would feel about it and all, but if she said she wanted to see her I’d have run to get her from our bedroom.

It looked like I wouldn’t have to make that trip, though. Nothing from the bed. It was dark with the shades drawn and I don’t normally do this but I pulled the string to raise the shades on the window to let some light into that hole. The sun cut into the room like a flashlight beam and suddenly I could see tiny little pieces of dust floating in the air like they’re deciding where to land. Maybe that’s why Momma liked it dark—so she couldn’t see the dust.

I know! I’ll dust in here. Then she can keep the shades open.

“I’ll be right back, Momma,” I told her even though I guessed she wasn’t going anywhere.

I love the duster. It’s like having a pet bird, the feathers are so soft and fluffy. I went downstairs and fetched it from the kitchen closet and raced back upstairs before Momma had a chance to close the shade again.

“I’m back,” I said, closing the door quietly behind me. Even though Momma hadn’t come out of her room to check on us I didn’t think she’d much appreciate loud noises. Maybe they’d remind her of how

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Daddy died. So I’d been closing the doors by turning the handle first and letting it go once it’s lined up with the frame.

Problem was, the duster only pushed more flecks into the air and made it feel suffocating in there.

“Hey, how’d you like the window open for a spell?” I talked to her in the same voice she used to use with me when I felt sick and needed ginger ale and smashed-up banana to settle my tummy.

“I’m just going to open it a tad, get some spring air into the room. I wish you could see how pretty it is outside,” I told her. The breezes helped me out some and soon I had the bureau top all dusted offand the trunk that sits at the end of her and Daddy’s bed.

The night table was right up by her face and, even though her head was mostly covered I didn’t want to make her mad by interrupting her sleep. I thought maybe I’d skip it altogether. Then again, in a way, the night table’s the most important thing to get clean since it’s what she sees most. I tiptoed over to it, quiet as a mouse. Before I started I leaned over her to check that she was fast asleep. ]’ackpot. So I moved all the pill bottles off, and the picture of Daddy and me from when I was weensier than Emma is now, and the glass of half-drunk water and then I let the feather duster do the rest of the work. It erased all the round circles from where the bottles sat for I don’t know how long and soon you could see the real color of the wood like it was new from the store. I couldn’t believe my luck, Momma hadn’t made a peep. She’ll be so surprised when she sees it all fresh in here, I figured. After I put everything back the way she had it, I cleared away the Tab cans from the floor by the bed. Most of them have tons of cigarette butts floating in the brown sludge on the bottoms so I’m real careful not to drop any and then, bingo! I’m done.

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I tiptoed out of her room, leaving the shade and window open so

she could have a room that didn’t smell like the washroom at school. It took me two trips up and down the stairs to empty all the Tab cans into the trash, that’s how careful I was about not tipping them over.

When Reverend Cleary came over soon after his eyes got real big, he looked at me all sad and then patted me on the head and opened Momma’s door. I looked around and couldn’t figure out what made him look that way except the kitchen was pretty dirty and messy, worse than Momma’s room. Two things Momma never used to let it get. I felt so embarrassed I went in and tried to pick up some of the trash but it was too little too late. There was one pile I didn’t dare touch: it was a stack of old pans of food people brought over but bugs had claimed it and I was afraid to shoo them away. I didn’t dare talk to Emma about it ‘cause I was trying to be extra nice to her since she’s the one who saw Daddy die.

She won’t talk about it but I heard Momma talking to Mrs. God-sey on the day we buried Daddy and Momma said it was real bad. The men were after money, she said. I remember Mrs. Godsey saying that if they’d only known we were poor as church mice, Daddy’d be alive today. She said being poor’s what killed him after all, since I guess the robbers got fed up and mad when they looked all over and couldn’t find any cash. That’s when they shot him. Right in front of Emma. They figured she was too little to tell on them which I guess is pretty much true. She didn’t make a sound after Daddy died. Not that she talked a whole lot before, but she was learning her words and could even say “ma.” After that she hardly made a sound.