Me & Emma (30 page)

I put the forks she’d been handing me back down and quickly put

my hand back in my pocket, where it’s been staying till it heals. “Nothing, ma’am,” I lie. “Had an accident, is all.” “Let me see that,” she says. “It’s fine, ma’am. Really.”

She cocks her head to the side and says, “All right then. You okay to put these forks out?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “I sure am.”

I gulp back the spit that’s been collecting in my cheeks once the smell of home cooking reached my nose.

“Now, go wash up for supper, girls. And, Carrie, take care of that hand[ That cut looks like it’ll loosen up real easy. Don’t git it too wet.”

I tried boiling the last of our eggs the other day ‘cause Momma once said eggs that’re old got only one use: being boiled. I tried holding the pot of boiling water real steady on my way to carrying it over to the sink for emptying but I’m not as strong as I thought I was so when it got heavy it started dropping and I had to catch hold of it on the side

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opposite the handle and gave myself a nasty burn. Momma always said I’s clumsy.

“Orla Mae ?” Mrs. Bickett says, settling into her chair at the kitchen table. “Will you say grace tonight?”

They unfold wash towels across their laps so I do the same.

“God bless this food, our friends—” she squeezes my hand across the table when she says this “—and our family,” I reckon she’s squeezing her momma when she says that, “and our home. Thank you for our blessings one and all. Amen.”

“Amen,” Mrs. Bickett says, her head still bowed.

“Amen,” I mutter, just to fit in.

“Pass the butter fat, will you?” Mrs. Bickett asks Orla Mae. “My, I guess some of us are mighty hungry!” she says, looking at me. I already have a mouthful of the roast chicken that’s so hot it’s scalding the inside of my mouth. But I don’t care. I never tasted chicken so good.

Orla Mae’s still buttering her first roll when I reach for my second, popping the whole thing into my mouth while I scoop corn onto my fork with the other hand.

I don’t know why Mrs. Bickett keeps staring at me.

“How’s that Mr. Tyler working out, girls?” she asks, after looking back down to her plate and delicately fixing a bite that’s half the size of the ones I been taking.

“He’s fine,” Orla Mae answers.

“Orla Mae, do not talk with yer mouth open,” her mother tells her. “You were not raised by wolves.”

When she looks over to correct Orla Mae’s eating, I grab a biscuit and drop it onto the towel across my lap. When I have another free second, I’ll stick it into the pocket in my sweater for Emma. By the

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end of the meal I have three biscuits stored away. Emma’s stomach’s not so big as mine so three’ll do her just fine. As for me, I’m stuffed fatter than a Christmas goose.

We clear away all the dishes, and when Mrs. Bickett scrapes offthe plates I steal a drumstick, the only one not eaten, for Emma. It’s a might greasy and will surely make my sweater not reusable, but that’s okay. A big sister has to look out for a baby sister.

“Thank you for supper, ma’am,” I say to Mrs. Bickett, after Orla Mae and me finish drying the pots and pans she hands over.

“You’re welcome, Carrie,” she says. “You can come on back anyme

you feel the urge, honey.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Tell your mother howdy for me!” she calls after me. “Yes, ma’am,” | holler back. “Bye, Orla Mae.” “Bye, smarty-pants.”

My cheeks flush red but it goes away when I look at her smiling face and realize she’s not laughing at me.

The way home feels much shorter on a full belly. I even skip some, knowing how happy Emma will be with the dinner [ brought her.

But there’s a weird light coming from the front window. Like a candle, only not. Other times when I’ve come home in the dark the

full window’s lit up, but tonight only half is.

The closer I get, the weirder I feel.

“Momma?” I say. I don’t call out too loud ‘cause I don’t know what’s waiting for me inside.

When I open the door I cain’t believe my eyes. Everything’s a mess, almost like it was when we got here in the first beginning.

“Oh, my dear Lord in heaven.” I say it just like Momma does when she walks into something me and Emma’ve done.

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A chair is laying on its side. There’s broken glass crunching under my shoes. And now I see why the light looked strange coming through the window—the lamp’s been knocked over, its shade with it so it looks like it’s taking a nap on the floor. Crossing the room to put it right, since I figure that’s as good a place as any to start cleaning up, I have to step over a pillow from the couch and pieces of the

china plates Gammy gave us to keep in the family.

“Momma?” I say it a littler louder this time.

The one picture we have—in a store-bought frame and everything—is lying facedown on the ground. It’s a picture of Momma and me on the beach when I was little bitty. Daddy’s the one who took it so he’s not in the picture, which I guess is a good thing since if he was we’d never have it setting out like we’ve done. Richard wouldn’t stand for it any.

I lean down to pick up the lamp and that’s when I see her. “Momma!”

The blood’s spreading out from her head like a spilled coffee cup. One arm is bent like it’s been pulled out of the socket. Her house-dress—the one she’s worn so long the roses have faded to where they look pink, not red, like they started out—is pulled up almost to her underpants.

“Momma?” I whisper to her, bending down over her head, trying to keep my tears from falling straight into her bloody mouth.

She moves her head slightly, so the one eye that’s not swollen shut

can fix on me. Her lips are moving over her teeth.

“Momma?”

“Git,” she says, softer than a whisper, “out.” She takes in another breath but not too deep ‘cause it looks like it hurts to breathe. “Now.”

“I’m not leaving you, Momma,” I say, trying, trying so hard, really

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really trying not to cry. So I shake my head no to make my point better.

“Hurry,” she whispers.

The shouting hits me before my brain can figure out what the words all mean.

“Trying to provide for my family, such as it is,” he hollers on his way into the front room. He must not have heard me come in. “Tha’s whut I’m tryin’ to do. Piece of shit.”

He pauses to gulp some beer and then kicks whatever’s slowing him down. That’s when I make my move toward the back of the room so I can slide out the kitchen door without him seeing me.

“You seen those prices in thar,” he calls over to Momma, like she’s able to carry on a conversation, “place’s beggin’ to be robbed, y’ask me! What the hell…”

Good thing he’s drunk since it takes him a minute to figure out where the noise I made hopping over broken dishes came from. I bet he’s given up looking for its source by the time I hit the woods that separate our house from Mr. Wilson’s. My breaths pant in my own ears. Oh, Lord. Please let me get Momma help ‘fore he kills her altogether. Please, Lord. I’ll do anything. I’ll never bicker with Emma again. I’ll keep a good house like Momma wishes I’d do. I’ll mind

Richard, even. Just please, Lord, let me get to Mr. Wilson.

Pow!

The sound hits me and nearly knocks me off of my feet.

The sound I know pretty well by now. Ain’t no other sound like it. A shot’s been fired. From inside our house.

I’ve seen pictures of the guy in circuses who walks on a wire high up in the air—like he’s suspended. That’s how I’m standing right this

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very minute. I don’t know whether to follow the wire I’m walking on to Mr. Wilson’s or to go back home to see what happened.

When I squeeze my eyes shut I see my momma lying out on the floor, the brightness of the lamp turning her whole face red with

blood. There’s my answer.

I’m comin’, Momma.

I take the porch stairs two by two and this time I don’t care who

hears me come in the house.

“Momma ?”

I hop over the broken glass, china and other things littered across

the floor to where she’s still laying.

“Momma ?”

Her head turns toward me so it ain’t her’s been killed. I stand up and turn, looking slowly around the room. It’s hard to see across the couch so I pick up the lamp and hold it like a lantern Laura Ingalls Wilder might’ve carried. The cord’s not that long but at least I can

throw some light over to the other side of the room.

And there he is. Richard.

Laid out and looking like he doesn’t mind the glass and china cutting into his back. His eyes are open like he’s studying the ceiling, so at first I’m afraid to go over that way…maybe it’s a trap and he’s playing dead so he can grab me when I get closer. I’m staying as far away as I can from his arms, spread out like he’s making a snow angel. And that’s when I see the red circle in his chest, getting wider and wider with blood.

He’s not moving.

I get closer still and see his chest is still, not moving up and down, letting air in and out. Richard’s the one’s been shot.

And for a hair of a second, less than a hair of a second—more like

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a halfa hair ofa second—I see my daddy, laid out, bleeding onto the linoleum floor back at the old house. I don’t know how that can be since Emma was the one who really saw him…I must’ve pictured it

so many times in my brain that I’ve taken over her memory. Emma.

“Emma!” I call out, hurrying over to the stairs, flying up them to our bedroom. She’s not here. She’s not here?

“Emma!” I shout for her but silence is the only answer I get back.

“Mr. Wilson! Help!” Like he could even hear me call him for help. Stupid me.

As fast as I ran in, I run out…down the dark path to the blacktop…down the blacktop to his pathway that seems steeper now that I’m trying my hardest to get to him. The rocks play tricks on my feet, being places I never knew they were. Just as I’m getting up from a fall I hear footsteps crunching on the gravel that’s closer to his front steps. Yep. It’s him, all right. I can tell by the hunched way he walks. I’m about to yell out for him when the moonlight catches hold of something shiny in his hand. A gun?

Oh. My. Lord.

The fallen pine branches breaking under my feet and my breathing’re the only things making any sound in the woods; the moon, the only thing lighted up. The scrub bushes and saplings I didn’t remember being here in the daylight slow me down but not by much. I don’t care if I get jabbed by any of them anymore.

The Bicketts’ house is absorbing all the blackness from the night, so it’s hard to see where the steps end and where the door begins but I find them both and soon I’m banging on the front door.

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‘aroline Caroline, look at me.” Momma’s swollen mouth is moving but the words don’t appear to be coming from that direction. She’s holding a towel wet with melting ice inside, up to her forehead.

The blood’s all cleaned away by now,

“Caroline ?”

“She’s tired,” another voice, a man’s voice, floats overhead. “Let her rest.”

“Caroline, can you hear me? What are you thinking about?”

The cottonwood tree was made for climbing, with fat, barky branches spaced out like a staircase, one on top of another, so you could climb almost to the top before it got scary.

“Can you see it? Can you see the house from there?” Emma called out to me from below.

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“Not yet,” I answered back. “Let me get up a little higher.” “Hurry up, I’m only two down from you.” She sounded annoyed ‘cause I was taking so long to pull myself up. I should have let her go first, she’s the faster tree climber. But I’m the oldest, so when I called it she knew I’d win.

“I can see it!” And I could. The cottonwood tree stood taller than the other trees around Hamilton’s farm so there was nothing blocking our view. “Come on! Git up here.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, still annoyed but breathless to catch up to me. “You should’re let me climb up first. Whoa, you’re right. You can see it from here.”

“What’d I tell you?”

Hamilton’s farm was a good distance from our house, the house with the chipping shutters on Murray Mill Road. But when you’re as high as a bird flies it doesn’t matter so much, you can see anything from up here.

Trouble is, you can also look down and see how far you have to get back down. I tried not to look down but it was impossible: I liked to scare myself sometimes and I reckon that’s what I was doing.

“How’re we ever gonna get out of this tree without killing ourselves ?”

“Who cares? Look! There’s the Godseys’!”

I didn’t think to check out what all lay on the other side of the trunk I was hugging like my life depended on it, which in that case it did. Sure enough, there was the Godsey house.

“I want to stay up here forever.”

“Caroline, answer me.” Momma’s tired voice is getting louder even though she’s not an arm’s length away from me. “Y’hear? Answer me.”

ME & EMMA

“What?”

“Listen to her, ‘what?’ Like she hadn’t heard us talking at her for hours,” Momma says to some invisible body that’s behind me.

“Now, now, Mrs. Parker, let’s go easy here,” a voice says. I don’t have the strength to turn around to see who the voice belongs to I’m so tired—but it’s a voice I’ve heard before. “It’s been a long day. For everyone.”

“I know it,” Momma says. “I’m going ‘bout as easy as I can. Caroline?” Her voice is fake soft, just for show. “Tell your momma what happened, all right? Just tell your momma.”

I watch her cracked lips move along with the words coming out. “Mrs. Parker, now, let us talk to her fo’ a while, how ‘bout,” the voice says. “You must be tired after all. Why don’t you go git yourself a cup of coffee and we’ll talk to Caroline.”

“It’s my husband’s been killed, it’s my daughter I’ll be talking to,” she says, her lips facing up to the man. “Now, Caroline Parker, you’re gonna talk to me, y’hear? Talk to me. Tell me.”