The Time of the Fireflies

by Kimberley Griffiths Little

  Through a window, I spotted cypress trees beyond the overgrown, bramble-choked yard. Slowly, I trudged upstairs, passing bedrooms and a hall bathroom. It was the old plantation house, but different. Smaller, and now abandoned.

  “Nobody’s lived here for a long time.” My voice echoed in the empty rooms.

  I shook my head and tried to piece together the history of the house and my family. Time periods of this very house. Well, not this exact house, but the house that used to stand here. The plantation house before the fire. “This is the house that was rebuilt after the fire,” I said out loud. “The house my mamma grew up in. The one Grandma Kat and my grandfather abandoned when they moved away after Gwen drowned.”

  I rubbed at my hot, scratchy eyes, and then raced downstairs and out the front door.

  A setting sun burned red along the bayou. Fresh air never tasted so good on my raw throat. I brushed off the grit and cobwebs on my shorts and shirt, staring at the rickety front porch, the dormer windows, and the broken weathervane stuck in the middle of the roof.

  The biggest question I still had was about Miss Anna. I’d seen her at twelve years old just like me in 1912. I’d seen a proper gray-haired woman holding a newborn baby while her daughter lay lifeless on the bed. And, finally, I’d seen an old woman in a wheelchair, stricken and crippled. She’d survived the death of her daughter and the death of her husband.

  But had Miss Anna Normand Prevost survived the fire?

  My sandals crunched along the dirt path as I peeked behind me every few steps. I wanted to see the beautiful, manicured plantation house of a hundred years ago. The trimmed lawns and rose garden, the stone paths and wraparound porch with rocking chairs and potted ferns. I wanted to see Mister Lance digging holes while Miss Anna gave him bossy directions. I wanted to see T-Paul’s happy grin, and the ladies’ early-century garden-party hats, gloves pulled up their slender arms.

  Where had they all gone? Well, that was a silly question! They were all dead and buried. But where? Did they ever find the buried silver from the Civil War? Did Uncle Edgar ever marry Miss Sally? What sort of life did T-Paul have — or Dulcie and Miz Beatrice?

  I wondered if my mamma would tell me. She didn’t like talking about many things these days, especially not Bayou Bridge.

  Dusk was settling and I tried to walk faster. Relief flooded my chest when I saw the lightning bugs dancing along the cattails. I swore they recognized me when they circled me inside their light.

  Basking in the warm glow, I stepped across the planks.

  I’d visited 1912 several times. Then again sometime at the end of World War II when Daphne died during childbirth. Then I’d shot ahead to Gwen’s wake, more than twenty years ago. Finally, I’d seen the early 1970s, when my grandmother got married.

  I was halfway across the bridge, right in the middle of the river — when the fireflies abruptly disappeared — and I crashed into time once more. The strong wooden planks vanished beneath my feet, and I plunged past quivery pilings, shooting deep into the murky water. I screamed and my mouth filled with water. Instantly, I was choking, drowning. Water burned my lungs so bad I thought I’d throw up. A moment later, I was throwing up, retching my guts up, spinning and whirling in the thick, soupy, dark river.

  I couldn’t see a thing. Was I upside down? Where was the sky? Where were the trees?

  I was gonna die all over again.

  Some part of my brain was still working because the idea came to me that I needed to stop thrashing around. I tried not to panic but tilted my head back, hoping I could see the surface. My hair floated around me in slow motion. The bayou water was dark and sinister, but I could see a pale moon rising above a watery tree line. I tried to swim, pulling my arms to rise to the surface, but they were so heavy. Like hundred-pound weights had been strapped to me. A monster trying to pull me to the bottom.

  The water was cold, and I had no air left. Dropping like a rock hadn’t given me a chance to catch any extra breath.

  Behind my eyes, pain flashed like a knife slicing into my head.

  Then something touched me, pulled at my hands, gripped and tugged at my arms. I panicked, a scream rising in my throat. There were monsters in the bayou! An alligator! I was dead for sure. Why was I so stupid to tempt fate?

  All of a sudden, the monster pulling at me became human arms. Strong pale hands tugging and yanking and lifting. I swore my own arms were about to snap right out of the socket. Moments later, I was plunked down on the edge of the broken bridge. Water poured off me in puddles.

  My lungs screamed in pain. My head hurt like I’d been pulverized in a grinder. My face throbbed and burned. Blood dripped down my shirt, and that’s when I think I fainted.

  Next thing I knew I was lying on some kind of bed, my clothes still drenched. Sirens wailed all around me, but there was so much water sloshing inside my skull I couldn’t hear proper.

  A woman’s voice came out of the shadows. “Lie still, honey; we’re going to get you to the hospital and patch you right up.”

  “Who’re you?” I croaked.

  “You’re in an ambulance,” she told me as she patted my hand. “I’m one of the paramedics and you’re safe. Just close your eyes. I put some drops in your eyes so you don’t get infection from the water. That’s why you can’t see too good. Try to relax; you’re going to be just fine once we clean you up.”

  I tried to nod, but my head felt so heavy. Next came a pinch in my arm. “Ouch,” I gasped, but the word came out funny, like I was talking from a mile away.

  “That shot will help you relax, Larissa. Take some of the pain away, too. We’re on the phone with the doctors at the hospital in St. Martinville.” The woman leaned close. “You’re a real trouper, and you’re going to be fine.”

  I shook my head. I wanted my daddy. I wanted my mamma, but I couldn’t get my lips to form the words.

  The sirens kept going and rustling noises came from the paramedics as they moved around the ambulance.

  Whispers came from the corner. “She’s going to be scarred, you know.”

  “Yeah. Poor little thing. It’s deep.”

  “She’s lucky she’s alive.”

  No! I wanted to scream. I knew I wasn’t lucky at all.

  The medicine made me feel like I was whirling on the ambulance cot. Why couldn’t the fireflies have taken me back to the time before we moved to Bayou Bridge? If we’d stayed in Baton Rouge, this would never have happened. Instead I was reliving my own accident. But what did this have to do with Miss Anna and Grandma Kat?

  “Not lucky,” I finally croaked. My lips felt fat. I swear my body was sitting in molasses.

  “You got yourself a good friend, shar.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t have any friends. All the kids at school were my enemies, and they always would be. Mamma said so.

  “Don’t shake your head at me!” the paramedic woman teased. “You surely do have a guardian angel. She called 911, and lucky for us we were right around the corner. She practically pulled you out of the water herself. And almost fell in trying to hang on to you before you sank to the bottom.”

  She had it all wrong. Nobody had helped me. It was the paramedics who saved my life, who’d dragged on my arms and wrenched me out of that miserable bayou.

  The woman kept talking in a cheerful voice. “I’ll bet Alyson is your best friend. The other kids scattered, but she stayed with you and made the phone call. That’s right, isn’t it, Eric?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” came a male voice in the direction of my feet.

  “Yes, indeed. At least I think her name is Alyson. Got it here in my report. Said she’s the sheriff’s daughter. Probably knows a thing about first aid.”

  I kept shaking my head. Hadn’t Alyson been the one to help push me off the bridge?

  Alyson Granger had saved my life?

  That was impossible.

  But the paramedic woman said it was in the record.

  Next thing I knew I was opening my eyes again and stari
ng up at a thousand lightning bugs whirling in the air like a beautiful cloud of gold.

  I sat up with a start, sucking in air. My throat felt fine. My eyes worked. I wasn’t soaked through anymore, either. No blood, no headache. I was lying safely near the elephant ears, right by the town road. I was back in my own time.

  Across the water, waves slapped against the broken pilings.

  Feeling wobbly, I crawled down the rickety steps and fell face-first in the mud. I wanted to kiss the dirt.

  I was alive. I hadn’t drowned.

  I lifted my hand and touched the scar on my face. It was still there. A ridge of white below my eye and nearly down to my chin. From a year ago. I’d slipped through time again.

  What was happening to me?

  Streetlights flicked on one by one along Main Street as I ran home.

  I pounded up the porch steps and burst through the screen door. “I gotta talk to Grandma Kat,” I muttered, slamming the door behind me. Heck, she used to live on that island once. In the very house that was now rotting and smelly.

  Somebody had to know what was going on, and the only person was my grandmother.

  “Hey, Daddy? Mamma? Where are you?” I raced into the kitchen, but the place was empty. Nothing but a pile of dishes in the sink from lunch.

  I pounded up the stairs and it was the same. Nobody around at all. An odd feeling punched me in the gut. Then the telephone rang.

  I about jumped out of my skin, but it wasn’t one of the antique phones along the back wall or the girl with the voice. It was the telephone in the kitchen. I breathed a sigh of relief and jumped downstairs two steps at a time so I could catch it before it stopped.

  “Larissa, that you?” It was my daddy.

  “Where are you?” I blurted out.

  “Mamma should be there. She left the restaurant early — said she wanted to come home.”

  “No, she’s not. Front door was unlocked, but no lights on. Mamma ain’t here.”

  “You sure? She said she needed to come home and lie down.”

  “Nope. No one’s here. Lights are off.”

  “Well, check upstairs. Help her out and I’ll be home in a bit.”

  “Where you at?”

  “Decided to make a quick trip to New Iberia to pick up some furniture I got at an estate sale last week.”

  “Hey —” I stopped, trying to figure out how to say my question.

  “What?”

  “Well, you know that house across the bayou? The one that’s on that island?”

  “Yeah,” he said slowly. “That’s where you got hurt so bad, shar. I try not to think about it. Promise me you’ll never go out there again.”

  I bit at my lips and didn’t say anything. I couldn’t make a promise like that. I’d been going almost every day for a week. “Um, wasn’t there another house — like a big plantation-mansion sort of house long ago?”

  “I believe I’ve heard something like that.”

  “I was wondering if we have any of the antique furniture from it. Stuff passed down, I mean. In the store or the storage shed. Something like that,” I added casually.

  “Don’t think so, honey. You may not know this, but that original big house was destroyed in a fire a long time ago. So was everything in it.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yep, think so. Really sad. Especially when we’re in the antique business.”

  “Why are we in the antique business?” I asked him.

  Daddy cleared his throat, and I could tell he wanted to stop talking. “Larissa, I gotta get on the road so I make it home before midnight. That’s a good question for your mamma.”

  “All right,” I said, feeling grumpy. “But you know Mamma doesn’t talk much these days. She always acts like she’s got chiggers biting her toes.”

  He laughed. “Well, help her out anyway, Larissa. Fix yourself some dinner, then get in your PJs, and I’ll be home to tuck you in bed.”

  Before I could say another word, he hung up. I frowned and put the phone down with a bang. I felt mad all of a sudden, and my stomach was growling bad.

  Before I went back upstairs to find Mamma — probably in the tub with the bathroom door closed and the radio on — I locked the front door. Then I turned on every single light in the house. The place was blazing by the time I got to my own bedroom. I’d probably get in trouble for wasting electricity, but Mamma never came out of the bath. The longer she took, the madder I got. Like she didn’t care that I was home. I almost got stuck on the island all night long and nobody was even around to know or care. I was mad Daddy wasn’t home. Mad that I was being ignored.

  I had practically died today. What if I got stuck in the past? What if I never could get back? Sometimes I wondered if my parents would even miss me.

  My throat still hurt from the smoke of the fire. I started coughing. Alarmed, I hurried to the bathroom, got a glass of water, and downed it, staring at myself in the mirror. My hair was a mess, my skin white as a ghost. I pulled up my sleeve and saw an ugly bruise on my elbow where I’d landed in the upstairs hall. The smoke inhalation, the bruises. I was really there, not just watching through a veil of time, but really, truly there.

  Leaning forward, I ran a finger along the white scar, noticing black circles under my eyes. Soon as I touched it, the ridge of skin began to itch, so I rubbed at it. I didn’t feel like fixing no food or talking to Mamma, but I figured I should tell her I was home. ’Course, usually she was screaming at me if I was late. And here it was, dark as pitch outside.

  Finally, I flushed the toilet and switched off the bathroom light. “Mamma, I’m home,” I said, pushing at the master bedroom door. “Been home for a while, so don’t ground me. You feeling okay?” The last words gurgled in my throat. The master bedroom was dark, too. I flipped the switch on the wall.

  Mamma wasn’t lying on the bed at all. She wasn’t sitting at her desk, either.

  The bathroom was empty. Tub dry as a bone.

  A queer dread started in the pit of my gut and ran straight up my throat. I raced back to the second floor of the store. “Mamma!” I called. “Mamma!” But I’d already gone through the entire house turning on lights. She wasn’t anywhere.

  Quickly, I unlocked the front door again and ran out onto the sidewalk. The other stores were closed, lights off for the night, except for the café way down Main. Grabbing the extra set of keys from the front desk, I locked the front door again and dashed down the sidewalk. Pushing my way into the café, I startled the hostess, a girl who looked like she was in college.

  “Just looking for my mamma. You seen her?”

  “You’re the girl from the antique store, right?” she asked me.

  I nodded, fighting the growing lump of fear in my throat.

  “Haven’t seen her since your family came in last week for dinner. Sorry.”

  I nodded again, my eyes darting around the room. It was easy to see all the tables. Verret’s Café wasn’t a very big place. A family sat in the corner, eating plate loads of food. Couple of teenagers wolfed down the cake-and-ice-cream Dessert Special.

  Mamma couldn’t go anywhere without a car, and Daddy had our only vehicle at the moment. My eyes watered as I ran back home. Once more I checked the whole house.

  Mamma was definitely not here. I grabbed the phone again in the kitchen and dialed Daddy’s cell number. “Daddy, I can’t find her.”

  He sounded bewildered. “She’s gotta be there. You know Mamma always curls up at night with a bowl of kettle corn and a diet soda for her television dramas.”

  “I checked everywhere. Twice. Even went down to Verret’s Café. Every place else is closed up. It’s dark, Daddy. And it’s getting late.”

  “Hmm, what time is it?” he murmured as I checked the kitchen clock on the stove.

  “Almost nine thirty,” I whispered.

  “Maybe she went to visit someone and forgot to leave a note. I’ll get home fast as I can, but I bet she’ll turn up. Just sit tight, and don’t worry, Larissa
.”

  “Okay,” I said as we hung up for the second time in an hour.

  But I knew something was wrong. Felt it deep inside my stomach all the way down to my toes. “Mamma, where are you?” I said into the silence. The house — the store — was so quiet.

  A new idea popped into my head and I rushed back upstairs, searching her closet and the dresser. Mamma’s house and car keys were sitting there on her key ring. So was her purse. She wouldn’t go anywhere without those two items. Even if she went for a walk she always took them. If they were still here was that a good sign or a bad sign?

  I opened the back door and went into the yard, but it was empty, too. Just weeds, no porch or chairs for sitting. The telephone pole was like a giant hovering in the darkness outside the fence line. I shivered and ran back inside, locking up again.

  “Mamma left without locking the front door,” I reminded myself. That unnerved me. My mamma never did that.

  A pounding started behind my eyes, and Daddy wouldn’t be home for a while.

  I paced the floor, circling the furniture. I didn’t want to do the nightly round of locking up and putting things away like I always did. Having all the lights on was a comfort, although small.

  Prickles of cold kept running up and down my arms and back.

  Finally, I forced myself to close up the two rolltop desks. Straightened a shelf of books. Picked up a pile of spilled old Life magazines.

  “Where are you, Mamma?” I asked into the silence.

  When I reached the doll case I crouched down, gripping my knees to stop them from trembling. “Oh!” I sucked in my breath. The lock to the case was undone, the sliding glass door ajar.

  Horror filled me. The porcelain doll, Anna Marie, was gone. Her usual spot on the shelf was bare. Crawling over, I pulled open the glass door and searched just to be sure I wasn’t seeing things. The doll hadn’t fallen down onto the lower ledge. She hadn’t been taken out and placed somewhere else. I’d have seen her as I searched for Mamma the last hour.

  I sat back on my heels, trying to figure it out.