by Lisa Wingate
“Take the utmost care of the little one in the sickroom,” Mrs. Murphy says now. “Give him a nice hot bath and some ice cream. Maybe a gingersnap. Pep him up a bit. I’ll ask Miss Tann if she might delay the order a day or two. I want him well enough to travel. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mrs. Murphy.” Mrs. Pulnik’s words hiss through clenched teeth, which tells me I sure don’t want to get caught here under the azalea bushes today. When she’s in that mood, you better run fast and hide good, because she’s looking for somebody to take it out on.
The last thing I hear is Mrs. Murphy crossing the room and yelling into the hall, “And don’t forget about poisoning those rabbits!”
I grab up a broken branch and quietly start stirring the leaves over my knee prints, so Mr. Riggs won’t be able to see that I’ve been here. I wouldn’t want him to tell Mrs. Pulnik.
But that’s not what scares me most. What scares me most is Mr. Riggs knowing someone’s been going up under here at all. To make it to the azalea bushes, you’ve got to slip past the cellar doors. Riggs keeps them open, and if he can, he’ll get kids in there with him one way or another. Nobody talks about what goes on down there, even the big boys. If you talk about it, they say, Riggs’ll get you and snap your neck and say you fell out of a tree or tripped on the porch steps. Then they’ll cart your body off to the swamps and feed it to the gators, and nobody’ll ever hear about you again.
James, the big redheaded boy, has been here long enough, he’s seen it happen. We give him peppermints, and he tells us what we need to know to get by here at Mrs. Murphy’s place. We’re not friends, but candies will buy you a lot around here. Every morning when we wake up, there’s a little wad of peppermints shoved under the door of our room. At night, I hear Mr. Riggs come around. He tries the knob, but it’s locked, and the workers always take the keys when they put us in bed. I’m glad. Sometimes, after Mr. Riggs comes by our room, I hear him walking up the stairs to the house. I don’t know where he goes, but I’m glad we’re down in the cellar. It’s cold, and the army cots are scratchy and smelly, and we have to use a slop pot at night, but at least nobody can get at us when we’re in there.
I hope Briny comes before enough beds empty out to move us upstairs.
Riggs is just headed in the cellar door when I get to the end of the azalea hedge. I almost don’t see him quick enough to let the branches fall back and hide me.
He looks right at me before he walks down the steps, but he can’t see me. I’m like the Invisible Man again. The Invisible Girl. That’s who I am.
I wait until I’m sure he’s gone, and then I creep out of my spot, quiet as a little bobcat. The thing about bobcats is, they can be two foot from you and you’ll never know it. One big breath, and I run past the cellar door and around the fig tree. After you’re past it, you’re safe. Riggs knows the workers look out the kitchen windows a lot. He won’t do things where anybody else can see.
Camellia’s waiting for me on the hill behind the church house playground. Lark and Fern are riding a teeter-totter with Gabion in the middle. Stevie’s sitting in the dirt beside Camellia. He climbs over into my lap soon as I sit down.
“Good,” Camellia says. “Get him offa me. He stinks like pee.”
“He can’t help it.” Stevie wraps his arms around my neck and lays against my chest. He’s sticky, and he does smell bad. I rub a hand over his head, and he whimpers and pulls away. There’s a goose egg under his hair. The helpers here like to thump kids on the head where it won’t show.
“Yes he can help it. He could talk too, if he wanted to. He’s just gettin’ hisself in trouble with the workers. I told him he better stop it or else.” Camellia’s a fine one to talk. If any of us does get the closet while we’re here, it’ll be her. I still don’t know for sure what happens in the closet, but it must be bad. Just a couple days ago, Mrs. Murphy stood over the breakfast table and said, When the food thief is caught, it’ll be the closet, and not just for one day.
Nothing’s disappeared from the kitchen since.
“Stevie’s just scared. He misses…” I stop without saying it. It’ll only make him upset if I bring up his sister. Sometimes I forget that, even though he won’t talk anymore, he can still understand everything we say.
“What’d you hear at the window?” Camellia hates it that I won’t let anybody else go under the azaleas. She always looks me over and sniffs at me to see if I found any peppermints while I was there. She thinks the big boys are lying about Mr. Riggs. If I don’t watch her, she’ll try to sidle off over there while we’re out to play. I can’t turn my back on her for a minute, unless I’m leaving her with the babies to watch.
“She didn’t say anything about Briny.” I’m still trying to make sense of what I heard under Mrs. Murphy’s window. I’m not sure how much of it I should tell Camellia.
“He ain’t comin’. He’s got hisself in jail or somethin’, and he can’t get out. Queenie’s dead.”
I scramble to my feet, taking Stevie with me. “No she ain’t! Don’t you say that, Mellia! Don’t you ever say that!”
On the playground, the teeter-totters stop, and feet scrape the ground to hold swings still. Kids look our way. They’re used to watching the big boys get in fights and roll around and kick and punch. It don’t usually happen with girls.
“It’s true!” Camellia’s on her feet quick as a whip, her chin poking out, her long, skinny arms cocked on her hips. Wads of freckles seem to squint her eyes down to practically nothing, and her nose scrunches up. She looks like a spotted pig.
“It ain’t!”
“Is so!”
Stevie whines and squirms to get away. I figure I’d better let him. He runs off to the teeter-totter, where Lark grabs him up in her arms.
Camellia rears back a fist. It won’t be the first time we’ve gotten in a knockdown, spit-flying, hair-pulling match.
“Hey! Hey, you cut that out!” Before I even see it coming, James is out of the big boys’ hidey-hole, and he’s headed our way.
Camellia hesitates just long enough for him to get to her. His big hand snakes out and grabs her dress, and he slings her into the dirt, hard.
“Stay down,” he growls, and points a finger.
She doesn’t, of course. She pops to her feet madder than a swatted hornet. He shoves her down again.
“Hey!” I yell. “Stop it!” She’s my sister, even if she was about to punch my lights out.
James looks my way and grins, the chipped tooth showing the pink tip of his tongue. “You want me to?”
Camellia takes a swing at him, and he grabs her arm, holding her far enough away that she can’t kick him. She’s like a daddy longlegs spider with one foot stuck in a door. He squeezes so hard her skin goes purple. Her eyes fill up and spill over, but she just keeps on fighting.
“Stop!” I yell. “Let her alone!”
“You want me to, then you be my girlfriend, pretty girl,” he says. And, “Elsewise, she’s fair game.”
Camellia roars and squeals and goes wild.
“Let her be!” I take a swing, and James grabs my wrist, and now he’s got us both. My bones crush together. The babies run over from the playground, even Stevie, and start pounding James’s legs. He swings Camellia around and uses her to knock down Fern and Gabion. Fern’s nose spouts blood, and she screams, grabbing her face.
“All right! All right!” I say. What else can I do? I look around for grown-ups, and like always, there aren’t any.
“All right, what, pretty girl?” James asks.
“All right, I’ll be your girlfriend. But I ain’t gonna kiss you.”
That seems good enough for him. He dumps Camellia in the dirt and tells her she better stay there. He makes me follow him up the hill and drags me around an old outhouse that’s nailed shut so nobody can get in it and get snakebit. For the second time that day, a hammer pounds inside me. “I ain’t kissin’ you,” I tell him again.
“Shut up,” he says.
Beh
ind the outhouse, he pushes me to the dirt and plops down next to me, still squeezing my arm. My breath comes fast and hangs in my throat. I taste my stomach.
What’s he plan to do to me? Growing up on a boat and with four babies born after I came along, I know a little bit about what men and women do together. I don’t want somebody to do that to me. Ever. I don’t like boys, and I never will. James’s breath smells like rotten potatoes, and the only boy I’ve ever thought I might let kiss me was Silas, and that was only for a minute or two.
The chants of his gang wind their way around the building. “James’s got a girlfriend. James’s got a girlfriend. James and May sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g…”
But James doesn’t try to kiss me. He just sits there with red splotches working up his neck and over his cheeks. “You’re pretty.” His voice squeaks like a baby pig’s. It’s funny, but I don’t laugh. I’m too scared.
“No I ain’t.”
“You’re real pretty.” He lets go of my wrist and tries to hold my hand. I pull it away and wrap my arms around my knees, holding myself in a tight ball.
“I don’t like boys,” I tell him.
“I’m gonna marry you someday.”
“I don’t wanna marry anybody. I’m gonna build a boat and go down the river. Take care of myself.”
“I might get on your boat too.”
“No you ain’t.”
We sit there a while. The boys down the hill chant, “James’s got a girlfriend….K-i-s-s-i-n-g…”
He lolls his elbows over his knees, looking at me. “That where you come from? The river?”
“Yep, it is.”
We talk about boats. James is from a dirt farm in Shelby County. Miss Tann picked him and his brother up off the side of the road when they were walking to school one day. He was in the fourth grade then. He’s been here ever since and not seen a day of school this whole time. His brother is long gone. Adopted.
James lifts his chin. “I don’t want me some new parents,” he says. “I figure I’ll be too big pretty soon, and I’ll get outa here. I’m gonna need me a wife. We can go live on the river, if you want.”
“My daddy’s comin’ back to get us.” I feel bad saying it. I feel sorry for James. He seems lonesome more than anything. Lonesome and sad. “He’ll be here pretty soon.”
James just shrugs. “I’ll bring you some tea cakes tomorrow. But you gotta still be my girlfriend.”
I don’t answer. My mouth waters thinking about tea cakes. I guess now I know who’s been sneaking around in the kitchen at night. “You hadn’t oughta. You might get the closet.”
“I ain’t scared.” He puts his hand over mine.
I let it stay there.
Maybe I don’t mind it too much.
Pretty soon, I figure out it’s not so bad being James’s girlfriend after all. He ain’t hard to talk to, and he only wants to hold my hand. Nobody bothers me the rest of the day. Nobody’s mean to Camellia or Lark or the babies. James and I walk around the yard and hold hands, and he tells me more things I need to know about Mrs. Murphy’s house. He promises me tea cakes again. He describes just how he’ll sneak down and get them tonight.
I tell him I don’t like tea cakes.
In the bath line, the big boys don’t look at me. They know they better not.
But the next day, James isn’t at breakfast. Mrs. Pulnik stands over the table, tapping a wood spoon in her big, meaty hand. She says they sent James off to a place where the boys have to earn their keep instead of getting it by the kindness of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.
“A boy who is oldt enough to pursue after the girls is oldt enough for work and too oldt to be wanted by a goot family. Mrs. Murphy will be havingk none of this behavior between boys and girls here. Each of you knows of our rules.” She slaps the spoon hard against the table, her breath coming in heavy snorts that make her wide, flat nose flare out. We jerk upright like puppets with strings bolted to our heads. She leans toward the boys’ side of the table. They duck and stare at their empty bowls. “Andt for the girls”—the spoon and the jiggly arm come our way now—“so much shame to you for causing trouble to the boys. Mind yourselfs, keep down your skirts, and behave as little women shouldt.” The last word comes with a hard look at me. “Or I do not want to think of what may happen to you.”
Blood rushes hot up my neck and burns in my cheeks. I feel bad for getting James sent away. I shouldn’t have been his girlfriend. I didn’t know.
The workers don’t bring Stevie down for breakfast either. He’s not on the playground. The other kids tell me he has to stay in his bed because he wet it again last night. I see him in the upstairs window later with his nose pushed against the screen. I stand in the yard and whisper up at him. “Be good, all right? Just be good, that’s all.”
Later on that afternoon, the workers line us up on the porch, and I gather my sisters and my brother close because I’m scared. Even the other kids don’t seem to know what’s happening.
Mrs. Pulnik and the workers march us by the rain barrel one by one. They swipe dirty faces and arms and knees with wet cloths and brush hair and have us wash our hands. Some kids are made to change their clothes right there on the porch. Some kids get fresh clothes or pinafores to put right on top of their playclothes.
Mrs. Murphy comes outside and stands on the top step and looks us over. A wire rug beater dangles off her arm. I’ve never seen the kitchen women use it to knock the dirt out of the rugs, but I’ve seen it used on kids a lot. The kids call it the wire witch.
“Something very special will be happening today,” Mrs. Murphy says. “But it’s only for good little boys and girls. Anyone who isn’t on best behavior will not be allowed to participate. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I say it right along with the rest of the kids.
“Very well.” She smiles, but the smile makes me back up a step. “Today, the bookmobile will be coming. The kind ladies of the Aid Society will be giving of their time to help you select books. It is very important that we make a good showing. Each of you may have one book to read if you are good.” She goes on and tells us to mind our manners, say yes ma’am and no ma’am, don’t grab and touch all the books, and if the workers ask whether we’re happy here, we’re to tell them we’re very grateful to Miss Tann for finding us and to Mrs. Murphy for taking us into her home.
I lose track of the rest. All I can think of is that we’re going to have a chance at a book, and there’s not much I like better than books, especially books I haven’t read yet. With five of us, we can get five books.
But when the workers unlock the yard gate and the line starts out, Mrs. Murphy stops Camellia and me and the babies. “Not you,” she says. “Since you haven’t a place upstairs yet, you’ve no good spot to keep books, and we can’t have the library’s property being damaged.”
“We’ll treat them real careful. I promise,” I blurt out. Normally, I’d never talk back to Mrs. Murphy, but I can’t help it this time. “Please. Could we get one book at least? And I can read it to my sisters and my brother? Queenie used to…” I button my lips before I can get myself in more trouble. We’re not allowed to talk about our mamas and daddies here.
Sighing, she hangs the rug beater on a nail in one of the porch posts. “Very well. But there is no need for the little ones to go. Just you. And be quick.”
It takes me a second to decide whether to leave the babies. Camellia grabs their arms and drags them toward her. “Go.” She pops her eyes at me. “Get us somethin’ good.”
I give them one last look before scooting out the gate. It’s all I can do not to run across the yard and bust through the magnolias. It smells like freedom out here. It smells good. I have to make myself stay in line and follow the rest of the kids around to the driveway, real orderly.
On the other side of the tree wall, there’s a big black truck. Two more cars pull up. Miss Tann gets out of one, and a man with a camera gets out of the other. They shake hands,
and the man takes a notepad and pen from his pocket.
The big black truck says SHELBY COUNTY LIBRARIES on the side, and once we get closer, I can see that there’re shelves coming right out the back of it. And the shelves are full of books. The kids mill around them, and I have to put my hands behind my back and lace my fingers tight to keep from touching things while I wait my turn.
“As you can observe for yourself, we provide the children with many stimulating opportunities,” Miss Tann says, and the man writes on his notepad like the words are going to get away if he doesn’t catch them fast enough. “Some of our little ones have never enjoyed the luxury of books before coming to us. We provide wonderful books and toys in all of our homes.”
I duck my head and fidget and wish the crowd would thin out. If Miss Tann has other places like this, I don’t know what they’re like, but there’s not a single book around Mrs. Murphy’s, and all the toys are broke. Nobody even cares enough to fix them. Miss Tann’s been here enough. She’s got to know that.
“Poor little waifs,” she says to the man. “We take them in when they are unwanted and unloved. We provide them with all that their parents cannot or will not give them.”
I bolt my eyes to the ground and make fists behind my back. It’s a lie, I wish I could scream at the man. My mama and daddy want us. They love us. So did the father who came to see his little boy, Lonnie, and ended up broke down on the porch crying like a baby when they said Lonnie’d been adopted.
“How long does the average child remain with the society?” the man asks.
“Oh, we have no average children here.” Miss Tann pushes out a high little laugh. “Only extraordinary ones. Some may remain longer than others, depending on the condition in which they come to us. Some are weak and small when they arrive and so wan they cannot even run and play. We plump them up with three nourishing meals per day. Children require good food to grow properly. Plenty of fruits and vegetables and red meats always put the glow back in their little cheeks.”
Not at Mrs. Murphy’s house. At Mrs. Murphy’s house, it’s cornmeal mush, one little bowl, morning and night. We’re hungry all the time. Gabby’s skin is pale as milk, and Lark and Fern’s arms are so thin you can see the muscles and the bones.