by Lisa Wingate
“We monitor all of our boarding homes to be certain the children are properly fed and well treated.” She acts like it’s true for a fact.
The man nods and writes and says, “Mmmm-hmm,” like he’s swallowing it whole and it tastes real good.
Go look in the backyard, I want to tell him. Go look in the kitchen. You’ll see how it really is. I want to say it so bad. But I know if I do, I won’t get a book, but I will get the closet.
“The children are so very grateful. We pull them from the gutters and…”
Someone touches my arm, and I jump without meaning to. A lady in a blue dress looks down at me. Her smile is bright as sunshine.
“And what do you like to read about?” she asks. “What sort of books? You’ve been so patiently waiting all this time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She leads me toward the bookshelves, and my eyes about pop out of my head. I forget all about Miss Tann, and all I can think about are books. I’ve been to libraries in river towns before, but back then we had books of our own on the Arcadia too. Now we haven’t got anything, and when you haven’t got a single book, the idea of putting your hands on one is like Christmas and a birthday rolled up together.
“I…I like any kind,” I stammer out. Just looking at the shelves and seeing all those colors and words makes me smile real big. I feel happy for the first time since we came here. “Maybe a long book would be good, since we just get one.”
“Smart girl.” The woman winks at me. “Are you a good reader?”
“Yes’m, real good. Back on…” I duck my head because I was about to say, Back on the Arcadia, Queenie had us reading all the time.
There’s a worker standing not two foot from me, and Miss Tann isn’t far off either. If she heard that, I’d be out of here quick as spit.
“All right then,” the book lady says. “Let’s see….”
“I like adventures. Adventure stories.”
“Hmmm…adventures about what?”
“Queens and princesses and wild Indians. All kinds of things.” My mind fills with tales.
“Maybe a western, then?”
“Or the river. Have you got a story about that?” A book about the river would be like going home again. It’d keep us till Briny takes us back to the Arcadia.
The woman claps her hands together. “Oh! Oh, yes I do!” She lifts a finger into the air. “I have the perfect thing for you.”
After a minute of looking, she hands me Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mr. Mark Twain, and I figure that one really was meant just for me. We’ve never had this book, but Briny has told us tales about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and Injun Joe. Mark Twain is one of Briny’s favorites. He used to read those books when he was little. You’d think him and Tom Sawyer were personal friends even.
The lady in the blue dress writes my new name, May Weathers, on the card. When she stamps the date in the book, I realize yesterday was Fern’s birthday. She’s four now. If we were on the Arcadia, Queenie would bake her a little cake and we’d all give her presents we made by hand or found along the riverbank. Here at Mrs. Murphy’s, the library book will have to do. When I get back to the yard, I’ll tell Fern it’s her birthday surprise, but she only gets to keep it awhile. We’ll make a mud cake and use flowers for frosting and add twig candles with little leaves balanced on top, so Fern can play like she’s blowing them out.
The library lady gives me a hug before she sends me off, and it feels so good, I want to stay right there and hang on to her and smell the books, but I can’t.
I hold Huckleberry Finn real tight against my chest and start across the yard. Now we can leave this place behind anytime we want. All we gotta do is join up with Huckleberry Finn. There’s room on his raft for all five of us, I’ll bet. Maybe we’ll find the Arcadia out there somewhere.
Even though I have to head back to Mrs. Murphy’s house, it feels like a whole new place.
Now it’s got a river in it.
That very night before bed, we open Fern’s birthday book and start on our adventures with Huck Finn. We’ve been traveling downwater with him for almost a week when Miss Tann’s shiny black car rolls up the driveway one afternoon. It’s a sunny day and hot as fry grease in the house, so her and Mrs. Murphy meet out on the porch to talk. I skitter around the fig tree and go up under the azaleas to listen.
“Oh yes, the advertisements have already run in all the papers!” Miss Tann is saying. “I’ve had such a brilliant vision, I must admit. Fair-haired cherubs for a fair summer season. Yours for the asking! Perfect, isn’t it? All the little blonds.”
“Like a gathering of wood nymphs. Little elves and fairies,” Mrs. Murphy agrees.
“It is almost as compelling as the Christmas Baby Program. Customers have been calling already. Once they see the children, they’ll be vying against one another.”
“Without a doubt.”
“You’ll have all of the children ready on Saturday morning, then? I will expect them well dressed—dirndls and bows and all the niceties. Baths all around and scrub every one of them down to the nubbins. No grimy fingernails or dirt behind the ears. Be sure they know what is expected of them and what will happen to them if they humiliate me in public. Make an example of someone ahead of time, and be certain the other children see it. This party represents an important opportunity to grow our reputation for offering the finest. With the new advertisements, we’ll have all of the best families in Tennessee and a dozen states beyond. They’ll all be coming to see our children, and when they see them, they won’t be able to help themselves. They’ll have to have one.”
“We’ll make certain the children are properly prepared. Just let me look again at the list.” They stop talking. Papers rattle. The wind shifts and blows the azalea branches, and I see Miss Tann’s head. Her short gray-brown hair catches the breeze and stands up straight when she bends close to Mrs. Murphy.
I press against the wall and hold real still, afraid they’ll hear me and look over the railing. The wind brings up the smell of something dead. I can’t see it, but it probably ate the poison Mr. Riggs put out. Once the stink gets bad enough, he’ll find the body and bury it someplace.
“Even May?” Mrs. Murphy asks, and my ears perk up. “She’s hardly a cherub.”
Miss Tann gives a sharp little laugh. “She’ll be a help with the little ones, and she is quite a pretty thing to look at, as I recall.”
“I suppose so.” Mrs. Murphy doesn’t sound happy. “She isn’t a troublemaker, to be sure.”
“I’ll have cars come for them at one o’clock on Saturday. Do not send them hungry or sleepy or needing to use the bathroom. Perky and bright and guaranteed to behave. That is my expectation.”
“Yes, of course.”
“What in heaven’s name is that ghastly smell?”
“Rabbits. We’ve had a problem with them this summer.”
I slip away before they can decide to go looking. Mr. Riggs is nowhere around, so it doesn’t take me long to get past the fig tree and back to the hill. I don’t tell Camellia about the viewing party or that we’re supposed to have an extra bath tomorrow. No sense letting her get started on a conniption fit ahead of time.
I’ve got a bad feeling that I don’t need to tell her about the extra bath anyhow.
Camellia hasn’t got blond hair.
Turns out, I’m right. After breakfast on Saturday, I find out that Camellia’s not on the list. Wherever we’re going, she’s not going with us.
“I ain’t sorry they don’t want me if it means another bath.” She pushes me away when I try to hug her goodbye.
“Be good while we’re gone, Mellia. Don’t give anybody trouble, and stay away from the big boys, and don’t go past the fig tree, and—”
“I don’t need lookin’ after.” Camellia lifts her chin, but there’s a little quiver in her bottom lip. She’s afraid.
“May!” one of the workers barks. “In line, now!” They’ve already got all the kids on th
e list gathered up.
“We’ll be back real quick,” I whisper to Camellia. “Don’t be scared.”
“I ain’t.”
But then she hugs me after all.
The worker yells at me again, and I hurry into line. The next hour and a half is full of soap, and scrubbing, and hair brushing, and bows, and toothbrushes under our fingernails, and ribbons, and lacy new clothes. We try on shoes from a closetful until we find some that fit.
By the time the workers take us to the cars out front, we don’t even look like the same kids. There’s the four of us, three other girls, a boy who’s five, two babies, and Stevie, who’s been told that, if he wets his pants again, he’ll get a whipping right then and there.
We’re not allowed to talk in the car. On the way over, the worker does the talking. “Girls, you will sit politely with your legs together like young ladies. Do not speak unless you are spoken to. You will be mannerly toward the attendees at Miss Tann’s party. You will say only good things about your time at Mrs. Murphy’s house. There will be toys and colors, cakes and cookies at the party today. You will…”
I lose track of her voice as the car goes over a hill and comes within sight of the river. May fades like a speck of sun on the water, and Rill comes out. She stretches toward the crack at the top of the window, and pulls in air and catches all the familiar scents.
For just a minute, she’s home.
Then the car turns a corner, and the river’s gone again. Something heavy and sad settles over me. I lean my head against the seat, and the worker tells me to stop; I’m smashing my hair bow.
In my lap, Gabion falls asleep, and I cuddle him close and let his hair tickle my chin, and I’m back home again anyway. These people can control everything about me, but they can’t control where I go in my mind.
But my visit to the Arcadia is too short. Pretty soon, we pull up to a tall white house that’s even bigger than Mrs. Murphy’s.
“Anyone who does not behave will be very sorry,” the worker says, and points a finger in our faces before letting us out of the car. “Be friendly with the guests at the party. Sit in their laps if they ask you to. Smile. Show them that you are good children.”
We go inside, and the house is filled with people. Other kids are there too, and babies. Everyone is dressed in pretty clothes, and we have cakes and cookies to eat. There are toys for the little kids, and before I know it, Fern and Gabion and even Lark wander away from me.
A man takes Gabion outside to play with a blue ball. A dark-haired woman sits with Lark, and they color in a picture book together. Fern laughs and plays peekaboo with a pretty blond-headed lady who sits off in a chair by herself looking tired and sad. Fern makes her laugh, and pretty soon, the lady is carrying my sister from toy to toy, like Fern can’t walk for herself.
They finally cuddle into a chair to read a book, and my heart squeezes. I think about Queenie and how she used to read to us. I want the woman to let go of Fern, to give her back.
A man comes into the room and tickles Fern on the belly, and the woman smiles and says, “Oh, Darren, she’s perfect! Amelia would have been this age.” She pats the chair arm. “Sit and read the book with us.”
“You go ahead.” He kisses her on the cheek. “I have some people to talk to.” Then he leaves the room.
Fern and the woman are on their second book when the man comes back. They’re so busy, they don’t even notice that he sits down next to me on the sofa. “Are you sisters?” he asks.
“Yes, sir,” I answer just like I’ve been told to. Ma’am and sir to everything.
Leaning away, he takes a good look at me. “You do favor one another.”
“Yes, sir.” I stare down at my hands. My heart speeds up, bumping around my chest like a wren caught in the shanty house. What does he want?
The man lays a hand on my back. My shoulder blades fold around it. Little hairs tug at the bottom of my neck. Sweat drips under my scratchy dress.
“And how old,” the man asks, “are you?”
CHAPTER 13
Avery
The cottage is quiet and filled with moonlight as I swing open the door. I fumble for the light switch and brace my cellphone against my shoulder as I wait for my Uncle Clifford to answer the question I’ve just asked. He’s put me on hold while he orders food at a drive-through window.
I’m consumed by the strongest memory of arriving here after dark for a visit, just my grandmother and me. The cottage was exactly like this, moon spears fanning over the floor in the shape of palmetto fronds, the air smelling of salt water, and sandy carpets, and lemon oil, and furniture that has lived long by the sea.
I wiggle my fingers. I can almost feel her hand wrapped around mine. I must’ve been about eleven or twelve—that awkward age when I’d quit holding her hand in public, but here in our magic place, it was okay.
Standing in the entry now, I reach for that sense of comfort, but this visit is pungent with opposing tastes. Bitter and sweet. Familiar and strange. The tastes of life.
Uncle Clifford comes back on the line. After a long walk along the beach and supper at the Waterfront Restaurant, I’ve decided that my uncle might be the only means of making progress in my quest, for now. Trent Turner ditched me by taking off in a jeep with the guy in the uniform. I waited around in my car, but the Turner Real Estate office remained closed all afternoon.
So far, this trip is looking like a bust.
“What was it that you needed, Avery? What about the Edisto house?” Uncle Clifford wants to know.
“So, I’m just wondering if you and Dad came here much with Grandma Judy? When you were little, I mean.” I’m keeping it casual. Trying not to tip him off to anything. Uncle Clifford was a federal agent in his younger years. “Did Grandma Judy have friends she met here or people she came to see?”
“Well…let me think….” He ruminates for a while, then simply says, “I don’t guess we went there all that much, now that you mention it. We visited more when I was young. Once we were older, we liked Granny Stafford’s place on Pawleys Island better. The house was bigger, and the sailboat was there, and more often than not, we had cousins around to play with. Usually, Mama went to the Edisto cottage by herself. She liked to write there. You know, she dabbled in poetry a bit, and she did the society column for a while.”
I’m momentarily dumbfounded. “Grandma Judy wrote a society column?” Otherwise known as the weekly gossip.
“Well, not under her own name, of course.”
“Under what name?”
“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”
“Uncle Clifford!” While my dad is straitlaced, Uncle Clifford has always been wild and a bit of a tease. He’s given Aunt Diana a full head of gray hair, which, as any good Southern lady would, she colors regularly.
“Oh, let your grandmother’s secrets stay secret.” For a minute, I think there’s a hidden message in that, but then I can tell he’s just toying with me. “So you’re down at the Myers cottage, huh?”
“Yes. I just decided to get away for a few days.”
“Well, drop a line in the water for me.”
“You know I don’t fish. Yuck.” Being saddled with girls, my poor father worked hard to form an avid angler from at least one of us.
Even Uncle Clifford knows it was a lost cause. “Well, now see, that’s one way you don’t take after your grandmother. She loved to fish, especially down on Edisto. When your dad and I were little, she’d take us there to meet up with somebody who had a little jon boat. We’d go up the river and spend half the day fishing. Don’t remember who it was we went with. A friend, I guess. He had a little blond-headed boy I liked to play with. Name started with a T…Tommy, Timmie…no…Tr…Trey or Travis maybe.”
“Trent? Trent Turner?” The current Trent Turner being Trent the Third, his father was a Trent too, and he’s around my uncle’s age.
“Could’ve been. There some reason you’re asking? Anything wrong?”
Sudden
ly, I realize I’ve gone one question too far and inadvertently unlocked the detective’s office. “No. No reason. Being on Edisto just started me thinking about things. I wish I’d come down here more with Grandma Judy. I wish I’d asked questions while she could still remember things, you know?”
“Well, that’s one of the paradoxes of life. You can’t have it all. You can have some of this and some of that or all of this and none of that. We make the trade-offs we think are best at the time. You’ve accomplished a lot for a girl—I mean, a woman just thirty years old.”
Sometimes I wonder if my family doesn’t see more in me than is really there. “Thanks, Uncle Clifford.”
“That’ll be five bucks for the session.”
“The check’s in the mail.”
After we hang up, I think through the conversation as I unpack the single sack of groceries I’ve picked up at the BI-LO, which I remember as the Piggly Wiggly.
Were there any clues in what Uncle Clifford said?
Nothing jumps out at me. Nothing that leads anywhere. If the little boy in the jon boat was named Trent, that tells me that my grandmother had some sort of personal connection to the elder Trent Turner, which I’d already guessed. But if they spent time out fishing together with the children, that also pokes holes in my blackmail theory. You don’t go fishing with a blackmailer, and you certainly don’t take your little boys. You also don’t bring children with you if you’re having an illicit affair. Especially not children who are old enough to remember the outing.
Maybe the elder Trent Turner was nothing more than a longtime friend. Maybe the envelope merely contains photos…something totally innocent. But then, why the deathbed pledge between grandfather and grandson that the packets wouldn’t be passed along to anyone other than their owners?
I form theories as I carry my things to the bedroom, open my suitcase, and settle in. I throw darts at the theories, just the way I would if we were gathered in the war room at my old office.