by Lisa Wingate
I wish I could run after him and at least apologize for Leslie’s abrupt dismissal, but I know I shouldn’t. It’ll only raise more questions.
“My phone was off, I think.” I preempt Leslie before she can start an inquisition. “Sorry about that. What’s going on?”
She blinks slowly, lifts her chin. “Let’s not talk about that for a minute. Let’s talk about what I just saw when I came up this sidewalk.” She waves a hand toward Trent, and I hope he’s far enough away not to hear her. “Because that was disturbing.”
“Leslie, he’s a friend. He was helping me track down some family history. That’s all.”
“Family history? Really? Here?” Jerking her chin up, she snorts in frustration. “Of what sort?”
“I’d rather not say.”
Leslie’s eyes flash. Her lips squeeze into a thin line. She takes a breath, blinks again, levels a heated gaze at me. “Well, let me tell you something. Whatever I just witnessed there is exactly the kind of scene you cannot afford. Nothing that could possibly be spun, used, or misinterpreted, Avery. Nothing. You have to be pure as the driven snow, and that did not look pure from a distance. Can you imagine how it would have played in a photograph? All of us, the entire team, are putting everything we have into you. In case you’re needed.”
“I know that. I understand.”
“The last thing this family can withstand is one more battle to fight.”
“Point taken.” I paint a layer of confidence over the words, but inside I’m confused; I’m embarrassed; I’m aggravated that I have to deal with Leslie right now. I’m torn between appeasing Leslie and running after Trent. I’m afraid to even look up to see whether he’s made it to his car yet.
The engine starts, and answers my question. I hear him back out and drive away. It’s probably for the best, I tell myself. Of course it is. I had my whole life planned before I went to Edisto. Why would I want to jeopardize that over…ancient family history, things that don’t matter anymore, a man with whom I have no connection other than a story that even those who lived it want to forget?
“There’s been a development.” Leslie’s words take a moment to register even though I’m looking right at her. “The Sentinel just rolled out a massive exposé about corporate-owned nursing care and the responsibility dodge. It’s only a matter of time before the major media pick it up. The article highlighted the South Carolina cases. They have cost comparisons between Magnolia Manor and the kind of care facilities that have been named in some of the injury lawsuits. They have photos of victims and their families. They titled it ‘Aging Unevenly,’ and they headed it up with a long-range picture of your dad and your grandmother walking in the gardens at Magnolia.”
I stare at her, openmouthed, a feverish anger igniting deep within me. “How dare they! How dare…anyone! They have no right to harass my grandmother.”
“This is politics, Avery. Politics and sensationalism. There is no safe ground.”
CHAPTER 20
Rill
The man’s name is Darren, and the woman’s name is Victoria, but we’ve been told that we’re to call them Papa and Mommy, not Darren and Victoria or Mr. Sevier and Mrs. Sevier. It doesn’t bother me much. I’ve never called anyone Papa or Mommy, so the words don’t have a place in me one way or the other. They’re just words. That’s all.
Queenie and Briny are still our folks, and we’re still going back to them, soon as I can find a way. It won’t be hard as I thought it might be. The Sevier house is big and filled with rooms no one uses, and out back there’s a wide porch that looks over fields of tall trees and green grass, and all of it slopes on down to the best thing ever—the water. It’s not the river; it’s a long, skinny oxbow lake that drains off into a place called Dedmen’s Slough…and Dedmen’s Slough goes all the way down to the Mississippi. I found that out because I asked Zuma, who cleans this place and fixes the meals and lives over the old carriage house, where Mr. Sevier parks his cars. He has three cars. I’ve never even met anybody that has three cars.
Zuma’s husband, Hoy, and their girl, Hootsie, live out there with her. Hoy keeps the yard and takes care of a pen of chickens, Mr. Sevier’s hunting dogs that bark and howl all night, and a pony Mrs. Sevier has been telling us for two weeks now we can go riding on if we want to. I said that we don’t like ponies, even though it’s not true. I let Fern know she better not say any different.
Zuma’s husband is big and scary and black as the dickens, and after being at Mrs. Murphy’s, I don’t want some yardman getting me or Fern off by ourselves anyplace. I don’t want us alone with Mr. Sevier. He’s tried to take us out to the pony too, but only because Mrs. Sevier made him. He’ll do just about anything to keep her from wandering off down the path to the garden where two babies born dead and three that were never born at all have graves with little stone lambs on top. When Mrs. Sevier goes out there, she lays on the ground and cries. Then she comes home and gets in her bed and stays. There’s old scars across her wrists. I know why they’re there, but I don’t tell Fern, of course.
“Just sit in her lap, and let her fix your hair and play dolls with you. Make sure she’s happy,” I tell Fern. “No crying and don’t wet the bed. You hear me?” That’s the only reason the Seviers brought me here in the first place—because Fern wouldn’t stop crying and bed-wetting and carrying on.
Mostly, Fern’s been doing pretty good now. Some days, though, there’s not a thing that’ll help Mrs. Sevier. Some days, she don’t want to be touched by another living soul. She only wants the dead.
When she lays up in her bed and cries over the babies she lost, Mr. Sevier hides in his music room, and we’re stuck with Zuma, who thinks having us around makes too much work for her. Mrs. Sevier used to buy things for Zuma’s little girl, Hootsie, who’s ten, two years younger than me. Now Mrs. Sevier buys things for us instead. Zuma ain’t one bit happy about that either. She’s weaseled enough information out of Fern to know where we’re from, and she can’t see why somebody fine as Mr. and Mrs. Sevier would want river trash like us anyhow. She lets us know it, but she can’t say it where Mrs. Sevier might hear, of course.
Zuma doesn’t dare hit us, but she’d like to. When Hootsie acts up, Zuma wears out Hootsie’s skinny behind. Sometimes, Zuma shakes that long wood spoon our way when nobody’s looking and says, “Oughta be grateful. Oughta be kissin’ the missus feet, her even lettin’ you in this fine house. I know what you is, and don’ you be fo’gettin’ it neither. You’s only here till the missus gits a baby a’ her own. Mister thinks, if she quit worrin’ about it so hard, it gonna happen. When it do, you li’l river rats be gone like smoke. Out wit’ the trash. Y’all only here fo’ now. Don’ be makin’ yo’self to home. I seen it all befo’, jus’ so you know. You ain’t here fo’ long.”
She’s right, so I got no reason to argue. There’s food here, at least, and plenty of it. There’s frilly dresses, even if they are scratchy and stiff, and hair ribbons, and Crayolas, and books, and shiny new Mary Jane shoes. There’s a little tea set for tea parties with cookies in the afternoons. We’ve never even had a tea party before, so Mrs. Sevier has to show us how to play the game.
There’s no lining up for bath time. We don’t have to get naked while other people look on. Nobody hits us in the head. Nobody threatens to tie us up and hang us in the closet. Nobody gets locked in the basement. At least not so far, and like Zuma says, we won’t be here long enough to find out whether it’d happen after the new wears off.
One thing I know for sure is that, whenever the Seviers get tired of us, we’re not going back to Mrs. Murphy’s. At night, after I’m safe in the room next to Fern’s, I look way down across the pasture and see the water through the trees. I watch for lanterns drifting along the oxbow lake, and I spot a few. Sometimes, I see lights, even far off in the slough, floating like fallen stars. All I have to do is find us a way onto one of the boats, and we can go through Dedmen’s Slough to the big river. Once we’re there, it’ll be an easy trip
downwater to where the Wolf meets the Mississippi at Mud Island, and that’s where Queenie and Briny will be waiting for us.
I just need to find us a boat, and I will. After we’re gone, the Seviers won’t have the first idea what happened to us. Miss Tann didn’t tell them we’re from river folk, and I bet Zuma won’t either. Our new mommy and papa think our real mama was a college girl and our daddy was a professor. They think she took sick with pneumonia and died and he lost his job and couldn’t keep us. They also think Fern’s just three years old, but she’s four.
I don’t tell the Seviers any different. Mostly, I just try to be good so nothing will happen before Fern and me can get away.
“There you are,” Mrs. Sevier says when she finds us down at the dining table waiting on breakfast. She frowns, seeing that we’re already dressed in the clothes that were set out for us last night. Fern’s wearing a pair of blue check pants with a little top that buttons up the back. It has puffy ruffles around her arms and shows her tummy under the lace at the bottom of the shirt. I’ve got on a purple dress that’s ruffly and fluffy and a little too small at the top. I had to suck in to get it buttoned, and I shouldn’t need to, but I’m growing, I guess. Queenie says we Foss kids always get bigger in spurts.
Either I’m in a growing spurt, or it’s because we eat a lot more than just corn mush here. Every morning, we all sit down to a big meal, and at lunch Zuma makes us sandwiches on a tray. In the evening, we have a big supper too, unless Mr. Sevier is busy in his music room at supper. When that happens, we have sandwiches on a tray again, and Mrs. Sevier plays parlor games with us, which Fern likes to do a lot.
“May, I told you there’s no reason for you to be up so early and making little Beth get dressed too.” She crosses her arms over the silky bathrobe that looks like it oughta be on Queen Cleopatra. Fern and me have robes that match. Our new mommy had Zuma make them just for us, special. We haven’t put them on since. I figure it’s best we don’t get used to fancy things, since we’re not staying long.
Besides that, there’s two little bumps poking out on my chest, and the gowns are shiny and thin, and it makes the bumps show, and I don’t want anybody to see.
“We waited…awhile.” I look down at my lap. She doesn’t understand that all our lives we’ve been up at first light. There’s no other way to live on a shantyboat. When the river comes awake, you do too. The birds speak, and the boats whistle, and the waves wash up one after another if you’re tied anyplace near a main channel. The lines have to be watched, and the fish are biting, and the stove needs kindling. There’s things to do.
“It’s time you learned to sleep until a decent hour.” Mrs. Sevier shakes her head at me, and I don’t know whether she’s playing or if she doesn’t like me very much. “You’re not in an orphanage anymore, May. This is your home.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Yes, Mommy.” She lays a hand on my head and leans over to kiss Fern’s cheek, then pretends to gobble up her ear. Fern giggles and squeals.
“Yes, Mommy,” I repeat. It ain’t natural, but I’m getting better at it. Next time, I’ll remember.
She sits at the end of the table and looks down the long hall, resting her chin on her hand, frowning. “I guess you haven’t seen Papa this morning?”
“No…Mommy.”
Fern shrinks in her seat and gives our new mommy’s frown a worried look. We all know where Mr. Sevier is. We can hear the music drifting up the hall. He’s not supposed to go in his music room before breakfast. We’ve heard them fighting about it.
“Dar-ren!” she hollers, clicking her fingernails on the table.
Fern slaps her hands over her ears, and Zuma rushes in with a covered china bowl rattling in her hands. The lid almost slides off before she catches it. The white shows all around her eyes, and then she sees that Mrs. Sevier isn’t mad at her. “I’ll go for ’im, Missus.” She sets the bowl on the table and hollers over her shoulder toward the kitchen, “Hootsie, you bring them platters in befo’ they go cold!”
She sweeps past the table, stiff as a whisk broom, and shoots a mad look my way when our new mommy isn’t looking. Back before we came, Zuma didn’t have to dirty up all these dishes for breakfast. She only had to make a tray and take it to Mrs. Sevier’s bedroom. Hootsie told me. Before we came, sometimes Hootsie’d stay upstairs all morning with the missus, just looking at Life magazines and picture books and trying to keep her happy so the mister could work.
Now Hootsie’s gotta help in the kitchen, and that’s our fault.
She sticks a foot under the table and stomps on my toes when she sets down the eggs.
In a minute, Zuma comes up the hall with Mr. Sevier. She’s the only one who can get him out of his music room when the door’s closed. She raised Mr. Sevier since he was a little boy, and she still takes care of him like he is one. He listens to her when he won’t even listen to his missus.
“You gotsa eat!” she says as she follows him up the hall, her hands waving in and out of the morning shadows. “Here I been, cookin’ up all this food, and it done gone half-cold a’ready.”
“Woke with a melody in mind earlier. Had to work it out before it left me.” He stops at the end of the hall, puts one hand to his stomach, and holds the other one in the air. He dances a little jig like he’s an actor onstage. Then he takes a bow for us. “Good morning, ladies.”
Mrs. Sevier’s frown tugs upward. “You know what we agreed, Darren. Not before breakfast, and meals at the table together. How will the girls ever learn to be a family if you’re locked away by yourself all hours?”
He doesn’t stop at his chair but rounds the table and kisses her square on the lips. “How’s my muse this morning?”
“Oh, stop that,” she complains. “You’re only trying to shake me off.”
“Am I succeeding at it?” He winks at Fern and me. Fern giggles, and I just pretend I didn’t notice.
Something tugs in my chest, and I stare down at my plate, and I see Briny kissing Queenie just that same way when he passed through the shanty heading to the afterdeck.
The food doesn’t smell good all of a sudden, even though my stomach growls for it. I don’t want to eat these people’s breakfast or laugh at their jokes or call them Mommy and Papa. I have a mama and a daddy, and I want to go home to them.
Fern shouldn’t giggle and carry on with these people either. It ain’t right.
I reach under the table and pinch her leg, and she yelps a little.
Our new mommy and papa bend their foreheads at us, trying to figure out what happened. Fern doesn’t tell.
Zuma and Hootsie bring out the rest of the dishes, and we eat breakfast while Mr. Sevier talks about his new music and how just the right tune came to him in the middle of the night. He talks about scores and rests and notes and all kinds of things. Mrs. Sevier sighs and looks out the window, but I can’t help listening. I’ve never heard anything about how people write music down on paper. All the tunes I know come from listening when Briny plays his guitar or harmonica or maybe even the piano in a pool hall. The music always goes deep down inside me and makes me feel a certain way.
Now I wonder if Briny ever knew that people write tunes on paper like a storybook and it gets put in the movies, the way Mr. Sevier talks about. His new music is for a movie. At the end of the table, he moves his hands around in the air and talks wild and excited about a scene where Quantrill’s Raiders ride through Kansas and burn a whole town.
He hums the tune and uses the table for a drum, and the dishes rattle, and I can feel the horses running and hear the guns blasting.
“What do you think, dear?” he says to Mrs. Sevier when he finishes.
She claps and Fern claps too. “A masterpiece,” Mrs. Sevier says. “Of course it’s a masterpiece. Don’t you think so, Bethie?”
I can’t get used to them calling Fern Beth, which they think is her real name, of course.
“Madderpees.” Fern tries to say the word masterpiece with her mouth full
of grits.
The three of them laugh, and I just look down at my plate.
“It’s so good to see her happy.” Our new mommy leans around the table to tuck Fern’s hair out of the way so she won’t get grits in it.
“Yes, it is.” Mr. Sevier is looking at his wife, but she doesn’t know it. She’s busy petting Fern.
Mrs. Sevier twirls Fern’s hair around her finger, blending tiny spirals into bigger curls, like Shirley Temple’s. Mrs. Sevier likes it that way best. Most days, I put mine in a braid behind my back, so she won’t get any ideas about doing that to me. “I was worried we’d never get to this point,” she tells her mister.
“These things take time.”
“I was so afraid I’d never be a mother.”
His eyes round upward, like he’s happy. He looks across the table. “She’s ours now.”
No she’s not! I want to scream. You’re not her mother. You’re not our mother. Those dead babies in the graveyard, those are yours. I hate Mrs. Sevier for wanting Fern. I hate those babies for dying. I hate Mr. Sevier for bringing us here. If he’d left us alone, we’d be back on the Arcadia by now, Fern and me. Nobody would be twirling my sister’s hair into Shirley Temple curls or calling her Beth.
I clench my teeth so hard the pain travels all the way to the top of my head. I’m glad for it. It’s just a little ache, and I know where it comes from. I can stop it any time I want. The one in my heart is way bigger. I can’t fix it no matter how hard I try. It scares me so much that I can’t even breathe.
What if Fern decides she likes these people better than she likes me? What if she forgets about Briny and Queenie and the Arcadia? We didn’t have fancy dresses and scooter toys on the porch and stuffed teddy bears and Crayolas and little china tea sets there. All we had was the river, but the river fed us and carried us and set us free.
I have to make sure Fern doesn’t forget. She can’t turn into Beth on the inside.