Between, Georgia

by Joshilyn Jackson

  Who did you pick?

  I started to spell Josephine into her hands, but as I got to the H, she pushed my hand away.

  Not Josephine, she signed.

  I tapped at her leg, and she grudgingly put one hand over mine. You asked me to pick—

  She pushed my hands away again. Not Josephine. Her mouth was set in a mutinous line. Her hand drew a forceful slash through the air, closing the subject. I’m hungry. I need my pill.

  I gave up. I put one arm around her, careful of her injured shoulder, and helped her to her feet. I walked with her to the kitchen, letting her lean on me on her bad side. We walked to the table and I stayed beside her, supporting her until she found the chair back with her hand. She felt her way to the front of the chair and eased herself down into it. Her hands drifted lightly along the table’s edge and then crept their way carefully up onto its surface, mapping the placement of her fork, the Styrofoam box with her supper in it, and her fountain drink. She felt along the top of the cup to see if I had already put the straw in, then picked it up and put her hand out for her pill.

  I’d gotten her prescription filled for her, so I had the bottle of Percocet in my bag. I got her one, and when I put it into her hand, she swallowed it, then put her hand back out.

  I put my hand in it and signed, You only take one.

  She compressed her mouth and demanded the bottle.

  You can only have one every four hours.

  I can tell time, she signed, annoyed, her index finger making an audible thump as she tapped at her wrist. I handed over the bottle, and she stuffed it carelessly in her pocket.

  I told her I was going downstairs, and she nodded her hand.

  She didn’t like to talk at meals because she couldn’t easily chat and eat at the same time, and she hated it when her food got cold.

  I went back down to the store to make sure Bernese had turned the front lights off. She’d left the Styrofoam box with the chicken nuggets sitting out on the counter, either for me to eat or as a message to butt out of her plan to have Fisher bloom into anorexia before she turned ten. Probably both. I hadn’t gotten myself anything. Between choosing a head and trying not to think about Henry kissing me, I hadn’t felt hungry. There it was again, Henry kissing me. I was doing an indescribably bad job of not thinking about it.

  I wasn’t sure how to take it. His comment afterward seemed to indicate he’d viewed it as some sort of litmus test, as if he’d licked the inside of my mouth so he could stand back and observe the chemical reaction: If my tongue turned blue, it would mean I’d tested positive for Jonno.

  I wasn’t sure why I had never thought of Henry as anything more than, well, Henry. I’d somehow neglected to be affected by his beauty or notice his interest. I’d been married, but I hadn’t been dead. Maybe it was the Crabtree connection? But even if, by some miracle of previously untapped black-eyed and swarthy re-cessives, Henry was genetically a Crabtree, fourth cousins three times removed was such a distant link it didn’t count.

  Except for his last name, he was everything my family would want for me. Mama and Genny already adored him for his manners, his book smarts, and his common sense, even his devotion to laundry starch. I realized he actually had a lot more in common with the Fretts than with the Crabtrees. Hell, his bed probably had hospital corners. I felt my cheeks flushing at the thought of his bed.

  I dunked the chicken nuggets in Trude’s overly sweet barbecue sauce and tried to shelve Henry for now. The last thing I needed was another man when I wasn’t at all sure I was shut of the first one. But then I realized that the actual last thing I needed was to lose Henry’s friendship.

  I threw away the rest of Fisher’s rejected dinner and went upstairs to get Mama. I could tell she was feeling low. As if her bad mood weren’t hint enough, her movements were languid, and she took the stairs one at a time, favoring her bruised hip. I offered to run home and get my Mustang and come back and drive her, but she insisted on walking.

  We set out together, me in Genny’s normal place beside her.

  She wanted to cut straight across the square. Usually, she stuck to the cobblestone walkway, but she was willing to trade a paved surface for a shorter walk. She leaned on me a bit more than usual across the springy grass, but her steps were sure, and she’d said she didn’t need me to carry her large handbag. She had it slung over her uninjured shoulder.

  We paused to rest at the crosswalk, then crossed Philbert and passed the Crabtrees’ gas station. As we came even with the corner of the chain-link fence surrounding the parts yard, her pace slowed and she paused again.

  I stopped as well. She let go of my elbow and took three long breaths, shifting her weight to her unbruised hip and leg. From behind a rusted-out Dodge, the two big male Dobies appeared.

  They came slinking down to where we were standing, regarding us with their blank and soulless eyes from the other side of the fence.

  I turned to look at her as she signed, I smell them. Are they barking?

  No, they seem very calm.

  It was always only Genny.

  Let’s get you home. Can you keep going?

  My mother gave her head a quick shake and then dug her left hand into her pocket. Into her other hand, I signed, You can’t have another pill for at least three more hours.

  My mother’s eyebrows went up, and her mouth shaped itself into a concerned O of surprise. The hand in her pocket came out holding nothing but the cap to her Percocet bottle.

  “Oh, good grief,” I said out loud. I signed, Did you take it out again at the apartment? Did you take another pill?

  She shook her hand in a firm no. Go find the bottle. I’ll wait here.

  I’m not leaving you here by these crazy dogs, I signed. She was so close to the fence that she could have reached out with one hand and touched it.

  Those dogs never minded me for a minute. I won’t be able to sleep without another pill. Go find them.

  I tried to get her to come with me, but she drooped by the fence as if she had taken root there. I finally let go of her and backtracked across the street, my eyes scanning the ground. In the middle of the road, I saw one of the pills and picked it up. I saw another in the gutter. The bottle, open and empty, was lying a bit farther on, and near it I found a third pill, almost completely hidden in the thick zoysia.

  Mama had apparently been leaking pills all along our walk, like an outsize Gretel with narcotics instead of bread crumbs. If I was willing to be Hansel, I could follow them all the way back, and tomorrow Bernese could cook me up in Mama’s kiln.

  I had found only a few of the pills, but I didn’t want to leave my mother standing between those dogs and the street for a second longer. Mama was never careless with physical objects, and the fact that she had casually stuffed the bottle in her pocket to begin with should have alerted me to how off she was feeling.

  I’d found enough pills to get her through the night, and in the morning I could take on the exciting project of calling Dr. Crow and telling him I needed a refill on a controlled substance because my mother had sprinkled the first batch into the long grass. He would probably say, “I see! And I suppose the check is in the mail? And your little brother ate your homework?”

  I looked over and saw my mother still standing in the same spot, her weight on her good leg. I hurried back and drew my heart on her arm, then stood beside her so she could get out her cane again and grasp my elbow.

  We picked our careful way home, and I made a mental note to drive her to and from the square until she was back up to snuff.

  Once through the front door, my mother dropped her keys into the blue bowl and plopped her handbag down beside it. She pulled in a long breath through her nose, catching the scent of home, and then released it in a long, satisfied sigh. Her spine straightened, her chin came up, and all at once she bloomed into her vivid self, her presence palpably filling the room.

  Can you call and check on Genny? I think I’ll make orange pound cake, she signed. She headed briskly
toward her kitchen, one hand trailing along the wall. I followed her, passing through the dining room. As soon as she reached the kitchen counter, I tapped at her shoulder. I suggested that since we had spent the last twenty minutes creeping home like wounded mice, it might be better if she went to bed.

  But you didn’t get me any dessert. Go call about Genny and quit worrying.

  There was no stopping her, so I picked up the kitchen phone and called Loganville General. The charge nurse said Genny was doing fine, and that Dr. Crow had come by earlier to check on her. I didn’t get to talk to Genny, who was asleep again.

  I sat at the kitchen table and succumbed to the pleasure of watching my mother baking in her own house. She got four sticks of butter out of the fridge and chose her midsize mixing bowl. She unwrapped the butter sticks and dropped them in, then set the bowl in her microwave. She ran her fingers lightly along the Braille buttons, programmed it to run for a minute on a low setting, and hit start.

  I loved watching the surety of her movements as she rambled about, sifting flour and salt together and humming. She often hummed when she was home with no one but family. She said the vibrations in her chest felt good. High-pitched, coming in tiny random spurts, her humming was a noise that might startle a stranger, but it gave me a feeling of peace because it meant my mother was home and happy and at ease in the middle of her world.

  She’d made this cake for me every year, for my birthday. One of my first memories was of her making it when she was still sighted. She missed only one year, the year I turned eight. That was the year she stopped working in porcelain. Her vision was failing, and she left Genny and me for seven months to stay at the Helen Keller National Center in New York and learn how to live blind.

  I hadn’t wanted her to go, and Genny had been in a state of nervous prostration. We’d both wept and clung and fussed and tried to keep her, but she left us anyway. She said to me, I can leave you now for half a year, and come back knowing how to be your mama, or I can stay here and never know, and very soon you’ll have to be mine.

  She poured the batter and put the Bundt pan in the oven, wincing as she bent. She stood up and leaned on the counter, finished, so I gave her the update on Genny, and she nodded her hand, satisfied.

  Then she added, This week I am going to start a new piece. I’ve had it in my head, but I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say. It came clear while I was mixing. It’s going to be called The Bones of Dogs, and I will make it in many pieces, very smooth, very long, each one knobbed on the end. I’ll fire them separately, and each piece will be so smooth it will be like butter, firm and cool. After they are fired, I’ll take a hammer, and I’ll hit some of them in places. Not exactly in half, although some will go in half. Some will need the ends smashed off into powder, and some will be in three or four pieces. They’ll have to be fitted together in a way that feels right to me, I think upward, leaning against each other like the spines of a tepee. So to feel it properly, you start at the base and follow the long pieces up with your hands, and it will be very smooth and beautiful, inviting you higher, but then it will become sharp, jagged, and that will happen mostly where the pieces intersect. Although some shorter pieces won’t make it up to the main intersection. They will lean on taller ones. It is going to be a very angry piece. You’ll like it.

  I knew better than to try and talk her out of working until her shoulder had more time to heal. When Mama was ready to sculpt, you couldn’t stop her if you tied her to the bed. It sounds wonderful, I said. But you are going to wear yourself out. Why won’t you go to bed? I’ll get your cake out for you when it’s done.

  Because I want cake now, she said.

  Why are you so cussed and strong-willed? For “cussed,” I used one of our home signs, shaping the letter B beside my right temple and then shooting it forward, fisting my hand with my index finger extended. A more perfect and literal interpretation was probably “Bernese-ish.”

  Because my mama taught me I had to be, she said. Her eyebrows knit together, and she tapped at my wrist three times with her index finger. After another pause, she added, So did your mama.

  Why aren’t you?

  I am, I signed, and she chuckled at my irritation.

  I know you are worried about what those Crabtrees might do. And Bernese is giving you a hard time. But I hope you won’t use these things as excuses and miss your court date on Friday. You need to get your divorce. Then maybe you can go after the things you really want.

  Or will you find some other bad thing to pin you down and keep you busy so you can’t?

  You’re making me angry, I signed. You say that like I know what I want.

  You know. And I know what I want, too.

  What do you want?

  I want to make glaze for this cake. It smells beautiful. She gave my wrist a final tap, and I told her rather huffily that I was going to bed.

  Without cake? she asked, raising her eyebrows, mock-innocent.

  I signed a terse good night and stomped upstairs, hard enough so she could feel the force of my footsteps through the floor. But the reverberations I felt came from her almost silent laughter following me up the stairs.

  CHAPTER 11

  MY EYES SPRANG open. I was breathing hard in the darkness, with the echoes of an unidentified noise dying in my ears. The digital alarm clock by my bed said 3:26. I lay in the dim light coming through the slats in the blinds, but the noise that had woken me up was not repeated. It took me a moment to orient.

  A damp ridge of heat was pressed into the small of my back. I half sat to look. Fisher. She was sleeping in a curl with her arms up tight against her chest, and she had pressed her bowed spine into mine. Her bangs stuck up in two sweaty tufts.

  I shifted, turning onto my side to face her and propping my head up on one arm, my elbow grinding a hole into the ancient feather pillow.

  She was such a pretty thing, asleep. Her lashes were thick and dark on her faintly pinked cheek, and her mouth, relaxed, retained the rosebud pout of a baby’s. I leaned down close to smell her hair: Johnson’s baby shampoo, and under that, the cut-grass 144

  angry scent that was Fisher. I leaned farther and dropped a kiss beside her mouth. She had one hand stuffed under her cheek, and her breath was as sweet as a cow’s. Apparently, her temper with me had shifted up a generation and sideways to Bernese.

  Whenever Fisher got mad at Bernese, she went night-walking.

  Sometimes she’d move down the hall to Bernese’s guest bedroom, sometimes to the sofa in the den. If she was really angry, she’d break into Mama’s house and sleep in her own toddler bed or climb in with one of us. Twice she had set off down Grace Street alone in the dead of night, all the way to the Dollhouse Store. She had let herself in with the spare key and gone to sleep upstairs in Bernese’s rental property.

  Bernese would have a duck when she woke up and found Fisher had gone on another night walk. I was debating whether I should try to move her back to her own bed or simply go next door and leave a note for Bernese when I heard it again, the mystery thunk that had woken me up. It was coming from outside. I slipped out of bed and went to the window, which faced front. I could see a pickup truck I didn’t know parked across from Bernese’s house. It was facing away from the dead end; someone was planning a quick getaway.

  Uncle Lou’s car was under the carport, and Bernese’s was pulled up behind his in the gravel drive. As my eyes adjusted to the moonlight, I saw the slight figure of a man or a boy slipping between Lou’s car and Bernese’s, bent low. I narrowed my eyes.

  The moonlight was too dim to show me his face, but I could see he was built long and scrawny. I put my money on Ona’s youngest boy, Tucker Crabtree.

  I was wearing nothing except my Braves T-shirt, so I picked up my folded jeans off the ottoman and pulled them on. I jammed 145

  my feet into my Adidas sneakers without bothering with socks. I walked quietly out of my room and crept down the stairs to the front door. I slipped out into the night and padded silentl
y across the lawn to Bernese’s gravel driveway.

  The boy was on the other side of Bernese’s car now. He was still bent over, creeping, so I couldn’t see him. On the side of the car closest to me, I could see that both of Bernese’s tires had been slashed. Not just punctured but cut open in long slices, so that the side of each tire was now three or four connected ribbons. I glanced over at Lou’s car and saw that his tires had been deci-mated as well. I could hear the hiss of air as a knife plunged into one of the tires on the other side.

  “Tucker, you moron, is that you?” I whispered.

  The boy straightened, looming up across the hood from me. I found myself staring into the face of a stranger, a skinny kid with greasy brown locks and dreadful acne. His mouth was hanging open.

  “Shit!” he said, and I said it, too, at exactly the same time. We stared at each other, and even though he had the knife, I was uncertain who was more frightened.

  He hissed, “Come on, come on, come on, let’s go!” and started sprinting for the pickup.

  “Hey!” I said, but he didn’t stop.

  Like an echo, another female voice said, “Hey!” in tones as softly outraged as my own. “You better not leave me!”

  The kid’s accomplice was sitting on the ground, on the other side of the car. As the boy scrambled into the truck’s cab and slammed the door, she lumbered to her feet. She was a mountain of a woman, pale, gelatinous; her upper arms, as big as thighs, wobbled and trembled in the moonlight. Her head was bent so I couldn’t see her whole face, only a splash of smeared lipstick around her mouth.