Every Day After

by Laura Golden

  “I ain’t pickin’ anybody over anybody, but who else does she have to talk to? Who else do I have? The way you act sometimes makes it hard not to think about pickin’ her. I think I’ve just about reached Wits’ End Corner with you, Lizzie.”

  “With me? Listen, Ben, if Erin Sawyer doesn’t have any friends, it’s her own fault, and you know it. She came here mean as a rattlesnake and she just got meaner. You don’t believe she’s really your friend, do you? ’Cause she’s only talking to you to get at me. You trying to get at me too?”

  “I ain’t never lied to you, Lizzie, not once. And I’m gonna tell you the truth now. I talk to Erin because she listens to me. After Daddy died, you got to where all you cared about was me being here for you. That don’t seem fair.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My cheeks started to burn. “Sometimes I think you’ve got feathers for brains. Believe what you want, but the only reason she’s listening to you is to find out things she’s got no business knowing. How could you tell her about me and Mama, Ben?” Once I’d admitted out loud that Ben was the reason Erin knew all that she did, it pushed up the hurt inside me. It flooded through me fast and hard, drowning out all my anger. Nobody would think it, but hurt is stronger than anger.

  “I didn’t set out to tell her. It just happened. She’d talk, and I’d talk. Mostly about me. But then about you. But I didn’t tell her nothin’ else about you after she got so mad about the essay contest. I told her she was taking things too far, and she told me she was gonna drop it. She knew I was worried about you, but she said you didn’t seem none too worried about me. And you didn’t. I knew you saw me with her that day. She saw you staring at us from behind that car.”

  The pancake began to sizzle in the skillet. I flipped it and poured in another. I thought back to that day and Erin glancing over in my direction. So she had seen. “Well, she didn’t drop it, Ben. She got worse.”

  Ben cleared his throat. “I tried to tell you all this that day we saw Dr. Heimler, but you were too busy rambling on about the Hinkles. And after we saw the doctor, you were worried about your mama. But it don’t matter. We won’t be fussin’ about Erin anymore after today anyway.”

  “So, you finally decided to see the light and stop being friends with her?”

  “No. Me and Ma’s leaving.”

  “Well, where are you going? You still gonna ignore me when you get back?”

  “We ain’t comin’ back. Bank’s takin’ the house. Got to be out in three days. We’re headin’ down to Montgomery to stay with my aunt.”

  Ben inched closer. The same blunt, breathless pain I’d felt when Daddy left gripped my insides. Ben was leaving. He was leaving me. I couldn’t let him. I needed him. I always had.

  “You can’t move away!” I shouted. My voice erupted louder than I’d intended.

  “Can’t help it.” Ben looked me dead in the face. “We’ll have no place to live. You want us livin’ like hobos?”

  “No, but there has to be another way. Can’t your ma talk to the banker? I mean, you just need more time, right?”

  “Done tried that. Mr. Cooper’s given us more time already. Time’s up. We can’t afford the house no more, and we all know it. I especially hate it for Mr. Reed. He’s got to where he’s talkin’ to me pretty good now. When I leave, he’ll be right back to his old ways.”

  The pancakes sizzled furiously. “Mr. Reed? What about me? You can’t leave me. You started all this mess with Erin, and you got to help me end it. And the bank’s after our house too. Got a letter from the sheriff just this week. Suppose I can’t get the money in time. You know what’ll happen quick as a flash—Erin keeps at her plan, the bank takes the house, the doctor takes Mama, and the orphanage takes me. Please, Ben, don’t leave me alone. Fight. For my sake.” I was desperate, grasping for words that might make him try.

  He threw up his hands. “Dang it, Lizzie! This ain’t all about you. It’s always about warring and winning to you. When are you gonna see that life ain’t one big war to win? Bad things happen, good things happen. Ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop it any more than I could stop what happened to Pa.”

  “Fine. Get mad. Give up. Go have a nice life with your aunt!”

  Ben grabbed my arms, his eyes blazing. “Lizzie, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you’re the most selfish person I know. You didn’t hear a word I just said. You wouldn’t care about my leavin’ a lick if your daddy was still here, ’cause then you wouldn’t need me. If you’d listened to me sooner and opened your eyes, you could’ve seen this comin’. But like Erin said, you’re always too concerned with yourself to care about anybody else. And what’s worse than being selfish is you’re scared.”

  I jerked away from his grip, away from that word. I knew I was afraid, but I hated hearing it out loud. “Scared? Of what?”

  “I reckon that’s for you to figure out.”

  Unwanted tears stung my eyes. I struggled to hold them back. “Just go, Ben, if that’s what you want to do. I’m tired of your badgering. Just leave me alone.”

  “Fine. Alone is what you’re about to be.”

  Ben stormed out of the kitchen to the front door. “Oh, yeah,” he called. “I almost forgot.” He stomped back into the kitchen, the window rattling with each step. “Happy birthday. Didn’t know when else I might see you.”

  He reached into his back pocket and slammed a homemade slingshot onto the table. Then he was gone. Part of me wanted to run after him and tell him I was sorry, that he was right. But a bigger part of me, the stubborn part, wouldn’t let me. And so I stood there, alone, in piercing silence.

  I picked up the slingshot and turned it over in my hands, running my fingers across the rough wood and smooth rubber. It looked just like Ben’s, maybe better. I loved it. And hated it. It was a painful reminder that I’d forgotten Ben’s birthday just two days earlier. I’d never forgotten Ben’s birthday before. Had he told Erin about his birthday? Had she remembered?

  A sharp smell filled the kitchen. I rushed over to the stove and flipped the pancakes. Burned. I took them out to Mama anyhow. It wouldn’t matter.

  “Here you go,” I said as I put the plate on the table beside her. “At least they’ll fill you up.”

  She sat stone still, not even blinking.

  “Mama?”

  Nothing. Not a breath. Silence. That silence frightened me more than Erin and Ben and being poor combined. It meant I was alone. Truly alone. I gripped my locket, wishing, praying, begging for Daddy to come home and make things right.

  Come on, Lizzie. Don’t give up. Were those my words or Daddy’s? I wasn’t sure.

  I knelt on the dusty boards beside Mama’s rocker and rested my head in her lap, just as I had many times before when I was sick or upset. I sat there thinking of Ben and everything he’d said. Thinking of how he’d told me I’d be alone. And now I was, even with Mama beside me. I sat like that till the sun sank behind the trees, waiting for her to stroke my hair and tell me everything would be all right.

  Fifteen

  The Days Are Prolonged and Every Vision Faileth

  May 30. My birthday. My twelfth birthday. I tried forcing myself into feeling as sunny on the inside as the day was outside. I never would’ve imagined I’d be spending it without Daddy. My sixtieth maybe, but not my twelfth.

  Still, it’s an unwritten rule that birthdays are special days when nothing goes wrong or brings you down. It’s the one day of the year when God grants you a wish. And today He was gonna grant one of mine. I felt it in my bones. And if God didn’t, surely Daddy wouldn’t let me down.

  I spent the better part of the morning with Mama. About every two minutes I’d pray, “Please, God, please. Make her well. It is my birthday, you know.”

  I read two sections of her book aloud, sitting cross-legged next to her rocker on the back porch. The breeze lapped at the pages of Mama’s book as if it were too impatient to wait on me to turn the page. About halfway through my reading, Mama stopped staring
, leaned her head back against the rocker, and closed her eyes. She was listening to me. I could tell.

  When I finished, I figured I’d carry on with the tradition of fishing on my birthday. Though Daddy wasn’t with me, the weather was perfect, and I couldn’t help but think about the possibility of landing One-Eye again. I told Mama to watch me from the porch and I’d be sure to land her a big one. She didn’t open her eyes.

  A warm breeze drifted through the field, sending the grass into gentle swirls and waves. Ripples danced across the water, creating millions of shimmers on its surface. I’d never been one for fairy tales, but that was how I thought it should look in a fairyland. And if there was ever a time for impossible things to happen, it was in a fairyland on your birthday.

  I found the fattest cricket I could, clutched my locket, then cast out my line. I stood in silence for a while. It was quieter than I was used to. Too quiet. Most times before, either Daddy or Ben had fished with me. Silence was possible with Daddy, depending on his mood, but Ben didn’t understand the meaning of the word. If he wasn’t talking, he was destroying the peace by popping his slingshot.

  The sick feeling I had when I thought about Daddy worsened when I thought about Ben. I didn’t want our friendship to end the way Mama’s and Mrs. Butler’s had, but I didn’t know how to stop it.

  It’s funny how something that usually gets on your nerves is the very thing you miss if you can’t have it, and right then I wished more than anything I could hear Ben snapping that slingshot. But I couldn’t. I started to head back to the house for mine so I could pop its band, but the fishing line twitched and I stopped. Something was testing the bait.

  I eased up to the edge of the water. The sky’s reflection hid the fish from view.

  The line twitched again, harder than before. This was it. Every cell in my body screamed that I was about to land One-Eye again. I glanced back at the porch. It made me happy to know Mama was there.

  My line jerked, and the pole dug into my hands. I jerked back to set the hook. Gooseflesh covered my body as One-Eye began the battle of tug-of-war. He’d tug, but I tugged harder. I pictured him beneath the water, trying his hardest to swim to the pond’s mucky bottom. I stepped back as I reeled, shortening the amount of line he had. His splashes sent water flying into the field.

  One-Eye, One-Eye, One-Eye, my heart pounded in rhythmic beats. I gave a final heave and the catfish’s heavy body slid out of the water. The sun glinted off his smooth, wet skin, and I raced up to inspect him.

  His eyes. I had to see his eyes. I looked.

  Two. Two eyes.

  It was just a regular catfish, a fish anyone would’ve been proud to land, and it’d make a tasty dinner, but it wasn’t One-Eye.

  I turned to Mama, halfway expecting to see a disappointed expression plastered across her face, but she wasn’t even looking in my direction. For the first time since Daddy left, I had the overwhelming feeling that maybe Mama didn’t want to look at me. That somehow, even in her other world, she knew I’d fail to save us, just as I’d failed to catch One-Eye for the second time.

  Panic rushed over me like a wave. I dropped to my knees, right there in the middle of the field. “Please, God. I can’t do this alone anymore. I can’t. I need a sign. Something to prove Daddy’s coming home.”

  Like Ben had done the first day he’d plowed without his pa, I ran inside and grabbed my slingshot, along with the bottomless tin can I used as a biscuit cutter. I sat that can up on an old stump out in the field, and just like Ben had, I told myself if I shot it off ten times, Daddy was on his way home. I searched around for twelve rocks, allowing two extra since I’d never shot a slingshot before. I put the rock in the sling the way I’d watched Ben do hundreds of times; then I pulled it back and let it go. It dropped to the ground only a few feet in front of me. Eleven more times, the same thing happened. I wasn’t getting my sign. Only thing left to do was pray. Pray hard.

  But though I could pray till the sun went down, facts were facts. The feeling my wish was gonna come true had vanished the second I spotted that two-eyed catfish. And there was no tricking it back, either.

  I spent the better part of half an hour sprawled out in the field, trying to invent some way of making my life, our life, better. Fast. But there was no way. I was happy to have my job at Hinkle’s, and my odd mending jobs, but they weren’t enough to rescue us completely. I’d wasted too much time waiting around on Daddy to come back.

  I opened my locket to examine the faces inside but quickly snapped it shut. I couldn’t face the deep disappointment that gripped me when I looked into Daddy’s dark eyes.

  I pushed the feeling aside, grasping at the last pinprick of hope. I picked up the stringer that held my two-eyed catfish and trudged to the end of our drive, the sun beating down on the dusty road. Over and over in my head I repeated: Please let there be. Please let there be. Please let there be.

  The mailbox’s handle felt cold and hard inside my grasp. The box screeched as I opened it. Slowly, I reached inside and shuffled through the little mail we’d gotten, searching for Daddy’s perfect penmanship.

  Nothing.

  I shoved the mail back into the box and slammed the door. “What are you doing?” I screamed at my locket as though Daddy could hear. I couldn’t understand. He’d always been there. Why wasn’t he now, when we needed him most?

  Time ticked past. Each second moved the bank deadline closer and closer. First things first. It was edging on close to noon, and I needed to get to Hinkle’s. Even the smallest earnings counted for something. Seconds spent working were seconds spent well.

  Still, I’d need more money than that. And money wasn’t easy to come by. The only money I knew of was in Mama and Daddy’s emergency savings jar. Well, if Daddy failed to show, this would count as an emergency, wouldn’t it?

  I ran back to the house, straight into the kitchen, dropped my fish into the sink, and retrieved the money jar from the cabinet. It felt heavy in my hands. Maybe there was more in it than I’d thought. Maybe it was just the weight of the Mason jar. I turned it bottom up, spilling its contents onto the counter. Loose change rolled off and clanged on the floor. I shook the jar again. A small wad of bills dropped out. I smoothed them, picked up the change, and counted. Eleven dollars and fifty-eight cents. Plus the dollar sixty from Mr. Hinkle, and zero dollars zero cents left from my mending work. That money had gone straight to the electric bill. That left me with a grand total of $13.18. A little less than ten dollars more would pay the mortgage for now. Maybe I could work some extra hours at Hinkle’s or …

  Or what? I wasn’t sure, but I knew I needed to get on with figuring it out. I stuffed the money back into the jar and put it back in its secret spot behind the plates.

  My mind whirled with ideas as I cleaned my fish and put the wrapped pieces into the icebox. With noon fast approaching, I hurried onto the back porch to get Mama. She pulled against me when I tried to move her inside. She’d resisted me a little on days past, but this was different. She wanted to stay outside, and that was the way it was going to be whether I liked it or not. Since it was a Monday, I let her have her way. Dr. Heimler had yet to show on a Monday. Besides, it would only be for a few hours, and then I’d be home. I kissed Mama’s cheek and took off.

  If the sunny weather was attempting to predict a good day, it was flat-out wrong. I hadn’t been at work for more than two hours when Erin flounced in. I was standing at the back dusting off shelves of jams and jellies when I heard her high-pitched voice echo through the store.

  “Hello, Mr. Hinkle. How are you today?”

  “Why, Erin, I’m fine as frog hair. You?”

  “I’m fine. I just came in to get a few things for Mother.”

  “All righty. You just hand me the list and I’ll let you know when I’ve finished.”

  Mr. Hinkle might’ve been fine as frog hair when Erin came in, but he probably wouldn’t be so lucky by the time she went out. And if he was, I figured I wouldn’t be. Unless I hid. If
Erin couldn’t see me, she couldn’t bother me. I ducked into the back room with Mrs. Hinkle.

  “What are you doing back here?” Mrs. Hinkle shrieked. “I gave you a dust rag not ten minutes ago, and you’re supposed to be using it.” She pointed her fat finger toward the storefront.

  Erin was waiting for me when I came back out. “What’cha hiding from, Lizzie?” Erin whispered. “Wouldn’t be me, would it?”

  “Go away, Erin,” I said. “I’m busy.”

  Erin’s eyes widened at the realization that I was an employee, not a customer. “You mean you’re working here? Things must be pretty bad for that to happen.”

  “Everything’s fine. Now, will you get your mother’s things and go?” I turned around and began to dust, carefully picking up one jelly jar at a time, wiping the wood beneath it, and putting it back.

  “All finished, Erin,” Mr. Hinkle called from the front counter.

  Erin didn’t budge. She watched me work for a few seconds before she said in a hushed voice, “I’m going. You just be careful not to drop anything.”

  I ignored her and picked up another jar. The next thing I knew, Erin’s shoulder rammed straight into the middle of my back. The force shoved me into the shelf, and I grabbed hold of it, trying to steady myself. It jerked and jiggled against my weight. Two jars teetered and crashed to the floor. Shattered glass and blueberry jam burst across the wood floor like a giant, sparkling ink blot.

  I turned to give Erin a piece of my mind, but she was already taking her bag from Mr. Hinkle.

  Mrs. Hinkle came flying out of the back room. “Land sakes, you careless girl! You’d best get to cleaning that up this instant! And don’t you think for one minute that I won’t take the cost of that jam out of your pay.” She mumbled something else I couldn’t make out, and then hurried away.

  Erin smirked at me as she went out the door. Mr. Hinkle brought over a mop and patted my shoulder. “Accidents happen,” he said. “I’ve knocked over more than my fair share of jars in my time.” He glanced up to make sure Mrs. Hinkle was in the back again. “I always got in trouble too.”