Georgia Rules

by Nanci Turner Steveson

  They’d been telling the truth about the leg. My ice cream cup fell, but I couldn’t look away from the little graveyard.

  “Oh no, her ice cream! It’s in the dirt!”

  The chicken pushed through a clump of yellow daisies and pecked at something in the grass next to the cross.

  “Pick it up, quick! Five-second rule!”

  Kendra crawled under the table and inspected the inside of the dish. The cup was filled with dirt. “Sheesh, she wasted this one.”

  A leg, and even animals they had loved, were memorialized in that graveyard, right outside the back door for them to see every single day. And I’d never even thought to ask Mama where my own daddy was buried.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s she staring at?”

  “Maggie, you okay?”

  I blinked really fast, aware of a quiet stirring going on inside my head. My chest had that melting-into-my-gut feeling, like I’d been walking on Mars for half my life, looking for a way to get home, and I was so close.

  “Was he buried near here?” I asked.

  “Who?” Lucy asked.

  All the buoyant energy slowly sifted to the ground.

  “The family plot is about twenty minutes away,” James said quietly.

  “Who?” Lucy said again.

  Sonnet narrowed her eyes. “Haven’t you ever been? He was your father, right?”

  Was it my fault I’d never seen his grave? Mama should have taken me. Seems like no matter what else, he was responsible for my life. We should have gone as soon as we got here. I shook my head slowly.

  “Do you want us to take you?” James asked.

  “I’d like that.”

  TWELVE

  James cleared the front seat of an old green pickup, throwing ropes and egg cartons and empty milk jugs into a box and putting it all in the back with Biz, Lucy, and Kendra. They sat up high on the wheel covers, Biz and Lucy on one side, Kendra on the other. Sonnet had disappeared.

  “Is that legal in Vermont for them to sit back there?” I asked.

  James adjusted the mirror. “To ride in the back of Mr. Green-Jeans? No, but in our town, no one cares.”

  He backed out of the steep driveway and we headed off down the road, his right foot working the gas and brake pedals, the sneaker on his left, fake foot resting on the floor. Traffic clogged up in the center of town. Masses of people crowded the sidewalks. A big family stopped in the middle of the road to take a picture without even caring that James had to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting them. I jerked forward.

  “What are they doing?” I asked.

  “Taking pictures, it looks like.” James grinned at me. “Most of these are tourists and 4-H families. County fair starts tomorrow.” He pointed to an overhead banner that spread from one side of the road to the other.

  “I don’t really know what a 4-H family is,” I said.

  “You’ve got a lot to learn about country living, then,” he said.

  We chugged through town and finally hit the open road. I sat back and stuck my arm out the window, letting the air make it rise and fall like a whip. The road snaked left and right, then straightened for a bit, rose up a hill, and dropped down so suddenly my belly tickled.

  It was nice, driving in Vermont. Instead of concrete barricades and hundreds of cars zooming by, the side of the road was lined with leafy trees and stone walls winding their way through the countryside with us. It was miles before we saw another car. James raised his hand off the steering wheel to wave, and the lady coming toward us did the same.

  “Who was that?”

  He shrugged. “Just another person on the road.”

  I could see why someone might like to live here, if they didn’t want a city life. Mama had to have a city. I thought again how it might be nice to come back and visit on vacations and drive on this road and sit on the front porch during the summers. After we went back to Georgia, of course.

  Ten minutes outside town, we turned onto a gravel driveway between two stone pillars, drove slowly past rows of headstones, crested a small hill, then went down a slope. James eased the truck next to a tree with long, leafy branches. Heavy clusters of green acorns pulled the limbs down over a black iron fence surrounding a yard. A small, white stone house sat in the middle. The roof peaked over a leaf design with Austin embossed in the center.

  “This is your family plot,” he said. “Some of the headstones are so old the inscriptions are worn off.”

  I put my hand on the door handle. “Which one is his?”

  James nodded toward the mausoleum. “He’s in there.”

  “Is that place big enough for coffins?”

  “No, only urns. He was cremated.”

  I tucked my hand back into my lap. The idea of going inside that building with jars full of dead people’s ashes creeped me out more than thinking about going inside that barn the first day.

  “Did you go inside at his funeral?”

  “No. I wasn’t there.”

  “You weren’t? Why not?”

  “Deacon was the only one,” James said.

  One of the girls knocked on the back window. “Can we get out?”

  James looked in the mirror and put a finger to his lips.

  “Your dad didn’t want a funeral.”

  My chest squeezed tight. “That’s why Mama said we didn’t come, but part of me didn’t believe her. She never liked talking about him much.”

  “She was telling the truth. We had our own family memorial for him, once Sonnet was ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “She was with him at the accident. She was in shock, so we waited.”

  My brain swirled again. These people, this town, everyone knew so much more about my daddy than I’d ever thought to know.

  “Mama said he got hit by a truck. Is that true?”

  James nodded. “He was trying to open the door of a car that had gone off the road. There were people trapped inside. They said he slipped backward right when a truck was coming around a curve. Driver was texting. He went to jail.”

  “Where was Sonnet?”

  “She was still in your dad’s car. Luckily, she didn’t see it happen.”

  “Was she close to him?”

  “She was. They were a lot alike. He taught her to paint.”

  No wonder Sonnet looked at me like I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t want to get out anymore. I didn’t like the way the whole thing made me feel. I wanted to go home and pretend I’d never seen this graveyard. It had been easier in Georgia to not think about him; but here, in Vermont, my daddy was everywhere. I felt trapped.

  “Can we go back now?”

  “You don’t want to get out? I’ll go in with you, if you want.”

  “No, it’s okay. Now that I know where it is, I’ll bring Mama,” I lied.

  The truth was, I had no intention of ever bringing Mama. I wasn’t even sure I’d come back myself. Sonnet had more right to him than I did. Now I understood why she hadn’t come.

  The girls pitched a fit when I had James drop me off at home instead of going back to their house. Biz and Lucy said they had something “really important” to show me. Kendra told them both to shut up.

  “Don’t say shut up!” Lucy wailed with tears in her eyes. James lifted her from the back and put her up front next to him.

  “Sheesh, now I have to listen to them keep on carrying on about it,” grumbled Kendra. “As if three months wasn’t enough.”

  I had no idea what she meant, or what the girls needed to show me, but it didn’t matter. I needed to be alone in my room for a while. I needed time and mental space to let everything I’d learned that day settle in my head. I needed time alone to think.

  THIRTEEN

  All afternoon my mind reeled. I couldn’t stop thinking about graveyards and buried legs and Sonnet sitting in a car, waiting for my daddy to come back, not knowing he’d been killed, and me all the way down in Georgia, not knowing anything abou
t him at all. At dinner I pushed food around on my plate.

  “What’s got you so sour tonight, little missy?” Mama said, stuffing a lump of tuna casserole in her mouth.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve barely said a word since you got back from that boy’s house. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they brainwashed you.”

  “No one brainwashed me. I’m just tired. There are so many people in that family. I’m not used to all the noise.”

  She settled in her chair, satisfied, and nodded. “Well, there should be a law about how many kids a person can have, even the Catholics.”

  “Four of them are adopted, remember?”

  “No, sugar, three. That dark-skinned girl is a foster—that’s what the boy said.”

  “Hello, that makes you sound racist!”

  “Excuse me, it does not. I’m simply identifying the one I’m talking about. And don’t speak to me that way.”

  “Then don’t call her that. Her name is Kendra.”

  “Okay, Kendra, then. She’s a foster. I can’t keep all the names straight, even that boy. He has the reddest hair I’ve ever seen. And that leg situation. I just don’t know what to think about that. Did they tell you how that happened?”

  “James. And, no, I don’t know how it happened.”

  “Did you meet the mothers?”

  “Just for a second.”

  She leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “What do they look like? I mean, can you tell?”

  I stood up so fast my chair scraped loudly across the floor. “You really just said that? Was there something in particular you wanted me to look for?”

  Mama’s head flew back like I’d slapped her. Her eyes welled up, but I saw for only a second because she looked away quickly and started picking at her casserole.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “That was rude of me.”

  Mama’s mood swings were as much a part of my life as one-hundred-degree summer days, but this sounded like a genuine apology. This was new. I didn’t know what to say, so I sat down again and watched a hazy, red sun hover over the tops of the trees in the distance. Finally, she picked up both our plates and took them to the sink. I slipped away silently to my room.

  After nine o’clock I was still sitting on my bed, reading From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for the third time, when Mama knocked on my door.

  “Come in.”

  She poked her head inside. “You didn’t get dessert. Want some? Butterscotch pudding.”

  “No, I’m okay, thanks.”

  “If you change your mind, there’s a cup of it in the fridge.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Okay, then,” she said, hesitating. “Good night, sugar.”

  “Good night.”

  Her head disappeared and the door started to close. I jolted upright.

  “Mama? Wait!”

  Her head came back. “Yes?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Just one? That’s not like you, but sure, shoot.”

  Big gulp. “You never told me why you and my daddy got a divorce.”

  Mama straightened up and crossed over to pull my curtains closed, like she had to think for a minute to remember.

  “Why would you want to know that?”

  “I was just wondering. I mean, I know we were here for a while, but I never knew why we didn’t stay.”

  Something funny crossed her face, but she was still soft. “Let’s put it this way: your daddy shouldn’t have gone to fight in a war. It did something to his head. When he came home, he was different. He wanted to make it work, but he couldn’t handle it.”

  “He couldn’t handle me?”

  “I didn’t say that. He wanted us, but he was damaged.”

  “Damaged like sick?”

  As fast as I could snap my fingers, the soft mood was gone. She shook her head and frowned. “I knew you couldn’t do it,” she said abruptly. “That’s more than one question. Now forget about all this and go to sleep.”

  Before I could say anything else, she strode to the door and slipped out.

  When the doorknob clicked shut, it was like a key opened a different room in my head. A room that had been waiting to be found for a long time. It was full of questions, and suddenly I needed answers.

  FOURTEEN

  Mama studied herself in the hall mirror and raised a mascara tool to her eye.

  “Do you think I look old?”

  She hardly ever asked me anything like that because she knew I’d give her a cheeky answer. It was like a game between us, and I almost always won. “Old as in an old cow, or old as in spoiled milk?”

  “Okay, smarty-pants, don’t get cocky. You’re still young enough for a good old-fashioned spanking.”

  “You can get arrested for spanking kids nowadays.”

  She switched eyes and lathered black gunk over blond lashes. “Well, they’d have to catch me first and now that I’ve got my zippy red Mustang, they’ll have to up their game.”

  I raised my book in front of my face. “Whatever.”

  “In any case, I appreciate you waiting for the cable people,” she said, sweet and tart at the same time. “It’s been so long since I’ve been in a real, live city, and it turns out Burlington is less than two hours away! I practically have to drive that far to get to a decent grocery store.”

  “We’ve been without internet for three weeks now. I’m not budging until they come.”

  “Deacon will be home most of the day, but don’t bother him unless it’s an emergency. We don’t want to owe him any favors.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “I know, but I might be gone until dinner. You’ll be on the internet anyway. You can research all the trees you want and not have to set a foot outside. That must make you happy.”

  “Uh-huh. Twenty-first century and all.”

  She giggled and tucked the mascara thing into her makeup bag.

  “Speaking of which,” she went on. “Did you know there’s a town in this state called Dummerston? You know, as in dumb? What kind of place has names like that? Only in Vermont, I’m telling you.”

  Her dig at Vermont irritated me. A month ago it wouldn’t have mattered, but right then, it did. “Could be worse,” I said. “There’s one called Monkey’s Eyebrow in Kentucky.”

  “Well, we can cross Kentucky off the list of possible places to move when we sell this godforsaken farm and get the heck out of Dodge. Or Dummerston, as the case may be.”

  I bolted upright so fast my book flew halfway across the room. “What do you mean? We’re going back to Atlanta, remember? I emailed Irene before we moved and promised her!”

  Mama looked at me through the mirror. “I make those kinds of decisions, and I am certain there isn’t anything more for us in Atlanta than there is here in Vermont.”

  “What? No! What about my friends? My school?” Every layer of skin on my face was on fire.

  She puckered her lips and painted them bright red. “I think you’ll come to understand what it means to be so rich we can go anywhere we want.”

  “I don’t want to be rich, I want to go home!”

  She turned to me, tucked her purse under her arm, and said, “All things considered, can you honestly say where home is right now?”

  I slammed myself down on the couch and turned my face so she couldn’t see the tears stinging my eyes.

  The cable lady showed up when I was getting the mail. I ran to the house, not sure which I was more excited about: finally getting internet or the pink envelope addressed to me from Irene. She was back from Europe. Finally! Communication from the great beyond.

  On the front was a pastel watercolor of a pond. It was one of Irene’s mother’s cards. I’d seen a box of them on her desk the last time I was there. Her mother hand-wrote sympathy notes for people at her church, which meant Irene never had to be bothered actually finding a card when she needed one.

  Inside, she
’d written in curly script, “Miss you, Ireneeeee.”

  That was it.

  That was all she wrote.

  I checked the back. Nothing about our friends or her trip to Europe. Not one word asking how I was doing, one thousand two hundred miles away. My heart sank. I let the card drop to the floor and sat in the window seat, watching the birds by the feeders outside until the cable lady was finished.

  “You won’t be able to get cell service until your mother registers the unit with her phone company,” she said. “But you’ve got internet and television today. Welcome to Vermont!”

  As soon as she left I switched on all three TVs just to hear the noise, then pulled up my Facebook account and messaged Irene.

  ME: Internet’s up! Come chat!

  Two hundred and thirty-seven notifications flashed on the top bar. One by one, I clicked through and deleted them.

  IRENE: Hey!

  Finally!

  ME: Ireneeee!

  IRENE: God, it’s been like forEVER.

  ME: I know, takes a bazillion years for the cable people to get out here.

  IRENE: What’s Vermont like?

  What is Vermont like?

  Outside the kitchen window, field grass swept across the landscape in gentle waves. A memory flashed of my daddy walking in that field, sweat soaking a gray T-shirt. I could almost hear his voice saying, “Nothing like the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass.”

  Was this a real memory?

  IRENE: Yo! You there?

  ME: Yeah, sry. It’s okay, kind of weird, but it’s pretty. Mama’s different. She leaves me alone a lot more. She doesn’t like it because we’re so far from everything, but I don’t want to be dragged all over Vermont just because she’s depressed.

  IRENE: Oh god, is she having migraines again?

  Irene was convinced Mama’s mood swings came from undiagnosed migraines. She was an expert Dr. Googler.

  ME: Not too bad, not yet. How was Europe? Sry I wasn’t there when you got back.