by Cote Smith
“Where is he?” the girl in front of him said.
“He’ll be here,” Emile said, more to himself than the girl. But she turned around and glared.
“Was I talking to you?” In her head, she called him a name. They loved to call him names.
Five more minutes passed, but no one seemed to notice. His classmates were busy cramming for the reading quiz Mr. Church gave every Friday. Emile watched the door, still expecting Mr. Church to burst in late, sweaty, defeated. Instead, a young woman walked in. Tall for a girl, Emile thought. Short red hair. She strode in with confidence, and several of the boys’ minds went to the places they always went and never really left. She dropped her belongings on Mr. Church’s desk and walked to the front of the class. For a moment the woman didn’t say anything. She stood there, surveying, sizing everyone up.
“Why, Mr. Church, you look different today,” one boy said. Austin Beckett, the class asshole. The classhole. He sat in the front corner, in the desk closest to the door, and turned to make sure all his buddies snickered at his joke. Emile kept his words to himself. He’d been in too many fights this year with Austin’s friends, a bunch of farm kids who made fun of Emile because he was thin and had long hair, and didn’t play a sport or hang out with anyone other than his brother, Jacob. Once they learned that Emile liked poetry, it was over.
“Why can’t you just let it go?” Jacob had said. Emile had shrugged. He was good at fighting. He liked it. He enjoyed seeing these kids’ false bravado recede into fear. But his brother was right. After his last fight, a bloody beating Emile doled out on school grounds, he’d been suspended for a week. One more such incident, the principal threatened, and Emile would be expelled, charges pressed.
The woman smiled at the class. “Mr. Church is dead,” she said. “I killed him.”
Emile was the only one who laughed.
“My name is Ginny Scott. If you earn an A on today’s quiz, you can call me Ginny. If you don’t, you can call me not surprised. Now take out a sheet of paper and something to write with.”
The quiz covered early colonial America. Middle school stuff, really. Name the oldest colony; which colony was founded by the British in 1607; label them both on a map. Which early colonies thrived? Which ones disappeared?
Emile finished the quiz in less than five minutes. He covered his mouth so no one could see him smile as he listened to the other students struggle. The girl to his right hummed a mnemonic device, while the boy on his left leaned over to his clueless friend and whispered Jonestown instead of Jamestown. It was an understandable mistake, actually. It was spring now, but the tragedy was all anyone talked about the previous semester. The largest loss of civilian life in American history, let alone 1978. An entire town, gone. At the time, Mr. Church tried to connect the tragedy to his curriculum—to Jamestown, to Roanoke—and had actually been quite successful. The class talked about it in hushed whispers like campfire ghost stories and peppered Mr. Church with question after question—What did the carving on the tree mean? Did everyone drink the Kool-Aid? Who survived?
“Pencils down,” Miss Scott said. She collected the quizzes, laughing at some of the answers as she flipped through them.
“What’s so funny?” Austin asked.
“The American education system, apparently.” A few students groaned. “Oh, it’s not your fault,” Miss Scott said. “You’re simply not engaged. All your lives you’ve been taught to memorize, which of course has its usefulness, but you’re not even memorizing the good stuff.”
A girl in the front row raised her hand. “We’re just doing what they tell us.”
“Exactly,” Miss Scott said.
“Well,” the girl said, “what should we be doing?”
“You should ask questions.”
“About what?” someone said. Everyone turned and looked at Emile. It took a moment before he realized he was the one who had spoken. It was the first thing he’d said in class all year.
“Whatever you want. But make it interesting.”
Emile and his classmates glanced at each other. No one knew what to say. Except Austin, the classhole, who raised his hand and said, “What do you know about Jonestown?”
Miss Scott leaned against the chalkboard. “Quite a bit, actually. I was there.”
* * *
She was a reporter, she explained. She studied journalism at a prestigious school on the East Coast the class had never heard of, took a low-paying gig with a revered newspaper after she graduated. She was one of two groups allowed to visit Jonestown before the mass suicide. She left right before the second group arrived, a delegation that included a congressman, two of his staffers, and nine journalists—most of whom were executed.
“What was it like there?” someone asked.
“It was hot.”
“Did you see the Kool-Aid?”
She did not.
“Did you meet the guy? Jim Jones?”
“I did.”
“What was he like?”
“He was the most charismatic person I’ve ever met. And the most terrifying.”
It was the greatest class he’d ever attended, Emile later realized, as he sat in the nosebleed section of the bleachers, waiting for his brother to finish track practice. Below, his brother sprinted around the track, far in front of everyone else. Jacob was different too, but in a way society had agreed to appreciate. He was beloved by his peers, as well as his teachers, who, despite their own failings, still had the ability to recognize greatness in others. Jacob, a senior, approached a freshman runner, whom he could easily lap. Instead, he slowed his pace to match the kid, even offered him an encouraging pat on the shoulder as the two circled the loop for the final time. Perhaps that’s what made today’s class so remarkable. For the first time in his recent memory, Emile’s mind raced alongside others, not far ahead.
He learned that although Jonestown ended in South America, it did not begin there. He learned that Jim Jones was from the Midwest, like Emile’s mother was from the Midwest. Jones eventually made his way to a small town in Northern California, then to San Francisco, before departing for South America. Ginny did not know why he left California, or what he left behind. “Though,” she said, “that certainly is a good question.” She said she would have to look it up, and that that was the class’s homework too. “Write down a question to which you don’t know the answer. Something you’re curious about.”
In his mind Emile wrote down questions he had about his mother. Where was she? Why did she leave?
“Once you have your question,” Ginny said, “search for the answer. On Monday, we’ll discuss what you discover.”
* * *
Jacob dropped Emile off at the library after practice. On the way, Emile closed his eyes and tried to picture her. Their mother. He remembered her state of mind more than her face. The way it rocked from one fear to another, like a rowboat in a rolling sea. Sometimes, late at night, Jacob would tell Emile stories about what she was like. How she never allowed visitors. How she never let the boys leave the house.
Why not?
She was afraid.
Of what?
That I was like you.
There was more to it than that, Jacob later confessed. Once their father ran out on them, their mother never left the house either. She stayed inside long enough for her mind to break. Jacob had only talked about that day once. How he waited until their mother fell asleep in front of the TV, her face frozen in its perpetual worry, before waking Emile and sneaking out the window of the bedroom they shared. It would have been dark then. The deep black of winter. Their nearest relatives, whom their mother had estranged herself from, lived a mile away. It was either run through the snow, barefoot—their mother slept on their coats and boots in case the boys got any ideas—or give up and sleep on the side of the road.
After Jacob and Emile left, after their mother learned that her brother and his wife had taken them in, she disappeared. No one knew where she went, or why she didn’t t
ry to take her boys back.
Emile didn’t remember any of this, but sometimes, if he closed his eyes and thought hard enough, he thought he could feel the cold of the snow stinging his feet.
* * *
Emile did not like the library as much as he thought he would have liked the library. It was quiet, yes, but often busy. And when people’s mouths were shut, their minds simmered. Still, there were spots he could go, pockets of isolation deep in the stacks. Over the years, he became something of an expert at finding these pockets, no matter where he went. At school, there was the nosebleed section of the bleachers, of course, or the Newspaper room, a new concept for public schools and thus unused so far, or the northwest stairwell, which for some reason always smelled of urine. But mostly Emile enjoyed roaming the halls while classes were in session. At least once a day he’d fake having to go to the restroom so that he could wander in near-perfect silence, the buzzing of a seemingly empty building. This buzzing was his favorite sound.
Emile sat down in the Bulgarian Lit section, took out his pencil and paper, and at the top he wrote “Questions.” He scribbled a question about his mother, then scratched it out. He knew he couldn’t share anything like that with the class, so he came up with a few questions about Roanoke and Jonestown instead. Does anyone live in Roanoke now, or do locals stay away out of fear? The news said thirty-three people escaped Jonestown. Where are they now? Do they still believe in whatever led them to South America? He thought of the questions as practice, before he tackled the real mysteries of his life.
Emile put his pencil down. Then he remembered what Ginny had said: The best questions are the questions your first questions ask. Emile sat back in his chair. He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. He stared at what he’d written. What did his questions have in common? He tried to connect the tragedies. He couldn’t. He didn’t know enough. Instead, he searched for words his questions shared. The only meaningful one was “now.” What happened to the survivors, and those who came after? What was left of all that was destroyed?
The very best questions, Ginny had explained, are the ones that teach you as much about the mysteries of yourself as the mysteries of the world. Austin laughed when she said this, and admittedly, Emile found it a little corny, something out of the latest kung fu movie. But there, alone in the stacks, it was easy to imagine that Ginny was right. He thought about his mother again. He picked up his pencil and wrote the word now, over and over, in sprawling columns that covered the page, until there were no more blank spaces.
* * *
His guardians would be asleep by the time Emile made it home. They were his uncle on his mother’s side, and his aunt. But they did not like it when Jacob and Emile called them that. Nor were they to be considered parents, a title, they believed, that should only be reserved for the brothers’ true mother and father. At home, meals were prompt, the food perfunctory—meat, side, vegetable—and the conversation limited. Every act was measured, not necessarily in a cruel way. They were dutiful, austere people, and Jacob explained that it was because of their religious background. They weren’t fanatics or anything, just big fans of the modest life. Their uncle worked at the co-op, their aunt stayed home, and both volunteered at the church. They slept in the same room, in twin beds pushed comfortably apart. They had no kids of their own, having lost their only child in infancy.
Emile sat down with Jacob for a glass of milk at the kitchen table, the questions from his homework still swirling in his head. “Do you ever think about Mom?”
“Of course,” Jacob said. “You know I do.”
Emile was aware of this, but he also knew Jacob wanted to talk about her less and less. He’d been this way the last year or so, wanting to focus less on the past, more on his future, which everyone described as bright.
From the living room, the guardians’ cuckoo clock sounded. Jacob told himself it was getting late. “I’m going to bed.”
Emile finished his milk and followed him to the room they shared, where Jacob lay in the dark. He wanted to be left alone. Emile changed, got into his bed, and whispered questions into the night.
“Where is she now?”
“What does she do now?”
“Does she have another family?”
And, “Will she ever come back for us?”
Jacob didn’t speak, but Emile felt a familiar longing in his brother, not that different from the pull that had tugged at Emile. It was like this sometimes with his brother’s thoughts. Everyone’s really. He didn’t always catch fully formed words or sentences. Sometimes he recognized a mood or an emotion; other times, a memory. Tonight, Jacob’s pull dragged up an image of a boy on a porch, watching a car drive away.
Emile’s imagination took over from there. The car belonged to their mother. She had come to retrieve the boys after they escaped, but the guardians had turned her away. Fine, she might’ve said. But when they’re ready, they’ll come for me. She got in her car and drove west, rolling the top down once she hit Arizona. Maybe she reached the coast of California, working jobs at various motels (she had been a housekeeper here in Lawrence, Emile was told, before her breakdown) until she found the perfect spot, her own pocket of isolation. It would be scenic, unlike Kansas. Or maybe she drove north, settled down in Minnesota or Wisconsin. Maybe she would meet a nice man—a minister maybe—who was charming and beloved by his fiercely loyal flock. Their mother would resist his advances at first, until he showed her that there was a normal life out there if she wanted to live it. His flock could become their family, and she would never have to worry how any of them would turn out. She would never have to be afraid if any of them were special and what it would cost her.
But all he knew for certain was that no one in town had seen her since the night they left.
“What if we found her?” Emile wondered out loud.
“Why would we do that?”
Because we have nothing else. Meaning, Emile had nothing else. No friends, no tethers to this place. Because their last semester together was nearly over, and when Jacob left in a few months, Emile would truly be alone, the only thing keeping him company the feeling that he belonged elsewhere. Because of the pull.
“You don’t remember what she was like,” Jacob said.
Emile tried to peer into his brother’s mind again, but all he saw was a ghost of a woman rocking in a chair, wagging her finger when Jacob pleaded to leave the house to get some fresh air. He saw a door, not on the wall, but on the ceiling, closing his brother into perfect darkness.
* * *
Emile spent the weekend at the library. Jacob traveled for a track meet and returned draped in medals. When Emile showed up to American History on Monday, Ginny sat in Mr. Church’s chair. She informed the class that Mr. Church would not be returning and, no, she didn’t know why. She then told the story of her childhood dentist, a man beloved by the entire town, who had a wife, two daughters—the whole bit. One morning the dentist got dressed, ate breakfast, kissed his wife and kids and went out to the garage, where he started the car with the door shut and waited for his death to arrive.
“The point is,” Ginny said, “we may think we know each other, but what do we really know? Everyone has their secrets.”
“You think that’s what happened to Mr. Church?” one boy said. Art, one of Austin’s cronies.
“God no. Are you listening to me?” Several students shifted in their seats. “Take out your homework. Let’s see what you discovered over the weekend.”
A few classmates had completely forgotten about the assignment; one girl claimed she completed it but left it at home and, no, she couldn’t remember any of the questions she asked.
“You know what the Australians would say about that, don’t you?” Ginny said. “Sounds sus. As in suspect. Yes, very sus indeed. Have any of you been to Australia?”
No one raised their hand.
It was Emile who finally broke the silence. He began by admitting that, like the rest of his classmates, he was very int
erested in Roanoke.
“This got me wondering what Roanoke was like now, so I went to the library. Spent the whole weekend there.”
A few students giggled, but Ginny nodded—Emile’s cue to continue. He told the class that today Roanoke was a place called Manteo, North Carolina, a small town in Dare County with a population of 547 people. Manteo was named after a Croatan Indian who helped the English settlers survive when they first landed and started their settlement. He told them that the town’s population saw steady growth in recent years, thanks in part to the current mayor embracing the area’s dark history, turning well-known tragedy into tourism. A play about the colony’s vanishing was performed, ghost tours were given. All this, and still no one knew what really happened to the settlers.
So what, one student thought. And: freak.
“The problem,” Emile said, “I think”—doofus, loser—“what I discovered is that the English waited too long. I mean, three years passed before White returned. That’s a really long time, isn’t it? By then the entire colony had been erased.”
So, the class thought.
“So?” Austin said.
“Yes,” Ginny said, “what exactly is your point?”
Emile thought of his brother. He saw him running away from their childhood home, away from their mother, yes, but also away from the answers Emile now felt he needed.
“I was just thinking,” he said, “what if that’s what happens with Jonestown? You don’t see it on the news anymore. We’re expected to move on?”
“So what do you want to do?” Austin said. “Fly to South America? You wanna drink the Kool-Aid? Be our guest.”
The class laughed.
“Quiet,” Ginny said. She turned to Emile. “Is that all? You want to know what the dead are up to?”
Not only the dead. There were survivors, but no one ever talked about them.