by Tawni Waters
I have the sickest feeling too, but I don’t tell her. It won’t help. I just put her to bed and go to my room and cry. I want to call Xylia, but I don’t dare. Iggy’s threat will only hold Daddy at bay for so long, and I don’t want to provoke him. Outside, an owl hoots. A year ago the sound may have been beautiful to me. But now it sounds like death. Life without Iggy, without Xylia, is uglier than I ever imagined it could be.
Days go by. Momma calls her cousin every morning and night. Iggy never shows up. Momma files a police report. I can’t focus at school. All I can think about is Iggy. I keep imagining the things that could have happened to him. None of them are pleasant.
On Sunday, Reverend Winchell gives a sermon about women burning for women. He reminds us all that God hates abominations. He looks right at me when he says it. Elijah is six rows in front of me, but I still hear him laugh. I look down at my chapped hands. Momma and Daddy stare straight ahead, pretending they don’t know Reverend Winchell is talking about me. I want to cry, but I find a round collection plate and stare at it until the tears dry up.
After that, school is harder than ever. Henry never comes back, even though he got out of jail. Rumor has it Henry’s dad stormed into Principal Harris’s office, squirting people with bleach and shouting that Christians were crazy as canaries in a snake pit. When I hear it, I laugh.
One night, I try to call Henry. I want to tell him how sorry I am, beg his forgiveness for leaving him in jail so long, but his dad answers and says he’s in the bath. Maybe he really is. I don’t know. But Henry’s father sounds distant. I call again and again. It’s always the same. Finally, I can’t find the courage to call anymore. Martha Pinkerton says Henry switched to public school. Later, Hannah and Keisha claim he went back to the reservation. All in all, people are way more interested in Henry after he disappears than they ever were when he was around.
I thought Elijah would get arrested, but he doesn’t. It turns out the hospital lost the rape kit. I throw a fit, but the police say it happens all the time. So I have no proof that Elijah raped me. It’s Elijah’s word against mine now, and who’s gonna believe an abomination like me? Also, Hannah and Keisha have gone to the police and told them that Elijah was practicing singing with them at the church at the time of the rape. Reverend Winchell says that’s God’s honest truth. He was there in his office studying for his sermon, and he heard those sweet youngsters singing with his own two ears. So it looks like Elijah’s gonna get off scott-free, just like Daddy always does. I wonder if someday I’ll meet him by the river again. I wonder what he’ll do to me then.
So I’m all alone at school, an abomination sitting in the corner, eating mushy peas, wishing for Henry, wishing for Iggy, wishing for Xylia. At night I pray desperate prayers. “Save me” is all I can say. Sometimes, winking stars make me feel like my brother’s God is listening. Sometimes, rolling thunder tells me Reverend Winchell’s God is waiting, ready with a death blow.
CHAPTER 28
WINTER’S FIRST SNOW COVERS THE world in white, and we get a snow day. I try not to remember the last snow day and Xylia screaming “Sayonara, motherfucker!” to the Reverend Winchell snowman.
I get out my sketchbook, wrap myself up in a quilt, and start drawing. I draw every chance I get these days, picture after picture. Most of them are of Xylia. The arc of her neck when it was bent to read something beautiful. The curve of her arm when she was touching my face. The smooth roundness of her belly.
I’m drawing her eyes when I hear someone knocking downstairs. I barely hear it through my closed door, but there it is again. Bop, bop, bop. The door squeaks open, and I hear a rumble of voices. I wonder who it may be. Visitors are so rare. I stand to go see who it is. And then Momma screams.
I run down the stairs. Momma is crumpled in a heap on her lilac rug.
“No, no.” It’s like in the movies, when people die. People in movies always say “no, no” when someone dies. So maybe that is how I know Iggy’s dead. I’m not sure that’s what tips me off, but I know it before I even notice the sheriff’s deputy standing at the door. Before I even hear him saying, “I’m sorry.”
My brother’s dead. I want to run to my momma and hold her, but I can’t. Suddenly I feel heavy, like a bag of rocks.
I sink right down next to Momma. I have the same feeling as that day with Elijah. I’m someone else, watching this scene from far away. Maybe I’m in the sky with Iggy and his God. I reach out my hand to see if that’s the case, but all I feel are the fibers of Momma’s rug. I’m not in heaven. This is real.
Momma’s legs are shaking. I’ve never heard a person make a gurgling sound quite like that before. She’s not saying “no, no” anymore. Now she’s repeating “My baby, my baby, my baby.”
That man in the uniform is still standing there. He isn’t much older than me. His eyes are the same rusty color as Iggy’s. I picture Iggy’s eyes, and I can’t imagine never seeing them again. It doesn’t seem real. It feels wrong not to cry, but I can’t, thinking any second he’ll come walking through the door.
“How did he die?” I ask.
The man looks at his shoes. “He was living under a bridge in Albuquerque. Someone shot him.”
And suddenly it’s real. I imagine my beautiful brother sleeping under a bridge, his wheat-colored hair sticking up in every direction. I imagine a gun pointed at his head. The image is too ugly, so I move the gun, and it’s pointed at his heart. I see a finger pull the trigger, and I see a hole break open in my brother’s chest, just like the hole in the coyote me and Henry found by the road.
“Oh, Iggy,” I whisper.
And that’s when I finally start to cry.
CHAPTER 29
YOU’VE WALKED WITH ME ALL this way, a million miles it must seem to you. And now you wonder why. Why, you say, did I come so far? I will tell you.
There are names you will remember, like Hitler and Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson. But if I hadn’t brought you along with me, you wouldn’t remember my brother. You’d say, “Who was Iggy Stonebrook anyway?” Maybe now someone will always remember my brother and his beautiful, broken brain.
My brother was my hero. He saved me again and again. He wasn’t a spit-shined hero, the kind in comic books with glossy boots and a billowing cape. My brother picked his nose. Still, I loved him with a love that stretches into forever. And now, at least, you know.
I will bury my brother today. I wish it would snow, but it doesn’t. I stare out the window, cursing the unseasonably warm weather. Who thought to make it sunny on the day I say good-bye to my brother? The sky cried for Momma’s broken face, but it can’t make the world pretty and white for Iggy. The patchy remnants of the last snowfall are muddy now, and ugly.
Last night I borrowed Momma’s old black funeral dress. She bought a new one, but I think the one I wore for the kittens is good. It’s hanging over the chair, as smooth and still as a death shroud.
“Iggy,” I whisper, and tears burn my eyes at his name. I go to my bed and muffle my sobs in the pillow. Then I slip into the dress. I run a comb through my hair, which is starting to grow back. I slide on a pair of Momma’s fancy shoes instead of my old boots. They hurt my feet, but that’s all right with me. I’d do anything to look pretty for Iggy today.
Iggy’s dead. A plane flies low over our house. Iggy’s dead. Cars speed on by, spraying mud with their tires. Iggy’s dead. Chickens squawk. Iggy’s dead. By the time Daddy gets dressed, I’ve been sitting on the couch for hours, watching the sun rise into the pale sky. I stand slowly.
“You ready?” I ask, all business-like. I surprise myself with how cool and calm I seem. You’d think I was on my way to school. Ever since I found out Iggy was dead, I’ve been going back and forth between numbness and hysteria.
Daddy straightens the lapel on his suit, the one Iggy wore to his graduation, and nods. Momma stands behind him. Her eyes are red. They walk out the door. I go to the change jar on the mantel and dump it in my purse. Then I follow them outside.
At the graveyard rows and rows of white stones are lined up with artificial flowers sprinkled here and there. Black birds squawk and peck. I want to shoo them away, tell them to have some respect for the dead. Ahead, a cluster of people gathers around an open grave. At the center of the people, right next to a pile of fresh, dark dirt, sits a big mahogany box. On top sit sixty billion white roses.
My belly knots up. I stare hard at the box, trying to picture Iggy sleeping there. I imagine breaking open the box, kissing what is left of him, and stealing a little lock of his hair. But the coroner said I shouldn’t look at him. He said it wouldn’t be easy to see. I agree. I’d rather remember him alive.
I glance around the crowd. I nod to Henry when I see him and smile a little. The grief of my betrayal washes over me, and I half expect him to walk over and slap me. He smiles back. He has new glasses, red ones now. “I like your glasses,” I want to say, but he’s too far away.
“I’m sorry,” I mouth instead, and I think he understands it, because he nods at me, a nod that says lots of things, one of them being, “I forgive you.” I wish I could hug him, but his father whispers something, and Henry turns away.
Mr. Farley, who’s serving as a pallbearer, whisks us right up front. It’s Momma, Daddy, and me, on show in the front row so everyone can get some entertainment from our pain. Trying not to think about all those hot eyes burning into my back, I touch the coffin.
“Bye, big brother,” I whisper. Then I step away.
Momma touches the casket too.
Daddy just stares.
I stand with my heels sinking into the soft dirt. The people around me are wearing boo-hoo faces, and I want to break their necks. How dare they pretend to cry, when they’re gonna leave this place and go out for a nice lunch, what with the funeral and all? How dare they when today is the last day they’ll ever think of Iggy? How dare they when their biggest responsibility is maybe to make a potato-cheese casserole later for Momma? I’ll be carrying the memory of this day around forever, like a cinder block.
“You can’t share in this,” I want to say. “This day isn’t yours. It’s mine. You people just go home.” Like when there’s an accident, and folks gather round, the sheriff says, “Everybody move along now. There’s nothing more to see here.” That’s what I want to say.
I think about the way Iggy wanted to be all he could be. The thing I never got to tell him was that he was all he could be. He was the best person I ever knew. He deserves a twenty-one-gun salute. Or better, a twenty-one-birdcall salute. In my head, I practice some birdcalls Iggy might like, caw, caw, whistle, warble, so on and so forth.
We sit on a row of lawn chairs that have been lined up for the family. A stand-in preacher shipped in from Albuquerque gets up to say a speech since Reverend Winchell couldn’t be here—family emergency, he said, though I think it’s mostly that he’s pissed about me telling the truth about Elijah.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” says the preacher. “God picked one of his flowers, don’t you see? He works in mysterious ways.”
And I think it’s all fine and good that the preacher can explain away my brother’s life in one ten-minute speech, but me, well, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life trying to get over this.
I look at my momma. She’s staring at the ground with empty eyes, wringing her hands, leaning as far away from Daddy as she can.
And Daddy? He’s posing, trying to look like he gives a shit. I want to spit on him, beat him down for all the times he beat Iggy.
A sick taste comes into my mouth. I feel like a coyote must feel when it gets caught in one of those traps. No way out. Panicky. Ready to chew off my own leg if it will do me one bit of good.
The preacher says something about the resurrection of the dead, and I just can’t take it anymore. That box. Iggy would never pick a stuffy place like that to sleep. Those white roses too. My guess is, Iggy would’ve liked a bunch of sunflowers better. This brouhaha has nothing to do with Iggy. I duck my head and stand. When Daddy tries to grab my arm, I jerk away.
“I’ll say good-bye to Iggy down by the river, where we played when we were little,” I whisper.
“Mara, stop,” he hisses.
“Come back here,” Momma mouths.
“No.” I walk slowly in front of the crowd, feeling their eyes burning into my skin. Let them look all they want. I keep walking.
When I’m safe inside the woods, I finally cry. A breeze plays with my skirt. The smell of river mud dances in my nose. It hurts to feel those things without my brother here. Seems like a sin to enjoy anything at all. I amble along through frozen clay and dead cattails, tasting my tears, thinking all the while about how Iggy would pick a day just like this for fishing or swimming.
When I reach our place, the sight of it nearly knocks the wind out of me. I imagine him sitting there on that rock, reeling in a big one, wriggling his bare toes in the mud, laughing up a storm. But he’s not there, and the only thing I can do is sink down on the rock and cry.
“Iggy,” I whisper, “I don’t know if you can hear me, up there with that God of yours. I’m trying to be happy for you, but I can’t. I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”
Dead is forever. Nothing ever lasts. I think about love and leaving, and then I think about Xylia. I stare at her ring, thinking about the letters she wrote me. I think about train tracks and Mexico. I think about the voice in my head that’s been telling me to run. I stick my toes in the water, even though it’s cold. A branch sloshes against my toes. I pick it up, just for something to hold on to, but this branch has wings. I turn the wood over, and there it is, Xylia’s face, waterlogged but beautiful. Slowly I take the angel I carved in my hand, touch the grooves on her wings, kiss the top of her head.
I close my eyes, pretending Iggy’s here beside me. He talks the way he did when his see-clear-through-you eyes came out. He talks like Daddy never broke him.
“I’m not afraid, Mara,” he says. “The only thing I can’t leave behind without crying is you. Sometimes I look around at the clouds, because I figure that’s what you’re watching too. You always did have your head in the clouds, Sis.”
I watch the clouds roll across the sky, over the mountains and away. I don’t know if the voice inside me is really Iggy, or if it’s only me. It doesn’t matter. I stand, staring down at the water as it rushes away from this town.
“Everything beautiful is on its way outta here,” I whisper. I close my eyes, trying to find that spark inside me that was strong enough to tell the truth about Henry, the thing that is strong enough to run off alone. Instead I find a cave, so deep and wide, I don’t know where the blackness ends and I begin.
“I can’t do this alone, Iggy,” I say. When I open my eyes, Iggy’s face is looking up at me from the water, smiling and sparkling like a million stars. “Iggy!” I call. He explodes in a swirl of liquid light. “Iggy!” I say again. But he’s gone.
I keep watching, but the water’s just the water, and the only light dancing on it comes from the sun above me. My head hurts so bad now, I think it’s gonna explode. I crumple to my knees and sob.
“Help me,” I say.
I pray with my eyes wide open, staring up at the billowing clouds drifting across the sun. Bars of golden sunlight fall like slices of heaven. Flurries of dust swirl in the light, and I reach up and touch them. They look like clouds of gold dust. I huddle there, holding a handful of gold dust in my palm, listening to the whisper-whisper of my breathing and the swishing of cattails in the wind. Then I hear it. A shrill whistle comes to me from fa
r away, down the railroad tracks.
“Time to go, Sis,” I hear my brother say from deep inside my head.
I stand and put one foot in front of the other. And I begin to walk.
The cedars sway above my head, and the river rushes along beside me. He’s walking with me, my brother. I can almost hear him calling the birds. Caw, caw, whistle, warble, so on and so forth.
I got nothing. Nothing but a waterlogged angel, a purse full of quarters, and a handful of gold dust. In the distance the train whistle blows again. If Xylia says San Francisco’s pretty, I bet she’s right. I’ll jump a train. I’ll hitch a ride. I’ll do whatever it takes to get to her. I remember the words from Ms. Elibee’s poem, and the promise I made in the bathroom stall. I will find out where she has gone, and kiss her lips, and take her hands.
I can almost see her now, smiling that light-up-the-night smile. “Mara!” she’ll say as she opens the door and throws her arms around my neck. I bet she’ll smell like flowers. The train whistle blows again.
Iggy and me keep walking.
Acknowledgments
THANK YOU:
To Annette Pollert, Sara Sargent, and the entire Simon Pulse team, who fell in love with Mara, Iggy, and Henry and helped me craft this book into something more beautiful than I ever imagined it could be. To my agent, Andy Ross, who took a chance on an unknown writer and became my first editor, my cheerleader, and my friend. I knew you, and only you, had to represent me the first time I saw you standing by a sombrero-wearing donkey. To Mitchell Sommers for your invaluable insights into the juvenile legal system. To my amazing father, Timothy John Hackett, for managing to give me in twenty-one years enough love to last a lifetime. To my beautiful mother, Christine Hackett, who taught me by example what courage was and never lost faith in me. To my beautiful brother, Bryan Hackett, who inspires me every day with his example of what a true follower of Christ should look like. To my babies, Desi and Tim, whose light makes my life worth living. To Eric Auxier for believing in me enough to put your money where your mouth is. Without you, I’d be living in a cardboard box, eating paste. To my angels, Julie Barrett, Polyxeni Angeles, Martine Tharp, Merridith Allen, and Jason Hicks. Without you, I’d be dead. To my inspiration, Roger Clyne, for providing the adventures, the magic, and soundtrack that fuel my art. To Jim Dalton, my dear friend who always made sure I was on the safe road. To my brilliant mentors, Amanda and Joseph Boyden, who taught me everything there was to know about writing. To my New Orleans writing family for your support and love, especially Jeni Stewart, Daniel Wallace, Lish McBride, and Kimberly Clouse. And most of all, to God (aka Big Cheese) for giving me the life of my dreams. To my fellow road warriors, who chased the horizon with me and made the highway even more magical: Jessica McDaniel (move!) and Kris Gwynn (buffalo!).