Precious

by Sandra Novack

Resolved, she hoists herself up as she might in gym class. Her legs dangle for a moment; her feet scratch the gravel, disrupting it. Her body strains. She peers in. Using all her strength, she lifts herself higher until her knees scrape along the surface of the car. She crawls and disturbs the resting flies. The air closes around her. She can see only shapes and shadows, and, frightened, she turns toward the distant lights again, the muffled sounds of music and people. She moves along the wall, inching along, groping the wooden boards. She moves cautiously, the hairs on her neck on end. She holds her breath and eases deeper into the car, the straw crunching beneath her feet. She squints, trying to bring shadows into view, and can sense it there—precise, raw—the presence of something waiting to devour her, to take her, finally.

  Something hits the top of the roof, an acorn, maybe, or knocking fingers. This isn’t the world of the swimming hole, she reminds herself. This is another world entirely—the world of the missing and of the dead, the mothers and fathers and children, turned here, to this waiting place, the caravan of Gypsies, the train. Her arms stretch forward, along the uneven surface. Scratches, which she imagines belong to all the children who are dead, who are taken away in cars that must be, she imagines, exactly like this: the air tight and musty. They claw to get to the light, she thinks. How awful.

  She closes her eyes and imagines Vicki Anderson that day at the park, how a man was there waiting for her, how he enticed her to the woods. Perhaps he told Vicki he’d lost someone, or perhaps he told her his dog had run off. Perhaps he, like the strange man in the tent, had a pet bird that flew off, and she followed it unknowingly, trying to reclaim it and bring it back. Perhaps he took her by the arm and yanked her away when no one was watching. In the woods, the man, a shadow of a man, came toward Vicki. He loomed over her until Vicki was in darkness. And, like the man so long ago, on that day when Sissy and Vicki were together, the man who exposed himself, the shadow man did the same, the shadow man grabbed her, the shadow man laced his hands around her neck. He left her there, dead—dead, dead, dead—the dirt caked under her fingers, the dirt staining her knees and elbows.

  Sissy breathes hard thinking on all this. She says something, inaudible even to herself, her voice small and hollow.

  A pause. Outside, she hears footsteps, rushed, and then sees a shadow moving across the door. Sissy’s heart races. She stays still, her palms sweating against the wood. The shadow stops, looks in, moves toward her. The shadow lifts itself up into the boxcar. If she runs, there is death. If she doesn’t run, there is death. If she moves toward the shadow man, she will die. If she breathes, she might die. If she can’t breathe, she will die. If she screams, the shadow might come in and grab her, silencing her forever.

  Dead.

  She crouches down, whimpers.

  “Sissy?” the voice says. Her father’s voice, raspy, grumbling.

  She doubts, waits for the voice to sound again, this time angrier. The voice bristles, irritable, inflamed. Still, she waits, unsure. A third time, the voice booming now.

  She steps forward slowly. “Dad?” she says. The word in the hollow car echoes.

  He reaches forward and catches her shoulder, his thumb pressing into her flesh, biting, his fingers biting, too, sending a shock, a wave of pain through her. She winces. He yanks her into the warm night air. Dumbfounded, she moves. He jerks her arm again and marches across the rails and stones and into the dim field, pulling Sissy behind him, the pressure of his grip descending down her arm like a clamp, sending up numbness, pins and needles.

  “Where is Eva?” he demands. Without waiting for her answer, he stops, turns her, and his hand goes back wide, hitting her bottom, hard, flat, the bone beneath the flesh already stinging, and then more tears, more hurt, the deadened ache. She hears a horse snort and whinny. A light in a nearby RV goes on but no one is really watching. Anything might happen.

  “If I hadn’t seen you in the light,” Frank yells. “Do you hear me?” He shakes her, brings her toward him. She can smell the faint aroma of beer on him from the picnic. “Do you ever listen? Where is Eva?”

  Sissy grows mute. If she tells the truth, she will be in more trouble—could she say she ran away?—and if she says nothing, her father will only growl more, but if she lies to save herself, she betrays Eva, Eva who on this night has been nice to her, Eva who offered to win her a doll, Eva who has done nothing wrong except speak of death, speak the truth, Eva who is, finally, in this unfolding moment, loved by Sissy best.

  “Well?” he demands.

  She blubbers. She chokes back sobs.

  Her father lets go a barrage of curses, each worse than the one before. He smacks her bottom again, harder, sending another wave of pain through her, from the bottom up, jolting her spine. “Don’t cry,” he yells.

  “I w-was in line,” she begins, stammering. “I turned and she left. She’s left all summer long with that man.”

  “Who?” Frank demands, yanking her, pulling her closer again. “What man?”

  Sissy bites her lip hard. She studies the ground. “I went looking for her. I was looking for her and the man—you’re hurting my arm.”

  Her father’s jaw clenches, but he lessens his grip. “Don’t you know, don’t you goddamn know, that if you’re lost, you find someone who works here and tell them you’re lost?”

  Dumbstruck, Sissy nods. He pulls her forward again. Her free hand rubs her bottom as she moves. She doesn’t look back, at the boxcar with its giant mouth, nor does she look up, to the stars. She looks down at the ground to her feet. Disembodied, they move across the trampled grass.

  Children. She realizes she would never be able to deal with them—she could never be able to have one of her own. Eva believed she was making things better by speaking the truth. She thought the truth would assuage Sissy’s panic, soothe her questions, and yet then, how suddenly her sister became more troubled, her fears amplified. How she wrenched away, a flash of silver lost suddenly in the crowd. Eva ran. She ran after Sissy. She weaved through people, eyed the stands, looked in the tents, peered into the bleachers. She glanced up at the swings, to the dangling feet. She ignored those she saw from Watson High, when they called to her. She scanned the Ferris wheel, waiting until the wheel made one rotation. She thought: If something should happen to Sissy in this place. She passed rides and saw the eyes of men watching her. She shuddered. She thought of someone pulling Sissy into darkness, attacking her.

  She tried the fun house and swallowed hard—the heat finally hitting her, her stomach assailed by the need to rid itself of the food she’d eaten at the Morrises’, the food that, after her mother had left, she’d downed ravenously. As she passed the mirrors, she suddenly turned short and fat, her legs mere stubs that could belong to a midget, her hair flat and wide. Her shape elongated, and then compressed. She called for Sissy as she ran down corridors. A train horn sounded, stopping her with a blare of sudden light. She burst out into the night air. Her stomach wrenched. Saliva coated her mouth, and then something acrid rose from her stomach. She ran to a trash can, beads of sweat dripping from her forehead. She threw up, in the discarded cardboard cups of french fries and half-eaten corn dogs, their smell making her stomach wrench again. She looked to see if anyone noticed.

  It is not Sissy she sees now, but Peter and Amy. She stops immediately, dumbstruck, catching herself. The two of them walk away from the carousel, holding hands—holding hands! she thinks to herself—Peter leaning into his wife. Eva stands, momentarily paralyzed, watching him kiss his wife’s cheek, the way his mouth touches her, not with ardent desire but the tenderness of years. How this action disaffirms everything Peter said during their times together, when he voiced his complaints about marriage, about his wife. She imagined them in separate rooms. She imagined an absence of conversation, and yet it was she and Peter in separate rooms, she and Peter with infrequent contact, their voices speaking over wires, their bodies occasionally slapping together. Always behind this was Amy. She was always present in the background.
It doesn’t matter what he said. He and his wife were together. Like her mother and like her father, they were together and alone sometimes, maybe, but still together nonetheless. She doesn’t understand how he could still be like this, touching his wife, kissing her, after the times Peter and she were together in his van, their bodies slick with sweat, naked, entwined. The force of the thought sends her back.

  Peter places an arm around Amy, the camera dangling from his wrist. He doesn’t see Eva standing by them now, her crushed expression, her intent stare. It is only Amy who glances toward her, and then stops, recognizing her immediately.

  “Peter,” Eva says loudly, so that it registers with his wife, the informality of a first name, the implied intimacy. She starts to make out the words that Peter whispers in Amy’s ear.

  “I don’t want a scene, Eva,” Peter says, his tone overly teacherly and academic, quelling any arguments or disruption. Eva, however, wants to make a scene. She wants to unleash herself, to claw at his eyes and pull at his hair. She wants to rip the glasses from his face and crush them under her feet. She wants to scream, to scream about all the lies, all the betrayals.

  “Eva,” he says again, warning, making it seem as though she is a foolish girl.

  “My husband explained everything,” Amy says.

  A wave of embarrassment comes over Eva, the same that she suffers through when the boys at school look past her or when they talk about her at their lockers, calling her a whore behind her back. “Did he explain? Did he really?” She shifts her weight, stares at Peter.

  “There are people to talk to who are your own age,” Amy says, her defensiveness registering. “But you can’t just go around following adults and pining after them. Did you come here tonight looking for Peter? Are you trying to cause problems?”

  Her words, her accusations, level Eva. What untruths has Peter told, what things has he said that portray Eva this way, in this light?

  “You’re a liar,” Eva tells him, but her voice shrinks in the noise, and she realizes she has only mouthed the words and not said them at all. A useless anger drains in her and is replaced by something stony. She stands up straighter, still waiting for him to take everything back. Heat travels through her, cutting deep—her embarrassment in the moment, her useless rage. She sees him like a boy, childish, foolhardy, accusing. He would lie so that he might keep together what life he has. He would lie about everything.

  Somewhere behind her now, another voice calls, and she turns abruptly and sees her father coming through the crowd, Sissy being pulled along. Sissy’s cheeks are blotchy, her lower lip protruding.

  Frank looks over to Peter. He is quick to assess the situation at hand: Eva’s En glish teacher standing there with a guilty, useless expression; Eva’s own look that betrays her—amorous, longing, angry. “What are you doing?” he says. He lets go of Sissy’s wrist and watches as she scrambles closer to Eva. “What the hell is going on?”

  Eva presses her lips together. She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

  “You’re supposed to be watching your sister. Instead you’re here, with him?” His voice startles her. Around them, a few people pause and look over before walking on again. Frank turns his attention to Peter, his neck twisting in provocation. “And you, what the hell are you doing with my kid?”

  “I’m not doing anything with your kid,” Peter says. “Your kid’s been following me around all summer long. Your kid’s been getting ideas in her head.”

  Frank debates, weighing the tension, the strained looks passing between Eva and Peter, and holding these against Sissy’s proclamation in the field, her mention of a man, of being left alone throughout the long days. His hands clench at the lingering knowledge that he’s been made a fool of by Eva—his own daughter—and her lies. He’s been made a fool of by this man who stands in front of him with his self-important look.

  Frank’s movements are deliberate and quick. He thunders past Eva, and delivers a punch that knocks Peter back and sends Amy into hysterics. The men wrangle on the ground, Frank’s anger erupting from some deep place inside him. There is an explosion, a pummeling force, and then strangers finally intervening, breaking the men up, pulling them apart. The last Frank sees of Peter is him righting his glasses, stumbling away, his wife calling after him.

  In the parking lot, Frank opens the door and screams at his girls to get in. His blood feels as though it’s on fire, and then, in the car, there is a smack, hard across Eva’s face from Frank, a blow. Eva’s shock, her hand against her cheek. Momentarily, she is speechless. Then her hand comes down, revealing a shine, a blush, a few broken vessels. The flare of nostrils. And there is a sense that this is bad, that this is very bad, that everything is different now, bone hitting bone, Eva’s nose disjointed, odd-looking. Frightened, Sissy leans back hard against the cushioned seat.

  Blood, dark like the color of cherries. Blood on Eva’s forearm from where she wipes: a thin smear that makes the dark hairs more pronounced. Eva cups her hand to her nose. The blood drips down, red, the taste of iron, and a wheeze then: blood in the nostril, the air pushing out. If Frank has seen what he’s done, if he regrets the blow at all, the blood, the impulsive action, it hardly matters now. There’s no stopping the evening.

  It is quiet in the house, which gives Natalia time to think of what to say. She must find a way to explain to Sissy not only death but the death of a child, a girl her age, a friend. She contemplates an outright lie—but she knows that the days of lying are over. She can no longer pretend with her children. Eventually Sissy will have to step outside, and she will hear smatterings of conversations. It is so hard to keep innocence in children, to cocoon them in stories and pleasantly benign untruths, to wrap them tightly, layer by layer, in an effort to keep them from anything harsh or unkind. It is hard to keep the world from them.

  When Frank called from the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, Natalia had just poured a drink—a shot of vodka from the liquor cabinet. She was so shaky. The flush of liquid—raw to her taste buds, hot in her throat—soothed her nerves and kept her hands from shaking, as they had been for the last two hours, since seeing the girl. She delivered the pronouncement as a newspaper reporter might—distanced, her voice drained of emotion. She described the scene, and Frank grew quiet, listening. She knew how angry he was, hearing everything—the girl’s bruised lower parts. “I’ll get the kids,” he told her. “Don’t rush,” she said. “I need a few minutes, to process, to let it sink in, to let some of it go. The girls—Sissy, my God! They were about the same age.” He told her both Eva and Sissy were fine, that nothing was going to happen to the girls tonight.

  After she hung up, she went from room to room and turned on all the lamps. The entire downstairs glowed, while upstairs the windows remained dark. It didn’t exactly cheer her mood—it was unlikely anything would—but the light at least made her feel better, as if she weren’t alone.

  How awful that small room had been, how it had smelled of chemicals and bleach, and how, when she, Milly and Ginny had walked down the hallway, everything around her had been held in suspension: the lights above them hanging from metal poles, the stationary exit sign at the end of the corridor, the tense hum from the wired equipment in a nearby room, a framed print of a forest and stream hanging on the wall. She couldn’t help but laugh at that awful print. It was meant, she supposed, to cheer the place, to alleviate the stiff angularity of the building. At the door, Ginny’s legs buckled. Still, at least Ginny didn’t cry anymore. Natalia couldn’t have handled tears. She sensed that all Ginny’s tears had been spent already, used up in the two months of waiting, and that this was the last thing to do, the last door to close. Natalia held her up, drew her close, and whispered: “At least you’ll know. At least you won’t go on in life, wondering.” Ginny had turned white. It was so cold, like a bitter cold of winter, like the snow crashing down on skin, except there was no snow, only a metallic light that hung over everything. Air pulsed through the vents, and Natalia imagined a chill on the metal
tables. A policeman was there, too, the same man, Milly said, who first went over to Ginny’s house months ago: a mere boy. Natalia judged him to be in his twenties. His manner was serious, intent on giving the news and showing Ginny the body—”a body,” he said, and Natalia thought: Just a body, and not a girl. You could see it in the officer, the dread and weariness that his job caused, especially on days like this. She had seen it before in the guards, in the camp, that desire to get through with a task and to leave, to go home to family, if they had one to go to at all; or, if not, to get through it and then go out, have a beer, have six beers, forget. He grimaced and his voice turned over to a whisper. “This is the worst part of my job,” he said apologetically. He took off his hat. “I hate it.”

  Everything was metallic and edged. The sheen distracted Natalia, gave her eyes things to wander to: the square table with instruments precisely laid, scissors and knives with thin, sharp blades; a wall of silver chambers, a piece of paper placed in the name tag slot. The entire room had the quality of something compulsively ordered. It emanated a sense of control, an antiseptic distance. She whispered to Ginny but Ginny was gone, Natalia could see that. A man came into the room, skinny, his forehead creased with age and framed by the thin skullcap that hugged his head. He reminded Natalia of the bird man from so long ago, except this man had a clean face and full lips and looked rested. Perhaps the bird man had been rested, too, though, and Natalia made him tired only by memory, forcing him to perform the same task over and over again.

  “I don’t feel well,” Milly said to Natalia. “I’m sorry.” Natalia watched as she turned the corner down the flat corridor. Natalia concentrated on the task at hand. It wasn’t about her but about Ginny. “Ginny,” she said. “Just force yourself to look, and in a minute it’ll be over.” It was a lie, of course. It would never be over. Ginny would play out the scene over and over until, after years of exhaustion, she might finally be able to let some of it go, maybe even learn to smile again, to laugh—how far away that was, but how that time waited for her in the distance, another place altogether.