by Anne Hansen
I’m almost done mixing in the last of the ingredients when Josh’s voice finally crackles through.
“Sunny? You okay?” He sounds worried.
He should be. He knows I wouldn’t be calling unless it was an emergency.
“Josh, I have to—” The words are right there, in my mouth, on my tongue. Why can’t I spit them out?
Because it will be real the second I do.
“Sunny?” He sounds frantic now. I hear him cup his hand over the mouthpiece and yell something sharp and angry at the noisy crowd in the back. It gets quiet. “Sunny, tell me what’s wrong. Tell me, and I swear to God, I’ll move hell and earth to make it right.”
I back away from the counter because I don’t want to get tears in the ambrosia.
“Nothing can be right again, Josh,” I say, my voice cracking. “Ms. Frannie died this morning.”
He tells me he loves me. He tells me he’s coming home now. He tells me to hold on, to wait for him. And then the connection clicks off, and I’m alone in the kitchen with the one person in the world who cares about me an ocean away.
I slide to the floor, hug my knees, and cry harder than I have since before I came here, eight years ago.
***
“It’s okay, Sunny.”
Mrs. Hartwick has a hand on my shoulder, and she squeezes tight. I cling to my plastic bag stuffed full of random things I grabbed when they told me my mother was sentenced to life in prison, and I was being placed in foster care. The frazzled, impatient friend of my mom’s who’d agree to watch me for a few days that turned into a few months was more than happy to hand me over.
Mom’s neglect and drug addiction had kept her kind of around for enough of my life that I was entering foster care as a knobby kneed tween right on the brink of that stage all foster parents dread—the teen years.
If the eager foster moms and dads couldn’t get the sweet babies, they at least wanted the adorable toddlers or funny school-aged kids.
No one was taking a chance on the eleven-year-old daughter of a woman convicted of murder.
No one except Ms. Frannie.
She crouches next to the falling-down row house, scratching at what looks like a mostly dead rose bush. When she smiles, I marvel at how big and white her teeth are.
“Woohee, what a beauty,” she says, coming over and hugging me without asking if it’s okay.
Mrs. Hardwick told me no one could touch me without permission, and I should tell her if anyone tried. But, when I look up from Ms. Frannie’s bony embrace—which smelled like talc powder and dried rose petals—Mrs. Hardwick is smiling wide.
So I put my arms around Ms. Frannie and hold tight, so glad to have another person to hold after so many years of thinking no one wanted to share a hug with me anymore.
“She’s got the best hug!” Ms. Frannie pulls me back and squints at me, her smile so big, it has to hurt her cheeks. “What’s your name, child?”
“Sunny Pace,” I whisper.
She runs a hand over my wild hair. “Perfect. Like a little beam of sunshine.”
She leads me into the house and she and Mrs. Hardwick talk about grown-up stuff while I sit at the dining room table and she puts homemade cupcakes and hot cocoa in front of me. I’m pretty sure the world’s been turned upside down, because I crawled out of hell and landed squarely in heaven.
When Mrs. Hardwick leaves, looking happier than I’ve ever seen on her on all the tense visits she’s ever paid me, Ms. Frannie leads me up a flight of stairs, pausing every few steps to rub her knees. She walks me to a little bedroom at the end of a hall with a bathroom right outside it.
“I know it’s not very fancy,” she says. “And I’m afraid it’s hard for me to get up here anymore, so you’ll have to be a big girl and keep things neat. I’ll show you how to run the vacuum and where the duster is. You know how to dust, don’t you, love?”
I have no idea how to dust, but I want to make her as happy as she’s making me, so I nod. She takes my shabby things out of my plastic bag like they’re precious and puts them in the little shiny wood dresser. There’s a delicate white iron bed with a crazy quilt cover and a mattress that squeaks when I sit on it. The lights flicker. It feels a little drafty. Out the window, I can see the branches of a huge tree.
I’m so happy, I could cry.
Ms. Frannie helps me to get ready for bed, since she’s upstairs anyway. She tucks me in and promises we’ll watch Gone with the Wind in the morning. Have I ever seen it?
I shake my head.
“Oooh, you’re in for a treat,” she assures me. “You’re gonna love Rhett and Scarlett.”
She kisses my forehead like she’s been doing it all my life, tells me to sleep tight, and I hear her groan a little as she takes the stairs down, one at a time, so slow I feel like she’ll never get all the way down. I sneak out and check on her, relieved to see she’s dozing in her big, overstuffed armchair in the living room.
That’s when the good turns to fear.
All the nice parts of the day fall away, and I’m left in the dark scared: scared Ms. Frannie won’t be so nice tomorrow, scared she’ll keep being nice but not want me anymore, scared I’ll never see Mom again, even more scared I will and she’ll remind me how most of what’s wrong with her life is my fault, scared of the dark and the tree scratching the window pane and my own shadow on the water-stained ceiling.
When I hear a yell outside, I nearly jump out of my skin, but years of taking care of myself have taught me there’s no point wasting time shivering under the covers. It’s better to know what’s coming for you and get yourself as ready as you can be to defend yourself.
When I look out the window I see a kid. A boy. He looks about the same age I am. And I see the panic on his face.
I know that panic well.
I throw the window open and wave to him, point to the tree, and he gives me the kind of look a starving dog gives you when you throw it your sandwich crust.
He climbs the tree like a monkey, and I help pull him into the room just as a car makes its slow circuit around the corner, headlights flashing as the driver pokes his head out and stares.
“Thanks,” the boy says. He’s skinny, dirty, wearing old clothes, and his blond hair needs a haircut. And maybe lice shampoo. “I didn’t know Ms. Frannie had a girl.”
“I only got here today,” I tell him. Then I say what I don’t usually tell anyone. “My mom is in prison. For life. So I’m going to live here now.”
He looks impressed, but not surprised. “My dad’s been to jail. He never gets life, though. I wish the bastard would.” He glares out the window.
“Was that your dad? Looking for you?”
You’d think a kid like me, with a mother who only talked about having a daughter when she wanted to make someone feel bad for her, would think having a parent combing the streets for you would be great. But I knew that having someone hunt the neighborhood for you could be just as scary as having someone leave you to fend for yourself.
“Yeah. And he’ll beat the shit out of me when he finds me.” He clears his throat. “I was gonna sleep on the back porch. Sometimes I do. Ms. Frannie doesn’t wake up for anything.”
“You can sleep in here,” I offer, not sure I should. If Ms. Frannie catches a dirty little boy in my room, she might kick me out for good.
I want to stay here. I think I do, anyway. But I feel like I know this boy I just met, and I don’t like the idea of him being cold out on the porch.
“You think it’d be okay?” he asks, looking hopeful.
“I think so.” I glance at the window. “Can you climb back out the window before Ms. Frannie gets up?” I ask.
He nods, and I go to the closet next to the bathroom and pull out the extra blankets and pillows folded above the clean towels. I make a little pallet on the rug and pat it when I’m done.
“Is this alright?” I ask.
He crawls onto the blankets and sighs. “Better than my lumpy-ass mattress at home.”
“Nah. I’ll just get dirty tomorrow. Why bother?” He closes his eyes, and I climb into bed, happy that I’m not going to be all alone this first night in a new place.
“My name is Sunny,” I say softly.
He laughs. “That’s a weird name.”
My feelings bruise. “It’s not. It’s after my grandma. Her name was Alison, and my mom named me Sunny ‘cause that’s what everyone called her.”
He rolls over and sits up on his elbow. “Yeah, you don’t look like your name should be Alison.” He shrugs. “Sunny is nice, I guess. I’m Josh Weston.”
“Good-night, Josh,” I grumble, still hurt he made fun of my name.
“Sleep tight, Sunny,” he says around a yawn. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you the creek by the railroad tracks. I never showed it to anyone else before.”
I smile into my pillow, all the bad feelings melting away. “I’ve never seen a creek.”
“You’ll love it. Go to sleep. If we get up early, we might see some raccoons catching crawfish,” he orders.
I do what Josh says, dreaming of cups of cocoa, hugs, racoons, and a boy with a smile that makes me feel like I finally came home.
“I’m begging you. She was more of a mother to me than my own mother ever was. It’s only a few days early.”
My commander rubs his face and sighs. “Damn it, Weston. I’m not heartless. I met Ms. Frannie at the last hail and farewell. That woman was a saint, and her ambrosia salad is probably better than my wife’s.” He points a finger at me and narrows his eyes. “You tell Clarissa I said that, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
“Fair enough,” I laugh. “C’mon, man. Help me out here. I need to get home. Sunny’s all on her own for this, planning the funeral, getting the house in order. Ms. Frannie was the only family she ever really had. Other than me.”
I wince over that fact like it’s a punch to my gut. The truth is, Sunny’s been family to me; I don’t know how ‘family-like’ I’ve been to her. Considering what happened that night she showed me her Spring Fling dress two years back, I’m lucky she even talks to me anymore.
It wasn’t what happened as much as what could have happened that rocked me to my core. Woke me up. Made me realize how close I was to being the fuck-up my father always promised I’d grow up to be.
I could have hurt her. Could have screwed over the one person who’d always looked out for me. I had to put some distance between us before my selfish, asshole tendencies ruined the one nontoxic relationship I’d been lucky enough to have in my life.
So I enlisted the next day.
Sunny and Ms. Frannie were there when I graduated boot camp and to see me off at the airport before my first tour. I get boxes from Sunny every few weeks, depending on how decent the mail delivery is. She packs them full of things that make the other guys jealous: DVDs of UFC matches and X Games, complete seasons of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner not made from whatever crap they sell at the bazaars here, beef jerky, drink pack mixes, hard candy, dice and decks of chard, and even a little bottle of Listerine which was actually filled with vodka she tinted blue with food coloring.
I smiled when I saw that one. It was an old trick I used as a teenager to sneak liquor into school for those endless day when it felt like I’d never get out of that shithole. Sunny never approved, but I sure appreciate her remembering so she could smuggle a little liquor through to this new version of hell.
The best thing in every box, by far, were her letters. She basically filled me in on all the gossip from Eastside High—who was screwing who, who’d been arrested, who was having a baby—and other random stuff like what Ms. Frannie was cooking for the church bazaar, how many raccoons she’d seen down by the creek, or what new businesses closed and opened around town.
You’d think that crap would bore the shit out of me, especially since I’d spent my entire life trying to get away from Eastside and everyone in it.
But, the truth was, I was homesick as hell. And those letters made me feel like I was back for a little while. I reread them over and over.
“I understand, Weston.” Sergeant Jeffries pinches the bridge of his nose. “Trouble is, I already used my token getting you out of Salveston’s unit when you were caught screwing the captain’s wife.” He glares at me, and I squirm.
“You know I owe you. I’ll never be able to pay you back for all you’ve done for me. But this…this isn’t even about me. This is…this is for her.” My voice breaks a little and Jeffries sighs.
“I’ll see what I can do. Get outta here and let me make some calls.”
I back out, thanking him over and over. I feel like I’m holding my breath for the entire five hours it takes to get word that I’ve been allowed immediate leave. I have to rush to get to the airstrip and board the plane for the grueling flight home.
I’m going home to say goodbye to the woman who loved me better than my own mother ever had.
I’m going home a war hero, a guy who made a success of his life even though every single person I met in Eastside assured me I’d end up a drunk loser like my old man.
I’m going home to Sunny.
Sunny, the girl I’ve been running to my entire life. The girl I had to run away from when I almost ruined things.
Sunny, the one person in this world who is my home.