Dad was carrying Mom to bed and he set her down so gently and kissed her eyes to wipe up her tears. He was crying too and full of sorry and Mr. Angry Bear was back in his cave where he belongs. He had scratched Mom badly and bitten her too, because she had blood on her head and it had pooled on her dress. Dad pulled the covers up under her chin and Mom didn’t move but Clemesta did. She had been in my hands the whole time, but suddenly she dropped to the floor and the noise made Dad look up. He saw me standing in the hallway and he said, “Oh Dolly. Oh Dolly.”
He came over to me and his eyes were blurry. “Oh Dolly,” he said, “don’t cry. It was just a very bad dream.”
He carried me back to bed. He got a glass of water and two magic white pills and told me to drink up. I finished the water and then I fell fast asleep. The bad dream vanished like magic.
In the morning it was all gone, and then we were gone too.
Sandra and Detective Marshall were looking at me with big eyes waiting for me to speak but I couldn’t say anything. My words were all poison and they had killed Mom and sent Dad to prison and smashed our whole lives into millions of pieces that wouldn’t ever be fixed. I couldn’t take them back and I couldn’t ever say them again.
I heard Clemesta’s voice from across the room. She was using the last of her telepathy powers and her voice was only a whisper
“Dolly,” she said, “don’t worry. I understand.”
I jumped up and ran to her. I lifted her in my arms and kissed all the places where she was hurt and bruised.
“I only wanted you to remember to keep you safe,” she whispered. “But we will keep this secret forever.”
“I know,” I said. I held her to me and cradled her broken body gently in my arms.
Then I sat back down in the chair and looked at Sandra and Detective Marshall. I took a deep breath.
“It was an accident,” I said. “Everything was an accident and no one did anything bad.”
Clemesta took my hand and squeezed it with the last strength that was left in her. Sandra coughed and made eyes at Detective Marshall. They nodded. Detective Marshall shut her notepad, and gave me a smile that said POOR ORPHAN YOU.
Afterward, Joy drove me back to her house.
Frank was off the porch and sitting in the living room but when he saw me he left.
“Don’t mind him,” Joy said. “He’ll come around.”
It was almost dark. I tried not to think about Dad going to sleep in prison, or Mom being forever asleep in heaven.
Joy showed me around the house that used to be Dad’s old house. It was neat and tidy. All the curtains were pulled shut. I could still hear the police radios crackling outside.
She opened the door to one of the bedrooms.
“This was your daddy’s old room,” she said. “Him and Joshua had bunk beds in here. They fought every night over who’d get to be on top.”
“I have stars on my ceiling at home,” I said. “When it’s dark, they glow.”
“That sounds pretty,” Joy said.
“I’ll show you,” I said. “As soon as you take me home.”
Joy looked at me but she didn’t say anything.
The doorbell rang and a lady handed Joy a dish covered in foil. Joy hugged her and took the dish, and the lady disappeared across the street into another house. Joy shut the door and heated the food and we sat around the kitchen table to eat it. Frank didn’t look at me. He made loud noises when he chewed and he spilled something down his shirt. Joy handed him a napkin. I nibbled a few bites and then I wasn’t hungry anymore.
Joy didn’t eat much either, she just kept looking at me and opening her mouth to say something and then closing it right back up.
After dinner, she ran me a bath. She left me alone to get undressed, probably so I wouldn’t be shy in front of strangers. I pulled off my clothes and threw them in the trash so I wouldn’t ever have to wear them again.
I lay in the bath a long time, until after the water went cold. All of me was cold too, like my heart had decided to stop beating the blood around. Probably it was too sad to do it anymore.
Joy was waiting for me in the spare bedroom. She handed me a shirt to sleep in. It was purple and smelled of flowers.
She pulled back the covers and patted the bed for me to climb inside.
“You didn’t even know I existed,” I said.
“Not until a few days ago.”
“And now you have to look after me.”
She nodded.
“Because there’s no one else left. Even if you didn’t want to do it.”
“Oh, Dolly.” She sat on the very edge of the bed like she was afraid of touching me. “There’s nothing on this earth I’d rather do than take care of you,” she said.
I looked at her face that was a little bit of Dad’s face, and a little bit of mine. Probably she was telling WHITE LIES. Her eyes were doing a lot of blinking and she pressed at them with her fingers. I thought about what Frank had said about Dad breaking her heart. I wondered if broken hearts could be fixed, or if they just stayed broken forever.
Joy patted me with her hand. It had brown spots but it was soft and warm against my skin.
“Did you know,” I said, “my middle name is Joy too?”
After she left the room, I checked on Clemesta. She had a fever of 103 degrees. She was very ill and weak. Probably she would die in the night, and then she wouldn’t be a magical horse queen anymore, just a plastic toy horse with a chopped-off mane that I would keep on a shelf. I stroked her face and listened to her heart beating softly in her chest, the same exact rhythm as mine.
“Clemesta,” I said. “Clemesta, my heart.”
Her eyes flickered, but she didn’t open them. She didn’t have enough strength left for that. I nuzzled her in the neck, very, very gently so it wouldn’t hurt. I breathed in her smell and stroked her soft, warm coat with my finger.
“Clemesta,” I said. “You can go now if you have to. I’ll be okay.”
She tried to smile and I kissed her softly on each of her eyelids. They were salty from our tears. I wiped my face with my hand and lay down carefully beside her on the pillow. I held her horse-hoof in my hand and squeezed.
“Goodbye, Clemesta,” I said. “Goodbye, my twin.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you, my incredible agent, Amy Berkower, for always going above and beyond, and for being wise, reassuring, and wonderful at all times. Thank you, Genevieve Gagne-Hawes, whom I am lucky enough to have as both an editor and a friend, and who is magnificent at all this and more. Thank you also to Abigail Barce, Daniel Berkowitz, Maja Nikolic, Peggy Boulos Smith, Natalie Medina, and Jessica Berger at Writers House, for being endlessly helpful and supportive.
Thank you to the amazing Asya Muchnick for her insight, enthusiasm, and expertise, and for being such a joy to work with. To the entire team at Little, Brown USA, thank you for everything you’ve done to bring this book into the world. I am enormously grateful.
Thank you to my eternally supportive mother, Avril, and sister, Lara, for their love and encouragement. Thank you to my niece Rebecca and nephew Nathan, whose wild and wonderful imaginations gave me great insight into the minds of children (I owe you some Lego, my poppets). Thank you to my father, Norman: This one is for you, and with all my love.
Finally, thank you, Maroje, for driving me across the country to research this book, and for being the best part of every day.
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About the Author
Michelle Sacks is the author of the novel You Were Made for This and the story collection Stone Baby. She was born in South Africa and holds a master’s degree in literature and film from the University of Cape Town. Her fiction has been shortlisted twice for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and for two South African PEN Literary Awards.
Also by Michelle Sacks
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You Were Made for This
Stone Baby: Stories
All the Lost Things Page 23