Daughters of the Wild

by Natalka Burian

  He shook his head, and Letta chuckled, blowing smoke around his face and head. “I thought she would at least have promised you that.” She moved away a little, and Cello took a deep breath, inhaling the harsh citrus scent of the dishwashing liquid.

  “No guesses, then, about why Joanie just had to leave, and right away?”

  Cello knew better than to speak.

  “Sad, that you had to hear it from me. Mother Joseph wants another girl from us. I told Joanie about it. How I was thinking about sending her back. We’ll keep the baby here, of course.”

  Cello’s body trembled with alarm, but he tried not to betray his panic. “Wouldn’t think she’d want Joanie, after what happened to Josiah.” He struggled to keep his voice wooden and even.

  Letta barked out another laugh, and Cello heard the flicker of her lighter as she inhaled on a new cigarette. “Wow, you’re really trying to keep your cool, honey. I respect that,” she said, though Cello knew, better than anyone, that she didn’t. He kept his head down, scrubbing at a cracked plastic bowl. “No, I haven’t decided who I’ll send yet. But I’ll surely let you know.”

  Something—large—clashed against the side of the trailer, and the laminate floor beneath Cello’s feet trembled. Letta hurried to the door, and Cello followed, wiping his soapy hands on his T-shirt.

  Sil’s voice spilled through the open door.

  “None a’that, miss,” he said. “You’d think after last night you’d all be on your best behavior.”

  “What did happen last night?” Marcela asked, her mouth a snide little curve. “Is Joanie pregnant again?”

  Cello and Letta clamored down from the trailer’s sweltering interior into the cooling night.

  Joanie’s arms and legs seemed to stretch and grow longer as she reached for Marcela. Cello heard someone shouting his name. He tried to grab onto one pair of limbs belonging to the same girl. It was hard to separate them, because they’d twisted arms and hair and waists around each other.

  “Jesus Christ, Marcela!” Miracle’s little voice cut through the muggy evening air. It was like a clap on his shoulder.

  Cello plucked at one of Marcela’s skinnier, longer arms and clamped it still. She swore and tried to kick out at him, but he just held her wrist until she stopped, until Sil had pulled Joanie from the tangle. Cello held Marcela at arm’s length until Letta grabbed her shoulders and nodded for Cello to let go.

  “This is the hour, I guess, for y’all to test my patience. Joanie,” Letta called to Joanie but didn’t move her head. She looked straight into Marcela’s eye. “Do you want to go back to Amberly Joseph?”

  Cello took a covert look at Joanie through the dishwater-blond hair that had fallen across his face in the struggle. Her eyes were wide and startled, but the rest of her face quiet.

  “Right,” Letta continued. “I’ll say this one more time, in front of all of you, so you don’t misunderstand me. I see any more nonsense from anyone, everybody sleeps outside for the rest of the summer. Don’t matter what weather, or bugs, or how sick you get. And, Joanie, if you can’t conduct yourself like a lady, I will send you back, no question. We’ll hang on to little Junior, of course, so you can give Mother-in-Law your full attention. She’s sure desperate for another female over there.” Letta narrowed her eyes as she examined Marcela’s spotty complexion. “How about you, Marcela? Time to start thinking about marriage.”

  Marcela turned her head and spat. “Nice try, but Mother Joseph doesn’t have any more available sons. Joanie killed off the very last one.”

  Joanie made a screeching sound in her throat, but kept her mouth closed. She’d come back from the Josephs’ so different. It wasn’t just because she was pregnant, either. It was like she’d lost her subtle Joanie-ness. Cello didn’t care, though. It made him love her more, watching her move through that change. He wished, though, that he could make it easier for her.

  “Oh, honey.” Letta smiled while Marcela sneered. “She may not have any sons, but she does have that brother. And all the cousins. I mean, they’re barely human the way Amberly lets them run around,” Letta coughed up a strange laugh. “But they sure are there. And they’re plenty available, as you say.” Letta brushed off Marcela’s shoulders. “Keeping all you kids is expensive. And Amberly does want another girl on the place.” Letta took a deep breath. “Just something to think about.” Cello shuddered at the declaration. “Come on, it’s bedtime. We got to work tomorrow.”

  5

  In the mornings, it was usually the sounds of the baby that woke Cello. Sometimes he’d be crying, sometimes he’d be crooning—looking up at the stained ceiling of the trailer, or at Joanie’s sleeping, milky softness. But this morning was different. This morning was ominously quiet.

  Cello immediately felt off by how naturally he’d wakened. There was no bleary longing for a few more minutes of rest—only a heavy, sated feeling in the full morning light streaming in through the trailer’s windows.

  Cello sat up, trying to recognize what was wrong. How long had they slept? Not too late, since Sil hadn’t come by to bang on the door yet. He pushed the dark flannel blanket down his legs and stood up, scanning the trailer’s guts from end to end. The kids were all asleep and breathing heavily. Emil had kicked his covers onto the floor, but the others were just as tucked in as they’d been the night before when Cello had collapsed onto his cot.

  He moved to the kitchen counter, to the baby’s crate. Was he sick? Cello imagined resting a hand on the baby’s belly to feel for the gentle fill of air into his tiny lungs. But in the crate there was no baby. Cello felt a shiver of worry, until he remembered that sometimes Joanie brought the baby to bed with her, if he’d been fussing.

  Cello approached Joanie much more carefully than he would have come up to just the baby alone. She was asleep on her side, turned away from him and the baby’s crate. He peered over the smooth fall of dark hair over her face and shoulder for the baby’s diminutive sprawl. But there was nothing—or rather, there was only Joanie.

  Cello gripped Joanie’s arm—through her blanket—and shook it. “Joanie,” he whispered, not wanting to wake the others. “Where’s the baby?”

  She murmured incoherently and turned onto her stomach. An arm darted out from under the blanket and then flopped down the side of her cot.

  “Joanie,” Cello repeated. This time he gave her arm a real squeeze.

  Joanie’s dark eyes popped open. “Ow! Cello!” Across the trailer, Miracle coughed in her sleep. “What?” Joanie snapped.

  “Where’s the baby?”

  “Over there.” Joanie yawned and waved at the crate in the trailer’s narrow kitchen.

  Cello shook his head.

  “What?” Joanie sat up a little straighter, the blankets falling away from her body. She stood up and Cello looked at the stained carpet floor so that he wouldn’t stare at her bare legs.

  “Where did you put him, Cello?” Joanie’s voice would sound bored to anyone else, but Cello heard the fear pressing through. “It’s not funny.”

  “I didn’t put him anywhere.” Cello pulled on his jeans and Joanie whirled out of the trailer. She let the door slam behind her, knowing it would wake up the little kids. Cello winced as Emil let loose a little wail.

  “What time is it?” Marcela called from under her thin camping pillow.

  Cello kicked the side of her cot. “Get up. The baby’s missing.”

  “Huh?” Marcela sat up and retied her ponytail. Sabina had already climbed down from her bunk and leaned over the empty wooden crate. Cello watched as she pulled away the small squares of blanket, and then the miniature mattress she and Marcela had made while Joanie lurched through the end of her pregnancy, swollen full of the baby.

  “He’s not in here,” Sabina said softly, as though he were and she didn’t want to wake him. She turned the empty crate on its side.

  “No shit, Sh
erlock,” Marcela said from her cot. “I’m sure Letta has him.”

  As though Marcela had called her inside, Letta burst in with Sil and Joanie. Joanie’s feet were still bare and covered in dew and broken blades of grass.

  “No one thinks this is funny,” Letta began. “Marcela?” Letta hovered over to where Marcela sat, upper body folded over her legs, eyes still only half-open.

  “What? I didn’t do anything,” she said coolly. Cello noticed that same fear pulsing under Marcela’s studied evenness.

  “Cello.” He could smell Letta’s pungent breath as she came up close to him. “What have you done?”

  “Please,” Marcela snorted. “Cello loves that baby more than Joanie. It’s embarrassing.”

  Even Cello didn’t see the slap coming. Letta spun at Marcela so fast that he heard the strike across her face before he understood what had happened.

  “Shut your mouth, Marcela. I don’t want to hear your voice until that baby gets found. Start looking, all of you.” Letta tossed her arms around, as though trying to animate the kids from a distance.

  “Do you mean we should look outside?” Miracle asked.

  “Yes, very good, Miracle. Of course, outside. Go!” Letta shouted.

  “But he can’t even walk,” Sabina protested.

  “Go! I won’t tell you one more time! Anyone still in here in two minutes is cruising for a bruising.”

  Sabina helped the little kids get dressed, and Marcela huffed her way into the trailer’s only bathroom. Joanie, Sil and the truck were already gone.

  * * *

  Cello and Miracle worked together, walking in overlapping loops around the campsite. When their paths crossed for the fifth or sixth time, Miracle reached out to Cello.

  “Do you think we’ll find him?” she asked.

  Cello nodded.

  “Will he be dead?”

  “No, he won’t. He’ll be fine,” Cello said. He hoped hard that he was right. Miracle nodded back at him and lowered her head. Cello felt a rush of love for his foster sister, for the obvious concern that whorled across her face.

  Cello’s sneakers were soaked through with dew, even as the sun built its strength above them. Each time he passed Miracle, she looked more wilted.

  “Go get a drink, Miracle,” he said when he saw her next. They’d fanned out a little, but the trailers were still visible through the scraggly patch of woods where they stood.

  “I don’t think I should yet,” she said. Her cheeks were red from the heat and her face shone with sweat. Cello swiped his hair away from his face. He felt the slickness on his own skin, too.

  “Let’s both go,” he said. “Maybe Sil and Joanie brought help.” Cello knew they weren’t back, just like he knew there were no cops called. His hearing was sharp enough that it would catch the first crunch of gravel when Sil’s truck turned from the main road onto the obscured track to the garden.

  “Come on,” Cello said as he caught on to Miracle’s small, sweaty palm. “Let’s see what’s happening. Maybe Marcela and Sabina found him.”

  Marcela and Sabina hadn’t found anything. Marcela leaned against the abandoned, rust-speckled water tank and drank from a plastic bottle, almost the same color green as the underside of the leaves above them. Sabina was entertaining Emil, and now the two were sprinting across the mowed rectangle of grass Sil kept short for their yard.

  “Go get some water, Miracle. Where’s Letta?” Cello asked.

  “Lying down.” Marcela nodded toward their trailer. “And no, they’re not back yet.”

  “You think they went to the Josephs’?” Cello asked, holding out his arm, waiting for Marcela to pass him the green plastic bottle.

  “I don’t know, probably. You know if anybody took him, it has to be them.” Marcela shrugged and handed it over.

  “How could it be them? They don’t even know Junior was born,” Cello said, before unscrewing the cap and pouring the contents into his mouth. He coughed as a syrupy sludge undercut with alcohol stung the back of his throat and nose.

  “Jesus, Marcela, what is that?”

  “One of Letta’s wine coolers.” Marcela wiped the flat of her hand over her perspiring forehead. “She won’t miss it today.”

  Cello drank again, swishing the sharp citrusy liquid around in his mouth. “You really think they went over there?”

  “To the Josephs’?” Marcela asked as she snatched back the bottle. “I don’t know. I mean, they went somewhere, didn’t they? It’s the first place I would check.”

  Cello nodded. “You and Sabina didn’t find anything?”

  “What were we going to find? Clues?”

  “I don’t know,” Cello muttered. “Just something.” He flushed under the layers of frustration.

  “Well, we didn’t. Ask Sabina if you think I’m lying.”

  Cello squinted across the yard where Sabina and Emil played tag. Even though the sisters were three years apart, Sabina was the slightly taller one. Their silhouettes were almost identical, though Sabina was leaner, almost bony. If it had been a hazier day, Cello wouldn’t have been able to tell which girl was chasing Emil. Emil’s squeal of laughter punctured his thoughts, and Cello turned back to Marcela.

  “What? No, why would I think you’re lying?”

  “Whatever. I’m going to check on Miracle.” Marcela left him alone by the old water tank. Cello could feel their anxiety, all of it pressed together, like they were animals in a pen. Miracle had been terrified on their hunt, and even now, Emil’s screams sounded more hysterical than joyful.

  Even Sabina, who consistently exercised a poised calm—in the ways she spoke and moved—seemed broken up somehow. Cello closed his eyes against a sudden vision of Mother Joseph’s hands on Joanie’s baby. He quickly tamped down the possibility that Junior was under the Josephs’ roof, and blotted out what it would do to Joanie—to all of them—to lose the baby to her.

  Cello pushed his hair off his forehead, and left his hands stacked on the top of his head, letting the breeze fill all of the space around him.

  6

  Joanie hunched over the dashboard, holding her back away from the scorching vinyl upholstery of the car seat left to broil in the sun. Her body knew this shape—the shape of fear, the shape of violence. Joanie longed to be in some other body, away from the garbled panic coursing through her. As soon as she realized the baby was missing, she knew that, somehow, Amberly Joseph was to blame. If her baby had been stolen and taken to the Joseph compound, he would cease to be hers. All of the Josephs’ poison would leach into his tiny body, and by the time he spoke his first word, he would be one of them—he would belong there instead of with her.

  At first, Joanie believed that her life would be better as a Joseph. Something would happen, some ascendance, and she would have what she wanted, would say what she wanted. She’d only known them from a distance—they were wealthier than Letta and Sil; they controlled Letta and Sil. More importantly, Amberly Joseph controlled the Vine of Heaven; she would answer the questions Letta couldn’t. Joanie imagined the Vine’s power looming and opening before her; she imagined controlling Letta and Sil, too. At her most daring, she imagined controlling Amberly Joseph.

  But, looking back, she couldn’t be expected to have known the scale of the Josephs’ dank secrets. She might have guessed or suspected that the Josephs weren’t any happier, or really better off, than Letta and Sil and their collection of kids. There was no guarantee that living with the Josephs would be an improvement, only that she would be more powerful among them. It was all that Joanie saw in the beginning.

  And the Josephs were powerful. It was Mother Joseph who chose Joanie from the girls. If she’d wanted Marcela or Sabina, she would have waited. But it was Joanie she wanted, because she knew Joanie was Letta’s favorite. Because she wanted to show her power over Letta. And Joanie went willingly because she, too, wanted
Letta to feel her strength.

  Remembering her life with the Josephs made Joanie wince. It was a reflex now, an involuntary, conditioned response, as reliable and acute as an animal’s under the whip. There had been real pain in the Joseph household. And at first, Joanie had been a little fascinated by it.

  That third morning at the compound, she went to sit with Mother Joseph on the mildewed lawn chairs out in front. Even though her thighs were bruised by her excitable new husband, and the shower smelled different, and she couldn’t think about or touch Josiah without feeling a mix of contempt and curiosity, she felt an unexpected wash of peace.

  The early-morning quiet, the sensation of half her face in sunlight, the sitting; it was luxurious. What is this feeling? Is it because I’m not a virgin anymore? Because I’m married? Because I’m sitting drinking coffee with the most powerful person I know? She was nearly happy, preening under Mother Joseph’s attention.

  “How’re you settling in, baby?” Mother Joseph asked her as she crunched on a piece of toast.

  “Fine.” Joanie pitched herself toward her new mother-in-law, the cup of coffee just against her lips. She admired the bronze angle of her bent arm, and imagined, for a minute, that they were two women breakfasting on a European piazza.

  “That’s good, very, very good. You know Letta was worried about you coming here. But I know one of us when I see one of us, and you, baby, you’re one of us.”

  “Thanks,” Joanie murmured against the ceramic lip of her mug.

  “To make it official, though, I’d appreciate it if you’d do me a favor.”

  “Sure.” Joanie dropped the hand holding the cup into her lap.

  “Now, you’re not the type to have a weak stomach, are you?”

  Joanie shook her head.

  “I need you to pull a tooth for me.”

  “What, your tooth?”

  “Lord, no!” Mother Joseph laughed and the movement rippled across her body—from the soft spills of flesh at the openings of her neon green housedress to the thick calves she’d propped up on a milk crate. Joanie watched, captivated, as the woman’s laughter took her over, absolutely possessed her. This isn’t normal, Joanie thought, but wasn’t disturbed. Instead, she was curious.