Chapter 31
I wake well before dawn with my own voice zinging through my head, so I can’t go back to sleep. I jump up and go down to start the kitchen fire.
My zizi comes down around the time the farina is just cooked. She nods at it and puts on her apron. I grab the milk pail and go out to the barn.
I have no appetite myself. The meetinghall fills but I’m exhausted. I put my feet up on a bench and hold a newspaper in my lap. Cassie slips in. She glances about warily before making a beeline to our aunt. I pretend to read the paper. I’m so not up for anyone else’s drama.
“What?” my zizi hisses, shrill enough for my ears to pick at it. Cassie says something else, and this time my aunt gasps, “What? Milo.”
I’m on my feet, moving towards her. I intercept them by the coat closet, taking her arm.
“What’s wrong?”
She mutters, unseeing, then, “Those fiends!”
“Zizi-”
“No!” She glares at me. I don’t move. “You stay.”
By now other people are passing by us, men trundling outside, little kids and some of my cousins squishing themselves in the other direction.
“No, tell me if it’s Milo. What’s wrong?”
“Your brother is fine. Let’s all stay inside.” She heaves the two doors shut, yelling at someone to move or she’ll close the door on them.
Cassie has my hand, gently leads me to a window. We stand on our tiptoes.
On the green, right in front of the meetinghouse, are a bunch of our uncles. They’re all fascinated by something awful, I think, because they can’t turn away despite their disgust.
There’s a shoe on a limp leg, and for a moment I’m horrified, thinking it’s my brother. My Uncle Groton clears a space with his arms around the prone boy, then, and it’s not Milo. It’s Lium.
Something that could have been a groan or a wince or a scream, I’m not sure, pierces my throat. Cassie clutches me, and she’s strong.
“Crusa,” anyone else and I’d rip myself away. I feel powerful enough, surely.
She speaks to me in a firm, calm voice that’s mesmerizing, “Last night, the other side of the family, they tried to raid Uncle Groton’s business.” I don’t care. I try to bolt. She yanks and we spin, “They didn’t get there,” she says, “But to make up for it, they went after the stupid cow. Philbert. Just to do something. They brought him back and were going to cook him, I think, but he ran off and all they got was his tail. So he’s fine. But by then Uncle Groton had gotten some guys together, including Lium and Hale, and went over there. There was a confrontation.
“Crusa, Lium went after one of their biggest guys. Milo’s adopted family’s son, Crusa. They had on masks. Milo got in the way, and Lium, he attacked him instead.”
This is a fairy tale, it must be. Because it makes no sense, and I’m a fairy there because I feel like I’m suspended above the floor, my blood so heavy, tingly with magic.
“Camillo is fine. But then Uncle Groton went after Lium. He’s out there now. You need to just leave them.”
No, I don’t. She makes no sense. I hear someone, Hale, scream, so close. I make for the doors, and Cassie doesn’t stop me.
I fly, and then I’m outside in the grass. My feet barely touch so I’m lucky when I don’t stumble. I kneel by Lium’s unconscious body. They drag him, toss him away from me.
I try just slipping through them but they’re hard and strong. I didn’t know how hard and strong. There are sickening noises. I saw Lium at first, but then he starts to disappear, and I’m being pushed back out into the open green. I hear his name being screamed over and over and I feel each one because it’s me.
There’s a clear shot, and I make it in again. I grab at him. A chilly, dry knuckle hits me on the jaw and there’s a burst of liquid in my mouth. I duck and pull, dragging myself in further. Other things make contact, but I don’t let go. I’ve got him. I’ve got Lium’s arm, twisted in one of mine at unnatural angles, and his hair, crushed in a fist. He’s dead weight, I can feel it. I don’t like it at all. Something licks the back of my thigh and I let out a muffled scream.
There’s shifting underneath me, and I’m hurled over. Lium’s awake, I note fleetingly. He smothers me into the grass, each blow resounding through his body before mine. It doesn’t stop.
I think we might die like this.
Then there’s no more errant blows landing on me. No more buffeting from around us, for him that’s made himself my human shroud. Heavy and slack.
“Everybody back,” my zizi calls.
There’s murmuring, and I know that order will have sent the men away.
Lium groans, which is wonderful. I realize he’s trying to sit up, so I help him. He starts murmuring things, trying to soothe me, moves my hair behind my ear, holds my head to himself. We don’t make it upright. I realize I’m shaking. I sink my face and fingers into him, wishing it would stop. I’m so glad he’s not dead. He keeps saying things into my ears.
My zizi is bent over us. There are dark circles around her eyes. She smacks Lium across the cheek and ignores the sound I make. All of this smacking is new. She tells him, “Don’t you ever threaten a child of mine.”
Lium looks like he’s about to say something to her, but I’m afraid. “He won’t, Zizi,” I say.
She stares at me like she can’t find me.
“He’s done it already.” She shouts, “I’ll kill him myself if you won’t let them do it!”
“Zizi! You won’t!” I try not to cry. “Leave him alone. Please, I’m begging you.”
“I told you not to come out here!”
“I had to.”
“Crusa,” warns Lium, laying alongside me. My zizi rolls her eyes.
“Fine,” she says. “If that’s how you want it, I’ll give you just this once. You tell that boy to go.”
“Lium?”
“Not leaving you.”
My zizi snorts. I wipe some blood off the face of the boy who is causing me so much trouble. “Yes, come on. You go and I’ll deal with them.” He’s trying to get up. Good. He slumps onto my shoulder, unconscious again. His weight clobbers me into the grass.
“I want him out of my yard in thirty seconds.”
“Zizi, hush,” I say, strained. I get an elbow under me.
“Oh, don’t you tell me to hush, girl. I’ll tell you to hush.” I bite the sides of my cheeks. “He’s not good, honey.”
“He’s good to me.” I try to figure out how best to get up without injuring him further.
“Boys like that aren’t good to you.”
“Zizi, stop!” My voice is sheer. “He is. He’s mine and I love him very much so just let him go, will you.”
I stop my tongue right then.
“Crusa,” she drawls, horrified. “Don’t say that.” She swallows in disgust. When she laughs, it rings. I could vomit.
“Crusa. Honey. Don’t be silly. Tell the boy to go home before I make him.”
I stare at her. Then, Lium, groggy, heaves himself partly up, grimacing in the attempt. He makes it to one knee. I sit up and wait until he sees me.
“Honey, it’s time for you to go home,” I say. I hope the spells of unconsciousness have him confused enough that he just does it.
“No,” he spits the word out at me.
“Please, for your own sake, just go.” I shake his shoulder. I start tearing up. His jaw tightens and twitches, but he shakes his head.
“No.”
“Please.”
“Listen to her boy. You go home and rest.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. Lium steadies himself on my shoulder, and he tells my zizi, “No, I can’t go home. She’s my home.”
He has both my zizi and I listening. Utterly still, the two of us.
“You tell me to go home and rest? I can go to her…and nowhere else. I can rest with her, and nowhere else. Even if I go, I end up right back here.”
I find the air too thi
ck to breathe. I don’t think the words. I’m just inspired with them, then I say them. It’s a good idea.
“Come on Lium, let’s go.”
“I won’t go, Crusa!”
Calmly, I tell him, “I’m going, too, Lium. Come with me.”
He lets me help him to his feet, rests heavily over my back. When I think he’s relatively steady, I take a small step, relieved when he trips along.
So low, it’s almost not there, my zizi says, “My girl, you go with that boy, and you never come back.”
I turn and stare at my aunt. I blink. I don’t know her.
She says, “You listen to me. You go out there, and I know I’ve taught you nothing. You don’t need me, then go. Go to the boy. Go fight strangers. And don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine without you.”
I don’t breathe. I don’t feel any need to.
I heave on Lium to give him some momentum. Without any hurry, I tell him come on, let’s go, again, and we shuffle off together.
At some point, Hale appears to take him from me. Then I get tired and I decide to collapse. Hale starts blabbing on and on about finding a spot where nobody will find us. I give him a solution so he’ll shut up. Then I sob and don’t stop.