AUBREY PRIESTLY COMES TO US FROM VIRGINIA
SURVIVOR OF CAR CRASH THAT KILLED HER FATHER, SISTER
IN APRIL
NEGLECTED AND ABANDONED BY HER MOTHER
NOW RESIDING WITH GRANDMOTHER
SESSIONS WITH SCHOOL COUNSELOR STRONGLY RECOMMENDED
I would have thought these notes were about someone else, except that they had my name on them. Survivor—I had never really thought of myself like that. But a neglected, abandoned child … I was definitely not one of those. Those stories were about other kids, not about me. I’d heard about those kids on TV and in books. My life was not supposed to be like that.
Were they the ones who decided I needed counseling? Or had Gram told them that I needed it? There was nothing wrong with me.
I was dizzy. I was really dizzy. I closed the folder and walked back around the desk and sat down. I covered my face with my hands because suddenly Mr. Pudlow’s office seemed too bright. Neglected, abandoned; neglected, abandoned…
Soon Mr. Pudlow returned. “Sorry about that, Aubrey. Now—”
I just made it to the trash can before I got sick.
Our meeting was over.
“I am so going to school.”
“Are not. You’re still too little.”
“Am too. I’m going to third grade, like you. See, I have a pack-pack with a lunch and a notebook in it.”
“Backpack, Savannah. And you are not!”
Dad scoops Savannah up. “Aubrey, she’s going to ride along with you and Mom to school and then come home. Just make it fun for her, okay? Make her feel included.”
“Fine,” I say. But school isn’t a game. I check my pencil case. It has three sharpened pencils in it. I have three new notebooks, one clean eraser, a full lunch box, and several folders. I’m all ready.
Mom puts Savannah in her car seat. Why does she have to ruin everything by always pretending? Why does she have to ruin my morning with Mom by coming along?
“Where were you all day?” Bridget stood over me. It was warm out, but I huddled in a sleeping bag under a tree in the yard.
“Visiting school,” I said. “And I didn’t feel good when I got home. I didn’t want to play.”
“Oh.” She sat down. “Are you better now?”
“A little,” I said. “I’m still dizzy-feeling.”
“Ooh, I hate that,” Bridget said. “Once, I had a fever for five days, and then even after I didn’t have a temperature, I was still dizzy for two more days. Dad says I wasn’t used to walking around…. But you can play now, right?”
“I don’t want to,” I said.
Bridget frowned but sat down next to me anyway. She talked with me for a while, telling me about the movie she watched that morning. I felt a little better listening to her. After a while I got up and asked her to wait there.
I found Gram in the kitchen.
“Can Bridget stay for dinner?” I asked.
Gram nodded.
I went back outside and invited Bridget. She went home and asked her mom if she could stay, and it was fine. Gram came outside and grilled some chicken. She called us in to a table set with three places and barbecued chicken, green beans, mashed squash, and rolls.
Gram and Bridget made polite conversation. I didn’t listen. to it.
I interrupted. “Did you hear from Mom today?” I asked Gram.
It made me braver, having Bridget there. Because maybe then we wouldn’t have this conversation just me and Gram. Because Bridget made me feel better. I don’t know why, really.
I also was mad at Gram for the note I’d read. For telling people those things about me.
Gram looked at me, surprised. She lowered her eyes and poked her food. She hesitated, and then sighed. “Not today.”
Gram asked Bridget another question, which Bridget answered, though she seemed less comfortable after my interruption. I stopped listening again. I didn’t eat any more. When dinner was over, I scraped my plate into the garbage and walked Bridget home.
Back up in my bedroom, I looked at my clean clothes piled on top of the dresser and my opened travel bags I’d been pulling things out of, which were still under the bed. I hauled the bags out and dumped them on the floor, sifting through my things roughly, throwing them around. I didn’t know where to put anything. I didn’t want to do it.
Dear Jilly,
I guess I’m not going back anytime soon. Today Gram took me to a new school here. I know you always wanted to go to school and Savannah told me you never got to, but maybe she was lying. Maybe you did go to school with her sometimes.
I’m not telling Gram this, but while I was waiting on the principal, I read my file. I was scared about the things I read there. It sounded like they happened to someone else, or like someone wrote up a nightmare and picked my file to stick it in. Ever since I read it, I’ve felt really sick. I can’t stop thinking about it, about Dad and Savannah, and I guess Mom, too. I think I’ve been pretending for a long time that everything’s okay when, really, every day is harder.
I guess that’s all I want to say for now. I’m going to be quick and send you this letter before I tear it up.
Love,
Aubrey
I heard the rain even before I opened my eyes.
“Whoa, Nellie, look at this downpour!”
I hear the expression from Dad enough that I don’t wonder who Nellie is. Nellie isn’t anybody. It’s just something to say.
“Maybe it will let up. We’ve only got another hour and a half until we get home,” Mom says.
I moaned and pulled the covers over my head. Gram couldn’t tell me I needed to get up. The plants wouldn’t need water. Gram could feed Martha herself. I was staying put.
I began to fall back asleep.
“Aubrey!” Gram called.
I ignored her, and fell asleep again.
Eventually my door opened. I heard steps, but they weren’t Gram’s steady ones. They were lighter, faster. The bed bounced and someone was sitting on my butt.
The intruder pulled the covers off me.
“Bridget, get off!”
“Get up!” she replied, without seeming to feel bad that I had yelled at her. “Come and play.”
“I don’t play on rainy days,” I said. I grabbed my covers back and rolled over, knocking her off me, and hid my head.
“Why not?”
“Rainy days are bad,” I answered. “Bad, bad, bad.”
“I don’t think so,” Bridget said. “Come on.” There was a hint of pleading in her voice. “Gram says she’s coming up here in a minute to wake you up, anyway.”
“I’m staying right here,” I said.
“Me too, then,” Bridget sighed. She lifted the covers again, hopped in, and tugged them over both of us. I looked at her under the soft pink dome protecting us from the rainy day.
“You’re dirty,” I said. “You probably walked here through the mud in bare feet and now Gram’s going to have to wash the sheets.”
Bridget lifted her foot to our faces.
“Ew! See!”
I threw the covers off to get away from the dirty feet. We were both giggling when Gram came in. I stopped laughing.
“Good morning, girls,” she said, sitting on the bed and looking at us over the lumpy covers. “Are you interested in breakfast in bed?”
“No,” I said.
Bridget nodded.
“Well, I’ll fix some, then.”
In five minutes Gram brought up two trays. Each had a steaming bowl of oatmeal with a melting lump of brown sugar on top, and a plate of sliced bananas and strawberries. She sat on the far end of the bed while we ate. She looked around my room. It was still a big mess from the night before.
“What happened in here?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Didn’t I ask you to unpack a long time ago?”
“No,” I lied.
“Didn’t I ask you to unpack a long time ago?” she repeated.
“Maybe,” I sa
id.
“Look under your plate,” she said. I slid the fruit plate to the side.
Finish unpacking.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m done eating.” I stretched forward to hand the tray of half-eaten oatmeal to her.
“I’ll leave the fruit for you in case you get hungry,” Gram said, setting it on the night table.
Bridget handed Gram her empty tray. “Thanks for breakfast!”
“You’re welcome,” Gram said, and left the room.
I pulled the covers back over my head. Bridget did the same, so that she could see me.
“Aren’t we going to clean your room?” she asked.
“Maybe later,” I said. I almost fell back asleep while Bridget tried to lie still, fidgeted, and finally gave up and pushed off the covers. She got out of the bed and started rummaging through my stuff.
“What’re you doing?” I asked with my eyes shut.
“Folding clothes,” Bridget said. I peered and saw that it was true, she was making a sloppy stack of clothes out of the ones strewn on the floor. I watched her. She took the pile over to the dresser and opened the top drawer.
“Did you know there’s stuff in here?” she asked.
“Mmm,” I said.
“Look, pictures.”
“Leave them alone, okay?”
Bridget ignored me. She dropped the clothes onto the bed and came over with a handful of pictures.
“Are these Gram’s kids?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Which one’s your mom?”
“The littlest girl,” I said. I pointed to her in one of the pictures, one of the three girls holding dancing poses.
Bridget sat down. “You miss her?”
I shrugged.
Bridget shuffled through the pictures. “This set isn’t that old. Who’s this?”
She held out one of the photos. Two small girls blew bubbles in a driveway. They wore white Easter outfits stained with bright red-orange smudges on the knees of the tights and along the sides of the shoes.
“That’s me,” I said.
“And your sister?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What’s all that red stuff?”
“Mud.”
“Why’s it that weird color?”
“That’s what color it is.”
“I’ve never seen it like that before.”
“Oh. Well, that’s what it is in Virginia. It’s not like that here. Here all the dirt washes out. That red stuff never comes out.”
Bridget looked carefully at the stains in the picture.
“You have an accent, you know,” she said.
“So do you.”
“No I don’t.”
“You do. You sound like a Yankee.”
“What!” Bridget exclaimed, but she was laughing. “A what?”
“Someone from up North. Dad used to call Mom that sometimes. ‘Just like a Yankee,’ he’d say.”
She flipped through the next photos. Dad lifts two-year-old Savannah into the air on that same Easter. Mom sets the table for the fancy dinner—her favorite, ham and pineapple. I lie on my back, hands reaching into the Easter basket on my stomach.
“Your dad wasn’t from here, then?”
“No,” I answered as Bridget scooched a little closer to me. “He grew up in Georgia. He and Mom met down there when Mom was on a trip. They wrote letters when she went back home, and then she moved there and they got married.”
We were quiet as Bridget flipped through the next clump of photos. More of us. I shut my eyes and rested my head against her middle.
“Why are you called Aubrey?”
“What do you mean? My parents picked it.”
“No, I mean, why did they pick it? I used to think you were Audrey when Mom would talk about you, and then that you got the ‘d’ backwards.”
“It’s a family name, on Dad’s side. His mom’s family.”
“So your first name is a last name?”
“It was. But there were no more boys to pass it on.”
“That’s weird.”
“No. A lot of people do it,” I said.
“Here’s you and your mom,” Bridget said. She held out a picture. I’m about seven, in a party dress, sitting on Mom’s lap, leaning into her. She rests her chin on my shoulder, her cheek pressed against mine. Neither of us looks at the camera. It is like there is no one watching us, and we are all alone, together.
“You miss her,” Bridget said again. This time she wasn’t asking. She looked carefully at my face.
“No,” I said.
Bridget was quiet again. I listened to the rain, which was a bad idea because my stomach started feeling funny and I felt like there was oatmeal stuck in my throat. I pulled a pillow to my chest and held it tight. Bridget put the photos down, and put her hands in my hair, and on my back.
“It’s okay,” she said.
That didn’t work. Words never helped anything.
I pressed my eyes closed and remembered that other rainy day, when words didn’t help us…. Daddy, why didn’t you just say it a little bit louder? Why? Why didn’t you make us all stop?
Bridget didn’t say anything as I started to cry. She just listened, and kept petting me.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Bridget said.
I liked Bridget, but I couldn’t agree. I should have been down in my own house in Virginia, with my own family.
Then I thought I heard Bridget thinking. Bridget was thinking, Tell me. It’s okay, just tell me.
And I thought right back to her, No, Bridget, I can’t.
It took three hours, but eventually we got all my things in a place. We emptied the dresser and filled it with my clothes. I hung up a few of my nicer outfits on hangers in the closet. Gram said we could carry an old table down from the attic to use as a desk, so I set up my art supplies on it. Since there wasn’t a bookshelf, I made a row of books on the desk and the dresser. Bridget was surprised that I had games, because I had never invited her to play any, so we played them on the rug before putting each one in the closet.
When we were done, it had stopped raining.
“We can go outside now!” Bridget said.
I looked around the bedroom, which seemed to say You live here now. I was fine with the idea of leaving it.
When we got downstairs, I saw that Gram had made us some kid sandwiches—plain American cheese on fluffy white bread that no grown-up would eat—and left a bowl of green grapes on the counter. Bridget and I ate standing up, and then headed outside.
As we started to cross the yard to Bridget’s, we saw Mabel and her dad, playing. He had picked her up and was spinning her. She screamed with happiness.
“What’s your dad doing home?” I asked.
“He took the day off,” Bridget said.
I stopped walking and shut my eyes. It wasn’t Mabel I heard at all. Outside, maybe, it was Mabel’s voice, but inside, I could hear Savannah.
“Bridget,” I said, keeping my eyes closed. “I need to …”
“Go,” she said. “You need to go.” She finished the words, but they sounded heavy, like it bothered her to say them. “You’re such a poop sometimes.”
“What did you call me?” But I had heard what she said. “I am not a poop.”
“You’re so mopey all the time—you’ll seem fine and then you just… I never know if we’re going to keep playing or if you’re going to run back to bed.”
Mabel was still laughing in the yard. I didn’t know if it was her making me think of Savannah, or Bridget being mean to me, that was making me feel so sick. And angry.
“Shut up!” I yelled. “You have no idea what it’s like!”
“How would I?” Bridget yelled back. “You never tell me anything about what it’s like!”
“That’s not true!” I said. Hadn’t Bridget and I just spent ages talking?
It only took me a few seconds to realize that she was right, that that whole time we had talked about dirt colors and a
ccents and names. I had held back everything else.
“I have to go,” I said. I ran back into Gram’s house and shut the door. I couldn’t hear Mabel anymore. But I could still hear Savannah. I couldn’t shut her out.
I went upstairs to my new desk and took out paper. I was going to write another letter, but I put Jilly’s name on the paper and that was all I could do. Bridget was right. I had nothing to say, to anyone. I climbed back into my bed.
I’m not sure why Gram let me, but I slept straight through to the morning. I woke up grumpy. Downstairs, Gram had put a bowl of bran flakes on the table, with a full glass of milk and a spoon next to it. I splashed the milk into the bowl and took two bites, then stirred the cereal until it turned to mush. I dumped it into the sink. I didn’t bother to rinse it down.
Gram had left a chore list on the counter. I ignored it. Then I snatched it and crumpled it up.
Bridget was already outside. She was hula-hooping. Mabel was out there, too, drawing on the slate stepping-stones in the grass with sidewalk chalk. Neither of them saw me walk up.
“Hi,” I said. “Can I play?”
Bridget shrugged.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“We had French toast for breakfast,” Bridget said.
“With berries!” Mabel exclaimed.
I pictured the whole thing … Bridget’s mom with a spatula flipping the bread in the frying pan, Bridget’s dad leaning to kiss her cheek as he offered his plate, Danny in his high chair picking up bite-sized soggy bits and smashing them into his face, Mabel with syrup on the front of her pajamas, Bridget asking for an extra piece….
“Want to go play in the woods?” Bridget asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“We have to take Mabel,” Bridget said. “Mom’s giving Danny his bath, so I’m watching her.”
“Sure,” I said. Danny probably had syrup in his hair.
Mabel skipped over and put her hand in mine. “Aubrey, Aubrey, we’re going to play!”
My heart started pounding as she swung my arm higher, but my arm was stiff. There were words forming in the back of my mind. I shoved them aside. My stomach squirmed.