We both sit up straight and swivel. Peanuts and Coke! It’s the best thing in the universe.
“I call I get to drop the first one in,” Emma practically shouts.
“Let’s shoot for it,” I say. And I lose.
The first peanut into the Coke causes the most bubbles, and this time when Emma drops it in is no different. It’s like a science experiment, the foam gets high up to the edge of the glass and then, just as quick-like, drops back down. The rest of the peanuts just plop in. But they make the Coke taste even better than when it’s on its own.
“Aw-right, here you go.” The waitress pushes the sloppy hot dog in front of the both of us. There’s a pickle on the side for good measure.
I eat my share but then my stomach lurches and it occurs to me I might throw up so I ask if I can visit the washroom before we go.
“Sure, sugar,” the waitress says. “Lemme unlock it for you.” She takes a wooden mallet with a little chain and key attached from behind the register and flicks her head to the side, which means I’m to follow her. We go past the kitchen and the smell makes me swallow hard. Uh-oh. She unlocks the door just in time for me to run in and lean over the toilet to throw up hot dog and Coke. I hear the door click closed behind me, and before I can reach for the toilet paper to clean myself up I hear a tap on the door and Miss Mary’s voice. “You okay, chile?”
I cain’t answer her ’cause I’m still gulping air, but she doesn’t wait for my answer, she’s through the door and stroking my back and then I feel her cool hands smoothing my forehead and pulling my hair back from my face and up from my neck. It feels so good that I stay leaning over even though I don’t have to anymore.
“I went too far’d with the talk of this Box,” she says. She’s talking soft, like you’d talk to a baby bird. “Don’t you worry anymore about it. We go on back home if you like. We just stop by my friend’s house to say howdy and then we hit the road—”
“No! Please, no,” I say, whipping around to face her. She dabs my chin with tissue from out of her purse that has the same Miss Mary smell of flowers mixed with cleaner fluid. “I feel fine now, for real. Please? I have to see the Box. I just have to.”
“But you worried sick ’bout it, chile.”
“No I’m not. I swear. I feel fine. Please?”
I cain’t breathe until she says, “Okay.” She frowns when she says it. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea no more. We go by for a second and give it the once-over.”
I throw my arms around her without even thinking first, the way I used to with Daddy when he came home from a trip. “Thank you,” I say into her waist. Her clothes smell so good. I feel her hand resting on my head, and for that second I feel like nothing could ever go wrong. Not when there’s Miss Mary to hug.
* * *
Ike’s General Store is a few doors down from Dot’s, but it’s set back farther from the road. I guess this is so they can have a front porch, where there are rocking chairs and a normal chair that has no seat on it. You’d have to be really big so you won’t fall through if you want to sit that bad. There’s an old guy in one of the rocking chairs and he’s staring straight ahead like he’s waiting on a ride somewhere, but when we walk up he turns his head to us and I get the feeling maybe he was sleeping with his eyes open. Inside the screen door there’s a little fan that’s turning its head from one side to another, but it doesn’t stay in any one place long enough for you to cool down any. Right by the cash machine there are candy jars with sugar sticks in all different colors. A whole jar with just red ones (my favorite) and another whole jar with the purple kind (Emma’s). There must be ten in all. Behind them are all kinds of bottles like at White’s, but the rest of the store has stuff you’d normally find at Feed-n-Plow back in Toast: barrels of grain, rakes, burlap sacks of flour that’ve leaked a bit so the floor looks like it’s dusted with fairy powder. I cain’t tell what’s toward the back of the store ’cause it gets dark, but I bet it’s cooler than here up front where the sun slashes through the door right onto us.
Emma takes hold of my hand and I pretend not to notice since she’s real proud and would pull away if I looked at her being scared.
“Now, what can I do for y’all today?” the man behind the counter asks. He looks like he could be a twin of the old man out front in the rocker, only both straps of his overalls are snapped up and his shirt looks cleaner. Also, his hair is combed and not quite so gray.
Miss Mary’s been looking at the table that has cookbooks on it and starts at the sound of his voice. I see she’s been reading the book called Sweet Tooth Heaven.
“They here to see the Box.” She looks over at me and Emma and says “the Box” in a lower tone, like it’s a secret between them and them only.
The man nods his head like the preacher does at church on Sunday when people stand up to confess their sins out loud in front of everybody. It’s a nod that says he knew all along they’d been sinning.
“I see,” he says. “And how old are you, young lady?” he asks me. He must think Emma’s going to hang behind when I go in.
“I’m eight and my sister’s six but she’s brave and wants to see, too,” I say.
The man looks at Miss Mary, who whispers something across to him like she’s sticking up for Emma, who does look pretty much younger than six. The man looks us up and down while Miss Mary whispers and then he whispers something back to her and I think they’ve been able to strike a deal.
“So you want to go in together, that right?” he says after thinking on it a minute and scratching his chin.
“Yes, sir,” we say at the same time again, only this time neither of us calls jinx. We’re too scared.
“I s’pose that can be allowed. Let me go on back and let them know you’re comin’,” he says, wiping his hands on the apron he has tied around his thin waist. On the way to the back there’s an icebox that I bet has meat in it since the man’s apron’s streaked with red. Either that or it’s blood from the Box!
“I’m so scared,” I whisper to Emma. She squeezes my hand tighter. “I don’t know if I can move my legs to walk back there.”
Miss Mary bends down so she can look us in the eyes. “You change yo minds an’ we can leave right now.”
I just shake my head and look over hers at the man who’s coming toward us and motioning with his arms that we should go on back to him to save him the rest of the steps it would take for him to come fetch us from the front.
“Aw-right, then.” Miss Mary straightens up and pats us on the heads. “Good luck, girls. I be right here the whole time, hear?”
I don’t remember how I take the first step on the dusty floor but somehow I’m walking toward a wooden door smack in the middle of shelves that line the whole back wall of the store. Our steps are tiny, though, ’cause the door stays far off in the distance even though we’re moving toward it.
“Oh, Lord,” I whisper my prayer out loud. “Oh, Lord, make us strong.”
Emma’s grip on my hand tightens and it’s hard to know whether it’s her or me sweating.
The man isn’t smiling anymore. He’s holding the door open for us to go through and he has a real serious look on his face like we’ve done something wrong. That’s fitting, I guess, since we’re walking toward him like we have something to answer for.
Once we’re at the doorway he says, “Now, girls, you sure you’re ready for the Box?”
My mouth is so dry ’cause I’ve had it hanging open, I now realize, so all I can do is nod to him like I see Emma doing out of the corner of my eye.
I look from his face into the darkened room and I see three figures standing around a table with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth on it, like the picnic one we used with Daddy. My eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark yet but I think one of the men is the old man from the front porch. It’s smoky in here and I notice t
hat toward the back there’s a card table set up and a cigarette is tilted against the side of an ashtray. One of the other men is wearing glasses, but I notice they only have glass in one side.
And there it is. The Box. Sitting by itself in the middle of the red-and-white tablecloth. It’s more a rectangle than a square; dark gunmetal gray with a lid that fits perfectly to the bottom. No one says a word to us. They stand to the side of it, waiting for one of us to reach out to lift the lid.
With a few more baby steps we’re up to the edge of the table and I know it’ll fall to me to open it. If I hadn’t throwed up at Dot’s, I would have now, so I s’pose that was good luck I got it over with early. I let go of Emma’s hand and wipe the sweat onto my blue jeans. I breathe in and breathe out and move my arm out in front of me so my hand is a dollar away from the edge of the box.
I jump when one of the men says, “Go on, now,” and that makes my heart race even faster.
Then, I do it. I reach…for the edge…of the lid…and I carefully lift it…just a tiny bit, not even more than a dime, when a ’lectric shock runs through me so fast and hard I scream, drop the lid and run, not waiting for Emma, pushing past the man at the door, escaping from the laughter that echoes out from that smoky room across the general store, and I bolt right to Miss Mary’s waist where I cleave on like moss to a tree. Emma’s there in a heartbeat, trying to hold on to Miss Mary, too, and I feel her nudging us toward the screen door, her voice over our heads saying, “Thank you, sir,” in a way that—can it be true?—sounds like she’s smiling. “I guess the Box live up to the hype after all,” she’s saying from the front porch to the register man, who’s opening her car door for her. I can tell because even though I still haven’t let go of her waist I can see dusty work boots alongside Miss Mary’s shoes that look two sizes too small for her fat feet, plus she isn’t talking louder so he can hear her from inside the store. Is she trying not to laugh?
“Y’all be sure to drive safe, now,” he says, shutting the door after we slide into the back, gripping on to each other like we were still at Miss Mary’s waist.
After all that, I still couldn’t tell you what was inside that dreaded box. I just know it’s the scariest thing I have ever seen in this whole entire world.
Chapter Five
It’s moving day and I don’t mind saying that Momma’s right—I am as bothered as a bee in a jar. Emma’s packed up most of our things since I refuse to take part in one bit of this move. She doesn’t mind. She’s a neat girl for someone as little as she is. She keeps all of her picture books and stickers in a nice low stack by the bed so all she has to do today is lower the stack into the box Momma put together for us to share. I’m the messy one. My things are like cows scattered across the meadow, they’re stubborn and hard to round up. And just when Emma thinks she’s gotten them all, another one turns up on the stairs. Or at the top of the mattresses where our pillows go.
The stamp book will be the last thing to go into the box because I’m studying it right now, trying to memorize the order the countries are in to keep my mind off of this move.
Lately Momma’s been calling it a fool’s errand, this move. I don’t understand what she means. Fool’s errand. The way she says it to Richard it sounds like she’s coming over to my side, but when I ask her what it means she just shoos me away. She barely has time for me and Emma these days. She’s got her mind all tangled up with the bits and pieces of moving a family of four. She said that when we move we aren’t going into a new school and I don’t know what to make of this news. I think I’m happy about it because then there won’t be any more of Sonny’s tortures or Mary Sellers’s snorting at me, but I don’t know where Momma expects us to get our learning. I was making real progress reading. And Emma, she’s starting to add and subtract, but without school I bet she’ll forget how and I’ll have to do all her counting for her. Momma says to quit talking about it, but I’m an eight-year-old—eight-year-olds are supposed to go to school; it’s our job, for goodness’ sake. Plus I was just starting to try on the idea that in a new school I could be popular for once in my life. Nobody’d know I was picked on at my old school. I’ve been practicing telling the new kids how I was voted the most popular girl in my third-grade class, and once they knew that, I know they’d want to be my friend. Emma doesn’t seem to care she’s not going back into school. That’s because, like I told you, she actually was cool and cool people don’t give a d-word what other people think of them. That’s what makes them cool.
“Carrie, Emma,” Momma calls from downstairs. “Get on down here, we got some errands to do.”
“Okay,” I call out for both of us. Emma, she’s been real quiet lately and I think it has to do with Richard and how he’s been closing the door with her on the other side of it with him. It’s like they’re sharing a secret and I don’t get it. He looks pleased as punch he’s got this secret, but Emma looks like she doesn’t want to be holding it for him. She’s one loyal girl, though, because she’s not even telling me the secret and I’m the closest person in the universe to her. But she’s always been good with secrets. She never tells anyone anything. That’s yet another reason why she’s got a whole army of friends.
“What’s taking you so long?” Momma’s starting to sound annoyed.
“Okay, okay,” Emma says, and we go down the attic stairs and then down the real stairs to the kitchen, which is Momma’s
headquarters.
“We got to go get some more boxes so put on your flip-flops,” she says.
I can barely remember Momma the way she used to be, before Richard broke her into pieces. One time when I went into the Cash-n-Carry to pick up a carton of cigarettes for her, Mr. Appleton himself told me to say hello to her for him. That alone isn’t anything new here in my town but it was the way he said it, all smiley like he and her had an inside joke and just my telling her hello from him would be giving her the punch line, that made me think more than once about it.
In the car I get right into the back seat even though Momma says I’m old enough to sit up front with her. But I don’t want Emma to feel left out so I stay in the back with her.
“It’s Tuesday and I think Harold’s just got through unpacking their delivery,” Momma says. Harold’s is the stationery store in town and Mondays they always get boxes of fresh papers, so we head there first since their boxes are clean and don’t smell bad.
“Jackpot,” Momma says, pulling up alongside the pile of flattened cardboard next to the Dumpster in the back. I’m glad about this, too. “Go on,” she says.
We get out and lower the back of the station wagon and start loading in the pieces that are always heavier than they look when you first pull up. I count thirteen small ones and get sad, since Momma says thirteen was Daddy’s favorite number. His lucky number. Our daddy never walked under ladders and was known to throw salt over his shoulder if the shaker spilled so you’d think he’d shy away from thirteen, it being unlucky and all, but Momma says he was full of contra-something-that-means-opposites so I guess it makes some kind of sense.
“Let’s go,” she says as we crawl back into the car, and we’re off to the market. The all-time worst place for box-getting I can think of. Why would anyone want to put their favorite things into soggy boxes that smell like squash? I asked Momma this once and she called me little miss fancy and then gave us the box with eggplant written on the side just for spite. So I’m staying just as quiet as Emma, and I know from the way my sister looks at me that we’re both hoping Momma gives us a Harold’s box for the rest of our stuff.
At the market Momma parks and heads inside. “I’ll be right back.”
Me and Emma get out, too, and scan the mess alongside the Dumpster here. Not a good box day. First of all, a lot of the boxes have tops and bottoms ripped off and the flaps on some of the others don’t touch each other so if you put something in them it’d fall right through.
“I hate market boxes,” Emma says. I’m a little surprised since it’s the first thing she’s said to me all day.
“Me, too,” I say.
“I wish we could just run away,” she says, and I nearly tip over since I’m squatting by the grape boxes when she says this.
“Why cain’t we?” I say, all excited now that Emma’s back on my team. Finally, a secret with my sister! Just like the good old days.
“They’d find us,” she sighs. “He’d find us and then it’d just be worse than it already is.”
“What if we went somewhere they couldn’t find us?” I ask her quickly so we can get the ball rolling before Momma comes back out of the market. “We could go anywhere!” I say. “They wouldn’t even know where to begin looking.”
But Emma’s shaking her head. Her hair is matted all the time now. Momma says she must have rats’ nests in there but Emma won’t let her comb them out and she won’t let her cut it so I guess it’s going to stay matted for a while.
“Yes, they would,” she says. “They’d find us for sure. Grown-ups would tell on us and then they’d come get us.”
Just then, before I can try to talk some sense into her, Momma comes out of the back door to the market, the one the delivery guys use, and she’s looking right past us.
“Get in,” she says, even though we haven’t loaded a single rotting box into the back yet. Her voice is hard and low, almost like a man’s. She starts the car and revs it up really loud and Emma and I look at each other and scramble in before she turns on us.
Momma hasn’t turned on the car radio and that’s a bad sign. Momma never drives without the radio on. Even if we’re out in the middle of nowhere and all that comes in is staticky foreigners talking, she’ll listen to it.
“I don’t know how he thinks we’re supposed to eat,” she mumbles in an angry voice. “I had one nerve left and that man killed it dead.”