I hear her voice calling out again for help and that’s about the last thing I hear before I run out of batteries altogether. Next thing I know, blurry faces are staring down at me and someone lifts something cold off my forehead then puts it back again in a way that feels cooler.
“Here she is,” a voice is saying. “Here’s our girl. Honey? Can you hear me? Carrie? Can you tell us where you’ve been?”
“Don’t bombard her with questions,” a man’s voice says. “Let her come to before you set in with the third degree.”
Seems like there are a dozen people in the room. Voices come from everywhere.
“We should take her to the hospital …”
“Let’s see what’s what first, why don’t we …”
It takes a lot of blinks to bring them into focus.
“Looks like she’s got something in her left eye,” the first voice says. I see now it’s Mrs. Ford. “She’s favoring it. Mom, call up to Cricket and tell her to bring me a washcloth from the linen closet, will you?
“Keep them closed for now, honey,” she says to me in a softer voice. “I think you’ve got something lodged in your eye—if you keep opening it like that, it could scratch your cornea.”
From somewhere that feels far away but probably isn’t, I hear Miss Chaplin hollering for Cricket. Then the booming of footsteps overhead. Then the mix of voices talking at once.
“I’m sorry to be a bother,” I say. At least I think I say it—Mrs. Ford is sitting right here next to me on the edge of whatever I’m laying on but she don’t hear me so I try to get my mouth moving again.
“I’m so sorry to put y’all out like this,” I say.
“I think she’s trying to say something,” Miss Chaplin says.
“What’s that you’re saying, honey lamb?” Cricket’s mom asks me. “You trying to tell us something?”
Why aren’t they hearing me?
“I’m sorry …,” I start again, but up and suddenly I feel too tired to make any more words.
Jumbled sentences fill my ears:
“Where’s that washcloth?”
“Cool water—not too cold, cool.”
“Mom? Dad? What’s going on? Oh my God, Carrie? What happened to her?”
“Shhhh, we’ll get to that but first we’ve got to get her cleaned up.”
“Is she asleep?”
“Cricket, bring me a bowl with some ice.”
I’m trying hard to stay awake, to make my brain work along with my mouth, to figure out why they’re looking at me funny, but I cain’t fight sleep.
So I don’t. I float away from them and let my brain turn off again. Until, a while later I think, it comes back on and this time it’s clearer. The thump and thwack of Momma’s foot then the sting of her hand across my face. The prickly dead grass ringing the pool. That’s all clear in my brain until it turns itself off for sleep. When I wake back up I hear them saying stuff about me and I don’t know what it is but I know it ain’t good. I think I’m being blamed for something and since I don’t know what it is and I cain’t exactly make it right, I know the best thing for me to do right now is to be scarce so’s not to be more of a burden. I want to holler at the top of my lungs just tell me what I did wrong and I swear I won’t do it again. I’m real good at never doing wrong stuff again, you’ll see. That’s what I’d holler out but the words stay in my throat to almost choking.
“Look at her fingernails,” the man’s voice says. Then I realize the voice belongs to Mr. Ford. “You see that? They’re packed with dirt.”
Mr. Ford looks different in his police uniform. Official-looking. If I hadn’t met him when I did and the way I did, I’d be scared of him for certain. Then again, Mr. Ford’s got a Yosemite Sam mustache that curls up at the ends so he looks to be smiling even when he’s not.
“Look look! Shhh. She’s waking up,” Mrs. Ford says. “Shh, y’all be quiet for a minute. Honey? Carrie? There’s our beautiful girl. You remember Mr. Ford. Cricket’s daddy. He’s here too.”
“Hey there, sweet Caroline.” Mr. Ford steps in closer so I can see his face better. He smiles and gives a little wave.
“Honey, Mr. Ford’s got a few questions he needs to ask you, okay?” Mrs. Ford says. “You feel up to a couple of questions?”
It hurts on my side when I push sound through my mouth so I near to whisper “yes, ma’am,” and Mrs. Ford looks relieved. I feel so grateful to them I want to jump up and hug them all close. I cain’t but I want to. Maybe in a bit I can get over to a sink so I can wash my hands. Get the dirt out from my fingernails.
“Honey, what happened to you, can you tell us?” Mr. Ford asks.
Cricket is craning her neck over her father’s shoulder.
I want so bad to answer them but my tongue feels heavy and thick in my mouth and my side feels like a log split open with an ax.
“Did your mama do this to you, Caroline?” Mr. Ford asks. When his eyebrows crinkle together with worry he looks exactly like Cricket. He moves closer and tilts his head so my voice can get a straight shot to his ear. “You can tell us anything—nothing bad’s going to happen to you I can promise you that.”
I cain’t keep from resting my eyelids but I’m still awake.
“I swear, that woman is a monster out of a horror movie …,” Miss Chaplin says from somewhere off to the side.
Mrs. Ford hushes her.
“Shhhhh, stop it, Mother. She won’t say a word if she thinks we’ll do something to the mother.”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“Well, don’t. Not now. Not in front of her.”
“Why don’t y’all leave Caroline and me alone for a minute?” Mr. Ford says to them, lowering his voice then raising it to jostle me awake. “We could use some sweet tea, I bet, right, Caroline? Wouldn’t that taste good? Some nice, cold sweet tea?”
“Coming right up,” Miss Chaplin says. “Come on, Honor. Cricket, you too, honey.”
“But, she’s my friend,” Cricket’s saying.
“Grandma’s right, let’s let Dad talk to Carrie alone for a bit. You can come back and check on her later.”
“Aw, man,” Cricket groans and lets herself be led out of the room. “Carrie, I’ll be in the kitchen, okay? You need me, you just tell my dad and he’ll get me. Dad, be gentle, ’kay?”
“Always am, princess,” he says. “Now go on. All of you.”
Both my eyes are back working okay and I watch him watch them leave the room.
“That’s better,” he says, turning his head back to me, letting his brows relax while his mouth puts a smile on. A smile that feels like the sun is shining on my face. A smile like Cricket’s.
“Finally some peace and quiet around here! That’s much better, isn’t it? Listen, Caroline, I want to tell you something real important here. I’m a police officer which I know you know and police officers are real good secret keepers which maybe you don’t know. We are. You can tell me anything at all and if you say I can’t tell anybody about it, well, then I won’t. But it’s real important you tell me the truth, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” I say with my tongue so fat it comes out “yeth thir.”
“Now, I can see it pains you to talk so what I’m going to do is ask you yes and no questions so all you’ve got to do is nod or shake your head. You don’t even need to say the word yes or no if you feel you can’t. All right?”
I nod my head.
“Good,” he says. “That’s real good. You’re a smart little girl, I can see that. Sometimes smart people find themselves in not-so-smart situations, you know? Or maybe they do not-so-smart things. When I was your age I got up to lots of not-so-smart things. Hell, let’s just call a spade a spade: I did some pretty dumb things. Who-ee, my mama sure did have her hands full with me. And I had eight brothers and sisters so you can imagine how tired my poor mother was. I’m worn out just dealing with that one in there!”
He smiles and tips his head in the direction of the kitchen so I know it’s Cricket he’s tal
king about.
“It’s just you and your mama living over there at the Loveless, is that right?”
“Yes, sir,” I say out loud.
“Um-hmm, yeah, your mama probably worries herself sick about you, I’m guessing,” he says. “That’s what mothers do. They worry.”
He’s pulled over a gray metal folding chair like they got at church for when too many people show up for services. The way he’s eased back into it you’d think it was the most comfortable chair in the world, man-crossing his legs, one ankle over the other knee.
“No sisters or brothers? Ah, here we go,” he says, looking up at something past the couch, then standing, “sweet tea for a sweet little girl. Thank you, Miss Ruth. That looks like just what the doctor ordered. Here, let me take that from you.”
He’s reaching, then sitting at the edge of his folding chair, then holding a straw to my lips.
“There you go, a little hydration’ll do you a world of good,” he says. “When was the last meal you had, sugar?”
I’ve only been gone and on my own for one day but you’d think it was a year the way my mouth waters hearing him say the word meal. I guess he can tell how hungry I am because he says, “Been that long, has it? Miss Ruth? Excuse me a minute, Caroline. I’m going to see if we can’t rustle up some food for you. I’ll be right back.”
“Yeth, thir.”
I’m tired. I’m tired of twisting my brain into knots to think what to do. If I tell him Momma got mad and threw me out, if I tell him she hurt me, he’ll go over to arrest her and if he goes over to arrest her she’ll tell him I’m crazy and if she tells him I’m crazy he’ll have me sent away. But then I remember.
Emma.
“Hey, kiddo, I’m back,” Mr. Ford says, resting a tray of food on his lap. “How about a piece of cinnamon toast? That sound good?”
After eating catalogs and clay and ketchup packets in between the goody bags, I don’t need to tell you how I feel about buttered toast with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on it. Miss Chaplin even cut off the crusts.
“That’s it,” he says, holding the other triangle out for when I finish chewing this one. He smiles and says, “I guess you were hungry,” and I nod and try to smile back at him while I chew.
“While you’re working on that, there’s something you need to know, Caroline,” he says. I figure he’s about to tell me again how he’s not gonna let anyone hurt me. Or that I can tell him anything. The last thing I ever thought he’d say is:
“Honey, we know about Emma.”
I stop working on the toast in case maybe I heard him wrong.
“Now, I know you didn’t want anyone to find out, but Caroline, there are some things that shouldn’t be kept secret. And when you went missing Cricket and her mom and Miss Chaplin—well, they were worried sick. And they did the right thing calling me. Don’t go getting mad at Cricket, I forced it out of her. She didn’t want to betray your confidence but she also knew what we all now know: you’re in way over your head, baby girl. You need to let us help you. And in order to help you, I need to know where you’ve been and what happened that made you look like the losing end of a prizefight. I know I sound stern—I don’t mean to come down hard on you—but if you don’t tell me I’m going to have to go over to the Loveless and find someone who will call a spade a spade. Your mama, maybe.”
“No! It ain’t her fault!” I hurry to stop him and I cain’t sit up easy but you can bet I’m trying.
“So tell me, then,” he says, and while I quickly finish chewing what’s in my mouth, he sets the food tray on the low table at the end of the couch. The glass table with a lamp that has a Charlie Chaplin hat for a shade.
“I knew she hated it when I studied her”—my thick tongue slows me up but it looks like he can understand me so far—“but she was having one of her fever dreams and I went to tell her it was just a nightmare and she saw me standing over her, staring at her—but the thing is, I wasn’t studying her right then, I swear—”
“Slow down, peaches,” Mr. Ford says. “I can’t understand you when you talk fast like that. Take a deep breath and slow down.”
I do as he says.
“I was crowding her and Momma hates me crowding her and I knew that but I guess I wasn’t thinking it at that exact time.”
“What happens when you crowd her?” he asks.
If I tell him the rest, he won’t understand. He doesn’t know Momma like I do. If I tell him the rest—
“Go on, Caroline.” He says it like he’s reading my thoughts, and just in case he can read thoughts I better just call a spade a spade, like he said to.
“I got punished,” I whisper the words. Then I remember something. “Mr. Ford? Did y’all find a Bible when you found me? I mean, I think I was carrying something when I got here. A Bible that belongs to someone else but I been borrowing it and I meant to bring it with me.”
He nods. “We found a notebook and a Gideon Bible out front on Miss Chaplin’s porch swing, don’t worry. We got them both safe and sound here for you, honey.”
I settle back against the couch cushions.
“We also found you clutching on to this pretty tight,” he says, holding up …
The picture of baby Emma.
I close my eyes, and for the first time since right before I stuck up for Momma and shot Richard, for the first time since we turned the page and landed at the Loveless, for the first time in what feels like forever, I feel Emma here with me. And that gives me courage. I take as deep a breath as I can and then spill the beans.
“Emma’s my baby sister,” I start from the beginning. “She’s opposite of me. She had hair that was near-white blond and tiny bird bones …”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Carrie
“Honey, remember our deal? You promised to stay out of the way once you got her to open the door,” Mrs. Ford says to me, “so come on out onto the balcony here so the police can do their work.”
Momma looks her up and down and says, “Calling her honey already—isn’t that just perfect.”
The policeman is talking to a black lady in a suit holding a clipboard. He’s using words like child services and fostering and safe houses. Mrs. Burdock is in her bright-colored housedress pacing on the balcony in front of our open door, muttering to herself about cleanup crews. Ever-body’s talking at once.
Another policeman pushes past Mrs. Burdock, talking into his radio. He stands at the far side of Momma’s bed, across from Mr. Ford.
“What’s going on? What’re y’all doing?” I ask Mr. Ford as he’s pulling the covers off Momma. “Wait, stop!”
I wish all these grown-ups would just leave her alone! Don’t they know this is gonna make it worse for me later, when they leave? Momma’s gonna skin me alive for this.
It’s all going so fast. Mrs. Ford keeps waving to get my attention so I’ll go out by her but what about Momma?
“How long have they been living like this?” the lady in the suit is asking Mrs. Burdock.
“Too long, I’ll tell you that much,” she says.
“Fifty-one-fifty,” a policeman’s hollering into his radio but it keeps breaking up so he says it over and over again.
“Place needs to be fumigated,” Mrs. Burdock’s saying to no one in particular.
And then I see room 217 like they must see it. The trash is stacked up pretty high in the far corner—I’m sure they think it’s Momma’s fault but it was my job to empty the trash. I’m the one who forgot to do it, not her. The flies settle—they’re only buzzing around because y’all are going through our things, I want to yell out. I want to tell them it’s not always this messy. I want to cover up Momma’s too-skinny body—I hate ever-one seeing her like this. She’s so beautiful, I want to holler. Y’all just don’t know. She was voted Most Beautiful in her high school. Suddenly ever-thing feels naked and ugly and tiny with so many people in it.
“It was only supposed to be until we got ourselves situated,” I say out loud. In case anyone’s lis
tening. “Until Momma found work. Why’re y’all going through ever-thing like that? Wait, don’t hurt her! Momma? Please, Mr. Ford, please don’t hurt her.”
“Honor, you’ve got to get Carrie out of the way,” Mr. Ford says. “This isn’t something she needs to see.”
Momma’s picked now to laugh good and hard.
“Honey,” Mrs. Ford is saying, “Carrie, come on with me, now. We’ll just go down and wait in the parking lot.”
“Momma, I’m sorry.” I wriggle away from Mrs. Ford and run over to Momma, who’s being held up to standing by two policemen, one on either side of her. “Momma, please don’t be mad. I’m sorry. I know I never should’ve left the room. You’re hurting her! Wait, Momma? Momma, this is Mrs. Ford and she’s real nice. She’s been so good to me, Momma.”
By then the policemen have Momma in the middle of the room. She’s swaying to music that ain’t playing.
“Ma’am, we’re looking for your daughter Emma,” Mr. Ford says. “Any ideas where she’d be?”
“Ask her.” Momma slurs the words, tipping her head in my direction, then tapping out a cigarette from the pack.
“We’d like for you to tell us, ma’am,” the other policeman says. He shines a flashlight at her face but Momma just looks away and blows smoke to the sky. Cool as a cucumber.
Then she looks over at me.
I look from her to Mrs. Ford to Mr. Ford to the lady in the suit to Mrs. Burdock. What’s going on? I want to scream.
“Go on and tell them,” Momma says.
“Carrie? Do you know where your sister is?” the suit lady asks. She’s using my name like she knows me. And acting like I lied to her when I haven’t ever met her before thank you very much.
“Momma?” I cain’t make any sense of all this. “Momma, what’s happening?”