Blackthorn Winter (30 page)

And Liza said basically the same thing to me about Nora's necklace, right here in this sunroom on the day we'd arrived:
Only death would keep us from wearing our lucky charms!

Nothing short of death...

Another voice was in my head—talking right over Mrs. Thurber's and Liza's:
I'll wear the necklace and treasure it forever. It'll be my good luck charm because it's a present from my precious little Jewel-baby...

I was falling ... falling ... I released the window ledge and slid down the wall to sit huddled by the last of Mom's
unpacked boxes, not far from the bloodstain. Instead of the stain I was seeing that dusty corner under the bed, reaching out my little-girl hand to pick up what lay there: a simple shell necklace strung on yarn.

Jewel? Jewel? You come on out from under there, now, girl.

I was falling into the shadows, but what did that matter? Darkness couldn't erase what was reshaping itself in my memory, fresh and nauseating, out of the long-buried past.

 

S
HE WAS NAMED
Jewel because her mama thought she was the most precious thing in the world. Her mama was called Buzzy because that was what people had called her in England, where she came from, and she wanted Jewel to call her Buzzy because "Mama" made her sound too old. "We're little girls together," Buzzy had told Jewel. "We're best friends forever."

Buzzy always told bedtime stories. She told Jewel about how she'd run away from home and met Jewel's daddy in San Jose, in California. He was called Petey because he was too young to be anybody's daddy, really. But they were super cool, the three of them. They traveled down the coast in the warm California sun, and Petey played the guitar and sang like an angel, and sometimes people paid him. He sang songs for Jewel. They lived on the beach or up in the woods
in the hills, or under bridges with other people who were too cool to live in boring houses and apartments. Sometimes Petey went out to get more money, and when he found some, he brought back the best food, like sodas and hot nachos covered with cheese sauce. Other times, when they didn't have money, he taught Jewel how to fish. She was good at it, because she could dangle at the end of the rope like a little wiggleworm and pull all the best stuff out of the Dumpsters. There was lots and lots of stuff down there that people threw away that was still perfectly good to eat! So they would have slurpy drinks with the straws still in them, and bits and pieces of hamburgers, and even whole pickles that nobody had wanted.

But then Petey went away. Buzzy cried a lot and told Jewel that Petey had died. "It was the drugs," she cried, "and fast driving because of drugs. It's bad business, Jewel, baby. Don't ever take drugs, you must promise me that!" And Jewel promised, but she didn't see why Buzzy wouldn't promise, too.

Now Buzzy couldn't just hang out all day with Jewel anymore because Buzzy had to work. Now she couldn't play on the beach. They had to look for shells and make
beautiful necklaces to sell to people who stopped at traffic lights when they saw Buzzy's sign that said please help me feed my little girl. The people would take money out of their fat wallets and give the money to Buzzy and say how nice the jewelry was. But the one necklace they never, ever could buy was the one that Jewel had made for Buzzy all by herself! Buzzy wore that one around her neck whenever she went out to work. It was her good luck charm, she said. She took it off only to go to sleep.

Jewel and Buzzy moved in with a girl called Tiara. Tiara didn't play with Jewel. She lived in a little dark apartment and watched TV when she was home. Buzzy and Jewel watched TV, too. When Buzzy and Tiara weren't home, Jewel watched TV by herself, whatever was on. When Buzzy came back to the apartment, she always fell into bed right away and wouldn't get up all the next day. There was one real bed, where Tiara slept, and one mattress on the floor that Jewel and Buzzy shared.

Sometimes Tiara had people come over to visit, and those people slept on the couch or crowded into the bed with Tiara. When the friends came over, Buzzy said Jewel should watch TV in the bedroom and not come out, because some things weren't for
little girls. Once Jewel came sneaking out to peek at what wasn't for little girls, but Tiara saw her and shouted mean things and locked her in the closet at the end of the hall. It was dark in there, with a hard, concrete floor, and Jewel cried so hard that Buzzy made Tiara let Jewel out. But after that, Jewel went running back to the bedroom and hid under Tiara's bed whenever the people came over.

One day there was a terrible big fight after the people had gone, and Jewel could hear Tiara and Buzzy shouting and yelling about money. She could hear the crashing of furniture, and the sound of breaking glass. Jewel cradled her head on her arm under the bed. She fell asleep to escape the noise.

Crashing music woke her up with a beat that sounded like more fighting. Jewel shifted on the dusty floor under Tiara's bed. She heard doors opening and closing, and water running—and finally silence. After the silence had stretched out forever, Jewel came sneaking out to see what was going on. But nobody was there.

"Buzzy? Buzzy?" Jewel stepped over a broken glass and curled up on the couch to wait. She waited a very long time and watched TV all night, but Buzzy didn't come back, and Tiara didn't come back. When Jewel got hungry, she opened Tiara's fridge
and found some cheese. It was hard, with greenish patches, but it tasted okay with the last of a box of crackers.

Jewel slept on the couch and finally Tiara came back the next day. She looked at Jewel as if she'd never seen her before. "Oh, Christ. I forgot about you!"

"Where's Buzzy?"

"Oh..." Tiara shrugged. "Buzzy? Oh yeah—Her Majesty had to buzz off for a while." Tiara collapsed onto the couch. "She's looking for work, and you're gonna be good and helpful around here, or you can't stay."

"Is Buzzy coming back soon?"

"Yeah, sure. Soon. When she finds a job."

"You mean she might be gone a long time? And she didn't take me?"

"Don't worry, you're perfectly safe with me. 'Her Royal Highness' ain't coming back for a long, long time, but she said she wanted you to stay with me. We'll be fine, just fine. Now help me clean up some of this mess, and don't you worry 'bout a thing..."

"No! Buzzy wouldn't leave me, she never never would!"

"Shut your trap and be a good girl or I'll be leaving you, too, so fast your head will spin!"

So Jewel tried to be as good as she could be and as helpful as she knew Buzzy would want her to be. She washed the dishes and she put them in the cupboard, she put out the cigarettes that Tiara dropped on the rug by mistake, and she waited obediently in the bedroom, watching TV, when Tiara had her friends coming over. One night the next week there was more shouting, and a man was yelling, and Jewel crawled under Tiara's bed. It was still daylight. And it looked different under the bed with light still coming in the window. The light lit long shafts of sun onto the floor, and the dust motes looked like fairies floating. In the light Jewel could see under the old dresser, too. More fairies darted here and there—and back in the corner something gleamed. Jewel edged her arm under the dresser to fish it out.

Buzzy's shell necklace! The beautiful one that Jewel had made for Buzzy all by herself! The one that Buzzy said was magic, and her good luck charm...

The one that Buzzy said she would never take off except when she went to bed.

So ... if Buzzy was out looking for work, why hadn't she taken her good luck necklace? Jewel would ask Tiara. Maybe Tiara would know.

After the friends left and the shouting man left, Jewel came out of the bedroom and asked Tiara about the necklace. Tiara just shrugged and said that Buzzy obviously had forgotten the necklace when she left.

That's when Jewel knew that Tiara was a big fat liar.

Buzzy would never have gone away without her special necklace. Jewel had a bad feeling in her stomach. She started to look for Buzzy whenever Tiara was out of the apartment. She stood outside by the Dumpsters and wandered across the street at the Laundromat, calling for Buzzy at the top of her voice. She went to the big streets where there were lots of stop signs, checking to see if Buzzy was there selling her jewelry. She asked people if they had seen Buzzy. Nobody had.

But soon there was a bad smell in the apartment. Jewel asked Tiara what it was, and Tiara said there must be a dead rat in the walls and they were going to move as soon as she found another place. Rats scared Jewel, even dead ones, but she didn't want to move because how would Buzzy find her again?

The smell grew more terrible. After a few more days it was sweet and salty at the same time, and rotten through and through—much worse than the garbage in
the overflowing Dumpster behind their building. Jewel sprayed Tiara's perfume in all the corners. The smell was especially bad by the closet at the end of the hall. The locked closet.

Jewel knew that Tiara kept her keys on a big ring inside her purse. She waited until she heard Tiara unlocking the apartment and coming home, then ran to the mattress and pretended to be asleep. After Tiara had a couple glasses of stuff to drink, plus some of the other stuff that she shot into her arms every day, she fell deeply asleep on the couch. So deeply she didn't even snore. That was when Jewel crept into the kitchen and took Tiara's purse off the counter. There were the keys!

She carried them to the stinking closet at the end of the hall. She tried first one and then another until she found one that made a click in the lock and the handle turned. The apartment was hot, stifling, but there was a fog rolling off the ocean. Jewel could smell the cooler salt air mixing with the other smell, the awful smell.

Just coats in the closet, and a stack of boxes. But there must be a hundred dead rats in there as well to make such a stink. Wait—what was that at the back? Jewel pushed past the storage boxes. She pushed
past the coats. There was something on the floor under a blanket. The bad smell was so strong that Jewel gagged. She knew something was very wrong.

She reached out and pulled back the corner of the blanket. There was an edge of pink flamingo T-shirt. And on the closet floor, a dark stain.

Jewel gasped and backed out of the closet, calling for Tiara in a panic: "Help! Help! Come quick! Buzzy's here! I think she's hurt herself!" But Tiara did not come.

"See, see? I
told
you she wouldn't have gone away! I
knew
she wouldn't! Look, look ... here she is! Oh, wake up, wake up—please wake up..."

But Tiara did not move off the couch, not even when Jewel pulled on her arms. Tiara would not wake up.

Jewel had to go back into the closet by herself. "Buzzy, my Buzzy?" she crooned softly, holding her hands over her nose to blot out the terrible, salty smell. "I knew you wouldn't leave without your necklace ... Buzzy, wake up, oh please wake up..."

She pulled off the blanket.

And screamed.

Blindly she turned. She ran, ran, ran out of that place, away, away, away from ... whatever she had seen that made her run
and run and run away away away. A long time later she found herself wandering on the beach, where the fresh salty air breezed through her nose and banished the evil smell. She'd been running, sucking in the ocean air and kicking up sand, but now her legs gave out and then she couldn't remember why she'd been running in the first place and all she wanted to do was fall over in the sand and sleep forever.

 

I
OPENED MY
eyes and stared around me in confusion. I was slumped on the sunroom floor, right next to the stain, with the empty necklace box at my side. I looked around the sunroom, remembering everything. "Mom?" I called her name weakly. The memories had exhausted me. I needed Mom. I needed to tell her what I'd remembered—how I had broken through the shadows at last and
remembered
! I'd remembered
everything.

Duncan said it had probably been some sort of trauma that made me lose my early memories—and he'd been right. He'd thought I'd need another trauma to break through the amnesia and restore the memories, but it hadn't happened that way. Why had I suddenly been able to remember what had happened to me?

I looked at the empty necklace box and felt a prickle at the back of my neck.

A sound from downstairs made me turn toward the door.

"Mom?" I called again, a little bit louder. I listened
2 79 hard, but no—all was silent. Probably just the creaking of an old house, I decided. Mom and the Goops must not be home yet.

I staggered to my feet, picking up Nora's necklace box. Then I realized that this box was what had finally triggered my memory:
Buzzy would never have left without the special necklace her little Jewel had made her.

The empty box was triggering other memories now, more recent ones: Liza standing in this room telling me how exceedingly strange it was that Nora had left her necklace behind. Nora had not worn her own special necklace when she'd left for London for that big television appearance. She
should
have been wearing it—but she hadn't because it was right here in this box the day we'd arrived at the cottage.