Ivy in the Shadows (17 page)

“Excuse me,” I asked the saleswoman. “Was there a girl about my age here?”

“Honey, there've been girls about your age in here all day long. Can you be more specific?”

“Real skinny. Brown hair. So tall.” I raised my hand to just below my height.

The woman let out a loud sigh. “That pretty much describes everyone I've seen today. I don't know if your friend is here. I suggest you look around. Sorry I can't be more help.”

I checked in the dressing rooms and then went outside. She still wasn't there so I waited a while. I wished I'd brought a jacket because it was getting cool. The sky was darker than it should be for this time of day, too. I finally decided I'd better hurry back in case it rained.

I pedaled toward home and was almost there when the first fat drop of rain hit the top of my head. Then more came down and splattered my back. Lightning streaked across the sky as I threw down my bike and ran to our porch. I looked back and saw fierce-looking clouds rolling in.

“Caleb? JJ?” I called as I flipped the light switch. “Where are you guys?”

There was no answer.

A crack of lightning sent a flash through the room. Storms didn't usually bother me but there was something eerie about this one. Maybe it was because Mama wasn't in town. I didn't want to be alone and I sure as heck didn't want JJ to be.

“JJ! Answer me!” I ran to his room but he wasn't there. I yanked open his closet door but he wasn't in there, either. Next I looked in the bathroom, but no JJ. Beads of sweat popped out on my forehead.

Where could they have gone? I swallowed hard, trying to keep down the fear that something might have happened to my brother. I shouldn't have left him with Caleb. Hadn't I said all along we didn't know him well enough? I went back into JJ's room and yanked the covers off his unmade bed, then looked underneath. I found an assortment of toys and dust. There was a worn-out stuffed puppy he'd dragged around with him when he was a little guy. I sniffed it and it smelled just like he used to, sort of a mixture of peanut butter, Kool-Aid, and sleep.

Tears filled my eyes. I had to sit down for a minute. I lowered myself onto his beanbag chair and felt a sharp pain in my hip.

“Ow!” I reached under my bottom and realized I'd sat on JJ's small but real guitar that Jack Henry had bought him. I remembered the times he'd sit with JJ on his lap, showing him chords. JJ had begged Jack Henry to take him to Harmony Street Blues, but Jack Henry always said, “Some Saturday night we'll do that.” Of course, that Saturday night never came.

But this was Saturday night.

Would JJ and Caleb have gone there? No. But after thinking and thinking, it was the only idea that I could come up with. Besides, if going there didn't help me find JJ, maybe it might lead to a better idea. Looking anywhere was better than sitting here alone.

Like a rocket, I shot out of that beanbag chair and ran down the stairs and out the front door.

Thunder clapped so loud it felt like the sky had broken apart and was about to cave in on me, but I didn't slow down. If JJ was out in this he was scared, and that meant he needed me.

I hurried down the street. The wet puddles soaked my sneakers and a pain started in my side, but I gritted my teeth and ignored it. I ran all the harder when I heard music coming from Harmony Street Blues.

I looked in the glass front door. It was too dark inside to see so I rapped on the window and called “JJ!”

The door swung open and a man said, “You're too young to come inside, miss.”

“I'm looking for my brother. He's only five.”

The man chuckled. “If you're too young, do you think we'd let a five-year-old inside? Go on home, now.”

He closed the door. The wind, mixed with rain, tore at my clothes and slapped my face. Splashes of rain rolled off me. Or maybe they were tears. At that point I didn't know. I just knew I'd lost JJ and had no idea where he was.

I felt something warm touch me. I jumped, spun around, and screamed. A man was holding out a plastic bag to me, just like the one he wore as a rain cover. I began backing up when Caleb came from behind the man, sidestepped him, and put his hand on my arm.

The man backed into the shadows. I held on to Caleb, never so happy to see anyone, even him, in my entire life.

I rubbed the spot where the man had touched me as if he'd branded me with an iron.

Caleb said something but I couldn't make it out. “What?” I leaned in closer.

“Don't be afraid. He was just trying to give you something to cover up with.” Then, his next words penetrated. The whistling wind died and the flashes of lightning ceased to matter to me. I felt as if the clouds had parted and the sun had broken through when he said, “Come on. I know where JJ is.”

I followed Caleb to the alley behind Harmony Street Blues. By now the rain was coming down hard and it was difficult to see, so I just kept my eyes on Caleb's back and trusted him. He ran to the Dumpsters lined up against a building, threw open the doors, and peered inside each until he came to the third one. His movements slowed and I could hear him murmuring into the bin.

I moved closer and saw brown hair. It was JJ. My God above! I almost slid to the wet ground in relief. Instead I opened the lid to the Dumpster wider. JJ looked up at me, blinking as the rain pelted his little face. I quickly lowered the lid as Caleb had done so that it provided him some shelter.

Caleb pulled on my arm to get my attention, then cradled his hands together and stooped so that I could use his hand to climb inside.

“I don't understand,” I yelled over the rain.

“Until the storm passes,” he said. I didn't give the smell of the empty Dumpster any thought at all as I put my foot on his hands and climbed in with JJ. Next Caleb slid in beside us and lowered the door.

I hugged JJ and rocked him.

“Ivy, are you scared, too?” he asked.

“I was.” I pulled back to look at him. “I couldn't find you, JJ.”

“I wasn't lost,” he said. “I knew exactly where I was. I'm not in trouble, am I?”

“No,” I said. I mean, really, how could I have been mad when I thought he was lost and I might never see him again? It would all have been my fault, too. But I was a little angry at Caleb.

“Weren't you watching JJ?” I asked him.

“Don't yell at Caleb, Ivy!” JJ said. “I know you didn't want a babysitter today. I know you told Aunt Maureen a fib so we wouldn't have one. So I did the same thing. I told Caleb I was going to take a nap. I hid in my room and then sneaked out when he was busy. I did it because I didn't want a babysitter, either!”

If I'd ever wondered where the exact location of my heart was—you know, center of my chest? left of center?—I knew at that moment, because there was a pain so sharp in it I thought I'd die from the hurt.

I'd been mad at every single person I knew for lying, Caleb most of all, but it was me that had caused the most pain. I'd almost lost JJ because he heard my lie.

“I'm really sorry,” I said in a small voice. I looked at Caleb and repeated it. “I'm so sorry.”

Caleb shook his head and took off his glasses to wipe the rain from them. “I should have known. JJ and I sometimes came here together to look for his father. I thought his dad might actually be here and I knew how much JJ wanted to see him.”

“What?” I said. “You
knew
he was coming here and you didn't stop him? You didn't tell anyone?”

Caleb hung his head. “It seemed like an innocent thing to do. I was always with him.”

“But not tonight, Caleb. What about tonight?”

“I thought he was napping. Then I realized he was gone and you weren't home to tell.”

I felt a pang at that, but kept on. “Still, you should have let someone know!”

“Maybe I should have left a note.”

“Gee, do you think?” I said with as much sarcasm as I could.

“But it was raining and all I could think about was getting to him.”

The same thing I had thought. I hadn't left a note for him when I went searching for JJ. It seemed like everything came back to how I'd messed up tonight.

I looked down at JJ. His face was puckered and he looked just miserable.

“Daddy didn't come, Ivy,” he said. “It's Saturday night. Music night. But he's not here and I don't think he's ever gonna come back.” His whole body began to shake and he buried his face into my neck, throwing his little arms around me as he cried.

18

Caleb carried JJ home. The rain had slowed to a fine mist and I was grateful to see a few lights on in the house. I opened the door for Caleb and then ran upstairs and poured JJ's bathwater. JJ was so tired that he barely stayed awake while I washed him. Together, Caleb and I got him to bed. I kissed him and then left Caleb to say good night.

As I walked by Caleb's room, I glanced in and saw a binder on the floor. It looked so out of place. I mean, if there was one thing you could count on, it was that Caleb's room was the cleanest in the house. I stepped inside and picked it up. I intended to put it back on his makeshift bookcase, truly. But then I realized it had clear sleeves that held handwritten letters. The page it was open to had the words “mud cookies” underlined and an exclamation point. Well, I ask you, would you have been able not to read it when JJ had just talked about them?

I sat down and read the pretty cursive.

“There is so much hunger here. To ease the emptiness in their stomachs, the Haitians eat
mud cookies
! They actually take mud and sift the rocks and clumps from it, then mix in salt and shortening. They flatten the mud into round shapes and spread them out on rooftops for the sun to bake. It breaks my heart to see them eating these just to have something in their stomachs. I often take them my food instead.”

I felt the bed shift as Caleb sat next to me, hands in his lap, head down.

“JJ mentioned mud cookies at supper. You've told him this story.”

Caleb nodded.

“And the man in the alley, JJ knows him?” The pieces started falling into place. “Has he been taking our food to this person?”

“He told me that he'd been trying to find his dad at the place where he used to play music. He took me there and said sometimes there are … he called them Haitians but he had to have confused the Haitians in the stories with homeless people. Like the one who offered you the plastic bag. He said he took them food from home so they won't eat mud cookies. Once I knew, I made him promise to never go alone. I said I wouldn't tell as long as I could come to keep him safe.”

I had no answer to that. I thought of JJ, brave enough to take food to people he didn't know.

“He could have been in danger.”

“That's why I followed. To watch after him.”

Then I looked back at the binder.

“This isn't your handwriting,” I said.

Caleb looked at me and shook his head but he didn't yank the book out of my hands or tell me to put it down. I turned the page. There were more letters. Some were in a man's handwriting and were signed “Dad.” The fancier handwriting was signed “Mom.” What didn't add up was how loving these letters were when I knew Caleb's parents hadn't called or written the whole time he'd been here.

In the letters I recognized bits of the stories Caleb had been telling JJ. I read about how his dad took a shower with someone peeping in. I read about riding in a tap tap.

He handed me another book and it was the journal his mother kept in Haiti. Some of the stories I hadn't heard, but I recognized the one where his parents let a boy bring his mattress into their tent on rainy nights.

I picked up a small scrapbook. It had newspaper clippings. The headlines said, “Haiti Devastated by Massive Earthquake,” “2010 Earthquake Worst in Haiti for 200 Years,” and “Local Citizens Confirmed Dead in Earthquake.” There were two photos on the page. The man looked thinner and younger than Caleb's dad. The woman was very pretty and younger than the one who had come to our house. In fact, she didn't look anything like her. In the picture, this lady had kind eyes and a big smile. Below their pictures were their obituaries. I read how they were missionaries working in Haiti. At the bottom I read, “They are survived by their son, Caleb.”

I looked at him. He hadn't moved.

“Caleb.” My voice surprised me. It sounded so thick. “This is your mom and dad, right?”

That's when he raised his eyes to mine and I noticed how much they looked like the eyes of the woman in the picture—his mom.

He said, “The witch doctors in Haiti take poison from puffer fish and give it to humans.” My brain registered he wasn't directly answering my question, but this time I knew that—if I really listened to Caleb's stories—he'd give me an answer.

“The poison made their breathing and heartbeat slow almost to a complete stop,” he said. “People would think that person had died, and they buried them. Then the witch doctor would use ‘voodoo' to bring them back to life. It made people think the witch doctors were very powerful. Of course, the people were never really dead to begin with. But they were called the living dead.”

Caleb took the book from my hands and looked at the picture of his parents. “These letters are all I have. And the stories of Haiti that my parents told me. When I miss them, I just have to open these books and here they are, written down for me to remember.”

He closed the scrapbook and put it on the shelf. “It's easier to think that my parents are really waiting on a witch doctor to bring them back to life. It's easier for me to talk about Haiti than it is to talk about anything else. It's all I have of them.”

“But what about the people who brought you here? If they aren't your parents, who are they?”

“My parents' only living relatives are my father's cousin and his wife. I stayed with them when my parents did their mission work.”