What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (3 page)

And then something real weird happened. It started when Mr. Wilson went and paid ten dollars for the three-legged table we had to prop up with a tree branch. Momma looked at him hard and I heard her say something about
charity case
but Mr. Wilson bought the table for ten dollars anyway, saying he’d be back later to pick it up. Momma watched him go and then looked over at me like I had something to do with it but before she could say why Mr. Wilson buying the kitchen table made her mouth go tight, Mr. Zebulon with no pinkie finger handed her a five-dollar bill for a beat-up cookbook that had Momma’s loopy handwriting all through it, like “a TBS more of butter” and “set oven to 375 not 350.” Mr. Zebulon walked away without taking any of the change Momma tried to hand back. Five dollars for one book! It made
Momma madder, though. I could tell by the way she shoved the five dollars into her money pocket—she crumpled it like she was going to throw it in the trash bin then jammed it in all while she was shaking her head. She clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth to make the
tsk
sound she does when she don’t like what’s what. Then the men who played guitars at Zebulon’s every Tuesday started coming up the hill, trudging along the dirt lines everyone’s car tires made into a driveway again.

It was like the Civil War picture book Daddy’d kept by his bedside—they looked like those army men marching their bloody ripped-up selves home after the war. Mr. Harvey tipped his hat at Momma and put down two dollar bills for a Bic pen that was out on the table by mistake. Right behind him was Mr. Jim, who’s colored black and who never once opened his mouth to sing or talk but played his guitar so good at Zebulon’s the other men would stop and let him take long parts of songs, his hands flying up and down on the strings like they couldn’t make up their mind where to be. He was the best player of all them—I could tell by the way ever-body watched him play. One time I saw Richard in town on a day I’d thought he’d be at work at the mill—I didn’t yet know he went and got hisself laid off. He didn’t see me because he was across the street going into the Fish-N-Fowl where you could find fish bait or a wallet or a head of lettuce—ever-thing got sold at Olson’s Fish-N-Fowl. The sign out front said
IF IT AIN’T HERE, IT AIN’T NEAR
. I didn’t want him to see me so I crunched myself small between parked cars and waited for him to come back out and get gone. That’s how I came to see it clear as day: Richard punched the door open like he was a dang movie cowboy ready for a shoot-out. He was so mad he wasn’t paying attention and walked head-on into Mr. Jim. I held my breath, knowing nothing good was gonna come from that, and sure enough, Richard looked up, pulled his head back like a rattlesnake before it bites, and I wanted so bad to yell out for Mr. Jim to run away but it was too late. Richard spit
right into Mr. Jim’s face and said
get the f— out of my way, n—, you know what’s good for you boy
so loud I could hear it from beside Mrs. Cleary’s station wagon where I was hiding. Richard used the f-word right out where anyone could hear! Normally he just used it hollering at Momma and me. Mr. Jim stepped aside for Richard to pass and it wasn’t till I was halfway to home when it occurred to me Mr. Jim didn’t hurry to wipe the spittle off his face like I would’ve. But I guess Mr. Jim knew Richard right well by then and expected about as much as Richard gave him. Mr. Jim must’ve made a lot of money playing his guitar because there he was standing in front of Momma at our yard sale putting a ten-dollar bill on top of Mr. Harvey’s ones. I bet Mr. Jim’s the happiest of all that Richard’s dead.

Momma wouldn’t say how much we made from the sale but I figured when she wasn’t looking I could count it. I knew she was hiding it in a rolled-up pair of socks held tight by a rubber band I used to flick at crickets. If I’d written the number down I’d remember but I didn’t so all I can say is that it’s so much money I could only get the band around twice, not three times like I wanted. While I was at it, I put the bills in order, all with presidents facing right-side up. Ones, then fives, then tens, then the one twenty-dollar bill we got. Momma’d call me crazy for doing that. She’d say my neatness is another sign I’m
loony tunes
and that I’ll end up
talking in tongues and polishing the kitchen floor with a toothbrush at all hours
. I say
no I won’t
but if I did, well what’s wrong with that? Wouldn’t you want polished floors? Not that I would polish them with a toothbrush a’course but if I did, wouldn’t that be a
good
thing?

This morning, before leaving the house forever, Momma said:

“If there’s anything you need to do before we go, you best go on and do it.”

She went inside for one last check that we got ever-thing worth taking but I didn’t. Out front by the old tire Momma planted little
daisies in is the rock I used to hide messages under when I pretend-played with Emma. It don’t look like all the other rocks around here—
they’re
all crummy brown, dusty and rough. In my head Emma called them
ordinary
. My favorite rock is smooth and when it’s wiped clean it’s almost snow-white with thin rivers of gray running all through it. It’s about the size of the ball we played Spud with at recess. I have no earthly idea how it ended up here but it’s plain to see it ain’t from here, no way. We had a system, me and Emma. If I was outside and Emma was inside, she’d put a note saying “Good” if the coast was clear to come on inside. “Bad” meant stay away long as you can. Usually that meant until the beer put Richard to sleep still setting upright in his chair, or like when he gave whippings. He always whipped with the buckle end of his belt because it was his goal in life to get me to cry and I never would even though it hurt real bad. You never saw girls as stubborn as me and Emma.

From out by the rock I could hear Momma’s steps on the wood flooring coming back down from checking upstairs so I knew my days as a Hendersonvillian were fading away. One last time I lifted up the message rock and it’d been a while since we’d used it so I jumped a little in my skin when a million bugs skittered off to other rocks, looking up at me ripping the roof off their house. If I spoke bug I’d tell them I didn’t mean them no harm. After they ran for cover, I shook the dirt off the folded-up notepaper to find “Bad.” I snuck it to my pocket for what I don’t know and put the rock back exactly where it was but them bugs didn’t know they could come on home and maybe they never will and maybe little bitty baby bugs got lost from their mommas and they’ll crawl around forever, crying little bug tears, homesick for their old rock and the way it used to be, and then they’ll die alone with no family or they’ll be squished on account of them not having a rock-roof over their heads. I wished I could find them and shoo them back. I wanted to cry I got to feeling so bad. The screen door
slammed behind Momma who hollered for me to
make haste
. She jingled the car keys and lowered her sunglasses from the top of her head.

Then a miracle of gar
gan
tuan, gi
normous
proportions happened. I’m listing it as
Miracle Number One
.

We’re about to get in the car when Momma squints at me over the peeling paint car hood and says:

“Why you riding in back?”

“I always ride in back,” I say.

Sometimes out of nowhere she likes to test me, see if I’ll follow rules, and I didn’t want to fail like I always do. Because I’m dumb. It’s okay—ever-one knows I’m stupid. Once I heard Momma tell Gammy I wasn’t
the sharpest tool in the shed
. So I thought Momma was tricking me to see if I’d follow the rule to always set in back.

“Best you get on up here with me,” Momma says.

She says it like it isn’t the first time I ever rode in front. She says it like it isn’t my dream come true. I been wanting to ride up front forever. Soon as I come to my senses I say:

“
Re
ally?”

“Come on, now,” Momma says. “Let’s not make a federal case of it.”

I hurry in case she decides to change her mind while she’s lighting her cigarette.

Then, just before the tires push off the crunchy rocks onto the paved road, Momma turns in her seat to face me. She blows smoke out the side her mouth like Puff the Magic Dragon, points her cigarette in the V of her fingers at me, and
lays down the law:

“From here on out, soon as we pull out of this no-good godforsaken town, I don’t want to hear anything more about anything. I’m laying down the law. You understand me? I don’t want to take any of that old shit with me. You listening? Look at me—I’m serious
as a heart attack. You understand? We’re leaving it all behind. You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And by the way, you haven’t said it in a while,” she says—figuring rightly that I’d know what she was talking about.

“Emma was made-up,” I say. I know the words by heart.

“Keep going …”

“I pretended I had a sister but I really didn’t. I made her up. Emma was made-up.”

Like I said, I know the words by heart.

“I don’t hear a lot of feeling behind those words—you’re sounding like a robot,” she says.

“No, Momma, I know I made her up,” I say, not wanting her mood to go bad like it can do if you’re not real careful.

“Promise?”

“Yes, ma’am, I promise,” I say.

Her eyes went to slits like they do when she’s making sure I’m not
being smart with her
, so I knew
yes, ma’am
, was definitely the answer she needed to hear. But I’m still not a hundred percent sure if
anything about anything
also means the murder. If that’s what she was talking about she would’ve said
that
instead of
anything about anything
, right? I’m trying to think up a list of what she wouldn’t want to take along with us but other than Richard (who’s dead anyway so he couldn’t come with us even if she wanted him to) and Emma, I got nothing to write down. So it’s not really a list, it’s more like two names taking up space in my notebook.

Momma turns back to the steering wheel, puts the car in Drive, and says, “We’re turning the page, Caroline Parker.”

And then
Miracle Number Two
comes along and near to blows my head clean off my neck.

Completely out of nowhere and for the first time in the history of the world, Momma pats my knee. First she lets me sit in the
front seat. Then she pats my knee. Momma doesn’t
ever
touch softly so I figure it’s best not to call attention to it in case it scares her from ever doing it again. I hold real still. I try to breathe through my nose so my body doesn’t move but you got to have a big nose to get enough air in and my nose is little. It’s a kid’s nose. I hope when it grows it’ll end up looking like Momma’s. I cain’t recall what Daddy’s nose looked like but I bet it wasn’t all that bad because people used to say he was
a real catch
. After a second or two, the pat on the knee ended even though I stayed as frozen as ice in Alaska.

When she checked left-right-left to see if it was safe to pull out of our dirt driveway I looked over at her real quick and I swear on a stack of Bibles I caught her smiling big—showing her teeth even. Momma hasn’t smiled since … well, I cain’t remember the last time I saw Momma smile.

“Here we go,” she said. And there it was again, Momma smiling bright as day right out in the open.

That’s most certainly
Miracle Number Three
.

CHAPTER THREE

Carrie

Coming down from the mountains where it’s shady cool to the flat land is real exciting even if it
is
102 degrees down here like the radio man just said. I never been off the mountain before so my head’s a windshield wiper turning right-then-left-then-right trying to take it all in. All this time we had a big ole front yard—miles and miles of it—and I didn’t even know it. No one ever told me. After a spell, I look back at where we came down from, across the farmland to the hills, and to me it looks as if a giant swept rocks and trees into piles of mountains and just let the flat land in the middle do what it was going to do anyway—stay flat. The air carries this grit you cain’t see till after it’s got itself all over you and ever-thing around you. Even in your mouth—you crunch it. You can taste the dust.

“How you doing over there?” Momma hollers over the radio playing some singer she says she used to have records of. Sounds like old-fogy music to me, if you want to know the truth.

“Fine,” I holler back.

I decide not to mention the dust because Momma would call me a complainer. Momma
can’t abide
complainers. She says
the only thing to complain about is a complainer
.

“Put that window all the way down,” Momma says. “Let’s get a better crosswind going.”

This is a great idea. I figure the crosswind’ll keep the dust from settling on us. Our car doesn’t have air-conditioning on account of it being as old as Moses. That’s why we have to open windows. The window on my side is hard because the crank handle’s long gone. What you have to do if you want it down is use these pinchers from Richard’s toolbox, stick them real careful in the hole where the handle used to be, like in the game Operation, and turn hard until the glass decides to start moving. My hands are so sweaty I wipe them on the front of my favorite T-shirt, the one with a unicorn that has a flowing white mane and a sparkly pink body. But I’m so dumb I forgot about the dang dust so I got smears of red on the unicorn’s neck and now it looks like she’s bleeding to death. The pinchers keep slipping and it takes me a while—
please dear Lord in Heaven please open this window soon so Momma doesn’t get mad. The day is going so good but this is just the kind of thing that’d ruin it Lord so please …

Phee-you, my window’s finally down, the wind thumps against my eardrums. It’s so loud I cain’t hear the radio no more but I don’t care. The whipping sound of the wind makes it feel like the car is a rocket ship about to take off into outer space. We drive for hours this way and I figure I could ride shotgun with Momma and the wind and the radio and even the gritty red dust forever.