What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (5 page)

“Must be nice to set and draw pictures all day while I’m here
trying to figure out how to save our hides
,” she says. “Here I am, dealing with shit we got on us once again and you’re over here all comfy scribbling Lord knows what kind of craziness in that—Gimme that goddamn thing. …”

I scramble to close it, shoving it under my fanny so she cain’t work it from me, and I pray she hadn’t set her mind to taking it ’cause if that’s the case then I might as well kiss my notebook goodbye now and make it easy on both of us.

“I’ll snatch your arm out of its socket and beat you with the bloody stump if I find your crazy talk in there, y’hear me?” She tries to get a pinch hold on it but I bear down to make myself heavier until she finally gives up.

“Oh, fine.” She waves it off, pretending she never really wanted it in the first place. “You can keep your precious little book, but the first sign of you losing your marbles again and it’s gone, you understand me?
I don’t want to hear anything about anything
, y’hear me?”

She goes off to fuss with the glove box and I try to calm down my heart that’s going so fast it likely could bust up. I believe that’s the first time I ever stood up to Momma and won. I need to remember this so I can write it down later, when she’s not looking.

The road must’ve been freshly tarred, it being near as soft underfoot as mossy forest floors. The sun soaked all the way through it and I do believe my flip-flops could melt. Momma must’ve read my mind because she says:

“Go on and fish out your real shoes,” she says. “Those won’t survive the trip.”

“Trip to where?” I ask her while I hop back up to the trunk gate to fish out my only other shoes. “Where we going?”

She either didn’t hear or she’s too busy shading her eyes and scanning the distance for signs of life in the flat farmland. Or she don’t want to answer because she don’t know.

“What trip, Momma?”

“Oh for Christ’s sake just hurry up,” Momma says, stamping out her cigarette in the gravel. “I want to get to where we’ll end up before nightfall.”

My real shoes hurt even on a cold day so I know there’ll be problems in this heat with my sweaty feet but there ain’t much I can do about it so I bend my toes at the tips to make for more room and cross my fingers it goes okay. Momma says we got to
get cracking
so I hurry to pull out the other Hefty sack. Emma would be too weak to carry anything. She’s seven. She
was
seven I mean. She was strong if she needed to punch on a boy at school but not strong enough to carry heavy loads. Momma’s getting a grip on the
odds and ends
sack while she tries to get her pocketbook strap to stay on her right shoulder by shrugging it. In her other hand she’s holding tight to the travel case she won’t let me near. She leans to one side then the other like someone invisible is tickling her. Holding on to the sack with our clothes in it is harder than I thought it’d be on account of my arms being too short to reach all the way round and sweat’s making me and the bag caught-fish wet.

We walk and walk, resting every now and then to give our arms a break. It’s hard to keep up with Momma—for every one of her steps I have to take two, sometimes three. For a long time, not a single word is said out loud. And since all the cars seemed to disappear once ours died, this road might as well be a graveyard, it’s so quiet. And then I have to go open my mouth.

“Momma, I got a blister on my heel and it’s bleeding.”

She slows down but she don’t look back at me. You could park two cars between us—that’s how far ahead she is.

“I’m sorry Momma. It’s bleeding though.”

“I hate to break it to you but I don’t have a first aid kit handy at the moment,” she finally says, over her shoulder.

“It’s hard to walk with it,” I say, hoping this don’t count as complaining.

She quiet-curses. I hear it on account of there being no cars, no wind, nothing making sound anywhere. Two steps later she puts down her bags, reaches into her shirt, and pulls an old kerchief out of her bra to mop the sweat from the back of her neck. Momma keeps lots of things in her bra. Things she might need handy. A dollar bill. Or a scrap of paper with something written on it. A recipe. You never know what’s gonna come out when she reaches into her shirt. It’s like hocus-pocus tricks.

I said
sweat
and that reminds me of Miss Ueland who made us call it
perspiration
. She said the word
sweat
ain’t proper. Tally Washington always forgot how to say the new word—she called it
per-sip-a-don
or something. Tally Washington said her people came over on the first boat to America. She said Washington was her name because of George Washington. But Tally Washington’s a liar and that’s a fact. Anyway, Miss Ueland gave us a list of twenty words we weren’t ever to say and the boys made it their number one mission to make up sentences using as many of them as they could fit. Billy Bud Moore made it to fourteen words but Miss Ueland turned the corner right when he got to
sweaty stupid-ass fart face
. He was sent home with a note from the principal which I thought would be the worst thing that could ever happen to you in your entire life, but Billy Bud Moore just shrugged his shoulders and grinned like a mule eating briars.

“We hardly got a spoon to cook with much less a
Band-Aid
,” Momma says. She takes the edge of the kerchief in her teeth to start a rip she finishes with just her hands. And guess what: no scissors and it’s still straight as an arrow. You cain’t question Momma too much and anyway she always makes sense in the end so I’m waiting on that to happen. For her to make sense.

“Here,” she says, holding out the smaller half of the kerchief for me. “Well? Get over here and take it. We ain’t got all day.”

Momma said
ain’t
and she hates that word more than life itself. More than pork rinds even. Momma says
ain’t
is
low class
, something only
hillbillies
say.

I limp over but don’t want her calling me a
drama queen
like usual so I stand straight thinking it will help me walk normal. It don’t though. She’s standing there shaking the piece at me and when I take it from her I figure she’ll tell me what it’s for. I squeeze it in my fist waiting to find out what all I’m supposed to do with half a wet kerchief ripped by teeth and hands.

“We
haven’t
got all day. Get going, little Miss Drama Queen,” she says. Dang it all she called me a
drama queen
after all. She rubs the bottom of her back and bends down to pick up the bags again, hiking the first bag over to her hip like a mother with a baby.

“What’re you waiting on?” she says. Then she starts walking, but slow, saying stuff to me even though she ain’t looking my way.

“You’ve driven me crazy since the day you were born into this godforsaken world, you know that? I tell you what,” she says, more to herself than me. Then she’s talking more than I heard her talk in my whole life.

“Cried all the time, like a cicada with food, and why’re you always underfoot like you are? And then the
other
thing—don’t you dare say anything—you know what I’m talking about without me having to say the words I never want to hear again. For the life of me I don’t know why I didn’t leave you back there with your guns and your Mr. Whatever-his-name-is. I should have my head examined. You’re not worth the gunpowder it’d take to blow you away.”

“Wilson. His name’s Mr. Wilson,” I say. Me, I’d want to know the right name. Who wouldn’t? I didn’t count on it coming out sounding like it did.

“Listen to her,” she says like there’s someone else to talk to.
“
His name’s Mr. Wilson
, she says. Well I got some news for you: I don’t care if his name is
Jesus H. Christmas
, he’s got
some nerve
wrecking my life like he did. I should’ve left you with him, see how you like that.
His name’s Mr. Wilson
.”

I don’t sound like she’s making me out to sound with her voice up high, but it doesn’t hurt my feelings. I used to think Momma was serious when she said stuff about throwing me out with the trash or about putting her out of her misery by me getting gone forever but I know she don’t mean it. It’s just how Momma is. It’s her nature. What I’m really wondering about is how come I never knew Jesus’s whole name is Jesus H. Christmas? Sheesh. I wish I could add that to the list of things to check in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, but Momma’s back to picking up the pace and I’m still standing in the same spot holding her rag.

“Fold that into a square and put it between your heel and shoe, keep them from rubbing up against each other,” she hollers over her shoulder on account of her being so far ahead by now.

Then all the sudden Momma drops the bags real quick like they’re on fire, whips around, and hollers so loud I cain’t hardly understand her. She’s louder than I ever heard her fight with Richard even.

“No. You know what?” she yells. “I’ll tell you what.
That goddamn Wilson ruined me
, you know that? You think he gave any thought to
me
when he showed you how to shoot that goddamn gun? Huh? If he thought Richard was so rotten and if he couldn’t keep his nose out of our
family
business he should’ve straightened Richard out himself, man to man. But noooo. He goes and teaches a crazy half-wit girl how to shoot a gun. That’s his big solution. And what about
food
? He think we have money coming out our ears, me with no job? He think we can afford to eat goddamn
steak
every night?

“How we gonna
live
? Tell me that. Tell me how you figure we’re gonna
live
, huh? I’d like to hear it. Are you a
magician
? You
Houdini come back from the dead?
Answer me!
How’re we gonna eat? I bet you didn’t think of
that
when you pulled the trigger, did you? Huh? Answer me, you goddamn crazy murderer!”

“I ain’t crazy, Momma, I swear!”

Stupid me. Now she’s charging at me. I drop the bag without meaning to—my arms got scared.
Be brave. Be brave
. I tell myself this over and over because I used to get so fearful of her I’d wet my panties. But that was when I was little and I’m brave now.
Be brave
.

“Sorry, Momma. Momma, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Momma,” forgetting altogether that Momma hates it when I say it fast just to get out of a whipping. She says I sound like a whiny baby.

Normally her fingernails would hurt my arm but they’re short today so it’s not too bad this time. When they’re long that’s another story. Plus the good news is this time I stay standing up when she shakes me. I used to flop to the ground like a rag doll some kid don’t want to play with anymore.

“You with your crazy brain.” Shake. “It probably didn’t even cross your crazy-ass mind that killing Richard was a nail in our coffin too. Did you think of that, you half-wit piece of shit?” Shake.

“No, ma’am.”

“I can’t hear you! Did you even think of me and what I’d do without that man?” Shake.

“No, ma’am.”

What I really want to say is:
That’s
all
I was thinking of, Momma. He nearly beat you dead. He was about to kill us. I wanted to protect you, Momma
. That’s what I want to say but that ain’t what Momma wants to hear, I know that even though I’m nine years old.

So I say “No, ma’am,” instead.

“No you didn’t. That’s exactly right. You
didn’t
think about how we’re gonna have to pick through trash for supper from here on out. You learn how to pull a trigger all right but you didn’t near think of me being flat broke. You know what I did at the truck stop
back there? When I went to the washroom? I stole a stack of paper towels, is what I did.”

She lets go of my arm and I make sure not to rub it even though I really and truly want to. She gets so her face is right up in mine and she spit-says:

“You know what those paper towels are gonna be for, smarty? Little Miss Smarty Pants. Huh? They’re for
that time of the month
. I’ve got to use what little money we have to put a roof over our heads so I don’t have the
luxury
of lady products anymore. Did your Mr. Wilson think about any of all this?
Did
he?”

“No, ma’am,” I say.

It’s best not to look at her when she’s mad like this. You have to stay scarecrow-still or she’ll say something like
you better clamp shut that fast-talking, excuse-making, tear-jerking jaw of yours right this very minute or I’ll do it for you
. And you do not want her to do it for you. My jaw hurt for days after she walloped me in the mouth when I was five.

But like I said, Momma don’t mean anything by it. She might get mad a lot but she keeps me around. Mothers who don’t want to be mothers give their kids away. She has a short fuse is all. And it’s been stored up ’cause she couldn’t exactly cut loose when Richard was alive. I figure she’s just getting it all out from years of being quiet as a feather on a cloud.

Here on the
road to nowhere
she stops hollering mostly on account of her being out of breath. A big ole crow caws from the high wire. Momma straightens herself up and smooths her dress but it don’t do much good—she still looks like a week-old birthday balloon. A pretty one, though.

I shove the half a hankie down in my shoe and we start walking again and I pretend like Momma and me are the only people on the whole planet. Like ever-body got a secret note telling them to hide real good but they forgot to pass the note to us. Or like the movies where someone says
it’s too quiet
right before something
scary happens. Or maybe a spaceship landed and we’re the only ones who escaped them kidnapping us like they did all the people in the world. Ever-one knows aliens kidnap humans onto their spaceships. Aliens with huge heads on top of stick bodies. Some people don’t think they’re real but Emma and me always believed they are.