VIKING

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First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2025

Copyright © 2025 by Brooks Whitney Phillips

Poem copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller, “In Passing,” from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, (Louisiana State University Press, 1996). Poem reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 9780593202128

Ebook ISBN 9780593202142

Cover art by David Curtis

Edited by Jenny Bak, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

This is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

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For

Tate & Posy

Deed & Amanda

A shared childhood is its own adventure

“In Passing”

How swiftly the strained honey

of afternoon light

flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off

its special mystery

in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists

so that it can be lost

and become precious.

—Lisel Mueller

One

This is the moment I curse—the traveling carnival materializing before our eyes, a dust devil in the distance that grows large and real and is upon us. Each year Sissy and I wait and hope—please let them come—and in this we are not disappointed. The carnival always arrives, opening a few days before Christmas and gone by dawn on New Year, slipping away alongside the waning night.

The entrance to our grove is marked by a large wooden sign that reads Welcome to Juicy Acres, with a picture of a smiling orange wearing sunglasses. The sign is old and faded from the relentless sun, and that smiling orange looks like he is missing a front tooth where the paint has chipped away. But the sign is true: our oranges are juicy, and on weekends Sissy and I work our family’s Florida roadside stand, trying our darndest to sell them.

There we sit, just below the Juicy Acres sign, reclining in folding lawn chairs under the rain umbrellas we hold for shade. We prop our chairs on either side of the empty orange crate we use as a table and lay out our prized possessions—Sissy’s battery-operated transistor radio, a Life magazine with Marilyn Monroe on the cover, and our empty autograph books—just in case a star happens to stop for a cup of juice on their way to Miami Beach in the far-off dreamy distance.

Belleville is just a spit on the map. A tiny one-road town split down the middle by Rural Route 13. On one side is the Thirsty Gator Supper Club & Lounge, post office, and Fresh Market. On the other, Hank’s Hardware & Drugs, a single-pump gas station, and the train depot, which has been abandoned so long I don’t ever remember a train stopping. That’s considered the main strip.

A bit farther down, past a sprinkling of stucco bungalows with rusted-metal swing sets and blow-up pools in their small dirt-patch front yards, is Twistee Twirl Tastee Freeze and the white wooden Congregational church, whose steeple is the highest point in town.

Don’t focus too long on any one thing, or you’ll be in and out of Belleville, racing toward the Gulf of Mexico if heading west or the Atlantic Ocean if heading east, nothing but endless rows of citrus trees as far as the eye can see.

We haven’t had a single customer and are both growing bored and antsy. Sissy keeps switching the dial back and forth between the three stations the radio picks up, in a desperate attempt to find anything but Christmas music. Since turning seventeen, all she wants to listen to is rock and roll.

I love the holiday songs—Frank Sinatra crooning about coming home for Christmas and chestnuts roasting on an open fire. I let my imagination wander to these places that only exist in books or magazines or other people’s lives.

Sissy finally lands on a song she considers acceptable, looks up, and starts screaming, “They’re here, they’re here!”

But I already know what is coming.

The traveling carnival, with its merry-go-round and Ferris wheel and bearded lady to entertain us, is barreling toward Belleville in a caravan of buses, trailers, and trucks.

The carnival’s arrival always brings an air of festivity to Belleville that the plastic nativity scene in front of the church and gold-tinsel bells hanging from the lampposts never do. The air fills with laughter, music, sweet smells, and colorful lights when the rides light up at dusk. But best of all, everybody is in a good mood—even Daddy seems to catch the excitement and puts on a clean pair of khaki pants and his authentic Hawaiian shirt he saves for special occasions and calls out to Mama, “Hey, Ada, let’s go dancing!”

We wave as the caravan rumbles past. I count the carnival’s trucks out loud, just like Sissy and I do with train cars when the wooden arm goes down at the crossing, catching our pickup truck on the unfortunate side. We’d both guess how many cars the black engine was pulling out of the horizon, count them out loud as they clickety-clacked on by. We agreed at one time if either of us guessed exactly right—not one car more or less—the loser would buy the winner a box of Hot Tamales. But it never happened. The game just gave us something to block out Daddy’s impatient cursing, something to look at besides Mama’s weary face turned toward her open window, fingers curled around a cigarette, eyes fixed on something only she can see.

Eighteen vehicles are in the caravan, not including the car bringing up the rear, a black convertible, obviously part of the procession, but it stays far enough behind to set itself apart. The car slows as it nears us, the distance growing between it and the others, then pulls off the road and rolls to a stop.

I don’t know what’s more beautiful—the vision of that carnival arriving or the boy driving that car. He’s like someone out of a movie—shiny and new and so perfect to look at—not like the worn folks of Belleville, with lives of hard work and disappointment etched deep into the wrinkles of their sun-weathered faces.

Sissy and I stand there, frozen, staring at the boy and the car, both positioned for our perfect viewing. The car is faded in places that will never shine again. The interior is deep red, the color of a brick. He doesn’t bother turning off the engine, just keeps it running as he steps out, stretches his arms high over his head, and lets out a satisfied moan. Then he walks slowly, very slowly, toward us.

He is staring at Sissy, who is staring at him—tall, tan, dark haired—wearing jeans, a white linen shirt unbuttoned to his navel, leather flip-flops, and a cross that hangs between his plum-colored nipples on a gold chain.

I hear Sissy gasp, not a scared gasp, just a quick loss of breath like something surprised her.

“Would you like some juice?” I ask. “It costs ten cents for one cup or fifteen cents for two.” Daddy taught us that customers always like a bargain.

“I don’t know,” he says, smiling and showing off the most perfect teeth marching along in a tidy white row. “Is it sweet?” He is looking at Sissy, who appears to have turned into a stone.

“Of course it’s sweet!” I pipe in. “Sissy and I are very careful when we pick our juice oranges. We look for the fattest, brightest ones. See?” I reach into the bushel and pull out a plump sunset-colored orange to make my point. “This grove isn’t called Juicy Acres for nothing, you know.”

Funny thing is, color has nothing to do with the quality of the juice inside. It’s cold air that turns the fruit from green to orange. Folks come to our stand, pluck through the barrels, hold an orange up in their hand, and turn it around. If there is even a hint of green, they toss it back in with the bunch and move on. When they drive away, I figure they are heading to the Piggly Wiggly to buy a can of concentrate, not knowing the juice within probably came from oranges green as grass.

He glances briefly at the orange, then back at Sissy. “Two cups, please.”

Without breaking his gaze, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a quarter, and holds it up for us to see.

“If the juice is good like you say, you keep the change.” And with that, he reaches over and drops the coin through the slit in the coffee can, its light clink snapping Sissy back to life, though I’m not sure who she came back as, because it sure isn’t the Sissy I know.

“I’m Cecelia,” she says. Her voice so sweet and syrupy I’m surprised flies aren’t sticking to her. I have never in my life heard Sissy introduce herself by her birth name. She’s been Sissy ever since I was old enough to talk and Sissy was the best my young tongue could make of my older sister’s slippery name.

Cecelia. The only time I ever hear her name at all is when Daddy is on a rage. Then he uses our birth names, his booming voice hurling Cecelia and Penelope through the house, making us wish they weren’t ours to claim.

“Pip, will you get the juice, please,” Sissy purrs. She casually slides the rubber band from the end of her braid and loosens the twists. With a slight backward toss of her head, she shakes out her hair, the golden ripples hanging down her back her crowning glory.

Sissy, being two years older, assigned our jobs a long time ago. Mine is to pour the juice from the glass milk bottle into the paper cups while she takes the money and makes change from the coffee can. If it is an even sale, she simply drops the shiny, sweaty coin into the slit we have carefully cut into the center of the can’s lid, the sound as it lands ringing of our riches and bringing smiles to our orange-juice-covered lips.

I set out a paper cup and carefully pour the juice, let it rise almost to the rim, but not so full he can’t safely pick it up without spilling.

“Would you like me to strain it for you?” Sissy asks. “That’s how I like it, smooth, so you don’t get those little pulps stuck in your throat and teeth.”

Sissy never offers to strain anyone’s juice, not even the man she was positive was a Hollywood talent scout on his way to Miami Beach. She only strains her own, pouring the thick, pulpy liquid through a small, cup-size strainer she made from chicken wire and a shred of screen.

While Sissy strains, I search for flaws on that flawless face—a slight scar from when he fell off a bike, a rut from a scab he picked. But there is nothing. His nose is straight, his eyes blue as the sky above my head, every bone in his face defined. He is so perfect he looks like a movie star. Even Sissy, who is surely the prettiest girl in town, looks little more than averagely pretty, golden hair and all, when standing next to him.

Sissy hands him the juice, which he drinks in one big swig, his Adam’s apple protruding from his arched neck as he swallows. He lowers his head and fixes his eyes on Sissy. “You just earned a quarter.”

Pink creeps across Sissy’s lightly tanned and freckled cheeks. “Pip, please pour our thirsty customer another.”

I do, taking great care to get the right amount of juice in the cup, then watch in amazement as Sissy again strains, careful not to spill a drop.

Sissy and I both know the importance of not spilling. Spilled juice brings bees. First one, then more, appearing out of thin air like magic, hovering over the sweet liquid before descending in fearless pursuit.

“I guess you’re with the carnival,” Sissy says.

“Yes. That’s easy. But can you guess what I do?” his voice teases.

He doesn’t look like the pimpled boys who serve ice cream and hot dogs, or like the thick-necked men who run the rides, pulling heavy metal levers that make them start and stop.

“You walk the tightrope?” I guess.

He laughs, a deep, rich laugh that would taste like chocolate could I have taken a bite out of it. “And you, Cecelia?”

Sissy tilts her head in a charming way and brings her small hand to rest against her lips while she looks at him and thinks. “The flying trapeze,” she says after a moment.

He clutches his heart and groans. “Ohhhh, my friends, you are wrong. Come. I’ll show you.”

He leads us over to his running car and pops the trunk. Inside is a deep-red velvet heart. It fills the cavernous space. Arranged on it are swords and knives held in place by brass brackets. The smallest blade is about eight inches and the largest nearly two feet. There is also a giant pair of scissors.

Sissy and I lean in to take a closer look at the impressive collection.

“Look at this one,” he says, and slowly slides the longest sword out of its brackets and wipes the blade on his shirt.

“My uncle was a very famous sword-swallower,” he says. “He traveled all over with Ringling Brothers Circus. He taught me how to swallow a sword so that the blade does not slice you apart.”

“How?” I ask.

“By inserting it slowly, very slowly, over and over again, until your throat muscles become used to the touch of cold steel and you stop retching.”

We are hooked.

He slides each of the swords out of their brackets, one after another, wiping the blade with a cloth before pointing out its finer features.

“The length a man can swallow is determined by the distance from his lips to the pit of his stomach.”

He shows us one with an elaborate serpent-headed handle.

“This one nearly killed me when the blade came loose,” he explains. “Luckily, I was able to reach the broken end with my thumb and forefinger and remove it from my throat. Some aren’t so lucky. You must come see me. I am the finale at the Thrill Seekers Show. Do you like thrills?”

His eyes fix on Sissy. The edges of his lips curl into the slightest smile, his body taut and still. I know how quickly she is breathing because I watch our chests rise and fall together. Suddenly I stop. His expression. His frozen stance. How terrifyingly reminiscent of our barn cat before he pounces on his prey.

“I do,” I say, eager to break the tension. “Last year I went on the Crazy Mouse four times in a row. Sissy was too chicken to even go once.”

“Shut up, Pip!” Sissy snaps. “Just because I’m no wild mangrove rat like you.”

Sissy’s words sting like a sharp slap to the cheek. She’s never spoken to me that way. I am suddenly anxious for the boy to leave, for everything to go back to how it was just minutes ago. The two of us, sitting together at the side of the road, singing along to the radio.

I walk away like I don’t care. Don’t want her to see the tears threatening. Don’t want that boy to think I’m a crybaby, because I’m not.

I peer in the driver’s window. A cross bearing Jesus on a string of plastic turquoise-blue beads dangles from the rearview mirror. An empty Coca-Cola bottle is on the floor of the passenger’s side, next to that, a woman’s narrow leather belt with a sequined buckle. In the back seat is an army duffel with Walker stamped in black letters across the side. A faded brown sleeping bag is rolled tight and tied with a piece of dirty line.

“My lovelies, I must go. Thank you for the juice.”

He opens the driver’s door and slides into the leather seat.

“You don’t need a ticket for my show,” he says. “Say you are a friend of Raffy’s.”

Then he winks at Sissy, a wink that seals our fate, and is gone down the road, disappearing before our eyes like a mirage we’ve come too close to grasping.

Two

A flight of narrow stairs leads to the room I share with Sissy, an attic tucked under the eaves. It runs the length of the small wooden cottage but has little space since the ceiling slopes down to the floor on either side. We have twin beds and two mismatched wooden dressers. The closet door, warped from time and heat, stands always ajar. There is a window between our beds, and the shade, once white, has yellowed at the edges from being pulled on by dirty fingers. Outside, the moss-draped branches of the giant live oak reach out and touch the window. On windy nights it claws at the glass like a lonely old woman trying to get in.

The only lamp in our bedroom provides little light, and in the dim glow I watch Sissy brush her hair one hundred strokes, like she does every night before she goes to sleep. I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed, wearing a pink-and-white-checked nightgown with puffy sleeves that is too small for me. The elastic bands are so tight they leave red circles on my upper arms. It takes half the day for them to fade away.

Sissy pauses and stares at her reflection in the mirror I choose to ignore. I already know I’m not pretty like Sissy. Mama never says I have good bones. My nose is straight, while Sissy’s turns up elegantly at the tip. My hair, thick and shoulder length, is shoe-polish brown like Daddy’s, with no wave at all, and I wear it pulled back in a ponytail every day. All our lives Sissy’s good looks have drawn attention. I don’t know how she can stand strangers coming up to her and telling her she looks as tasty as a piece of sweet potato pie.

“Did you brush your teeth, Pip?” she asks, without breaking her gaze from the mirror.

“I did,” lying because I don’t feel like walking downstairs.

After a few more strokes, she puts down her hairbrush, comes over, sticks her nose in my face, and says, “Breathe.” When I do, she groans and waves her hand in front of her nose like my breath is the worst thing she has ever smelled.

“You got a dead crab in there? Go brush right now. You know how mad Daddy will be if you get another cavity. Cavities are expensive.”

I don’t tell her I can feel I have another one. Figure it’s better to suffer through a little toothache than Daddy. He also said that if I got another cavity, he would just have them yank the tooth right out. Solve the problem that way.

I walk downstairs and am relieved to find the house dark. I don’t feel like encountering my parents, who got drunk at dinner again, Daddy’s brown eyes growing black and squinty with each swill of whiskey, Mama’s lids drooping like she was too weary to go on one more minute. Daddy had come home in a real good mood with a bag of fried catfish, coleslaw and cornbread, too. Ma Ruby sold it out of her garage on Saturday nights and folks lined up to get their share before it ran out, which happened quick. He’d also bought a bottle of whiskey, which he and Mama drank while Sissy and I ate, piling bones on the sides of our plates like burial mounds.

In the bathroom I turn on the water, rust orange and smelling faintly of rotten eggs, letting it run, but it never gets cool. I squeeze Gleem on my toothbrush, careful to squish the tube from the bottom because it drives Sissy crazy when I do it in the middle, brush vigorously until my mouth is full of mint foam, then spit and rinse. I run my tongue across my minty-fresh teeth, give the light chain a good tug to turn it off, and head toward the stairs.

That’s when I see Daddy, sitting in the dark living room, slouched in a chair. I can’t tell if his eyes are open or not but do my best to sneak by without being noticed. I think I’m home free, just about to put my foot on the first stair when I hear “Pip, come sit down here with your daddy.” His words so slurred from the booze I hardly understand him.

I don’t want to, but know better than to defy him, especially when he’s had too much to drink and his temper’s likely to flare. I sit down on the couch, but he slaps his knee and says, “Right here, girly. Come sit right here on your daddy’s knee.”

Sit on his lap? I’m fifteen, haven’t sat on his lap in as long as I can remember. I don’t dare disobey. I perch on the edge of his knee, sit very still, and try to hide the awkwardness I feel.

“You and I are cut from the same cloth, Pip. You know that, right? But your mama is different. Thinks she deserves some high-and-mighty life. Never happy with the fact she has a roof over her head and shoes on her feet.”

I keep my lips closed tight.

“You know I’m trying my darndest—you know that, don’t you? But nothing I do ever pleases your mama. She wants a big, fancy house like the one she grew up in. Fancy clothes.”

Since Daddy moved us from our grandparents’ grove to Juicy Acres—when he knew darn well Mama wanted desperately to leave the groves—not a day in ten years has gone by she doesn’t remind him this is not where she belongs or wants to be.

Mama and Sissy are alike in that way. They long for a bigger world outside the grove. They long for a city.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’m like Daddy in that I have no interest in cities. Too much noise and bustle. Too many people. I prefer the quiet of the grove. It doesn’t matter that some afternoons I might not see another living soul, save the birds and bees, for hours.

I like it that way. Just my thoughts and me. I make up stories in my head that later I write down in my notebook. Worlds where there are no people. Just animals and insects. They don’t scream. They don’t even talk. It’s all quiet.

Mama’s voice comes out of the dark, “All you’re good for is drinking and gambling away what little money we have, Nathan Bean!” She is screaming, her words slurring together as bad as Daddy’s.

Daddy jumps up, dumping me from his lap to the floor, as if he’s forgotten I was even there.

“Watch your tongue, Ada! I’ve always provided for this family! It may not be up to your fancy likings, but you’ve never gone without!”

“By the end of the month we’re living off oatmeal and oranges, Nathan! That’s what you call providing for your family?”

I want to escape into the grove, run until I can no longer hear their yelling, climb high into the branches of an orange tree, and lose myself amongst the leaves, where Mama and Daddy’s fighting feels a million miles away.

I make a beeline for the safety of Sissy instead.

I hear shattering glass, the front door slam, the truck speed off, like so many nights before. Since their fighting is a common occurrence, you’d think I’d get used to it, like Sissy, who is more asleep than awake. But I never do.

“Sissy?”

“What?”

“Sing me a song.”

“I’m tired, Pip—please go to sleep.”

“One song, Sissy.”

She sighs. “All right.”

I curl up and pull the covers around my shoulders. Sissy begins singing “Amazing Grace,” which she still remembers from her days with the church choir. Sissy was the youngest person ever invited to join. She even got a solo once. But we haven’t been to church since our grandparents Ma and Pa Bean died and we moved to Juicy Acres. The only person who misses church is Sissy. She liked the singing part a real lot.

Three

Sissy shakes me awake. “Pip, do you hear that?” she whispers.

I groan and pull the covers over my head. “Leave me alone,” I mumble. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Wake up—somebody’s out there!”

Soon as the words are out of her mouth, I hear footsteps crunching on the broken shells Daddy lined the perimeter of the house with to keep the sand from blowing in.

The first thing that comes to mind is the story Sissy told me about the person who escaped from the insane asylum in Okahumpka. Sissy tells really scary stories, and this is a particular favorite. Though I’ve heard it a hundred times, the vision of a man sitting on the front porch of a farmhouse, rocking a woman’s severed head in his lap, always terrifies.

There is a tap at our window, followed by another, followed by another.

Sissy leans over, cracks the shade, and peers out.

“Oh my god, it’s him,” she says, quickly dropping the shade. “He’s standing below our window!”

Ping, ping, ping, more stones.

“Where we gonna hide, Sissy? There’s nowhere to go but under the bed or the closet. He’s going to find us and chop off our heads!”

“What are you talking about? It’s Raffy. You’ve always had such an imagination, Pip.”

My body relaxes into the worn springs of the bed, but the moment is fleeting because the tapping at the window begins again. A new fear enters my mind. “Sissy, you have to do something before he wakes up Daddy.”

“Fine,” she says, turning on the light between our beds. She stands, smooths her hair in the mirror, opens the shade and then the window. My curiosity is piqued, so I join her. Sure enough, standing below is Raffy.

Sissy puts her finger to her lips. He motions for us to come down, and Sissy nods okay.

“What are you doing, Sissy? Just shoo him away.”

She ignores me, puts on navy pedal pusher pants, buttons up a white shirt. Instead of tucking it in like usual, I’m shocked when she ties the tails high around her tiny waist so part of her stomach shows. She pinches her cheeks to pinken them, opens her dresser drawer and removes a tube of lipstick I didn’t know she owned, swipes the red across her lips quickly and perfectly—like she’s done it many times before, like she’s been practicing for this moment—and stares fondly at herself in the mirror.

I find her primping annoying. It seems a bit much just to go tell a guy to scram before he gets us in trouble. And what’s she thinking, showing her belly? No matter that it’s the latest style, Daddy would be livid—always says only “white trash” dresses like that—his girls never will.

She turns away from her reflection. “You have to come with me, Pip.”

I stare at her, surprised by how grown up she looks. I don’t feel like changing, but a handsome stranger arriving at our bedroom window is certainly one of the more exciting things to happen.

“Please,” she says.

“Fine.”

I throw on a pair of blue jeans and a sweater that is threadbare at the elbows and too short in the arms. I pull my hair back into a ponytail without bothering to brush it, and we creep down the stairs, slowly, deliberately, silently. The only sound is the groan of the rusted metal spring as we open and close the screen door.

We tiptoe across the porch. The light has been left on, and Raffy is standing by the entrance to our scraggly yard. The chicken wire fence enclosing it tilts all crooked and wavy, the front gate long gone.

I remember the day Daddy brought us to Juicy Acres for the first time. He’d bought it without telling Mama even though she’d begged him to leave grove life after our grandparents died and the bank took all thousand acres of their orange trees and the big yellow house, too. The grove where Daddy was born and raised. The grove where we were born and our earliest memories formed.

He said, “Ada, I know you’ll be able to plant a nice garden. I put up the fence special for you, to keep animals out.”

And Sissy enthusiastically saying, “I’m sure you’ll make it beautiful, Mama, with your green thumb and all.”

But in my mind, I couldn’t imagine anything that wasn’t fierce and ugly surviving in such a scraggly yard. I don’t know if I was right or not because Mama never bothered trying.

Raffy is leaning against the car, hands buried in his pockets, wearing the same clothes we saw him in earlier.

“Jump in,” he says. “It’s the best time to go for a drive. Not a soul on the road.”

“We just came to tell you to leave,” I say. “If our daddy finds you here, we’ll be in serious trouble. Probably won’t let us go to the carnival the entire week. Right, Sissy? Tell him,” I say, giving her a nudge.

“Why don’t you let Cecelia decide for herself? She’s a big girl,” Raffy says, flashing a smile that’s surely gotten him most everything he’s ever wanted.

I wait for Sissy to ask him to leave. I know she’s worried about getting caught, although it’s unlikely. First off, Mama and Daddy are passed out cold by now. And second, neither bothers climbing the stairs to our room much. Even when I was little, Sissy was the one to tuck me into bed, pull the blanket up to my chin, kiss me on the tip of my nose.

Raffy opens the front passenger door, like he already knows the answer.

Sissy looks over at me, and our eyes connect—we’ve always been able to read each other’s thoughts—and I’m stunned when she says, “Let’s go, Pip! You’re always up for an adventure.”

She gets in the car, and Raffy slams the door firmly behind her, opens the back door, stares at me with those piercing blue eyes that draw me to him like a magnet. I get in the car. Raffy goes to the trunk and returns with two blankets. I wrap mine around my shoulders like a cape. Raffy fiddles with the radio. When he gets to the end of our drive, he turns it real loud.

“All right,” he asks. “Are you ready?” He pulls a flask out of the glove compartment and takes a swig. I know what it is because Daddy has one. He passes it to Sissy, who politely declines. After seeing what booze does to Mama and Daddy, Sissy and I have vowed we will never touch the stuff.

“I have something for you, Pipsqueak,” he says, passing me a roll of Necco candy wafers, like I’m a child. I tear the sheer wax paper and unroll the long tube of crunchy, colorful disks. I’ve always hated Necco wafers.

“I’m taking you girls someplace special,” he says. “I bet you’ve never been to a juke joint.” He takes another drink from his flask.

He’s right. We haven’t. Didn’t even know such a thing existed.

“I discovered one about ten miles away. I’ll let you pick the songs on the jukebox.”

“What’s a jukebox?” I ask.

He whips his head around. “Are you kidding? You don’t know what a jukebox is?”

I’m immediately sorry I let the cat out of the bag. I should have just faked it, like Sissy. I know her face is burning. She hates it when our oddness becomes apparent.

“You girls don’t get out of this backwater town much, do ya?”

I wait for Sissy to answer, and when she doesn’t, I say, “No. Not too much.”

“Let’s go have some fun,” he says. “I bet you don’t have a lot of that either.”

He faces front and puts the car into gear, and we barrel through the night, the only ones on the road. My stomach grumbles, and I begin to think this might be an okay adventure after all.

Four

The engine roars; we speed toward the unknown. There isn’t a single car on the road, and Raffy drives faster and faster, my heart in my throat, the tip of my ponytail whipping my face. I have never ridden in a convertible before and love the wild freedom of it all. Something about traveling so far from home with no one knowing makes me feel powerful. I see only darkness on either side of me, but I know the Southern landscape so well I can visualize the sugar sand hills, tin-roofed shanties, pine forests, the miles of groves, empty now, but by day filled with pickers.

The Shirelles come on the radio, and Sissy squeals and begins to sing along.

“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” has been the hit song of 1960, and the radio plays it so much even I know the words, but I don’t sing along. I know I have a terrible voice, and not just because Sissy reminds me every time I sing. Or because when our class went caroling at the old folks’ home, Miss Mable asked me to mouth the words. Or the time I was singing in the grove and hit a high note that set every hound in the vicinity howling. I can hear it with my own ears—my voice is terrible. Daddy says he’d rather listen to fingernails on a chalkboard.

I haven’t discovered my talent yet. I can juggle and play the harmonica, and I like to write stories in my notebook, but it doesn’t seem like much compared to Sissy’s angel voice.

Raffy cuts the headlights, and we are soaring in the pitch black. At first it’s exhilarating, and I abandon myself to the sensation—close my eyes, put my arms up high in the air like I do when riding the Crazy Mouse. But then it’s not. I open my eyes, stare into the shoe-polish-black night. It’s terrifying. I wait to plow into a tree, or off the road into the dried-up gulley alongside.

Sissy stops singing. I know her heart is pounding in her chest and she’s gripping the door like I am. There is only cold wind and dark sky, the deep roar of the engine, the looming threat of death just around the bend. Sissy screaming, “Stop! Stop! Stop! ”

Raffy is laughing. He doesn’t stop. He goes faster, and I think he must have escaped from the asylum after all. My palms are sweating even though my arms and legs are covered in goose bumps.

The headlights flash on; the car’s still in the middle of the stick-straight road.

Before she can scold him, he exclaims, “Cecelia, you must be the prettiest singer I ever heard. One day the world will be listening to you on the radio.”

Sissy’s face is turned toward him. I can’t see her expression but know she’s soaking up his words like a pancake does syrup, her pretty rosebud mouth smiling.

“I see you going places. I know, I travel the country and meet lots of people, but you’re different. You’re one in a million.” Raffy fiddles with the radio, but the stations are off the air for the night, leaving nothing but static. “Sing something for us, Cecelia,” he says.

And she does, needing no further encouragement, her confidence fueled.

The diner appears out of nowhere—the Jumpin’ Jacks sign a neon beacon in the night. I’ve never been so excited to get out of a car in my life.

Inside, the floors are black-and-white checkerboard, the booths bright shiny red. Raffy picks a table by the window overlooking the parking lot. Dark shadows of palm trees blow in the wind.

He hands me a quarter. “This will buy you three songs. You choose first.”

I go over to the jukebox. Put my hands against the glass dome and peer in. It is an amazing thing. All those little records stacked side by side, the names of the songs neatly written above. I’m not much of a music person. Mostly I listen to what Sissy likes. I slip the coin through the slot, pick three of her favorites, and watch in amazement as the electronic arm comes out, plucks a record from the stack, and places it on the turntable. Music fills the room.

The waitress puts three sodas on the table. They are in wavy glasses that say Coca-Cola in loopy white letters on the side. When she leaves, Raffy takes a big swig out of his glass and then Sissy’s. I’m horrified when he opens the flask and pours a dark liquid into both. I know what it is—and so does Sissy. It smells like Daddy. I try to catch her eye, but she refuses to look at me.

In the background, Elvis Presley croons “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Raffy takes Sissy’s hand and leads her to an empty space in front of the jukebox with room to dance. He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her close. They sway slowly to the music. He sings in her ear.

I want to go home. My stomach hurts, and I blame it on hunger, grateful when the waitress arrives, plates of food stacked up her arm, and Raffy lets go of my sister. With her free hand, she puts the Salisbury steak at Raffy’s place, blueberry pancakes in front of me, and for Sissy, a piece of banana cream pie.

Raffy keeps his hand on Sissy’s thigh while he shovels food in his mouth with the other. He chews with his mouth open, talks with it full. When he’s finished, he doesn’t line up his fork and knife side by side on the plate like we’ve been taught to do.

I notice Sissy take ladylike sips of her whiskey cola through her straw. I can’t tell by the expression on her face whether she likes it or not, but she doesn’t stop. I give her a swift kick under the table—she refuses to meet my eye. I kick her again, and this time she kicks me back. That stomach-churning feeling returns. The one I get when I know something’s just not right, and this time I can’t blame it on hunger.

“I’ve been to twenty-eight out of fifty states, and I’m only twenty years old,” Raffy says. “My goal is to have visited every state on this map by the time I’m twenty-five.”

Sissy and I have never left Florida. She stops skimming the whipped cream off the top of her pie and is staring at him with big moony eyes.

“I dream of traveling. I’m so tired of being stuck in boring Belleville,” Sissy says. “You’re so lucky to have a job that moves you around.”

Traveling? I’m pretty sure I know everything about my sister, but I didn’t know that. I look at her Coke glass. It is half-empty, and I wonder if the whiskey is messing with her brain like it does Mama’s and Daddy’s. Will it make her turn mean like it does them? I’m relieved when the waitress puts the check down on the table. I’m eager to leave before Sissy drinks any more. Raffy pulls out a roll of cash, peels off a five, and tells her to keep the change without even looking at the bill.

On the drive home, I chuck Necco wafers, one by one—licorice, cinnamon, wintergreen—out the side of the car. We reach Juicy Acres and I can’t get out of there fast enough. I’m ready to be home, back in my bed, in a place that is familiar. This has been the strangest night of my life.

Raffy drops us at the end of the drive we walked down not so long ago. He doesn’t bother to get out and open Sissy’s door, just reaches across her lap, pulls on the handle, and gives it a push.

Sissy loops her arm through mine, and we walk down the sandy lane. She is humming “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” I picture Raffy and Sissy slowly swaying to the music.

“Wasn’t that so much fun, Pip? Didn’t you love the jukebox? I could have stayed there all night. Dancing.” She is smiling.

“No, Sissy, I thought it was weird. And Raffy turning off the headlights was crazy. We could’ve been killed.”

“But we weren’t. I thought it was exciting.” I’m surprised by this response—Sissy has always been the more timid of the two of us. Won’t even ride the roller coaster at the carnival.

In silence, we walk the rest of the sandy lane home—a tin-roofed cottage more gray than the white it once was, its sloping screened porch held up by a short stack of cement blocks.

Inside, everything is as it was. The pendulum on the clock softly sways back and forth. Our father’s snores seep through the closed bedroom door. It is two in the morning.

“Can I sleep with you, Sissy?” I whisper as we climb the stairs. Even back home, I can’t shake the oddness of our adventure. The bad feeling I have about Raffy. There’s something about him I just don’t trust.

She gets in bed, opens the covers and I climb in. She curls around me because it’s the only way for us both to fit in the single bed.

My mind wanders over the night. I don’t like who my sister is around this boy. She doesn’t act like herself.

“Sissy, why did you drink the whiskey Coke? I thought we promised never to drink.”

“That was a long time ago, Pip. We have to grow up sometime. Anyway, I couldn’t even taste the whiskey and it didn’t affect me at all.”

“I think it did.”

“Stop talking, please, Pip. I’m tired.”

I lie quiet in the dark. Finally my breathing falls in rhythm with Sissy’s, and as I’m drifting off, I remember the freedom, the danger, the strangeness—and wonder if it was all just a dream.

Five

When I wake the next morning, Sissy is standing at the closet, riffling through the hangers, an issue of McCall’s magazine at the foot of the bed. On the cover, a red-lipped model wears a full-skirted yellow party dress.

“What are you doing?” I ask groggily.

“Looking for something to wear,” she says. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

I can tell by the tone of her voice she is frustrated. The alarm clock on the bedside table reads seventeen minutes after two, which means neither one of us remembered to wind it the night before. I look out the window and can tell it is around eight o’clock because the sun has risen as high as the first branch on the oak.

“Who cares what you wear to the stand?” I say. “Better hurry up. Daddy wants us to be open by eight thirty.”

“I’m not looking for something to wear to the stand. I’m looking for something to wear to the carnival.”

Sissy spends what little free time she has poring over fashion magazines, trying new hairstyles, and digging around her closet for clothes she doesn’t own in a desperate attempt to mimic the latest styles.

I don’t understand why since we have no friends. Each day Sissy and I come straight home from school for chores while other kids attend sporting events in neighboring towns, or cheerleading practice in the school’s musty gym, or sip sodas at the Twistee Twirl. We don’t have time for such things. We have to ride the early bus with its smell of old food—bananas and bubble gum and peanut butter sandwiches—do our homework all the while so it will be finished by the time we get home.

I throw the covers back and reluctantly get out of bed. The wooden floor is cold beneath my feet, the December air chilled. I pick up yesterday’s clothes from where I threw them on the chair. I don’t brush my hair, just smooth it back into a ponytail and secure it with a rubber band.

“Meet me at the stand, Sissy. I’m going to go ahead and get it open.”

Downstairs the house is quiet. No smell of bacon or pancakes. No one to greet us and encourage us forward into the new day. I walk by our parents’ open bedroom door, their room long deserted—Daddy in the grove since six, Mama in the packinghouse, separating the mottled oranges from the perfect.

I hoped to fry myself an egg, but there are none to be found, so I settle on a bowl of Corn Flakes and eat them dry because the milk has soured.

I leave the house and walk to the stand. The December air is crisp and the sky bright blue; puffy clouds float quickly by. The morning sun is still low, sitting just above the canopy of trees, though quickly rising, the dew glistening on the strip of grass running between the tire tracks in the sandy lane.

Our stand is a white wooden building with a flat tin roof and large flaps for windows. By day they sit propped open, resting on narrow arms that perch precariously on the windows’ ledges like spider legs. I busy myself removing the locks and drop them in the old soup can where they are stored. Sissy and I call it the cream of can because the Campbell’s label is half-gone, and just exactly what kind of cream soup it once contained is a mystery.

I take the wooden sign out to the road, where passing cars are sure to see it. Fresh Orange Juice Sold Here! I dust small bottles of orange blossom water, straighten the shelves of souvenirs—stuffed green alligators with white triangle teeth, miniature wooden crates filled with orange gumballs.

I set up my folding chair in a patch of sun, drag over the empty orange crate we use as a table, and plop down. It is a delicious warmth, not hot, and when the clouds move over the sun, it quickly becomes cool and a little sad, until the clouds pass and the sun shines down again, lighting everything up. Parson Brown, the old tabby that lives in the shadows, rubs his soft head against my bare leg, purring, and I am as glad for the companionship as he is.

From a distance, I hear the faint whistle of the train. It rumbles through town twice a day, at nine o’clock in the morning heading east, at eleven o’clock at night heading west, more reliable at keeping time than the old steeple clock ever is. The train always slows as it nears the defunct Belleville depot, as if paying respect to a long-lost friend, before picking up speed and passing us by.

As much as I like being in the grove alone, I hate working the stand myself. There is something lonely about spending the day watching people come and go. It doesn’t matter if they chat as they drink their juice or take their sweet time looking over the selection of souvenirs and postcards stacked along the back wall before buying nothing. They always move on to places I figure are better than my own.

I like observing the folks, wondering who they are, making up stories about their lives. Stories of happy families and happy homes. Writing is the best relief for loneliness I’ve learned—an escape hatch out of your own life. I open my notebook, flip through the pages of words until I get to a clean one. There is always something so exciting about beginnings, with their infinite possibilities. Worlds upon worlds to dream up far away from Juicy Acres.

I’m surprised Sissy still isn’t here. How long can it take to pick an outfit with so little to choose from? It’s the first time she’s ever given a hoot about what to wear to the carnival. That bad feeling is sitting in my stomach again.

I’m startled out of my thoughts by a tap on the shoulder and jump out of my chair.

It’s Silas. He has a straw hat with frayed edges that looks like it’s been sat on a hundred times smashed on his head. Overalls with knees so faded they are white. He wears the same thing every day. In the cool months, an undershirt beneath; in the warmest, nothing at all. Freckles scatter across his cheeks and nose. Sandy hair hangs ragged to his shoulders and sometimes flops down and covers his brown eyes.

“You darn near scared me to death. Shouldn’t creep up on people like that.”

He hangs his head, nods in agreement, then looks up at me with that huge smile of his. It fills up his face, and it’s sure hard not to feel happy when you’re looking at it.

Silas has been with our family almost as long as we’ve been at Juicy Acres, and in those ten years he’s grown from a skinny boy into a young man. He drifted in with a small group of pickers who traveled citrus country barefoot, working the groves they wandered into, earning twenty-five cents for every box they picked. When the work was done, they packed up their small town of ratty tents and moved on. But not Silas. In his mind, he seemed to have found home.

In exchange for work—tending the stinky turkeys we raise and picking the grove—Daddy put him up in a shack where he stored tools, field boxes that needed repair, a wooden ladder with most of its rungs broken out. Torn spiderwebs hung in the windows like tattered lace curtains; dead termite wings covered the floor. Daddy gave Silas a cot and a gas lantern, and Mama gathered some sheets and a blanket with a moth hole shaped like a small crooked heart eaten out of the middle.

Silas sits cross-legged on the ground next to me. There is a comfortable silence between us that comes from knowing someone a long time. I like working the grove with Silas. He’s not much of a talker, but he’s taught me all sorts of interesting things—like how to play harmonica, juggle oranges, and whistle like a bird.

He scoops Parson Brown into his lap, pulls his harmonica from his pocket, and begins playing softly, a song I don’t recognize. Parson Brown snuggles into him and purrs. I watch Silas’s long, elegant fingers—a boy with hands as hard as a man’s—move easily across the harmonica and wonder that as much time as we’ve spent working together in the grove, how little I know about him.

“Silas, where did you live before you came to Juicy Acres?”

He keeps playing. I’ve learned he is prone to long pauses when he thinks hard about something. Finally, he stops and answers, “Just wandered with the pickers looking for work.”

“But you must have been born somewhere? Everyone has a mother and father.”

Silas is silent for a time. “I didn’t know my pa. Don’t recall much about my ma. No kin I know of.”

He stops talking, and I can tell he is remembering.

“We lived on a grove. Shared a big barn with other pickers’ families. Slept rolled in blankets on the floor, with lights on to keep roaches from crawling over us and bedbugs biting.”

“What happened to your ma?”

“Had a cough that rattled her chest until she couldn’t breathe. The doctor wouldn’t have nothing to do with us ’cause we had no money. One morning she didn’t wake up.”

“How old were you?”

“About this old,” he says, holding his hand knee high. “I wasn’t very big when Ma died. Other folks took care of me until I growed up some, and then I set out on my own.”

“You don’t know how old you are? Don’t you know your own birthday?”

He shakes his head no.

I think about the years Silas has been alone. It’s been ten years since he arrived at Juicy Acres, looking no older than Sissy, who was seven at the time. What that must do to a child. I don’t have any friends, but I have Sissy. She’s my best friend. She’s all I need.

“Do you get lonely, Silas?”

“I suppose not. I’ve never known any different.”

Daddy’s truck pulls up; he yells out the window, “What the hell you two doing? You’re supposed to be working, not sitting around gabbing like a bunch of schoolgirls.”

“Yes, sir,” Silas says, standing up.

“Where’s your sister?” Daddy asks.

Tardiness infuriates Daddy, who finds it an inexcusable trait. Though we rarely see him between dawn and dusk, unless we are helping in the grove, he has a way of hearing things. Then we have to endure his lecture about lost sales and bad customer service. How the grocery stores are going to take every customer if we aren’t careful. He always says, “People are loyal as long as you provide something they want. When that’s gone, so are they.” But I can’t help thinking that’s the opposite of loyal.

I pause before answering, trying to figure out what to say, “She stayed home to get the house clean. We haven’t been too busy, so I suggested she do that instead.”

“I give the orders around here, little girl.” Then he pulls away and turns down our drive.

Sometimes I think Daddy is a bunch of different people stuffed into one body.

You never know who you’re going to get, his moods as unpredictable as a summer squall. There are days when he is happy—the trees plump with oranges and the promise of a good harvest—and others when he is all thunderstorms and rain for no apparent reason.

“Sounds like he’s in a foul mood today. You best get back into that grove if you know what’s good for you.”

Silas shrugs his shoulders, as if none of it really matters. He gives me a wave, starts playing his harmonica again, meandering into the thicket of trees.

Six

Having seen Daddy’s mood, I am suddenly worried about Sissy. Where is she? What’s taking her so long? I drop the wooden flaps over the windows, hide the cashbox under an orange crate, and head to the house. As I get close, I hear Daddy’s angry voice booming through the open window, and I squat below to listen, afraid to go in.

“What the hell are you doing standing in front of that mirror admiring yourself, not out working, being useful, contributing to the cause like the rest of the family?”

When she doesn’t answer, he continues his rant. “Go wash that makeup off your face. You look like a common whore. We are Beans! We come from something! I’m a fourth-generation grove man! My father was one of the biggest landowners on the Ridge! We have a reputation to uphold! And goddamn if I won’t send you to the home for wayward girls if I ever catch you with makeup on your face again!”

This is one of his favorite threats, and it never loses its power. We are petrified of the Magdalene House, where girls are sent to have their babies and work off their keep by doing the convent’s laundry.

“As a matter of fact, I think I’m done fed up with your lazy behavior and classless ways. The Magdalene House will do you good, make you see what you have!” he shouts.

Then I hear Daddy’s voice saying hello and asking if Sister Roberta is available. I can stand it no more. If he is sending Sissy away, I’m going too. I would rather spend my days sweating in the laundry than without her.

I scramble from my hiding place and run up the porch steps into the living room. I didn’t expect what I see—Sissy in Mama’s clothes—clothes she hasn’t worn in years.

Standing in the dim room, Sissy appears more woman than girl in a yellow full-skirted dress like the one on the cover of McCall’s, a black patent belt cinching her tiny waist.

I remember the dress. Shortly after we moved to Juicy Acres, Mama came downstairs one morning wearing it. White gloves firmly clasped in her hand, black leather pocketbook with the shiny gold buckle tucked tightly under her arm.

“I’m going to find myself a job,” she said. “Money is freedom. If you don’t have money, you’re trapped, no better than a caged animal. I have skills. Perhaps something in bookkeeping would suit me well. Or secretarial. Before I dropped out of college to marry your daddy, I could type thirty-eight words a minute, which isn’t as many as some, but better than others.”

When Mama returned that evening, she put away the yellow dress and the white gloves with the tiny buttons in the cedar trunk at the foot of her bed. “Girls, you were born poor, but worse than being poor, you were born female. You’re gonna have to claw your way through this life if you want to have any hope of gettin’ ahead.”

While others spend Sunday mornings in church, heads bowed in prayer—Mama calls it begging for miracles—she cleans the deserted halls of Lake County High School. All morning she pushes the wide dust mop down the faded linoleum floors and scrubs nasty words off cinder block walls.

She never spends any of her earnings, or at least not that we can tell. She calls it her nest egg. Every Sunday she comes home from work, goes to her bedroom, and closes the door. I imagine her digging in the back of her closet, looking for her nest, the way it feels in the dark when she finds it—little twigs poking at searching fingertips—dollar bills crumpled into egg-shaped balls waiting to hatch so she can take flight.

I’m stunned at how much Sissy looks like Mama in the old photos. Bright red lipstick-stained mouth. Hair that same extraordinary color that Mama’s used to be—the color of honey before it grew dark and streaked with gray. Mascara is smeared across Sissy’s cheeks where the back of her hand swiped the tears away.

Sissy must have reminded Daddy of Mama, too, all those years ago, when he had first become smitten with her, a painful reminder of what life on the grove has cost him.

When I close my eyes, concentrate real hard, push my mind back as far as it can go in search of this other mama, that’s not who I ever see. That mama was gone before I was even born.

“Please, Daddy! We will be better! Right, Sissy?”

But Sissy’s stubbornness has grabbed her tongue and won’t let go.

“Right, Sissy,” I plead. “Right? Sissy! Speak!”

Finally, Sissy whispers, between clenched teeth, “Yes, Daddy, we will be better.” Her hands tremble.

He slams down the receiver, and I feel the same overwhelming relief that I always do. This Sister Roberta must be a mighty patient woman for the number of times our father has called and hung up before she ever gets to the phone.

“Change out of that dress, and bring it to me,” Daddy orders.

Sissy leaves the room, and it’s my turn. His voice is so cold and steely, I can feel goose bumps cover my arms.

“Don’t ever let me see you sitting with Silas again. You work together on the grove. When the work is done, so are you. Do I make myself clear?”

I nod my head.

Daddy likes Silas. Respects him as a picker. But make no mistake, Daddy believes it best for folks to stay among their own kind.

And Mama, though she is kind to Silas, has never invited him into our home. On evenings when she says for him to stop by after sundown and pick up the leftovers from our supper table, he doesn’t come knocking on the front door, but comes to the back and waits for someone to pass the plate out.

Sissy returns wearing her denims and a red tee. The makeup has been washed off her face, and she’s pulled her hair back into a long, thick braid. Her eyes are greener than ever, which always happens after she cries real hard or real long.

Daddy takes the dress and rips it into pieces, gets a plastic bucket from the pantry, stuffs the yellow shreds into it, and kicks it across the wood floor toward Sissy.

“Take those rags and go scrub the turkey shed. Pip, you get back to the stand.”

Then he slams out the front door and roars off in his truck, the back tires kicking up a thick haze of sugar sand.

Sissy ignores the bucket sitting on the floor next to her, says, “I didn’t say those words to help myself. I said them for you.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I offer, “I don’t think Mama will notice that dress is even missing. She hasn’t worn it in years.”

“No. Neither do I.”

“I thought it looked real pretty on you, Sissy. I’m sorry it’s gone.”

She picks up the bucket with the shredded dress, and we leave the house, walk to where the drive splits. Before veering off in separate directions, I grab her hand and give our longtime secret handshake. Three tight squeezes, I love you. She squeezes back twice, How much? And me, With all my might—the last squeeze the strongest.

Seven

The carnival greets us as it does every year. Wonder and anticipation wrapped up in lights and rainbow stripes and the sweet, soft smell of pink cotton candy mixing with dusty roads. I grip three well-worn one-dollar bills. Hold them like a drowning girl would an inner tube, clinging desperately as if life depends on it.

The line to get in is long, twisting around the parking lot, swollen and fat in places where families bunch together—mamas holding babies, daddies with clean-shaven faces smelling like Old Spice, brothers and sisters behaving because it sure isn’t worth being bad and getting sent to the car.

I wrap my arms around my ribs, hug myself tight as I twist and turn in excitement, check out Sissy standing next to me, stiff as a board. She absently picks at the cuticle of her thumb with the nail of her index finger.

She worked hard putting together that outfit—blue jeans she’d cuffed at the bottom to mimic the short, tapered styles, a plaid button-down shirt untucked and tied high at the waist.

Once through the gate, Sissy grabs my hand and weaves us in and out of the crowd toward the top of the midway, where a crowd is forming around the stage in front of the Thrill Seekers Show. A man stands on a platform outside a huge tent, ringing a triangle to bring attention to the brightly painted canvases depicting the various acts performed within.

“Friends, you are now standing in front of the premier attraction of the midway—the great Thrill Seekers Show! Inside is the largest congregation of freaks and fabulous attractions ever to appear under one top. Step right up! Step right up!”

The ticket taker sitting outside the tent is the largest man I’ve ever seen. His white undershirt has a bright yellow mustard stain where his belly button would’ve been and large brown rings under his arms from old sweat. His waist is too big to tie his ticket apron around, so he wears it about his neck like a bib.

When we get to the front of the line, Sissy says softly, “We’re friends of Raffy,” like a secret not to be overheard.

The ticket taker smiles and shakes his head. “Of course you are, darlin’. Raffy gots lots of friends. What do you want me to do about it?”

Sissy’s face is bright red. “Raffy says we can get in free.”

“One of you gets in free. The other needs to pay up—two tickets.”

Spit collects in small white balls at the corners of his mouth when he talks. His teeth are rotten yellow. He holds out his dirty hand and wiggles his fingers impatiently. They look like short pork sausages about to burst from their casings.

We decide it’s only fair to split the tickets. Neither of us minds the unexpected expense, both lost in our own thoughts, excited for different reasons.

I’m eager to watch Raffy swallow that long blade and survive. And Sissy? Well, she wants Raffy to see her.

The canvas tent is erected over the baseball field, the center pole planted deep in the heart of the pitcher’s mound. Strings of bulbs run from each point of the diamond up to the top of the tent, meeting in the center like sparkling ribbons on a maypole.

Being among the first to arrive, we get front-row seats behind home plate. The bleachers fill quickly, the tent grows warm and hums with other people’s stories until the lights start blinking and the crowd hushes. A dwarf dressed in a glittering red tuxedo comes out to the pitcher’s mound, removes his glittering red top hat, and bows deep to the audience at each point on the diamond.

“Welcome ladies and gents to the great Thrill Seekers Show. Be warned, the spectacles you are about to witness are not for the faint of heart or weak of spine. Be warned!”

Each act is more thrilling than the last: Bruno the Strong Man, squat and muscled, lifts a refrigerator high over his shiny bald head like a trophy, his face turning the color of a cranberry. Lycidius, the Master of Escape, writhes and jerks in sweaty, spasmodic motions in the grass, his eyes squeezed tight, face contorted as he works himself free from the heavy chains the audience participator has wrapped around him before securing a padlock with a click. Then Lady Medusa, who carries a cage of rattlesnakes up to the pitcher’s mound and slowly drapes them, one by one, across her shoulders, until she is dripping with hissing, rattling snakes like a maharaja dripping in precious jewels.

Time ceases, then sneaks up on us; the lights blink to announce the grand finale. Raffy walks onto the field dressed in black pants cinched at the ankle and waist like a genie. He wears a black sequined vest over his bare chest, the gold cross around his neck, nothing on his feet. He holds his sword by its snake-headed handle, his hand tight at the throat, the blade stretching long before him, raises the shining blade above his head to be admired, his stomach muscles rippling and growing tight. The one red rose he tucked into the waist of his pants revealed.

He walks around the pitcher’s mound so his sword can be admired by all, then stops in front of home plate, kisses the gold cross on the gold chain, and falls to his knees, his eyes locking on Sissy. She shifts in her seat, her bony hips and shoulders knocking slightly against me.

Raffy lifts the sword with both hands over his head like he is preparing to plunge it into his own heart, tilts his head back, juts his chin forward, and opens his mouth wide. Then slowly slides the blade down deep, a little bit at a time, until it disappears into the darkness of his being.

The tent swells with gasps and sighs. He withdraws the sword from his throat, and the crowd bursts into applause and whistles. He stands and faces second base, again falls to his knees as if in prayer, and once more, slowly, gently, a bit at a time, sinks the blade inside himself. When he has finished, he lifts the sword high over his head triumphantly, then brings it down against his stomach and bows deep, as if cutting himself in half.

As he exits, he gives the crowd his gorgeous smile.

To Sissy, the rose.

Sissy smiles and rolls the stem between her thumb and forefinger. It has thorns, and I wonder if Raffy has bloody scratches where the prickly stem pressed against him.

“Let’s go on some rides, Sissy.” I made a list and the order in which we would do them. The Tilt-a-Whirl is first, followed by the Round Up.

“I think it’s best to wait here for Raffy,” she says. “Too hard to find anyone in that crowd.”

Sissy keeps looking around nervously for Raffy. She twirls the rose between her fingers, buries her nose among its petals, and inhales deeply. Outside, the shouts of the barkers luring folks to their concessions, music from three bands, the clankety-clank racket of the rides.

I sigh and pull my ponytail holder out, lick my hand, and run it down my hair, trying to smooth the flyaways.

“Enough, Pip. You’re making your hair smell like bad breath. What’re you doing that for anyway?”

I look at Sissy, shocked. That was mean. I drop my hand and wipe it on the side of my shorts, then get up and walk toward the exit without a word. Something about Raffy brings out sides of my sister I’ve never seen, and it’s not for the better.

“Where you going, Pip?”

“Out,” I yell without turning around.

“Oh, Pip, don’t be mad. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Don’t care. Just want to. I’m tired of sitting around here when I could be having fun. You’re the one who wants to see him so bad, you wait.”

Everywhere I look, something wonderful is happening. The red cups of the Tilt-a-Whirl whip children into a blurred frenzy of laughter. The horses on the carousel climb high, then drop low in jerky movements in time to the tinny music. The Crazy Mouse roller coaster, white and wooden, clatters around the edge of the carnival. A couple holds hands and a giant blue teddy bear. But the best part is, I forget about the grove, Daddy’s moods, Mama’s sadness, Sissy’s preoccupation. It all just vanishes. If only for a few hours.

I watch the Ferris wheel load and unload over and over, but Sissy doesn’t come. I storm back into the tent to get her, but the lights have been turned out, the bleachers empty. I stare at the abandoned spot where she was sitting. I keep staring because I can’t believe she went to find Raffy instead of me. It is the loneliest feeling I know.

I buy a cone of popcorn and a box of sour lemon drops to cheer myself up, then make my way over to the line at the roller coaster. It is the longest line of any ride, but I don’t mind. It gives me time to finish my popcorn, which I savor, nibbling the soft edges of each kernel, licking the tips of my salty fingers after the last of it is gone.

By the time I finish, there are only three people ahead of me. I figure I have a great chance of getting the first car since the two girls in front have been talking about how scared they are the entire time and jittering about leaving the line. The boy they are with keeps making chicken noises, flapping his arms up and down and clucking.

Then I smell him. Chocolate, rich coffee beans, burning banana leaves, something spicy, an exotic root unearthed. And then I feel him, not touching me, but close, close enough to make the hair on my arms prickle, to make me shiver, as if a spirit has blown through me.

I turn around and am looking into Raffy’s flawless face. It takes my breath away.

“Want a partner on the Mouse?” he asks.

“Don’t know. Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Well, who it is.”

“What if it’s me?”

His hands are buried in his jean pockets; a tight black T-shirt shows off his muscular chest and arms. I feel myself blushing, don’t want him to see my burning cheeks, so look down and kick a pebble. Use the faded toe of my sneaker to spell my initials in the dust.

“I’m not scared, you know.” I look up to meet his gaze.

“Didn’t think you were. Just thought you might like some company. I know I would.” He flashes his beautiful smile. His eyes tease me into accepting.

“Well, all right. But not because I’m scared. Sissy, she’s scared of just about anything and everything. One year our daddy promised to buy her a new pair of denims if she could ride the Mouse and not cry. But she cried, she cried all the way up that slope.” I point my finger at the first and tallest rise. “And she never stopped. I was with her. She pinched my arm so hard all the way down I got five bloody fingernail marks. I have scars.”

Sissy would be mortified I shared this information, but I don’t care. It was her own fault for being so damn mean. I thrust my arm out and show him the white underside where five pale pink lines have settled in and become a part of me. He takes my arm, small in his large hand, and softly kisses each of the scars. His lips give me the shivers, and I swipe my arm away.

“Now you will look at them and remember something different than your sister’s fear.”

The roller coaster stops and empties, then fills again. We sit in the front car, his arm wrapped lightly around my shoulder.

“You’re real pretty,” he whispers. “Someday you’re going to be a heartbreaker.”

Pretty. Heartbreaker. I can’t believe he is saying these things to me. What would Sissy think if she knew? He should be saying these words to her. But I liked them. I liked them a real lot.

Five scars burn the underside of my arm. I trace them with my finger.

The car lurches forward, and we climb the first hill into the darkness. Beneath us, the wheels on the metal rails click, slowly, slowly, as we climb higher. I look straight up, count the stars in the black night sky. The car pauses at the top, hesitates for a moment as if there were a decision to be made. But I already know there is no turning back. We tip over the edge, picking up speed as we hurtle downward, the known world falling away.

Eight

Raffy drives us home that night because Daddy never showed. The convertible’s top is closed, and the car smells of sleep, old clothes, mildew. We drive by the Twistee Twirl. See the boys and girls from school, the ones who never include us, sitting around the picnic table under the glowing neon swirled cone. They eat french fries and laugh at something we will never hear. We glide by, silent as a secret.

Sissy sits in the front; Raffy’s arm rests along the back of the seat; his hand dangles out of sight. When he touches the tops of her shoulders with his fingertips, do goose bumps appear on her arms like they did mine?

Sissy shivers, and Raffy pulls her closer, her body becoming part of his. I roll up my window, crank the handle around and around. A little squeak fills the car, Remember me, remember me. Neither one turns around. I shrink into my corner, pull my knees to my chest, making myself as small as possible, press my forehead against the cool glass.

Raffy turns on the heat; the warmth quickly replaces the lonely chill. I close my eyes, and my body melts into the seat.

I wake up alone in the car. A jacket is draped over me. I’m confused about where I am, but the moon is high in the sky and I recognize Foggy Bottom Lake shimmering in the faint silvery light. The windows are cracked and the car full of night sounds—grasshoppers, katydids, bullfrogs luring a mate with their deep, throaty beggar’s song.

The car is parked in the tall grass, and picnic tables dot the area leading to the water’s edge. The overturned rowboats look like giant snapping turtles, the picnic tables prehistoric spiders. I want to go home.

I get out of the car to go find Sissy. A narrow sandy beach wraps the lake. I’m not scared—even in the dark—I know the area well. It’s one of our favorite places to swim, and on hot days folks sprawl on towels, float in inner tubes, fish off the splintered wooden dock. Now, in the night, objects are distorted.

The grass is cold and wet on my legs as I walk through it toward the beach, looking for their shadowed figures. I call her name—she does not answer. When I reach the sand, I take off my canvas shoes. Small pebbles stick to the bottoms of my feet; icy water soundlessly licks the tips of my toes.

My eyes adjust to the darkness, and I scour the shoreline for sleeping alligators. Wouldn’t want to wake one by mistake, but I know what to do just in case. One of my earliest memories is of Daddy teaching me how to outsmart a gator—you have to run in a zigzag, never a straight line. If they catch you, they’ll crush you between their jaws. Maybe not even to death, just break you and swallow you alive.

I see the small boathouse not far down the beach. A faint glow comes from the window, and I walk toward it.

I should knock on the padlocked door, call Sissy’s name, but that isn’t what I choose to do. I walk around to the side, real quiet, though I needn’t have worried since the bullfrogs are making such a noise no one would have heard a branch snap under my foot or my cursing when I stubbed my toe.

I peer in a window. Oars hang on the wall; fishing nets and orange life preservers are heaped in a pile on the floor. A single candle burns in a glass bottle. It sits on a metal bucket that has been turned upside down for a table. The window across from me is open, and I imagine Raffy coaxing Sissy inside, promising her no one will ever know, that they’d never be found out. Sissy doesn’t like to break rules. She’s a real straight shooter, always believing life handed her its fair share of problems without opening the door and inviting more in.

Then I see her. Standing with her back against the wall. Her hair hangs in waves down the sides of her arms, like a golden shawl. Raffy is leaning into her, saying something in her ear, kissing her neck. Her arms are wrapped around his waist, her plaid shirt hangs open and loose, the knot at the waist untied, the little white buttons undone.

A gust of wind kicks up, snuffing the candle, and the boathouse goes black. I wait, but the candle is not relit. The darkness within impenetrable. No matter how long I stare, my eyes never adjust.

Suddenly I am aware of being cold and alone. I walk back to the car, put on Raffy’s black leather jacket, which hangs down to my knees. I curl up in the back seat, tucking my frozen feet into the warmth of my legs.

I don’t know how long it is before Sissy and Raffy return. It seems an eternity. I expect the sky to turn pale with the arrival of dawn, but the night stays dark.

I keep my eyes fixed on the boathouse, waiting for their figures to appear. Finally, I see them, taking form in the darkness, holding hands…not him and her, but they. Instinctively I know something is different—that my sister no longer belongs to me in the way she did before we walked out of the house that evening.

When she opens the car door, I shock us both by bursting into tears. Sissy assumes I’ve been frightened in the dark, my sorrow so simple.

She holds me. “It’s okay, I’m here. I’m here. I’d never leave you. You know that.”

The ride home is silent. A fragile mist covers the road and groves, giving everything a dreamlike quality. Soon the sun will rise and objects the darkness distorted will take shape again and appear ordinary, and that thought relieves me.

Raffy stops at the foot of our lane, just below the Juicy Acres sign.

“Pipsqueak,” he says. “I’m looking forward to riding the Crazy Mouse with you again.”

I slam the door in response and stand waiting for Sissy with my arms folded across my chest. I can hear them talking through Sissy’s cracked window, faraway words, Sissy laughing.

I knock on her window impatiently.

“Go on, Pip,” she says.

But I don’t budge. “It’s late,” I say. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. You know Daddy’s going to have us up early for turkey-delivery day.”

“Bug off,” she says, and rolls her window up.

Her words are like a swift kick in the gut—they take my breath away. I wonder, who is this Sissy I have never known? It’s the first time I’ve ever had to share my sister…and I hate it.

I walk down our lane, the path so familiar it doesn’t matter that I can see almost not at all until the house comes into sight. The porch light is on, a single burning bulb the moths flock to. Their sheer wings provide no shade from the harsh light illuminating the chipped white paint, the steeply sloping porch, the screen door sagging in its wooden frame, soon to fall from its hinges.

Nine

We wake to the bellowing of Daddy’s voice from the bottom of the stairs. “Time to get the tree up. Got a full day of turkey deliveries ahead of us, as far as Frostproof.”

It’s still dark outside, the room chilled from the cold night air. I turn on the light. The clock on the table between our beds reads 5:35. Sissy is asleep, her face turned toward the wall. She has carefully propped the rose in a small glass that normally sits on the bathroom sink; a clump of white toothpaste sticks to its side. The stem is too long for the short glass, and Sissy has rested the bloom against the lampshade to keep it standing upright. The rose is only partially opened, but the petals have grown brown around the tips from being out of water too long. If I run my finger around the edges, I imagine they’ll crumble like burnt paper, litter the top of the table with petal crumbs until the wind blows them away.

I want nothing more than to snuggle beneath the covers. Instead, we will spend the day driving the hills of citrus country, selling turkeys door to door, in and out of towns where we are strangers, dropping in on folks we don’t know.

When we moved to Juicy Acres, one of the first things Daddy did was enlarge the chicken coop and turn it into a turkey shed because he hates chickens. His older brothers locked him in the coop when he was a boy. Small scars where the hens pecked him dot the tops of his feet like freckles.

Daddy and Silas have been slaughtering turkeys for the last week. As much as I detest tending them—the nostril-burning stench of dried shit, swarming flies that follow you around, observing your every move—I hate the turkeys being killed even more.

But there is no escaping it. A killing cone is hung from the big live oak in front of the house. The white plastic funnel blows slightly in the wind until a bird is stuffed headfirst into it. One firm hand pulls the neck taut while the other slits the throat with a quick swipe of the knife. When dead, its feet are tied together with clothesline and the turkey hung from a limb to let the blood drip out. I call it the death tree, those dangling birds reminiscent of ornaments. Sometimes when I look at our own Christmas tree, I don’t see glass balls or paper angels, but dead turkeys instead.

Sissy kicks off her covers and says, “Come on, Pip. Let’s get this day over with.”

“Girls!” Daddy yells. “I don’t hear much movement up there!”

We quickly put cardigan sweaters over our cotton nightgowns before walking down the wooden stairs to the living room, both of us skipping the groaning step out of years of habit. The standing lamp in the corner is on, creating enough light to make the gray shadowed landscape outside disappear into blackness.

We stand there, not sure what to do, our sweaters pulled tight, arms crossed. I hear the radio play in the kitchen—an ad for the Christmas-morning pancake breakfast at the Congregational church. The announcer reminding us there are only eight days left of 1960. The countdown has begun.

We hear thumping on the cellar stairs. “Come help, for damn sake,” he calls.

Daddy has the top of the artificial tree clamped under his arm. Sissy and I lift the back end by the legs of the metal stand, and the three of us awkwardly shuffle into the living room.

It is the only Christmas tree I’ve ever known, a mothball-scented reminder of the sour years we spent living with Daddy’s parents on their grove. They’d purchased it from the Sears & Roebuck catalog, pleased with the fact they never had to purchase a tree again—a real tree with needles that brown and fall to the ground. A mess to clean. A real tree that dies and is tossed out back. Nothing but waste.

The lights remain on it from year to year because Daddy sees no need to make more work than necessary. They hang awkwardly, with deep droops in the cords. Some of the fat, colored bulbs are missing, causing gaping dark holes in the tree when lit. Old tinsel remains snarled in the branches, no longer shiny, but faded into a flat gray that doesn’t sparkle.

I look at the tree, and it gives me the shivers. Memories of the years we lived with Ma and Pa Bean dangle from every branch. Ma Bean shuffling her thick slippered feet across the fake Oriental rug, screaming at me to bring the canola oil and come rub the corns on her feet. The awful family dinners that Sissy and I weren’t allowed to speak at, or we would be excused without the rest of our supper.

Mama once asked, “Why shouldn’t they talk?”

“Hush!” Pa Bean yelled. “While you live under my roof, you live under my rules.”

Even though they were Daddy’s own parents, he never said a word. There was only the clinking of his silverware in the silence as he trimmed the fat off his slice of gray beef.

I go down to the cellar and return with the two shoeboxes that hold our meager collection of ornaments. One box holds the ornaments Sissy and I made at school when we were younger. Cotton balls stacked and glued to make a snowman. A green construction paper Christmas tree with small, colored buttons on the tips of its pointed branches.

It seems odd for Mama to have saved these projects when there are so few remnants of our childhood. No bronzed baby shoes or a first tooth lost. For this reason, this box is especially precious to Sissy and me. Each Christmas we gently bicker over who gets to open it, be the first to remove its treasures and spread them out on the floor like a fortune teller would a deck of cards. We take great care in where we place these ornaments on the tree, each hanging our own paper memories in a place sure to be seen.

The other box holds a motley collection gathered from flea markets or plucked from a pile of garage sale trinkets. It was in some such place that Sissy and I bought a grocery bag full of glass balls for a nickel. Some were solid, others striped or dotted with glitter. We dumped them in a pile on the floor, took turns selecting our favorites—Sissy chose the balls with sparkly trim, and I the ones that were plain.

We put the tree in front of the window like we do every year, though it makes little sense since we are the only people to see it, and that particular spot crowds the room. Daddy plugs in the lights, and those that still work begin blinking. Sissy arranges them, tucking the cord in deep and positioning the bulbs so the dark spots aren’t too obvious. She does an excellent job, carefully balancing bulbs on the tips of branches before weaving the mostly defunct strand back toward the trunk. If you squint your eyes at the blinking tree, you’d never know half the bulbs are dead.

It doesn’t take long to hang the ornaments, and by the time we finish, a beam of sun is streaming through the window. Dust motes float through the light like snow.

Mama stands in the doorway in her blue quilted bathrobe and smiles. “What a difference the tree makes,” she says. “The room doesn’t look so shabby.”

Mama has a way of making something happy seem a little less so, even when she has a smile on her face.

“Growing up, we always had a big fresh tree,” she says. “It made the entire downstairs smell like the woods.”

She reaches into the front pocket of her robe, removes her cigarettes and a pack of matches, lights one, inhales, and blows the smoke out through her nose like a dragon.

“On Christmas Eve, my mama and I would string popcorn and cranberries and weave them around the branches of the magnolia tree in the backyard before it got dark. In the morning, I’d wake to the sound of dozens of chickadees flocked in that tree, enjoying a Christmas feast outside my bedroom window.”

I look at Sissy. We’ve heard this story for as many Christmases as I can remember. It always makes me feel sad for Mama. She gave up so much when she married Daddy and he moved her to the groves.

Daddy is about to put the star with the broken tip on top of the tree, but he stops when she starts to speak, listening, but not turning around to face her. He also seems sad when Mama talks about her past, and I can see him now, his happiness draining out and spreading across the wooden floor like a rug unrolled. He looks around the tired room. Ma and Pa Bean’s fake-fancy velveteen furniture is long gone, sold off piece by piece when harvests were bad, winters too cold, and the sales of souvenirs could barely feed us. They’ve been replaced with simpler items gathered at rummage sales or scavenged from the side of a road.

He slips the broken star into his wide coat pocket. “Come on, girls. Get dressed and eat yourselves some breakfast. We have a long day ahead of us. Lots of folks waiting on their turkey for tomorrow’s Christmas dinner.”

“Turkey. We didn’t have turkey,” Mama says, staring out the window at the death tree. “We always had goose. Stuffed. Slow roasted until it fell off the bone.”

Ten

We load the back of Daddy’s pickup with the turkeys—gutted, plucked clean, white pimpled skin showing through clear plastic bags. Sissy and I take turns knocking on doors, collecting money, passing over the heavy bird while Daddy sits in the truck.

It is no longer daylight but not yet night either when we finish. The Christmas Eve sky is a deep, dark blue. A spattering of stars begin to softly glow.

The heater in the old truck is broken, and I wish I’d worn another layer of clothes. I blow on my fingertips to warm them. Sissy takes them in her chilly hands, and we rub each other’s fingers until they are warm again, but even when they are, I don’t let go.

“Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” plays on the radio, reminding me of the day Sissy came home from school and proudly announced Santa didn’t exist. Said he was a big lie told to us by our parents to trick us into being good, and that the toys were really kept in the garage hidden under a blanket until Christmas Eve. I was six and Sissy eight, and it had yet to occur to me that Santa, his elves, and reindeer might be a tall tale.

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“Well, go ask Mama.”

We found her in the backyard, down on her hands and knees, planting tiny green sprouts that would grow into banana trees.

“Mama, some kids at school told Sissy that Santa isn’t real. But he is, isn’t he?”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I wanted to snatch them back. But it was too late.

Mama stopped what she was doing, sat back on her heels, and looked up. Without pause she answered, “No. Santa isn’t real.”

Just as matter of fact as that. Like she’d forgotten we were children.

Sissy looked stunned, the victorious moment not as triumphant as she’d imagined, fact sinking into our bones like chill. It was a moment so final we had no choice but to tuck the loss away into a corner of our hearts and learn to live without it.

I shiver at the memory, and Sissy instinctively puts her arm around me, pulls me close. I close my eyes and lean into her, her arms around me more familiar and comforting than Mama’s.

We pull into Sebring, a town that actually feels like a town, with its many intersecting streets, stoplights, and a Woolworth’s that is still open. Daddy parks the truck at the curb and turns off the engine.

“You girls come on inside and get warmed up while I get your mother a gift.”

The bells on the door jingle as we enter the empty store. I head over to the lunch counter while Sissy browses the magazine rack. The counter is deserted, except for a man hunched over a cup of coffee next to a sign that says We Serve Whites Only. A colored boy, tall and skinny, serves him the Christmas special—a turkey-dinner platter.

“Can we get a snack, Daddy?”

“No time for that. Your ma’s waiting for us, and I’m sure she’ll be plenty bothered if we’re late and supper gets cold.”

I think about the salty ham and warm German potato salad we eat every Christmas Eve because that’s what Ma Bean always served. Because Daddy insists we have it.

“I don’t like ham. Why can’t we have goose, like Mama wants?”

“Goose costs too much. Silly to spend extra money on something that gets eaten and is gone. Nothing left to show for it but a pile of bones,” he says, sounding like Ma Bean. Daddy wanders down the kitchen aisle and settles himself in front of a shelf of pots and pans. Takes off his black wool cap and scratches his head while pondering his choices.

I find Sissy standing at a long display table spread with ornaments. She is holding a porcelain angel swaddled in pale blue, with tiny rosebud lips and apple-red cheeks. Sissy places the angel back on the table and winds the key in her back. “Silent Night” tinkles out, and she turns in place.

“She’s so beautiful,” Sissy says. I can hear the longing in her voice. Imagine the angel on the small wicker table between our beds, the prettiest thing in our room. Sissy loves pretty things I would never notice.

When the angel finishes playing, Sissy walks to the counter, where Daddy is paying for his purchases. I look at the price, consider asking Daddy to buy her, but know what he’ll say—one dollar is too much for something that will only collect dust.

But I desperately want to get it for her. Imagine the happiness on her face when I give her the angel—Raffy forgotten. I look around the empty store and quickly slip her into the pocket of my coat. My hand trembles. I wonder if I’ll go to hell.

“I saw you.”

I whip around and am looking into the face of the colored boy working behind the lunch counter.

“I saw you put it in your pocket.”

Frozen. Rooted. My eyes skirt the room.

Daddy looks over. I can feel my body start to tremble. What was I thinking?

Daddy grabs his bag of goods off the counter. Sissy is behind him.

“Is there a problem?” Daddy demands.

“I saw her stealing,” the boy says.

Daddy scowls and squints, his eyes angry slits. “Stealing? Stealing? Do you know who we are? We are Beans! My daddy owned a thousand acres of groves. We don’t steal. We come from something!”

“Check her pockets,” he says.

Daddy’s gripping the bag so tight his knuckles look white. “Boy, you talking back to me?”

I see the store manager walking briskly toward us. I know there’s no getting out of this mess—I’m going to jail. I’ve never longed for home or a ham dinner so much.

“Excuse me—is there a problem?” he asks.

“There sure is!” says Daddy. “Your employee is accusing my daughter of stealing! We don’t steal!”

The manager looks at me. Looks at my seething father. Turns to the boy, who says, “I know what I saw with my own two eyes. Why don’t you go on and ask her?”

I feel the angel burning through my pocket into the side of my leg like a smoldering ember. I want to give her back, but I’m so scared I can’t move. I try to speak, but my jaw is locked shut.

“I’ve had enough of this baloney,” Daddy says. “I’m ready to hand you all my purchases and get my money back.” He holds up the large paper bag for the manager to see.

The manager turns to the boy, says, “You’re out of line, young man. You should know better. Consider yourself relieved of your duties immediately.”

I know I will always remember the way he looked at that moment—how his face went from shock to confusion to sadness in moments. What have I done? But I’m too scared to speak.

To Daddy, “I’m sorry, sir, for your troubles. I appreciate your patronage. A merry Christmas to you and your family.”

“Let’s go, girls,” Daddy says. He shoves us out the door, my hand clenched around the porcelain angel. I turn around and see the manager yelling at the boy. He holds his paper soda fountain cap in his hands. He stares at his feet.

I feel myself walking—not toward the truck—but the Woolworth’s front door. I have to give the angel back, even if it means I go to prison. The boy looks up and catches my eye through the glass. I offer a slight smile and nod to tell him it’s going to be okay, but he drops his eyes to the floor again.

I reach for the door, but Daddy grabs my arm so hard it hurts.

“Dammit, Pip, what the hell are you doing?” Before I can answer, he yanks me toward the truck. “We will never go back into that store again. Never! Imagine accusing a Bean of stealing!”

Back in the truck, Daddy turns on the radio and hums along like nothing happened. He is pleased with his pocketful of turkey money. A Christmas Eve sale that bought three pans for the price of one. A ham dinner waiting at home.

I keep my hand wrapped around the fragile angel. Can’t stop thinking about what happened. But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t. That’s what I tell myself. Over and over. That’s what I tell myself until I believe it.

The town streets are mostly deserted, the lights of the houses fewer and farther between, until we are back in the darkness of the country, where there is no light at all.

Eleven

We arrive home, but the house doesn’t smell of food cooking. It is dark except for the tree’s blinking lights bathing the small room in flickers of color—on, off, on, off. Beer cans cover the top of the coffee table. Balls of used tissues are scattered across the floor. The ashtray heaped with cigarette butts and ash. Mama’s unmoving hand dangles off the side of the couch; photos spill across the floor beneath her limp fingertips.

I look over at Sissy. Her face is expressionless, her mouth a straight line. It’s like she wears an invisible suit of armor that protects her from disappointment. When I’m seventeen, will my skin have toughened up, too?

Daddy turns on a light. Mama’s still in her blue robe, her mug of morning coffee on the table amid the beer bottles.

“Mama,” Sissy says, shaking her shoulder gently. When she doesn’t respond, she shakes harder, saying loudly, “Mama, Mama, we are home, wake up, wake up.”

The clock’s ticking fills the room. Its swaying pendulum the only movement. Daddy finally bends over, picks up the scattered photos from the floor, and sifts through before tossing them on the table with the rest of the trash. He leans over Mama, slides one arm under her neck and another beneath her knees.

“Jack?” she says. “Jack?” She opens her eyes and looks up into Daddy’s face. “Oh, Nathan, it’s you.”

“Don’t talk to me,” he says between gritted teeth. “Not one goddamn word!”

But I doubt she hears because she is passed out again. He lifts her off the couch, grunting with the effort, and carries her to bed.

I sit down and pick up the photos from the table. Sissy joins me, and we look at them together—a picture of Mama with a handsome young man in uniform in front of a Christmas tree, the two of them at the beach, laughing into the camera.

Sometimes when Mama drinks too much, she tells us about Jack. He was the love of her life. She had thought she was going to marry him when he returned from duty in France, be the wife of a military officer, and live in a fine Southern house like the one she had grown up in. It was all planned out. Instead, his letters grew fewer and further between, until the last one arrived, stating he had married somebody else. It was later that summer she met our father.

Daddy comes back into the living room still wearing his coat, black wool cap pulled low on his forehead so we can’t see his eyebrows.

“You girls hungry?” he asks.

He’s not looking at us, but at the tree. He clasps the brown bag with his gifts for Mama in both hands, rocks slightly back and forth.

Sissy looks at me, then answers for us both. “No, we’re not hungry,” even though we are starving, having not eaten since breakfast.

“Well, all right, then.” He opens the bag and removes a new gold star we didn’t see him purchase and places it on the top of the tree. It shines bright of disappointment, of our bruised and broken hearts. And I can’t help but think that no matter how hard Daddy tries, things just don’t seem to turn out right. Will Mama even notice the new star? Will it remind her of this awful night every time she looks at it, too? I sigh. Sissy catches my eye and blows a silent kiss.

Daddy puts the brown bag with Mama’s gifts under the tree and leaves, quietly closing the door behind him. We know he is going to the Thirsty Gator to drink whiskey and play cards with his pocketful of turkey money, and our family will suffer in the weeks to come because of it.

“I’ll make us some scrambled eggs and toast for supper,” Sissy says.

In the kitchen, the uncooked ham sits on the counter, a reminder of what Christmas Eve might have been. I put it back in the refrigerator and remove the bowl of eggs. There is only the sound of Mama snoring from her bedroom across the hall. When I can’t stand the noise any longer, I go to the living room and take the angel from my coat pocket, wind her up, and set her on the table. “Silent Night” tinkles delicately through the room, but it doesn’t cover Mama’s snores. It only brings back the vision of that clerk holding his paper cap in his hands, eyes cast down as the store manager waved his finger and scolded.

Sissy joins me, and we are quiet, watching the pretty angel turn in circles. She doesn’t seem surprised. She doesn’t say a thing. Not even when I pick up the angel and throw her against the wall, shattering her into so many pieces she can never be made right.

Twelve

Sissy is asleep, the day awash in dreams. I’ve always been jealous of her ability to sleep through the worst situations.

But “Silent Night” plays repeatedly in my brain, and remorse devours my insides like termites a tree. I wonder about that boy. Can’t get his face out of my mind. He didn’t seem to be any older than I was. Surely, he didn’t want to be working on Christmas Eve any more than I wanted to be delivering turkeys. Is he lying awake, too?

I remember the time I became aware of the different rules for colored folks—separate drinking fountains, restrooms, waiting areas. Places they can sit and places they can’t.

I had gone to city hall in Lake Wales with Ma Bean. The line to see the clerk was long, so she had me go sit down in the waiting area while she stood in it.

Being five at the time and not knowing any better, I sat down in the back row because I didn’t see any other seats. When Ma Bean turned around to check on me, oh, the look on her face! You’d have thought I was sitting naked in a church pew.

I couldn’t figure out what I’d done, but I knew it was bad. She broke out of line, not caring that she was losing her hard-earned place, grabbed me by the arm and lifted me off that seat. My feet barely touched the floor until she plunked me down in a chair at the front.

“You sit with your own kind,” she snapped. Then she pointed to the back wall. Two water fountains stood side by side. One was a modern machine, the other nothing more than a sink stuck to the side of the wall with rust stains in the basin.

“See those signs above the drinking fountains?”

I could but didn’t know how to read yet.

“That one is the white water fountain, and the other is the colored water fountain. You get thirsty, you only drink from the white water fountain. Understand me?” She grabbed my chin so tight it ached. Lifted my face to look at her. I nodded my head because she was using her scary voice, but I didn’t understand what she was talking about.

She let go of my throbbing face and harrumphed off, her tweed skirt tight around her wide hips, thick waist.

I sat there and thought about it. White water. Colored water. Finally figured out what she meant. There must be milk running through the white fountain, and grape Nehi running through the colored. No wonder she wouldn’t let me have it. We weren’t allowed to drink soda. She said it was garbage and would rot out our insides.

I kept glancing over at the colored fountain. My curiosity was killing me. I had never tasted grape soda. I looked back at the line and saw Ma Bean talking to the clerk at the window. Nothing wrong with getting a sip of water. Ma Bean said I could. I got up and walked over to the fountains.

I looked over at Ma Bean; she was deep in conversation and waving her hands all over the place, clearly griping about something. I felt sorry for the clerk who had to listen to her rant. I knew what that was like.

I took a sip of water from the white fountain, like I had been told to do, wiped my dripping mouth with the back of my hand. It was icy cold but nothing special. Just plain old water.

I looked over at Ma Bean. Still ranting, still waving her hands. I figured she was just getting going and had forgotten about me.

I shouldn’t have risked it, but I could stand it no longer, and jumped in front of the colored fountain, shoved my face in it, and held the button down. Liquid filled my mouth. To my shock, it tasted no different than the water in the white fountain, only it was warm instead of cold. I didn’t get what the fuss was about.

On our way home in the car, I asked Ma Bean why I could drink only from the white water fountain.

“Because if you drink from theirs, you’ll turn colored,” she replied.

I heard myself start whimpering, little moans like a hum escaping from my throat. I have never been able to control it. Still can’t today. It’s what my body does all on its own when it thinks something bad is going to happen.

If I turned colored, like Ma Bean had said I would, then she would know I had disobeyed her. Nobody disobeys Ma Bean. I couldn’t even imagine what horrible thing she would do to me for being so naughty. I couldn’t stop whimpering.

“Quit that humming. It’s getting on my nerves,” she snapped.

The whole ride home I kept looking at my skin. But nothing changed. When we got to the house, I ran up to our room and stood in front of the mirror. I looked exactly as I had when I walked out the door this morning, but I expected the transformation would happen overnight, like a werewolf, and by tomorrow there would be no hiding what I had done. I was doomed.

I lay on my bed crying, my face buried in a stuffed white rabbit I’d named Sleepy, when Sissy walked in. She was seven, and I was convinced she knew everything. She immediately came over and sat next to me on my bed, rolling me over to face her.

“Did Ma Bean say something mean to you?” she asked.

I shook my head no.

“What could be so bad as to make you cry this hard?”

I had to tell her. I could live with the shame no more. I wished I could just disappear.

“I—I did something terrible. I drank from the colored water fountain even though Ma Bean told me not to. And now I’m going to turn colored, and she is going to know I disobeyed her. I’m going to be sent to the orphanage!” I started bawling even harder.

It took a minute for my words to sink into Sissy’s brain, and then she started laughing. “That’s hogwash,” she said. “Nothing is going to happen to you for drinking from the colored fountain. Water is water.”

“Then why are there two different ones?”

“I don’t know,” Sissy said. “I never really thought about it. Just the way it’s always been.”

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, especially as I got older and learned the truth about the fountains. How unfair to tell people where they can and can’t go, what they can and can’t do, because of the color of their skin.

Now I throw back the covers, go to the top dresser drawer, and remove my notebook. I creep down the stairs and sit at the kitchen table. Mama still snores. Daddy’s truck is still gone. I sigh and open to a fresh page. Sissy can lose herself in sleep; I can lose myself in stories. But this story is going to have a different ending. This story is going to tell the truth about what happened at the Woolworth’s.

What if I had done the right thing?

What if Mama had cooked the Christmas Eve ham instead of getting drunk and remembering?

What if one little thing had gone different to change the way things came to be?

I begin to write. I know I will hate the song “Silent Night” forever.

Thirteen

Mama says merry Christmas. She is dressed, and the house smells of baking ham. The Christmas tree is blinking, and the lamps in the living room have been turned on to add sunniness to the gray morning.

Mama never says anything on those mornings following the black nights when the beer consumes her. Like nothing happened. But I can always tell she feels bad when the house is tidied and food’s cooking.

Sissy and I sit sleepily at the kitchen table, the warmth from the stove heating the small room with the tall window. The wooden frame rattles in the morning wind. Cold air slices through the cracks.

We watch Mama set the table—take down four plates and put the cracked one at her own place, fold paper napkins into swans to make the table look fancy like her mama taught her to do. She goes outside, and through the window we watch her carefully fill the bird feeder with seed.

“She takes better care of those birds than she does us,” Sissy says.

Mama loves sitting at the kitchen table, studying the different birds, concocting plans to foil the squirrels that climb down the rope and eat the seed. She knows the visitors by name. Knows the month they come, the month they fly away.

When finished, Mama breaks a red hibiscus bloom from the bush, fills a small glass bowl with water, floats the vibrant flower in it, and places the bowl in the center of the table. She reaches into her apron pocket for a cigarette, which she then smokes while studying her work.

“Well, it’s about the best I can do, considering what little I’ve got. Doesn’t look a bit like my mama’s Christmas table, set with fine bone china from England and wineglasses made of cut crystal. It was a pretty sight to see. Everything sparkled.”

I look at the mason jars we use as glasses, mismatched and varying sizes, and wonder what glasses made of cut crystal look like. Diamonds, I think. Glasses made of diamonds. But china made of bones? I don’t understand that at all.

The screen door slams. Daddy’s heavy boots, thick-heeled and high-laced so rattlers can’t get his ankles, thump heavily across the wooden floor. He appears in the doorway, and it’s obvious he didn’t come home the night before. He is still wearing the same clothes—denims, a long-sleeve work shirt, wide suspenders holding up his pants on his tall, bony frame. Two days of prickly growth shadow his chin. His eyes are bloodshot, beet red like he hasn’t slept a wink.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Nathan,” Mama says. “Your absence has been holding up Christmas morning. The girls are eager to open their gifts, and the ham is almost ready for serving.”

Sissy and I look at each other. Neither of us feels eager to open our gifts. We snooped around the few presents under the tree the night before.

Mama doesn’t use gift tags, just writes our name on the wrapping paper that is recycled year after year, the paper covered in ink where the previous recipient’s name has been crossed out and written over again. When we open presents, we know to do so carefully—no ripping allowed.

“Don’t wait on account of me,” Daddy says.

Mama is looking straight at him, her eyes fixed and unblinking. “Please, Nathan, let’s try to have a nice morning. For the girls. It’s Christmas, after all.”

I feel the hairs on my arms stand up. Please don’t let them fight, please don’t let them fight. Not on Christmas…

He looks at the table Mama set pretty. At Sissy and me sitting there, still in our nightgowns, sighs and says, “All right.” Then he pulls off his cap and runs a large bony hand through his thick brown hair to muss it up where the cap flattened it. Sissy’s head is down; she is picking at her cuticles, distant and distracted, her mind surely on Raffy. I know she cares more about getting to the carnival than opening gifts.

I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I let out a deep sigh.

We gather around the tree. Sissy and I sit on the floor by the presents, Mama on one end of the couch, Daddy on the other. I pass out the gifts. A wooden Duncan Tournament yo-yo to me from Sissy. The latest issue of McCall’s magazine to Sissy from me. From Mama and Daddy, new socks and underwear, licorice, and the stationery with kittens tumbling around the edges I saw on the half-off table at Woolworth’s the night before. Daddy can’t resist a bargain. Hates paying full price for anything, even if that stationery will sit in a drawer, forever sealed, stinging of our solitary childhood in which there is no one to write.

Daddy got a new pair of work gloves and a packet of Fruit of the Loom undershirts.

The last gift under the tree is the brown bag to Mama. She opens her pans and says, “Thank you, Nathan. They will come in handy.” And quietly puts them down on the couch beside her.

“There is something else in the bag,” Daddy says.

Mama reaches in and pulls out a small shell with a bottle of perfume nestled in it.

“Eau de toilette,” she reads. “How thoughtful, a bottle of toilet water.” But she isn’t smiling.

“That’s not toilet water,” Daddy says irritably. “It’s genuine French perfume.”

Mama stands without picking up her pans or perfume and goes to the kitchen. I hear the refrigerator door open, the clanking of dishes being set out.

“Please come to the table—the meal is being served.”

I don’t want that damn ham for breakfast. I want pancakes dripping with syrup and crispy bacon, like other kids eat on Christmas morning.

Daddy stands abruptly. “I don’t have time to eat. Lots of pruning to do.”

Mama comes into the living room, puts her hands on her hips, and says, “Please, it’s Christmas. Can’t the work wait until after you’ve eaten with your family? I made the ham, like you wanted. And Ma Bean’s German potato salad you love.”

“That was last night’s ham, Ada. Remember?” He pulls his cap over his head and storms out the front door, slamming it hard behind him. He didn’t want to eat that ham either. It was ruined for all of us. I expect for Mama, too.

In the kitchen, Mama clears away Daddy’s place setting before the three of us sit down. We carefully unfold napkin swans and smooth their wrinkled bodies over our laps. Mama serves the ham and heaps on the German potato salad, one of Ma Bean’s prize recipes, the tang of vinegar present with every bite.

Mama doesn’t eat. Just smokes and stares at the blinking Christmas tree through the door.

“Pip, will you please unplug the tree lights. That blinking is making my head ache.”

I go to the living room, get down on my hands and knees, and reach under the tree for the plug, and that’s when I feel it—another present, slim and narrow, wrapped in newspaper. Ada is written across it in Daddy’s chicken scrawl.

I go back to the kitchen and put the gift in front of Mama.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“I found it under the tree. It’s from Daddy.”

Sissy looks up from her food, vaguely interested in something for the first time all day. Mama stubs out her cigarette, takes the package in her hands, and slowly peels back the tape. She gasps. It is a box of watercolor paints and a collection of brushes in varying sizes. She smiles. A real, true smile.

Mama opens the lid and runs her finger across the pots of bright colors, puts the box up to her nose and takes a deep breath, remembering.

“It’s been years since I held a paintbrush,” she says. “Doubt I can even do it anymore.” She laughs—something that happens so rarely, I forgot how pretty the sound of it is—light and tinkling, like a bag of jingle bells spilled across the floor.

“Sure you can,” I say. “Your talent doesn’t go away just because you haven’t used it in a while. Like Sissy’s singing. Her voice will always sound pretty.”

She laughs again. It is so good to see Mama happy. Better than any Christmas present I could ever open. I just wish Daddy were here to witness it.

Sissy stands and stacks our empty plates. “Come on, Pip, let’s get these dishes done so we can get to the carnival.”

“Leave them for me,” Mama says. “It’s Christmas—I want you girls to go have some fun.”

•   •   •

I sit on the bed, waiting for Sissy to finish dressing for the carnival, which is taking forever. She’s probably tried on five outfits, which are now lying in a rejected heap on the floor. Through our bedroom window, I see Silas schlepping to the turkey shed, the muck rake in one hand, the heavy bucket of turkey pellets in the other. He never has a day off, not even on Christmas.

I wonder what it’s like not to celebrate Christmas at all—at least we have a tree, a few presents, a hot meal.

“Sissy, I’ll meet you at our bikes.”

I leave our bedroom, take the stairs two at a time, and go to the abandoned kitchen. Mama’s done the dishes, and everything is neat and tidy. I open the fridge and pull out the Christmas ham and potato salad. Serve a big plate for Silas, pour some milk in my school thermos.

On my way out, I pause at the Christmas tree, wish I had a present to give him. Then I see Mama’s bag of new pans still sitting on the couch. Mama barely looked at them, she won’t know one is missing. I pick a frying pan from the bunch, find a piece of ribbon, and tie it around the handle. I take a shiny red ball off the tree.

When I get to Silas’s sack, I hang the sparkly red ornament on his doorknob. Leave the gift and Christmas dinner just below.

Fourteen

We ride our bikes in the dried-up creek bed. Come summer’s rain, the creek will be full again with murky water and tadpoles that never grow into frogs.

We stash the bikes in the weedy grass along the edge of the field that has been reserved for parking, walk through the rows of cars and into the mayhem of the carnival.

“I’m going to check the Thrill Seekers tent for Raffy,” Sissy says. “I said I’d meet him there at noon.”

“But it’s only eleven,” I say. “You promised to do some stuff with me first.”

“Well, I changed my mind.”

“Whatever,” I say, like I don’t care. “I’m going to get a cotton candy. I’ll meet you there.”

I find a stand, order blue instead of pink because Sissy isn’t there to tell me how gross blue tongues are. Pull the sticky fluff from its paper cone with two fingers, small bits at first, then bigger and bigger, stuffing it in my mouth, amazed at how quickly the huge mound dissolves into nothing.

I stroll the midway to the Thrill Seekers tent, glance around inside, and see it’s deserted, except for a single person sitting in the bleachers—Angel.

Angel is Sissy’s only friend. I suppose it’s odd that Sissy has only one friend and I have none at all. But that’s the way it’s always been—just Sissy and me. And then Angel when she moved to Belleville a couple of years ago. She just plopped down at our lunch bench on her first day, without being invited. Misfits have a way of finding each other.

“Hey, Angel,” I call. She stands up and puts her hand over her eyes as if there were a blinding sun beating down.

“Oh, hey, Pip.”

I walk into the tent, let the heavy flap drop behind me, and join her in the bleachers. She is wearing a purple sequined dress that hugs every curve on her curvy body. I look down at my own clothes—blue jeans, sneakers, a red sweatshirt from Dollar Duds that says Orlando across the front.

“Snazzy dress,” I say. “Interesting pick for the carnival.”

“Thanks,” she says, giving the hem a slight tug.

Angel is rocking side to side, chewing her gum a million miles an hour, blowing little bubbles, snapping them repeatedly. She is pretty, but in a different way than Sissy. Angel is the kind of pretty men honk and whistle at, slow down and say things through open windows. I’d be mortified if it happened to me—which it never would—but she says she likes it.

“Have you seen Sissy? I’m supposed to meet her here,” I say.

“Nope.” Angel is looking around, seeming mighty nervous about something.

“I guess I’ll just keep searching. Want to come?”

“I’m busy, Pip,” she says. “I’ll see ya later.”

“Busy? What exactly is it you’re doing other than sitting here?”

She is obviously eager for me to leave, and when Raffy enters the tent, I understand why.

“Well, if it ain’t Pipsqueak,” he says, giving me a wink and his gorgeous smile. “When do we get to ride the Crazy Mouse together again?”

I remember his lips—soft as a feather’s touch—and my hand instinctively covers the five scars tingling on my arm. His words, Someday you’re going to be a real heartbreaker…I feel my cheeks burning, and when I glance up at Raffy, I know he sees it, too.

“Have you seen my sister?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “Didn’t even know she was here.”

“She’s here,” I say. “She came to see you.”

“I promised Angel I would show her my collection of blades.”

His gaze is pointed; something in his piercing blue eyes hushes me up and convinces me it’s best to get on my way.

“That’s right,” Angel says. “Hop like a bunny, Pip.”

I leave the tent, squint in the bright sun in search of Sissy, wait a few minutes, then go back inside. Raffy’s hand is on Angel’s bottom as he guides her out the back. I see them walk to his car, which is parked away from the others in the shade of a coconut palm. He doesn’t open the trunk, where I know the velvet heart is kept, but the back door, and they get in. I watch, but the car door remains closed.

I can’t wait to tell Sissy what I saw. She’ll have nothing to do with Raffy after she hears he’s with Angel. Teach him he can’t have his cake and eat it, too.

Outside, I see Sissy sitting on the edge of the bally platform where the barker usually stands luring folks into the show. Her long, thin legs swing back and forth; her eyes search the crowd.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” I say. “Where have you been?”

“Looking for Raffy, but he seems to have disappeared into thin air. I haven’t seen him since I got here, and no one knows where he might be. I figure if I sit here long enough, he’ll show up.”

“Don’t waste your time,” I say. “He’s a creep.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just don’t go thinking that you’re his special girl. I bet he’s got lots, probably a dozen in every town he stops at, and you’re just another.”

I want to tell her the truth—about the roller coaster, about Angel—but when I see the hurt on her face, I’m immediately sorry I said anything at all. Raffy will be gone by the end of the week—a blip in our life, a fading memory—and everything will return to normal.

“What a hateful thing to say, Pip. Why would you say that to me?”

Why would I say that? I’ve never been purposefully unkind to her.

“Forget about him.”

Sissy is quiet, letting it all sink in before responding. “You’re just jealous.”

Her words suck the breath out of me—because she’s right—though not for the reason she thinks. I am jealous, not of Raffy’s attention, but of her happiness.

I turn and walk quickly toward the exit, eager to be out of the carnival, which seems suddenly sad and shabby. The tent flaps tattered and unraveling, white stripes streaked with dirt. The once cheerful lights shine too bright. The promises of the ticket sellers sound empty—as if true happiness could really exist in a handful of tickets.

I glance back and feel relieved that Sissy follows a few paces behind. She doesn’t say a word until the exit, when she grabs me by the arm and stops me. I keep my eyes on the parking lot. The cars shimmer in the sun.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she says. “It’s just you don’t understand how it is between me and Raffy. He appreciates me in a way no one ever has—not even you.”

I can’t believe she said that. Raffy has only been in our lives for a few days. He doesn’t know anything about her.

I pull my arm away from her grasp, walk on for a few minutes, sure she is trailing, but when I turn around, Sissy is nowhere to be seen.

Wind whistles through the tops of the tall, feathery Australian pines. They howl and moan.

•   •   •

Late afternoon, I’m sitting on our bedroom floor playing jacks. Even though the other girls have long outgrown the schoolyard competitions, Sissy and I still play. Not much to do at Juicy Acres when we aren’t working.

I can’t get Sissy’s words out of my head. Try to shoo them from my brain but they keep coming back. What did she mean nobody understands her like Raffy? I understand Sissy better than anyone ever will. I know things about her he doesn’t—that she talks in her sleep, hates milk, is allergic to cats, picks at her cuticles when she’s nervous. But I have that stomachache again—the one I get when I sense something is about to go terribly wrong.

I hear the screen door slam and Sissy’s feet on the wooden stairs to our bedroom. “Hi, Pip,” she says. But I don’t answer. I don’t even bother to look up. She sits across from me and leans her back against the bed. I feel her watching, though she remains quiet.

I scoop ten metal jacks into my hand and toss them across the wood floor. It’s a decent roll. The jacks are close enough together to be easy to pick up, but not so close you accidently touch another and lose your turn. I’m on threesies. I throw the small rubber ball into the air and let it bounce, swiping up three of the jacks and catching it before it bounces again.

“Remember that time when we were little and both had terrible gas?” Sissy says. “We hid behind Ma Bean’s chaise lounge while she was napping and let out all those toots.”

I smile because I do remember. Ma Bean awoke in disgust, demanding to know who was creating that rancid odor. She chased us with a flyswatter until we ran into the grove and collapsed in the sand laughing, though we knew there would be hell to pay later.

“Or that time we snuck into the kitchen in the early morning while everyone was sleeping and ate the boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix? And in the middle of breakfast, I puked up chocolate and you vanilla all over Ma Bean’s lace tablecloth?”

I’m laughing and loving my sister. How silly to believe that anyone could come between us. I can’t wait for Raffy to leave and life to go back to the way it used to be—Sissy and Pip. We’ve had our squabbles over the years—but this time was different—this felt bigger, like we just had our first fight.

“Want to play?” I ask.

She nods her head yes.

We sit, legs spread wide, soles of our feet touching, toes entangled—nothing but the jacks between us.

Fifteen

New Year’s Eve—the last night of the carnival. Sissy and I stand outside our parents’ closed bedroom door. Behind it, Mama is resting. Sissy knocks lightly, so as not to wake her should she be sleeping, and we wait to be invited in before turning the knob and entering the dim room.

She lies on her side, her back to the door, one arm folded under her head, gaze fixed on the open window. The pale, colorless sky. The light draining from the day.

“Girls?” Mama asks.

We remain just inside the doorway. “We are leaving. For the carnival. Riding our bikes,” Sissy says.

“What time is it?”

Sissy looks at the clock on the wall above the tall dresser, where a mirror should have been. “Almost six.”

“It’s cold in here,” I say. “Would you like the throw?”

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed. I don’t suppose you girls have had supper. I need to get to the market. Take a dollar from my purse. You can eat at the carnival.”

Sissy walks over to the wooden ladder-back chair where Mama’s purse hangs and carries it around the bed to her. Only now does she move, slowly and with great effort. She props herself up on one arm and with her free hand searches around the inside of the bag for her wallet. She removes a red leather pouch, soft and worn, the zipper long gone, the top held together by a safety pin. She pulls out a dollar from a small roll of bills and gives it to Sissy.

“You’d best get on your way,” she says. “Who knows what you might be missing.”

I pick up the throw from the trunk, where it was haphazardly piled—black, crocheted with a snowflake pattern in primary colors—and hand it to her. She wraps the blanket around her shoulders like a shawl. I kiss her cheek, the skin no longer firm but soft and supple and smelling of Pond’s cold cream.

Sissy is already out the door, but I pause at the threshold and look back at Mama, her body curved into the shape of a question mark, her eyes fixed on a pair of crows perched on the branch of a tree outside the window. One of the birds gives a quick, harsh cry before flying off. The other cocks its head, as if deciding to stay or go, before it, too, flies away.

We walk our bikes down the sandy drive until we reach the smooth road, then ride in the middle, follow the dotted yellow line, past citrus trees under a darkening sky, with a low moon rising and stars becoming visible. Fireflies flicker in the groves. The road rises and falls in gentle hills, and we coast as much as we pedal. Sissy rides ahead of me, bent low over her handlebars, pumping as hard as she can until she reaches the top of the hill. She lets go, spreads her arms out to the side; the wind blows back her long hair. I copy her, enjoying the exhilarating feeling of flight.

I had no intention of going back to the carnival, but Daddy decided to ring in the new year with a bottle of whiskey and was halfway through it before the sun even set. No way was I hanging around home. As for Sissy, I didn’t even bother trying to change her mind about Raffy. Nothing I said was going to keep her from going to that carnival one last time, and I didn’t even care. Come tomorrow morning it will all be gone, packed up and hauled away to some other faraway town, the unknown faces of a crowd always the same. Midnight couldn’t come quick enough.

We continue west toward Belleville, the groves interrupted by a handful of houses, and then we are through town, over the bumpy railroad tracks, and back into darkness, the groves taking over. The road curves around hard, and the blinking lights of the carnival brighten the black countryside. The moon glows between the spokes of the Ferris wheel. The colored lights of the bespangled tents shine so bright the stars are barely seen.

Sissy and I weave our way through the mob of people, not stopping until we reach the Thrill Seekers tent. The bally platform out front is empty except for the painted canvases promoting the acts inside—life-size freaks swaying in the wind—and Raffy, standing, dressed for show in his spangled pants, arms crossed over his bare chest. Waiting.

We climb the worn wooden stairs and join him. I hear screams as the roller coaster plummets. Applause and hoots from the crowd under the big top. I’ve never seen a carnival from a bally platform and have to admit, I feel special up here above the heads of the crowd.

“Hey, Pipsqueak,” he says, giving me a wink. I don’t answer him, I just glare.

Raffy takes Sissy’s hand and leads us down the stairs and through a secret passage between the tents. We pop out into a clearing, the carnies’ trucks and cars parked in a circle around a campfire. I recognize most of the performers from the Thrill Seekers Show—Pepe the Human Pincushion and Medusa, her python wrapped around her shoulders like a mink stole. Those not working are sitting in folding camp chairs, drinking coffee out of tin cups or taking swills from a bottle of whiskey being passed around.

Raffy grabs the bottle, takes a swig, and hands it to Sissy. I wait for her to say No thank you, but she accepts. A week ago this would have shocked me. She takes two big swallows and offers the bottle to me.

“Try it, Pip. It doesn’t taste so good, but it sure makes you feel warm on the inside.”

Before I can answer, Raffy says, “Don’t waste the good stuff on the kid,” and hands me a bottle of warm Coca-Cola.

“I’m not a kid,” I say, ignoring the Coke.

Raffy takes another swig and hands the bottle back to Sissy, says, “Finish it up, pretty girl.”

When she does, he wraps his arm around her shoulders and guides her toward the darkness of the tent village beyond. Raffy turns and flashes that smile. I can’t believe I ever thought he was handsome, with his ugly insides seeping through his skin. I flip him the bird.

I watch Sissy, expecting her to turn around and yell Wait for me—I’ll be right back. But she doesn’t. I sigh. It’s all right. Tomorrow the carnival will be gone and everything will be as it once was.

Having spent all my money, I decide to hang out by the fire. I don’t mind sitting there not knowing a soul. I watch Medusa rub the body of her python with a polishing cloth so it will shine in the lights. I have a thousand questions I want to ask the performers, but when I look around the campfire circle, I get the distinct feeling they’d prefer me to be gone.

The dwarf puts on his red-spangled turban, beats the bottom of a metal soup pot with a wooden spoon, calls, “Showtime!” The campfire circle comes to life as the carnies pick up their props—a bed of nails, fire-eating torches, a cage of squirming mice waiting to be swallowed whole—and slip through the crack in the tents, back into my world, leaving me alone in theirs.

I scan the darkness for Raffy, hoping to see him pulling my sister behind him, but they do not appear. The fire embers barely glow. Clouds pass over the moon and stars, and all light is suddenly snuffed. But lanterns burn in the tent city. I’m tired of waiting and walk among them, calling Sissy, Sissy in a loud whisper. A mangy dog comes barking around a corner. A small boy, stark naked, crawls out from under a car and stares at me, a filthy finger in his mouth.

I walk faster, suddenly eager to find my way out of the maze, when I hear moans. Through the opening of a small tent, I see a girl’s bare legs, a naked man on top of her. Hear a voice—Raffy’s voice—Cecelia, Cecelia, Cecelia.

Fireworks boom in the sky above the carnival. Colorful glittering shards rain down like a shattered rainbow. It is 1961.

Sixteen

I remember seeing myself, as if no longer a part of my own body, but outside it, staring down as the moon might from where it hovers in the sky. I’m riding my bike like a blind person, not thinking of where I’m going, led only by instinct and the curve of the land and the passages of groves, not needing the light of the moon for guidance, though it is always with me, watching.

There is a cluster of trees I love, and where I often find solace. They are so old they no longer bear fruit, and because of this are ignored. Their branches touch the ground, encircling gnarled trunks, and when you duck beneath you are completely concealed, protected by wise and weathered arms, the grandmother I never had.

I sink down into the sand because my legs shake, so I can no longer stand. I let the tent go black in my mind, but I see the same picture against the closed lids of my eyes, a shadow that does not disappear with darkness or become less real with light, and I think—What have I seen?

It is pitch black beneath the canopy, so dense are the leaves, and I feel hopelessly trapped, unable to find a way free of memory.

Strangeness blurs the lines between earth and sky and groves so that I can no longer tell what is real and what is not. It could have been minutes, or hours, before I go home to our empty room.

It’s dawn when Sissy returns. The sun is barely above the earth, but birds sing so loud I know daybreak will soon be spreading its immodest pink stain across the sky.

I’m awake. Have been awake all night. Listening. Waiting. Finally, I hear our bedroom door open and close and know he is gone—a dissipated nightmare in the morning light. My body relaxes. I take a deep breath and let it out quietly so Sissy doesn’t hear.

Then I hear the click of the closet light when she pulls the chain. The sound of her suitcase as she drags it across the wooden shelf. The light thud it makes when it falls to the floor.

I turn over and watch her empty the top drawer onto the bed, pluck out her favorite shirts, and roll them into tight little tubes.

“Want this?” she asks, holding up a denim one with white buttons down the front.

“Why don’t you want it?”

“It’s not that I don’t want it—it’s just that I can’t take it all.”

Neither of us has spent a night away from Juicy Acres since the day we arrived ten years ago, the suitcases dormant and dusty and long forgotten. It’s obvious something’s brewing. I feel like the excited butterflies that were fluttering around my stomach as I counted down the hours until Raffy’s departure have had their wings chopped off and are now sitting in a pile in my gut, making me feel sick.

“Why…Why are you packing the suitcase, Sissy?”

She stops what she is doing and looks at me, sits down on the edge of her bed, the weight of what she’s about to say apparent in the droop of her shoulders, the sag in the mattress beneath her.

“I’m leaving,” she says. “With Raffy this morning as soon as they’re done breaking down and getting packed up. He’s my ticket out of Hellville. Says there’s lots of opportunities in the carnival for girls with talent like me.”

She wraps her arms around her waist and rocks back and forth.

“I’m in love, Pip. I didn’t know such happiness existed!”

In love? I thought that only existed in books, seeing as the only marriages I knew—Ma and Pa Bean’s and our parents’—looked miserable.

“Can you believe I’m so lucky? Think of all the girls he could choose—and it’s me!”

“You can’t leave me, Sissy—you’re all I have!” My words sound silly and pointless. More than anyone, I know when Sissy makes a decision it’s final. No turning back or changing her mind.

In a voice that sounds rehearsed, she says, “We can’t spend our whole lives together, Pip. We need other people.”

Other people? I need Sissy. I need her to worry over me, kiss my forehead at night.

“But you can take me with you—please take me with you!” I’m bawling uncontrollably.

Sissy continues packing, her back to me so I can’t see her face, her eyes, only her hands busily rolling clothes and placing them snuggly in the small case.

Finally, she responds, “Yes, but that’s not what I am going to do.”

Sissy stops packing and comes and sits with me, takes my hand in hers, and gives it the secret handshake. My hand is limp. When she squeezes with all my might, I scream at her, “That’s a lie, Sissy! If you love me with all your might, you wouldn’t go! You can’t leave me alone with Mama and Daddy, you just can’t!”

“I won’t stay here, Pip. Not even for you.”

“I’d never abandon you, Sissy!”

She returns to the open suitcase, closes it, and I hear the snap—first of the left buckle, then the right—two hammer blows smashing my heart.

She comes and puts her arms around me. I want to hug her back, but keep my arms plastered to my sides, afraid if I do, I’ll never let go.

And then she leaves, wearing the pink dress she made in sewing class, her cardigan draped over her shoulders, the sleeves dangling empty by her sides.

I sit on the edge of the bed and watch through our dust-streaked window as she walks down the lane. She neither stops nor pauses to glance back and wonder. Her departure is that definitive.

In that moment, I’m not sure if I love her more than I ever have—or hate her.

I wait for my eyes to adjust and some form to take shape and become familiar in an unfamiliar landscape. But it never does.

Seventeen

I want to escape into the grove. Into the routine of my chores so I can pretend it’s any other day. I drag myself downstairs, too depressed to remember to skip the creaky third step. Daddy, who claims to have such sharp ears he can hear a fish fart, calls for me.

Mama and Daddy are sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and talking. Or at least Daddy is.

“Come sit down,” he says. “Have some toast and marmalade.”

I hate orange marmalade, with its pieces of rind mixed in. I like grape jelly. Nice and smooth. But I can’t remember the last time I saw a jar of jelly in this house. It’s less expensive to make the marmalade, which is one of Sissy’s chores.

I miserably do as I’m told, pull out the wooden chair, and plop down. Mama’s drinking coffee and staring at the birds poking at the feeder. I twirl my ponytail around my finger. The lump in my throat so big it hurts to swallow. Tears burn at the back of my eyes.

“I have a strong sense that 1961 is going to be a banner year for the Bean family!” Daddy says. “I was just sharing my latest idea with your mama—opening a small luncheonette out of the stand. We can serve ham-and-cheese sandwiches, bologna, deviled eggs. Set up picnic tables out front.”

In an instant, I watch Mama’s expressionless face change into fire. I want to slither down the side of my chair because I know what is coming next.

“Where are we going to get money to buy picnic tables? Sandwich fixings? We can barely feed ourselves, let alone others!”

I imagine Sissy sitting next to Raffy in that convertible, top down, hair blowing wild in the wind as she sings along with the radio. I see the smile on her face as the grove lands slip away.

How could Sissy have left me to deal with them on my own? I can’t imagine even one day in this house without her. I push back my chair with such force it tips over with a loud bang. The lump at the back of my throat explodes.

“Sissy’s gone!” I scream. “She’s never coming back because she hates it here so much and it’s all your fault! You’re sorry excuses for parents! Why did you even have kids?”

Both Mama and Daddy look at me. Shocked. Speechless.

But no one is more surprised than me—I’ve never spoken out like that before. But now that I’ve started, I can’t stop.

“Parents are supposed to create a home, not a hellhole! Parents are supposed to take care of their kids, not drive them away!”

I’m out the door, sprinting toward my bike—running for my life.

“You get back here, Penelope Bean, if you know what’s good for you!” Daddy yells after me.

I don’t stop or turn around. I just keep running. I can’t imagine life without Sissy. I can’t. If Sissy’s leaving with the carnival, so am I. There is no way I’m living here without her.

I jump on my bike, pump the pedals hard and fast. They couldn’t have packed it all up by now—the tents, the rides, the concessions, the camels and ponies. It’s barely nine in the morning. I imagine the look on Sissy’s face when she sees me—relief and happiness—the huge hug we’ll share because surely she realizes she made a big mistake leaving me behind. Sissy may act all tough, but I know she needs me as much as I need her.

My legs ache, and my lungs burn so it’s hard to breathe, but I never stop to coast and catch my breath until I come around the final curve in the road and see the high school. My legs finally give up. My heart bursts in my chest.

I can’t believe my eyes.

The carnival’s vanished, as if it never existed. The only remnants are the withered grass where the big top was and the tire tracks in the lawn from when the trucks pulled away. I see the palm tree Raffy parked under, go sit beneath it, and lean my back against its trunk for support. I’m oddly comforted—it soothes as surely as a hand would.

I try to catch my breath, let the reality of my situation sink in. Sissy’s gone for good. I don’t even know where to find her. Suddenly I feel very, very small—a speck of dust in this vast world the wind could blow away like an afterthought. I wish the earth would open up into a sinkhole and swallow me whole—whoosh, I’d be gone.

I had been so positive everything was going to work out and have no backup plan. I’m too afraid to return home. Finally, I decide on Driscoll’s Department Store in Lake Wales. They sell absolutely everything you can think of, serve the best chocolate sodas, and it’s the only place around with air-conditioning, making it a favorite summer escape on a steamy afternoon. I could spend days there and still not see everything on those shelves.

My stomach is grumbling, but I don’t have money, so I avoid the food counter, with its tantalizing photos of cheeseburgers, hot dogs, banana splits, and crinkle fries. While away the hours snooping through the aisles of stuff instead: makeup, umbrellas, houseplants—real and fake—toys, scented bath salts, comic books, bras and panties, wigs.

It’s five o’clock, and they are closing. I stand on the street, listening to my hungry belly grumble, and watch the woman lock the door and click down the sidewalk in her high heels. She smells nice, and I want to run after her and beg her to take me home with her. But I have no choice. There is no place to go but back to Juicy Acres. I slowly pedal home. Even worse than facing Daddy’s rage is facing our empty bedroom. I can’t imagine life without Sissy.

I get off my bike at the entrance to Juicy Acres and begin walking down the sandy lane when I notice a figure in the dark.

“Silas?” I call. “Is that you?”

But there is no response.

“Silas, I’m not kidding around—you know I don’t like to be startled.”

Silence.

“Cut it out now. You’re scaring me!”

In a small voice, “It’s me, Pip,” says Sissy out of the darkness.

I can’t believe it. It’s a miracle. I am so happy I drop my bike and throw my arms around her.

“I knew you wouldn’t leave me, Sissy. I just knew!”

But she isn’t hugging me back. I look at my sister’s pretty face. She’s been crying—dirt streaks across her cheeks where she swiped away the tears.

Suddenly I understand—she didn’t come back for me. She came back because Raffy left without her. She had no choice but to return home, trapped in a life she doesn’t want to live—like Mama. But I don’t care. Even this realization can’t dim my happiness—Sissy is home and Raffy gone from our lives.

“He ditched you, didn’t he?”

She doesn’t say anything, just starts walking down the drive. The small suitcase bangs against her leg. I follow, wheeling my bike, but stay quiet because it seems best.

The house comes into sight; gnats swarm the porch light like flies around a dead animal. Through the window, I see Daddy pacing—he is worked up.

“I don’t want to go in there, Sissy,” I say. “Let’s go hide in the grove until morning, wait it out until he is calmer.”

“That’ll just rile him up further, Pip. Let’s get it over with.”

The second we are through the door, he is on us. Mama is nowhere to be seen.

“Who the hell do you think you are? The princesses of England, waltzing away from your chores? Do you know how much money was lost with the stand being closed on the busiest day of the year?”

He is so angry his lips curl like a snarling dog. His fists clench. Then he sees Sissy holding the suitcase and grows silent as the grove before a summer storm when the wind stops blowing, the leaves quit rustling, the birds hush because they know what’s coming next.

In that quiet, icy voice of his, the one that scares me more than his yelling, he says, “Were you going somewhere, Sissy? Are we not good enough for you?”

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t look away. Stares him down fierce.

“I hate everything about Hellville, this dump of a house, this shitty grove!”

“You’re as ungrateful as your mother!” Daddy whips out his hand to smack her, but she ducks, and his hand comes down hard on the wooden bookshelf. In all Daddy’s rages, he has never hit us before. I feel pee run down the side of my leg.

I see the whiskey bottle on the coffee table, which is never a good sign.

“You think you’re better than me, just like your mama does, don’t you? That you deserve something fancier than what I’ve given you?”

As he raised his hand again, Mama appears out of thin air.

“Nathan! Don’t you lay one hand on that child, or I will call the police. I MEAN IT.” I have never heard Mama threaten to call the police before.

Daddy’s hand freezes in midair, then drops. It dangles at his side, too big for his long, bony arm, as if a part of another person’s body, like Frankenstein.

Mama says, “Pip, go clean yourself up. Sissy, put your stuff away. I have chicken and dumplings waiting on the stove for you. I’m going to bed. I’ve had enough for today.”

Sissy and I don’t say a word while she unpacks and I change out of my soaking jeans and panties. Through our window, I watch Daddy’s truck speed off into the night like I have so many times before. I remember when I used to care—worry he might never come back for us—but that was a long time ago. Now I just feel relieved.

Mama had set the kitchen table for two, as if she knew we would be home soon. No one knows better than Mama that it’s tough to get far without money.

Chicken and dumplings are our favorite dinner. It fills the Sissy-size hole that has been growing in my belly all day. I occasionally steal glances at her while we eat, but she never looks up from her plate.

We wordlessly do the dishes, turn out the lights, and go to bed. When the quiet and loneliness are too much, I say, “Sissy, will you sing a song?” But she doesn’t answer.

I pull the covers tight around me, curl into a ball, and tell myself Sissy is home and everything is going to be all right.

•   •   •

I wake in the middle of the night. Sissy’s bed is empty, and I’m terrified she’s gone for good this time. I feel my way downstairs in the dark. The house is pitch black, the only sound the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the living room wall.

“Sissy?” I hiss in a loud whisper. “Sissy?” No answer. I turn on a light; the room is empty. I check the screened porch, bathroom, kitchen, moving faster. She is not in the house. I take the stairs two at a time. I stand outside our closet door, afraid to open it. Afraid to find the suitcase missing. Her clothes gone. Finally, I do.

Her suitcase is there, clothes still hanging. A moment of relief, but it’s quickly erased. I can’t imagine where she could be in the middle of the night. She’d never wander into the grove in the dark. She’s scared to death of snakes, coyotes, wildcats.

I go back downstairs and sit at the kitchen table to wait for her because I don’t know what else to do. I don’t bother to turn on the light. I stare out at the sliver moon—a hook to hang your hopes on.

Then I see her through the window. Sitting on the back stoop in her nightgown, arms wrapped around her legs, chin resting on her knees, crying. I imagine tears pooling in the dirt at her feet, the dry dust and hard ground not absorbing them, but repelling.

I want to go to her, wrap my arms around her, rock together as one. Like before. I want to soothe her the way she always has me. Tell her everything is going to be okay, smooth back her hair. But I don’t. Not because I’m afraid of what she might say to me—but because I’m afraid of what she might not.

I want her to tell me she loves me.

That thought sends me back to our deserted room, where I feel less alone in solitude than I do in the shadow of her fading presence.

Eighteen

First day back to school after the holiday break. Sissy and I walk down the sandy lane together as we have a hundred times before—book bag in one hand, brown-bag lunch in the other—my memory forever scented with the sweet smell of blossoms, the silence as we walked, or sometimes the hollow cry of a hungry crow, the faint buzz of bees on blossoms.

Instead of our normal chatter, Sissy is silent. She has barely spoken a word in the days since the carnival left. She doesn’t want to spend time with me after chores—no playing jacks or listening to the transistor radio together before bed. But even worse, she seems to go out of her way to avoid me.

I once heard it said that time heals all wounds. I’m hoping that’s true, but I’m doubtful on account of Mama. Time doesn’t seem to have healed anything for her—only made it worse.

Eager to break the silence, I say, “I’m kind of looking forward to school. What about you? Aren’t you tired of squeezing oranges all day? Working the boring stand?”

I’m lying because I dread school and would rather be in the grove, but even school seems better than another day at home being ignored by Sissy. At least school will be distracting.

“Doesn’t matter which place I spend my days trapped in,” she replies. “I hate everything about Hellville. When I turn eighteen, I’m out of here. I won’t be stuck like Mama. There is a whole big world out there, and I’m going to be part of it.”

Until Raffy, it never occurred to me that Sissy might leave Belleville.

I try to keep my voice controlled, don’t want her to hear the quiver, “Where do you plan to go, Sissy? Miami?”

“Miami? Why would I ever go there? I’m moving to New York City. That’s where civilized people live. I’m sick and tired of this hot, swampy, mosquito-infested state. Better fit for a wild animal than a human being.”

The only time I’ve ever seen New York City was a picture in our United States history textbook. All those buildings piled so close together, rising out of one little island like hundreds of chimneys. It gives me the shivers.

In the distance, I see the yellow bus lumbering toward us. I am grateful for an interruption in the conversation I now wish I hadn’t started.

The brakes squeal as it comes to a halt at the end of our lane. The door folds open, and I am looking at Fortune, the bus driver, fat and squat; her small, pudgy feet barely reach the pedals. She doesn’t turn to smile or say good morning, just waits for us to climb aboard, then slams the door shut, hitting the gas before we are even seated.

I slip into the first seat, like always, and wait for Sissy to follow, but she doesn’t. I turn around and watch her walk to the middle of the bus before taking an empty seat and turning her face toward the window. I slide down low. The only thing I can see is the back of Fortune’s navy blue bus-driver shirt. When she scratches her head, dandruff snows down onto her shoulders. I count the tiny white specks all the way to school. I let them fill up my mind.

Later in the schoolyard, Angel, Sissy, and I are sitting at our regular lunch bench. Poinciana doesn’t have a cafeteria like Lakeland High—we are the kids with the wrong address; they are the kids with the right one. Although Sissy’s two grades higher, Poinciana has only one high school teacher, so all four levels share a big, crowded classroom. There are forty-eight students in total.

Angel is chatting away at Sissy, who hasn’t said a word. I’m not paying a bit of attention, because I’m thinking about the writing contest Miss Mable just announced to our class. The winning story will be sent to Florida State University to compete at the state level, with a cash prize and publication in the university’s literary journal.

Finally something besides worksheets with long rambling paragraphs I’m supposed to fill with punctuation. I’m terrible at punctuation. I can barely figure out when to use a period or a comma, and I don’t have a clue what to do with a semicolon. But I know I can write a pretty good story. I’ve been filling notebooks with stories since I was old enough to write.

“What the hell crawled up your butt and died, Sissy?” Angel’s words shatter my thoughts.

Sissy shoots back, “You’re not my friend, Angel. Don’t even bother pretending you are.”

Angel jumps to her feet, her lunch sack falling to the dirt. I stare hard at my peanut-butter-and-orange-marmalade sandwich, as if the white bread I hold in my hands is fascinating. I notice the spot of blue-green mold for the first time.

“What the hell are you talking about, Sissy?” she yells.

“You were with Raffy. I went looking for him one afternoon. Went out to his car. I saw you two in the back seat!”

Angel is speechless—so am I—but for a different reason. Sissy knew about Raffy and Angel, and still planned to go with him. Her desire to leave Juicy Acres was that great. The sandwich stops tasting good in my mouth, becoming a ball of wet sand, sickly sweet and unswallowable.

“If you saw us, then why did you still go around with him?” Angel asks. “What makes you any different from me, Sissy?”

“It’s different for us. He’ll be back. Just you watch.”

“No, he won’t,” Angel says. “You’re just any other girl in any other crummy town, Sissy. But you are right about one thing—you’re not like me. I’m smart enough to know when I’m being used for a good time, and a good time it was.”

Angel bends over, grabs her lunch bag out of the dirt, and storms off. She sits alone on another bench, keeps her eyes pressed hard on her food.

I stuff the rest of my moldy sandwich back into the bag and throw it in the trash. When I turn around, Sissy is gone.

I glance over at Angel. She looks up and catches my eye, then quickly turns away. I watch a circle of girls laughing around a picnic table, another group cheering on the boys’ kickball game. When the loneliness becomes too much, I go back to the classroom. It is empty, the quiet as comforting as the grove. I sit down at my desk and take out my composition book. I begin my story.

Nineteen

January drags on, and Sissy remains sullen as a stone. I wait for a sign of my sister, but each day she slips further away.

She no longer brushes her hair one hundred strokes before bed. Or touches her toes fifty times because she read somewhere good health is a form of beauty. She hasn’t washed her sheets since Christmas, and they give off the dingy smell of old age. Sissy used to change her bed fastidiously, stripping off the linens weekly, telling me to do the same. We’d wash them in the claw-foot tub, down on our knees, shoulder to shoulder. Stuff a clean rag in the drain to keep the water from running out because the tub never had a proper stopper.

After we rinsed the sheets, we’d refill the tub, add orange blossom water, let them soak before we removed them, sweet scented and dripping, carry them around to the side of the house where the clothesline spread like a web from tree to tree to tree.

There are other odd things. She wakes at first light, soundlessly gets out of bed, and dresses in the closet, the door half-closed to hide her. She wears her work denim overalls, day after day, her appearance once so doted upon, now not cared about.

She’s started walking at dawn. Some days she’ll be back at breakfast, and I find her standing at the kitchen counter, making lunch. Other mornings she walks to school, and I see her at noon with no lunch at all. Once I offered her half my sandwich—she looked blankly at me, eyes as void of emotion as glass. When she didn’t answer, I stuffed the sandwich back in my bag and never offered again. Not because I didn’t want to—I did—but her rejection was too painful.

She spends lunch alone on a bench at the back of the schoolyard, reading old magazines or newspapers she collected, intently studying pages filled with other places. I once asked her where she got them all, and she said, “Wherever people leave them.” So I began to see her early-morning walks as scavenger hunts, past the bench at the bus stop, the counter at the diner, picking up what others left behind.

Sissy always loved magazines, but mostly those that were about her own self-improvement. She would tear out favorite pages—outfits she would try to mimic, hairstyles she planned to attempt—and tape them into notebooks.

Then one day I found a notebook on her bed and opened it. The pictures of clothes, makeup, and models were gone. Taped in their place were photos of the Golden Gate Bridge on a cloudless day, the public gardens in Boston, the New York City skyline sparkling at night. These comforted me because I thought if she could be satisfied with pictures of faraway places, she would not need to go.

•   •   •

The wooden porch stairs creak, a tired sigh and sag as I walk up them; the smack of the screen door behind me announces my arrival home to no one. It’s midafternoon. Mama’s in the packinghouse, sorting oranges, and Daddy’s in the grove.

I hang my school clothes on the left side of the closet because Sissy’s hang on the right. Put on old blue jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, canvas sneakers with thick socks in case of rattlers. I pull my notebook out of my backpack and read my finished story one more time. Then read it again. I think it’s perfect—not a thing to change.

I leave the room, take the stairs two at a time. On my way to the grove, I stop in the packinghouse.

“Hi, Mama.” She doesn’t quit sorting oranges or glance up.

“How was school?” she asks, more from habit than interest.

“It was a swell day. I’ve been working hard on my story for the school writing contest and finally finished it.”

I wait for her to ask me what it’s about. When she doesn’t, I continue. “It’s about a gang of wild animals who are forced to set out on a journey in search of a new home because the woods where they live are being cut down to build houses. They are led by two squirrels who promise to create a harmonious society—everyone is free to be who they are and express themselves without being judged. Of course, they encounter many dangers along the way and have lots of obstacles to overcome.”

Mama stops what she’s doing to massage the back of her neck. Her jeans are tight, and I notice she’s unzipped them. Gray wisps of hair have come loose from her bun, and I think she looks old.

I wait for her response, for her to look up and tell me that it sounds great and she can’t wait to read it. Isn’t that what moms are supposed to do?

Instead, she says, “Where’s your sister?” Like she wasn’t listening. I don’t know why I expected something different—for her to be proud of me, to be encouraging, to smile—her mind is always someplace else and Sissy and I just something to contend with.

Before I answer, Sissy says, “I’m here.” She was standing in the doorway, listening.

“Take these oranges up to the house, please.”

While I spend my afternoons working in the grove, Sissy sits on the back porch, cutting tough, imperfect skins in half before twisting them around the pointed cone of the glass juicer until her fingers ache and nothing but hollow hulls remain.

Daddy’s dark figure appears in the door. “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon,” he says. “I needed you in the grove an hour ago, Pip!”

“Sorry. I was finishing my homework,” I say.

“Does finishing your homework pay the bills?”

“No, sir.”

“Homework doesn’t come before chores. Truck’s out front. Go get in.”

As I pass Sissy, she whispers, “That is the stupidest story I’ve ever heard.”

Her meanness stings, then stuns. I can’t get used to this stranger my sister has become—I don’t understand what I’ve done to make her be so nasty to me all the time.

Silas is sitting in the back of the pickup. He never rides with Daddy, even when it’s just the two of them.

“Hi, Silas,” I say, wishing I could be sitting in back in the sun chewing on a blade of saw grass like him. He smiles and nods his head in greeting.

I open the front door and get in. A warm breeze blows through the windows. It is the perfect temperature, the kind of day you can sit in the sun and not sweat.

Daddy slams his door and starts the engine. The wheels have sunk into the soft sand, and he rocks the truck back and forth with the patience and ease of someone who has done this many times before.

“I’m going to drop you and Silas in the north grove,” he says. “Where’s your picking sack?”

“I guess I forgot it,” I say.

“I don’t know where your head’s at this afternoon. Sharpen up.” He stops in front of a long row of trees; branches droop under the weight of the oranges. Daddy grips the steering wheel with both hands, doesn’t look at me when he talks.

“Extra sack in back,” he says.

I get out and slam my door. Silas hands me the canvas bag, having noticed I’d forgotten mine.

“Thanks, Silas,” I say.

He nods and smiles again, lifts two long wooden ladders out of the back of the truck, one with each hand, and places them in neighboring trees. The truck tires kick up a haze of sugar sand as Daddy speeds away without a goodbye.

I hang the canvas picking bag across my shoulder. It dangles past my knee. Silas gives the ladder a slight shake to make sure it’s firm, holds it secure while I climb up.

You don’t ever pluck an orange straight from the stem; you have to twist it before snapping it off, or you’ll put a hole in the rind and the fruit will rot. When I’m picking, I always hear Chubby Checker singing “Let’s do the twist” as I twist the orange back and forth before giving it a good tug.

I can’t get Sissy’s words out of my mind. The more I think about it, the more I think she’s right. My story is stupid. What business did I have thinking it any good? No one has ever told me I’m good at writing. No one has ever told me I’m good at anything.

I climb down the ladder, my heart as heavy as my picking bag, which is only half-full because that’s as much weight as I can handle. I dump it in the crate beneath the tree. My load barely makes a dent in the emptiness.

Silas comes down and dumps his bulging bag. He plucks an orange off the heap, flips out the long, thin blade of his fruit knife, and peels it from the sweeter blossom end. He pulls the orange into sections and passes one to me.

“Thank you.”

Juice spills through my lips and runs down my chin until I wipe it away with the back of my hand.

I look over at Silas. He flashes me a big smile—his teeth replaced by orange rind. Even though he’s done this many times before, it always cracks me up. But not today.

Silas removes the rind from his mouth, says, “What’s eating at you?”

“You can tell?” I ask.

“Of course I can. Been picking together for too long for me not to notice your moods. I haven’t seen you smile once.”

Silas may not be a big talker, but he is a good listener, and since Sissy barely acknowledges me these days, I’m extra grateful.

“Well, I’ve been working hard on a story for the school writing contest. But Sissy told me it’s stupid. And she’s right.”

“What’s it about?”

I sigh. “It’s about a pack of wild animals struggling to find their place in the world. They go on a journey in search of a new home because theirs is being destroyed by man. They want to create a utopian society free of judgment. I consider it a story about courage and survival and overcoming the odds.”

“What does utopian mean?” he asks.

“It means perfect.”

“That’s not stupid. That’s a fine story. I bet you win that contest.”

I can feel myself blushing. No one has ever said anything so nice to me—not even Sissy before she turned mean.

“Nah, the only thing I’ve ever won are stuffed animals in the ring toss game at the carnival.”

I use the toe of my shoe to absently write my name in the sand.

Silas stares hard at it. “What’s that say?”

I look up at him, shocked—it never occurred to me he couldn’t read. “It says Pip.”

“Those letters that look the same, which is that?”

“That’s the letter P. The one in the middle is an I.” I sound out each letter for him.

I use the toe of my shoe and spell Silas in the sand, big and careful.

“I’m not real sure if this is how you spell your name since I’ve never seen it before, but this is my best guess.”

He looks at it, and after a moment says, “That looks like a fine name.”

“See the letter shaped like a snake? That’s an S. It sounds like hisssss. Same sound a snake makes.” I didn’t have to say it for both of us to envision an angry snake whipping its forked tongue at us. We’ve both encountered plenty in the grove. “Does it bother you? Not knowing how to read?” I ask.

“Don’t need to know how to read words to pick oranges,” he says. “Just need to know how to read trees. Read clouds.”

“That sounds like something Daddy would say.”

Silas nods. He never stops looking at his name swirling across the sand.

“How about I teach you to write your name? Every person should at least know how to do that.” I kneel in the soft sand. “Come sit next to me.”

He does, crossing his legs, a knee poking out the hole in his overalls. I take his hand in mine, extend his index finger to use as a pencil, and slowly write the letters in the sand. I finish and look up. He is smiling.

“I’ll do it one more time—then you try.” Again, I hold his finger between my own and write the letters easily through the fine sand. “Your turn,” I say.

I sit back on my heels and watch him. His long, graceful finger moves slowly through the sand, his letters big and loopy. He finishes and does it again and then again, memorizing each stroke, planting it like a seed in his brain.

The hairs on my arms prickle, and I have the odd sensation we are being watched. I’m so scared it’s Daddy, I don’t look up at first. When I do, I see Sissy—half-hidden behind a tree, spying. Our eyes lock, and she comes out of hiding. I jump to my feet, but Silas stays still. Sissy’s hands are on her bony hips; she is glaring at Silas, her eyes squinty. I have a feeling this isn’t going to go well.

“I was sent to fetch you for supper.” She turns and walks toward home. But then stops and spins around, snarls, “I saw you touching that filthy boy—don’t even think of coming in the house without giving your hands a good, long wash at the pump outside.”

I watch her storm away, rotten from the inside out, same as a spoiled piece of fruit.

I look at Silas still kneeling in the sand. He seems so sad—like if I reached over and touched his arm, he would cry. He looks down so I can no longer see his eyes.

“Don’t mind her. She’s mean as a vulture these days.” Sissy’s never paid much attention to Silas, mostly just ignores him, but she’s never been unkind.

He shrugs his shoulders. Just keeps staring at his name in the sand. Silas.

Twenty

Silas and I stare up at a wasp’s nest. It’s taken hold under the overhang in the back corner of the turkey shed. Silas discovered it in January. It was small then. We came every day for the past month and watched it grow, hexagon by hexagon.

The nest isn’t swarming with wasps like bees around a hive. Just a few workers flying away for a spell, then coming back and hovering around, legs dangling lifeless as if not attached to their own bodies. The process never ceases to fascinate—watching them build their world, crawling in and out of the combs, the nest growing before our eyes.

“My teacher says you can trap wasps on the bottom of a jar without a lid because they can’t look up,” I explain. “If they did, they’d fly away to freedom.”

Silas raises one eyebrow—his doubting look—pulls off his straw hat, pushes his long hair back to keep it from hanging in front of his eyes, smashes the hat back on to keep the hair in place.

“All right, I can tell you don’t believe me, so I’m going to show you.”

I have no idea if there is any truth in this theory but am curious to find out. I unscrew the lid of the jelly jar and scoop a hovering wasp inside, slam the lid on tight. I give the jar a couple of quick shakes, until the wasp sits stunned on the bottom, set it in the sand and remove the lid. Silas and I both instinctively take a step back and wait. Sure enough, when that wasp comes back to its senses, it doesn’t fly out, but walks around the jar, flying into the side of it, over and over, before settling on the bottom again, confused.

I step closer and give it another shake, say, “Come on, you dumb old wasp. Can’t you find that giant opening?” I hold the jar up in the air and study the captured wasp real close. But Silas can’t handle the torture anymore and takes the jar from my hand. He hates seeing anything trapped.

I once saw him disentangle a fly from a spiderweb and set it free. I remember I couldn’t take my eyes off his fingers, better suited for a piano player than a picker.

He squats down and gently dumps the traumatized wasp onto the sand, but that wasp is seriously pissed off, and the next thing I know he is flying straight at me and I’m beelining it out of there, running toward the safety of the house. I hear Silas’s feet in the sand behind me, but I don’t dare turn around and look. I’ve been stung by a wasp before; it hurts way worse than a beesting. I spent the rest of the day crying with my foot soaking in a tub of baking soda, which did nothing to take the pain away.

I get to the oak in front of the house when my arm is grabbed, and I’m jolted to a stop. I turn around, and it’s Silas, laughing, and then I’m laughing, thinking how silly I must look running from a wasp like I’m running from a gator. I’m snorting, which is something I do when I laugh really hard. Finally, we calm so that we can hear the leaves above rustling. In the distance, a confused rooster crows at the setting sun.

“Told you I was right,” I say, smiling. He smiles back, nods his head in agreement, and turns to leave.

“Tomorrow!” I yell after him. He waves without turning around and walks toward the trees and into them.

Fuchsia bougainvillea has grown thick and wild over the porch. It climbs the screens and drapes its flowering, thorny mass across the roof. Daddy threatens to chop it down, says it rots the house, nothing but a bridge for bugs. But Mama says, Don’t you dare, Nathan. I think it’s beautiful.

I agree with Mama. It certainly hides the shabbiness, and when sitting on the porch, I feel like I’m sitting in the middle of a big bouquet of flowers.

I make my way up the porch steps, open the moaning screen door, and let it slam behind me with a loud, sharp smack that never fails to startle.

I didn’t notice Sissy in the rocking chair until she speaks.

“I’ve been watching you. I see you and Turkey Boy sneaking off every afternoon. I think you should tell me where you are going. Otherwise I’ll tell Daddy you’re spending a lot of time hidden away in private with the beast.”

Her spitefulness shocks me. “You wouldn’t.” But as I study her emotionless face, her blank plum-rimmed eyes, I believe she would.

“You know it’s true,” she says.

I meet her gaze. “Fine,” I say. “We found a wasp’s nest hanging off the turkey shed, and we’ve been keeping an eye on it. Watching it grow. That’s where we’ve been going.”

Sissy bursts out laughing. Not a real laugh. Not the happy kind. “You really expect me to believe that? I know what’s going on between you two, and I think it’s disgusting…just the thought of his filthy hands on you.” She shivers to make the point of how vile she thinks this is.

Images flicker in my mind—the tent, Raffy on top of Sissy, the soft moans. I shake my head as if that could make the memory go away.

I want to say his hands are cleaner than Raffy’s. He has better manners, too. But she is extra ornery today, and I don’t want to rile her further. “There’s nothing going on between us, Sissy. We’ve been watching a wasp nest be built.”

“Liar,” she says.

“You don’t believe me? I’ll show you.”

I storm out the door—not waiting for Sissy to follow—walk around the side of the shed to the back corner, stand under the nest, and wait, arms crossed tightly. When she appears, I point defiantly.

“We’ve been coming here, Sissy, watching this nest grow. I wouldn’t exactly call it sneaking off.”

She glances at the nest. “You always were such a dork, Pip.” Then she turns around and walks off.

Sissy’s words make me miss Silas. I can’t imagine him ever saying anything mean.

The following afternoon I return to the turkey shed. The nest is on the ground, smashed flat, a metal shovel lying in the sand beside it. I imagine the queen dead inside.

I think about how different Silas and Sissy are: he set the jarred wasp free—and she destroyed their lives. It’s a terrible thing to hate your own sister, but at this moment I do. For the past six weeks, I’ve yearned for her, told myself to give her time to mend—to forget about Raffy—then everything would be as it once was between us. But no longer. I can’t stand her company.

Long after the day Silas buried the ruined nest in the sand, habit would lead me back to that spot, like the wasps, who came back, too. They would come for the rest of spring, not a pack, but a single wasp, circling the area, as if remembering, or wondering, what could have been.

•   •   •

It is the perfect February afternoon. Not too hot. Not too cold. The sky endlessly blue and beckoning. Miss Mable’s droning on, about what I’m not sure because I gave up listening ages ago. I stare out the window, daydream about being outside.

When I bore with that, I study the dull tip of my pencil and decide it needs a good sharpening, pull my jackknife out of my pocket, and snap open the blade. Smooth strokes—perfect wooden curls pile up on my desk.

Tap, tap, tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and it’s Miss Mable with her hands on her narrow hips, her beady toad eyes staring down at me from either side of her sharp beak-like nose.

“Pip Bean! How dare you bring a weapon into my classroom! I’m appalled!”

“A weapon? You mean my jackknife?”

“You give that to me this instant,” she says, holding open her palm.

But I don’t want to. I know she’ll never give it back and it will end up in that black hole of a desk drawer of hers with all the other stuff she’s confiscated from the class over the months. Daddy will kill me if that gets taken away. I need it working in the grove.

“You’re walking on thin ice,” Miss Mable says, shoving her open hand closer to my face.

Sissy turns around in her desk and flashes a wicked toothless smile—like she’s happy I’m getting in trouble.

“I’ll just put it back in my pocket,” I say, stuffing it away quick as I can.

“Are you disobeying me?” she asks.

When I don’t respond, she grabs me by the arm and pulls me to my feet. “Get marching,” she says. “We’re going to see the principal.”

I turn around as Miss Mable drags me out the door. Sissy and I lock matching green eyes, and I long for my gone sister—the one who would have come to my defense, the one who would have followed me to the principal’s office and explained that he couldn’t take the knife away because it really was a tool.

Mr. Plum’s office door is open; he is sitting at his desk, eating a bag of potato chips, crumbs covering the mess of papers. Miss Mable pushes me into a hard wooden chair.

“Pip Bean brought a weapon into the classroom and sassed me when I asked for it. She refuses to hand over her knife.” Miss Mable’s arms are crossed tight. She taps her practical brown rubber-soled shoe.

I study Mr. Plum while Miss Mable describes my crime. The tops of his small, chubby hands are covered in thick, dark hair. His fingers are hairy, too. Hair puffs out of his nostrils and ears.

“Thank you, Miss Mable. I will handle it from here.”

But Miss Mable doesn’t leave. She waits to hear what is going to happen to me. Keeps tapping her foot impatiently, arms crossed tight over her flat chest.

“Please return to your teaching, Miss Mable.”

She grunts in disgust and gives me a final glare. When she is gone, he asks, “Where is the weapon?”

I know I’m out of choices, so I reluctantly put it on the desk. Stick my hand back in my empty pocket.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say. “I was just sharpening my pencil. Didn’t want to use the sharpener on Miss Mable’s desk because she was talking and thought that would be rude. And I couldn’t take notes with a broken tip.” It sounds like a good story. I hope he is buying it.

“We have a strict rule at Poinciana.” He turns around and gets the school handbook, flips through the pages until he finds what he wants, and begins reading, “For the safety of our students and faculty, absolutely no knives or guns allowed on school premises at any time. Failure to comply will result in a one-week suspension.” He closes the book. “I am going to have to call your parents and have you picked up immediately.”

“We don’t have a phone,” I say out of desperation, but he is already holding the school’s book of student addresses and phone numbers.

I let out a groan and slide down in my seat. Watch him stick his fat, furry finger in the small hole of the rotary dial on the phone and am surprised it fits. I hope no one answers—or better yet, that it’s one of those months Daddy didn’t pay the bill and our phone’s disconnected. But that’s not to be the case.

“Yes, hello, is this Mr. Bean? This is Peter Plum, the principal at Poinciana School.”

Daddy is not going to be happy about any of this. Not about having to come pick me up in the middle of a workday, not about the suspension.

“Well, as a matter of fact, it is a serious offense,” I hear him say.

There is a pause, and Mr. Plum says, “No, this isn’t a joke. You must come pick her up immediately.”

Mr. Plum quickly pulls the phone away from his ear, and I know Daddy slammed the receiver down hard. I slither farther down in my chair, close my eyes to block out my life.

The school bell rings, announcing lunch, and though I hate lunch period since Sissy started avoiding me, even sitting alone in the schoolyard is better than what is coming next.

“Wait for your father in the hallway.”

I stand outside his office, lean my back against the wall, watch my classroom empty. Sissy is the last to leave. She pauses, looks back, and for a moment I think she is going to come be with me. I beg her with my eyes, but she turns and walks away.

Daddy bursts through the front door of the school and is heading toward me with long, fast strides. He doesn’t say a word, but storms into Mr. Plum’s office.

“Where is this so-called weapon?”

“It’s right here, Mr. Bean.”

“That?” Daddy says. “That’s not a weapon. It’s a tool.”

“As I said, she will have to serve a one-week suspension.”

“Like hell she will!”

I can feel my face burning. I want to tell him to stop, that he is going to make my life at school even more miserable than it already is.

“You can’t suspend her because I’m withdrawing her from this ridiculous place for the week. Let’s get outta here, Pip.”

Outside, I take a deep breath of fresh air, hold it in, sigh deep. I walk as slowly as I can toward the truck. I’d rather be back in the boring classroom than about to suffer Daddy’s wrath.

“Get moving,” he says. “Wasted enough time with this hogwash.”

He hands me back my knife, shakes his head, and says, “Fool doesn’t know the difference between a weapon and a tool.” He starts laughing. I look at him, shocked; then I start laughing, too.

“What do ya say we play hooky and go get a cone at Twistee?”

The only time Daddy ever takes us to Twistee Twirl is when he feels bad after one of his rages. When it comes time to order, he sticks his head through the little window and asks for three vanilla cones dipped. I’ve never told him I hate dipped cones. That the hard shell of chocolate always tastes more bitter than sweet, a lump of sadness that sits in my stomach and never melts.

“All right,” I say. Daddy is in one of his better moods, so I decide to tell him the truth. “But not chocolate dipped. I don’t like mine that way.”

“You don’t like a dipped cone?”

“No. I like vanilla and chocolate swirled.”

Daddy looks at me thoughtfully, nods his head. “Well, now. I didn’t know. I’ll try to remember.”

Twenty-one

I’ve decided being suspended is one of the best things to ever happen to me. Daddy doesn’t give a hoot about school. He considers it a pile of useless hogwash—Fractions? What the hell are you going to do with fractions? And Mama doesn’t seem to feel much different. Even though she attended three years of college before marrying Daddy, she didn’t end up any place good because of it.

Each morning when the rooster crows at 6:30, I get to curl up under the covers for another hour while Sissy dresses. I know she’s jealous I don’t have to go to school because I hear her stomping around the room, slamming her dresser drawer extra loud and angry trying to wake me up.

Today’s going to be a good day. Daddy is sending Silas and me to Lake Wales to grocery shop at the Piggly Wiggly, which means a couple of things: One, money is good, and the refrigerator and cabinets will be full for a change. Otherwise, we just go to Fresh Market in town and pick up the few things we can afford. And two, I get to hang out with Silas.

Silas and I bump along in the truck. He rests his elbow on the open window, his hand on the steering wheel. The radio is off, the silence easy between us. If Sissy were here, that radio would be blaring. I like music, but also like the quiet of my thoughts. Silas isn’t much for rock music; he thinks it sounds like noise. Birdsong, babbling brooks, palm fronds rustling in the wind—that’s his music, he says.

Daddy gave me money for groceries and a list in his chicken scratch that I can barely read. I scan it to see if there is anything good—canned tuna fish, noodles, mayonnaise, saltine crackers—that means tuna casserole for dinner. I hate tuna casserole. I continue reading, hoping for something delicious, like Oreos or potato chips or soda pop—but no such luck. Instead, we get liverwurst (gross), lettuce, tomato, eggs, coffee, Corn Flakes, milk, chicken legs, rice, white bread. I groan.

“What’s bugging you?” Silas asks.

I look over at him—bare foot on the gas pedal, hat on his head, shirtless under his coveralls, long hair hanging down. I think about how little he has and feel bad for not being more grateful.

“It’s not important,” I say, turn my gaze to the window, and go back to wondering. “Silas, what would you be if you could be anything?”

“A turtle,” he says.

I laugh. “No, I mean for work. Like, I dream about being a writer. And Sissy has always wanted to be a singer on the radio. What if you had a choice, and you could be anything your mind dreamed up, what would it be?”

“Well, I’ve never thought about it,” he says. “But I do like watching the airplanes and wonder what it would be like to fly one.”

“That’s called a pilot,” I say.

“A pilot. I’d be a pilot and fly around free as a bird.”

“That’s kind of what writing stories is like for me. The only time I feel totally free is when I’m alone filling up those empty pages with whatever’s on my mind.”

We pull into the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. Silas stops at the front door to drop me off.

“Aren’t you going to come in?” I ask.

“Perhaps it’s best if I just wait in the truck.”

“Aw, come in! Going to the grocery is fun—they have tables set up with free samples of food for you to taste.”

“Free food? I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“Well, they hope you like it enough to buy the product. It’s not like they have your best interest in mind or anything, but it still tastes good.”

He pulls into a parking space—I know the free food sold him. When we get to the front door, he pauses and says, “I’ve never been inside a grocery store before.”

“What! Are you serious?” I can’t imagine such a thing.

He shrugs his shoulders, and I feel bad for making him feel different—like the way Raffy did the night he took us to play the jukebox when we didn’t even know what one was.

“Well, all right, then. I’ll give you a tour. My favorite aisle is the candy one. Or maybe the Popsicle freezer.”

We walk into the overly air-conditioned store through the automatic doors, and he lets out a long whistle. I look around and try to view it through his eyes—aisles straight as the tree-lined corridors of the grove, the bright colors of the packaging, the shelves neatly stacked with cans and jars and boxes of food you didn’t even know existed.

I pull out the list, grab a grocery cart, and try to ignore the people looking at us—at Silas. I wonder if he notices the smirks, the stares, too.

“Come on, Silas. We’re going to start at the produce section.”

“What’s produce?” he asks.

“Oh, it’s just a fancy word for fruits and vegetables.”

“All right, let’s go to produce,” he says, testing out his new word. “Mind if I push the cart?”

“Nope, not at all.”

He’s excited as a child about to be let out of school for summer, and I think he looks real proud pushing that cart.

He stops, says, “What are these weird-looking things?”

“Grapes.”

“Grapes? Do you eat them?” He reaches out and pokes at one.

“Yes, but I’ve never tried them. Daddy refuses to buy fruit, says oranges are the best there is, why waste money paying for anything else.”

“I agree with your pa on that one.”

I pluck two grapes from the heaping bunch and hand one to him. He looks at me shocked, then quickly pops it in his mouth. I do, too. We smile at the same time.

“I like grapes,” he says. “Think I can grow them in my garden?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I’ve never seen any growing around here, but it never hurts to try. I’m going to go fetch the tomatoes. Will you please get a head of lettuce? Make sure there’s no brown.”

I pluck through tomatoes, looking for the reddest ones, just like people do with oranges when they stop at our stand. I wonder if the color of tomatoes, unlike oranges, has anything to do with the quality inside.

I hear a loud commotion and turn to see a pile of apples tumbling off a table onto the linoleum floor, a stunned little girl standing nearby the obvious culprit. Silas hears it, too, goes over, and starts picking up spilled apples and stacking them neatly back where they belong. The little girl stands by, watching.

Silas hands her one of the apples. “Is this what you were reaching for?”

No sooner does the child take the apple than her mother appears out of thin air, the way mothers are prone to do, and slaps the apple out of her small hand, making her burst into tears. “Stay away from that filthy boy, Millie. He’s not safe. Might try to kidnap you.” She grabs the girl by her hand and whisks her away.

A startled Silas remains; he doesn’t look happy anymore. That huge smile wiped clean. He slowly continues restacking apples. I reach him just as the grocery man arrives to clean up the mess. He takes one look at Silas and says, “You have to leave now. Didn’t you read the sign on the door?”

Silas shakes his head no.

“No shoes, no shirt, no service.”

I want to say it’s not his fault he can’t read signs and he’s too poor to buy shoes—that folks can’t help what they are born into and you shouldn’t judge people by the way they look. But I know it would only make Silas feel worse to have these things pointed out. No one likes to be reminded of their differences.

“Come on, Silas. Let’s get out of here.”

“What about the list? You don’t want to make your pa mad.”

“There are plenty of groceries I’d be happy to give my money to. The Jewel is just down the road,” I say extra loud so the man hears.

We get back in the truck, but Silas doesn’t start it, his eyes stay fixed on the store. I watch his face—sometimes he looks so sad. “That’s why I keep to myself,” he says. “Can’t tell how different you are if you have no one to compare yourself to.”

I agree. I hate school, where my oddness shines brightest against the backdrop of the other kids. “Silas, I like to think we aren’t different or weird. Just out of the ordinary.”

“Out of the ordinary?”

“Yes—which means we are special.”

His face becomes a smile, he puts the truck in gear, and we move on down the road, the Piggly Wiggly a blip on the horizon until it is gone.

Twenty-two

Come March, the orange trees are draped in white blossoms. It is the heaviest Valencia bloom in a decade, and the sweet fragrance saturates the air from Sebring to Leesburg. It blankets our sleep, tints our dreams, and tugs at secret places in memories. Mama pauses in the open kitchen window. Daddy lingers in the grove long after the work is done.

Saturday morning. Mason jars are lined up on the picnic table. Pieces of ground orange blossoms float languidly through the water, the metal lids scorching to the touch by afternoon’s end. The sweet-scented liquid will fetch a dollar per bottle at the Orange Blossom Festival in Winter Haven today.

Through the kitchen window I watch Silas fill crates with hay and carefully pack the bottles labeled Orange Blossom Water in Mama’s small, tight script. He loads them into the back of Daddy’s truck, along with bags of oranges, orange blossom honey, and plastic pints of freshly squeezed juice.

Across the kitchen table, Sissy pushes her oatmeal around the bowl but doesn’t eat it. Piles the rock-hard raisins on the side.

Mama notices, too. “Eat your breakfast. I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, acting like food is some sort of poison.”

“I’m just not hungry,” Sissy says. “Can I be excused to go change?”

“When you finish eating,” Mama says.

Sissy scowls, starts shoveling oatmeal in her mouth, and swallows it in one giant gulp, gets up, and drops the tin plate into the sink with a clank.

I hear her feet on the stairs and then the sound of our bedroom door as she slams it behind her. Change? Sissy hasn’t worn anything but denim overalls for the last couple of months.

“Pip, help Silas finish loading so we can get going,” Daddy says.

I join Silas at the picnic table, stuff hay into crates, and bury the bottles. We work, not saying a word, Silas whistling a cheerful tune, making me wish he was coming with us instead of grumpy Sissy.

Sissy joins me but doesn’t help, just watches us. She’s still wearing the overalls but has replaced the ratty tee she’s been wearing underneath for the last two days with a clean pink shirt. Her braid is undone, and the front part of her hair pulled back and clipped in a barrette. The braid has left beautiful ripples that roll down her back. She hasn’t worn her hair loose since the carnival left town and I think she looks pretty.

When the truck is packed, Mama and Daddy get in the cab. Sissy and I sit in the back with the crates. We leave Juicy Acres, drive north into the spring green landscape that has no beginning or end, the groves turning into pastures of horses, spotted cattle, fields of strawberries, lettuce, cabbage before becoming more citrus groves.

I’m happy—with the sunlight, the colors, the smells, the luxuriant warmth of the perfect Southern day. Our backs rest against the warm metal cab, our shoulders touching. Sissy’s eyes are closed. Her lips turn up in a sweet smile. Memories of the last three months fade away with the passing miles—as if we could leave it all behind.

A road sign saying Winter Haven is just ahead, and a billboard advertising the seventy-fifth-annual Orange Blossom Festival comes into sight. Daddy finds us a prime parking spot on Orange Avenue along the parade route, opens the back of the truck, and sets out our crates.

“Look at the crowd!” he says. “It’s going to be a stellar sales day! Here, take three dollars, and go find some fun. But don’t snack too much. We’re going to stop for cheeseburgers and malts at Diamond Jim’s Drive-In on our way home! Best burger you’ll ever eat! Isn’t that right, Ada?”

“I have to agree with your daddy on that one,” she says.

It must be mighty good because she doesn’t agree with him on much. Overhead, a jet plane leaves a white trail across the cloudless blue sky, and I think of Silas.

Sissy takes the money, says, “Let’s ride the Ferris wheel, Pip!” Like the old days when she used to read my mind and blurt out my thoughts before I did. I look at her suspiciously, not sure why she is being nice all of a sudden, but I don’t think too long about it. I’m just grateful she’s in a good mood.

We head off into the fairgrounds, past the rodeo ring and the livestock tent with the blue-ribbon cow. We stop at the penny candy buckets, buy Pixy Stix, dump the colored sugar on our tongues. When the sugar dissolves, we stick our tongues out at each other—mine bright blue and hers lime green.

I see the giant wheel looming in the distance. “Come on, Sissy—if we hurry, we can get the next ride, I bet.”

“Run ahead and save a spot. You’ve always been faster.”

I do, but when I stop to catch my breath, turn around, I don’t see Sissy. “Dang it!”

I retrace my steps. Can’t go on a Ferris wheel ride with no money—and of course, Sissy has all the money.

Finally, I see her. Standing outside the beer tent, peering through the opening.

“Sissy,” I scream. “Sissy!”

She looks up at me. Then ducks inside. Not knowing what else to do, I unhappily follow—because I have always followed her, not thinking about my own movements, but tracing hers instead.

She finds an empty table back in a corner away from the dance floor, and we sit down. A meager band with a trumpet, banjo, and stand-up bass is playing. Men and women are packed on the dance floor, spinning and sweating, the afternoon sun soaking into the canvas roof of the tent and heating the air around us.

“What are we doing in here?” I ask her. “Let’s go ride the Ferris wheel.”

“I’m thirsty for a beer.”

“Beer? You’re not old enough to get a beer, and I don’t want to waste our money on that anyway.”

“Mind your own business.” And just like that, Sissy’s gone and the alien is back.

I watch her walk up to a table of older boys. She is talking, smiling, twirling her hair around her finger. Her breasts push up against the front of her coveralls, and I notice for the first time how full they’ve become; the little white buttons of her shirt strain to stay closed.

A boy smoking a cigarette passes her a beer. She gulps the cup down, dabs at her mouth with the back of her hand, picks up another, and does it again. I watch her pull the money Daddy gave us out of her pocket and hand it to the boy with the cigarette. He gets up from the table and walks toward the beer concession, smoke trailing him like a ghost. He returns with a pitcher of beer, and I know the money is gone.

The boy grabs an empty chair and pulls it next to him, smacks the seat hard with his open palm, the sound of his fat college ring reverberating against the metal.

“Come on over,” he says to me. I reluctantly do. But I’m too mad to sit. I can’t believe all our money is gone. What are we gonna do the rest of the day?

“Let’s go, Sissy. We don’t belong here.”

“Where do we belong?” she says sarcastically, rolling her eyes at me and then looking away in disgust.

“I don’t know. Someplace else,” I say. “I thought we were going to ride the Ferris wheel until you spent all our money,” I say pointedly.

She ignores me, holds out her cup, and the boy fills it with beer.

“I’ll ride the Ferris wheel with you, cutie,” another says to me, giving me a wink like Raffy used to. The hair goes up on my arms, and my hand instinctively covers the five Raffy-kissed scars.

Sissy slams another beer and belches. The boys laugh.

One of them says, “You know, you’re prettier than the Orange Blossom Queen.” He reaches out and strokes her long, rippling hair.

I want to smack his hand away.

“Your hair looks like sunshine,” he continues. “That’s what I am going to call you. Sunshine.”

I keep my eyes on the dance floor, on the couples holding each other close, try to ignore Sissy basking in the attention of these boys, glowing warm from the beer and their compliments, her own words becoming soft and slurred.

I see what beer does to Mama. How at first she’s happy, then it wipes her expression clean off and she talks about things I don’t want to hear.

Too many bodies, too much sweat and smoke, the stench of stale, spilled beer. Disappointment. I suddenly feel sick and need to get outside and away from Sissy, the brief glimpse I had of her earlier in the day gone. I stupidly let myself believe things were back to the way they’d been before Raffy. If this is what being in love does to a person, I want nothing to do with it. I push past bodies until I am free.

Twenty-three

Outside, a soft rain has started. I stand under a big oak and gulp in the fresh spring air. Drizzling rain quietly falls through the leaves on the branches I’m climbing. I find a sturdy limb and straddle it. Lost among the green I feel like I’m in another world—the Orange Fest, the beer tent, Sissy, Mama, and Daddy—all a million miles away.

Wind blows, and droplets sprinkle my face and moisten my hair. The leaves are so thick I can’t see much; there are only sounds and smells—wet dust, wet grass, distant strains of the band in the beer tent, rain frogs croaking—and male voices below.

“I think Sunshine’s taken a liking to you.”

I look down and recognize two of the boys from the table, relieving themselves on the side of the tree.

“I think she’s taken a liking to all of us. Bet she’d go in the woods.”

“Wish Maggie were so easy! I can’t even get to second base.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a difference between Maggie and Sunshine—I mean, did you check out what she’s wearing? Dressed like my father’s gardener,” he says with a laugh.

I imagine Maggie—pearls and perfectly coiffed hair, shiny patent leather pumps with a pocketbook to match—realize they consider us poor white trash. It never occurred to me that’s how folks might view us. I am shocked and embarrassed. Is this how Silas feels when folks treat him bad because of the way he looks?

“Who gives a crap what she’s wearing—it’s what’s underneath that counts!”

The two boys laugh, zip their pants, and move away.

I remember Mama’s beer-slurred words—words I didn’t understand at the time. Boys only want one thing girls—to get in your pants. I don’t want you to get trapped the way I have.

I try to see the entrance to the beer tent, but it is blocked by leaves, so I climb higher in search of a limb with a better view. I just got settled when I see Sissy leave the tent, arm looped through the boy’s who was complaining about some girl named Maggie. Compared to Raffy, he looks like a toad.

She doesn’t walk straight, but staggers and trips, and he appears to carry her as much as she walks. He moves quickly around a corner and disappears into a thick cluster of trees.

I scramble from my perch, scraping the sides of my legs bloody on the way down, but that doesn’t stop me. Once on the ground, I notice the crowd has thinned. The afternoon growing late, the rain sending folks to look for shelter. Concessions are breaking down and packing up; the festival no longer looks festive, just regular people going back to regular lives.

I start in their direction, follow the path through the trees, but once inside, the path breaks into many narrow trails. I hear nothing but rain on leaves, a car horn, the distant grumble of thunder. I run down one of the trails, then another, lost in a maze of pathways. I stop to catch my breath. Then a male’s voice, loud and gruff. “You know you want it.” Through a break in the brush, I see Sissy, her back up against a tree, the boy pressed against her.

“Stop!” She tries to push him off but is no match. His large frame devours her small one.

I search the leafy ground for a rock, find one, and throw it at his back, missing by a mile. It lands with a thud, startling him, and he lets go of Sissy, who is too drunk to stand. She slides down the trunk of the palm until she is slumped on the ground like a rag doll, her head rolling side to side.

He whips around. His lips curl into a snarl. I take a step back, want nothing more than to run for my life, but I can’t leave Sissy.

“Well, if it isn’t the ugly duckling,” he sneers, swaying back and forth. Clearly the beer has gotten to him, too.

I take a step back and another as he nears me.

“Get out of here, twerp. I mean it!”

He walks back to Sissy, a moaning heap in the dirt, and gives her a nudge with his foot. “Get up,” he says. “Finish what you started.”

Sissy manages to lift her head, then pukes all over his shiny penny loafers, again and again, uncontrollably.

If I weren’t so terrified, I would have burst out laughing.

He looks down and scowls. “Filthy cracker!” Shoves her with his foot like a stray dog and staggers away without glancing back.

I let out a long sigh and realize I’ve been holding my breath. I go to Sissy. Kneel and gather her hair in my hands, hold it back from her face until she finishes being sick, like she’s done with mine before.

“Pip?”

“Yes, Sissy. Who else would it be?”

I look at my sister—what a mess she’s become—her behavior this morning a cruel tease, a bitter reminder of how much I’d lost.

“I miss the way things used to be, Sissy,” I say quietly.

“Can’t ever be like it used to,” she slurs. “Like Mama says—time always takes back what it gives.”

“Stop being so dramatic. You’re saying things you don’t mean because you’re drunk—like Mama does.”

“Mama doesn’t say things ’cause she’s drunk. She says them ’cause she means them. Beer just loosens her tongue.”

We are silent because we know this is true.

“Remember when we first moved to Juicy Acres and you saved my life?” she asks.

I remember. We had been playing on top of the old well, which was a hole dug into the ground with some rotten boards placed over the top. The wood broke under Sissy, but she didn’t fall through. She had, amazingly, instinctively, put her arms out to the side like wings, caught herself, and stopped from falling deep. Most of her body was hanging in that hole until I pulled her out, even though I was much smaller.

“I wish you could save me now. But nobody can.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have a secret,” she slurs. “Something no one else in the whole world knows but me.”

There is a seriousness in her face. A darkness in her eyes.

She leans forward, about to speak, and I think she is going to let me in, help me understand what makes her cry at night when she thinks I am sleeping. But she just shakes her head. Her eyes fill up with tears; the back of her hand wipes them away, leaving dirt smudges on her cheeks.

“Never mind. Just never mind.”

“Sissy, you’re scaring me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I said never mind, Pip!”

She stands, sways. I link my arm in hers to steady her, and we walk silently through the quiet fairgrounds, bound together like conjoined twins.

I can’t get Sissy’s words out of my head. The desperate look in her eyes the moment I thought she was going to share her secret. What does she keep from me? What could be so bad? I know she hurts all the time.

The rain has stopped, but the sky remains clouded and dark, the perfect blue day gone. Daddy is standing outside the truck, impatiently pacing. Mama is sitting inside, her head resting on the back of the seat, eyes closed.

“Where the hell have you two been? Rain drove folks away an hour ago, and we haven’t sold a thing since. Barely made enough money to pay for the damn gas here and back.”

He’s too caught up in his own frustration to realize Sissy is drunk. I spread hay from the packing crates across the flatbed so we’d have a dry place to sit, give Sissy a boost. She curls into a ball and falls immediately asleep.

I study her. The sadness evident in her changing face so that what I remember is almost not visible at all. How like our mother she has become in her silence and moods, the days when it does not seem worth her while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead.

We drive through the blue twilight. Past cotton fields. Tin-roofed shanties. Diamond Jim’s Drive-In, with its colorful neon sign and line of waiting cars. Deeper into the heart of citrus country.

•   •   •

I sit cross-legged on top of the picnic table, haunted by Sissy’s words this afternoon. There are a million stars in the dark night sky. It is quiet, but not silent. I don’t believe there are silent nights in Florida. Always a frog croaking, a dog howling in the distance, songs of the night bugs, stray cats fighting.

The house is dark except for our bedroom window. The light is still on, and Sissy stares out through the glass. I watch her run her fingers through her hair like a comb, pull it in front of her shoulders, fluff it at the crown. She is staring at her reflection in the window.

She disappears, though the light stays on, and soon she is back. Her hair now in two long braids. I watch her take a pair of scissors, and to my horror, cut off one braid, and then the other.

She doesn’t hold them, just lets them fall to the floor. Her beautiful hair, gone. What remains hangs raggedly at her chin so she no longer looks like Sissy. She stares at herself, a stranger in the glass, no expression on her face. She opens the window, throws the braids out into the yard, and the room goes black.

I get up off the picnic table and stand below our window. There they are, the two braids, golden enough to be visible in the night. I pick them up and run my hand down the soft twists. So many memories carried in those strands—Sissy teaching me how to French braid her hair, the hours I spent rolling it in cans so it would curl, teasing knots out with a wide-toothed comb, the way it glistened when the sun hit it just right, showing off all the different shades of gold streaking through.

I return to our room. Sissy is asleep, covers pulled over her head so I can’t see her hair.

I reach under my bed and feel around for my Florsheim shoebox. In it I store my keepsakes. A jar of sand from Juicy Acres. An arrowhead I found buried in the grove. A cellophane-wrapped book of fairy tales borrowed from the library and never returned. I put the braids in the box with everything else that is precious.

Outside memories, they feel like the only piece of Sissy I have left.

•   •   •

In the morning, I come down to see Sissy sitting in the kitchen. A holey faded-blue bath towel draped around her shoulders. She clutches it closed at the neck, sits up straight, not slouched, face totally blank.

“Child, what possessed you to do such a thing? That beautiful hair!”

Mama tries hard to get it even, but it just gets more crooked. Finally she gives up, deciding it best to leave it be or Sissy might not have any hair at all. Mama picks up a fistful of Sissy’s ravaged locks, shakes her head in disbelief. “It will be years before you have hair like that again. Years!”

Sissy is so still I swear she doesn’t blink or swallow, like she’s completely checked out of her body. I study her face while Mama cuts. Stare at it and stare at it, looking for a hint of what used to be. But she is unrecognizable, her transformation so heartbreakingly absolute.

This must be what phantom pain feels like. I read about it once. How people who lose a limb can still feel it—an aching for something that is no longer there.

Twenty-four

I have a confession. One afternoon I followed Silas without his knowing. I’m not sure why I did it, really, just that I was curious as to where he went off to on his own.

Gone through the grove, he swings himself over the faded gray wooden fence with two hands, walks down the road until he cuts off from it and is lost among pine and scrub. He moseys along, not with the quick step of someone in a hurry, but languidly, whistling a tune the whole while, his hands buried in the pockets of the denim overalls he wears with no shirt, his skin shiny with sweat.

I know this path well. It leads to Lake Leona, one of the many sinkholes that dot central Florida, which has more than any other state in the nation. Daddy likens the geology to Swiss cheese covered in sand.

The water is clear green and cold. One hundred feet deep, so you can’t see the bottom. I know because Sissy and I have spent hours floating face down, eyes open, looking for all it’s devoured. When we tire of that, we float on our backs and practice water ballet, trying to fold our bodies into a clam, sinking seamlessly into the water like we’ve seen Esther Williams do in the movies. I always splash around like a fighting fish, but Sissy can sink gracefully beneath the surface with barely a ripple, her perfectly pointed toes the last to submerge.

I watch Silas. He takes his time. Strength and supple grace. Muscles carved like stone by the labor that has sculpted him. The wide smile and deep brown eyes with golden rims the only remnants of the boy I once knew. Out here in the wild, I understand that I am more in his world than my own. He belongs to it—the water, the mud, the trees, the fish, the stars. He moves so easily through it.

When he reaches the edge of the lake, he takes off his overalls. He is naked underneath. Startled, I look down and watch his feet sink into the wet sand—it’s the first time I’ve seen a naked boy. Goose bumps cover my arms as I imagine they do his as he enters the icy lake, bare body walking into water so cold it hurts at first until your limbs go numb, and then it is a pleasant place to be.

The water swallows him up, and there is nothing but a bobbing head in the still green. He swims out toward the center, strong strokes, cutting through the water with barely a ripple, like a gator, then flips over on his back and floats, looks up at the clouds moving lazily across the sky. I imagine a school of minnows pecking at his flesh, nibbling on his skin. I imagine doing the same, surprised at the pleasure this thought brings.

He treads water for a time, staring out into the distance, turning in a circle as if to take it all in, or as if he senses eyes watching him, then dives down again, his head disappearing for so long beneath I’m scared he will never emerge, sucked into that hole with no choice. Finally, he pops up and gives a shake of his long hair before he swims back to shore and walks out of the lake. This time I do not look away.

Droplets of water roll down his body, like a thousand stories that never got told. I want to capture each one on my tongue, drink in his secrets. I feel my cheeks burning even though I am alone.

He stretches out on his stomach in the sand, arms under head for a pillow, wet body glistening. Behind him the late-afternoon sun spills across the surface of the lake, like a glittering path of diamonds to be scooped up and given away.

The longer I watch, the more I feel the wrong of what I’m doing. But I can’t take my eyes off him, can’t force myself to go.

Finally he stands, leaving a nest in the sand the shape of his body, reaches for the overalls he’s neatly hung on a tree branch, puts them on, and heads for home. He whistles a happy tune, sounding more like birds than song.

There had been hints of beginnings. Faint whispers, teases slight as a feather’s tickle. But always this one remains. This was its own.

Twenty-five

Daddy stands at the stove, flipping pancakes. His hips sway back and forth to Buddy Holly singing on the radio. It’s Sunday morning, and Mama is long gone to her cleaning job. It’s an unseasonably hot day for April. The windows are open, and the smell of blossoms mingles with the smell of melted butter. Sun shines on the wooden floor, and leafy shadows dance across the kitchen wall. Daddy is in a good mood because the abundance of blossoms promises a good crop of Valencias to come. He calls the blossoms white gold.

“When this harvest pays off, I’m going to buy us a television set so we can keep up with current events—hear what Mr. President Kennedy has to say about the future of this great country. And new school dresses for you girls from Driscoll’s Department Store. Enough Dollar Duds. Times are changing in the Bean household. I can feel it!”

I wish I believed him. I hated Dollar Duds. For a “buck a bag” you get to stuff as much as you can into a brown paper grocery sack. I don’t mind the clothes are used—like Sissy does—I just can’t stand the smell of dirty clothing. The entire store smells like a hamper of filth.

He doesn’t see Sissy roll her eyes, having heard this a hundred times before.

“And for your beautiful mama—well, hell, I’ll get whatever makes her happy!”

I know his words are empty promises, but I don’t care. I love this Daddy and want the moment never to end. I don’t give a hoot about a new dress or television set.

“I’m taking you girls to have some real fun! We’re going to find Lost Lake! You know why it’s called Lost Lake? Because for years now, no one seems to recall where it is. I’ve heard it is the most beautiful lake on the Ridge. Filled by a natural spring, aqua blue and so clear you can scoop fish up with your hands and fill your pockets with them.”

I was planning to ride my bike to Driscoll’s and spend the day loitering in the air-conditioning. I have a nickel to spend on the penny candy buckets. Figure if I get jawbreakers, I can suck on them all afternoon in the chilled air while reading comic books.

“It’s too hot,” says Sissy.

“Hot?” Daddy asks, incredulous. “Hot? What kind of hogwash is that? You’re a Bean, fourth-generation Floridian, born for heat like an ox is born for labor! Finish up and get in the truck.”

Sissy throws her half-eaten food in the trash and stomps out ahead of me, gets in the passenger side, slams the door in my face.

“Too hot for us both to be up front. You go sit in back.”

I’m happy to oblige. Would rather be alone with my thoughts and the wind than grumpy Sissy.

Daddy says, “You can’t sit in the back, Pip. You’ll need to be buckled up for this ride!”

Daddy gets in and tells Sissy to slide over, which makes her even more annoyed because it means she sits in the middle—the hot seat.

We hit the road, windows down, my head hanging out like a dog’s. Daddy drives much too fast on the long, open stretch, and my heart is in my throat from the thrill of the speed. I can feel it pounding in my chest a million miles an hour, just like it does on the Crazy Mouse. Daddy takes a hard left turn off the road, busting through the tilting barbed wire fence and screeching by the No Trespassing sign with a shout of “Woo-hoo! ” Sissy’s arms are outstretched, and she clutches the dashboard, eyes shut so tight squint lines appear. I almost feel sorry for her because I know how much she hates scary rides.

We race wildly through the open land, kicking up a sandstorm behind us. In the distance is a thicket of green. Daddy’s foot is holding the pedal to the floor and not letting up until we get to the edge of the woods. It is too dense to drive any farther, the trees a lush tropical forest all tangled together.

Daddy stops the pickup. “Have to walk the rest. Only way to get through that mess.”

He packed a cooler of beer and soda. I take an ice-cold bottle of grape Nehi and rub it across my dripping forehead and along the back of my sweaty neck. Sissy does the same while Daddy quickly drinks three beers like he just stumbled upon water in the Sahara Desert. Takes another from the cooler, chugs it, drops the can in the dirt and smashes it flat with the heel of his boot but doesn’t bother to pick it up. When he walks away, I snatch it, toss it in the back of the truck with the others.

“Beans aren’t afraid of gators or rattlers or droves of skeeters. Hell no!” Daddy says.

The beer has clearly gotten to him, but I am eager to be out of the beating sun and back among the shady trees. Sissy lets out a grunt of annoyance he doesn’t hear.

Into the woods, deeper into the shadows, the landscape in wild disorder. No paths, spongy earth overgrown with brush, fallen logs to climb over, dripping moss dangling from limbs to brush aside. Mosquitoes scream in our ears. Sweat drips from the tips of our noses. I can feel the fun being sucked from the day like the blood being sucked from my body.

Finally, we come upon a small clearing—a stone doorstep cracked and splintered with age. A crumbling brick house with the windows broken out, deeply shaded except for small breaks in the trees so that slivers of sunlight shine through. Wildflowers and rambling strawberries grow alongside. Abandoned homesteads like this are common sights. Deserted during hardship that must have been insurmountable. There is plenty of suffering on the Ridge.

“This is the old Proctor house, which means we’re getting close,” Daddy says. “Why don’t you girls keep on looking for that lake? I’m gonna rest here under this tree. Wake me when you find it.”

Daddy pulls his cap down over his eyes and is asleep in an instant, his breath deep and regular, then turns into a snore.

Sissy sits down on the stone stoop. Brushes away the ants crawling up her leg, smacks at a mosquito on her arm, flicks the bloody body off in disgust.

“I’m going to find Lost Lake. Ready for a swim in those cool blue waters Daddy keeps talking about. Want to come?”

I don’t know why I bother asking. Perhaps habit. Perhaps hope. Perhaps just waiting for the time her response doesn’t smart.

“Bug off, Pip. Only you would be dumb enough to believe any of Daddy’s stories. The only stories stupider than his are the ones you’re always scribbling down in that notebook.”

Sissy knows just where to strike. I snap.

“Why do you have to be so mean?” I scream. “I’m not the one who left you at the side of the road to rot like roadkill! That was Raffy! But I don’t care anymore. I can’t stand being around you!”

Sissy’s face remains blank—I’m more shocked at my outburst than she is.

I run. I stumble. I’m scratched and bitten and bleeding. Can barely see through the tears running down my face. Can barely breathe because my nose is stuffed full of snot. The air is so thick with humidity, moisture drips from the tips of leaves like morning dew. The afternoon chorus of cicadas swells in the heat.

I try to empty my head of her words. I don’t want words, or thoughts or memories. I want to be wild. Not wild like an alligator, with its wide-open jaws waiting to swallow you whole. I want to be wild like a minnow. Minnows have teeth hidden in the backs of their throats. They may look innocent on the outside but are fierce on the inside.

I have no idea how far I’ve walked, how long I’ve been gone. Everything looks the same. Endless tangles of green and dripping moss; the only other color the pale orange sky fading through the heavy canopy of leaves. Sunset already washed out, so I know night will come soon.

I retrace my steps, recognize the fallen log that is so thick I must straddle it to climb over, the trio of palms that looks as if they shot off from one root. But after that, nothing is familiar. Darkness creeps in. Fireflies flicker at my knee. The afternoon cicadas hush, and crickets take over. Softer. Less insistent. Soon the night singers will start, chant until the wee hours of the morning—kay-tee-did, kay-tee-did.

My toe stubs something, and I fall, bite my lip so hard the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. Beneath my hands I feel splintered wood—a boardwalk wildly overgrown with weeds. I stand and brush dirt off my scraped knees, carefully follow it through a tall, thick bush that hides what lies behind.

I imagine snakes dangling from the limbs, ready to strike my flesh with poison-injecting fangs. But I’m not afraid. I’m a wild thing. I have teeth in the back of my throat. They chew fear.

The dark canopy opens. I am at the edge of a small lake. A big, low moon rising casts a beam of light on the water—a path to nowhere—and I see the boardwalk is actually a dock leading to a wooden shack on stilts. I walk the short length and knock on the weathered door. I half expect it to creak open and old man Proctor to be glaring back at me for intruding on his eternal silence. When no one answers, I open it.

In the dim moonlight I see a large screened room with a wood-burning stove, two stumps for stools, a metal cot. Beyond the screens, the blackness of the jungle is impenetrable.

I go to the bed, lie down on the lumpy mattress. The warm air throbs and pulses with night song at an intensity I’ve never heard in the grove. It is deafening—but oddly soothing—its rhythm lulls. Moonlight spills over me, and I pull it tight around my shoulders like a blanket. It is the first night I have ever spent alone. It is the first night I have ever spent away from Sissy.

Twenty-six

I wake to the cacophony of birdsong. There must be a thousand of them calling back and forth to each other. Mama would love it. Bet she could name most of the birds by their calls.

I can’t remember the last time I slept so well. Like I don’t have a care in the world. I feel so far away, as if my life on the grove doesn’t even exist. I’m happy in a way I haven’t been in months. That’s when I realize how anxious Sissy makes me—trying to navigate her moods, planning my days to avoid her. It’s the first morning since the carnival left that I haven’t awoken with a stomachache.

I lie with my arms beneath my head, taking it all in—the rusted tin roof, creeper vines snaking across the ceiling, the old screens loose and wavy in their frames, the rough wood walls. I see a calendar tacked up—May 1940. Twenty-one years since anyone’s been back.

I sit up, look out, and gasp—not in my wildest imaginings could I have prepared my eyes for what they were about to see. Daddy was actually right—it truly is paradise on earth.

Lost Lake at dawn is hauntingly beautiful, like no place I’ve ever seen. The early-morning sun shines through the trees so the cypress trunks, wide and rippled, become mossy silhouettes. The leaves, which grow only on the very highest limbs, are a vivid emerald green. Mist hovers above clear aqua-blue water, still as glass. Lily pads with pink blooms sit breathless on top.

The only time I’ve ever seen water so clear and blue was at the municipal pool Ma Bean took us to before they hung a new sign on the chain-link fence: Colored Swim Time: Sunday from 3 Pm to 5 Pm. On Monday morning the pool was drained and scrubbed clean with bleach, but Ma Bean never took us again. By then Sissy and I knew better than to ask—after the drinking fountain incident at the clerk’s office, I understood how our grandparents felt about colored folks; what I didn’t understand was why.

Though it’s early, the humidity is already stifling, and I can’t wait to plunge into the water and wash yesterday’s dried sweat off my bug-eaten body. I strip, consider keeping my bra and panties on, but decide not to. I’ve never been skinny-dipping before. Wouldn’t have even thought to do such a thing had I not watched Silas. The memory brings an unexpected smile.

I walk out on the crooked dock. Stand naked and listen. I like the way the warm breeze feels on my bare skin, my bare nipples. Birds call back and forth. The sudden splash of a jumping fish. Croak of a lone frog. A turtle pokes his head out as if to say good morning. I watch a heron stand perfectly still on one leg for so long I wonder if he is real. I try to do the same but quickly lose my balance. Below the dock, a pool of bass lingers in the transparent water. I can’t wait to fill my pockets, like Daddy described, but when I slowly sink my hand into the icy water, they scatter. I pull my empty hand out, fingers numb from cold.

I take a running start, scream at the top of my lungs—every bone, every vein, every cell in my body screaming out hurt and anger. I cannonball into the frigid depths of the crystal water, sink deeper and deeper into silence, remember the underwater tea parties Sissy and I would have when we were much younger—hair floating above us like a mermaid’s, twin green eyes open and locked on the other’s—nibbling pretend cookies and drinking pretend tea. I want to stay underwater forever.

When I can hold my breath no longer, I surface and float on my back, spread my arms and legs wide so my body is in the shape of a star. The sun is getting higher; giant cobwebs shimmer in the dew-glistening branches when caught in the light, gossamer secrets exposed.

I swim to the shore, lie naked on the dock in a patch of sunlight, which quickly dries the water droplets on my cold skin, soon to be moist again with sweat. I don’t want to leave, but expect they’ll come looking for me now that it’s daylight. Who knows how good Daddy’s recollection will be this morning, his brain no longer soggy with beer. I’d hate for them to discover my secret spot.

Back in the cabin I look around and make note of the things I want to bring: a lantern and matches, a coverlet for the musty mattress, a frying pan for cooking up fish on the potbelly stove, a towel. When I close the door behind me, I feel sorry to leave. I turn around for one last look.

I follow the dock through the thick hedge, use my jackknife to trim away a path. I carve Xs in tree trunks as markers, try to ignore my grumbling belly and dry mouth. When I reach an opening in the thicket, I check the sun like Silas taught me and walk north toward the grove. I figure if I keep walking in that direction, eventually something will come into sight that’s familiar. When I can’t feel my legs any longer, the woods at last open to a sunny meadow full of hopping crickets and swooping dragonflies. I know this field well. Must be a mile from home if you cut through the neighboring groves.

I walk on, dreaming of pancakes with melted butter and syrup running down the side, a glass of cold milk. Or maybe a fried-egg sandwich with crispy bacon. Or, heck, all of it! I’ve never been so hungry in my life or happy to see our house because of it. I take the porch steps two at a time and burst through the screen door.

“Mama? Daddy? I’m home,” I call.

But there is only Sissy sitting on the porch, eating a bowl of Corn Flakes like it is any other morning. She doesn’t look happy to see me alive.

“Boy are you in trouble, running off like that. Caused a BIG argument between Mama and Daddy last night. They’re out looking for you now.”

“You know I didn’t run off. Went to look for the lake like Daddy told me to do. It got dark, and I couldn’t find my way back.”

I hear the roar of the muffler, watch the pickup come down the drive.

Sissy stands. “Guess you never found that lost lake,” she says with a snicker.

Mama and Daddy see me standing on the porch, and you’d think they’d seen a ghost. They both stop dead in their tracks, mouths hanging open.

Mama gasps and pulls me to her in an awkward hug. “Don’t ever let me hear of you chasing after one of your father’s tall tales again,” she says. “You’ll end up lost every time.” Then she releases me and says, “You must be starved. I’ll make you an egg sandwich with catsup,” like she could see into my thoughts.

She leaves the room, and Daddy says, “Your mama was sure you got devoured by some creature in the night. But me, I knew you’d be just fine. You’re a Bean. A chip off the old block.” Then after a moment, “So, did you find it?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Damn,” he says. “I hear it’s a real beauty. Paradise on Earth.”

Just like Sissy has her secret, now I have mine.

•   •   •

I scrounge around home collecting like a pack rat. A book of matches from the kitchen drawer. A kerosene lantern from the toolshed. A small chipped vase with pink rosettes found in the cellar. Toilet paper. I wrap my goods in a stained blue-checked tablecloth I found wadded up in the kitchen pantry and tie it to the end of a stick, carry it over my shoulder like a hobo. I fill my metal canteen with water at the pump, hang it around my neck. When I’m sure the coast is clear, I beeline it out of there.

I’ve figured out a shortcut. Biking the back sand roads and cutting through the groves, I reach the thicket in twenty minutes, stash my bike and hike the rest of the way into the endless green. Vines creep up and over, strangling everything.

I brought a notebook and pencil. Each time I find one of the Xs I carved as a marking, I draw it on my map.

When I reach the abandoned Proctor house, I stop and pick a wild strawberry. Hold the stem and nibble the berry like an apple. It is the sweetest strawberry I’ve ever eaten. I fill my pockets and hike on.

The shack is more magical than I remember. Dappled late-afternoon light, soft and golden, gently streams through the screens. Outside, birds wade daintily along the shallow shore, dip their beaks into the shimmering water for fish. Turtle heads pop to the surface. The ceaseless chorus of insects, like a rattler’s tail shaking away.

I get to work fixing up the shack. I use the checked tablecloth as a bedspread to cover the mattress, tuck it in all the way around, making tight hospital corners the way Ma Bean taught us. It brightens the room immediately, stains and all. I fill the vase with water and wildflowers, set it on the potbelly stove. I make a duster by tying palm fronds to the end of a long branch. I clean that shack until it is dust-free and the last cobweb swept away. I stand in the doorway and admire my work.

A place with no past. No memory. No rules.

A place all my own.

I call it the Mystery House.

Twenty-seven

“I found a secret spot.” Silas and I are raking the turkey shed. “There’s the clearest, bluest fishing hole you’ve ever seen. I want to take you when we finish. It’s real special. No one knows about it except me.”

He stops raking and raises one eyebrow in question.

“I hid my bike at the wishbone tree so no one will see us leave. We’ll go from there.”

The wishbone tree is a tall, skinny pine in a long-neglected corner of the grove where no citrus grows. It was struck by lightning ages ago. Split it right down the middle. I think it looks like a wishbone sticking straight out of the sand.

We bring our bamboo poles with the red-and-white plastic bobbers and a bucket of worms we dug out of the ground. Silas pedals while I balance on the handlebars, shouting directions—left down the bumpy road, through the small sunny meadow of crickets and bee-infested chinaberry, then a right onto a long, hilly stretch. We reach the thicket and continue on foot.

“This is where it starts to get a bit hairy. It’s swampy, so lots of skeeters,” I say. “You may get bitten up, but you won’t be disappointed.”

He reaches into his overall pocket, pulls out a leafy bunch of wild mint, and hands it to me.

“What’s this for?”

“Rubbing on your skin. Skeeters don’t like it.”

“How’d you know I was taking you someplace with skeeters?”

He laughs. “Your arms and legs covered with scabs from scratching. No skeeters in the grove in spring.”

He was right about that. They come with the summer rains.

I rub the mint on my arms, legs, neck, and hand it back to him. He tosses it.

“Why’d you do that? Aren’t you going to rub some on?”

“Nah. Bugs don’t like me much. I brought it for you.”

I look down because I know my cheeks are glowing red, unsnap the rusty metal tackle box, and take out my map. It is rolled and tied with one of Sissy’s hair ribbons that has no use since she chopped her hair. It looks prissy and out of place sitting atop a sea of rusty hooks, tangled line, dirty bobbers.

I remove the ribbon and unroll the map. I used Mama’s watercolors to paint pictures of the landmarks that guide me through the tangle. I clearly don’t have Mama’s painting talent, but I still think it looks good, kind of like a treasure map. Silas lets out an approving whistle.

“X marks the spot,” I say. “That’s where we are going. But I’ve discovered a few things on the way I think you’ll find interesting.”

He follows behind me. When I stop and turn, I see he has been clearing the path with his pocketknife—slicing away strangling vines, breaking off the pointy branches with a sharp crack.

I stop in front of a towering tree. “This is a bald cypress. It’s called the wood eternal because it’s one of the oldest living trees on earth. It can live to be a thousand years old. I call this beauty the Tree of Tears because it has so much moss it looks like it’s crying.”

I take out my knife, flip open the blade, and carve Pip in the massive trunk. I carve May 6, 1961, just below. “Your turn,” I say.

He takes the knife, squints, rolls his tongue around the inside of his cheek, which he does when he is concentrating. Slowly, carefully, he carves Silas.

“You’ve been practicing,” I say.

He nods. “That snake letter is hard.”

“Sure is. Not like the letter i. That’s just a straight line. Easy, right?”

He nods again.

“Imagine our names on this tree hundreds of years after we die. We’ll live on forever now.”

He reaches out and strokes the old trunk, traces the letters with his fingertip.

We walk deeper into the woods. The map guides us easily to the foot of the dock. I’d cut back the overgrowth, so the shack is now visible.

“Whose cabin is this?” he asks.

“It’s mine. I found it. Been abandoned for a lot of years now. Go ahead. Go on in,” I say.

He pushes open the door, holds it for me, then closes it softly instead of letting it slam.

I don’t say anything, just watch him as he looks about. I scoured the abandoned Proctor house one afternoon, come away with some good loot—mismatched silverware that I stood upright in an old pickle jar, a frying pan and spatula on the stove, waiting for some fish to fry, a small framed painting of a palm tree I hung by the cot.

Silas walks over and peers through the screen at the green leafy bank. The clear aqua-blue spring—a color I’d never seen before—bubbles up from deep beneath the sand.

“This is our secret place. Nobody to tell us what to do. Nobody’s rules to follow but our own. We can be whoever we want to be. Do whatever we want to do.”

He is quiet, and I can tell he understands what a special place this is.

We go to the dock. The water, still as glass, reflects green trees, white clouds, blue sky in precise colors. Silas rolls up the hem of his denims and steps into the spring, reminding me of the time I secretly followed him. In my mind his clothes fall away, his long, bare legs graceful as those of a great blue heron wading along the shore. I feel Silas looking at me.

“What you smiling so big about?” he asks, snapping me back from my daydream. He’s smiling, too.

“Maybe someday I’ll tell you,” I tease.

I cuff my pants and join him. Our toes sink into the sand. It oozes softly between them. We plunge into the icy depths, clothes and all. He swims to a deep, shaded pool and treads water. A breeze parts the leafy limbs. Sunshine drops on his head and shoulders.

“Well?” I ask.

“Never been someplace so pretty. Couldn’t even dream it up.”

I nod. “It’s our secret. No one can tell us what to do—we’re totally free.”

I pause for a moment. “I’ve never told anybody this, but when Mama and Daddy start screaming, I run into the grove. I climb up into a tree, high as I can go until quiet takes over and it feels like the universe has stopped. I pretend I’m in my own kingdom, living with animals and insects. No people. This place feels safe like those treetops.”

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I’m sorry. It sounds babyish. Why didn’t I just keep my trap shut?

“Bet you think that’s stupid.” I laugh like I don’t care. But I do. I care desperately.

“I understand,” he says. “It’s why I prefer the woods, the grove. Nature accepts you the way you are and either comes close or stays away.”

We sit on the dock to dry. Dangle our bare feet in the water, watch fish nibble our toes.

We skim flat stones across the surface to make them skip. Silas’s hop effortlessly—one, two, three, four, five jumps. Mine skip once if at all.

“Dang it,” I say. “I’ve never been good at skipping stones. Can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.”

“Picking the wrong stones, I’d guess.”

Silas reaches into his pocket. He then takes my hand, his fingers soft, not rough and calloused as one would think, and presses a stone into my palm. It’s shaped like a perfect heart.

I don’t skip it. I close my fingers around it and hold tight. I look at him—freckles scatter across his nose, reminding me of stars in the Milky Way—he’s staring at the sky. “Fixin’ to rain,” he says. And I’m relieved for a break in the moment.

“Aw, no it’s not. That sky looks nothing but blue.”

“Look at the birds.” He points to the trees.

Silent birds perch on the highest limbs, not hidden away in the leaves, beaks pointing toward the sky, wings tucked in tight.

“Means a storm is brewing,” Silas says. “Birds singing in the rain mean the sun’s coming out soon.”

Thunder grumbles in the distance, and he smiles. “Best be going if we want to beat that storm.”

I bury the stone in my pocket.

Twenty-eight

I hear hooting and hollering in the distance. Rarely do I pass another soul on the backcountry roads to and from the Mystery House, so I’m surprised.

Instinctively Silas begins to pedal faster. I’m perched on the handlebars, holding on for dear life. I look back, see a gang of boys, quick and darting like a swarm of mosquitoes, emerge from the cloud of dust being kicked up from their bike tires. I can tell they are looking for trouble.

“Faster, Silas, pedal faster!” I hear his huffing and puffing in my ears, and my hair’s blowing back in the wind.

But there is no chance of outrunning them with my extra weight on the bike. Soon they’re all around us, weaving in front, behind, on either side. We have no choice but to stop, and when we do, they circle us.

“Get off the bike,” a scrawny, bucktoothed boy spits. I don’t recognize any of them from school, which means they are Back Bay boys, the poorest town in Lake County. Those kids don’t go to school.

Silas and I get off the bike, and he lays it on the ground.

“We don’t want trouble,” I say. I already know nothing good is going to come of this. “We just want to be on our way. If it’s the bike you want, you can take it. We don’t have anything else.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Silas flinch, his hands clench and unclench at his sides. He is bigger than all those boys, but no match for their numbers.

The boy looks us up and down, walks over and grabs me by the shirt collar, pushes his face into mine.

“Empty your pockets,” he says. “I already know he’s got nothing in his.”

He lets go, and I reach into my pocket; my hand trembles. I pull out the only thing in it—the heart-shaped stone.

I keep my eyes fixed on the tall weedy grass running alongside the dusty road. There is no shade, just the fiery heat of the sun beating on us. The humidity soaring with the threat of the approaching storm. Lightning flashes in the far-off distance; sweat trickles down my stomach.

The boy swipes it out of my hand and looks at it. “A rock? A rock? I don’t believe that’s all you got. Pull out your pockets.”

I do as he says. They are empty. Without a word he turns and walks toward his bike, and I think we are home free. But he stops and faces us again.

He winds up his arm like he is pitching a baseball, and the stone comes hurtling at my face, hitting me in the nose. The hatred and anger in the power of that throw—one of those people born mean to the core. Blood pours from my nostrils; the pain is so intense it causes my brain to freeze. I see nothing but red. I cup my nose in my hands. Blood runs down my bare arms.

When I finally open my eyes, I see the boy on the ground and Silas kicking him with all his might. The boy is curled in a ball with his arms over his head, trying to protect his face. You can tell he has been beaten before.

“Silas, stop before they kill you!” I scream.

But it’s too late—the others are already upon him. Two of them grab him by the arms, and another gives him a slug to the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He is gasping for air like a fish dying on the riverbank.

“Stop,” I’m begging, “stop!”

The boy is back on his feet. “Stand him up straight,” he says, kicks him hard between the legs. When the other boys let go of his arms, Silas collapses into a groaning heap in the dirt. The boy walks over and spits on him. Pokes at him with his foot.

In the distance, I see dust rising and a car speeding toward us. I watch it getting closer and closer, praying it will stop and help. It is our only chance. I fix my eyes on that car, silently beg it with all my might. It doesn’t slow as it nears us or as it passes us by. We must have appeared little more than a blur of kids hanging out on the side of a road, whiling away a Saturday.

Then the car stops, pauses for a moment, and begins reversing.

“Let’s get out of here,” the boy yells. They hop on their bikes and speed off in the opposite direction, gone as quickly as they appeared.

I don’t know how many miracles a person is given in this life, but I just cashed in on one of mine.

The car reaches me, and a man gets out. I am so relieved I collapse to the ground, my legs no longer stable enough to hold me. I’ve never been so scared in my life.

The stranger helps me to my feet, takes a hankie from his pocket, and begins wiping the blood from my face. I must have looked quite the mess. Blood on my arms, my hands, the front of my T-shirt. I taste it on my lips. My nose throbs, and I can only breathe through my mouth. Silas is lying on the side of the road in a ball, moaning.

“What did that boy do to you? What has he done?”

“He didn’t do anything. It was the other boys. They are the ones that did this to us.”

The man looks back and forth between us, and I get the feeling he doesn’t believe me.

“Where do you live?”

“Belleville,” I answer.

“I’m heading that direction. Let me take you home.”

“My friend needs help,” I say. “I can’t leave him on the side of the road. He’s hurt.”

The man looks down at Silas—long hair tangled from the swim, dirty bare feet, shirtless. He shakes his head.

I run over to Silas, crouch down. “Silas,” I say. “Are you all right?”

He opens his bloodshot eyes. I see how much he hurts, but he still manages a small smile. I let out a big breath of relief and smile back. Blood from my nose drips down on him.

A hand grips my arm, not hard but insistent, pulls me to my feet, steers me to the passenger door. “Your parents need to get you to a hospital.”

“I won’t leave my friend!”

He opens the car door and pushes me in, closes it behind me. My nose hurts so bad I can’t think straight. I want to run from that car to Silas, but now the man is inside and we’re moving down the road. I turn around and watch Silas grow smaller and smaller until he disappears. This never would have happened if I hadn’t taken him to the Mystery House.

“You shouldn’t be friends with that kind of boy,” the man says. “I have three daughters. If the tables were turned, I’d hope your father would do the same.”

We don’t speak the entire ride, just a thank-you when the man drops me at the edge of our drive. I think about Silas piled in a heap at the side of the road. My heart hurts more than my nose.

I stop at the hand pump by the back door, pump the metal lever until water begins pouring out, wash my face and hands and bloody arms. I go to the clothesline, take down a clean shirt and pair of shorts and change behind a tree. The soiled clothes I bury in the sand. I know they will never come clean—not of the blood, not of the memory.

The house is stifling hot. The doors and windows are open, but the curtains hang limp. No breeze blows, the trees still as statues. Mama is sitting in the living room inches from the fan. She holds a cold beer on her cheek. Tiny beads of condensation dribble down the side like tears. Outside the window, a thin strip of horizon glows red-orange beneath a darkening sky.

“What in the world happened to your nose?”

I reach up and stroke it, not recognizing it as my own, thick beneath my fingers, pain pulsing through it in waves.

“I skidded on my bike and landed on my face.” I lied because it seemed easier than telling her the truth.

“You best get yourself some ice. Might help with the swelling.” She doesn’t move to help.

I open the freezer. The ice tray is empty, no one having bothered to refill it after taking the last cube. I storm out the back door cursing—there’s my bike, resting against the fence. I walk over to it, and on the seat is the heart-shaped stone. I clutch it, crouch down, hang my head between my knees, and cry. I cry out of relief that Silas is home. I cry at the unfairness of it all.

Dark clouds roll in—the fiery horizon snuffed—a steady rain begins to fall.

•   •   •

It rains for the next three days. I stare out the window into the dripping grove, worrying about Silas. I can’t stop seeing him curled on the ground—how dark his blood looked pooled in the white sugar sand. Finally the sun shines and Daddy tells me to go fetch my picking sack. He drops me in the grove next to a ladder, boxes piled high with beautiful Valencias, the prettiest orange in our crop. I hear whistling from the treetop and smile.

When the truck pulls away Silas comes down the ladder. He’s got a black eye and a fat lip. The bruise on his right cheek an odd mix of purple and green.

I can’t help myself—I throw my arms around him. After a moment, he wraps his arms around me, too. We hold each other. We breathe the other in. I whisper in his ear, “Are you okay?”

“I think we both got lucky that beating wasn’t much worse,” he says. “They would have left us dead on the side of the road for the vultures to finish off. Are you okay?” he asks, peering at my swollen nose.

“Yes, it aches, but Daddy says it’s not broken. Silas, you’re the bravest person I know, going up against those boys.” Besides Sissy, he is the only other person to ever come to my defense.

“I couldn’t watch him hurt you, Pip. It wasn’t even a choice—it was like my animal instinct kicked in and my body went into motion.”

Sissy didn’t think twice about walking out the door and leaving me behind. But Silas—he was willing to take a beating for me.

“Thanks for coming to my rescue, Silas.”

“Thanks for taking me to the Mystery House. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Silas, we can’t go back there. If we run into that gang again, they’ll probably kill us this time.”

“Well, we’ll just have to find another route. There are more ways than one to get to a place.”

I smile up at him—he always finds a bright side. “Really, you’d risk going back?”

“Being at that secret paradise—being with you—it’s worth the risk.”

Twenty-nine

Every Mother’s Day weekend for as long as I can remember, Daddy’s attended the annual citrus convention in Orlando. Mama drives him to the train station in Lake Wales, and an hour later she’s home.

The truck door slams, and she appears on the porch, where I am working on a new story in my notebook. “Pip, there’s no time for lazing around if we want to get there before dark. Come now.”

Get where before dark? I think as I follow her into the house.

Mama is pacing the living room excitedly. Back and forth, back and forth, the wooden floor creaking beneath her feet. She holds an ashtray in her left hand and a cigarette in her right. Sissy is sitting on the couch, watching her.

“I’ve got some exciting news, girls. We’re going on a little vacation to Saint Augustine. It’s time you met your grandparents.”

The only grandparents I have ever known were the Beans, so the vision of grandparents being anything but mean is nonexistent in my imaginings.

Silence, moments of it, then Sissy speaks the thought we are both thinking. “But I thought they disowned you?”

Mama stops pacing and becomes thoughtful. “It’s been a long time now. I expect their hearts have softened. And times are different. I sent a letter a few weeks back saying I was bringing their granddaughters to meet them.”

“Did they write back?” asks Sissy. “Did they say it was okay if we come?”

“No, but I didn’t expect them to. Only if they didn’t welcome us. I’d suggested in my letter they write back if that was going to be the case. Otherwise, we would plan to arrive Sunday, May fourteenth, to celebrate Mother’s Day as a family.”

“And there’s no letter?” asks Sissy.

“No letter,” Mama sings out.

“What about Daddy?” I ask. “Does he know we’ll be visiting while he is away?”

“No. No need. We’ll be back in time to pick him up at the train on Monday night.”

I eye the luggage by the front door. There isn’t just one suitcase, but three. The exact same three she packed when we left the Beans’ grove with everything we owned inside. I hate the feeling in my stomach.

I look over at Sissy, her eyes fixed on Mama. I can tell by her crinkled forehead, the way she keeps picking at her thumb cuticle, she is troubled, too.

“Please bring the bags and lock the front door behind you. I’ve got you all packed up.” She walks out of the room with a quick glance back, as if we are an afterthought to contend with.

We’ve never been on a vacation, so I don’t know what to think, except that we’re going to some strange place to meet grandparents who have no interest in any of us.

Sissy starts biting her nails.

We drive through the morning. The sun coming up low and soft. Groves and cotton fields flicker past, eventually giving way to concrete buildings rising three or four stories. Billboards replace citrus trees—Monkey Village, Underwater Mermaid Theater, Jungleland, McDonald’s—and when the golden arches appear like a rainbow on the horizon, we beg Mama to stop so we can try one of the famous fifteen-cent hamburgers, but she says, “Not now,” without a thought.

Mama’s right hand is on the steering wheel, left hand holds a cigarette; her elbow rests on the edge of the open window.

“I just can’t wait to show you girls the ocean. Oh, how I’ve missed it all these years. The smell of the air, like salt and rain mixed, and hearing the cries of the seagulls, and watching the sun rise, a perfect round ball the color of an orange coming straight out of the ocean.”

At that moment she doesn’t really look like Mama. Her face has softened so the lines appear faint. Wisps of hair fly loose from her bun and blow lightly around her cheeks until she absently tucks them behind her ear. Her cheeks are rosy with the heat of the afternoon, her skin covered in a light glaze of sweat that gives it a dewy appearance.

“You know what I like best about the ocean?” Mama continues, “That you can see the horizon, you can see until there is nothing to see anymore, just sky and water stretching out into infinity. Not like the groves, with the thick walls of trees that hold you so tight you can barely breathe.”

It is dusk when we arrive in Saint Augustine. We cross a long bridge with lights glittering up both sides and just starting to come on in the buildings surrounding us. We cruise the ocean strip, Mama’s head out the window, breathing in the salty air. “It’s so good to be home!”

I love seeing Mama happy. It’s like she’s a completely different person—a stranger. I never want this Mama to leave, think maybe this trip is going to turn out all right—her parents will forgive her, and Mama won’t seem so sad all the time.

We park at the beach, take off our shoes, and walk to the water’s edge, the coarse golden sand between my toes so different from the fine pale sugar sand on the grove.

I listen to the roar of the waves crashing out deep before rolling up—white foamy edges wash over my feet. Far out to sea, the lights of a barge creep slowly along. Even in darkness, the groves could never be as threatening as the ocean. The ocean is never still, always roiling, moving forward only to draw back from where it came.

“Careful of the undertow,” Mama says as we clutch the hems of our cotton sundresses in both hands, lift them up over our knees, wade out a bit and then a bit more, until we can feel the strong pull of the water behind our legs.

“I don’t know what it is about the ocean at night,” Mama says. “Sometimes I feel this urge to swim out in it, as far as I can go, nothing or no one to stop me. Just keep swimming and swimming until I can’t swim anymore.”

Sometimes Mama says the strangest things, as if she unknowingly shares her private thoughts instead of keeping them tucked away inside her head, where they belong.

“I’m hungry,” Sissy says, and I’m grateful to have an ordinary statement bring Mama back to her senses.

“All right. We passed a Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge back a bit. We can get a room there for the night. HoJo’s has a good restaurant, too. Famous for their fried clam strips.”

I’ve never stayed at a motor lodge, and the HoJo’s, as Mama called it, has an indoor pool with a slide. It’s the first indoor pool I’ve ever seen, and even though there is a roof, umbrellas poke out of tables as if there were sun to be shaded from, and lounge chairs are scattered about.

We get a booth by the window. I pore over the large plastic-coated menu, gaze at the photos of BLTs and crinkle fries, grilled cheese sandwiches cut in triangles, pork dinners with biscuits and butter beans, the fried-clam-strip basket. When the waitress comes and Mama snaps at me to stop acting like it’s the Last Supper and to order before she orders for me, I still pause.

I love everything about HoJo’s—the food, the pool, the television set in our room—but the shower is the cherry on top. After dinner, I take a long steaming shower—something I haven’t done since moving to Juicy Acres, where there is only the old claw-foot tub for bathing. I play tic-tac-toe on the steamed-up bathroom mirror, sign my name in elaborate curling script before wiping it all clean with my palm.

Mama is lying on the bed in her robe, hair wrapped in a towel, filing her nails. The room smells of soap and cigarette smoke.

I get in the other bed, which I share with Sissy, who is propped up on a pillow, watching television, pull the floral quilt up to my chin to keep the chill of the overly air-conditioned room out.

We watch I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners and The Benny Hill Show, and when I wake in the middle of the night, the television is still on, nothing but blue fuzz across the screen and the sound of static. Mama snores softly. I turn off the television, and the room is dark. Lights from the passing cars on the road slip between the crack in the drawn curtain and play along the wall. I pull the curtain tight, but even with it closed completely, the sound of cars does not fade.

I feel my way back to bed, lie next to Sissy, the unfamiliar noise of the road outside making me homesick for the quiet groves—for Silas. I never got to say goodbye. Will he wonder where I’ve gone? If I am ever coming back? I do.

Thirty

Mama hung our dresses in the closet the night before. She polished our scuffed too-small Mary Janes with a wet cloth, and they shone, until they dried and became dull again. The dress she picked for me is a hand-me-down from Sissy, like most of my clothes. I hate wearing dresses to begin with, and this one is especially loathsome. Selected for its practicality off the rack at the thrift store—chocolate brown so it wouldn’t show dirt, a white lace collar, puffed sleeves, three brass buttons down the front. I look ridiculous.

Mama wears the same dress she wore the day we moved to Juicy Acres. She picked it out thinking she was going to end up someplace special, someplace other than the groves. Even though it’s a pretty sundress, it brings back memories of that terrible day. Mama’s shock and horror and heartbreak when she realized Daddy had bought Juicy Acres behind her back and she was trapped in a place she hated.

She spent a long time on her bun, smoothing back the hair, wrapping the net tightly around, securing any loose ends with bobby pins she clenched between her lips. Pulling it out when it wasn’t perfect to do it again. A cigarette burns in the ashtray; the ash grows longer and longer until the forgotten cigarette finally burns out.

“Can we eat breakfast before we go?” Sissy asks.

“No need—I’m sure there will be a proper breakfast waiting—fried eggs, grits, and sausage links,” she says. “And my mama makes the best cup of coffee.”

She reaches into her purse and gives us each a couple of packets of saltines she swiped from the basket at dinner last night. “Here, these should fill you until we get there.”

Sissy and I crunch on saltines all the way through town, until Mama turns onto a quiet road with towering mossy trees and rambling houses spread wide apart. We stop crunching at the same time, instinctively knowing this is the street Mama grew up on.

She drives slowly, stopping occasionally to point out things and remember.

“Oh look, the Joneses’ magnolia bushes! I used to hide in them and have tea parties with my imaginary sister, Julia.”

“The Mulberrys’ house! They have a pond in back where a hundred-year-old snapping turtle lives.”

She slows, pulls the car over to the curb in front of a house I recognize from photos. It’s a beautiful house—white and wooden, with three stories and a porch that wraps all the way around. It has red shutters and a round stained glass window above the imposing wooden front door with a brass lion-head knocker.

It’s hard to imagine Mama growing up in such a fancy house and ending up at Juicy Acres, working as a cleaning woman. It is my first real glimpse at the life she gave up, and I understand her sadness in a way I didn’t before.

Mama turns off the car, removes the keys from the ignition, and holds them in her lap. She looks down and absently rubs her thumb along the ridged edge. Finally, she lifts her head and stares out the window at her childhood home. I imagine all the things she must be remembering—another lifetime ago.

“See that stained glass window over the front door? My daddy had that stained glass window it shipped from France as a present to my mama on her wedding day,” she says. “When the sun shines through it at just the right angle, shadows dance around the foyer in the colors and shapes of jewels.”

A winding brick path cuts through tall weedy grass dotted with white clovers. Wide steps lead up to a long front porch. Tall arching windows line the front.

“All right, then, I suppose we should go in and say hello.”

She looks at her reflection in the rearview mirror, smooths her hair back one more time, and pinches her cheeks quickly until they blush pink. I can tell she is excited, but I’m nervous. Sissy doesn’t seem to care about the situation one way or other.

Mama leads the way up the walk with Sissy and I obediently following. I imagine how hard Mama’s heart must be beating, every step closer to the front door beating harder.

Mama rings the doorbell, and we wait. She rings it again, but no one comes. She lifts the lion-head knocker and gives it three hard raps.

“I don’t think anyone’s home,” Sissy finally says.

“How strange. Let’s walk around and check the kitchen door. Maybe they don’t hear so good,” Mama says.

We follow her around the porch, her heels clicking on the wood. The back door has a glass window with the shade drawn. A tired broom lies on the ground at our feet. Mama stands in front of us, her back a wall. She raps on the glass with her knuckles and waits. Does it again before she turns the knob, the door opening. She laughs in relief—as if this is all easily explainable, just another day and she a young girl coming home from school, her mama sitting at the kitchen table in wait.

She pushes the door open and walks into the dim kitchen. “Mama, Daddy? It’s me. It’s Ada. I’m home!”

Sissy and I wait to be invited inside. Except I can see into the kitchen. The pantry is empty, and there is no table or chairs, nothing on the counters or on the shelves, the shades pulled closed over all the windows.

Mama stands, not moving or saying anything, just looking around. We follow her into a large oval room with wood-paneled walls. Cords hang from the ceiling where a chandelier must have been. The front room with the tall arching windows is empty, too. Up the curving staircase to the second floor, into another empty room, then down a long hall until she reaches the back corner room with a round turret.

Finally, she speaks. “This was my bedroom. My bed was against that wall so I could look out the window into the branches of the jasmine tree. It used to smell so sweet in here. Hummingbirds would flutter about my windows in the morning. My mama hung all sorts of bird feeders in that tree. Sugar water for the hummingbirds, another with seed. I would sit for hours watching them.”

So that’s why Mama loves her birds and feeders so much. They remind her of home.

She walks over and peers out. “I wonder what happened to that tree. Maybe it got sick. Maybe it just got old and died.” But she isn’t talking to us.

I am eager to leave the empty house. To be outside. To smell air that is fresh—not stale and reeking of Mama’s disappointment—even if it is a sweltering ninety degrees.

I walk down the stairway; my sandals click loudly on the wood and echo through the emptiness, every little sound so much bigger than it actually is.

I reach the foot of the stairs. A white envelope sits below the mail slot. I pick it up, recognize Mama’s tight, pretty script. I slip the unopened letter in my pocket and leave the house.

I walk into the backyard and sit on the stump where the jasmine tree once grew and open the letter.

April 20, 1961

Dear Mama and Daddy,

I know after seventeen years you are probably surprised to hear from me. I want you to know that I think of you often and have never stopped missing you. I have many regrets, but none more than shaming you. I am sorry every day. That baby was a girl and I named her Cecelia after Mama. She’s pretty like you, too. I have another daughter named Penelope. She is fifteen and quite smart. They are good girls. I would like to bring them to visit. We could stay as long as you will have us. If this is not all right, please write and tell me so and we will not come. Otherwise, you can expect the three of us the morning of May 16. I thought it would be nice to celebrate Mother’s Day together.

Your loving daughter,
Ada

Reply to:

Juicy Acres

Rural Route 13

Belleville, FL 33445

Suddenly I feel very sad. Very sad and very sorry I opened that letter and learned the things I now know. Mama had never been in love with Daddy—she’d been pregnant with Sissy and had no choice but to marry him. Mama’s parents hadn’t disowned her because she married beneath her, like she’d always led us to believe—but because she’d disgraced them.

I think about my parents’ wedding portrait in the tarnished oval frame. Mama isn’t smiling, though I’d say she looks more resigned than sad, standing in front of the dark backdrop the county courthouse used for its official photos. She wore a white sundress, her hands clasped in front of her. The court stenographer had taken the picture because there was no wedding photographer. There was no wedding, really. It was just the two of them on a steamy August afternoon, Daddy’s car packed full of Mama’s past, waiting to take her away.

I rip the letter into tiny pieces and hold the pile in my open hand. Then, I blow on them like the head of a feathery dandelion, sending confetti into the windless air, where they float and flutter and land in the grass, blending in with the white clover.

I hear someone humming on the other side of the low fence. An old colored maid is hanging laundry on the line. I get up and walk over.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I say. “Do you happen to know where the people who lived in this house went to?”

She squints her eyes. “Why you want to know?”

“Because they are my grandparents. I’m here with my mama and sister for a visit, but we don’t know where they’ve gone to.”

Sissy and Mama join me. The maid looks the three of us up and down. When she gets to Mama, she gives a quiet grunt of disgust, clucks her tongue twice, and shakes her head back and forth while sucking on her teeth.

“Well, the lady died some years back, and when she did, the old man just shut himself up in that house with the curtains pulled tight. Never said a word to folks around here. One morning, a truck come and took all their things away. I heard he died in that house, his body carried out by the movers on the living room couch. Uh-huh.” She looks at Mama. “You their little girl that gone run off?”

Mama doesn’t say anything. I know she is letting it all sink in even though her face is blank.

“I remember you. Always roaming the garden barefoot even though your mama bought you pretty shoes. The minute she turned her back, off they came. She put them on; you took them off.”

“Do you know what happened to that tree?” I point to the stump where the magnolia outside Mama’s window was.

“Your granddaddy cut it down.” She pauses for a moment, puts a hand on her stout hip, and waves a finger at Mama. “Shame on you. Shame on you. You done broke your mama’s heart. She was never right after you left. Not never.”

The maid rests the laundry basket on her wide hip and saunters away without glancing back, just shaking her head and muttering all the while.

My mother’s truth was never more pronounced than at this moment—there is no place for her to go but back to Juicy Acres.

Mama stays rooted, staring at that house, where all her dreams were left behind. She stands perfectly still, absorbing every detail, knowing she will never see it again. She walks over to the stump and stands on top of it, stares up at her bedroom window.

I can’t see her tears, but know she is crying—her hand keeps swiping them away. I turn and look at Sissy. She is staring at the house, too. But I know all she feels is jealousy she didn’t grow up in a beautiful house like Mama.

Our truck pulls away from the curb. I turn around and watch the house grow smaller and smaller until finally it is gone; then I turn around and settle into the long quiet ride home. Warm, dusty wind blows through the open windows, and I’m hot in my fancy dress. The lace collar itches. I see Sissy sweating, too, but she looks braced to handle whatever misery is surely in store for us next. Sweat dribbles down her forehead, hangs in her eyelashes, and she doesn’t wipe it away.

Mama hasn’t spoken a word. But something’s different about her—like the last bit of hope has been snuffed from her eyes, the things she learned today forcing her to make a mournful peace with the place her life has arrived at. No matter how hard she tries to escape the groves, something always pulls her back.

Thirty-one

The late Valencias are the last of the season’s oranges. They tend to be a sorry-looking lot, the June days too warm to turn the fruit deep orange. Daddy still tries to sell them by the bag—though no one wants green oranges, and even if they did, no tourists are driving down the heat-buckled road to buy them.

I’m standing below the tree Silas just finished picking, looking for shiners—lone oranges Silas may have missed, but Silas is too good, and of course, the tree is picked clean. Sweat rolls down my stomach in the summer heat.

“Silas, I don’t think it’s right you don’t have a birthday. Everyone should have one day that belongs to them. Which got me thinking, my birthday’s coming up on June twelfth. Why don’t we share it? We can have a birthday party at the Mystery House to celebrate. With cake and presents.”

He stops what he is doing and looks at me. I can’t tell if he likes the idea or not, and then his face turns into a smile.

“I’ve never actually had a birthday party myself,” I say. “But Sissy and I went to one a long time ago while we were still living on our grandparents’ grove. I’ll never forget. There was a table with a pink paper tablecloth. And pink-and-white streamers hanging from the ceiling and a roll of Smarties in front of every place.”

I remember all the girls were wearing party dresses. But not us. We were wearing shorts and sneakers, like every day. I know that’s what burned Sissy up most—being different.

But what I remember is the birthday cake with swirled frosting roses from the bakery. How badly I wanted a piece with a frosting rose. How happy I was when one was actually put down in front of me. How shocked I was when Sissy reached her fork over and ate my frosting rose in one bite, saying, “What? Stop staring at me.”

“Can’t show up at a birthday party empty handed. Sissy and I learned that the hard way ’cause no one told us any different.” I think for a moment. “Since we don’t have any money, how about we make gifts for each other?”

“All right. How many days until June twelfth?” he asks.

“Let’s see, today is June fourth. I know that for sure because June fifth is the last day of school, and that’s tomorrow. It’s also the day Miss Mable is going to announce the winner of the short story contest.” But I already know I’m not going to win, so I’m not sure why I even mentioned it. “So that’s seven days away. Doesn’t give us much time,” I finish.

He doesn’t say anything, just nods his head, and I can tell he is lost in his own thoughts.

•   •   •

It is the last day of school before summer break, which is good, because even with every window thrown open wide, it’s too hot to sit and concentrate. Miss Mable is standing at the front of the room, sweating and fanning herself with a pile of papers. She is about to announce the winner of the writing contest.

My hand is buried deep in my shorts pocket. I turn the heart stone over and over in my fingers, trace the shape of the heart with my thumb. I’ve never wanted anything so bad in my life.

“As you know, the winning entry will be competing in Florida State University’s Young Writers Contest. The top ten selections get a fifty-dollar prize and will be published in their literary journal.”

My eyes land on the back of Sissy’s ragged hair; her words crash my happy thoughts—That is the stupidest story I’ve ever heard!

I look out the open window, see summer begging me into it, just a stone’s throw away. And then I see Silas’s big brown eyes peering in. His head pops up like a jack-in-the-box, smiling—orange rind where teeth should have been. I’m laughing, like we’re back at the Mystery House, the only two people on earth.

When I turn around, everyone is staring at me.

“Pip Bean?” Miss Mable says. “Would you like to share with the class what you think is so funny?”

I glance over at the window, but Silas is gone, and I wonder if I imagined it.

“What?” I say.

I hear people laughing. I hear Sissy.

“Please, come to the front of the room now. I’m waiting.”

This experience is getting more miserable by the moment. I do as I’m told, push my chair back, the wooden feet scrape loudly on the linoleum floor. I don’t want to go to Mr. Plum’s office and be stuck in detention on the last day of school. I feel eyes on my skin like a hundred pinpricks as I walk to the front of the room. I stand before my classmates, keep my eyes fixed on the classroom door, think about running for the grove.

Without ceremony she says, “Congratulations, Pip Bean, you are Poinciana School’s 1961 short story winner. Please share your entry with the class.”

I’m so shocked I don’t move but simply stare at her. Finally, I manage to stutter, “I—I won?”

She takes off her glasses, and for the first time, I notice what pretty blue eyes she has. “I knew if you applied yourself you would see fine results,” Miss Mable says. I just smile and nod. I don’t want to share that my father considers homework second to chores. That by day’s end, I’m so weary I can’t keep my eyes open long enough to get my schoolwork done, my fingers too tired from picking oranges to hold a pencil.

I take my story from her, my small, boxy print as familiar as an old friend. A roomful of eyes stares back at me, but not Sissy, she is doodling on a piece of paper. She won’t even look up and pretend to listen.

I’ve never read to a crowd before—only to Silas—and my hands are trembling slightly.

“Go on,” Miss Mable says.

I glance at the window, but see only sullen trees drooping in the summer heat. I put my hand in my pocket and hold the heart-shaped stone. With the other, I hold my story. I open my mouth, but like a baby bird soundlessly gasping for food, nothing comes out. The class is laughing. My eyes dart to the door—it’s only steps away.

“Quiet!” Miss Mable says. “Or there will be detention for all of you! Go ahead. Try again, Pip.”

I lift the paper in front of my face to block my peers—or perhaps just Sissy. I begin again. First softly, then louder, my voice growing stronger, falling into the rhythm of the story. I want to draw the moment out, want it never to end. When I finish, everyone claps—everyone but Sissy.

The bell rings, and the classroom erupts into the chaos of sliding chairs and whooping kids running for summer’s freedom. But not me. I just stand there, gripping my story, letting happiness run through my veins and fill my mind.

Thirty-two

I wake to the smell of cake baking. I’m excited, not for my own birthday, but for Silas’s. I’ve been working hard on a gift for him—a book of wildflowers. Collecting and pressing blooms between pages of the heavy Bible that never gets opened. I made a little booklet by tying pieces of paper together with twine, glued a bloom on each page, and wrote their names beneath.

I’ve been thinking about the wildflowers Silas pulls up by the roots from the creek side, dirt and worms still clinging to them. He tries to plant them alongside the Mystery House, but they never live.

“You can’t transplant wild things,” I say. “Some things are just meant to live where they’re born.” But Silas never stops trying.

Sissy rolls over in her bed. I wait for her to say happy birthday, but she doesn’t, just pulls the tattered white sheet around her and turns away.

I sigh and get up. Never mind her.

I pull on shorts and a T-shirt, lace up my shoes, stuff the heart stone in my pocket, take the stairs two at a time.

The cake is cooling on the kitchen table. Always chocolate for me, vanilla for Sissy. The kitchen is so hot from the oven, the stick of butter on the counter has melted into a pool on its plate.

I pour myself a bowl of Corn Flakes and head to the screened porch, where it surely will be cooler.

Daddy is standing on a ladder, chopping down the bougainvillea. Piles of thorny pink-blossomed branches cover the ground. He climbs down. Nothing but a thick ugly stalk remains.

“Damn nuisance,” he says. His arms are covered in thin red lines that bleed where the thorns have scratched him.

Cutting it is the practical thing to do for all the reasons Daddy recites—wood rot, bugs, vermin—but I think our house looks like a very old woman’s face with her beautiful veil removed.

“Pip, fetch me a damp towel for these scratches,” he says.

The kitchen is filled with the golden light of morning. Tall windows are open, faded yellow curtains blow in and out like the house is breathing.

Then I hear Mama shouting “What have you done, what have you done, what have you done!”

Daddy says, “I’ve been telling you for months that weed had to go, but you don’t listen.”

“You ruin anything that is beautiful in my life!” Mama screams.

“It was destroying the house, Ada!”

“House? You call this a house? This is a shack!”

I want to make a run for the grove, but I can’t move, can’t get my frozen feet across the kitchen floor.

Then bitter-voiced Mama, “I won’t stay.”

Daddy laughs, then steely-sharp like knives: “What choice you got, Ada? Where you goin’? Your folks threw you out years ago. We’re all you got. This is where you belong, and this is where you’ll stay.”

A cloud passes across the sun, and the room dims. Suddenly Daddy fills the kitchen, furiously whips his giant hand out, and the glass cake plate shatters on the wooden floor.

He stares hard at the mess—the broken glass, the ruined cake—and for a moment I think he is going to apologize. When Daddy’s temper takes over, there is no telling what he might do. Then he turns and storms from the house and disappears into the grove.

The screen door slams with a sharp smack. Mama pushes past me to the back stoop. She stands looking out into the grove. Finally, she sinks down on the top step, covers her face with her hands, sobs long and hard. Deep wails that come from a place so sorrowful I want to cry, too. I go to the icebox, get a beer, and take it to Mama. Gently push the cold bottle into her hand.

“Here, Mama. Please don’t cry anymore. Our life’s not so bad as some others.”

I don’t know if it’s my comforting, or the cold beer, but Mama does stop crying. She sits very still for a while, sighs deep, and takes a long sip.

“I suppose I don’t know what’s harder, Pip—being a child and always at the mercy of others or being an adult and having to live with all the rotten decisions you made along the way.”

She pulls her pack of Pall Malls from her dress pocket and taps one out. Her hands shake so bad she can barely get it lit. When she does, she inhales long and hard, holds it deep within her body until I think she might explode. Finally, she exhales a long rush of white smoke and watches it disappear.

“When you’re young, you have everything before you, nothing but beginnings and dreams. Then you marry, have babies, and one day wake up and realize this is it, your life—a bunch of bad decisions that dead-end in the present.”

I wish she would hug me. Put her arms around me and rock me back and forth. Tell me that Sissy and I aren’t part of the bad decisions she is talking about. But that isn’t Mama.

She grinds her cigarette out in the sand, makes a little hole for it with her finger, and buries it like a seed. She stands, briefly lays her hand on my head, and says, “Don’t dream too big, little girl. Won’t bring any good. It’ll just leave you with your heart cracked open wide and always aching.”

Then she slips away into the hush of the empty house, leaving me alone.

Thirty-three

I wait at the wishbone tree, but Silas doesn’t show. I wander down the long empty rows of clean-picked trees. Call his name but the only response is the caw of a lone crow. Not knowing what else to do, I sit down in the shade of a gorgeous blooming royal poinciana, its canopy as fiery red as a sunset. It is my very favorite tree and always blooms in time for my birthday.

I pull a brown paper lunch sack from my canvas backpack. Inside are the two most salvageable slices of cake I could rescue from the pile of crumbs and broken glass on the kitchen floor before I swept up the mess and threw it away.

I take out a piece—looking at it gives me a stomachache. I put it back in the bag and remove the gift for Silas. Red-nosed reindeer prance cheerfully across the paper. I turn it over in my hands. I wonder why he didn’t show? My heart feels smashed like the glass platter, and I can’t help thinking perhaps Mama’s right about not dreaming too big, hoping for much.

The trees are so still they could be carved of stone, not even the slightest breeze to rustle the leaves. I’m too hot and sad to sit here any longer, so I decide to go to the Mystery House anyway, take a swim, escape the grove.

I pedal faster and faster—disappointment fueling my speed. I get to the thicket and duck into the green, head deeper and deeper into the unruly tangle. Breathe in the moist, mossy air thick with humidity, deep gulping breaths that fill me back up, make me whole again. I know the path so well I don’t need the map, and soon feel the boards of the dock beneath my feet, see the crystal-blue water of the spring begging me to come swim, the Mystery House welcoming me home.

A sudden and surprising breeze blows through the trees. When they still, I open the door and gasp. Only in my imagination have I ever seen something so magical.

Hanging from the rafters on clear line and silver fishhooks is the most beautiful collection of butterflies floating through the air—must be twenty of them—as perfect in death as in life, nothing changed but wings forever stilled. Color fills the room like the inside of a kaleidoscope.

“Happy birthday,” says Silas, his face bursting into that big smile. “I wanted to surprise you—I hope you don’t mind.”

How could I have doubted he’d come? “Oh, Silas! I couldn’t dream up anything this beautiful.”

“But you did. It’s the utopia you created in your story. Isn’t that what the Mystery House is?”

I look at him—how rare and extraordinary to find someone who sees the same world you do. “Nobody’s ever surprised me with a birthday like this,” I say. “Thank you.”

He hasn’t stopped smiling since I walked in the door, and neither have I.

“How old are you today?” he asks.

“Sixteen. I think we should try and figure out how old you are, too, so you can keep track. I’ve been thinking about it. I’m guessing you must be around Sissy’s age because you two were the same height when you came to Juicy Acres.” Silas towers over Sissy now. “She’s seventeen, so you’d be about the same. What do you think?”

“Seventeen,” he says. “I think that sounds like a fine age.”

“Well, happy seventeenth birthday, Silas.”

I hand him a slice of cake and watch in amazement as he gobbles it down faster than I thought humanly possible.

“Haven’t you ever had chocolate cake before?” I ask.

“Nope,” he says. “Best thing I’ve ever tasted!”

I laugh. “Here, have mine.” He’d enjoy that piece more than I ever would.

When he finishes the second slice, I say, “Let’s open presents.” Eager to think about something else besides my parents’ fight.

I pull the booklet out of my pack and put it in his lap. I dug through Mama’s Christmas wrapping to find a piece that didn’t have one of our names written and scratched out too many times.

He peels back the paper slowly, as if he knows how carefully I wrapped it. Holds the book in his large hands, runs a long, elegant finger down the green construction paper cover, admires the twine binding tied in bows to keep it all together.

Carefully he turns the pages, and I read the names of the flowers out loud—pink phlox, dune sunflower, yellow button, swamp milkweed. He nods his head after each one. When we come to the end, he turns back to the Indian paintbrush, stares at it like he’s remembering.

“That’s my favorite,” he says. I smile because it’s mine, too.

“Maybe now you’ll stop trying to transplant those poor flowers and leave them where they’ve grown.”

He smiles, but we both know he’ll never quit.

Then he hands me a paper box made of folded magazine pages. It fits perfectly in my palm. “Another gift?” I ask, surprised. “The butterflies were enough, Silas.”

“Open it,” he says excitedly.

I don’t remove the lid right away. Afraid the gift could be so wrong I’d realize he doesn’t know me at all—or so right—no one would ever know me that way again.

The paper lid slides off easily. I remove a delicate paper butterfly, also made from folded magazine pages, its wings pleated like a fan. Fine wire wraps around its body and curls into antennae with tiny blue-glass beads at the tip of each one.

“Oh, Silas…it’s perfect.”

“It’s to remind you of the Mystery House when you’re not here.”

“Silas, don’t you think it’s strange I gave you wildflowers and you gave me butterflies? Flowers and butterflies need each other to survive.”

We look at each other. Beautiful butterflies hover above our heads and it is only Silas and me in the tiniest of moments. He leans in, bends his head down, and kisses my lips with such a light touch it could have been a butterfly landing.

When he pulls away, there is no embarrassment. I want him to kiss me again. When he does, it feels like a hundred hummingbird wings whirring in my stomach, tickling my insides.

Thirty-four

In July quiet takes over the grove, every living thing resting in the heat. The trees are barren of oranges and the tourists driven away by the soaring summer temperatures. With less work, time becomes ours and escaping to the Mystery House is easier.

I lie on the squeaky cot, reading a cellophane-wrapped library book on butterflies, wonder why they don’t teach us interesting things like this in school instead of all the boring stuff. A hard rain pounds on the tin roof; frogs croak so loud I can’t concentrate and stop for a moment. Silas sits cross-legged on the floor, cutting fishing line and knotting a silver hook. I watch his long, elegant fingers work—think about his hands running through my hair—warm and sure.

He glances up and catches me staring at him, but I don’t look away. I smile and so does he.

We’ve found two new specimens of butterflies to hang from the rafters, or really, Silas has. But I was with him, so I guess that counts for something.

I never see them on the ground the way he does, and more than once he’s grabbed my arm to keep me from stepping on something he’d spotted—a tiny abandoned bird egg, a dead dragonfly with glorious blue-and-black wings, the jawbone of a small unknown animal, the delicate shrugged-off skin of a snake.

He bends down to gingerly pick up whatever castoff from nature has caught his eye and studies it with such intensity, as if the bones and skins can provide answers to lifetimes now passed. Then he pockets his treasure, and we continue on. Later, he will add it to his collection proudly displayed along the window ledge at the Mystery House.

The rain softens, becoming a light patter on the roof.

“That black one with the yellow stripes is called the zebra longwing. It lives for months instead of just a few weeks, like most other butterflies. It likes warm, damp tropical areas and is often found in thickets and hammocks.”

Silas doesn’t say anything, but I know he is taking it all in.

“Butterflies are born from eggs laid on the undersides of leaves. When the egg hatches, out comes a caterpillar. I didn’t know that. Did you?”

He shakes his head no.

“In order to become a butterfly, the caterpillar falls apart completely, decomposing down to its very essence. It literally dies. There is nothing left of it. And from this liquid essence, the butterfly starts to put itself together from scratch. Wow, imagine that. It’s kind of like having two lifetimes,” I say.

I look around at the Mystery House—butterflies and bones and unbroken bird eggs—and for the first time in my life, I don’t feel like an outcast. I feel like I am right where I belong.

“Remember when you asked me a way back if I get lonely?” Silas asks.

I nod my head yes.

“Well, I didn’t. I’ve never had anyone to miss before. Until now.”

Silas comes over to the bed and sits next to me—he smells piney, like juniper berries. He stares at me—his eyes won’t let go. “I want to remember everything about you. Everything. So if you ever go away, I’ll have you with me always.”

I don’t mind his eyes on me. He makes me feel…pretty. “No place else for me to go, Silas. Daddy’s never leaving the grove. You’re stuck with me.”

“No place else for me to go either. So I guess you’re stuck with me, too.”

•   •   •

“This was in the mailbox for you.” Daddy hands me a long white envelope. My name, Penelope Bean, is typed all formal on the front. In the left corner it says Florida State University, with an address in Tallahassee. I’ve never received a letter before.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Daddy says.

I know what it is. The results of the writing contest telling me I didn’t win.

I sit down in a kitchen chair. I didn’t know a person could feel so excited and terrified at the same time. I peel apart the sealed envelope carefully. I pull out the crisp letter and open it up.

But the letter doesn’t tell me that I lost. Instead, it says that my story is one of the ten winning entries selected out of more than three hundred from around the state. There is also a check for fifty dollars. I’m so shocked, I stand frozen, staring at the letter, at my name typed all formal, the word winner in bold.

Daddy’s peering over my shoulder, reading the letter; then he grabs the check out of my hands and stares at it in disbelief before letting out a loud woo-hoo!

“Sissy! Ada!” Daddy yells. “Get down here this instant.”

Through the ceiling I hear footsteps; then I see Sissy’s scowling face over the banister, glaring at us. Mama appears not to be around.

“We have a genuine writer in the Bean family!” Daddy says. “Pip just won fifty dollars. FIFTY DOLLARS!”

Sissy’s staring at that check. I know she is jealous.

“I guess my story wasn’t stupid after all, Sissy,” I say.

She spins around without a word, stomps up the stairs and slams our bedroom door.

Daddy’s too excited to notice her rudeness, says, “You and I are going to the bank right now to cash that check. Better off stashing your money in the mattress than leaving it in one of those institutions. They charge you to store your money! Have you ever heard anything so stupid?”

The entire ride to the bank I keep smiling because it doesn’t seem real, not even after a crisp fifty-dollar bill is buried deep in my pocket next to my heart-shaped stone.

“So what are you going to spend it on?” Daddy asks.

“I haven’t decided yet.” But that’s a lie. I’m going to buy Silas a bike.

Daddy turns the truck into the Twistee Twirl, says, “I’d say this deserves a celebration!” He pulls up to the drive-through window and orders two cones—one dipped, the other vanilla-chocolate swirled.

I look at Daddy—he actually remembered.

Thirty-five

The day is hot, so hot, as all summer days are, the thermometer reaching the nineties by afternoon, dropping a mere few degrees when the sun sets. The only relief from the heat is when the sky clouds up and rain falls, which it does almost every day. After, everything swelters. Steam rises from the scorching ground. The land perspires and wilts. Hot water runs down the streets, which we wade through with sandaled feet because there are no sidewalks.

“Hotter than hell today,” Mama says. She opens the freezer and sticks her head in. After a few moments, she removes it, but sweat keeps pouring down. “Come sit with me on the porch. Much cooler out there.”

It’s Sunday, and I am eager for her to leave for her cleaning job so I can escape to the Mystery House. After Daddy drops Mama at the high school, he plans on doing errands in Lake Wales for the afternoon, and I doubt Sissy will leave our room except to pee. No one will know I am gone.

Mama sits in a wicker rocker; I sit in the other. Termites have eaten away at the frames, and small piles of droppings gather like sawdust beneath the chairs.

“I have something for you,” she says. She reaches into her apron pocket, removes a present, and hands it to me. It is wrapped in thick, glossy white paper. A gold sticker on the front reads Driscoll’s. I trace the raised letters with my finger, liking the way they bubble up.

“What’s this for?” I ask. Other than Christmas, we don’t get presents. Not even on our birthdays.

She doesn’t answer. Too busy fishing around in her pocket for her cigs.

I turn the package over and peel back the tape. Savor opening the crisp, new wrapping paper with no one else’s name on it.

It’s a red leather diary with a tiny gold lock and key. I look up at Mama; a half smile hangs on her face.

“Every girl needs a place to write down her dreams,” she says. “I’m proud of you for winning that contest. I hope you’ll share your story with me sometime. I’d like to read it.”

Mama’s never said she’s proud of me for anything, those words more valuable than the prize money. I savor them, repeat them over and over in my mind.

“I’d love for you to read it, Mama.” She’s the first person in the family to ask.

Daddy leans on the truck’s horn, yells out the window, “Come on, Ada! You’re holding me up!”

She stands and reaches for her purse. Her brown sunspot-covered hands look like those of an old woman. I watch her walk to the car in her cleaning clothes—faded jeans, black thick-soled rubber shoes like a waitress wears, a kerchief tied around her hair—and wonder what her dreams were as a girl.

I lift the book and inhale the leather, use the tiny gold key to open the tiny gold lock, and crack it open. The pages are thin tissue. I will treasure it for the rest of my life—not because I have never owned anything so fine—but because it came from Mama.

•   •   •

Mama and Daddy are on the road for the next couple of days, trying to sell bags of late-season oranges to the big groceries—Piggly Wiggly, Shop & Save, Jewel.

It’s dinnertime when I finish pruning in the grove. The house is dark except for a light in the kitchen. It looks sad and lonely, like nobody lives there, and I don’t want to go inside. But my stomach’s grumbling from not eating all day, so I do.

Sissy is standing at the stove, stirring something. She doesn’t turn around when I enter the room.

“Mama left a pot of stew. How about I fix you a plate?” she says sweetly.

I sit down at the orange-crate table, try to remember the last time she offered to do something nice for me.

“Thank you,” I say.

Sissy turns around. A sickly sweet smile on her face. She holds the dish high above her head with great ceremony, like she’s holding more than just a plate of stew, but a silver platter with a feast fit for a queen. She sets it down in front of me.

The stew is in the bowl Mama keeps set aside for Silas. It looks different from our place settings, so they won’t be confused. On nights when there is extra, she’ll make him a plate and leave it on the back porch. The next morning the dish will have been washed clean at the pump and left by the kitchen door.

We look at each other. I know she is reading my face, so I try to harden up as quickly as I can.

“Aren’t you going to take a bite from Turkey Boy’s special bowl with his special fork?” Sissy asks with a smirk.

Before I can respond, she does.

“I knew you wouldn’t.”

Her words are like needles in my skin. I smack the hateful dish off the table and listen to it shatter, pleased never to have to see it again.

“What makes you think you’re so much better than him, Sissy? He’s no different from me or you! Not his fault what he was born to, just like it’s not ours!”

“I can’t believe you’re actually defending him,” she says. “That’s pathetic.”

“No, Sissy—what’s pathetic is all the years I stood by you! The only person you care about is yourself!”

I run from the house, grab my bike, pedal through the grove without stopping until I reach Silas’s shack.

A campfire burns, green tomatoes are frying in the skillet I’d snagged from Mama’s unwanted gifts and given him for Christmas. His face glows in the light; his long hair is pulled back in a ponytail, tied with a piece of twine, and I am struck by how handsome he looks.

“Evening,” he says.

I sit down in the sand next to him and take a deep breath. Nothing smells better than melting butter and frying cornmeal. My mouth waters. My stomach grumbles.

I look around the yard. Fat red tomatoes weigh down branches; collard greens march along in a tidy row. A bushy bouquet of mint sits in a can of water.

“Hungry?” he asks.

“Starving!”

He serves me and then himself. We sit side by side without talking; metal forks clank against tin plates, the fire low and glowing.

“I don’t understand what I’ve done to make Sissy be so mean all the time. She’s getting meaner by the day.”

“You didn’t do nothin’. People be mean ’cause they feel bad inside, so they try to make other people feel just as bad as they do.”

I think about Mama and Daddy, about Ma and Pa Bean—all that unhappiness roiling around inside their bodies until it’s churned into meanness. For never having gone to school, Silas says smart things.

“I’m not going home, Silas. Not tonight. Not ever. I’m running away to the Mystery House. I plan on being a hermit.”

“What’s a hermit?”

“It’s a person who lives alone in the woods or maybe on a mountaintop. They live a completely solitary life.”

I reach into my pocket and pull out my winnings. I carry that fifty-dollar bill with me always, buried deep next to the heart stone.

Silas lets out a long whistle and takes the crisp bill. “I’ve never seen money that looks like this. Is it a lot?”

Fifty dollars. “It’s the money I won in the writing contest. I can get by for a while on this,” I say. “What, with all that fish to eat outside my front door and the wild strawberries by the Proctor house…I plan on spending all day fishing and writing stories. No more school. No more rules. No more of Mama and Daddy’s fighting, no more of Sissy’s meanness. I’m done.”

“Hermit,” he says. “I like the sound of that.”

I stand. “Do you have a lantern I can use?”

He disappears into his shack and returns with his blanket packed and thrown over his shoulder like Santa’s sack.

When I look at him questioningly, he says, “Well, if we’re moving to the Mystery House, we’re going to need supplies. Grab that jug of water, and let’s wash up these plates and the pan.”

I didn’t realize until that moment how badly I’d wanted to hear those words. I scoop up a pile of sand and use it to scrub food and grease off the plates. Glance over at him stomping out the fire, shirtless in the summer heat. My cheeks burn, and I’m grateful when the fire is snuffed and blackness takes over.

“I was hoping you’d come,” I say. Barely a whisper that’s lost in the breeze, in the gentle rustle of the palms overhead.

We walk through the steamy night, no moon to light our way, but a million stars blanket the sky. My small hand is clasped in his big one, fingers interlaced. Silas leads the way, holding the lantern out in front of him, the light no match for the vast wild stretching out around us. If there is something to be aware of in the path—a fallen log, a tangle of vines—he gives a squeeze.

Inside the Mystery House, the lantern casts a soft light around the room. Even in the summer stillness, the hanging butterflies sway, their shadows floating dreamlike across the walls, more magical at night than day.

We unpack his blanket satchel—lard, tomatoes, cornmeal, the plates, spatula, skillet, bar of bathing soap, canteen, kerosene for the lantern. Basically, everything a hermit could possibly need.

“It’s so hot in here,” I say, taking the lantern. “Let’s go down to the dock.”

We dangle our feet and stare up at the stars. Silas quickly scans the sky until he spots what he is looking for, points to it. “That’s the North Star,” he says.

But I don’t see it. There are too many stars. Everything looks the same.

“Locate the Big Dipper—if you can find that, you can find the North Star.” He takes my hand, loosens my index finger, turns it upward, and traces the shape of the constellation over and over until it comes clear—like I did with his finger and the letters in the sand.

“See those last two stars in the cup of the dipper? They point right at the North Star. If you can find the North Star, you can always find your way home.”

Slowly my eyes come into focus, and a picture takes shape so clear I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. “There it is!”

Silas says, “Did you ever think about the fact that the only thing every person on earth shares is the sky? No matter where you live, who you are, it’s the same sun and moon and stars.”

He stands, takes my hand, and pulls me to my feet.

“It’s too hot to go to bed,” I say.

“Was thinking we should go for a swim.”

He unhooks the metal buttons on his overalls, first one, then the other. He lets go, and the overalls hang around his waist, his chest bare. I remember watching him skinny-dip and know he is naked underneath. He doesn’t look at what he is doing, but at me, silently asking if this is okay. When I don’t say anything, he pushes them off his hips onto the dock and steps out of them. I don’t look away. I watch. I breathe.

He reaches over, slowly unbuttons my shirt, and slips it off my shoulders. It falls on top of his overalls. He reaches around and undoes my bra easily, my clothes a growing pile at our feet. My breathing has become slow and deep. He runs his hands down my waist to the top of my shorts and slides them down my legs so all that remains are my panties. I get goose bumps on my arms even though it’s ninety degrees. He stops, but I don’t want him to. I want him to see all of me the way I see all of him. I want him to know me the way no one ever has. I remove my panties and drop them on the pile.

It’s just Silas and me underneath a million stars.

Silas dives in the water, and I follow. We swim out to the middle of the spring and float on our backs. I see the Big Dipper. I see the North Star. I know I’ve found home.

He swims over to me, and we are treading water and laughing and kissing, and I don’t ever remember a happiness like this—not even when Sissy came back home after trying to run away.

We swim to shore. He takes me by the hand and leads me carefully through the dark to the Mystery House. We do not dry off. We do not pick up our clothes. Water rolls down our cooled bodies, the day’s sweat washed away. I lick the droplets from his chest, savoring each one.

We go to the cot. It is too warm for covers, so we lie on top. His wet body curls around mine. I blow out the lantern, and the room goes black. I wait. Finally his hand drifts over my stomach, slow and deliberate—then lower. The night throbs, like a heart beating—a life of its own.

Thirty-six

The front door flies open with such force it slams against the back wall.

Silas and I are jolted awake.

I sit up in bed, cover my bare chest with the blanket. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust and realize where I am. Sissy is standing in the doorway; morning sun streams in behind her. She is clutching the map to the Mystery House in one hand, which means she was snooping through my stuff.

“I knew you were sneaking off with him! I knew it!” Sissy’s voice is shrill and scary. “Oh my god—where are your clothes? Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ll be in when Daddy finds out you’ve been coming here with Turkey Boy? Big, big trouble,” she gloats.

Sissy has become almost unrecognizable in the eight months since the carnival left. She’s gained weight. Her face is full and puffy. Purple circles under her eyes. Chopped hair unwashed and greasy.

“You wouldn’t tell, right?” I say. “You know he’ll send me to the Magdalene House if he finds out about us.”

“So it’s ‘us’ now? Is he your boyfriend? That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean…I…He…”

Sissy looks around, seeing the Mystery House for the first time. Butterflies dangle from the rafters, our menagerie of nature’s castoffs displayed along the window ledge.

“Oh my god,” she says. “This is super creepy. Only a zombie would hang out with all this dead stuff. Get your clothes on. We’re leaving right now, Penelope Bean,” she says, holding the front door open for me. “Say goodbye to this tomb and that Turkey Boy. You’re never coming back here again!”

I glance over at Silas. He’s sitting up in the bed, looking at the floor; long hair shields his face. I will him to look at me, but he keeps his eyes down. And then he sighs—such a heartbreaking sigh I know it will haunt me forever.

“His name isn’t Turkey Boy, Sissy—it’s Silas.”

I don’t want to leave, but have no choice. If I don’t, Sissy will tell Daddy. I know for a fact Daddy will send me away, no escaping Sister Roberta this time, but I can’t even imagine what he’d do to Silas.

Sissy and I don’t speak as we march along. The thicket closes in over our heads. Small birds fly from the denseness with an alarming whir of wings. The thicket thins. The ground drops and becomes swamp. Occasionally sunlight falls across the path. Finally, the blue, white-tufted sky, endless overhead as we burst out of the shadows.

I pick up my bike and start walking away from her.

“You’re never going back there,” she says. “I’ll make sure of that. And that Turkey Boy gets fired.”

I whip around. A cruel, thin smile is on her lips. Her words, sharp as Raffy’s swords, cut up my insides, slice their way through my heart.

I throw my bike on the ground. Teeth shimmer in the back of my throat.

I step toward her, reach out and grab her crooked hair and pull it as hard as I can. She’s screaming and swatting at my hand, but I don’t let go. I want to hurt her as badly as she hurt me. She kicks me hard in the shin, and I release her. I take a step back—our twin green eyes sizing the other up. We are both crying. I’m glad I caused her pain.

“What’s it worth for me not to spill the beans?”

“You don’t have to tell Daddy anything at all.”

“Have it your way,” she says, picking up her bike and wheeling it through the thick sand toward the road. “I guarantee when Daddy hears about what I just witnessed, you and Turkey Boy will be gone before dusk.”

I know she is right. “Fine,” I say. “What do you want?”

In a rehearsed voice I recognize as the same one she used when she told me she was leaving with Raffy. “Fifty dollars.”

“You wouldn’t!” But I already know she would.

“I need it. To get away from here. I just…can’t.” For a moment I think my sister is going to cry. Then her face goes blank again.

In my mind I see Silas smiling, hear his whistle as he meanders along, the distant sound of his harmonica in the grove leading me to him. I put my hand in my pocket, clutch the crisp, carefully folded bill and the heart-shaped stone. There is no decision to be made. I give her the money.

She stares at it, then stuffs it in her pocket, a wadded-up ball, the bike I wanted to get Silas buried deep and gone.

I watch my sister walk away and not look back, like she had all those months ago when she abandoned me for Raffy.

This time I don’t care.

•   •   •

I toss and turn, tangled in my sweaty sheets, until finally I kick them off and lie on top. The window is open, but the night is hot and still, the cotton curtain limp and lifeless. I can’t get the sound of Silas’s sigh out of my head, like it came from a deep, down well of sorrow many years in the making. A deeper sigh than just Sissy’s words could cause.

I look over at Sissy. She is on top of the covers, too, her back toward me. She snores softly. It is still dark, but I sense dawn approaching and decide it safest to go to his shack while my family sleeps.

I throw pebbles at his window, wonder if I would have thought to do this if Raffy hadn’t thrown pebbles at ours.

Silas appears sleepily in the door.

“Silas, I’m here, under this tree.”

He looks around puzzled, like he’s not sure if what he heard was real, sees me, comes loping over and gathers me in his arms. We don’t move. We don’t talk. Our breathing becomes synchronized; our chests rise and fall together. I inhale his piney scent.

“Silas, please don’t let Sissy’s words hurt you. You’re above her meanness. Remember, you’re the one who taught me that mean people are fighting their own demons on the inside and not to blame yourself.”

He doesn’t look at me but stares off into the distance. The sky turns a soft pink. I study his face—he looks so serious; his shoulders droop under the weight of his thoughts. I wait for him to speak.

“It’s not just Sissy. You think I don’t know your pa sends you to town with me because he thinks I might steal his money? Or that your ma keeps my bowl and fork separate ’cause she thinks I might have cooties? I see the way the town folk steer clear of me when I walk down the sidewalk. How mamas pull their children close to their sides. I try to act like I don’t care, but I do.”

He continues. “That’s what I love about the Mystery House—about you—I don’t feel like an outcast.”

I nod in agreement. “When I’m with you, Silas, I feel funny and smart and appreciated. You always believed I would win that writing contest when no one else did—especially me.”

He smiles, that huge smile that fills up his face making it hard not to smile, too. This time it’s me memorizing every part of him because I know what I have to say next.

“Silas, I don’t trust Sissy. I’ve never seen her this mean. If she catches us so much as glance at each other, she’ll tell Daddy. We’re going to have to avoid each other for a while. Even working in the grove.”

“Don’t know how I will get through my days without talking to you.”

I hear the rooster crow in the distance, the same damn one that has been waking us for years, and know the household will be stirring soon.

“I gotta go, Silas.”

He grabs my hand. “Promise me something—that every night you’ll look at the sky when the sun goes down. Know I will be looking at the same stars, the same moon. Know I will be missing you.”

Thirty-seven

August is the hottest month, the days long and humid. Cicadas hum. Dragonflies swoop low over dusty roads with black crows in hungry pursuit. Alligators loll in warm mud-brown rivers. Barren orange trees sit sullen under a scorching sun.

By month’s end the heat finally breaks. The cool north wind begins to blow, lifting the leaves of the drooping orange trees, sending a rustle through the grove like hope. Summer always seems to end this way—abruptly.

Sissy didn’t come downstairs to eat supper. Complained of stomach pains. After, I go upstairs to take her a plate with a hamburger on two pieces of white bread and a small pile of lima beans because Mama told me to.

Her face is flushed and puffy. Her eyes have a dark look in them. I put the plate down on the table, but the smell makes her gag.

“Take that out, Pip,” Sissy snaps.

A pain comes. She tightens into herself, arms wrapped around her stomach, holding her breath, eyes closed. When it passes, she exhales deeply and relaxes back into the pillow. Delicate beads of sweat dot her upper lip and forehead.

She realizes I’m still in the room, screams, “Get out!”

Mama is sitting on the screened porch, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Her legs are tucked beneath her in a girlish position, and a small Wedgwood ashtray with a gold peacock rests on the wide arm of the wooden rocking chair. The ashtray once belonged to her mother’s china set. Mama had taken it many years before, when she was in college at the University of Florida, carried it around in her purse, and used it in unlikely places, like waiting at the bus stop or sitting on the campus lawn with friends between classes.

A small mountain of cigarette butts towers precariously over a pool of gray ashes that blows from the elegant ashtray in a soft flurry when the wind gusts. A trapped moth bangs against the lampshade on the table. In the morning, gray moth bodies litter the tabletop, more dead than alive, a final flutter scooting them across the surface but never strong enough to lift them in flight. They get inside somehow, despite the small wads of toilet paper used to plug the holes in the screens, like tiny ghosts with their heads trapped in guillotines.

She plays solitaire, stopping between moves to take a sip of beer and lay her head against the back of the chair and wonder. When she sees me standing in the doorway, she smiles and asks if I will fetch her another bottle. I gather the four empties from the table, the strong skunkish smell reminding me of her.

“Why don’t you sit and keep me company for a spell,” she says.

I know she won’t stay awake long since I just brought her the last beer and her cigs are running low. I sit down in the other rocker.

“What’s your sister doing?” she asks.

“Sleeping.”

“She didn’t seem herself today. Must have been tired.”

“Yes.” But what I want to say is she hasn’t been herself in months. Hasn’t Mama noticed?

We sit, not speaking. The clouds, silver rimmed and brilliantly white, move across the sky, sometimes passing over the expressionless face of the full moon. A liar’s face. The live oak blows maniacally in the wind, like a woman whipping her long head of hair around and around in a mad frenzy.

Wind gusts through the screened porch, and Mama’s game of solitaire is blown across the floor, though she doesn’t move to retrieve the cards. The bright full moon has risen above the treetops; the sky is becoming blue with the light of it, the stars hidden behind its glow. I think of Silas staring at the moon and he doesn’t seem so far away.

“Such a wild night,” she says. “Like something’s going to happen.”

Mama tries to light her last cigarette, but it’s too windy on the porch and the match goes out. “Shoot,” she mutters, tucking the lone cigarette back into its box and announcing she is calling it a night.

“Early to bed, early to rise,” she mutters more to herself than me. I follow her into the living room and watch her walk down the narrow hall to the kitchen, see a glow come from the darkened room as she lights her cigarette using the burner on the stove. With the windows closed, there is nothing to dilute the smell of cigarette smoke that forever clings to the interior of our house like ivy to a brick wall.

I lie down on the tattered couch. A brown-and-beige weave with flecks of black in it. Steel coils push into my back. Above my head the clock ticks slow and loud. Outside, wind fills the canopies of the trees, shakes them hard, only to let them go and settle into themselves before starting again.

Thirty-eight

I wake to the clock chiming. The wind still rages, and branches bump against the house. Windows rattle, and wind whistles through. The moon is now high in the sky, its light so bright that shadows loom like ghostly patches of shade on a sunny day.

I walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water before heading to bed. Clean dishes are piled in the wooden drying rack, a bowl of oranges on the counter, moonlight shadows of the windowpanes on the worn wooden floor. I don’t see Daddy’s truck in the driveway, but the turkey-shed door is blown open wide. I walk out into the night to close it.

Moments flash, shadow and light, with no fluidity to movement. Only blurred images click silently by—fragmented screens void of color. Me standing in the small yard, weeds grown up everywhere; dried leaves scrape across the ground. The shed door banging against the wall, persistent as a child. I’m struggling, head bowed against the wind that keeps pushing me back—as if to keep me from my destiny.

When I get to the shed, I step inside and am met with an eerie silence. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The dirty, narrow windows filter the bright moonlight, so it is soft and faint, and I realize the turkeys have escaped—but I am not alone.

In the shadows, propped on a pile of hay, is my sister. Beside her I see a towel, a plastic jug of water. I don’t see the scissors until she begins to cut in a motion that isn’t a snip, but a gnawing, and what she holds in her hands is set free.

Strange noises come from her—a cross between a hum and a moan. She is clutching it to her chest, rocking back and forth. I watch her—think she is acting crazy. It scares me.

“Sissy,” I softly say. “Sissy.”

She doesn’t look over at me or answer; that noise coming from her never breaks; she just keeps rocking, eyes glued on whatever she holds in her hands.

I go to my sister and kneel beside her. She rocks back and forth; she moans.

“I’ve come to fetch you to bed.”

I lean over and gently take her arm so as not to startle her. My touch goes unnoticed. I glance down at what she holds.

“Oh, Sissy. Oh, Sissy. Oh no, Sissy…”

A baby boy—eyes squeezed shut because they never opened, body the color of a blueberry because he never took a breath.

I take the tiny newborn from her arms. She doesn’t resist, just keeps rocking and moaning, staring at her empty hands, where the body was. I make a little nest in the hay, like a manger, place the baby in it, cover him with hay like a blanket so I don’t have to look at him.

“Come, Sissy,” I say gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up and in bed.”

I help her stand, and she doesn’t resist, but the humming never stops.

“Let’s go to the hose. We don’t want to wake Mama up using the bath.”

I wash Sissy, like a mother would a child, remove a towel and nightgown from the clothesline, dry her off, and take her up to our room. She doesn’t resist or say a single word; it’s like she is no longer inside her own body. Her bed is messed from earlier, so I fluff her pillow, pull up the sheet, and tuck it in tight.

“Come, Sissy. The bed is ready. Come get in.”

She does, rolls over onto her side, and curls into a ball. She hums. I sit down on the edge and stroke her hair, smoothing it back off her forehead again and again, the way she did for me when I was younger and had a bad dream. I did not understand what pain Sissy suffered all those months, more than she could bear, more than I could bear to think about. Her breathing becomes deep, the humming ceases, and I know she is asleep.

I return to the shed.

The night has grown suddenly silent, the wind stopping as quickly as it started. Strangeness distorts the lines between earth and sky and grove so that I can no longer tell what is real and what is not.

I stand outside the turkey shed, but can’t go in. This must be a dream, a terrible dream…

Finally, I enter—the hush is deafening after the constant cacophony of turkeys. I make myself go over to the pile of hay where the baby rests. Moonlight streams in. I kneel beside his body, but can’t look at him. The first glance I’d had forever emblazoned in my memory.

I’m crying. Cursing Raffy for doing this to my sister, smashing her heart into a million pieces and leaving her to put it back together like a puzzle that she never did get right. Leaving her with a baby and a ruined life while he drives off in search of the next pretty girl. My heart burns with the unfairness.

I wrap the stillborn baby in a picking sack—a cocoon no butterfly will ever hatch from—and walk into the night to the grandmother tree with the protective limbs. I dig a hole in the sand with my hands and bury the swaddled baby.

I return to the shed, use the garden hose to fill a metal bucket with water, and scrub the blood from the wooden floor, as if I can erase what happened. This must be a dream, a terrible dream…but I am down on my knees, scrubbing with both hands, my knuckles raw where they scrape against the floor, and I know I’m awake because they hurt and bleed.

I go outside to the tarp that covers the hay pile, remove the heavy stones that hold the edges in place. I take the shovel and scoop up piles of clean hay, which I carry inside and spread over the floor, a pale blanket hiding what no one is supposed to see.

But it is too late—the blood has already seeped into the cracks and become our history.

Thirty-nine

I sit in our bedroom window, unable to sleep because I am afraid of my dreams. Birds are beginning to sing, as if it is any other day. Tattered clouds drift across the pale early-morning sky. Uprooted trees cover the ground like fallen giants, and a large limb from the oak has broken free and crushed a corner of the front porch.

I look at Sissy, eyes closed, face turned toward the wall. Her fair hair, matted and untended, spills across her cheek so that she is only partially seen.

She has always been slim, with a flat belly drawn tight between two protruding hip bones. Somehow that scrawny frame concealed a baby, her stomach never becoming deeply extended, only pooched in the last couple of months.

The hints were all there. Her desire to be alone, as if shuttered inside her own body. The privacy in which she dressed. The overalls she wore so she had almost no shape at all. But I could not see them. I did not.

Mama’s only choice had been to marry our Daddy—what choice did Sissy have? Hide the baby or be sent to the Magdalene House for wayward girls? There was no aunt to go live with, like Dixie Brown, who just stopped coming to school one day. She was gone a lot of months before she returned to Belleville. When she did, her folks pulled the shades and wouldn’t let her in the house. Unwed girls aren’t supposed to come back with their babies.

Daddy’s truck comes speeding down the drive. It slows as it enters the yard and then stops, but it is minutes before he gets out. He walks over to the turkey shed, where the door is ajar, opens it, peers inside before taking a step in, only to immediately come back out, turn in circles, eyes focused on the distance, looking for movement in the grove.

Downstairs, Mama is sitting at the kitchen table in her robe, drinking coffee and smoking. She stares out the open window into the small Barbados cherry tree. In the heat, berries grow fat and full, then fall and rot. Fruit flies swarm, leaving seeds like bones.

A mourning dove is perched on the feeder. Mama loves the mourning doves. They sing through the summer nights, melancholy coos haunting the dark.

The back door slams, and Daddy barges into the kitchen, cursing up a storm. “What the hell happened around here last night? Looks like a tornado blew through. And not a damn turkey left in that shed!”

Mama doesn’t answer, just keeps staring at that mourning dove, surely wishing she could jump on its back and fly away.

I answer, “The wind was blowing hard, real hard. I heard banging and saw the turkey-shed door blown open. I went to go close it, but the turkeys were already gone.”

Mama looks up. “The turkeys are gone? Does that mean we can have chickens instead? Fresh eggs…”

“You know how I feel about chickens, Ada! Go get yourself ready for work. I’ve got a busy day with this mess, and I’d like to drive you now.”

“That’s fine, Nathan,” she says. “Let me fetch my pocketbook.”

“Where’s your sister?” he asks.

“She’s not feeling good. It’s her time of the month.” I know this makes Daddy uncomfortable and he’ll stop prying.

He’s gone as abruptly as he arrived. Like that storm. Blowing in and out without warning, no hello or goodbye, leaving nothing good in his wake.

Forty

Daddy and Silas cut and stack tree limbs. The sound of the electric chain saw pulls at my nerves until I can stand it no more and start walking, then running down the road beyond the swamp that smells of rot and still water, past cattails, sawgrass swaying slightly in the breeze—trying to get as far away from Juicy Acres as possible. I collapse in a patch of sun on a grove that isn’t ours.

I long for the day to turn into the next. For time to pass and dull my memory like the ocean dulls the edges of broken glass, washing over each piece until it is no longer sharp, no longer clear, but opaque.

I close my eyes, but all I see is the baby behind my lids. I don’t want that body buried on our grove, poisoning our land like a bad seed. I want that baby gone. Gone from Juicy Acres. Gone from our lives. And that’s when I decide.

I make my way back home and go to where the body is buried, a slight mound in the sand. I drop to my knees and start digging until I feel the rough burlap of the picking bag. I remove the tiny cocoon.

When I get home, Daddy’s truck is parked in the driveway, stacked high with debris—broken branches with clinging green leaves that have yet to wither and die, ripped out screen and splintered wood, the mangled tin roof. The larger logs have been cut for firewood and neatly stacked. The rest will go to the dump. I bury the baby deep beneath the wreckage. By dusk tomorrow, all remnants of the storm will be gone. As if it never happened.

Inside, the house is warm and quiet; wooden floorboards creak under my feet as I walk through the living room. The only sound the ticking clock. It is half past six.

For dinner, Mama put out a box of Corn Flakes, two bowls and spoons. Sunday-evening supper is always cereal, and sometimes, if she has the energy or inclination, there are biscuits. Mama doesn’t cook on Sunday nights, a small sliver of respite she claimed years back when she started her cleaning job.

I have no appetite, haven’t eaten since early morning. I don’t even know where the hours have gone, one blending into another, into the next, until the moon is again high in the sky, the house still, the night air full of cricket song.

I look at Sissy, a mound beneath her covers. She has yet to say a word to me, her eyes closed, or when briefly opened are as indifferent as glass, and the food I bring stays untouched.

I’m exhausted, want my brain to turn off, but sleep doesn’t come. I go outside to the picnic table, stretch out on top, and look at the sky sparkling with a million stars. I find the Big Dipper. I find the North Star. I hear Silas’s voice saying, If you can find the North Star, you can always find your way home. He is my home.

•   •   •

A flawless blue sky. Not a single cloud to cast doubt on the earth below. Wind gently rustles the treetops, teasing of beginnings, not ends. On a day filled with such promise, I can almost forget the storm, the horror fading in the morning light like a bad dream.

I look over at Sissy. Her face turned toward the wall, her body curled up tight. I watch the covers rise and fall and know she is breathing.

I kick back the sheet, grab yesterday’s clothes off the floor, don’t bother brushing out my ponytail.

I give the warped kitchen-cupboard door a hard yank. Remove a jar of peanut butter and loaf of white bread to make a sandwich, place them on the small wooden table we use as a counter. Years of cutting have left white lines across its surface like scars.

Daddy’s heavy boots come pounding up the back steps; his large figure fills the doorway. Sun streams in behind, making him dark like a shadow.

“I need you helping Silas in the grove today. Lots of storm debris to be cleaned up still. I want you to collect the broken branches for firewood. Rip the leaves off so only wood remains, and stack ’em neat.”

I stop chewing my sandwich, swallow the peanut butter ball in one gulp. Because it is summer and the grove barren of oranges, Silas and I only see each other in passing. I miss him so much—I miss talking to him. The way he makes me laugh. Kissing him.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

I wrap the rest of my sandwich in a paper napkin for Silas—he loves peanut butter—take long strides down the drive, gulp in the cooler air.

I hear Daddy’s truck behind me, but don’t bother turning around. The truck pulls up; to my surprise, it’s not Daddy—it’s Silas. He tips his straw hat and smiles. I forgot the feeling I get when he’s around—like a hundred hummingbird wings are beating in my stomach.

I pass the sandwich through the window. Can’t take my eyes off him. There is so much I want to tell him.

“Just thinking a peanut butter sandwich would taste real good.”

“Daddy says he needs me in the grove today.”

“All right, then. I’ll see you there,” he says, smiling so big my heart melts into a puddle at my feet. “I sure have missed your company, Pip.”

“I’ve been missing you terribly, Silas. I feel like there is a big hole where you’re supposed to be.”

“I’ll be back soon. Just gotta go drop this stuff at the dump for your pa.”

He continues down the drive toward the highway, the weight of his load dragging down the back of the truck. I don’t break my gaze until it takes a right turn onto Rural Route 13 and I know that baby is gone.

Forty-one

As the day fades, so does my hope of seeing Silas. Then I hear his harmonica floating through the grove, leading me to him. He’s sitting beneath an orange tree, legs stretched out long, as if he knew I would come.

“What took you so long?” he asks, his voice teasing. He puts his harmonica in his pocket and goes back to whittling a bamboo reed.

I sit down in the sand. Our shoulders touch, and a familiar warmth spreads through my body. It’s like we’ve known each other for a hundred years.

There’s lots to tell him; instead I stay silent, and it is only us.

“I’m making you a whistle. Blow on it, and I’ll always know where to find you,” he says.

I laugh, for what feels like the first time in ages. “Does that mean you’re giving up trying to teach me to whistle?” But I already know the answer to that. Silas never gives up on anything.

A flash of sunlight reflects off a car hood and momentarily blinds me. I jump to my feet, sure it’s Daddy—but it’s even worse—dread spreads through my body. Everyone knows the sheriff coming to your house can’t be good. I instinctively stuff my hand in my pocket, wrap my fingers around the heart stone.

The sheriff gets out, wipes sweat from his thick neck with his soaked and soiled hankie. He is a tall man with a red face and a large gut that hangs proudly over his pants. He wears a white cowboy hat, and his pointy-toed boots are covered in a fine layer of sand and don’t shine anymore. His sheriff star does. The sweat under his arms leaves long dark moons on his shirt, and I instinctively hold my breath so as not to breathe him in.

“Where’s your daddy?” he asks. But he’s not looking at me, only at Silas, who is quietly climbing the ladder into the tree.

“Hey, boy, where you going? Got something to hide?”

Silas doesn’t stop or acknowledge the sheriff in any way. Goes back to trimming the tree. Leaves flutter down and land on the sheriff’s hat.

The sheriff glares at me, then walks impatiently over to the ladder and gives it a shake. Silas pauses and looks down into the man’s squinty eyes. He doesn’t take his straw hat off. He doesn’t call him sir.

The sheriff puffs himself up like a proud rooster, his heaving belly heaving a little more, his legs getting a little stiffer, and says, “I strongly suggest you don’t go disrespecting the law, now.” I see him checking Silas out—bare feet, bare chest, his long hair braided down his back like an Apache from the Everglades. “Where do you live? Back Bay?”

“No, sir. He lives in a shack here on the grove. Helps my daddy work our land.”

“I don’t think I was talking to you,” the sheriff says. He looks at me, and I instinctively take a step back. He doesn’t need to say anything. I can already tell he is one of those people who was born rotten to the core.

I see Daddy walking quickly toward us, and I’ve never been so happy to see him in my life.

The Sheriff puts out his hand and introduces himself.

Daddy doesn’t shake it, says, “I know who you are.” I can tell by his tone he doesn’t like having the sheriff here either. “What is it I can help you with?”

“Why don’t we go have a talk in my car.”

As they walk away, the sheriff keeps stopping to lift his leg after each sinking step, shaking his pointy-toed boot to get the sand off, first his left, then his right. He looks like he has ants in his pants, and I hear laughter coming from the tree. I look up at Silas. The sun is bright behind him but softening so that a golden glow is cast over the day. Everything it touches becomes beautiful, the tattered straw hat he always wears shining in the sunlight like a crown on a king, a young man without a care in the world.

The sheriff hears the laughter, too. He stops and glares at Silas long and hard before turning and walking out of sight. Goose bumps cover my arms.

Silas keeps trimming, unbothered by it all, but I can’t stop pacing. I have that stomachache again. What must have been only five minutes seems like thirty.

Finally I see Daddy, followed by the sheriff and two officers. They surround Silas’s ladder.

Daddy calls, “Silas, come on down, please.”

He does, and as soon as his bare feet touch the sand, the police grab him by the arms. He looks startled, then alarmed, and finally, afraid. He glances at Daddy and me, back and forth.

The sheriff yanks his hands behind his back, cuffs them, and says, “Look who’s laughing now, boy. You’ll be going away for a loooong time. That’s if they don’t send you to the electric chair.”

Silas and I look at each other—his eyes—wild and frightened and confused.

“What are you doing?” I scream at the sheriff. “You can’t take him! He didn’t do anything wrong! He doesn’t have a bad bone in his body!”

Daddy grabs my arms and holds them tightly to my side, shakes me, and says, “Shush your mouth now! There are things you don’t know!”

The sheriff shoves Silas into the car like trash into a can. I think his wrists look frail in the silver handcuffs hanging off them. That a piece of me left when that car drove away.

I feel my body draining into the sand, as if in an hourglass, draining down into a place I do not want to go but am powerless to stop.

Daddy releases me, and I collapse, curl in a ball, and rock back and forth, unable to process all that has happened in the last three days—Sissy, the baby, Silas. I cry until I can cry no more. I cry until the sky turns orange with the last of the setting sun and Daddy picks me up, my limp body dangling from his arms like a charm on a bracelet, and carries me to bed.

Forty-two

Middle of the night. The alarm clock ticks on the table. The shade softly slaps at the windowpane. I can’t figure out why I am still in my clothes, though under the covers—and then I remember. I have to know if Silas is in his shack, so I go out into the night to find him. Surely the sheriff realized the mistake he’d made and returned him home.

The flashlight I carry gives off a fading orange light, little more than a small halo. I don’t know why I’m not afraid walking through the grove, darkness spreading out all around me. You never know what you might stumble upon in the dark—a nest of rattlers or a wildcat or gator that has wandered inland from Foggy Bottom Lake, where they blend into the tangled roots of the muddy bank. A big, hungry gator can eat a whole coop of chickens and gobble down the family dog, too. But even in the shoeshine pitch black, I never feel scared, the trees forming passages that stretch long and straight as a row of protective soldiers on either side.

His shack is dark, no light coming through the window, but I didn’t expect there to be, considering it is the middle of the night and he is surely sleeping. I shine my flashlight around the front yard, see the firepit with no embers glowing, the garden picked clean of summer’s vegetables; a white T-shirt hangs on the line like a headless ghost.

I stand outside the door, glance up at the sky. Please let him be here. I knock and wait. But nothing happens. I knock louder, using the butt end of my flashlight, say his name, sure he will get up now and answer the door. When he doesn’t, I lift the latch, and the door creaks open enough for me to stick my head in and shine the dim light around.

I haven’t been inside the shack for years, not since Sissy and I played dolls here, pretending it was our own little house, a secret cottage in an enchanted forest. Then Sissy lost interest in dolls and enchanted forests, and Silas moved in and the shack slipped into memory.

I immediately notice it smells different, not of closed-up places and forgotten things, but like spring—rain and wind and fresh mown grass.

I shine my flashlight around. The shack is impeccably clean, the cot tightly made with its sheet and ash-gray wool blanket tucked in all the way around. His few worldly belongings are hanging from nails—a couple of white undershirts, a pair of suspenders, a tattered barn coat I recognize as a castoff from Daddy. The book of wildflowers I gave him sits next to his bed on a small table made from tree branches with bark still clinging. I sit down on the bed and pick up the book. The corners have become soft and dog-eared from being turned often.

How little I really know about this strange, quiet boy—only that he smells clean as soap after sweating in the grove all day. He loves to fish and whittle and play harmonica. He can fold paper into boxes and butterflies, and if given a scrap of rope, can tie the most amazing knots.

I dig the heart stone out of my pocket and leave it on the table next to the book and return home.

•   •   •

I wake to the eleven o’clock train blowing its long thin whistle. Bright sun slips under the window shade. My fit the day before must have concerned my parents enough for them to let me sleep in.

I’m surprised to see Sissy’s bed empty for the first time in days. I pull the shade forward and look out. Everything appears as it always has. I wonder at how much can change and still stay the same, the world a placid backdrop for its inhabitants. I fall back against the pillow and fold my arm over my eyes, let out a small groan, and reluctantly force myself out of bed.

Downstairs the Lake County Sentinel is spread across the kitchen table, and two coffee cups—one empty, the other half-full—sit on top of the paper. I pick up the cups and place them in the sink, stack the scattered paper into a pile when a photograph catches my eye. On the front page is a grainy picture of Silas sitting on the floor, his hands cuffed, his feet bound with rope. He looks straight into the camera. His eyes are black and swollen half-closed. His nose looks crooked on his face. He doesn’t resemble the Silas I know. The headline reads Murdered Newborn Found at Dump!

I sit because I can no longer stand. Pick up the paper but my hands shake so I can’t read it.

I put the paper down, place my hands flat on top to still them—The baby was strangled, wrapped in a picking bag stamped with Juicy Acres, and buried in a load of trash that was dropped at the dump by a hired man. The mother unknown and missing. Anyone with information is asked to please come forward. They call the murder the most savage crime in Lake County history and Silas a heartless killer, a monster, a savage. He is being held at the abandoned train depot because Belleville doesn’t have a police station. He is to be transferred to the jail in Lake Wales before day’s end. The crime is punishable by electric chair—Old Smoky.

What have I done? Silas wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for me. I walk out of the house as if in a dream. My mind desperately seeks some kind of mooring to cling to, labeling each thing it encounters—door, bike, gate, road, stones, sky, trees.

I pump harder and harder, desperate to get to the sheriff, to explain Silas did not commit this crime. They’ve made a mistake, a terrible mistake.

Outside the abandoned depot, a large group of men has gathered. Loud, unruly, angry. I stash my bike, try to worm my way through the crowd toward the front.

Some hold broken bottles, others shotguns or wooden axe handles.

A voice yells, “We want that killer!”

Men in blue stand nervously in huddles, knowing their numbers are no match for an angry mob, even if they are the law.

I reach the foot of the depot stairs, where two police officers are standing post.

“Get out of here. This is no place for a kid.” He looks hot and annoyed.

“My name’s Pip Bean, and I have information about the baby. Please, sir, I need to talk to the sheriff.”

The other stops him from pushing me back into the crowd. “Went to school with her dad,” he whispers. “That boy works for them.”

I’m escorted up the wooden stairs, aware of the crowd of eyes slicing through my back, angry words fueling the scene like gas on a fire.

When the door opens, a bell tinkles above my head, a happy sound better suited for an ice cream parlor than a makeshift jail. The shades are pulled on the long windows, except for one where there is no shade, and outside I see reporters hunched together, smoking cigarettes, cameras hanging around their necks.

The sheriff is sitting at a card table. Behind him, the barred window of the deserted ticket-seller’s booth reminds me of a prison cell. I imagine Silas being held there, sitting on the linoleum floor, bashed face bowed, hands and feet bound. It is a sickening thought.

The sheriff doesn’t greet me or invite me to sit down. “I remember you,” he says with contempt. “You got something to say, you best speak up now.”

I take a deep breath, as if air were courage.

“You’ve made a terrible mistake arresting Silas. He didn’t commit any crime. He doesn’t kill anything, not spiders or ants, not even scorpions. He just scoops them up and sets them free.”

The sheriff rolls a toothpick between his thumb and forefinger, uses it to pick at his teeth, then sucks whatever it is he got off the tip before continuing.

“Murder is a very serious crime,” he says. “Worse than a crime, it is a sin. The worst sin a person can commit. Not even God forgives a killer. Especially a baby killer.”

“You don’t have any proof he killed that baby,” I say. “I know that’s a fact.”

He puts his feet up on the desk so that I’m looking at the scuffed soles.

I speak steadily even though my hands are shaking. I put them in my pocket so he won’t see. “I realize to you Silas is no more deserving than a barn dog, but if you can’t prove it, you might harm an innocent person, and that would make you a murderer.”

“Don’t give me none of your sass, girl, or you’re going to find yourself in a mess of trouble you don’t want to be in.” He taps a cigarette out of the pack and lights it with a silver Zippo lighter, inhales, and blows the smoke out his nose.

“Why you want to save that boy so bad, I can’t imagine, but I’m going to make this easy for you. I have one question, and only one. Do you know who killed that baby?”

The air is suddenly sucked from the sweltering room; sweat runs down my stomach. I hear a fly banging up against the glass window, anxious to escape. Even though freedom is so close, right before its eyes, it will die before ever finding a way out.

Sissy or Silas? I cannot save them both.

The past months flash before my eyes—Sissy walking down our drive with her suitcase, leaving me behind. Taking my prize money. When I finally speak, I quietly answer, “Yes.”

“Louder,” he bellows. “I can’t hear you.”

“YES! That baby wasn’t murdered. It was born dead. I was there. That’s my sister’s child. That’s why no mother has come forward. Sissy hid that baby so our daddy wouldn’t send her to the home for wayward girls.”

“That’s a pile of hog shit,” he says. “We have a signed confession, which is enough evidence to send that boy to the electric chair.”

“That’s a lie!”

The sheriff leaps to his feet and slams both his hands down on the table, scaring me so bad I jump back. He leans his face real close to mine, so close I can smell his rotten breath rising from his rotten soul.

He lifts a paperweight and hands me a sheet of paper. I read the words I know Silas did not say. At the bottom, I recognize his signature, just the way I taught him. He would never sign something admitting to strangling that baby unless they’d beaten it out of him and he’d been desperate.

I can’t move, can’t stop thinking—Silas wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. Why didn’t I just let that baby stay buried in the sand? A secret Sissy and I would never talk about. It is the most sickening feeling I have ever known. I feel like I’m going to vomit.

“Get the hell out before I throw you out! You’ve wasted enough of my time with your hog shit.”

The finality of the situation sinks into my bones like a winter chill, impossible to shake. I have no memory of walking out of that room.

Outside, gray clouds diffuse the sun and thunder rumbles in the distance; the air is thick with humidity and the approaching threat of rain. The mob is more riled than before, as if fear is contagious and spreading like a plague.

Policemen take off their hats and swipe shiny brows with the backs of their hands. Reporters snap pictures of sneering faces.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and a newspaper man with a camera hanging around his neck introduces himself.

“I’m Lloyd Powers,” he says, sticking out his hand. “Reporter for the Orlando Times. You know that boy?”

I’ve never had a grown man shake my hand before. “Yes, sir. He works for my daddy on our grove.”

“You mind if I ask you some questions?”

“What kind of questions?” I ask, suspicious.

“I’m researching a story on that sheriff and his treatment of prisoners.”

As if on cue, the sheriff steps out onto the porch of the depot, raises his hands to hush people down. “Please, quiet, quiet,” he says.

A voice in the crowd. “We’re gonna fix that boy right now, or our families ain’t safe! Let us in!”

“I can’t do that. I’m a law and order man.” He says law and order like it is one word. “Folks, quiet down, quiet down and let me finish. We have a fugitive on our hands. The prisoner escaped sometime in the early-morning hours, shortly before dawn. He is considered very dangerous, and we encourage you to lock your doors and make sure your women and children are home before dark. We have been in touch with authorities in the neighboring counties, and a statewide manhunt is under way. We don’t believe he could have traveled far, assuming he is on foot, but he is a wily one. I assure you we are doing all we can to capture him and bring peace to Lake County.”

From the back of the mob, jeers and shouts of “Liar!”

“Let us in or we’ll let ourselves in!”

There must be over a hundred men gathered outside the depot. Even a sheriff with a gun is no match for an angry mob. He nods his head. “All right.” Points to a man at the front. “You. Come along.” He leads him into the one-room depot while the nervous deputies wait without.

After minutes the two men emerge. Satisfied, he confirms what the sheriff has said; the prisoner is not here.

“Now, you fellas give it up and go about your own business. Go home to your families. Leave the law to me.”

A steady rain begins, and the grumbling crowd returns to their cars and trucks with their rifles and axe handles and broken bottles.

I stand there with tears and raindrops rolling down my face. I cry out of relief because he is free—I cry because I will never see him again. I am sobbing, loud, ugly noises coming from a well of sadness so deep I can’t imagine it ever being drained.

I hear a honk, and Daddy’s voice yelling my name. I quickly wipe my tears, swallow my sadness best I can. He gets out of the truck and pushes me into the front seat next to Mama, puts my bike in the rear. She reaches behind the seat for an old towel and wraps it around my shoulders.

“What are you doing here? Have you gone and lost your mind?” Daddy says.

I don’t answer, afraid if I do I will start crying again.

The wipers scrape across the windshield, but it is raining so hard they do no good. We sit in silence, for what seems an eternity, until finally the rain softens, and we drive home.

Forty-three

We near the entrance to Juicy Acres. Cars and trucks line the side of the road. I see license plates from Polk County and Orange County, too, remember the mob that gathered outside the depot. Mama glances at Daddy, and I know something is not right. Daddy turns down our lane and parks in front of the house. The rain has turned into a light drizzle and taps softly on the roof.

“You girls wait here while I check the house.”

When he returns, he says everything is fine—though I know it isn’t—and to lock the door and not open it for any reason.

We do as we are told, and once inside, Mama sends me upstairs to change into dry clothes, while she busies herself drawing the curtains across all the windows and locking the doors.

When I return, she is sitting in the dark living room, smoking. She uses the burning stub of her cigarette to light the next one before putting it out.

“Why do you think all those cars are parked outside our lane?” I ask.

There is a long pause before she answers, as if deciding whether to tell me the truth or lie. “I suppose they came to look for Silas,” she finally says.

Mama stands and walks into the kitchen. The refrigerator door squeaks, and I know she is getting a beer. She comes back into the living room, takes a long swig, lights another cigarette, and begins pacing back and forth, the old floorboards creaking underfoot. The rain has stopped. Outside, birds have resumed chirping.

“Silas didn’t do anything wrong,” I say.

“Neither one of us knows a lick about that boy. Not where he came from, not what he’s capable of doing,” she says.

I want to tell her she’s wrong. I know lots of things about him. That when I kiss him, his lips taste lightly of salt, like the ocean air. That he smiles when he sleeps and smells of juniper when I bury my face in his neck. That he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.

“They’ll never find him,” I say. “He’s long gone by now.”

“For his sake, I hope he is. Fear does terrible things to folks.” She pulls back the curtains, peers out, shuts them again, and shivers even though the house is closed-up tight and has become sweltering.

Mama finishes her second beer. It’s relaxed her. “I’m going to go lie down for a bit. Listen up for your sister, please. She should be home from school soon.” Mama walks to her bedroom and closes the door with a quiet click.

The air is warm and thick and stinks of cigarettes. I am desperate to breathe in something fresh, so I pull back the curtains to make sure no one is lurking outside. Birds hop around the yard, dip beaks into wet dirt in search of worms the earth offers up in sacrifice.

I unlock the front door and go out to the screened porch. I sit in a rocking chair and take deep breaths, gulp in the sweet rain-scented air that has washed everything clean.

A light breeze rustles the leaves on the oak; a hummingbird hovers over the bright red blooms on the hibiscus bush. Just beyond, the green edges of the groves beckon, and I feel myself drawn off the front porch—needing to go to Silas’s shack, to be in that place where he once was.

I move quickly through the groves. I don’t know what makes me hurry, what turns my walk into a run, why I’m not afraid I might encounter the mob. All I think about is Silas. The pathway dips, and the alley of trees opens into a small clearing. I see his shack and stop, comforted. I bend over and put my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. The silence is disturbed by men’s voices, the voices of a crowd, no words discernible. They grow louder, and I become uneasy. Not wanting to be seen, I drop down on all fours, crawl to an orange tree, and silently climb up high into the canopy, where I am hidden.

I hear Daddy’s voice, “Get the hell off my property. I mean it, now.”

I hear the sheriff’s voice. “If you realize what’s good for you and your family, you’ll put that gun down and keep your mouth shut,” he says.

Daddy has his gun? I try to peer through the branches, but the leaves are too thick.

“These men are on my property,” Daddy says. “I’m politely asking them to leave.”

“You’re picking the wrong side, mister,” the sheriff says.

“This isn’t a courtroom—this is an orange grove. My orange grove. You’re trespassing on it.”

“In the name of the law, I demand you lower that gun,” the sheriff says.

I’ve never prayed before, not even when we used to go to church with Ma and Pa Bean. I could never get Mama’s words out of my head—Praying’s just begging for miracles. I have no other choice; only a miracle will save us now. I pray, or maybe I beg, jumbled words over and over, Put the gun down, Daddy—please put the gun down.

Daddy’s fierce, stubborn side is kicking in. “This is my land. I’m simply asking the trespassers to remove themselves from my property.”

“I wouldn’t want to have to shoot you now because you defied the law.”

I can’t stand listening any longer, scream from the branches, “Please, Daddy, do what he says before he kills you!”

But it’s too late. A gun goes off, one shot that will echo through my brain forever.

Silence takes over the grove. No bird stirs in any branch. No creature moves. Not even the bees drone.

Forty-four

If I live to be one hundred years old, this is what I will always remember:

That I screamed until my throat ached, but no sound ever came out.

The smell of gunpowder, like Mama’s matches after she blows one out, like the night sky on the Fourth of July.

What I don’t remember is falling from the tree, or anything after until I open my eyes. My head aches terribly. I can’t figure out where I am.

“Lucky for you that sand is so soft,” Daddy says. “That was quite a fall.”

The room is blurred, giving it a dreamlike quality.

“Daddy? Are we dead?”

“No—but think we came close.”

“I heard a gunshot and thought for sure the sheriff killed you.” I know how evil that man is.

“I shot my gun up in the air to show that I meant business. Pissed that sheriff off good, but pissed that mob off even more. Things were about to get bad, but some reporter showed up and started snapping pictures. The crowd dispersed real quick after that. Sheriff put away his gun and acted like it was all in the name of duty. Probably hoping to make himself look like a hero and get some good press out of it.”

“Where am I?”

“In Silas’s shack. I didn’t want to move you far. I found you piled in a heap beneath that tree. Sure your neck was broken.”

For a moment I think I see tears welling up in his eyes; then he looks away and clears his throat.

“Why don’t you take a moment and gather yourself,” Daddy says. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

Suddenly every bone in my body feels broken. My shattered heart spills across the floor. I stare at the glimmering pieces, edges ragged and sharp and unforgiving. Think if I stare hard enough, maybe the pieces will fit back together into something I recognize.

I see the book of wildflowers and the heart-shaped stone exactly as I had left it. I pick up the stone, wrap my hand tightly around it, the solidness a small anchor in my drifting world. I put it in my pocket and take the wildflower book with me.

It is dusk when Daddy and I walk back through the grove home. Memories fill the branches, bright and abundant as oranges. Silas teaching me to juggle. Silas peeling an orange with his knife, around and around, so the skin comes off in one long, twisting piece. Silas with his bare shoulder leaning into the roughness of a tree, the tattered straw hat he always wore shining in the sunlight like a crown on a king, a young man without a care in the world.

Mama and Sissy are on the front porch, not saying a word, just waiting and rocking. Sissy still wears her school skirt and blouse. It is the first time I’ve seen her out of her bathrobe since the storm blew through. It feels like years, not days.

“Where have you two been? I’ve been worried sick,” Mama says. Her eyes drop to her lap, and she fumbles in her apron pocket. She removes a cigarette, puts it to her lips, tries to light it, but her hands shake too bad. Daddy walks over, takes her hand in his, and holds it steady until the cigarette catches. She inhales deeply, then exhales in relief.

I go upstairs to our room. The fifty-dollar bill is on my pillow. It no longer makes me happy, just reminds me of the bike I’ll never buy for Silas. Sissy’s cruelty. I stuff it in my pocket and remove the stone, trace my thumb around its heart shape, notice the little crack that runs through the center for the first time.

What if that storm had never come? If I hadn’t gone to the turkey shed and seen what I did? If I’d left the baby buried in the sand? Had one little thing gone differently, Silas would still be here. I ache for him the way I ached for Sissy months ago—I hate that love has the power to break us.

Footsteps softly tap up the wooden stairs. I recognize them as Sissy’s. The bedroom door opens, and I feel her presence, but I don’t turn around or acknowledge her. I know she is standing inside the doorway, waiting, wondering whether to stay or go.

Then the familiar creaks in the well-trodden floor as she moves across the room, the sag and squeak when she sits on the edge of my bed. I feel her looking at me, then her hand on my shoulder, but she says nothing.

Finally, I turn and look into my sister’s face. Suffering has chiseled away the softness, leaving it sharp and less pretty. Tears run down her cheeks.

“You were there that night,” she says. “I don’t remember most of it; it’s like a giant blur.”

I nod. “Why didn’t you tell me, Sissy? We’ve never kept secrets from each other.”

She is quiet for a while; then finally she answers, “I was so ashamed—and so scared. I kept praying that it would somehow leave my body and nobody would ever have to know. I even ate a handful of dandelions because I read it could cause a miscarriage—but it just gave me a terrible stomachache.”

She pauses, as if deciding whether to ask the next question. “Please, tell me what happened. I need to know what happened.”

“It was late. I’d fallen asleep on the couch and awoke to the sound of the turkey-shed door banging in the wind and went to close it. That’s when I saw you.”

I stop because the memory is so vivid and awful.

“He wasn’t born alive, Sissy. I didn’t know what to do, so I wrapped him in a picking sack and buried him in the grove.”

“A boy?”

“Yes.”

“But I didn’t want to leave him there. I felt like I’d buried a bad seed that was going to poison us. The next night, I dug up the baby and hid him in the truckload of stuff going to the dump. I wanted that baby as far away from Juicy Acres as possible.”

Sissy buries her face in her hands. “I just want everything to go back to the way it used to be. I am so sorry for everything, Pip.”

For months I’ve dreamed of this moment, but no longer. It can never be the same between us. Those two girls are long gone. I do not answer her—grief has strangled my words.

“I’m sorry about Silas. That I treated him so badly. I was jealous of how happy you were together.”

I roll over and stare out our window. Watch a raindrop dribble down the glass, connect to another, and continue on together. Sissy lies on the bed beside me, curls her body around mine, draws me into her like the old days—two broken hearts beat as one.

Forty-five

For a while the town talk is of the missing mother who never did step forward and claim that baby, many speculating Silas killed her, too, dumped her body in Alligator Bayou to be finished up. Finally, folks grew tired of it and moved on to something else. Our interrupted lives begin again, but nothing is the same.

His body is gone, but he is not. Silas lingers in the ordered passages of the grove, in the hush of the abandoned turkey shed, in the canopies of the trees he will never climb again, in the soundless ripples of Foggy Bottom Lake.

On quiet, still days I hear him whistling in the distance. Not a song, but that happy tune he used to absently whistle while moseying along. I try to find him, but the closer I get, the softer it becomes until it fades away.

At night, when the missing becomes more than I can stand, I go out to the picnic table and stretch out on my back, arms under my head. I stare up at that sky and then he doesn’t feel so far away.

Without Silas, the grove is impossible to maintain. Oranges fall and rot before we have a chance to pick them. We save what we can, down on our hands and knees, sorting through the ground fruit that in the past would have been discarded without another thought. It seems as if we work all the time, falling into a deep dreamless sleep at night, only to awaken and work again. With production down and the turkeys gone, Daddy falls behind in his payments to the bank. But it is the December freeze that finally seals our fate.

For three nights in a row, the temperature on the Ridge falls to a record-breaking twenty-eight degrees. At first, the leaves appear firm and green, but as they thaw, they soften and dry. As for the fruit, the juice sacks rupture and the oranges become worthless slush-filled orbs.

On the fourth day of the freeze, we know our trees will die. Daddy calls us into the kitchen and tells us so. Mama is already sitting at the table when Sissy and I get there. I can tell she has been awake for a while because the ashtray is full, the kitchen heavy with the stench of smoke. Her paints are open, brushes resting in a glass of water that has turned a color there is no name for, the paper illustrating the sky at dawn—pale pink and peach with streaks of orange. She painted it looking out at the grove, but there isn’t a single tree.

While Daddy talks about the possibility of working at the orange-juice-concentrate plant in Lake Wales and taking rooms in widow Willoughby’s broken-down boarding house until we get on our feet, Mama stares at the birds fluttering around the feeder outside the window. When he finishes, there is only silence

She speaks without taking her eyes from the feeder, as if she already knows what his answer will be and is steeling herself for it. “We can leave,” she says. “I have enough money saved to get us started someplace new, far away from the groves.”

We stare at her. All this time Mama had enough money saved up to leave? She could have flown away like a bird, but she didn’t. Maybe Mama really did love us after all.

Leaving the grove is the answer to my prayers, to Sissy’s prayers. We can live in a place where ghosts don’t linger, or memories dangle from trees, or lurk in turkey sheds and abandoned shacks at the back of a grove. I imagine a beginning as blank and hopeful as a fresh page in the beautiful journal Mama gave me—as her canvas before she starts to paint.

His face turns angry, scowling and squinty, the look I hate most. “I’m a grove man! This is where I belong and my family will stay!”

I expect Mama to get mad, to storm about. But she doesn’t, her silence even worse, like the eerie hush before a summer storm. She turns her gaze back toward the feeder, and I am struck by how oddly serene she looks. She lifts the brush from the glass, lightly taps it on the rim to remove the excess water, and begins to paint—dark blue and aqua green—the sea beneath a pink confection sky.

Daddy watches her for a few moments. Then turns and leaves the room without a word. The screen door slams, and Sissy says, “I don’t want to stay in Belleville, Mama. I want to move by the ocean, like you. Hell, I don’t even care if it’s the ocean, just anywhere but here.”

Mama doesn’t respond. She hums lightly as she paints, never pausing, or even glancing our way.

“Say something, Mama,” Sissy yells. “Say something!” When Mama doesn’t, she runs from the room. I hear her feet pounding on the wooden stairs, the slam of our bedroom door.

I look at the feeder; a yellow-throated warbler is perched on it. I’ve often wondered how the birds find that feeder, such a tiny thing in this vast world. Yet they always find their way back, stopping as they fly north for summer or south in winter, the varieties greatest in the spring and fall.

I once asked Mama if she thought birds knew where they were going, if they had a plan, a destination, a place to land. And she said, “No. I think they fly until they find a place they want to stay.”

Through the window I see Daddy standing in the yard, looking at the grove. Our tears and blood soaked into this land that is silently devouring us. He bends over, scoops up a handful of the soft sugar sand, and lets it run through his fingers, and I wonder how entire lifetimes are built on a material so fine even the slightest wind can carry it away.

I push open the screen door and join him in the chilled December air.

“I didn’t know a man could feel so lost,” Daddy says, his eyes fixed on the trees where he once hung his dreams.

I take a deep breath and speak my mind. “All the years Ma’s lived here for you, sacrificing her own happiness. It’s not right you won’t let us leave the groves. There’s not a damn thing left worth staying for.”

Daddy lifts his head, looks me in the eye, and I’m sure I’m going to get it good this time. I suck in my breath and hold it, meet his gaze, and don’t look away.

Instead, he speaks softly. “You’re right. There is nothing left for us here.”

I’m stunned—Daddy’s never told me I’m right about anything.

“Does that mean we can move?”

He opens the screen door, holds it for me, the familiar squeak a constant reminder of our years at Juicy Acres. “Let’s go tell your mama.”

Mama hasn’t moved, just keeps painting.

“Ada,” Daddy says.

She doesn’t bother to look up or acknowledge him in any way.

“I had thought I could give you a fine life, and I am sorry for all the hardships. You’re right, it’s time for us to be moving on, away from the groves. I hope this makes you happy. That’s what I want. I want you to be happy.”

Mama stops painting and looks at him. Her face confused—like she doesn’t really believe him.

Daddy walks over, puts a hand on her shoulder, and gives it a squeeze. “Let’s plan to leave on Friday.” She looks up at him and smiles, lays her hand on top of his.

I look out the window at the sky. There is a crack in the clouds that have hung heavy all day, and a bright shaft of sunlight streaks across the kitchen floor.

I know that beam of light is saying, Everything will be all right.

Forty-six

I paint new words on the old folding sign. Clearince Sale! Everything Must Go! 2 for the Price of 1! For the dots in the exclamation points, I paint a smiling orange with long, curly eyelashes. I step back to admire my work and think it looks swell.

“You spelled clearance wrong,” Sissy says.

Only Sissy would notice a minor detail like that. I drag the sign to the side of the road while she dusts the souvenirs. The transistor radio sits on the counter, and Perry Como sings “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Christmas music has been playing all morning, and Sissy hasn’t complained once.

Then I see it—just as I had a year ago—a dust devil in the distance that grows large and real and is upon us.

The carnival is on its way to town.

This time, I don’t wave. I don’t jump up and down. I don’t count the cars in the caravan as they rumble past. I stand there with my hands on my hips, looking for that black convertible. Again, it’s the last car in the caravan, but the top is up. It slows as it nears us, letting the distance grow between it and the others, before pulling off the road.

I turn around and see Sissy in the window, untying her work apron, smoothing her bobbed hair behind her ears, pinching her cheeks pink. What is she doing? She should be waiting to give him a piece of her mind—not primping! I shake my head in disgust. She’ll never change.

Me on the other hand, I’m livid, not sure when I’ve felt this angry before. If it weren’t for Raffy, Silas would still be here. I can’t wait to chew that boy out—tell him about the baby, about what he did to my sister, how he left a wake of ruin in our lives long after he was gone.

The car rolls to a stop, and I hear that cloying little squeak of the window being rolled down, remember Sissy’s face peering out, telling me to scram.

I take a step forward, but it’s not Raffy’s flawless face staring back, it’s the revolting ticket taker from the Thrill Seekers tent, his filthy sausage fingers beckoning us into a future we couldn’t even fathom.

Sissy comes running over, a huge smile on her face that falls quickly to the ground.

“Got any oranges? Got any cake? I like cake,” he says.

“No, no cake or oranges. Just souvenirs and postcards left.”

I look around the inside of the car. He is the only one in it.

“Don’t have no need for a pile o’ crap. But I’ll let my boss know. He’s always looking for arcade prizes.”

He starts rolling up the window; the squeaking makes the hair on my arms stand up straight. I grab the window with both hands to stop it.

“Wait,” I say. “Where’s Raffy?”

“Raffy? Knocked up a girl in Biloxi, Mississippi. Her father hunted him down. Found us six towns later in Millington, Tennessee, and dragged him off at gunpoint in the middle of the night to marry her.”

I let go of the window, watch the car slip away into the horizon, the red taillights glowing like devil’s eyes as he speeds away, never to be seen again.

Sissy stays very still, staring into the car-swallowing distance, and I wonder—will we ever speak of this time again?

“I know you might not think so, but you sure got lucky when he ditched you and left town,” I tell her. “I don’t think Raffy’s capable of staying true to anyone but himself.” Kind of like you, I think

She doesn’t respond, disappears inside the stand, and turns up the Christmas music on the transistor radio. Her beautiful voice floats out the window. It’s the first time I’ve heard her sing in a year.

Forty-seven

It is the day before we leave Juicy Acres when I decide I must go back to the Mystery House one more time. I haven’t had the courage to do so—the pain still so raw—but time is running out.

I’m surprised the path we cleared has already been taken over by the wild, as if we’d never been there, our tracks forever concealed. I stop at the Tree of Tears. Trace Silas’s name with my finger, wrap my arms around the trunk of that sturdy old tree the way I used to wrap my arms around him. Will anyone ever understand me in the same way again?

I reach the foot of the dock—stare at the front door where all my yesterdays have been left behind. Finally, I walk toward it and put my hand on the knob, but I don’t turn it—not sure I’m brave enough to go back to the only time and place I was ever truly happy.

Inside, everything is as it was, and nothing as it was. Butterflies float above my head in the languid afternoon breeze. The quilt on the bed tucked in tight. Dishes stacked neatly on the wooden shelf Silas built. The frying pan hangs on the wall; silverware sits bundled in the pickle jar. But it’s our beautiful collection of nature’s castoffs painstakingly arranged along the window ledge that makes me catch my breath. The memories are too much—I can’t stand the finality of it all. I have to get out of here.

Then I see a jar of fresh wildflowers on the potbelly stove. The hairs go up on my arms. I turn around, there is no one, but I know I am not alone. I walk to the screened window. I see the blue-green spring, the long trunks of the trees reaching out as if to pull someone safely to shore, the constant movement of birds in the branches, the flutter of fish tails in the sunlit water. I feel a hand on my shoulder, and a familiar jolt shoots through my body. I should have felt scared—terrified—but there was something so kind and gentle in that touch, I didn’t. I wait and breathe and hope…and finally turn around.

It’s Silas.

He is looking back at me, fishing pole in hand. “What took you so long?” he asks, that beautiful smile filling up his face.

I’m so shocked, I can’t move.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he teases.

He bundles me into his arms and I bury my face in his neck, as I have so many times before, breathe in his piney scent. I never want to let go, afraid if I do, he will disappear like a puff of smoke and I’d know it was just a dream.

He releases me and holds my face between his hands. “You’re even prettier in real life than in my memory.”

I notice a long, jagged scar across his cheek that wasn’t there before. I run my finger over its raised edges.

“Did the sheriff do this?” I ask.

He nods.

“Silas, I could say I’m sorry a million times, but I’ll never forgive myself for everything that’s happened to you.”

I know I must tell him the truth—even if he hates me.

“What happened to me has nothing to do with you, Pip.”

I hang my head because I can’t look in his eyes. I sigh; I don’t look up. “It’s my fault you got arrested. The night of the storm…Sissy had a baby that died in birth. She hid the pregnancy from all of us. All those months I’ve been complaining about her meanness—now I understand why she acted that way—she was terrified.

I pause to study his face. His expression is blank.

“I didn’t know what to do with the body, so I wrapped it in a picking sack and buried it in the grove. But I didn’t want it there, I wanted it as far away as possible. The next day I dug up the body and buried it in the truckbed among the storm debris going to the dump. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would come to this—and I just keep thinking, if I had done one thing different—one little thing—none of this would have happened.”

He remains silent—and I know I’ve lost the only friend I’ve ever had—and rightfully so.

“I’m so sorry I’ve ruined your life, Silas. I don’t blame you for hating me.”

He turns away and stares out through the screen—the clear blue spring begs us to come play—and I long to return to a time when we thought tomorrow was ours forever.

When the silence gets too loud, he finally speaks. “I could never hate you—I love you. You didn’t ruin my life—you gave me a new one.”

Did he say I love you? Outside Sissy, no one has ever told me they loved me, and even we don’t actually say it to each other.

Not Mama, not Daddy, not Ma or Pa Bean. Those words simply weren’t spoken in our house, just quietly assumed.

“If I hadn’t gotten arrested, I’d probably work at Juicy Acres till I died. I’m grateful for your pa and all, but I like my freedom. And you know I’ve got everything I need right here at the Mystery House—fish, fruit, fresh water.” He reaches over and takes my hand.

Silas always seems to find the good in things. That’s a nice way to go through life, I think. I’m going to try to be more like Silas in that way.

I was eager to move from Juicy Acres…leave all those memories behind and start fresh. But now all I want is to stay.

“Silas—there’s something else. Something important. We’re moving away tomorrow. Far from the groves. I’m not sure where to yet. But I’m thinking I should stay here with you.”

His face looks suddenly sad, and he remains quiet for the longest time.

“I want nothing more than for you to stay—but that’s not right,” he says. “You need to go with your family, finish school. And when you come back, you can teach me all the things you’ve learned.”

I see a great blue heron standing alone in the water. He reminds me of Silas—patient and proud and solitary. I remember Silas once saying that Mother Nature was the best teacher—learned everything he needed to know from observing the wild. Yes, he belongs here—he is of this beautiful, wild place.

Even though it’s not what I want to do, I know he is right.

“I graduate two summers from now. I’ll come back here to live with you then.”

“How will I know when that is?” he asks.

“The royal poinciana trees always blossom in time for our birthday in June—which is when I graduate. So when those trees burst into red for the second time, I promise I’ll be back. And with an entire chocolate cake!

He laughs. “Two summers isn’t so long.”

I agree, but it feels like an eternity.

“It’s getting dark,” I say. We both know this means I must leave.

I have a lump in my throat but am determined not to cry. I don’t want my blubbering to be the last image in his mind when he thinks of me.

Silas takes my hand. We walk to the front door, which he opens and holds for me like a gentleman. We face each other one last time. He leans down and kisses me; his lips linger on mine like the early-morning mist on the water outside the Mystery House.

I do not say goodbye. Instead I say, “I love you, too, Silas,” and feel a fullness I have never known.

“When the poincianas bloom,” he responds.

“When the poincianas bloom.”

I stuff my hand in my pocket, clutch the heart stone, and start walking; tears run down my cheeks, endless. I don’t turn around—I can’t turn around—I just keep moving forward.

Forty-eight

Our room is slowly becoming undone. The years peeled off the walls, emptied out of drawers and the closet. Large gray dust balls roll across the bedroom floor and settle into corners, not to be disturbed again.

Sissy picks out objects and stacks them on her bed. The empty autograph book with Hollywood stamped in tall gold script on its deep blue cover. The weathered magazines, dog-eared corners turned down to mark hairstyles, makeup tips, dress patterns she will never try. The rose Raffy gave her—pressed thin between the pages of a heavy book for months—the flattened bloom dangling from the reed-thin stem like a head on a broken neck.

“I’m going to burn them,” she says. Just like that. Easily. Calmly. Like none of it ever mattered.

Sissy sits down on her bed and studies the pile of her stuff. “What about you?” she asks. “You can’t take it all. Why would you even want to? Wouldn’t it be nicer to start over fresh?”

I am fascinated and horrified by the idea. How easy she makes it look—as if by destroying our past, we can be set free of it.

I look at my possessions spread across the bed. My menagerie of carnival trophies—stuffed dogs, and teddy bears with fur the color of jelly beans and vacant plastic eyes. Comic books; a baton I never used; a pair of metal strap-on roller skates, the key to adjust the size long gone, the skates too small and now unchangeable. I nod my head and stack them in the hall next to her stuff. It really is a sorry-looking pile of junk.

“I’m going to get a trash bag,” she says.

When she leaves, I reach under the bed for my box of keepsakes. I pull it out, place it in my lap, and remove the lid.

The paper box Silas made me for my birthday is on top, the lid and walls still strong and intact. Inside the beautiful butterfly is nestled. I hold it in my palm, think about how most of a butterfly’s life is lived as a caterpillar, being ordinary. Then one day the unexpected happens.

I remove one of Sissy’s long gold braids and run my hand slowly down the twists and turns of our childhood until I get to the end. With her short bobbed hair, made fashionable by Mrs. Jackie Kennedy, she looks like a young woman now.

And the red journal with the little gold key. My fifty-dollar bill pressed inside. I’m saving it to buy a bus ticket back. The arrowhead. The jar of sugar sand. The official letter from Florida State University telling me I’d won. The last thing I find is the business card from Lloyd Powers at the Orlando Sentinel. I replace my treasures, put the lid back on the box, and tuck it inside my open suitcase. But not Lloyd Powers card.

I go to the trash pile on my bed and pull out the box of unused stationery Daddy gave me for Christmas. I tear open the cellophane and remove a sheet of paper with kittens tumbling around the edge. I find a pen amongst the mess and settle myself down.

December 22, 1961

Dear Mr. Powers,

My name is Penelope Bean. I met you outside the depot during the arrest and you gave me your card. I have a confession to make:

On the night of August 30, 1961, my sister gave birth to a baby boy that was born dead, and an innocent boy was blamed for it.

I’m the one who found my sister and the newborn in our family’s turkey shed. I’m the one who took the body and wrapped it in a picking sack and hid it in my Daddy’s truck, which Silas, our hired worker, drove to the dump. Silas had nothing to do with the death of that baby, he was just the unlucky one to be driving that truck.

The day I saw you at the depot, I went to the sheriff and told him what I knew—the truth. But he didn’t care. He wanted Silas gone from this earth because he sees him as little better than a dog. He says Silas read and signed a confession, but I know that’s a lie because Silas can’t read. The only reason he can sign his name is because I taught him. The sheriff beat him into signing that piece of paper.

I have more information, but we are moving from Belleville and I don’t know where. I want to help with your story and clear Silas’s name. I will write when we settle.

Sincerely,
Penelope Bean

Sissy and I drag our trash bags into the grove and empty them into one pile. Without the dense canopy of leaves, the grove opens and things are visible that could not be seen before. Even in the dim, colorless day, there is light where there was dark. Birds flit confused between finger-bone limbs, stark silhouettes against the sky, vulnerable and exposed. A lone palm I’ve never noticed stands tall in the distance. Rotten oranges cover the sand.

We rip out magazine pages, wad them into balls that we stuff between items to help the fire catch. I gather dead leaves and add them. Break off thin branches to use as kindling. When we finish, Sissy douses the heap with gasoline, and we light and throw matches into the pile.

Magazine pages turn blue and melt into themselves. Leaves crackle in the low flames. Fire teases at the seams of old clothes that are slow to catch. Then more paper ignites in a poof. The fire grows and takes on a life of its own, greedy and devouring, feasting on our histories while we watch.

Mama and Daddy arrive with the truck bed piled high. I recognize the brown cartons full of Mama’s old photos, the fake Christmas tree. They work together, hauling items and stacking them at the side of the firepit.

Mama doesn’t open the boxes, but heaves them, one at a time, waiting until each has caught before tossing another. Sparks shoot to the sky and disperse in every direction, like sorrows with wings.

The four of us stand together in the firelight, watch the towering flames, the heat-rippled air warp, tease, and distort, until we don’t know if what we are looking at is false or true.

We stay in the grove late into the night, watching the fire. Until the known is unrecognizable and finally burned away. Until flames die down into nothing and sand is shoveled over glowing embers and charred debris.

Until all that remains is each other.

We drive down the sandy lane for the last time in the chilled, quiet air—silent fog slowly lifting. I don’t turn around to see what I am leaving behind. I know I will be back.

“Ready to fly this coop?” Daddy asks.

“Yes!” we all say.

I look at Mama, and she is smiling. A real, true smile.

We stop at the end of the lane. “Wait,” I say, and hand Daddy the letter. He barely glances at it before opening the box and putting up the little red flag. I can’t help think—Hey, Sheriff, who is laughing now?

Daddy turns to Mama, sees how happy she looks, and smiles. “Do you prefer to watch the sun set into the ocean or rise from it?”

Without pause, Mama says, “Rise.”

Sissy grabs my hand and gives me the secret handshake. Three tight squeezes, I love you. I squeeze back twice, How much? And Sissy, With all my might—the last squeeze the strongest.

Daddy turns east onto Rural Route 13 for the last time—the rosy dawn beckoning us forward into a new day—puts the pedal to the metal, and we soar.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the following people for being the wind beneath my wings:

My agents, Harvey Klinger and Rachel Ridout, who make me laugh and come up with great solutions to tricky editorial problems. Liza Kaplan, the acquiring editor who took a chance on The Grove—forever grateful. For the wisdom and talents of Jenny Bak and AZ Hackett, the editors who helped me hone the story and guided this book across the finish line.

My writer posses:

Carmen Marti, Connie Biewald, Samantha Schoech, Laura Catherine Brown—you have been with The Grove since chapter one. Your insight and guidance were invaluable, but it’s the laughter, late-night fireside talks, and random dance parties when the work was done I cherish most of all.

The Key West crew! Rosalind Brackenbury, Jessica Argyle, Katrin Schumann, George Collins—long, literary lunches at Azur and readings at the Secret Studio—such a joy.

The Key West Literary Seminar for awarding me the Marrianne Russo Award for “novel in progress.” Reading my work on that stage among some of the best writers in the world is a memory and honor I will forever cherish.

Those who offered me a place to write:

The Studios of Key West when I really needed a studio (Jay Scott!). Tom Pope at 610 White for providing that little studio buried in the branches of an avocado tree. Holly, who always greets me with a smile. Millay Arts, Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, Vermont Studio Center—so lucky to spend time in such creative places.

My family:

Mom, Barbara Whitney Carr, a beautiful poet, who gave me the gift of words. Dad, the late John Whitney, who truly believed I could! For my brother and sister, Deed and Amanda, if it weren’t for you, I’m not sure this book would exist. Mimi and Rebecca, you are the best cheerleaders a sister could ask for.

Aunt Pleasant, thank you for all you have done to encourage and support my career. Those early years writing for American Girl are some of my fondest memories. Aunt Lizzie, always full of good ideas and plot suggestions. Uncle Eddie, I love that we share books.

Susan Sugar, Hal Bromm, Doneley Meris—art and gardens and fabulous people—always creatively inspiring!

My own sweet, little family: Mark, for making sure there is always a quiet time and place for me to write, for your unwavering belief and support—you never faltered even when I did. My dumplings, Tate and Posy, thank you for sharing your mom with Sissy and Pip. For understanding when my head was consumed by their world, deadlines loomed, and I couldn’t be as present as I wished. I love you dearly.

And finally, Flores Del Camino in the medieval village of Castrillo de los Polvazares, Spain, where I was when final revisions popped into my email. Books are a pilgrimage and so it seems fitting to have finished on the Camino de Santiago. Thank you, Basia, Bertrand, Kim, Rosalind, Kelly, Oakleigh, Lucy, Peeka, Jessica, Judy, Harriet—I can’t imagine a kinder group or more beautiful, spiritual place to complete this journey.

Buen camino, Sissy and Pip.

About the Author

Brooks Whitney Phillips is a freelance writer and author. She wrote a syndicated column and feature stories on music and the arts for the Chicago Tribune, is the author of eight middle grade books, and contributes design and travel stories to national magazines. She is the recipient of the Key West Literary Seminar’s Marianne Russo Award for novel-in-progress, and is co-founder of the Rowland Writers Retreat, which hosts and funds ten annual residencies for women authors. She lives in Key West, Florida and Saugatuck, Michigan.

Follow her on Instagram @BrooksWhitneyPhillips

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