Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Twenty-Four

JOSIE – SEVEN YEARS OLD

Josie woke, thrashing and sweat-covered from a nightmare. Her eyes snapped open, and she had a moment of terror at the unfamiliar surroundings before the fog of sleep receded and she remembered where she was—at Gram’s house, in Gram’s bed. Ever since her daddy died, she had been staying here. She had her own room, but she usually preferred to curl up beside Gram. Josie sat up and blinked, her hands searching the bed covers for her grandmother’s warmth, but it wasn’t there.

“Gram?” she called.

There was no answer. Fear wrapped its calloused fingers around her heart, squeezing hard. She climbed down from the bed and tiptoed along the hallway toward the sliver of light coming from beneath the bathroom door. As she got closer, she heard her grandmother wailing, a high-pitched keening sound that made goosebumps break out all over her skin. She stood frozen in the hall, wondering if she should knock or call out to her. The pressure in her chest got tighter, and she ran back to Gram’s bed and pulled the covers all the way over her head. She wished more than anything that her daddy would come back from heaven, but deep down she knew she would never see him again.

She was just wondering if Wolfie was in heaven with him when she heard her gram’s footsteps in the hall. Josie shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep when Gram returned, not moving an inch when she climbed back into bed and wrapped her arms tightly around her.

When she woke, Gram was gone again, and sunlight streamed through the windows of the bedroom. Hearing voices downstairs, Josie hopped out of bed and went to the top of the steps to listen.

The sound of her mother’s voice made Josie’s whole body go cold. “She’s mine. You’ll never get her, Lisette.”

“Please, Belinda,” answered her gram. “She’s happy here. I’ll take care of her.”

“Over my dead body,” Josie’s mother said. Then she shouted, “JoJo! Come down here.”

Slowly, like her limbs were moving through mud, Josie made her way down the stairs. Her mother smiled at her. Not in the scary way she sometimes did just before she did something mean, but in the way she did on the rare occasion that she was nice to Josie—like when she gave her the coloring book. She knelt so that she was face to face with Josie and gently smoothed Josie’s hair out of her eyes. “JoJo, you want to come home with Mommy, right?”

Josie didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to leave Gram, but she liked it when her mother was nice to her. When she didn’t answer, her mother said, “I’ve missed you, JoJo. Don’t you want to come home with me? We’ll color and play games and do girl stuff together; what do you say?”

Josie looked at Gram, whose face had gone all stiff.

“JoJo?” her mother said.

She wanted to do all those things with her mother. They could play hide and seek and tag, and maybe they could paint their nails together. One of Josie’s friends from school had spa days with her mother where they played with makeup and did each other’s hair. Josie wanted that more than anything.

Josie nodded, and before she knew it, her mother was stuffing her into the passenger’s seat of her blue Chevette and slamming the door. Josie looked up to where Gram stood on the porch, tears glittering in her eyes, waving slowly. Josie’s mother got into the driver’s side and started the engine.

“Mommy,” Josie said. “I forgot my clothes and my blanket.”

“Shut up, JoJo.”