Tomorrow River

Chapter Eighteen

Branches are beating against the four-paned window. Our house has gone deep black, which always happens when the wind comes up this fierce. We lose our power. Lou tells Woody and me that it’s a ghost playing a trick on us. I half believe her, because Mr. Cole has tried to fix whatever is wrong in the fuse box time and time again with no luck. I’ve lit a couple of stubby candles, let the wax drip onto the porcelain sink and stuck them.

My shadow is dancing across the white bathroom wall like a chorus girl in a movie musical when I sing for the fifth and, I swear, last time, “When you walk through a storm keep your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm is a golden sky and the sweet silver song of a… bark.” This song from the Carousel album is another one of Woody’s all-time favorites. I have sung it to her enough times down in the root cellar that I know perfectly well that last part’s supposed to go-the sweet silver song of a… lark, but I knew changing it up like that would make her smile.

I already took my bath. Now my sister’s in the claw tub beneath a scattering of bubbles, her freshly shampooed hair floating like seaweed in the ocean. I’ve already inspected her for the dime-sized marks.

The first time I found the purple splotches, I scrubbed and scrubbed and when they wouldn’t come off I asked her, “Did you do a swan dive into a blueberry patch or something?” It was mysterious. And got more so when I noticed that the marks kept showing up even when there weren’t any berries blooming. I figured it out the afternoon I saw Woody running down to the animal cemetery behind the barn. She was going to bury a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. When I got down to the barn, Pegasus was pawing in the cross ties. Out the door, I could see that Blackie who was here to shoe Papa’s horse had caught Woody. He pried the dead bird out of her hand, threw it as far as he could, and when it landed up against a tree, he laughed and said, “Guess it needs some more practice.” He mimicked Woody’s flapping. “Ya can fool your idiot father, but ya can’t fool me. You’re just puttin’ this shit on.” That’s when he started pinching her all over the place. He only stopped because I yelled out to him, “There’s a woman on the telephone for you, Uncle Blackie. Got a voice like Marilyn Monroe’s. You better come quick.” I wanted to tell Papa on him, but I knew if I did, Blackie would get back at me. The next time he got ahold of my sister, he’d pinch her quarter size.

I sit on the edge of the tub and bury my toes in Ivory’s chocolate back. He looks up at me and gives me a very jolly look. “I were you, I’d wipe that smile off my face. You’re next,” I tell him. “Get out now, Woody. We got to get up to the fort before the rain comes.”

When she stands, I notice how we’re not flat anymore. Our chests are budding. And between our legs wispy hair has come in and we’ve got gentle curves at the waist. Tears spring to my eyes when I do Mama’s job of wrapping my sister up tight in a towel. Woody and I are changing into little women without her.

Due to his unusually small size, Ivory was easy to stuff into the Bucket Express.

Mama was the one who came up with the idea of jerry-rigging a rope to a branch on the tree fort, placing a pully on top and an old wash pail down on the bottom so we could haul stuff up without having to leave the fort. “Mother is the necessity of invention,” she said when she stood back to admire her work, and I just loved that.

Woody, me, and Ivory are snug like spoons in the sleeping corner of our fort, so maybe that’s why the rhyme that Papa liked to recite to us when we’d come up here together to view the spring constellations is popping into my mind no matter how hard I’m trying to push it away.

Hey diddle diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon,

The little dog laughed to see such sport,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

“Right there, girls. See?” Papa would speak softly, like he was hunting and might scare the stars away. “The cat is your birth sign-Leo the lion. And the fiddle is Lyra-the lyre. The cow the rhyme is referring to is Taurus the bull. The little dog is Canis Minor, you see him? And the dish is Crater running away with the spoon, who is the Big Dipper.”

Memories are so two-faced.

One minute they’re hugging you like a long-lost friend, the next minute they’re ripping you apart like your worst enemy.

I whisper into my sister’s hair, “I’m gettin’ so grimmery. ’Bout everything.”

Woody and I are having our pillow talk time the way we always have. I wish she’d start holding up her end again. My thoughts come so fast and furious this time of day. I desperately miss my twin telling me when I would get like this, “Ya know what your problem is, Shenny? You think way too much. Hushacat.”

We came into this world knowing a foreign language. Mama thought it was cute and would try to chitter-chatter with us, but Papa made us quit because he said we sounded like little monkeys. So, just like anything else you don’t keep up, we mostly forgot how. We still remember some of the twin talk and use it when we are alone. Before Woody went mute on me, that is. You already know that hushacat means everything is going to be all right no matter how bad it seems at the present time, but what I just told Woody? That I’m feeling grimmery? That’s hard to define in regular English. The closest I can get is-“catastrophically worried to death.” Meetone-means “I’m hungry.” Rabadee-“I’m sorry.” The best twin word of all, though, has got to be boomba-“love.” Not the dependable kind, like when your mother and father who still care for each other are sitting on the back steps discussing their day and their voices come drifting through your bedroom window where you’re sleepy between hung-in-the-sun sheets after a warm bubble bath. And not the kind of romantic love that E. J. feels for Woody and I feel for Bootie Young. No, a boomba is more like how you feel when you get an unexpected gift. Me getting Ivory Minnow into my sister’s arms, for instance. That gave her a boomba.

Speaking of which, poor Clive. I wish I hadn’t run out of Rolaids . Just thinking about him is making my stomach leap about the same way his must’ve before he died. Deceasing all alone like that must’ve been terrible.

Or maybe my tummy’s jumpy because I’m having one of those gut instincts that Sam is always going on about. “If you two girls begin to feel like something bad is about to happen that means it probably is. Trust your gut,” he tells us all the time. “You start feeling that way, come to the station as fast as you can.”

“Does your stomach feel like you swallowed a pogo stick?” I ask Woody.

Beneath this starless sky, Sam’s words are especially worrisome. I’m not so sure Papa would be able to stop himself from doing something I can’t even imagine if he found out what Woody is holding back. Other than Mama leaving with a packed suitcase, I don’t know what else she knows, but she knows something-believe me. I can tell. She’s my twin.

“Pea? Why do you think Papa keeps askin’ us what we saw that night?”

Seems like he doesn’t even want his loving wife to come back anymore, so going over the details of her disappearance is as pointless as a pocket on the back of your shirt. He put his arm around Abigail Hawkins this afternoon in the kitchen. He might’ve fallen into her web, which should make my grandfather pleased as punch. He’s glad that Mama’s gone. The only reason he’s offering that hefty reward for information on her whereabouts is so those good old boys will comment to each other what a thoughtful man Guster Carmody is over their biscuits and gravy at Ginny’s Diner.

His cronies have no way of knowing that whenever Grampa would come over to Lilyfield for Sunday lunch, he’d bark at Mama fetch me this, fetch me that. He threw insults and ordered her around. But it wasn’t only her. He talked to Gramma like she was one of his prize retrievers, too. If they tried to enter into a conversation the men were having around the table, Grampa’d cut them off with, “Yap… yap… yap… you girls don’t have one useful brain between ya.”

After they’d cleaned up the kitchen, they’d go for a walk near the garden. Mama would tell Gramma, “Gus doesn’t own you, Ruth Love. You’re not one of his parcels of land. Possession may be ninth tenths of the law, but it isn’t the same as love. Don’t… don’t you see that?” Mama would beg her to get a backbone and Gramma would smile and nod her head, but I think it must be true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks because I have never heard her tell our grandfather to sit down and shut up. Not once.

I say to Woody, “I’ve been thinkin’. No matter how put off you’ve been by Gramma lately, Mama’d want you to go out of your way for her when she comes this weekend. Play with her dolls, let her show you the pictures in the album, all right? I’ll put Vick’s VapoRub under your nose so you won’t smell her Ben-Gay.” I nudge my sister pretty hard. “Are you or are you not asleep?” Her slow breathing is leading me to believe she is, but she could be playing possum again. I lift up her arm and it drops heavily onto Ivory’s back, which is balled into her tummy. Carefully pulling myself away from the two of them, I remove Sam’s aviator sunglasses off of the dog and place them over Woody’s eyes. They’ll prevent the lightning that’s coming from waking her up. E. J. nailed a bit of galvanized tin over part of the fort last month when I told him we were spending more time up here than in our room, so the two of them will stay dry when the rain finally comes. E. J. sure does come in handy with a hammer. I was such a piglet to him today. I’ll bring him some extra breakfast tomorrow.

I tickle my sister’s cheek one last time, wanting to make sure she’s out. I slipped one of the pills I took out of Papa’s medicine cabinet this morning into our last piece of pecan fudge and fed it to her. They’re the same calming pills he put into Mama’s tea. But unlike what he did to her, me doing this really is for my sister’s own good. I got something important to do and I can’t get worried while I’m gone about Woody wandering off to the Triple S or the hobo camp or Lord knows where.

I tug her thumb out of her mouth and open her fingers. A jagged square of Mama’s shredded chiffon scarf is bunched in her hot palm the way I knew it would be. I kiss every single one of her bit-to-the-quick nails, pat Ivory on the snout, and say, “Watch over her.” The both of them smell like rose soap.

Sticking my flashlight into my shorts, I get the rope between my fingers and lift the fort hatch, reminding myself to watch my step. Papa came back a little while ago from wherever he went. I heard his Lincoln Continental drive up. And I think Uncle Blackie must be around here somewhere, he usually is. His house is down creek from us but since he’s been messing with Lou in the meadow, much to my and Woody’s dismay, he’s over at Lilyfield a lot more than he used to be, which is another good reason to stay on my toes.

A dog is good but not as good as a mother at giving comfort and Woody really needs extra sweet loving. ASAP. I’m sure that the anniversary of Mama’s leaving is going to hit her like a tidal wave. I can already see it coming. She’s going to need something to hold on to, something all in one piece. I’m going into town to break into What Goes Around Comes Around to get my sister a backup boomba.

It’s not stealing to take back something that is rightfully yours.

Is it?