#ya crossover

                                      Chapter One (part two)

Twice I step on Nessa’s foot and tears spring to her eyes. I pat her head – it’ll have to do – then stand back, fold my arms and wait.

‘Wouldn’t you like to sit?’ the woman asks, her voice soft.

I glance at Nessa, squirmin’ in her seat, shyly slurpin’ her water, and shake my head no. The woman smiles at me before fumblin’ through her briefcase. She slides out a manila folder thick with pages. The white label on the front,  I can even read upside down. It says, ‘Blackburn, Carey and Jenessa’.

‘My name is Mrs Haskell,’ she says.

She pauses, and I follow her gaze back to my sister who pours a few drops of water into an old bottle cap. We all watch as Nessa leans down and sets it in front of a fat beetle laborin’ through the sea of wanwood leafmeal.

I nod, not knowin’  what to say. It’s  hard to keep my eyes on her when the man keeps starin’ at me. I watch a tear slip down his clean-shaven cheek, surprised when he don’t wipe it away. Puzzle pieces click-clack into old places and my stomach twists at the picture they’re  startin’  to make.

He hasn’t offered his name and he isn’t familiar to me. But in that instant, hittin’ like a lightnin’ bolt, I know who he is.

‘It’s called Brut. I can’t smell it anymore without gettin’ sick, thinkin’ what he did to us.’

The memory bridges ten years of space and, just like that, I’m five again and on the run, clutchin’ my dolly to

my chest like a life preserver. Mama, crazy-eyed and talkin’ nonsense, backhandin’ the questions from my lips until the salty-metal  taste of tears and blood make me forget the questions in the first place.

‘Do you know why we’re here?’

Mrs Haskell searches my face as my stomach contents begin their climb: beans, of course. Baked beans cold from the can, the sweet kind Nessa likes so much. I feel like a fortune-teller, knowin’ her words are about to change the earth below and the sky above and rearrange everythin’ we hold normal and dear.

I stare at her, expectin’ the inevitable.

‘We’re here to take you home, Carey.’

Home?

I wait for the ground to right itself and, once it does, I ‘ing myself into the bushes and let the beans ‘y. Afterwards, the anger licks my innards like a wildfire. I turn around, hands on my hips, and stare this woman down. She cringes when I wipe my mouth on the sleeve of my T-shirt.

‘That’s impossible, ma’am. We are home. We live here with our mama.’

‘Where is your mom, honey?’

I glare at her; no way I’m fallin’ for the ‘honey’ bit.

‘Like I said, Mama went into town for supplies. We were runnin’ – running – out of some stuff and—’

‘How long has she been gone?’

I have to lie. Jenessa is almost hyperventilatin’, on the verge of one of her nervous fits. She skitters over and stands next to me, reachin’ for my hand and holdin’ it so tight, my pulse punches through my fingernails.

‘Mama left this mornin’. We’re fixin’ on seein’ her before nightfall.’

I give Ness’s hand a hard squeeze.

‘Your  mother said she left over two months ago. We received her letter yesterday.’

What?

The blood rushes from  my head and my ears ring. I grasp onto a nearby branch for steadyin’. I must have heard her wrong. But she nods her head yes, her eyes full of sorrys I don’t want to hear.

‘Wha-what letter?’

Jenessa’s tears tickle my arm like chiggers and I want to scratch, but I can’t let go of her hand. She sags against me and, again, I burn. Look what they’re doin’ to my sister. Mama was right: Outsiders can’t be trusted. All they do is ruin lives.

Mrs Haskell smiles an apologetic smile, a practised smile, like we’re not her first victims, nor her last. I wonder how many kids have stood before her like this, swayin’ in their newly tiltin’ worlds. Hundreds, I’d bet, goin’ by her eyes.

However, I see a sadness there, too; a softness for us, a familiar bent of the head that comes from  the things we’re used to seein’, like the sun-dazzled canopies of the Hundred Acre Wood, or learnin’ to go without butter, or havin’ Mama disappear for weeks on end.

She waits until I’m steady again. I hold on to her eyes, like a rock in the roilin’ river.

‘Your mother wrote us last month, Carey. She said she could no longer take care of you and your sister—’

‘That’s a lie! She’d never leave us!’

‘She asked us to intervene,’ she continues, ignorin’ my outburst. ‘We would’ve been here sooner, but we couldn’t find  you girls. She  really had you hidden away pretty good.’

‘No!’

But it’s a strangled cry, a hollow cry, ‘oatin’ away on the air like dandelion ‘uff and wishes that don’t come true. And then, as quick as the emotion escapes, it freezes over. I stand up straight. I am ice, slippery and cool, impenetrable and in control.

‘You must have it wrong, ma’am. Mama wouldn’t leave us permanent-like. You must’ve misunderstood.’

The three of us jump back, but not fast enough. Nessa’s stomach contents spatter Mrs Haskell’s fancy shoes. This, I can tell, is somethin’ she ain’t used to. Mrs Haskell throws up her hands and, without thinkin’, I fling my arms in front of my face.

‘Oh, God, honey, no—’

‘Just leave us alone,’ I snap. ‘I wish you’d never found us!’

Without a word, she knows another one of my secrets and I hate her for it. I hate them both.

Her eyes burn into my back as I lead Jenessa over to a pail. I dip a clean rag into the water and dab at my sister’s mouth, her eyes glazed over and dartin’ from me to them like a cornered rabbit. The man walks away, his shoulders saggin’. He pulls a cigarette pack from his coat pocket, the cellophane crinklin’ like a butterscotch wrapper.

Get a hold of yourself this instant,  Carey Violet Blackburn! Fix this!

‘You’re scarin’ my little sister,’ I say, my voice close to a hiss. ‘Look, Mama will be home tomorrow. Why don’t you come back and we can discuss it then?’

I sound just like an adult. Pretty convincin’, if you ask me.

‘I’m sorry, Carey, but I can’t do that. Under the laws of the state of Tennessee, I can’t  leave two minor children unattended in the middle of the woods.’

I soak another rag in the water and hand it to Mrs Haskell, lowerin’ myself onto the rough bark of a downed tree. I pull Ness onto my lap, my arm around her waist, not even carin’ about the acrid smell that replaces the sweet, sunbaked one from just twenty minutes ago. Her body is limp, like a rag doll in my arms. She’s already gone.

‘Can I see the letter, ma’am?’

Mrs Haskell picks her way over to the table, ribes through more papers and returns with a sheet of my own notebook paper containin’ a handful of lines that, even from a distance, I recognize as Mama’s scratchy penmanship. I pluck the page from her fingers, turn from her and begin readin’.

To Whom It May Concern,

I’m writing in regards to my daughters, Carey and Jenessa Blackburn . . .

It’s as far as I get before the waterfall blinds me. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, pretendin’ I don’t care that everyone sees.

‘Can I keep it, ma’am?’

Without waitin’  for an answer, I fold the paper into smaller and smaller squares before shovin’ it into my jeans pocket.

Mrs Haskell nods. ‘That’s just a copy. The original is in your occial records. We need it for the hearing, when your case goes before the judge.’

I jut my chin at the man on the bench, who’s watchin’ us, squintin’ through a latticework of cigarette smoke, his form spotlighted by the wanin’ sunlight.

‘I know who he is and we’re not goin’ with him.’

‘I have permission from Child Services to release you into his custody.’

‘So we have no choice?’

Mrs Haskell sits down next to me, lowerin’ her voice.

‘You have a choice, Carey. If you refuse to go with him, we can place you in foster care. Two foster homes. Our families are pretty full right now and we can’t  find one that can take both of you at present. In light of your sister’s condition—’

‘She’s not retarded or nothin’. She just don’t talk.’

‘Even so, her, um, issue requires special placement. We found a home for Jenessa, but they’re just not equipped to take two children right now.’

Nessa’s  thumb finds her mouth, and her hair, soaked with sweat, falls in a curtain across her eyes. She makes no move to smooth it away. She’s hidin’ in plain sight.

‘I can’t leave my sister alone with strangers.’

‘I don’t think it’s the best idea, either. We like to place children with  relatives whenever possible. Taking into account Jenessa’s  bond  with  you,  I think it  would  be detrimental to her emotional well-being  to separate the two of you. It’s already going to be a big adjustment as it is.’ I glare in the direction of the man on the bench, this man I don’t know and barely recognize. I think of runnin’ away, like maybe we should’ve done as soon as we saw them comin’. But we have no money, no place to go. There’s no car to pull the camper, since Mama drove off with it, and we can’t stay here. They know where we are now. They know everythin’.

I think of tellin’ her what Mama told me about him, because there’s no way she’d make us go with him if she knew. But I look down at Ness, disappearin’  before our eyes.

I can’t leave my sister.

‘How much time do we have?’

‘Enough  time to pack up your things. You’ll  need to pack a bag for your sister also.’

She leaves us sittin’ there, with the late-afternoon sun dapplin’ the forest floor as if it’s any other day. I watch her reach into the bin by the foldin’ table, then walk back over. She hands me two of the shiny black bin bags folded up like Mama’s letter. I slip out from under Jenessa, balance her on the tree and proceed to shake each bag into its full size. We all stop and watch the birds scatter into jagged flight at the unnatural sound of plastic slappin’ the air.

‘Just take the necessities. We’ll send someone back to pack up the rest.’

I nod, glad to turn my gaze towards the camper before my face melts again. How could Mama do this to us? How could she leave us to fend for ourselves – leave us at all – without explainin’ or sayin’ goodbye?

I hate her with the fury of gasoline set on fire. I burn for Jenessa, who deserves better than this, better than some screwed-up, drug-addicted mother, better than this chaos that always seems to find us, rubbin’ off on us like some horrible rash.

Ness is my shadow as the camper door creaks on its hinges, this old piece-of-crap ve-hic-le we’ve called home for almost as long as I can remember – definitely as long as Ness can remember.

I glance around, absorb the mess, the clothes strewn about, the plates dribblin’  crumbs or caked with dried bean glue, and begin to pack Ness’s bag first. She sits on the cot, unmovin’, not even jumpin’ when I grab the nearest book, one of her Winnie-the-Poohs, and slam it down on a cockroach scuttlin’  across the tiny stainless-steel sink; without runnin’ water, it was as useless as a doll’s house sink, until I’d turned it into a place to store plates and cups. Mama never hooked the camper up to water because water sources meant campgrounds, sites out in the open, and judgmental strangers with pryin’ eyes.

Almost everythin’ of Nessa’s is some shade of pink. I pack a pair of scuffed Mary Janes and her pale pink trainers, her

neon pink long-sleeved T-shirt, a dark pink-and-red-striped T-shirt,  and another T-shirt  with a peelin’-off  Cinderella iron-on on the front. I pack her spare vest and underpants; ‘one  on and one off,’ as Mama says when we complain. Ness’s  jeans look small and vulnerable stretched between my hands, and my heart wrenches.

When her bag is full, I use mine to gather up her rag doll, her one-armed teddy bear and her stuffed dog. Her Pooh books. The brush and elastics. On top, I place my own pair of jeans (one on, one off ), a newer T-shirt, two tank tops, my spare underpants and the only shoes I own besides the ratty trainers on my feet: a pair of cowboy boots from a garage sale in town, the toes stuffed with tissue paper to force a fit.

Not much fits me clothes-wise, after a growth spurt last year. Now I’m glad, because it means more room for Jenessa’s  stuff. I don’t  need much room anyhow. I don’t have toys from childhood or any stuffed animals. I left my childhood behind when Mama dragged us off in the middle of the night. My belongin’s consist of a sketch pad I place on top of the pile, while I make a mental note not to forget my most prized possession: the violin that Mama taught me to play the year we moved to the Hundred Acre Wood.

Mama played in a symphony before she met my father. I grab the scrapbook crammed with clippin’s  from  her performances and place it on top of the sketch pad, then draw the yellow plastic strings tight. The bag looks close to burstin’ by the time I’m through. But it’s good, because I bet the bag holds more than any suitcase would, if we had one.

Before I can call for her, Mrs Haskell appears, and I hand her down the bag, which she struggles beneath. The man gets up to help, lockin’ on my eyes while takin’ the bag from her and slingin’ it over his back. He does the same with the second bag.

‘May I have one more bag, ma’am?’

Mrs Haskell obliges. I fill  it with  our  schoolbooks, with my Emily Dickinson, my Tagore, my Tennyson and Wordsworth, making the bag impossibly heavy. Lookin’ at the man, I’d have giggled in different circumstances. He looks like a reverse sort of Santa Claus. A Santa Claus of garbage.

No one speaks as he plunks the lightest bag down in front of Mrs Haskell.

I go back inside and gather Ness from the bed. Reachin’ out, I pluck her thumb gently from her mouth. Her lips remain in an O shape, and the thumb pops right back in.

‘You’re gonna make your teeth crooked, you know it.’ She stares right through me, droolin’ a little, and I give her a hug before helpin’ her stand up and walk to the door.

‘How about a piggyback?’ I squat in front of her, and she slowly climbs on. ‘Hold on tight, ’K?’

The sun is meltin’,  poolin’  behind the trees, and still Mama don’t come. I scan the Hundred Acre Wood, somehow expectin’ her to show up with a greasy brown bag and save the day, but she don’t.

The man takes the lead, with Mrs Haskell strugglin’ behind him, trippin’ over roots and sinkin’ into the mud, cursin’ under her breath as Ness and I follow. It’s a long ways to the road, and if we go the way they’re headin’ it’ll be twice as long.

‘This way, ma’am,’ I say, poppin’ Nessa farther up my back and takin’ the lead, refusin’ to meet the man’s eyes as he steps aside so we can pass.

I focus on the endless treetops scrapin’ the sunset into gooey colours, the birds trillin’ and fussin’ at our departure. I close my eyes for a second, breathin’  in deep to make serious memories, the kind that stick forever. I’d locked up the camper on my way out, but I don’t know who has a key, since Ness and I don’t, and we’d only ever locked up when we were inside.

Mama has a key, and the least she could’ve done, if she wasn’t comin’ back, would’ve been to leave it for us. And then I remember: the old hollow hickory, the one a few hundred feet past the clearin’. I’m eight years old, watchin’ Mama slide a sweaty white string off her neck with a brass key danglin’ from it, glintin’ in the sunlight.

‘This is our spare, and if you ever need it, it’ll be right here in the tree. See?’

She places it into the hollow, where it disappears like a magic trick.

I feel safer, somehow, knowin’ the key is there.

My secret.