I’m a secret keeper. A pretty good one. And there’s a lot of stuff I know that I’m not going to tell. But I will say this. Our mama loves us. Not like the mothers in books and on television and on vacation at the island where we live, but it’s not bad, and I know we are the reason she gets up and out of bed every morning. Our daddy loved us too, but he was gone before Charlie was born.
Here’s a secret: There are enemies out there. Enemies who mean to do us harm. My older sister, Heath, knows who they are. And so does Mama. Charlie doesn’t know, and there’s no need to tell him right now. It’ll become clear enough to him if they strike again, but maybe they won’t. Maybe they will forget about us and leave us alone. We are fine, but I bet there are other kids out there in the world who aren’t.
There’s also sickness, which is a different kind of enemy. Not the kind that drives down the long dirt road and knocks on your door when you’re in the middle of drawing a bouquet of yellow snapdragons. There is sickness in Mama’s lungs. The doctor showed it to her on the X-ray when we spent the day at Aunt Dot’s. Heath was watching cable TV and Charlie was playing with Aunt Dot’s old fire truck, the one her son used to play with, when Mama came home from the doctor. She and Aunt Dot ducked into the kitchen, and I crept up quietly to the doorway and listened.
An operation can fix the sickness. The doctors can cut it out from inside Mama like cutting off a rotten spot from a peach. She said it’s no problem. It’s a done deal. But by the look on Aunt Dot’s face when she walked us to the car and by the way Mama stops to stare at us sometimes when we’re on the porch passing the milk for the cereal or doing our schoolwork, I’m not so sure. I think there are some unknowns. Some secrets our own bodies keep from us. Secrets that grow in dark places when no one is looking. And sometimes we don’t know what the secret is until it’s too big and too late.
Take my father, for instance. His body kept a secret from him. There was something called plaque in his body, and it built up year after year in an important place near his heart. One day the plaque burst without warning, and it formed a wall that blocked all of the good blood from getting to his heart. A heart without good blood begins to die. It’s true. I saw it with my own eyes just a week before my fifth birthday. Heard him cry out in the chair before he fell forward onto the dock, his legs bucking then twitching like a fish out of water. That’s another one of my secrets. But I’ve got more.
Aunt Dot has a bad hip, but she will take care of us when Mama has to have the operation. Heath and I will help Aunt Dot. We can pick up Charlie and give him a bath. We can feed him. We can chase down Phydeaux, our crazy old dog that Daddy found on the side of the road the year before the plaque burst and built its wall. We can feed him and give him his worm medicine. All we have to do is bury it in peanut butter and plop it down in his bowl.
Mama will be in the hospital for three weeks. Then she’ll be back, she’ll get stronger, and we’ll have the end of our summer to do the things we like to do: make Velveeta sandwiches for a picnic and swim to the little island that forms in our creek at low tide, get ice cream at the movie store on the beach, ride around in our old Suburban with our flashlights at night hoping to stop some deer in their tracks, watch the sunset at the sound, and pick fresh tomatoes in Skeeter and Glenda’s garden.
Then homeschool will start again, even though Heath wants to go to a real school and meet boys and girls her age. Heath is real smart. She’s only twelve, but she’s skipped three grades in homeschool. Mama tried to get her a scholarship to a private school in town, but it didn’t work out. I think the enemies had something to do with it, but I’m not sure.
I just like to draw. Still lifes are my favorites, but I do portraits too, as well as landscapes. Daddy worked with me when I was little, and I still remember what he taught me—how to divide the face into three parts, how to shade the nose, how to create a shadow beside the basket of oranges or a shadow of the rising moon on the water. I don’t show Mama or Heath my drawings. I only show Charlie, who doesn’t know how lucky he is not to have known my father. Not because Daddy was mean or bad, but because he doesn’t have to miss him the way we do.
I know a lot of other stuff that people don’t think I do. I know that Daddy had a whole family before our family. His wife and daughters were beautiful. I found the picture in his handkerchief drawer, a picture of them all in front of a pretty Charleston house in their Sunday best, but I didn’t tell anyone. This means we have two half sisters. Heath seems to know that much of the story too, but I don’t think she’s seen the picture. One of the sisters could be an enemy. She came here once after Daddy died, and screamed at Mama. The other one is a famous artist who lives in New York City. Daddy used to show me articles about her in the newspaper. She’s pretty and stylish and serious looking. Her eyes, even in the grainy black and white of the newspaper, look like they can see right through you, into your secrets. Her name is Julia, which is a name that reminds me of dew on a flower petal. It’s sweet and melodic. She went to college with my mama. But that’s another secret too. One only she, Mama, and I know. And her mother and her sister, of course. But not mine. Heath doesn’t like knowing that kind of stuff. She’s like Mama in that way.
I don’t know what happened. How my daddy came to be with my mama instead of Julia’s mama. And anyway, I’ve probably said too much already.
“Eddda!” Charlie’s feet slap the hardwood floor. “Where’s my remo contro helcopter?”
Much of my life is spent finding Charlie’s things.
He stands in the doorway, his eyebrows furrowed. He’s pretty cute even though he’s demanding. He looks like a miniature version of my daddy, deep brown eyes and lots of golden curls.
“Come on. I’ll show you.” I walk past him, brushing my arm against his shoulder.
Aunt Dot says it’s not good to act exasperated. She knows a lot of stuff that seems right because it makes my heart feel better. Mama says she doesn’t believe in the stuff Aunt Dot does, but she also says it’s okay if I want to. She says maybe it will help me and my condition.
I do want to believe in what Aunt Dot believes in, but I’m not going to tell Mama or anyone else. It will be another secret, though I might tell Aunt Dot or someone else when I grow up and leave our little house on Edisto Island.
Heath says there is a whole world outside of this one, but it is hard to imagine. Maybe I will go live with my half sister in New York and we will be artists together. Maybe she believes the thing I want to believe. The thing Aunt Dot believes. Maybe she has secrets too, and we can share and trade them like Silly Bandz or baseball cards or Lifesavers. You don’t have to look at her picture in the paper too long to know she has some. Sometimes you can keep a secret so long that you forget it’s even there. And it’s not until everyone around you starts talking that you realize what you’ve hidden. But it’s not all bad. There is a kind of strength in silence. A kind of power. It can be dangerous, I know, but it can also protect us from the enemies.