We set off once we catch our breath, and part ways at the next stop sign. Constance leads the way from there. The road feels so familiar that she could be following me. I know where it bends and dips, curves and grooves. All these years and things haven’t really changed as much as folks like to think they have. The dark blue houses with white trim and brown doors look like ones I’ve seen all my life. Back when they first settled Curdle Creek this would have been the workers’ cove. A whole road made just for the people who kept the town running. The butchers and blacksmiths, shopkeepers and tailors. All of them living in one place so everyone knew just where to go when they needed them. If someone wanted to move house, they moved job to do it. So few people ever changed jobs that there was a day for it, part celebration, part not. Those moving to the left enjoyed fish fries and barbecues, moving wagons and a band. Those moving down to the right moved in cardboard boxes, on foot, and in a hurry. Right by nine, left anytime.
We turn up from the blue row onto a row of brick houses. Back home this would be where the doctors, lawyers and schoolteachers lived.
“Who lives in those houses?”
Constance shrugs her shoulders. “How would I know?”
“You don’t know your neighbors?”
“These aren’t my neighbors.”
We pass the dimly lit lights, Constance humming, me keeping up and trying to stay out of the shadows.
“How come nobody’s outside? I haven’t seen but one friendly face since I been here.”
Constance sucks her teeth like I’m interrupting her. “People stick to themselves here; they mind their own business. Besides, they can see you just fine from where they are.” She nods toward one of the houses. Sure enough, the curtain twitches. “Why are your teeth chattering? You scared of something?”
“A little. I think the glassblower saw us.”
“Who cares?” Rocks crunch beneath her feet.
“Won’t there be trouble?”
“Who can he tell?” Constance skips ahead.
For a minute, it’s too dark to see anything. I stand still. There’s hot breath on my neck, my back, my cheeks. It’s unsettling. Like when you come face-to-face with a soon-to-be-departed. It’s the part you’re never quite ready for, no matter how much you practice. If you aren’t quick enough, you’re in a sort of trance, felled by the hot, whispery breath of the Moved On. It hasn’t happened to me. Anyone it’s ever happened to can’t sleep again. Before long, they see the dead everywhere. The kindest thing to do is to indulge them. Tell them yes, the clock does have a face. Yes, it’s staring straight at you. Yes, the Caller said your name. Now, I’m surrounded by folks still hanging on to hope, love or fear, blowing out death to steal wisps of breath. I hold mine in.
We stop in front of a grand pink and white house. It’s exactly the sort of place I’d expect her to live in. It’s a lot like Mother Opal’s.
“Is your mother a Charter Mother?”
“Is that some sort of group?” She hums and snaps her fingers. “My mother, in a band? She couldn’t carry a tune if it came with a handle.” Constance runs up the steps. “Come on, you’re safer in there than you are out here.”
Curdle Creek was founded in 1864. The Council was formed in 1865 and the Charter Mothers in 1915. I don’t know how I got here but it’s at least 1900. 1910, maybe. The wild times. Before some of the ordinances were decreed. I need to get to the Town Hall.
A curtain twitches in another window. If I wait out here long enough, someone will come outside. But then again, they already are. We aren’t alone. Someone’s following us. Has been not more than a few steps behind since we left the glassblower’s hut. They’re good—stopping when we stop, breathing when we breathe, blending into shadows when I peek over my shoulder—but I still feel them too close, taking up space. When we dropped her off, I had hoped whoever it was would follow Opal, but instead of chasing her down the dirt road they stuck with me and Constance. Anyone with any sense would have followed Opal instead. It’s easier to catch one person than it is two. Opal only weighs but so much. Her bony legs don’t look used to running. They could only carry her so far for so long. But even if they did, if they were as limber as worn rubber bands and able to get her to her doorstep, she’s the type to look behind her when she gets a little way ahead but not quite far enough. She’s the type to slow down and get caught. Constance is the type to save herself.
She hasn’t mentioned it so maybe she doesn’t feel it, doesn’t care, or they’re working together. I don’t know, but I’m not safe out here. As soon as she turned her back, whoever, whatever it is came closer. Their too-close heat presses against mine. They match my breathing breath by breath. I don’t know what they want. I never thought I’d see the day when I don’t feel safe in Curdle Creek but I’m not safe here now. Whoever it is, is waiting on me to be alone. I don’t care much who it is. I don’t intend to stay here to find out what they want. If Constance goes in that door, they’ll be right behind me. By the time she closes it, I’ll be dead. I know it. I run up the steps behind her.
I’ve never seen so many lamps. Of course we have electricity, we aren’t stuck in the 1860s, but Curdle Creek is a bit old-fashioned. Things like lights, phones and cars are limited, so we don’t get distracted by wanting too much easy living. Here there’s a lamp—sometimes two—in every room. Constance lights them as we walk through the sunporch, which is bright even though it must be past midnight. She keeps lighting them through the foyer, up the spiral staircase, through the long hall until we get to her room all the way up on the third floor. Here, she lights candles.
I don’t know where to sit so I stand in the middle of the room, shadows dancing around me. They slip up and down the wall, dart across windows, slide under the bed. This must be where she keeps her victims. My fingers tingle. It’s been hours since I’ve cracked them. I’d do anything for the sweet pop, the release.
Crack. It wasn’t me. My fingers are still tense, pressed against my sides to settle them.
Constance is perched on the edge of a high double bed, staring at her fingers as though she could gobble them up like little pork knuckles. Instead of sucking on them as I half expect her to, she takes her time, popping each joint on each finger one by one, not even worried about who might hear her. Mother says cracking your knuckles is an invitation to the devil. The noise is his music and he just follows the beat to your soul. The sound is as sweet as splintering wood. My own fingers jump with each pop. I can’t seem to stop them. Before I know it, my right hand caresses, slowly presses against a joint. It’s not just air but pressure. My friends turning on me, Daddy, Mother, the well, the bones, here, all of it. I breathe ten pops later.
“That’s a horrible habit,” Constance says. She’s grinning, so I don’t bother to hide my hands like I would any other time.
She hops off her bed and stands in front of one of her many shelves. They’re packed, things crammed over and into one another. She has more things than I could even want, let alone own. “They’re presents for being an only child,” she says when she catches me looking. She’s searching for something and, whatever she’s looking for, she’s making a show of finding. She twirls and hums, lightly touching spools of this, snippets of that. She slides her fingers over bottles, taps the skin of stones with her short nails. She’s a collector like me. I know where she’s going before she gets there. The dolls.
It’s a mini museum within a museum. Mother still collects pretty things. A corner full of pretty. The dolls, a quartet of porcelain faces on stiff necks, thin bodies slipped into ball gowns, gather on the ledge watching me. Their tiny parasols twirl in slender fingers bent back at peculiar angles. Their crisp starched hats sit over long pin curls. They lean against one another, a tangle of entwined arms, legs, curls, long-lashed and grinning like sisters.
Constance lifts them off the ledge, tosses them in the air. If they fall, they will crash to the floor and shatter, slivers of eyes, mouths, noses rolling under the bed. Maybe that will teach her to take care of things. They sail over her shoulder, and, God help me, I catch them. Constance or the dolls giggle. Slender doll fingers snatch the tiny hairs on my hands. Curls swirl around my fingers, bending them back. There’s a hole in the wall behind the dolls’ perch. If only I were closer, I could see inside. Their limbs untangle; an arm slithers up my wrist, an eyelash blinks along my thumb. I drop the jumble of dolls on Constance’s bed. They bounce before settling with a thump that’s louder than it should be. Constance turns to glare at me, though she should be blaming herself. The dolls stare ahead unblinking, still tangled, arms and legs not where they used to be but at least where they should be.
By the time I stop watching them, Constance is standing in front of me, arms stretched out, a glass figurine in each hand. “Pick one,” she says.
Maybe this is one of those tests like when a Charter Mother or Sister invites you in for a cup of tea which means talk without tea but since you don’t know it, when she asks what you would like in your tea you say Milk and two sugars, please? And she nods like it’s fine and goes in to the kitchen to make it. It’s not the nod but the stomping of feet across wooden beams, the slamming of the back door, the squeak of the pump and the gush of the water, the grunts of the woman no longer used to hard work. By then of course it’s too late to stop her, so you listen to the grunts, the squeaks, the rushes of air, your name said like a curse through the door that though slammed has popped back open as if on its own so that you can hear what an inconvenience you are. Because that’s not enough, there’s the closing of the door again, the slam or the lift, grunt and slam that keeps the sticking door closed this time. The heavy steps that let you know your host is back in the kitchen, followed by the rustling of pots and pans in the hunt for the teakettle that you’re sure is on the stove where all Charter Mothers seem to keep them. The hunt is for you, so you listen to more grunting, banging and scraping. The time between the first slam and the hallelujah that lets you know the kettle has been found, scrubbed, rinsed and filled with water you better not waste, then set to boil depends on whose daughter you are. Thanks to Mother, I’m sure of a less-than-thirty-minute wait, but not much less. I’ve heard some people have to wait for an hour. I don’t complain, as that only ever makes anything worse. After the show, when the tea is finally served it is lukewarm and most certainly not the way you asked for it. That’s when you realize, if you didn’t before, that tea doesn’t mean tea in Curdle Creek.
There’s a glass elephant in one hand and a glass lion in her other one. The elephant is a beautiful blue-gray. It has a long trunk that thins near the end, a mouth open mid-chew. Its thick legs are lined with creases and dimples that somehow hold up a see-through body. It’s the ears that really do it though. They are wide open and large, bold in their hearing. Dangerously brazen. I want to touch their cool folds. Listen to glass secrets. Through its body, I see Constance’s palm pressed firmly against it. Her fingers are tight around it. She isn’t so much offering it as inviting me not to take it. The lion is in her other palm. It’s no less beautiful. Its bright orange fire mane is captured in peaks around its round head. The pink tongue makes up for its not being the elephant. It is long and swirled, delicately wound. It has four strong-looking legs, a long tail with a glass plume at the tip.
“From the glassblower?”
“He makes the most beautiful things.”
I take the lion by the middle, carefully put it in my palm. Its mane is cool against my fingertips. I rub the little body between my hands. It feels like a small living thing. It would look almost perfect in my treasure box.
In silence, we sit cross-legged on the floor, snapping off little legs, breaking off ears and tongues, cracking bodies in two. The mane feels as good as I thought it would. It snips off clear, a peak at a time. She’s right. It does feel better than cracking bones. I finish before her. I don’t mind. With my eyes closed I picture a cemetery, a scattering of skeletons at my feet. Last-chancers and come-afters—folks running from heat and torches, chased from homes in ripped nightclothes, mouths wide open still screaming, running to me. Instead of Warding them Off, waving my stick at them, chasing them back out of town because we don’t need no trouble here, I throw down the stick, open my arms and welcome them. Don’t know where I’d keep them, but I gather them, an arm here, a leg there, pluck them up like seeds. We’d walk till I find a place to plant them. If I don’t court trouble, what right do I have to expect someone to look after my own? Because if they aren’t dead, half-buried at the bottom of the well, then my own children are running around somewhere doing ancestors-know-what to ancestors-know-who. My children have always been somebody else’s trouble.
Constance’s hands move quick, quick, knitting and stitching things together. Head cocked, tip of her tongue poking against her cheek. Her fingers are a blur.
“Made you this.” It’s a necklace of arms and legs, torsos and mane, a trunk. I take it, slip it around my neck. “I’ll tie it for you.”
Her fingers are cold against my throat. It’s the feeling, even before her too-close hands set on my warm skin. Mother. This little bit of a thing, this Constance is my Constance, or will be. I don’t know how she did it, but I’m smack-dab in the past. I know I’m here to be with her.