I run all the way back to get to Mother first but I’m too late. She’s in the sitting room, leaning back in her chair, one leg crossed over her knee, finger twirling the phone wire as she talks. The party line—I should have known. “You don’t say,” she says. “Before the others had a chance to run? He has always been ambitious. Mmm-hmm. I bet Mother Opal didn’t see this coming. It can’t be helped. We’ll bury her in the Creek.”
Mariah squeezes my hand before leading me into the house. She nearly skips up the steps. Rumor locks the door. The click sounds out of place, loud and obnoxious. It shouldn’t be, but, from the sound of Mother’s voice, Mother Opal dying is about the best thing that could have happened. Charter Mothers are holy in Curdle Creek. They don’t just die like normal people. Their names don’t get called. They don’t slip on sheets of ice and crack their heads wide open, or tumble down stairs reaching for light switches. The rest of us get Moved On or have accidents. Charter Mothers are supposed to die from old age. Mother Opal always said we’d know when it was her time to die because she’d tell us, not because she’d wake up dead. We’ve never not had a Head Charter Mother. Not even buried yet and Mother’s already holding office.
I don’t even have time to stop them. My fingers are popping and cracking and it feels so good even with Mother staring at me, mouth wide open, shuddering as though each pop is a touch and I just have one more left and ahh. It’s like every bad thing is a bubble, a big old wad of chewing gum, and cracking my knuckles sort of sets them loose. My hands settle. I let out my breath. The look in her eyes dares me to smile so I bite my lip to keep from doing it. I’m smiling inside though.
“I better go, Osira’s here. We have plans to make, especially before the Warding Off.”
Mother presses the connector before replacing the receiver in the cradle. She reaches into her blouse, pulls out a Moving On jubilee flyer, a change purse, and then, tucked close to her chest and still warm, smelling of her favorite scent—mourning and ginger—she pulls out a pair of misshapen gloves.
I’m a grown woman. There’s no use in saying it out loud unless I want to hear about my being a big beast of a baby who almost cracked her like a walnut clear in two at birth. A baby born to wail, or born wailing and wailing until Daddy scooped me up, cut the cord, cleaned me off, named me, and welcomed me properly into the family like a stranger. She’ll eye me again as if, even though I came from her body, she’s not a hundred percent certain I’m her child. She leans forward, eyes looking where my hands should be, holds out a glove. They are stiff, made with twined hay and cord, heavy and uncomfortable. I put my hands out, palms up, fingers stretched. They are big enough to slip right on but she wiggles and jiggles them, scooches each finger in an inch at a time so the hay scratches against my skin. I would close my eyes and pretend I’m somewhere else but the last time I did that, she forgot herself and slapped me across the face with the hand holding the glove and the hay scratched my eyelid. It was that and not the slap, she said, that caused my eye to swell. So I keep them open, watch her twirl the cord around and around my wrists to bind them.
“Ten minutes,” she says. She walks away, tsk, tsk, tsking, to go and check on the girls.
“Daddy ran off.”
“Good, then he won’t be around for the Warding Off.”
“I mean before the Moving On. He left—”
“We’ll talk about this in a minute.”
She leaves me standing in the vestibule. I can see outside from here, which means outside can see in. Nothing would make her angrier than a neighbor knocking on the door to find me fumbling around trying to unlock it. They’d surely be wondering what we were trying to hide, since everyone knows only the guilty need locked doors in the first place. I imagine I would use my chin to unlock it somehow and then my mouth to turn the knob. Mother would have a fit. The first thing they would see, once I opened the door wide enough to push it the rest of the way with my toe, would be the devil gloves. The shame. They’d know I was up to something I shouldn’t have been up to and they would guess at what it was. Their guesses would be far worse than my cracking my knuckles and getting on Mother’s one good nerve.
If Mother Opal is truly dead—and it isn’t the sort of thing Mother or the Council would joke about—then Daddy running away is the least important thing to have happened today. That, and my declaring we should end the Moving On loud enough for anyone to hear, maybe. That doesn’t mean I won’t be punished, though. There won’t be any point in a trial, but they’ll hold one just to show how fair they are. It’ll be there in Book XIII. The trial will be public. Mae will be all dressed up, holding the good doctor’s hand. He won’t know me well enough to be a character witness but it won’t really matter. Jeremiah will be there too. He won’t hardly look at me. He’ll be too busy worrying if he’s crossed out all of the double-grave signs he’s scratched into trees around town. Those were long-ago days. Before we were old enough to court, so what felt like love then wasn’t. He’ll have missed one though so he may as well not even bother. He’ll be a suspect too before the night ends. Mother will bring out the lavender. It’s good for situations like these. She’ll weave a garland or something for the girls’ hair, put one in her buttonhole and pin one to her scarf, to show she’s grieving two. Mr. Jacobs might not be in such a hurry to take Daddy’s place then.
Mother comes back with the Book of Sorrows. I’m in for it now. I can’t imagine what other folks keep theirs for but ours seems to be just for me. Mother would say I’m stuck-up for even thinking that. Anything I do that rubs her up when it should smooth her down goes in the family book. Use up too much hot water? In the book. Invite a weak ringer around for tea? In the book. Paint the girls with glue so they’ll really be “joined at the hip”? In the book. Even Romulus only made the book when he ran off. I have pages and pages. Maybe even a whole chapter. If she were creative she’d call it The Least Likely Among Us. Knowing Mother, if anything the title’s There’s Always Been Something About That Girl and I Saw It Coming but Who Would Believe Me?
Mother settles down in the front room. She motions for me to join her. Not to sit down, to stand before her. Across from me, she spreads the book out. It should be stiff—the spine is meant to crack to show we don’t harbor trouble here—but ours just flops right open. She leans back into her armchair. Closes her eyes as if she’s thinking of what to write. She sits there for a full minute. It almost looks like she’s asleep. If she were, she’d be snoring, although, to hear her tell it, snoring isn’t something ladies like her do.
I’m not supposed to be looking at her, but since I am, I see her eyes snap open. Her back straightens. She lifts the family pen out of its sheath. It’s brass, polished and practically glowing. Mother presses the nib against her tongue. Sucks her teeth. She’s been hit by an inspiration. She dips the spitty pen into the ink. Let it be empty, let it be empty, let it be empty. She slides the pen from the well. I can practically see the words dripping off it even from here. I won’t even be able to sneak a peek at the passage until the ink truly dries. By then it will be too late. Whatever is written will be there for life. That’s not because it’s holy or anything. I know it because I’ve tried to smudge a deed or two off of a page. I was only twelve. How was I supposed to know lemon juice only made the sins shine—and stink?
If she writes that I had something to do with Daddy leaving, I’m as good as dead. It won’t matter that it was her idea in the first place. All that will matter is that I was in the procession and shouldn’t have been and now Daddy hasn’t been Moved On and should have been. Once it’s in the book, anyone from the Council can call it in for a reading. The only thing worse than having to kneel on the cold marble floor and read out my own crimes in my mother’s voice—since she’d be the recorder—will be the atonement. They’ll be up half the night, each Council member trying to outdo the next to suggest the most severe punishments. If they don’t outright kill me, it won’t make a difference. I could atone until I can’t atone no more; my name will be called next year either way.
“Is Mother Opal dead because of me?” I ask. I don’t know what makes me think it’s my fault but maybe my doubts killed her. The true believers have always said that doubt will be what topples Curdle Creek in the end. Maybe, instead of fire and brimstone, a forty-five-year-old widow will be what divides Curdle Creek once and for all. I just wanted Daddy to be here. I didn’t mean for anything to happen to anyone. Least of all to Mother Opal. The tears spring and I let them slide down my face straight into my mouth. I don’t swallow them, though. Mother says I look ugly when I swallow tears and that’s the last thing she needs to be thinking about right now.
Mother sets the pen down. “What foolishness are you talking now?”
My throat opens up. Everything, every deed, flows out like a fountain. I’m sobbing and boohooing and just confessing right there and then. I don’t bother to get on my knees and apologize. She can’t forgive me.
Mother lets out a grand sigh. It’s her practiced one. The one she uses to show you’ve worn out her patience or your welcome. “I’m trying to write about your father. Not everything is about you.”
Of all the great sins against the town, arrogance is one of the top ones. It’s smack in between failing to come to the Calling and not participating in the Warding Off.
“But Daddy’s gone.”
“It was his time to go.” She taps the pen on the palm of her hand.
“He didn’t wait for the bells to ring. He didn’t wait for the call to run. He ran. Not in the Moving On but from it.”
Mother closes her eyes. She rubs her temples. She likes to do this when she wants to look thoughtful. As though she’s measuring words before dishing them out.
“That’s simply not true. They collected your father. He marched with the others to town. As he approached the Town Hall, he ran, just as he’s supposed to do. The bells were rung.”
“Mother, they rang after he left, not before!”
“The bells were rung. I know you are not standing in my house accusing my husband of running off today on the day of his great sacrifice when no one but you is saying it. Now, if you’re saying the bell ringer was late with the ringing, that is another matter. We can take that up at the next Moving On. Is that what you’re saying?”
Of course not. I know what I saw, but if no one is accusing Daddy of deserting then it’s my word against that of the Deacons and everyone else. If Mother told them I wrongfully accused Daddy, I’d be compelled to offer a lifetime of sorrys. Each time she entered a room, I’d be forced to drop to the floor and sing a litany of apologies. It would take hours. She wouldn’t even have to listen. She could read, eat, sleep. Even if she left the room, I’d have to stay there until it was finished. If she came back I’d have to start over again. She would rather be stoned than let me have even this one thing. She’d have the bell ringer called just to prove I’m wrong. I can’t let an innocent person be punished for what I know happened.
“No, ma’am. I must have been mistaken. It happened just as you said. I have no call to accuse or falsely accuse anyone. Book VI says—”
“Please don’t recite those damned books to me.”
It’s not the first time she’s said this, but blasphemy today doesn’t feel right.
“You were just tired. There was the Running, the excitement of the Calling, the Moving On, and not to mention the rain. It’s natural. You can hardly be trusted to know what you saw or when you saw it.”
Maybe she’s right. She must be. Mother doesn’t even think before the words pop out of her mouth, she’s that sure. It was all in my head. Even if he wasn’t a Deacon, Daddy knows what happens to families once someone deserts Curdle Creek. He knows how a broken heart feels afterward. He would know that after Romulus, my own children and him, I’d be the one left to pay for the leavings. Of course Mother’s right.
I change the subject. “How can Mother Opal be dead? What happened?”
Mother drums her finger on the table as if she’s playing the piano. “Who’s to say anything happened? Sometimes people just die.”
“Not Charter Mothers.” My mouth is dry. I feel sick.
“Even Charter Mothers. Our names don’t get called but surely you don’t think Moving On is the same as dying.” She twirls the pen in her hand like a wand. She’d have made a beautiful band leader.
“Of course not, no. I just mean, she was Mother Opal. Who would kill her?”
“Who said anyone killed her? Accidents happen all the time, and old age—though that’s no accident…” she chuckles; they are the same age “… old age happens to the lucky ones. Sooner or later everyone runs out of luck.”
“But we just saw her!”
“The last time anyone saw her was at the Calling.” She closes her eyes. As if she’s imagining that last time she saw her, she smiles, savoring it. She looks down at my feet, still covered. Frowns. She traces my footsteps from the top of the stairs to where I stand. I look too. A pebble or two, a smudge of dirt. Nothing that won’t come off without too much trouble. It’s the indentation that will drive her to distraction. The stamp of soles crushing her good plush carpet. I lift my leg to nudge one shoe off with the other. Not like I can unclasp the latch around my ankles but the effort, the shh shh of leather against leather, then leather against clasp, might wiggle it free enough to push off. Then my toes can undo the other one.
Mother hates the sight of naked toes. For a moment, wrinkles crease her face. My fingers stick to the hay.
“The Calling.” She shakes her head slowly from side to side like the tongue of a bell in need of oil. “We were all there when you gave her that little something to drink. I sure hope there wasn’t anything wrong with it.” She taps the pen again. “I have been thinking about the Running of the Widows, though. Not so much the running but the outcome.” The word sounds like a curse coming from her lips. “Letting your best friend beat you to the church like you don’t give a damn about protecting me, your poor darling sisters, the town, or anyone in it. As if you don’t have an ounce of Turner blood flowing through your body and you wouldn’t know winning if it hit you in the face. I would have thought surely you would know about running, though. You are your father’s daughter.” Mother’s lips twist in her poor Osira look. “Girls!” she calls.
Never far away, Mariah and Rumor trudge into the room, holding the hourglass between them. It’s glass and wood, inscribed with the family name. It’s been with us for generations. Outlived many a Turner. It’s nearly bigger than both of them combined. They each hold tight to a curved wooden handle. They know better than to drop it or let the sands dip. There’s nothing worse than wasting time around here.
It’s eerie how they know what she wants without her saying. They slide it onto the table next to her. On either side, they both lean their cheeks toward her on cue. She pecks each one. Rumor first, then Mariah. The girls skip out of the room. When they’re gone, Mother turns back to me.
“We’ll start your punishment from the beginning so there are no distractions.”
She flips the hourglass over, picks up the pen, and writes, and writes, and writes. The scratch, scratch, scratch sounds like nails in a coffin. Not that anyone has much use for coffins anymore.
BY the time she finally closes the book, supper is underway. I’ve made Mother’s favorites. The ham hocks are just about done so it’s time to put in the greens. I take the lid off quietly. The heat feels good on my skin.
“Did you wash them?” she asks from the next room.
“Yes, Mother.” They’re still dripping from their bath in salt and vinegar water. It took a while to ease the gloves off and still my fingers were near raw where straw had scraped away skin. Careful as I tried to be, dunking my hands in a pot of that concoction for the sake of clean greens was almost my undoing. My fingers still tingle.
“Dry them?”
If they could talk they’d start telling on me right now. They might be trying to. The dripping gets louder and louder and—I pop the little traitors into the pot. “Yes, Mother.”
I fiddle with an empty pan so she can’t hear me checking the roast. My mouth waters as I open the oven door. I stick out my tongue to taste the beef-onion steam. The fork slides right into the meat. Juice oozes out. It’s tender and near-perfect.
“Leave it in a bit longer. I like mine well-done,” she calls without looking at it.
“It’s finished. I’m going to leave it to rest.”
“You are going to leave it to cook until I say take it out. That’s what you’re going to do.”
I slice off a chunk. Wave goodbye to the roast. The next time I see it, it will be thick-skinned and dry.
“Put that right back in with the rest of it,” she says. I’d swear she has eyes all over her head. “I won’t have you getting sick before the Warding Off.”
As if she’d let me miss the Warding Off even if I was. I dig my fingernail into the chunk before sentencing it to the same fate as the rest of the roast. Ashes to ashes. I close the oven door, suck the juice from my finger like I’m ten.
ONCE the smoke fills the kitchen, Mother comes in to finish supper. She sets the roast, still smoldering, on the countertop to rest. Mostly she’s tasting everything I’ve already cooked while waving a tea towel around to clear the air. “Cooking wears me out,” she says. “Go sit at the table for a spell. I’ll make us some fruit punch.”
I do as I’m told. Maybe it’s the smoke but Mother doesn’t seem to be able to find anything without banging, clanging and slamming pots, pans, lids, and cupboards. A few minutes later she sets a pitcher of what she says is special fruit punch in the middle of the table. I’m not sure if it’s special because there’s alcohol in it or because there’s hardly any fruit in there at all.
“If Mother Opal’s gone, what happens to the Warding Off? We can’t hold it without her. Does that mean Daddy can come back?”
“Oh, God, no!” Mother cackles. Doubled over, she holds her sides. Her laughs turn to coughs. I could pat her back. I don’t do it, though. “How could he?” She takes a deep breath, shakes her head. She sits in her chair at the head of the table. “No, that’s done. I wouldn’t know how to bring him back even if I wanted to.”
Wasn’t it her idea in the first place? Daddy was probably standing there about to do the right thing when her words came back to haunt him. So, he ran. It’s almost like she rode the getaway horse, if there’d been one. It can’t be too hard to convince whoever needs convincing. But then again, I’d be up there too. I heard her and didn’t record it, didn’t tell anyone at all. They could call both of us. Leave Mariah and Rumor orphaned. Unmarried and not yet thirty, they’d be split up for sure.
If it’s really just the right name at the wrong time, next year I could sneak down a few nights before the Calling and write her name on one hundred slips of paper. There would be no room for hardly any other name. The Law of Probability says Mother’s name would be called. That don’t mean it would be. Even Callers have families. They could show her the slip with her name written across it and she could say another name. No one but them two would know. Them two and me. Mother would know my handwriting and would let me know she knew it was me.
All this plotting. One way or another, Daddy’s gone, and here I am breaking ordinance after ordinance like I don’t have any home training at all.
Besides, I know it won’t happen. The last place I’d want to be is in that smelly, creepy well. I’d swear I hear the ghosts of old Callers wailing on clear nights and holler until someone came to get me out. I’d get my own self caught. I’d have to get someone else to do it. There’s no shortage of people on Mother’s bad side. And thanks to her high-and-mightiness, if only in public, I can’t imagine folks like her any more than she likes them. With Mother Opal gone, there’s no one she can have a word with about discrepancies of one kind or another. There’s no way she can have the entire Council in her purse just waiting to do her bidding. Mother Opal might not be the only one out of luck.
I don’t say it out loud but it’s on my face, though. I can tell by the way Mother’s looking at me like I’m a photograph she wishes hadn’t developed.
“He’d be different if he came back now.” Her lips twitch. It’s just a little smile, but I see it. “Angry, dangerous. I couldn’t have him around my babies.” She raises her glass to her lips. Puts it back down. “Around you either.” She bats her eyelashes. That innocent look has only ever worked on Daddy, and of course on Mr. Jacobs. She bows her head.
I’m sitting next to her, staring down at the top of her head and her fresh-permed hair still straight despite the rain. Newly dyed, here and there a curly gray strand breaks through. She’ll have plucked it out before her next appointment. I feel like a priest. As if I can see all of her sins.
“I could protect us,” I say.
Guilty. The word pops into my head from nowhere. It nearly comes out of my mouth. She looks small in Daddy’s chair. But why is she in Daddy’s chair in the first place? There’s always been six of them. Moses’s chair is still empty. Mother tilts her chin, motions for me to take the seat across from her instead. To sit in her chair. I do it, but looking at her makes my eyes water so I look at her reflection in the mirror. The dining room mirror is a puzzle of glass. Daddy got the fitters to do it just for Mother, so he could see the million pieces he loves about her. There’s nothing worse than watching a million yous with a fork. The sight of all those mini-mes stuffing their tiny mouths fills my stomach right up. I couldn’t wait for the girls to get old enough to sit at the family table. I almost wish they were here now instead of picking out clothes for the Warding Off as if they’re too excited to eat. Since I’m the oldest, my back’s normally to the mirror now. Now when I visit it’s just the horror on their faces that makes it hard to keep food down. Hard, but not impossible.
Daddy must have really loved her. It must be the light, but sitting way at the other end of the table makes Mother look like death to me. Not like she’s dying or sickly but like I’d imagine death would look like if it were sitting across from me sipping a glass of bloodred punch and wiping its mouth on a freshly laundered napkin that I’ll have to wash later. Pleased. It’s like there’s two of her. One sitting in front of me and one shadow mother standing over her staring down at me like I’m next. When I look away from the mirror, she looks away too. My heart’s beating so fast that my fingers are tapping. My throat’s so dry I think I swallowed the same spit twice. I lean forward and reach for the pitcher.
“I’ll get that for you, sugar,” Mother says. She’s not sitting across from me anymore, neither one of them. I didn’t see her get up. Growing up, I could hear her chair scraping the bare carpet when she pushed back, leaned forward. But she’s standing next to me now. I smell her peppermint soap, vanilla baby powder, cherry-scented hair grease, rose-infused sweat. She has the pitcher in her hand, nods to my glass. My hand shakes as I hold it up. She leans close, wraps her strong fingers around my wrist, squeezes. “If I ever hear you talking about your father ran off again—” She pauses. Mmms. Mother is a hummer. She punctuates silence with sound. Mmm can mean anything, really. Sometimes it’s good, like Mmm, that pie sure is tasty. Or, Mmm, that sounds interesting. It’s one of her could-mean-anything phrases like I didn’t know that about you, have a good day, or Watch your step. “I’ll give you something to cry about.”
I nod to show I understand that here mmm means she’d enjoy that.
I sit for ten minutes watching her watch me not take a sip from that glass. It’s not that I think she’d poison me. I just don’t want to take a chance on dying before my time. Every so often I raise the glass to my lips. She leans forward. I put it down.
“I can’t think straight,” I say. “First Daddy, then Mother Opal.”
“The harvest will be full this season,” she says.
Timers and their sayings. Seems no matter what position they get, some people just don’t change. Here she is, a Charter Mother, and she can’t stop herself from sounding just the way her own mother and father probably did. Anybody can be a timer if they believe and live long enough. I guess that’s why they have sayings. Helps them pass the time. They have one for just about everything. They say the traditions will die out when the timers do. Like timers don’t just birth more timers. That’s silly talk. You can’t pass down time. Just beliefs. Timers birth believers, mostly.
She’s already opened the windows. They say it helps Move On the spirits. I suppose it does. That and packing up their belongings. Gusts of wind carry damp air like news through the house. The dining room is thick with it. The girls are still in their rooms trying on outfits. It’s just like them to want to look good even on a night like tonight. They’re singing “Move Along Harry,” a duet usually reserved for courting. But since there’s only two of them and neither of them ever wants to be Harry, they’ve changed the words. They sing: “Somebody’s daddy’s not coming home, somebody’s daddy’s stayed too long, somebody’s daddy’s done something wrong, somebody’s daddy’s Moving On.” Their voices trail off into a fit of giggles.
The room feels cold all of a sudden. “Should they be singing that?” I ask.
Mother’s been snapping her fingers to their song as if it never occurred to her that that somebody is them. “I don’t see why not.”
I won’t look up at her so I just stare at her fingers. The way her nails click slightly when she taps them together. They are short and strong. They left dents in my wrist. I wonder if Mother Opal has them too. I should tell her I was there. Heard her and Mother Opal. But asking questions is just what always gets the girl killed in the books the library’s always displaying for Ordinance Awareness Month. The heroine’s always some Inspector Suzie–type cozying up to the killer talking about I know you killed him and I can prove it, just before she ends up at the bottom of the Creek or holed up in a mineshaft or just everyday dead. No, thank you. I close my lips tight so nothing I can’t take back slips out.
“I hope your sisters aren’t as hardheaded as you are,” she says. She grins like she really hopes they are. I picture her pinching their slender arms, making heart-shaped welts on their soft brown skin. Mother’s never been much of a mother. More a fickle friend I could trust from time to time. I’m grown and I still can’t look at her without shaking. She’s prone to turn her back on me. Again.
“What will be your first ordinance as Head Charter Mother?”
“We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?” she says. And she giggles like a schoolgirl.
I get up to clear the table. The bells. Without being told, the girls come running downstairs. One grabs Mother’s hand, the other mine. From the top of the hill, the bell rings. It’s loud and sharp. The echo reaches each corner of Curdle Creek. From house to home and hill to knoll, all shall hear the bell’s true toll. According to Mother Opal, the first set of townsfolk, the Founders, forged the famous stalactites and stalagmites of Bell Cave so the ringing could be heard all through the town. Because Curdle Creek’s at the butt of a mountain, the ringing bounces off rock back through brick, wood and window so that each tone answers its own prayer. There’s one for all the Moving-On-ers. Even one for Daddy. My heart aches when his rings. The return one, the one that’s supposed to be him blessing the town, is hollow and offbeat. It doesn’t sound anything like him. I hope he got away and he’s still running.
After the chime, lesser bells including Old Glory peal into “Ten Minutes of Glory” and, finally, “Thanks for a Plentiful Year.” I keep my eyes closed for the minute of silence. I can’t see them but I know Mariah and Rumor and Mother are all staring at me. My forehead burns, then my ears, neck, chest, arms, waist, legs, feet. They are wondering if I’m strong enough to carry the family name, fast enough to get away with it. Not everybody makes it back from the Warding Off. How could they? Accidents happen and in the dark, well, the Moving On blend in, hide, and sometimes a family member with too close a resemblance ends up being chased clear through town before someone recognizes the mistake. Once it’s done and the body is declared dead, it’s time for the Warding Off of the soul. That’s worse. Anything’s liable to happen at the Warding Off.
When the Thankful ends, the girls go back to their rooms. They have too much energy; it’s been raining all afternoon so they couldn’t go outside. Small creatures all over Curdle Creek must be rejoicing. I am too. Those girls hunting squirrels and dressing them up in little pinafores and ballet shoes is about the scariest thing. I can’t handle it right now. Just the thought of the things they get up to makes me cold all at once. I can see them singing and laughing while cornering one, scooping it up by its tail and then, just when it thinks it’s going to go in a pot, contorting it into shapes not befitting a rodent. Arms in the air, legs akimbo, tail mid-flit. It is primped and pressed into poses and snapped. The picture is all the girls seem to want. They undo and unbutton, unfurl handmade outfits and set the dazed squirrels free. I wonder if they talk about it. Little squirrels plotting my sisters’ downfall. I hope they know I’m not one of them. I would never do to an animal anything I wouldn’t do to a man. Daddy taught me that.
Mother’s on the phone again. I imagine her whispering to her one good friend but even telephones can’t summon the dead so it’s most likely Mr. Jacobs. She’s reminiscing. I recognize the tone. It’s her you should have seen me then voice. Sultry. When she talks about how she and Daddy met she always adds, There he was when I wasn’t even looking. I wasn’t even thinking about getting married when love tapped me on the shoulder talking about try this one on, see if it fits. She’s always like that. If she talks about love at all, it’s like she could eat it or wear it.