Rusty lay on his back, breathing and blinking at the darkness. The windows were open and night was passing through the house. Outside, the trees were stuffed with insects flicking and rattling their shells.
Across the room, Carol sat up and saw that her son was moving around in the bed.
You alright, Rusty? Why you ain’t sleeping?
Uh-huh.
You got a fever?
He shook his head. She was able to see because the room was glazed with moonlight.
How come you ain’t sleeping, then?
The little boy rolled his body to look at her. We gonna die, Momma?
What kind of a question is that for a little boy to ask in the middle of the night?
Carol watched. But her son didn’t move or make a sound. We ain’t gonna die for a long while yet.
Bomb Momma, bomb come.
What bomb?
Bomb make people lyin’ dead on floor, ain’t it?
The bomb? The atomic bomb?
Yup.
We done that, Rusty, we dropped it on them. On the Japs. To stop the war. I explained all this to you.
Their heads?
What? Well I guess. I don’t know exactly where it hit ’em.
Why they kill ’em?
You know why. Like the man on the radio said, it’s because they wouldn’t quit.
Quit what, Momma?
Fighting. But the war is over now, remember?
He moved his head from side to side, across the valley of his pillow.
It’s been over for a while now, Rusty . . . that’s why we’re leaving this place.
No, Momma.
We have to. It’s bin decided.
Carol got up and went barefoot to Rusty’s bed in her cotton nightdress. When she sat down, the springs creaked and his body floated up to meet her arms.
What if they fall on our heads too?
Just kisses gonna fall on your head, Rusty, that’s all, jus’ like Bessie told you the other day.
No leave home, Momma. Stay.
We have to go. You even helped pack Momma’s little green suitcase. You thought that was funny. You laughed. Mary Bright is coming too. That’s Momma’s little sister. Momma’s little doll.
No.
It’s time for you and me to see the world. You’re ten years old, and I’m a grown woman.
Rusty turned to the open window, toward the coming summer he would miss with Bessie and Martha.
But world is right there, Momma. I can see it.
I mean someplace else, not just Bessie and Martha’s. We been here ten years already. That’s a long while, almost half my life and all of yours.
No, Momma.
We have to make it on our own. And we’re going to be safe and happy in our new place, because I’m your momma and I say so.
My garden gonna die.
Martha said she’d water it. There’ll be a place for you to have another garden where we’re going, and if there ain’t, well, we’ll grow anything you want in little pots.
The world had broken into many pieces, and Carol wanted to go out and see what was left. She had desired to leave for some time, but Bessie wouldn’t arrange anything until the war was over and done with.
Some of the women who visited their house left magazines behind, and Carol had spent hours looking at the pictures, taking in all she could of other women’s lives in California and New York. Every morning, she hummed in the cane chair before her mirror, teasing her hair into new styles, pinning and unpinning until she felt satisfied with how she looked. The world was so much bigger than this place, she thought—and so many men and boys had already seen half of it, just by fighting in a war.
From the magazines and dramas on the wireless, it was obvious to Carol that she knew very little of life beyond Bessie and Martha’s house. She had never even been to a movie theater to see the silver, flickering figures on a screen. It was just one thing on a list of things she wanted.
Carol imagined herself walking down Main Street of some town with her hair curled, wearing shoes that made a noise with each step. People who saw her would stop and stare, wondering who she was. A glamour girl from the East Coast? Some beauty from Palm Springs with her little brother who can’t walk? Poor dear.
Carol practiced the things she would say in a mirror. To people she imagined meeting on a street, or in a shop as they stood on either side of a counter. None of them would know her father, or the place she had come from, or that far below the surface of their conversation, Carol was lost in a great emptiness where something should have been but wasn’t.