Those are the last words I hear before Mrs. Pulnik drags me down the porch steps, telling me under her breath what Mrs. Murphy will do to me if I don’t step it up. Her grip wrenches my arm until I’m sure it’s gonna break.
I don’t even care. I can’t feel anything—not the summer-dry grass crunching under my feet, not the stiff shoes the workers gave me this morning. Not the hot, sticky evening air or the too-tight dress tugging when Fern kicks and wiggles and reaches over my shoulder, whimpering, “Gabby…Gabby…”
I’m cold on the outside, like I just fell off in the winter river and all the blood’s gone deep down inside to try to keep me from freezing to death. My arms and legs seem like they’re somebody else’s. They move, but only because they know what they’re supposed to do, not because I tell them.
Mrs. Pulnik throws Fern and me in the car with the rest of the kids and gets in beside me. I sit stiff and stare toward the big house and wait for the door to open and someone to bring Gabion across the yard. I wish for it so hard, the wishing hurts.
“Where’s Gabby?” Fern whispers into my ear, and Lark watches me with her sad, quiet eyes. She hasn’t said much since we came to Mrs. Murphy’s, and she won’t now either, but still I hear her. You gotta get Gabion, she’s telling me.
I picture him coming across the yard.
I hope.
I watch.
I try to think.
What should I do?
Mrs. Pulnik’s wristwatch ticks. Tick, tick, tick, tick.
Miss Tann’s words flit through my mind, zipping off the way water striders do when someone throws a rock in the river. They go all directions at once.
Died during the birthing process…
My mama’s dead?
…the children were abandoned….
Briny’s not coming back for us?
The only sibling to this little fellow is an infant girl. Newborn.
One of the babies didn’t die at the hospital? I have a new little sister? Miss Tann gave her to somebody? Is that a lie? Is all of it a lie? Miss Tann can tell a fib so smooth and easy, it seems like even she believes it. Gabby doesn’t have a mama who’s a college student. Queenie’s smart, but she only got through the eighth grade before she met Briny and took off for the river.
It’s lies, I tell myself. Everything she says is a lie. It’s gotta be.
She’s trying to make the party people happy, but they’ll have to give Gabion back because Miss Tann knows our daddy’s coming to get us soon’s he can. Briny would never give us up. He’d never let a lady like Miss Tann take my new baby sister, if I had one. Never. Ever. He’d die first.
Is Briny dead? Is that why he hasn’t come for us?
The car starts, and I jerk toward the window, pushing Fern off my lap. She slides into the seat as I grab hold of the door handle. I’ll run back to the house, and I’ll tell those people the truth. I’ll tell them Miss Tann is a liar. I don’t care what they do to me after.
Before anything else can happen, Mrs. Pulnik has me by the big, fancy hair bow one of the workers prettied me up with this morning. Fern squirms out from between us and lands on the floor with Stevie and Lark.
“You will behave.” Mrs. Pulnik’s lips touch my ear, her breath hot and sour. It smells of Mrs. Murphy’s whiskey. “Shouldt you not, Mrs. Murphy will gif you the closet. And not only will this be for you. We will be tying all of you and leavingk you there, hangingk like shoes by the laces. The closet is cold. And it is dark. Will the little ones enjoy the dark, do you think?”
My heart beats wild as she yanks my head back. My neck crackles and snaps. Hair pops loose from the roots. A white flash of pain shoots over my eyes.
“Is that understoodt?”
I do my best to nod.
She throws me against the door, and my head bounces off the glass. “I did not imagine any troubles would be comingk from you.”
Tears storm into my eyes, and I blink hard against them. I won’t cry. I won’t.
The seat bends, sucking me closer to Mrs. Pulnik’s bulky body. She lets out a purring sigh, like a cat in a sunny chair. “Driver, take us to home now. It is time.”
I worm away and watch out the window as long as I can until the white house with its big columns is gone.
Nobody in the car says a word. Fern crawls back into my lap and we all sit still as stones.
On the way back to Mrs. Murphy’s, I look for the river. A little dream finds its way into my mind while Fern hangs on around my neck, and Lark rests against my knee, and Stevie huddles between my feet, his fingers squeezed over the buckles on my shoes. I pretend that when we pass by the river the Arcadia will be there, and Briny will see the car.
In my daydream, he runs up the banks and makes the driver stop. Briny opens the door and pulls us out, all of us, even Stevie. When Mrs. Pulnik tries to get in his way, he slugs her in the nose, just like he would if someone tried to steal from him in a pool hall. Briny kidnaps us the way Huck Finn’s daddy does in the story, but Huck’s daddy was a bad man, and Briny is good.
He goes back to the house and gets Gabion away from Miss Tann and carries us to a far-off place.
But my dream isn’t true. The river comes and goes. There’s no sign of the Arcadia, and soon enough, the shadow of Mrs. Murphy’s house covers the car. Inside my skin, I’m empty and cold, like the Indian caves where Briny took us camping one time when we hiked up over the bluffs. There were bones in the caves. Dead bones of people who are gone. There are dead bones in me.
Rill Foss can’t breathe in this place. She doesn’t live here. Only May Weathers does. Rill Foss lives down on the river. She’s the princess of Kingdom Arcadia.
It’s when we’re marching up Mrs. Murphy’s sidewalk that I think about Camellia. I feel guilty for imagining that Briny rescued us from the car, that he took us away without Camellia.
I’m scared of what she’ll say when I tell her we haven’t got Gabion with us—that I hope he’s coming later on. Camellia will say I should’ve fought harder, that I should’ve bit and scratched and screamed the way she would have. Maybe that’s right. Maybe I deserve to hear it. Could be I’m just too chicken, but I don’t want to get the closet. I don’t want them to put my little sisters in there either.
Dread steals over me when we get inside. It’s the kind of dread that comes on a swolled-up river when the spring melt happens and you see an ice floe headed straight for the boat. Sometimes, the ice is so big that you know there’s no chance of pushing it away with a boathook. It’s about to hit and hit hard, and if the edge slices the hull, you’re sunk.
It’s all I can do not to shake off the babies and turn around and run out Mrs. Murphy’s door before it closes behind us. The house stinks of mold, and bathroom smells, and Mrs. Murphy’s perfume and whiskey. The smells grab me by the throat, and I can’t breathe, and I’m glad when we’re told to go outside because the kids haven’t come in for supper yet.
“And the clothes are not to be soiledt!” Mrs. Pulnik hollers after us.
I look for Camellia in the places where I told her to stay, the safe places. She’s not at any of them. The big boys don’t answer when I ask where she is. They just shrug and go on playing a game of conkers with the buckeyes they pick by the back fence.
Camellia’s not digging in the dirt, or swinging on the swings, or playing house in the shade under the trees. All the other kids are here, but not Camellia.
For the second time in one day, my heart feels like it’ll bust out of my chest. What if they’ve taken her away? What if she threw a fit after we left, and she got herself in trouble?
“Camellia!” I holler, and then listen, but there are only the voices of the other kids. My sister doesn’t answer. “Camellia!”
I’m headed for the side of the house, for the azalea bushes, when I see her. She’s sitting on the corner of the porch with her legs pulled tight to her chest and her face buried. Her black hair and her skin are gray with dirt. It looks like she’s been in a scrape with somebody while I was gone. There’re scratches on her arm, and she’s got a skinned knee.