I’ll tell you what, Hoyt said. At least let me take a look. Let’s see what we’re talking about here. There’s no harm in looking, is there?
Abruptly he stood up. They traded glances and followed him down the hallway past the bathroom. Hoyt looked into the bedrooms as he passed, first Luther and Betty’s bedroom, then Richie’s, before coming to a closed door at the end of the hall; he pushed the door open with his foot and walked into Joy Rae’s room. In all the house it alone was neat and clean. The single narrow bed against the wall. A wooden dresser draped with a thin pink scarf. A meager box of jewelry and a brush and comb displayed over the scarf. The faded oval rug on the floor next to the bed.
This here’ll do, he said. At least it’s cleaned up. She can move in with her brother and I’ll stay in here.
Oh, I don’t know about that, Betty said, standing behind him in the doorway.
It’s just for a little while. Till I get going again. Where’s your charity? Don’t you have no heart?
I got my kids to think about too.
How is me moving in here going to hurt your kids?
Joy Rae fixed it up all by herself.
All right, he said. I’m your uncle, but if you don’t want me moving in all you got to do is say get out. I’m not stupid.
I don’t know what to say, she said. Luther, you say something.
Luther looked up the hallway. Well honey, Uncle Hoyt says it’s just for a little while. He lost his own apartment. He ain’t got no other place to go. Seems like we could help him out a little bit.
There, Hoyt said. That’s somebody that cares.
I know one thing, Betty said. Joy Rae isn’t going to like it.
THEY TOLD HER OF THESE NEW ARRANGEMENTS WHEN SHE got home from school that day, and she went immediately to her room and shut the door and lay on the bed and cried bitterly. But that night, as ordered, she moved her things into Richie’s room and hung up her few dresses in the little closet and set out the box of cheap jewelry on the half of the dresser she’d claimed for herself, then picked up his shoes and toys and clothes and put them away.
When she got into bed that night it was too narrow for two of them, even as small and as thin as they were, and in the night after they’d gone to sleep Richie began to dream violently, thrashing in bed, and she was forced to wake him.
Quit your kicking. Quit it, Richie. It’s just a dream, so be quiet.
Then she looked up from the bed and saw her mother’s uncle standing in the doorway staring at them, only his face visible in the shadow. He was leaning against the door frame. She pretended to be asleep and watched him through the darkness, and she could smell him. He’d been out drinking. She had been sitting at the table after supper when he’d asked her father for five dollars. He couldn’t be expected to stay home at night, he’d said, he was still a young man and nobody was about to tie him down. Her father had looked suddenly afraid, and he’d glanced ceilingward for help but none had come, so he’d handed over five dollar bills out of his wallet. Now she kept watching him across the dark, and after a while he left the doorway and went down the hall to her room.
But even after he’d gone Joy Rae couldn’t fall asleep for an hour or more. Then she woke in the morning to discover she was sleeping in a wet bed. Her brother had wet himself in the night and her gown was soaked with it, her legs cold and damp. It made her want to cry. She got up and wiped at her hips and legs with a dirty tee-shirt and began dressing for school. She woke her brother. He whimpered and complained, standing beside the bed.
Hush up, she said.
She helped him skin off his wet underpants. He was shivering and there were goose bumps running down his legs.
We got to get ready for school. The bus is coming. Hush up that crying, you little baby. I’m the one ought to be crying.
11