Quick as the rabbits I used to shoot for breakfast, I sprint across the asphalt to the bushes and let my breakfast fly.
“You have a bird’s stomach,” Mama says, none too pleased. “You have to get those nerves under control, girl. Why you so scared? No one here but your Mama.”
She was barely there, the last year, and still not there, when she was. And that’s not counting the times she was there and a person wished with all her might she wasn’t.
7
It’s been three weeks since we arrived at our father’s farm, and yet it feels like a year in some ways.
Looking at Jenessa, you’d never know she was the same little girl. Her body, kindling thin and all angles upon arrival, is now pinker and rounder, with the start of little dents Melissa calls “dimples” in her cheeks and at the back of her knees. Her huge, haunted eyes are as sweet as they’ve always been, but the edges of worry have crumbled away, not all of it, but most. Those eyes sparkle brightest when she’s with Shorty, and there’s many a time we sit and watch them play, her company melting years off the old hound, “undoing the gray,” as my father likes to joke.
Last week, Melissa took Ness into town for a haircut, and my sister came back with her blond curls brushing her shoulders, framing rosy apple cheeks. In her new shirts, jeans, chinos, dresses, shoes, slippers, and nightgowns, she looks like a girl, a normal little girl, not the forlorn soul huddling over a tin cup of never-ending beans.
I haven’t fared as well, with so much on my mind. I haven’t gained more than five pounds, if I’m lucky. It’s the bird nerves, like Mama said.
At breakfast, I eat my bacon but pick at the eggs. I’m snug-warm in a pale blue terry-cloth bathrobe, a gift from Melissa. And yet, I’m keening fierce for the campfire, for the early-morning bird chatter launching the sun into orbit as I shiver and poke the sleeping coals awake, the morning not just a vision but a feeling, a scent, a taste that enters your pores and coasts through your veins until it fires up your very soul.
Melissa interrupts my daydreaming, her back to me as she pours herself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the kitchen counter.
“I think it’s your turn, Carey. We need to get you some new clothes. Not just for school but to keep you warm and comfortable, too. Winter’s coming. At the least, you need a new coat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It’s impossible to say no to Melissa (especially when she’s talking up a new winter coat!), but not because she’s bossy. More because her intentions are always in the right places.
Melissa waits until my seat belt clicks before she turns the key and proceeds down the driveway. She waves to my father, who’s chopping firewood, and to Nessa and Shorty, who are playing fetch out front.
Melissa hums to the radio, to slower songs I’ve never heard before. I sneak a few glances at her, and she catches me, winking at me, and I can’t help but smile back. At least until we reach the ginor-mous (Delaney’s word) bustling place called “the mall,” and I change my mind less than five feet from the entrance.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?”
My feet remain glued to the blacktop. I can’t look at her.
“Carey? Look at me, child.”
I look into her face, my own expressing the tangle of emotions churning my breakfast and flushing my cheeks.
Melissa looks pained, which surprises me. She takes a deep, steadying breath for both of us and then smiles her reassurance, with the kind of strength dredged up from a backbone of steel. Steel. For me.
“Here. Take these.”
She drops the key chain to the SUV into my open palm.
“You can wait in the car, okay? I’ll pick up a few things, and then we’ll go home. How does that sound?”
“Good, ma’am.” I summon up a tiny grin, all monkey arms-awkward. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Do you know how tall you are?”
Longing runs down my innards like Pooh’s honey as I think of the Growing Trees, two hickorys side by side, where I’d carved ascending notches as I’d marked my height on one and Nessa’s on the other.
“Five feet, seven inches.”
“How about your feet? Do you know what size?”
“My sneakers are an eight? And they fit right good.”
Same size as Mama’s. But I don’t say it out loud.
Slumping in the passenger seat, barely blinking, I people-watch my eyes out. There are lots of girls my age dancing around women like Melissa, as excited as Shorty when I hold up a bone and he weaves between my legs in rapidfire anticipation.
I smooth my hair, seeing the girls’ perfect locks. Melissa made mine perfect just last week.
“Unless you want to change your style, I only need to take about an inch off the ends, straight across the bottom. I could do it for you, if you’d like.”
The ends look chunky now, and I can’t stop turning around to see them in the mirror.