“Yeah, well. You just mind your g’s and keep up your book learnin. That way, you sound smart on the strings and in the world.”
Over the years, I learned each piece from front page to last, playing for her and Ness on the evenings she stayed at the camper, which wasn’t as often after the white-star night. Eventually, I didn’t need the books anymore. She called it “playin’ by heart.”
Even though playing reminds me of Mama, I feel worse when I don’t play. It feels like my soul is lost outside my body, howling to get back in. These past weeks, with my violin lonely on the toppest closet shelf, I’m sure it pined for me the way I pined for it. I just wish it weren’t so tangled and complicated.
Tonight, my captive audience is Nessa, who’s snuggled up against Shorty on the bed. I know I’m playing soulfully when Shorty points his nose toward the ceiling and howls in mournful accompaniment.
Right away, I notice the shadow beneath the door, which lingers while I play. And I think of what Melissa said about the big adjustment, and I wonder what it would be like to have an older sister, or even a friend close to my age.
I spied on Delaney through the kitchen window as I pretended to wash a dish or rinse a cup, and the sleds and saucers looked fun, and so did the girls laughing and pushing one another into the snow.
Melissa appears in the doorway, her cheeks rosy with cold.
“Why don’t you join Del and her friends? Doesn’t it look like fun?”
“Thanks, ma’am,” I say, but my feet don’t budge.
One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight girls, I count, with Delaney the queen.
I smile shyly at Melissa, but my insides are an avalanche of slush. I’ll never be like those girls. I’ll never be able to forget.
“You’ll make friends once you start school,” she says knowingly. “You’ll see.”
But, I don’t know. I think of the woods, and I still feel like that girl—filthy, lacking, backward. I don’t know the hip music, the slang, the cultural references, what’s “cool.”
I don’t know how to be like them, how to think like them.
I’m hoping it’ll be easier for Nessa, since she’s still so young. But can a person make friends when they don’t talk? Will the other children tease her, make her cry, cause her to yearn for the woods like me?
I wonder where Mama is, what she’s doing, if she has friends. I want to stay angry at her, but lately what I’m feeling is sorry for her. She remains in the old world, a cold, colorless world with all the energy a person can muster spent on sheer survival.
As soon as the Mazurka-Oberek is over,Jenessa bounces on the bed and claps her hands, giggling when Shorty burrows his head into her lap, watching us from upside down.
I bow like a real performer, imagining people throwing roses onto the stage like they did for Mama.
Glancing at the bottom of the door, the shadow flickers, then disappears.
“Music is a bridge,” Mama says, blowin meth smoke through the melancholy strains my violin leaves hangin in the air, the notes decora-tin the woods like ornaments on a Christmas tree. “It connects folks on a higher level, sayin what words can’t say.”
Maybe it says what Delaney can’t say, also.
Part II
THE MIDDLE
It’s always useful to know where a friend-and-relation is, whether you want him or whether you don’t.
—RABBIT, FROM POOHS LITTLE INSTRUCTION BOOK
10
Melissa calls it fate when school reopens on Wednesday, December 1, the exact day I’m supposed to start. The snow has been divided and conquered, she says, plowed to each side of the roadway, and the buses are running again. However, Melissa takes her mom job seriously, driving Delaney to school on those slippery, snowy days—which means driving all three of us now.
“I’m going to drop you girls at the high school first, so I can get Jenessa settled into her new classroom.”
“Don’t you worry about Carey, Mom.” Delaney turns to me from the front seat, her face sweet as pie. “I’ll take her to homeroom and introduce her to everyone.”
Melissa looks harried as she switches on her blinker and turns right, weaving her way through the high school parking lot and coming to a stop along the sidewalk by the front entrance.
“Well, I registered her last week, and took care of all the paperwork. You sure, Delly?”
“Sure I’m sure. No self-respecting sophomore shows up for homeroom with a parent in tow.”
I’m paying little attention to either of them at this point, as I take in the building, so large that I have to blink to be sure I’m really seeing what I’m seeing. I could get lost in there and no one would find me for weeks.
“You’re absolutely sure?” Melissa darts a look at her watch.
“Yes, we’re sure.” Delaney throws her arm around Melissa, and my teeth ache. “We can look out for each other. Didn’t you say that’s what sisters do? It’s more important you take care of Jenessa. Right, Carey?”