I went to the back porch, caught the screen when it swung, and pinned it to the wall with my hand. I looked in through a panel window but it was pitch black inside and when I tried the door it was locked. I stepped back, let go of the screen for one second, and it swung loose and smacked me on the back of the head.
I screamed and stumbled off the porch. There was a throb at the top of my skull and it widened until it filled my nostrils and pushed up hard against the back of my eyeballs. I took a moment to gather myself and then spat at the snow. As I might have mentioned, it starts to seem personal.
I went for the woodpile next, grabbed a log, and propped it beneath a small window on the other end of the trailer. I stepped up and my face was level with the glass. Jenna was crying now and I turned to the side to protect her as I brushed away the snow and came to the crusted ice beneath.
I could not see through the window but I uncurled my fists and put my hands to its sides and pushed. I pushed until the freeze crackled and fell away from the seams and the window rose in its frame.
I stepped down to take off the pack. I got the formula and put it on the windowsill, then slid Jenna’s bottle in the pocket of my hoodie.
“Almost there now,” I said.
I peered inside with the flashlight and I could see a rust-stained tub and a sink and toilet. There was a drip coming from the ceiling and it plunked loudly in that small, tinny room. Finally, I took off the papoose with Jenna inside and tried to lower her into the sink. She cried out and reached for me and I snapped her back up.
“I know, baby girl,” I said. “It’s just for a minute.”
She cried harder the second time and in the end I had to force her into the sink. I came in next, dropping a few feet to the floor, where I reached for the formula and pulled the window shut behind me. Then I went for Jenna.
It was warm in the bathroom. There was heat pulsing through the register, but that didn’t worry me. I came back to the fact that there were no vehicles outside and figured Shelton must have forgot to flip the switch when he last left. I turned my flashlight toward the darkened hall and there was insulation falling from the ceiling tiles and trash strewn across the carpet. Typical Shelton. An empty trailer full of toxic waste, and he was pumping it with hot air.
There was water, too, and when I cranked the sink handle it sprang fast and hot from the faucet. I filled the bottle, mixed in the formula, and fed Jenna on the floor.
I leaned back against the tub as feeling hit my fingers like small flames at the ends of match tips. It felt good to have the papoose off, to let the muscles in my back uncoil.
“Eat, baby girl,” I said. “Eat.”
Jenna sucked down her bottle and then her breath came slow and steady. I knew she was going to fall asleep and that brought me comfort. I wanted to set her down, but mostly I was glad for our tiny, predictable pattern. She would eat and then she would sleep, and I was glad to have something the both of us could depend on.
I put her down in the papoose after she fell off and let her sleep on the tile. The formula was nearly empty when I filled the scoop; there was nothing left but a little pinch in the corner of the canister and that wouldn’t make us so much as a gulp. I hoped she gathered whatever rest she could now, because she’d be running on empty from here on in.
I walked into the hall with the flashlight and pushed through the trash. I was looking for a phone but there was only more filth. Emptied bottles of drain cleaner and lighter fluid, smoked soda bottles and tubing and black bubbles burned into the carpet.
I walked from one end of the trailer clear to the other and it was there in the hall between a bedroom and a storage closet that I found Carletta facedown on the floor.
Her left arm was twisted and tucked beneath her stomach and both legs splayed behind her in a V. She wasn’t dead. I could see her shoulders rise with breath and when I rolled her over she groaned and looked up. She was alive but her eyes were as flat and still as stones.
“It’s me,” I said. “Mama. It’s Percy.”
“Sweetgirl,” she whispered, and reached for me.
The thing that surprised me most was my own surprise. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought Mama might be there. The trailer was as logical a place as any for her to wait out the storm, and when she wasn’t at the farmhouse I should have known she would have gone somewhere nearby to cook up a batch and gotten stranded. I should have known she would resurface at the moment Jenna needed me most, after I’d already lost Portis and nearly forgotten why I’d come to the hills in the first place.
I lifted her from the shoulders and pulled her close to my chest. Her arms had gone limp and her hair was grease-damp and clumped together in strings. She was in a tattered sweatshirt and blue jeans and smelled like burned shit. She looked like she’d been spit out by the storm itself.
“Mama,” I said. “I’m right here.”
Carletta cried in my arms, and when I cried back I couldn’t be exactly sure why. I was wild with anger, but I was relieved too. Or at least I was so emptied out and exhausted that it felt like relief. Mama was alive and I was there to hold her.