“I was unwell,” Ellen replied. “I didn’t take care of myself. I didn’t know how. And if I couldn’t take care of myself, then how could I possibly take care of you?”
“So your solution was to run away and leave us to fend for ourselves with all the bills you didn’t bother to pay?” Clara retorted. “We were scared out of our minds! We didn’t know where you went or when you’d come home!”
“Clara, stop,” Beatrice scolded.
Clara did not look at her sister. She kept her eyes fastened on her mother.
“I’m not saying it was right,” Ellen replied. “I made a mistake.”
“Ha! A mistake! Are you hearing this, Beatrice?” Clara asked, bewildered.
Beatrice ignored Clara and turned to her mother. “It’s okay, Mommy. Everybody makes mistakes.”
“I’m working two jobs because of you. We didn’t have electricity for two and half months! We were boiling water over the fire!” Clara yelled.
“Clara, I’m sorry,” her mother replied. “I can’t imagine what you went through. I hoped that someone . . . someone like Ms. Debbie would help you while I was gone. Can’t you understand that if I stayed, I still would have been no help to you?”
“Maybe not,” Clara snapped. “But you would have been here. And Ms. Debbie’s dead.”
There was silence. Clara felt the anger course through her veins. She wanted to put her fist through a window and scream until her throat went raw.
“I’m going to make it up to you,” Ellen said quietly.
“Yeah? Well there are things you can’t make up to me,” Clara replied. She was tempted to tell her mother right there about the man she slept with for money. She was angry enough to do it, but Beatrice was there.
“You can make them up to me,” Beatrice said encouragingly. She cut a hateful glance at Clara, and Clara’s heart broke into tiny pieces, sharp fragments that fell flat at the base of her stomach, piercing the lining and making it hurt.
She got up from the table and grabbed her purse.
“Clara, where are you going?” her mother asked.
“I don’t have to tell you where I’m going. You don’t get to decide to come back into this house after five months and be my mother and expect me to tell you what I’m doing and where I’m going,” Clara said. Her voice was flat, emotionless.
“Clara,” Ellen whispered, but Clara ignored her and walked out the door.
***
She didn’t know where to go. She had no place to go. Evan was at work. Ms. Debbie was dead. She drove around aimlessly, wasting gas, not caring. She was on a familiar road, and then she remembered. The cemetery just down to the right. She pulled in and parked the car in the visitor’s parking lot. She walked to the gravesite and sunk down next to the stone. No one was there. It was too cold, and she felt the snow begin to seep through her pants, turning her skin to ice and making it ache. She brought no flowers and searched around for something she could leave beside the headstone. There was nothing. She had nothing, and the tears spilled over—angry, vicious tears of longing and pain.
“Ms. Debbie,” she cried. She clutched the headstone as great, loud sobs escaped her mouth. She tried to quiet herself. She didn’t want to disturb the others trying to rest peacefully.
“Ms. Debbie,” she said again, regaining some control. “Why did you have to go away?”
She waited for the answer.
“Why did you go, Ms. Debbie?” Clara asked again. “I’m alone. Beatrice doesn’t like me anymore. She’s afraid of me. And now my mother’s home, and she thinks she’s going to make everything all right.”
Clara stroked the headstone as she spoke.
“But she can’t. She doesn’t know what I’ve done, what I had to do for money.”
She wanted to confess her sins to someone. She tried with God, but he never answered her, so she decided to try with Ms. Debbie instead.
“I had sex with a man for money,” she whispered into the headstone. “I needed money for the property tax. I was desperate and didn’t know what else to do.”
She wiped her runny nose with the back of her gloved hand.
“I thought I could keep doing it until the tax was paid, but I couldn’t go back,” Clara said. “I’ll never go back, and I’m glad for it even though I know we’ll lose our house.”
Clara waited to hear Ms. Debbie’s voice, but there was only the silence of a still winter day.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Debbie,” Clara continued. “Please don’t think I’m a bad person. I want to be good. I just don’t know how to be good and be poor at the same time.”
Clara’s pants were soaked through, so she repositioned herself. She lay on her side, the right side of her face nestled in the snow facing the headstone. She cried out at the sharp pain until her cheek went numb. Then she settled into a constant shiver, curling into herself to try and stay warm. She tried to ignore the dull burning deep within her muscles. She didn’t want to leave Ms. Debbie. She thought if she let the chill sink into her bones, become a part of them, then she would be able to stay all night, lying beside the woman who gave her the silver earrings, the ones Clara now wore.
“I miss you,” she said, her warm tears falling to the ground, cutting deep holes in the snow.
Clara closed her eyes against a bitter wind that swept through the cemetery. She felt the wind drag something out of her, toss it up into the heavens where it disappeared forever. She thought it was part of her soul severed from her, cut out by a god who did not know her but thought to punish her anyway because she didn’t know how to be good and poor at the same time. She breathed in the icy chill, feeling her chest burn, thinking that some people were just better than others.
***
She heard his voice in the distance. It sounded like a dot on the far side of the world, and as it came closer, growing louder and more urgent, it turned into a blaring megaphone. She closed her hands over her ears to block out the noise.
She felt her wet body lifted off the ground, carried to a place warm and soft, and she relaxed on the backseat feeling the blast of heat hit her face.