There are times when I can go full days without thinking about the Community. It’s been weeks since I craved nettlecake or the first ripe mushrooms that I could sneak from the pail before anyone noticed, and lately I haven’t even spent much time thinking about Jude. This morning, though, he came back in an unexpected rush when I saw a new inmate traveling across the cafeteria linoleum. She held her tray uncertainly, walked around on knees half folded and wavered before she sat down at an empty table. Staining her cheek, big and bright, was the burgundy fist of a bruise. Something went off in my brain like a trigger, and bang I wasn’t in the cafeteria but right back in the forest, waiting for Jude in the bleeding dusk.
There were days when he would meet me with a bruise purpling the skin around his eye, and he never talked about it. He held his eyes down and barely looked at me. I hadn’t met his father, who could quote the Bible and down a bottle of moonshine in the same heartbeat, who came to the wild before Jude was born. Wordlessly, I showed Jude my scars, the red raised skin on the back of my wrists from Vivienne’s switch and, years later, the branch-like whip marks that scored my bare back.
“Will you teach me to read, Jude?” I asked one day in our second winter. I sat huddled inside a blanket we left in the tree house for chill afternoons like this. Jude had brought his mother’s Bible up to the tree house to show me where she’d written her name in curly pencil when she was twelve, and I held the thick, frayed book in my hands like it was made of precious metal. It had been years since I’d touched a book.
“Teach you to read?” Jude looked up from where he was picking at the strings of his guitar. “What do you wanna learn that for? Don’t do me no good.”
“I dunno,” I said. “Might come in handy. And I could read your Bible.”
He stopped strumming. “I’m starting to think I don’t really like what’s in that book, besides my momma’s name. My daddy always talks from it when he’s angry, wickedness, damnation, sinning. Sometimes I think there ain’t no right way to live in this world, least not in my daddy’s view.”
“Then teach me to sing,” I said.
“What do you wanna sing?”
“The first song you sang me.”
“‘Ain’t We Got Fun’?”
I nodded. “Your mother taught you it, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, strumming. “She was the prettiest singer.”
“What happened to her?” I asked, then bit my lip. Jude’s brow furrowed a fraction and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. He never talked about her. She was dead, that I knew, but of what Jude never said.
“Here,” he said. “Sit next to me.” He patted the floorboards near him.
I stood and swung my legs over the side of the tree house and let the large skirt of my dress cascade down.
“Every morning, every evening, ain’t we got fun?” he sang.
I repeated him in a wobbly, high voice.
“Not much money, oh but honey, ain’t we got fun? The rent’s unpaid dear, we haven’t a bus, but smiles are made dear, for people like us.”
“Why do they need a bus?” I interrupted. “Most people in town drive cars.”
He paused. “Maybe they have a lot of kids.”
“Maybe they’re Kevinians.”
He laughed, and I startled. I’d never made anyone laugh before. The sound echoed out to where the forest sloped away toward the east. The sky was different there. Paler, as though it reflected light from a city. Below, I could see two sets of footprints in the snow, each coming from a different direction.
“Play something,” I said.
“All right. You gotta help though. Put your hand there.”
I curved my fingers over the guitar’s neck and moved my fingers around to make different sounds. It was tight in the opening, and Jude had to prop his left hand behind him, picking at the strings with his right. At one point, Jude rested his left hand lightly on my rib cage. Each of his fingertips touched a different rib. Unconsciously, he pressed down with his fingers, as though he was still playing the guitar.
I’d never been touched by a boy, not like this. Girls were discouraged from even sharing eye contact with the opposite sex. Physical affection was the domain of the Devil. Badness has a way of slipping between skin, easy, like badness does. This, right here, the warmth from his hand penetrating the navy thickness of my dress, my hip grazing his, was enough to damn me for eternity.
It was worth it.
Chapter 36