“He didn’t break my skin. It was a warning . . .” He sighs. “I swear to God, Gracie. It’s never-ending with you, isn’t it?”
I don’t know why, but that makes me burst out laughing—a deep sound rising from my belly, until my whole body is shaking. I should be peeling myself off him but I can’t move—I’m laughing too hard.
He peers up at me, an unreadable expression on his face.
“What?” My heart starts pounding in my chest.
“Nothing, I just . . .” His words drift, and I can see that he’s changed his mind about what he was going to say. “I was trying to decide who’s dirtier now—you or your stray dog.”
I elbow him in the ribs as I roll off.
* * *
“You have to eat, Mom.” I set the container of chicken broth on the nightstand next to her.
She dismisses it with a pinched nose. “Everything is making me nauseous. Even that pizza . . .” She has some color in her face again, at least, but I know that she’s not exaggerating. At least she’s in that happy lull, though, after the harshest of the drug’s effects have worn off, but before the heroin withdrawal symptoms come back with a vengeance.
Noah’s immediately on his feet and closing the door to his adjoining room, where the offending smell permeates the air. “Gracie’s right. You need to put something besides all this medication into your body. That’s why you have no energy.”
She offers him a weak smile as he returns to sit on the edge of the bed beside her. “You still call her Gracie.”
He collects the bowl and spoon. “It’s all I know.”
“Abe called her that. Gracie . . . or Gracie May . . .”
Slowly, Noah slips a spoon’s worth of soup into her mouth. “I remember watching you feed her like this.”
She swallows with only a slight grimace. “Do you really?”
His mouth twists into a boyish grin. “I’d make faces at her, and she’d get so excited she’d slap your hand away.”
“Her food would end up all over the wall. Drove me bananas.” Mom begins to laugh, the rare sound bringing a prickle to my throat. “I never had the heart to scold you for that.”
He slips another mouthful of soup into her. And another, and another, like some doting son, as they reminisce about summer barbecues in the backyard, and games we used to play, and how my dad used to keel over from laughing when I’d dance around in nothing but a diaper, my hips swaying and my arms waving above my head. I quietly listen and watch.
But talk of my dad also brings the tension slithering back into the room, like a snake coiling around its prey, squeezing tighter and tighter until I’m unable to focus on anything else.
My mom feels it too; I can see it in her pained eyes as she studies Noah’s face, who sits quietly, biting his bottom lip. Waiting, as if he’s suddenly afraid to push her.
I’m not. I’ve been waiting years for proof of her quiet accusations. “Tell us what you’ve been hiding. Now, while you can handle it.” How long before her attention wanes, before she’s more focused on keeping down her soup than letting loose skeletons she’s been so adept at hiding? Ten minutes? Half an hour?
Her eyes fall to her lap, where her hands are entwined tightly. “I don’t even know where to start.”
I flip open the metal box and pull out the first mystery. The picture of my mom that might not be a picture of my mom. I hand it to her.
She smiles weakly as she studies it. “That’s probably a good place to start.”
My mother gathers her thoughts, as scattered as they may be. I have to keep reminding myself that she’s far from well, even if she’s lucid.
“The first time I introduced Abe to your nan was when I was six months pregnant with you. She insisted that we make the trip from Texas to Arizona. She and Brian wanted to meet him before you were born.”
Mom says I met my mom’s stepdad, but I was too young to remember. Nan kicked him out a year before we moved out to Tucson. But I heard enough of Nan’s offhand unflattering comments to figure out that they hadn’t parted on good terms.
“So we drove here for Christmas. She insisted we stay in the trailer. All of us—Abe and I in one room, your nan and Brian in the other . . .” She drags a finger along the picture. “And Betsy, on the couch.”
Noah was right.
“Betsy is my little sister. Well, half-sister,” she corrects. “Nan had her with Brian when I was ten.”
My mouth drops open. “Why haven’t I met her? Or even heard of her?”
“You did meet her. We came back to Tucson for a visit when you were three.”
I pause to digest this shocking new information. It’s hard enough imagining your parent as a person who had an entire life—an identity—before you came into the picture. But when that identity includes a sister you’ve never heard of . . . “What happened to her? Did she leave with Brian?”
My mother swallows hard, then shakes her head.
The alternative hits me. “She died.”
“I don’t know. Maybe she is dead by now.” My mom studies the picture for another long moment. “Betsy was fourteen when she ran away. Nan phoned us in hysterics, the goodbye letter in her hand. Your dad hopped in his car and drove through the night to go looking for her. He grilled her friends and found out that she’d been seeing this older guy. He was buying her clothes and things, making all kinds of promises for a better life.
“Abe looked for days, but she was gone. He figured she was picked up that same night and taken out of the city right away. That’s how those things work. Steal ’em young and in the night.”
“Those things? What things?”
“Human trafficking. They bring in young girls from broken homes and force them into prostitution. Betsy was stolen, and sold.” Mom’s voice cracks with emotion.
Oh my God. “And you never heard from her again?”
Another solemn head shake, my mom’s eyes glazing over with the threat of tears. “Abe felt responsible for what happened to Betsy. He convinced himself that he should have seen the signs. He didn’t like Brian right from the second he met him. I figured it was because Brian had a thing or two to say about me marrying a black man. Abe said it wasn’t that. My stepfather was an ignorant fool, and he expected as much from him. He couldn’t peg exactly why, but Brian rubbed him the wrong way, and your daddy could find the good in most anybody. That’s why we stopped coming here—”
“Wait a minute, what do you mean, ‘he should have seen the signs’?” I interrupt.
Mom pauses. “Brian was abusing Betsy. Touching her and stuff.”
My stomach drops. “In our trailer? In my room?” I feel my face twist with disgust. “And Nan didn’t know?”
“That’s the thing . . . Betsy tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“Bullshit.” How could my nan—my sweet grandma who made me pancakes on weekends and smothered me with hugs—ignore that?
“Gracie, you have to remember, I grew up in that trailer, too. And I had never come to her so much as suggesting something like that was happening to me. In her mind, it didn’t make sense. And Betsy was a wild kid. She was getting into all kinds of trouble—shoplifting, neighborhood mischief, that sort of thing. She and Brian were butting heads all the time, so your nan assumed Betsy was lying, that she was being an uncontrollable teenager.
“It wasn’t until Betsy ran that she confronted Brian. And he admitted to it. Nan kicked him out, but it was too late. Betsy was gone. Nan never forgave herself. When I phoned her to ask if we could move in, she packed up everything to do with Betsy.”
“And you both went on like she never existed.” I can’t help the accusation in my tone.
My mom’s fingers fumble with the charm dangling from her necklace. “Believe me, neither of us ever forgot about Betsy. But Nan couldn’t handle you asking her questions. She’d have to lie because she couldn’t handle telling you the truth.” After one last look, she passes the picture back to Noah, who hands it to me.
I study Betsy’s—my aunt’s—face. “I thought this was you.”
Mom smiles sadly. “We’re both spitting images of your nan when she was young. People called us twins, ten years apart.”