“You see there? That’s all. Wattie did it.” Threats of labs and hair pullings had rolled off her, but I remembered how Wattie would use recipes and the regular beats of her real life to call her home. Now I used them against her, saying, “Wattie wants y’all to plant the pumpkins today, and if we don’t, you are going to have store-bought pumpkins on your porch come October. Is that what you want?”
That got her mouth open, but only to berate me. “Leia Birch Briggs, I would sooner have no pumpkins at all! Did you know last year half those ones in the Pig were not even from America?”
“Well, do the stick, and let’s go plant. June won’t last forever,” I said, though no matter how this all came out, Birchie would not be here to pick those pumpkins come October.
Birchie eyed the stick, mistrustful, but Wattie gave me a little nod, almost imperceptible, encouraging me.
“It isn’t ladylike,” Birchie said. At least she was talking to me now, the pinhole gone. “Look, it has her spittle on it. Her human spittle, and there you stand holding it in the parlor.”
“It gets put right away,” I said. I muscled Cody aside and picked up the little bag with the plastic zippered top. I held it where she could see, then I put the stick in and zippered it shut. “You see? It gets sealed, even. Let’s do this. No fun in the garden until this is done!”
It was my first try at Unbrookable Mother. I tried to sound like Rachel telling Lavender to clear the breakfast dishes. I tried to sound like Birchie herself had sounded on all my childhood summers, telling me I had to put away my coloring supplies before I could go out and play on the square. It felt wrong to be using it on one of the very women who had taught it to me, but I found I did own this voice after all. To my mingled rage and sorrow, it worked. It unmothered her, turning her into the child.
“Goodness, no need to make such a fuss,” Birchie said, sulky, and she opened up her mouth like a baby bird.
I got out of Cody’s way, super fast, before she forgot that she’d consented. He stepped in, smart enough to keep his own mouth shut for a minute. I lurked behind him making hyper-encouraging eyebrows as Cody tore open a new box and made a big show of putting on clean gloves. Wattie leaned in, whispering a soothing list of all the seeds they needed to get into the ground now—sweet potatoes and lady peas and melons—while Cody took the sample. It was such a long minute that Wattie was reciting their winter planting schedule before he finished. But then the stick was out and he was popping it into the bag, and thanks to us nobody was stabbed or broken. Thanks to us the state had everything they needed to ruin us.
Frank pantomimed a fast Whew, and I smiled back, but wry. This was not a victory I could celebrate.
“Now, was that so hard?” Cody said, holding up the plastic bag for her to see.
She put a hand to her chest, distaste registering in her turned-down lips and lowering eyebrows.
“Really?” I said quietly behind him. “Because when she slaps that out of your hand, I am going to laugh my ass off. And good luck getting another sample. Can’t wait to hear you call Ms. Tackrey and explain—”
But he was already setting the bag in the bottom of his briefcase, saying, “Okay, okay, okay,” over me until I stopped talking. “I was only showing her,” which was crap. He’d been trying to bait her. He was the same bully he’d been in childhood. Instead of growing out of his worst traits, he’d only gotten big enough to do real damage with them.
Birchie dropped her eyes, hands folded, back in demure mode.
“Now what?” I asked as Cody fished in his shirt pocket for a pen to fill out the label on the sticker.
“Now I box it up and drop it off straight to the lab,” he said, checking the dusty briefcase and then feeling in his back pockets for a pen that wasn’t there.
I think, if I had a plan at all, it happened then. Not even a plan. More like a noticing, a logical click of understanding much too fast to think in words: there was a little bag full of cells sitting in the dusty bottom of his briefcase. Cells I’d helped gather, though they could put Birchie into prison. There was another little bag full of cells, anonymous, identical, in my hand. Cells that wouldn’t help the cops or Regina Tackrey at all.
“I have one,” Frank said, holding out his own pen. Cody turned toward the fireplace to take it, blocking Frank’s view of the briefcase. He was turned away for a second, maybe two. Not enough time, if I had thought about it. But I didn’t think. My body had been ready, waiting, filled with pent-up purple action this whole time. My body moved, setting my little bag down, picking his up. Boom and done.
Wattie saw me. Just her. Her eyes went wide, horrified, and she opened her mouth. She snapped it shut again. Cody was already turning back. He was writing on the sticker. I watched him affixing it to the wrong bag, as horrified as Wattie was. My bad hands buzzed and trembled, so that I had to work to not drop the bag holding the real sample.
This is a felony, I thought. I am holding a felony, and I did it. This is how fast a person’s hand can move, almost without permission. An impulse, a breath, and then it’s done, and then you did a felony, forever.
I didn’t want to think about Birchie with a hammer, about what she did in her own worst moment, but I already was. I clutched the bag so hard my knuckles were white.
Wattie was purely panicked. I could see it in her wide, wide eyes. She opened her mouth again and then closed it. We were telegraphing urgent eye messages back and forth in total silence.
She was telling me that I was stupid, and God, but she was right. My hands had done a felony, and it could not be undone. Cody had already put the wrong sample in the box and labeled it.
If it had been our chief, Willard Dalton, I could have said, Oh, wait, I did something bad and stupid. He could have switched them back or taken a whole new sample. Hell, if it had been Willard Dalton, observant and smart, my bad hands would never, never, never have had the opportunity. But this was Cody Mack. If we spoke up now, I’d be leaving the house in handcuffs.
Hush! Hush! I don’t want to have my baby in a prison, I thought-beamed at Wattie, and she closed her mouth up for the third time.
Frank, oblivious, began a round of cool, polite good-byes as Cody clicked his stupid briefcase shut. I croaked out some kind of good-bye, too, and so did Wattie. I hoped I didn’t look as red and sweaty as I felt. I could hardly hear myself over the blood roaring in my ears.
“How long until we get results?” Frank asked.
“Well, this kinda thing, it can take months,” Cody said, and I felt his words both as relief and as a heavy sword on a thin string, hanging over my head. Months? Months of not knowing if I’d be caught. Months of this baby growing here in Birchville with my grandmother unable to leave the state, stuck in this dangerous, fork-and stair-filled house. I couldn’t put her in a temporary place until I could move her close to me. Not when I had no idea where I’d be living and every tiny change was so hard on her. But this also meant months of putting off a prosecution. Which was worse? Then Cody flashed a big, shit-eating grin and added, “But Tackrey’ll fast-track this one. So say a week? Ten days?”