If You Find Me (8 page)

“I’m sorry, kiddo. I don’t know why she would’ve lied to you, unless it was to keep you two disguised.”
“Or she forgot.” I don’t look up. “Jenessa’s still six, right?”
“Yes. She got that right.”
I hug my knees to my chest, my arms aching, I hold on so tight. We share the silence for a bit— six minutes, according to my wristwatch—and then he fixes to go back into the building, stopping after a few paces to turn back to me.
“Don’t you go anywhere, you hear? I don’t know if you’re thinking about running, but your sister needs you here.”
I look up at him, my face swollen and tear-stained.
“I need you here. And Melissa would skin me alive if I came home without you. She’s pretty attached to you two, if you don’t already know it. She’s expecting me to bring both her girls home.”
I swallow my emotions in an audible gulp. He walks back over, nudges my foot again.
“Are we clear?”
I nod, as mute as Jenessa. Then I watch his feet walk away, although it still feels like he’s walking toward me in all the ways that count.
I wonder, in the darkest puzzle piece of my heart, if he’d say those words if he knew, really knew, about the white-star night.
Jenessa would never tell. It had sucked the words right out of her.
I carry the secret close as skin or breath or pee. It rode in the truck with me as surely as those three garbage bags. Even with hours and miles between us, the truth hunkers down fat as a tick tucked into the moistest, darkest place.
Quick as the rabbits I used to shoot for breakfast, I sprint across the asphalt to the bushes and let my breakfast fly.
“You have a bird’s stomach,” Mama says, none too pleased. “You have to get those nerves under control, girl. Why you so scared? No one here but your Mama.”
She was barely there, the last year, and still not there, when she was. And that’s not counting the times she was there and a person wished with all her might she wasn’t.

Looking at Jenessa, you’d never know she was the same little girl. Her body, kindling thin and all angles upon arrival, is now pinker and rounder, with the start of little dents Melissa calls “dimples” in her cheeks and at the back of her knees. Her huge, haunted eyes are as sweet as they’ve always been, but the edges of worry have crumbled away, not all of it, but most. Those eyes sparkle brightest when she’s with Shorty, and there’s many a time we sit and watch them play, her company melting years off the old hound, “undoing the gray,” as my father likes to joke.

Last week, Melissa took Ness into town for a haircut, and my sister came back with her blond curls brushing her shoulders, framing rosy apple cheeks. In her new shirts, jeans, chinos, dresses, shoes, slippers, and nightgowns, she looks like a girl, a normal little girl, not the forlorn soul huddling over a tin cup of never-ending beans.

I haven’t fared as well, with so much on my mind. I haven’t gained more than five pounds, if I’m lucky. It’s the bird nerves, like Mama said.

At breakfast, I eat my bacon but pick at the eggs. I’m snug-warm in a pale blue terry-cloth bathrobe, a gift from Melissa. And yet, I’m keening fierce for the campfire, for the early-morning bird chatter launching the sun into orbit as I shiver and poke the sleeping coals awake, the morning not just a vision but a feeling, a scent, a taste that enters your pores and coasts through your veins until it fires up your very soul.

Melissa interrupts my daydreaming, her back to me as she pours herself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the kitchen counter.
“I think it’s your turn, Carey. We need to get you some new clothes. Not just for school but to keep you warm and comfortable, too. Winter’s coming. At the least, you need a new coat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It’s impossible to say no to Melissa (especially when she’s talking up a new winter coat!), but not because she’s bossy. More because her intentions are always in the right places.
Melissa waits until my seat belt clicks before she turns the key and proceeds down the driveway. She waves to my father, who’s chopping firewood, and to Nessa and Shorty, who are playing fetch out front.
Melissa hums to the radio, to slower songs I’ve never heard before. I sneak a few glances at her, and she catches me, winking at me, and I can’t help but smile back. At least until we reach the ginormous (Delaney’s word) bustling place called “the mall,” and I change my mind less than five feet from the entrance.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?”
My feet remain glued to the blacktop. I can’t look at her.
“Carey? Look at me, child.”
I look into her face, my own expressing the tangle of emotions churning my breakfast and flushing my cheeks.
Melissa looks pained, which surprises me. She takes a deep, steadying breath for both of us and then smiles her reassurance, with the kind of strength dredged up from a backbone of steel. Steel. For me.
“Here. Take these.”
She drops the key chain to the SUV into my open palm.
“You can wait in the car, okay? I’ll pick up a few things, and then we’ll go home. How does that sound?”
“Good, ma’am.” I summon up a tiny grin, all monkey arms– awkward. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Do you know how tall you are?”
Longing runs down my innards like Pooh’s honey as I think of the Growing Trees, two hickorys side by side, where I’d carved ascending notches as I’d marked my height on one and Nessa’s on the other.
“Five feet, seven inches.”
“How about your feet? Do you know what size?”
“My sneakers are an eight? And they fit right good.”
Same size as Mama’s. But I don’t say it out loud.
Slumping in the passenger seat, barely blinking, I people-watch my eyes out. There are lots of girls my age dancing around women like Melissa, as excited as Shorty when I hold up a bone and he weaves between my legs in rapidfire anticipation.
I smooth my hair, seeing the girls’ perfect locks. Melissa made mine perfect just last week.
“Unless you want to change your style, I only need to take about an inch off the ends, straight across the bottom. I could do it for you, if you’d like.”
The ends look chunky now, and I can’t stop turning around to see them in the mirror.
I watch women navigate kids with wires hanging out of their ears, their heads bouncing rhythmically. I follow the wires down to little square boxes clipped onto their belts or disappearing inside jacket pockets.
Some talk into rectangular devices pressed to their ears, called “cell phones,” or hold them out in front of them, thumbs tapping wildly. If you did that in Obed, you could fall down a ravine or step on a venomous snake. Not paying attention, you’d miss the snippet of baby rabbit flashing by or the red shuffle fox who could easily be persuaded to visit from time to time in exchange for bread crusts or wild blackberries, twinkly tinfoil or a busted shoestring.
Delaney has both devices, and she laughed at me when I first asked Melissa what they were. In the middle of the conversation, Nessa’s head whipped toward me, her eyes wide as the harvest moon. I shook my head no.
“We can’t call Mama.”
Why not? Jenessa’s eyes shout.
“Because Mama don’t—doesn’t—have one of those fancy phones.”
Delaney turns to Melissa, incredulous.
“She’s kidding, right? How can anyone in this century, let alone on this planet, not know what a cell phone or an iPod is?”
Melissa’s lips press into a hard line. Delaney throws up her hands, her signature gesture, I’ve learned by now. She glares at me before turning back to Melissa.
“What? What did I say this time?”
Melissa shakes her head slowly, a look passing between them.
“Fine. If you think I’m bad, Mother, wait until she goes to school. The kids’ll eat her alive if she doesn’t get with the program!”
School.
Each time I replay that conversation, my blood pounds in my ears and my stomach jumps like catfish in the Obed River.
It only takes Melissa one and a half shopping hours, the end of which I spend dozing. I quickly grow tired of scrutinizing my reflection in the mirror, studying the girl who lives in that glass. I hadn’t known I was beautiful until Melissa confirmed it. Going by her voice, it’s supposed to be a good thing—like winning the Mega Millions, which my father plays twice a week, or bringing down a fat buck.
Only, I don’t see it. All I see is me. And I know me. And that word doesn’t fit me. I still look exactly like the girl who lived in the woods. You can take the girl out of the woods, but not the woods out of the girl, I reckon. I still look owl-eyed, pointy-chinned, serious. I still look like I know more than I should, which I do. I still look like I’m hefting huge white-star secrets. I’m surprised every day that no one else can see.
Rap rap rap!
I open my eyes and see Melissa looking in, toting a bunch of large white bags that bump against her thighs.
“Could you pop the trunk for me?”
I watch her eyes remember. I like that she forgets.
“Here. Let me show you how.”
She disappears from view, reappearing by her own door.
I know how to unlock the doors, so I do that. One flick of a switch. It’s amazing.
“Thanks, Carey. See this button here?” I lean toward her, nodding.
She pushes it, and I spin in my seat to watch the trunk open automatically.
“Now you know.”
She smiles softly and disappears around the back. I sit up straight and wipe the sleep from my eyes, smooth my hair again, and wait.
“Just a sec, and we’ll be on our way home,” she calls out.
Home.
That word. It creeps across my consciousness like a plump caterpillar measuring my humerus. You don’t want to hurt it, but you don’t know what to do with it, either. To which I tell myself, home is wherever Jenessa is. It’s as simple as that, really. It doesn’t have to mean more than that unless I want it to. One h word can’t wipe out my Obed life. Nor can it wipe out Mama. Even if sometimes a huge part of me wishes it could.
We carry the humongous (I’m a fast study) bags to my room. I carry a heavy one filled with rectangular white boxes. I have no idea what goes into rectangular white boxes. But they look so clean, so fresh and new. For a moment, everything that’s good in the whole wide world must fit into rectangular white boxes.
I vow to keep the boxes, too.

“Let’s unpack the loot,” she says, and I don’t know what loot means is, but it sounds like it must be at least as good as rectangular white boxes.

The first bag is full of so many colors, I can’t even name them all. I most definitely can’t call the first items “undergarments,” because the plain word dishonors the silky beauty of the pretty colors and patterns. There are matching bras to go along with them, some with small cups and some that remind me of tank tops cut in half. I glide my fingers over the material as Melissa pulls out packs of socks, some colored, some white, some up to the calf, some stopping at the ankle. There are even two pairs of panty hose I could swear are made of flesh-colored s piderwebs.

Another bag contains a pair of gloves fashioned from the softest material I’ve ever touched—“cashmere,” Melissa says, then explains what cashmere is.
“Isn’t it the most amazing thing you’ve ever felt?”
“Right soft.” Gently, I lay my check on the glove, imagining a

whole pillow made of the stuff.
“Do you know what cashmere is?”
I shake my head no.
“It’s the silky, fine wool at the roots of the hair of the Kashmir

goat.”
“A goat?”
“I know. Isn’t the world so interesting?”
I smile my yes, my attention turned back to the loot, to another

“That’s wool, and it comes from sheep. It’s not as soft, but it’s thick and warm. They’re called ‘mittens.’ It can get pretty cold most winters.”

She says it like I don’t know, like I don’t know cold the way I do. I like when she forgets. I think of early mornings with my clumsy hands purple as I rubbed Nessa’s little fingers, her skin denting yellow, then glazed-over white as we huddled together in the camper, frostbitten if we weren’t careful, our winter coats buttoned up past our throats, and underneath, sweatshirts, the hoods tied snugly under our chins. We wore two pairs of jeans apiece, and a spare pair of socks on our hands once the feeling returned to our fingers.

It was warmer outside in the snow, where we sat on logs around the fire I coaxed to life from coals each morning, and if we had tea bags, we’d drink cups of orange pekoe. There, I could peel off the covering and warm my hands to the point that I could play for Ness, the ghosts of Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven crouched on the log, the notes sparkling like the icicles hanging from the branches above us.

Sometimes, Nessa skipped and danced to the music to keep warm, her feet scratching white circles around the fire as I heated the leftover squirrel, hiding the bits of meat in thick beans sweetened with brown sugar, lucky with a few squares of bobbing fat.

My new clothes don’t smell like wood smoke, and neither does my hair or Jenessa’s anymore. I never thought I’d miss it, but I do . . . in the same way I miss the crisp ceiling of stars and the wanwood leafmeal that made up our floor.

“Look in the next bag,” Melissa urges, her voice gilded with excitement.
I unpack two pairs of jeans, fancy as all get out. Jeans just like Delaney’s.
“Bedazzled jeans. They’re bedazzled with gems and rhinestones,” she explains as I run my fingers over the glinting swirls and patterns along the bottom of the legs. “Delaney and her friends brought them back into style.”
Along with a few plain pairs, I count seven pairs of jeans in all. Seven pairs of jeans. It’s right unimaginable. My fingers wander over to one pair, washed- out-blue, with a small hole I trace around the knee.
“Can you believe that’s the in thing? Even in the woods, you were sporting the style,” Melissa says, winking.
I laugh, startling myself with the sound. But it is funny. All these girls with hot water and warm houses and store-bought clothes wearing washed- out jeans with holes in them.
The next bag is filled with tops— a few sweater pullovers, a few button-downs made of flannel, also soft in my hands, and some of what Melissa calls “turtlenecks” to wear beneath them. There are more T-shirts, some short-sleeved, some long. My bed is a rainbow for the senses. Melissa leaves and then returns with six packs of hangers in white, pale blue, and pale pink colors.
We turn to the next bag, the one with the white rectangular boxes. My breath catches in my throat. Box after box is filled with shoes. I pull out a pair of ankle-high boots that look like my dad’s work boots, a pair of white Keds, another pair of sneakers in dark blue with the word Converse and a star on the sides, and a shiny pair of shoes with little heels that look as fancy and wobbly as Mrs. Haskell’s. Another box contains a pair of snappy snow boots with faux fur tufting the tops. I gasp when, from the last box, I pull out a slinky pair of knee-high boots in rich brown leather, so beautiful that my eyes grow as wide as Jennesa’s.
This can’t be for real. It can’t be all for me. Luck is as rare as butter for Mama, Jenessa, and me.
“These items should start you off right. Your closet’s going to look the way it should—nice and full. Go in and try something on.”
Needing no second invitation, I grab a bright purple bra with cups and a matching pair of underpants, a pair of bedazzled jeans, and a long-sleeve T-shirt splashed with flowers melting into different colors down the front. I close the door of the closet behind me.
My clean, warm toes sink into the plush rug, and I hold my breath as I put my arms through the bra straps, the A cups padded and the tricky clasp taking me a few tries to hook. I turn sideways in front of the mirror. I actually look like I have something up there now. I pull on the underpants, amazed that Melissa sized me so perfectly. I turn back to the mirror, holding my breath, afraid to open my eyes. When I do, I can’t believe the girl staring back at me is me.
It’s so wonderfully, truly, frightening, but in a good way, like Delaney says.
I slip on the shirt and jeans, smile shyly at the stranger in the mirror.
Melissa knocks on the door. “Are you decent?”
I push the door open without turning, frozen in the looking glass. Melissa clasps her hands and gasps, her eyes on my eyes in the mirror. We stare at the strange girl, the honey-blond hair woven into a thick French braid by her gentle hands that morning, and the large brown eyes blinking in disbelief. The bedazzled jeans flash in the light as I turn left, then right.
“Look at you, Carey. You’re absolutely gorgeous. You could be a model in a magazine.”
I can’t take my eyes off myself. Hair clean and styled, no smoke smudges on my nose or cheeks. Hands slender, lotioned, nails clean. My old life kicks within me, but on the surface, the woods are gone. I look like Delaney. Like the girls in the mall parking lot. A brand-new Carey. No one would guess what I did.
I tear my eyes from Melissa’s as I tear up.
“Oh honey,” she says. “It’s okay for things to go well for you. It’s about time. Don’t you think?”
“I reckon.” I duck my head, noting her own white Keds. “Thank you kindly for the clothes. For shopping for me—” My voice cracks, and the sentence melts away. She smiles wide enough for both of us.
“It’s my pleasure, honey. And hey—”
I find her eyes again.
“Thanks for not calling me ‘ma’am.’ ”
I go back to the girl in the mirror, and I can see it plain as day, like a photo negative of the woods. The girl standing on the rug practices a smile. The mirror girl throbs on the inside. Melissa locks her arms around me, holding me against her. I feel womanly softness against my wing bones and her heartbeat tapping against my back. She rests her chin on my head, her eyes solemn. We both stare at the girl in the mirror, a creature that can’t be fully captured, not even in mirror glass.
“You deserve all of it, Carey—all of it. You always have.”
She pauses, seeing me, really seeing me. Like she knows.
“That girl in the woods is amazing. Don’t you ever stop being that girl in the woods, you hear me? Braids and new clothes can’t take away the best parts of you. You hold on tight to your heritage. That girl in the woods raised a baby, took care of her sister, kept her fed, warm, safe. That girl in the woods is special. Especially out here.”
I nod, my voice a wavery whisper.
“Thank you.”
I hope she knows it’s the girl in the woods who’s thanking her.
“You’re braver than most girls your age will ever have to be. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”
I feel the cool air move in where her warmth used to be, as she walks out of my bedroom to check on Jenessa. She doesn’t have to say so; I know her well enough by now to know that’s where she’s going.
I walk over to the window, where I see Jenessa smiling and giggling and whispering to Shorty in the field below, bolder when no one’s around. Shorty lies on his back with his legs in the air, grabbing Nessa’s arm in his huge mouth and letting go as she laughs and laughs.
Melissa walks down the path toward her, and Nessa’s smile grows large enough to swallow the sun. She flies into Melissa’s arms, laughing as Melissa spins her in circles.
Please don’t let me wake up. Please, Saint Joseph, don’t let this be a dream. Let me have this. Help me to know how to have this. Don’t let us wake up cold and hungry, Jenessa’s eyes begging me to make it better. Please. Never again. I may not deserve it, but Jenessa does.
Melissa takes Nessa’s hand and they walk across the grass toward the kitchen door, while Shorty tears around, doing what my father calls a “rabbit hop,” streaking ahead and doubling back, like he knows, somehow, these times are special. I know, because I have that same feeling.
For a moment, I almost forget how the date of my classroom debut’s rapidly approaching.
“You’ll start on December first, and there’ll only be a few weeks until Christmas break. It’ll give you a chance to dip your feet in the water without being overwhelmed,” Melissa had said, brave enough for both of us.
I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s going to be. All I know is, if I want to be normal, I’m going to have to work at acting normal. Talking normal.
Fake it through until I make it true.