Children of Exile (8 page)

“Here,” I said. The Freds would have wanted me to say,
Here, Father,
or
Here, Daddy; Here, Papa; Here, Dad.
But I couldn't do that, any more than I could call the woman Mother, Mama, or Mom.

The woman shoved me forward. Then she pushed down on my shoulders.

“Kneel,” she said. “You're too tall.”

I wanted to tell her,
It's wrong for someone who's bigger and stronger and older to be mean like that to someone who's smaller and weaker and younger.
But I was taller than her, and maybe stronger, too. She was just older.

It was wrong for her to say, “You're too tall,” like that was a defect.

I stumbled forward, bumping against the man's knees just like Bobo had.

“She's old enough to help you sell the apples,” the woman said, and there was something conniving in her voice, almost like a little kid wheedling for a piece of candy. “She'd be able to watch and make sure nobody steals from you.”

What was she talking about? Was the man totally blind? Could he not see at all?

What kind of people would steal from a blind man?

The woman kept pushing me down, forcing me to crouch before the man. He put his hand out and ran his fingers across my face just as he'd done with Bobo. He froze when his fingertips brushed against my nostrils.

“She's got
that
kind of nose?” he asked. “What color are her eyes?”

I opened my mouth to answer—or maybe to ask what was wrong with my nose—but the woman spoke first.

“Brown,” she said quickly. “They're dark brown, almost black, just like yours.”

My eyes aren't brown, but green. Like . . . well, like the woman's own.

The woman squeezed my shoulder warningly. I turned to look at her. She put a finger over her lips and shook her head fiercely, her scowl deepening.

I glanced at Bobo. It wouldn't have been surprising for him to chime in, “Oh, don't you know your colors yet?
I
do! See,
this
is what brown looks like, and
that
is what green looks like,” pointing first to his eyes, then to mine.

Bobo was turned away from the rest of us. He was watching a spider make a little web between the wall and the leg of the man's chair. He didn't say anything.

The woman jerked me up and back, away from the man.

“It's almost time to eat,” she said. “Rosi can help me make supper.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound cheerful and helpful and kind. Not puzzled and angry and sad, like I really felt. “Bobo's good at setting the table, so we can both help.”

Bobo still didn't say anything. I suddenly realized that if Bobo was really that interested in the spider, he would have pointed it out to the rest of us. He would have turned around exclaiming,
Look! Look! How does that spider do that? Why can't I spin sticky web stuff out of
my
belly?
Instead, he was standing there motionless, except for his shoulders quivering every now and then.

Bobo was crying, and trying not to let anyone see.

I recast the way I'd heard him say “That tickles” when the man was feeling his face. I recast the giggle I'd heard. Bobo's moods could turn like that, a giggle twisting into tears in an instant.

I remembered that Bobo sometimes hated being tickled.

I was a terrible sister for not remembering sooner.

I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Come on, B,” I said. “We'll work together.”

But the man slashed his one arm through the air and slapped his hand against his leg.

“My son doing women's work?” he said. “Never!”

Bobo's shoulders shook harder.

“Women's work?” I asked. “Setting the table isn't women's work or men's work! Preparing meals is everyone's work!”

Bobo whirled around.

“Fred-daddy cooks for us all the time!” he said. “I want my Fred-daddy! I want my Fred-mama! I want to go home! My real home, I mean, in Fredtown!”

I'd thought the woman was scowling before. Now her face was like the sky before a thunderstorm. Terrifying.

“Punishment,” the man said. “They must be punished. They have to learn—”

“You'll go to bed without supper,” the woman said quickly. She yanked me backward. Because I still had one hand on Bobo's shoulder, I jerked him backward, too. He tipped against me.

“But—,” I began.

“
Both
of you will go to bed without any supper,” the woman said. “Now. In there.”

She pointed to a break in the wall where a tiny room seemed to hide. A hanging cloth in the doorway separated it from the rest of the house.

But it's still light out,
I wanted to say.
And we don't even have our bags delivered from the airport. We don't have any clothes to sleep in. And . . . we didn't do anything wrong.

The Freds had taught us to stand up for ourselves when we were falsely accused. They'd taught us to explain away misunderstandings calmly and peacefully. They'd taught
us everything about how to behave in Fredtown, with Freds.

But we weren't in Fredtown anymore. These adults weren't anything like Freds.

There was something bottled up in the woman's expression that really scared me. Rage, yes, but also fear. It was like she was a kid too. Like Bobo and me. Little kids were the ones who got scared and angry. Not adults. And who was she scared of and mad at? The man? Bobo and me?

“We are tired after our long trip,” I said stiffly. Suddenly I just wanted to get away before I said or did anything awful. “Come on, Bobo. I'm sure we'll feel better after a good night's sleep.”

“Not tired!” Bobo wailed. “Not sleepy! Not—”

I picked him up. He kicked at me like he was throwing a tantrum—something he probably hadn't done since he was two. I kept holding on, hoping it would calm both of us.

“Shh,” I said, stroking Bobo's hair like Fred-mama always used to do. “Shh. It's okay. Everything's okay.”

I carried Bobo into the tiny room, and it was a relief to be away from the woman's glare, the man's anger. I let the cloth drop behind me, hiding us. There was nothing in that little room except a lamp on an upturned orange crate and a thin blanket spread on the floor.

“Look how soft this blanket is,” I said, leaning down to
pat it. “Look how nicely it's spread out, just waiting for you and me.”

“Don't like that blanket!” Bobo cried. “Want
my
blanket! Want my bed! Want to go back to Fredtown! Want—”

“Shh,” I whispered in his ear, as I eased him down onto the blanket. “Calm down. Would eating help? I've still got a bag of raisins and a peanut butter sandwich in my knapsack. . . .”

Was it wrong to offer him that when we'd been sent to bed without our supper? My Fred-parents had never used that as punishment, so I couldn't be sure.

It didn't matter, because Bobo screamed, “No! Not hungry!”

I understood. My stomach felt too achy and sad for me to even think about food. I couldn't believe I'd ever be hungry again.

But what if the man and the woman heard Bobo yelling and realized that we didn't care about supper, so they'd think of some
worse
punishment?

“Listen,” I whispered again to Bobo. “You can tell me everything that's making you sad or mad. Sometimes that helps. You can tell me anything you want. But tell only me. Whisper. Don't let anyone else hear.”

“Want my Fred-daddy,” Bobo said, and while it wasn't a whisper yet, at least he wasn't screaming. “Want my Fred-mama. Want my toy sailboat.”

“We packed that, remember?” I whispered in his ear. “It will probably be here by the time we wake up tomorrow.”

“Want my monkey bars,” Bobo said, and now this was more like a murmur.

“I bet there's a playground here, too,” I said. “Maybe their monkey bars are even better.”

“Want . . .” Bobo went on listing everything he missed about Fredtown. Every third or fourth word was “Fred-mama” or “Fred-daddy.” Only when I was sure he was more asleep than not did I dare to let myself whisper back, “Oh, me, too, Bobo. I want our Fred-parents too.”

Except that I knew the kind of thing they would say to me if they were here, even if they'd witnessed everything the man and woman had said and done. I could just hear Fred-daddy's voice in my head, telling me,
I think you just don't understand the reasons behind those things you were insulted and hurt by. You just don't understand your real parents. If you understand other people's viewpoint, you can think of them more kindly. And you can stop focusing on your own anger and pain.

I did still want my Fred-mama and Fred-daddy. I wanted to go back to Fredtown as much as Bobo did.

But I also wanted something I thought might be possible, something I promised myself I would find a way to do tomorrow:

I wanted to talk to Edwy.

In the morning,
when I woke up, the space on the blanket beside me was empty. I was confused for a moment—
Blanket? Floor? Where's my bed?
—but then my empty stomach twisted painfully and I remembered everything: Bobo and me being sent to bed without supper, the man who was supposed to be our father yelling that we had to be punished (
for what?
), the woman who was supposed to be our mother scowling and glaring at me, and telling me I babied Bobo.

Where
was
Bobo?

Back in Fredtown, he'd never wandered off in the night, and this new place—our new/old home—had to have scared him yesterday as much as it scared me. . . .

Just then I heard laughter on the other side of the wall: pure, clear laughter flowing like a river of joy.

It was Bobo.

Thinking about how his giggle the day before had been followed by tears, I scrambled to my feet. I was still wearing
the dress I'd worn yesterday—and the entire time on the plane the night and day before that. My hair was probably sticking out in all directions, and I had no comb to tame it. But all I could think of was getting to Bobo.

I spun around the open edge of the wall, into the next room.

Bobo was sitting at the small, rickety table—sitting on the woman's lap, actually. He had a fork raised in the air and his head was tilted back, his curls resting against the woman's collarbone.

“Bobo!” I said, and somehow everything I was confused or worried about made his name come out sounding harsh. “Be careful! If you're eating and laughing at the same time, you might choke!”

“She said I could put sugar on my pancakes!” Bobo burbled. “Then . . .” He let out another fountain of laughter. “Then she said that for all she cared, today I could have sugar on my sugar, if I wanted it!”

The woman shot me a glance that just dared me to remind Bobo that eating too much sugar made him bounce off the walls. She hugged him closer.

I glanced toward the corner where the man had been sitting the night before.

“He went to the privy,” the woman said.

“The father,” Bobo said, as if he wasn't sure I'd understand.
I kind of liked how Bobo put it—“
the
father,” not “my” or “our.” I could do that much.

Bobo stabbed his fork into a mess of pancake pieces on the plate before him, but stopped before bringing it up to his mouth.

“Does the father feel people's faces every time he sees them?” Bobo asked.

The woman—the mother—glanced toward the back wall of the house and lowered her voice.

“He can't see,” she said, her face pinched. “That's why he touches. He wasn't always like this. Just since—”

“Since what?” I asked.

The mother shook her head. Now the expression on her face was like a door slamming shut.

“There's hotcakes on the stove for you, too,” she said, motioning with her head.

I walked to the stove. I wanted her to offer me sugar as well. I wanted her to say I could have sugar on top of sugar, just like Bobo. But she didn't.

The pancakes left in the skillet were shriveled and not even lukewarm. There was a fly crawling on the one plate laid out on the cracked counter beside the stove.

My Fred-parents would never expect me to eat off a fly-specked plate,
I thought.
They would never give me the left-behind breakfast.

But my brain was rebellious too, that morning. It shot back at me,
And if they were here now, they'd say, Rosi, Rosi, Rosi, aren't you capable of washing off your own plate? Aren't you capable of heating up your own food?

I wished my Fred-parents were there to call me
Rosi, Rosi, Rosi.
I wished they were there even if they were gently scolding me. I washed off my plate in the sink and pretended I didn't notice the slight brown tinge to the water. But I slung a little hotcake onto my plate without bothering to turn the fire on under the skillet first. I had a feeling the food would stick in my throat no matter how cold or hot it was.

I sat down with Bobo and the mother. Bobo had his mouth full, and neither the mother nor I said anything for a moment. I worked out dates in my head: It was a Saturday or, at the latest, a Sunday. Not a school day.

“I could run errands for you today,” I said. I felt devious. Back in Fredtown I could have just asked,
Can I go see my friends? Can I go talk to Edwy?
But here it felt like I had to hide what I really wanted. “If you need me to go to the store, I know how to barter for a good price. I won't forget to get the change when I pay.”

The mother pressed her lips into a thin line.

“You'll help with the apples,” she said. “This afternoon. This morning we'll go to church. You and me and Bobo. It's Sunday.”

“Church?” I said, trying out the word, the idea.