Cousins (8 page)

Something caught hold of it, swirled it farther out. It went under. Elodie leaped to get her shoe. She jumped up and over, kind of, like a little kangaroo, or something. Both little paws, reaching out.

Kid. Kid, Cammy thought.

“L-O-D!” Ms. Devine, calling. “L-O-D!”

The call sounded weird now. Ms. Devine seemed to be calling through her teeth.

There was noise. Cammy didn’t know what it was. She thought, wildly, bear. She could hear thrashing, a huge sound, coming down on her. She bent low and held to a bush, where she’d been for a long time. The noise was enormous, breaking away. It hurtled past her.

Ms. Devine. She hit the water, out of control. She scrambled back to the slant.

All of it was like a picture wheeling, to Cammy. For the first time, she saw it all. Ms. Devine, covered in mud and wet, scrambling out of the water. Elodie, sort of going backward in the water. She was making a big kind of U-turn. She’d tried for her sneaker and failed. Her face was just full of something, Cammy couldn’t be sure what it was.

Fright, that’s what it is.

Elodie’s eyes, staring, pleading. They gleamed, searching for a friend.

Elodie!

Right on that, in one instant, Cammy knew Elodie was caught in the river. She saw it all.

Patty Ann. Larry was just off the hill, ankle-deep in water, holding his head. Seemed he was yelling. There was noise from lots of kids now.

Patty Ann. She’d left Larry behind. Went wading out toward Elodie. Her little hands were daintily up by her shoulders, as if to keep them dry. Then, she reached out toward Elodie.

They all could see the back of Patty Ann’s head, her long hair riding like a tail on the water before it got too heavy. Patty Ann wasn’t making a sound.

Elodie stared into her face. Cammy saw that, saw it all, like a spiraling in light.

Ms. Devine, trying to keep out of the water. Larry, jumping up and down, holding his head. There were these loud sounds, coming from him—“No! Look! Look! No! No!”

Patty Ann, wading out, moving in slow, long strides in the water, her arms out. Going deeper; then, getting carried closer to Elodie. Elodie reaching for her. Both, reaching.

All the time, the current was swirling in an arc from near the hillside and pulling back into the river. Curving like a big teardrop.

The bluety.

Oh. Oh. Cammy closed her eyes. There was screaming now, all around her. Kids were scrambling back up the hillside. Ms. Devine was below Cammy, holding onto the hill’s bushes with her feet in the water. Her voice was shrill, calling both Patty Ann and Elodie.

Patty Ann and Elodie reached each other. Cammy didn’t know she had opened her eyes. There was this look of peace all over Elodie’s face. It was just so swell, to see her face seem to break out in happiness, with tears. Elodie was crying.

Cammy didn’t know what Patty Ann was saying. But she was sure Patty Ann was talking calmly to Elodie. Elodie turned over on her back. Her head pointed toward the hillside. Patty Ann had Elodie under one arm. She guided her back toward the hill. Patty Ann’s left arm pushed through the water while she kicked with her feet.

Cammy watched it all. She kept losing sight of it in a daze. It was as if her eyes were closed and she couldn’t see. And yet, they were open the whole time. She felt she was actually using her own energy to help Patty Ann and Elodie. She could see Patty Ann’s face now. That no-nonsense look as Patty Ann tried to bring Elodie out of the current. Elodie kicked her legs, helping. And they were more than halfway back now.

Cammy couldn’t believe her cousin was so good at everything, and so brave. It made her feel proud. Yes!

Screams and cries, still loud all around. She saw when the current seemed to tug at them, seemed to jolt them. Was it swifter, coming back?

All at once, the sure look left Patty Ann. Never strong to begin with, now she seemed tired. The current had picked up, pulling both girls backward toward the bluety as they struggled forward. Patty Ann looked confused and hurt.

I won’t get an A this time
, her look seemed to say.

Cammy wanted to close her eyes. But she couldn’t not look. Her mouth opened and she was crying out, she couldn’t help it.

“Patty Ann! Patty Ann, hurry!”

Patty Ann gathered Elodie to her. Elodie was on her stomach now, struggling, terrified. She paddled furiously to get to safety. Patty Ann had her hands on Elodie’s lower back. Both girls were going to be pulled into the swirling around the bluety.

But then, Patty Ann had her special expression again, the kind that made folks say she was the best. That made people not notice that the rest of her was skin and bones. Her face was just perfect, like nothing Cammy had ever seen.

Patty Ann grabbed hold of Elodie. She was yelling something at Elodie. Then, Elodie surged halfway out of the water. At once helping her, Patty Ann gave her a real strong lift. Patty Ann’s cheeks turned red as fire. Her legs churned furiously. Her face was twisted with the strain. She groaned a huge sound and pitched Elodie as far as she could. Kicked Elodie’s behind straight toward the hillside, as Elodie leaped toward the land. All of it done in this suffering, bursting effort from Patty Ann.

Cammy saw it all as her eyes closed, opened, she couldn’t tell. But she was seeing, and praying that she wasn’t. Elodie, paddling for dear life. She did reach the hill, but the current carried her way down from where all of them were clinging to the slant. They could see her dig her hands into the hillside. Hands like claws. Cammy thought she could hear Elodie breathing, holding on. Too spent to yell or even cry.

Safe! Home! Don’t move a muscle, Elodie. Hold tight! That was all Cammy could think about. Fastening the thought to her cousin with imaginary safety pins.

Hold tight, Elodie! Everything else, out of sight, out of mind.

When Cammy remembered, or stopped making herself forget about what could happen next, she looked. She couldn’t see it. But it happened. It became part of the spinning wheel of sky and hillside, kids and blinding sunlight in her head, with no luck to it.

A silence came over everything. It pinned this day to them forever after. And Cammy to Patty Ann.

Beautiful Patricia Ann. All alone.

Her cousin.

The bluety.

Not a trace.

7
I Get It

CAMMY WOKE UP
, slippery with sweat. She was breathing so hard, her chest ached. Her mama, Maylene, had to come in, comfort her, and that made her feel ashamed. During the night, Cammy could barely swallow. Her throat was raw from her screaming.

Her mama had to come in most nights. But then Andrew brought a cot and set it there right inside the doorway, about three feet from her bed.

“You just go to sleep,” he told her. “And when I’m ready for bed, I’ll come in and sleep on the cot awhile, to keep you company, so Mom can get some sleep, too. Okay, Cam?”

“Okay, Andrew,” she said. Waves of cold came over her, made her voice waver. But she was so hoarse all the time, she could hardly get a sound out.

So Andrew did come in, to protect her, was the way she saw it. She slept most of the night, too. But somehow, she knew when he got up to go back to his room and his own comfortable bed. She was awake, or thought she was. Andrew wasn’t there. Patty Ann was.

Sitting on the cot, looking at her. That smooth face so full of beauty. Patty Ann. Not dressed in her day-camp clothes the way she had been that fateful time of no luck anywhere. But wearing something fine. Something that was more than any color, in Cammy’s mind. It was just so rich and beautiful, was all.

“Oh, Mama. Oh, Mama,” Cammy moaned. She was scared out of her mind and commenced crying as if she’d never stop.

Patty Ann spoke to her. That made the darkness break into pieces. Cammy screamed. She came out of it when Andrew shook her and her mama put cold, wet dish towels across her forehead. Her brother and her mama talked softly and said kind things to her.

“Nothing’s going to hurt you. I love you,” Maylene told her, “Please, baby, don’t take on so,” holding her against the dark.

“Cam, you’re not to blame for anything. It’s not your fault, none of it,” her big brother said. He squeezed her hand tight. Leaning toward her, Andrew sat on the cot right where Patty Ann had been.

But none of the night terrors happened right after that last, awful, Little River day. Right after was a week when there were church prayers and sadness in the town. But still, she got ready for school. New clothes and school supplies purchased at the Mall. And then, she went to school like everybody else. The day campers were happy to have been part of the “tragic event of late August,” as the principal, Mr. Hardell, said. Cammy and her camp mates were stared at and talked about. At first, even Elodie was sought out by other children.

“I bet I told about it twenty times today,” Cammy said to Andrew when she got home. “I’ll see somebody coming my way, and it all just comes out, too.”

“Don’t upset yourself, Cam,” he said. He had looked so serious.

“I don’t feel anything about it, one way or the other,” she said, airily.

Andrew had seemed worried about her, she didn’t know why.

But things built up and fell down on her. The worst of anything was having to sit and see that desk. Each kid in homeroom had to bring a streamer of crepe paper. The teacher said it could be any color, as long as it was pastel. Soft colors, like pink or baby blue, even yellow. If a kid had a mind to bring in purple, well, it had to be a real pale purple. Cammy wouldn’t know where to get a pale purple, anyway. Ms. Wells, the teacher, said she’d contribute the black crepe streamers to make the border.

So the way it was, Cammy got a roll of white crepe paper from the variety store. That had been all they had. She had most of the roll left over because she only needed one long strip. She wondered what she would do with it all.

I’ll wind it around my neck and pin myself to the donkey with it, she thought, and then wondered why she’d thought that. She didn’t feel right, though, somehow, inside.

But she had to admit Patty Ann’s desk did look well decorated when they had finished it. Patricia Ann! When they’d all done it just as Ms. Wells directed them, it looked out of this world, Cammy thought.

“Just like Jesus might sit there,” Elodie said. Cammy wished she’d thought to say that, even though kids snickered and looked mean at Elodie. Because all the kids agreed even if they wouldn’t say so. Cammy could tell they did. The desk was now a sacred place. It scared them a little because they knew nothing on earth was good enough to sit in the seat with its black, black border.

The desk looked heavenly. It was like a prayer—
if I should die before I wake
—from all the children. None in Patty Ann’s class had attended the real memorial service.

Yet, having to see the empty, decorated space all the time made Cammy’s head start to hurt. After a couple of days, lots of kids got sick to their stomachs. Maybe it was the flu flitting from one to the next one of them. Maybe it wasn’t.

Cammy stayed home sometimes. “I can’t take school,” she told her mama. “My tummy just turns over and up and down.”

Andrew and her mama gave one another long looks, it seemed to Cammy. But she had to keep her eyes closed a lot of the time. Her head wouldn’t stop aching. It felt like it was going to float off by itself. And it seemed as if she looked through a cloud when she tried watching TV.

Her mama took off from work half days to be at home with her. One time, Maylene also made a trip to school. She came home and told Andrew about it. Cammy had been lying on the couch with her bedspread over her and heard the whole thing.

“Why, the idea of it!” her mama said. “I told them, Patricia Ann’s desk shouldn’t be made into a centerpiece for a costume party, like some carved Halloween pumpkin. And the little kids sitting around all dressed up and having punch and cookies. Staring at that desk. Can you believe it? No wonder they’re all getting sick. And it’s ten days after the fact.

“Helen Wells told me Effie Lee was there, too, today,” her mama told Andrew. “Said my sister thought it was real kind of the children to do such a thing. Considering none of them attempted to save her beloved child when doing something special and brave might’ve meant something, Helen said Effie said. Said my sister had a few choice words for the one adult who had been present that day. And she, of course, would be Ms. Devine, Helen said.

“They say Ms. Devine is leaving town.” Maylene’s voice sounded less angry now and more serious. Saying that folks had made it so uncomfortable for Ms. Devine. They talked about her being big and fat. “They called her a coward for not ever even trying to reach Patricia Ann, herself,” her mama said.

Cold jitters jumped along Cammy’s shoulders and down her spine. She felt Patty Ann come up close to the couch.

“They were calling Joyce Devine a fool, and worse, over the phone late at night,” her mama said, “for allowing those children to go near that swollen Little River in the first place.”

Then, things started getting worse and worse for Cammy. She had thought that the new school year, with new clothes and all, would be just cool for her. Yet, things went very wrong for her. But not as wrong as they went for Eloise Odie.

Naturally, everybody’s meanness slowly came to rest on Elodie, who Patty Ann had saved. Elodie kind of shriveled up after she and Cammy and their classmates decorated Patty Ann’s desk. When Cammy did manage to come to school once in a while, she could tell Elodie had really changed.

She always was a strange kid, anyway, Cammy thought. But now, Elodie had stopped eating. Her face went blank and gray. She lost a lot of weight; she looked skinny, like Patty Ann had. She walked around in a weakened state. And she was all bent over, just like Patty Ann had been.

Kids said the ghost of Patty Ann visited Elodie one night and got inside her. Kids wouldn’t talk to her anymore, wouldn’t sit near her. They ran away every time she got close to them. Ms. Wells had a time. Kids would scream and vomit when Elodie came into class.

Cammy didn’t know what it was nor how to stop it. But she, too, got sick to her stomach every time she looked at Elodie. She went home and stayed there.