What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (2 page)

Momma hates it when I watch her closely. She says I been doing it all my life but I’m good at pretending I don’t do it no more because I once overheard her telling Richard I study her like I was gonna be quizzed. She said to him
it makes my skin crawl, her looking at me like that
. So ever since I make myself think about other things when I’m around her so I won’t make her
skin crawl
. That’s where my vocabulary book comes in handy. I found that the best way to memorize a new word is to squeeze your eyes closed and picture it being spelled out on a chalkboard. Now, if Momma looks like I’m making her skin crawl I shut my eyes and pretend I’m working on vocabulary. It’s worked real good so far because I usually end up leafing through the book (to make it look real) and landing on words I really truly
do
want to learn.
Peculiar. Plethora
. My mind wanders real easy, though, so before long I find myself wondering if Momma smiled much when she was a kid.
Penultimate
. I wonder if she knew how to dance. If she liked candy.
Palatial
. Did she love my real daddy when they got married?
Puny
. Did he carry her in through the front door after their wedding? Were they happy when they found out they were gonna have me?
Plebeian
. Does she know who killed my daddy? Why’d she have to go and marry Richard? I watch her close in case any of it comes out and if it does I write about it so I won’t forget. You never know: she might do or say something that will be a clue about her life. I’ve
gotten good at watching from the corner of my eye so it looks like I’m staring straight ahead but I’m really not. Like right now, for instance. Right now it’s easy because Momma’s got to keep her eyes fixed on the road to
starting fresh
.

But to start fresh we’ve first got to pass through Hendersonville to get to the interstate.

People I See on Our Way out of Town for Good

    
1. Mr. Zebulon is standing with his arms crossed in front of the hardware store. I looked straight at him and he looked away
.

    
2. Miss Lettie who cuts ladies’ hair in her kitchen is about to get in her car when she sees us and freezes, still holding her key out, like the game Red Light, Green Light
.

    
3. Mr. Willie Harding from the lumber mill watches our car closely then spits chew tobacco on the ground, showing off he can make a big gob of spit, I guess
.

Not a one of them waves goodbye. I guess it figures. Ever-one stopped smiling at me after I went and killed Richard and I cain’t blame them no sirree—who smiles at a murderer? That’s what they call me behind my back.
Murderer
. They whisper the word but it still reaches my hearing and part of me thinks they know it.
Psycho murderer
. Now, as we’re driving down Main Street this one last time, they stand there blinking at us, watching our car move along like we’re in a slow-motion movie.

I should’ve brushed my hair. Momma calls it a
rat’s nest
. I close my eyes and make believe I have silky long pretty hair and we’re in a parade like they have on Fourth of July and I’m in a dress that has a bow and sparkles and I’m sitting high up on a chair tied good and tight in the back of a shiny red pickup truck and there’s tons of people from all over waving little flags, waiting to get a look at me and when our truck comes in sight ever-body cheers and claps
because I just won a contest that makes me Miss Hendersonville, Queen of North Carolina.

So even though when I open my eyes and I see that I’m not in a parade, I got a rat’s nest in my hair, and not a one person’s cheering or clapping in real life, I smile and wave anyway. They’ll remember me all right: to them I’ll always be the child who shot her stepdaddy and smiled good and wide about it.

Momma says there’s nothing but
cold stares
and
loose lips
in Hendersonville. I’m writing down what it’s like there in case I read this when I’m in an old folks’ home and I cain’t remember anything about anything. Maybe my grandkids’ll ask me about it and I don’t want to be the kind of granny who cain’t answer even easy questions like
What was Hendersonville like?
so I’m making a record of it.

In Hendersonville they don’t honk at you but for waving. A little toot on the horn and your name’s hollered out like you been lost to the world even if you just saw the person five minutes before. If a dog runs away in Hendersonville ever-one’ll know where he belongs and how to get him there. When someone’s sick, ladies bring food till the sick person’s back on their feet. Ever-one talks ever-thing to death in Hendersonville. Trouble is, most times there isn’t much to talk about so when Mrs. Ferson’s hiccups didn’t stop for three weeks it was big news.

Ever-body had an idea of how to get rid of them. She drank water backwards; she hopped ten times on her right foot, ten times on her left, then swallowed whiskey real quick; she even tried to stand on her head (Mr. Ferson
drew the line
at that which was too bad because we’d placed penny bets on whether a headstand would do the trick and plus who wouldn’t want to see Mrs. Ferson standing on her head?). Nothing worked until out of nowhere Levon the knife sharpener knocked on her door one day and told her to drink quinine holding the glass in her left hand while her right arm was up like she was waving at someone a long
ways away. Sure enough Mrs. Ferson’s hiccups stopped right then and there. I wrote the whole thing down in case I ever got hiccups lasting three weeks.

Levon’s Hiccup Remedy

    
1. Get quinine

    
2. Pour it in a glass

    
3. Hold it in left hand

    
4. Put right arm up in the air

    
5. Drink

Anyway, ever-one in town also knew about Mr. Zebulon’s missing right pinkie and how the stump itched if it was going to rain. And ever-one—I’m not kidding—
ever-one
knew about Richard, my stepdaddy. Funny thing is, Richard was one of those people ever-one wishes they
didn’t
know. So when he got killed last month the whole place near exploded like firecrackers in a dry barn. Then, when word spread that Sheriff had Momma and me in
for questioning
, it was almost like birds were flying stories about us from house to home same way they did in
Snow White
when they flew her clothes to her in their little beaks. The talk never stopped. Talk talk talk talk. Momma’s beatin’ marks were real bright, like someone used black and blue markers to paint her cheek and draw a ring around her neck.

After I shot Richard dead, Momma made me stop going to town for supplies. She said we had enough in the cupboard and icebox anyway. People drove real slow past the path leading from the blacktop to our front porch. With us not driving anywhere the grass started growing back in the two lines of dirt the tires used to make. One night two boys from the next county over burnt a cross on the dirt in front of our house because someone told them a white man’d been killed by a black woman. Momma called that
the
final straw
. She couldn’t take it anymore, said we had to leave.
I hope you’re happy
, she said to me more than once after that but I don’t know what I’m supposed to be happy about so I don’t answer her but to say
yes, ma’am
, under my breath in case that’s the answer she’s looking for. We packed up sacks of what we were keeping but it was so boring and Momma was crabby the whole time saying things like
pitch it
and
don’t even think of sneaking that into the keep pile
, so every once in a while I would sneak out the back door to the creek on the far edge of the holler. The creek is what made Emma real for me. I been real good about not saying her name too often so far. But I cain’t not say it when I’m talking about our creek. The two are tied together in my mind like peas and carrots. Emma loved that creek more than anything and I do believe it loved her back. It’s where I could always find her if she went missing. She’d set on the big smooth rock on the far side and poke at underwater things with a switch, her lips moving like she was telling secrets to the water. If you held a gun to my head right now on this very day I would still swear she was real. I’d be whupped bloody if Momma knew I thought that but dangit, this is my notebook and I need to write the truth. And that’s the truth. Momma says that Emma was just an imaginary sister I made up after my real daddy died, but Emma was real, I could swear it. It got confusing on account of Mr. White at the drugstore back in Toast asking me
how’s Emma doing?
And Miss Mary working the cash register always inviting Emma to
come and visit
with her even though Momma’d say she was sick of humoring me about Emma ’cause
Emma’s something not very humorous
. Anyway, I take care not to mention Emma’s name in front of Momma since Richard died, and even in my pretend world Emma mostly stays outside, out of Momma’s sight line much as possible so they won’t overlap in my brain. Like when we hauled out all our stuff for a yard sale on one of our last days.

I wanted to put up signs about the sale in town but Momma
said folks would find it without us having to say a word. She said the smell of us fixing to leave would reach them like how hot biscuits tell kids when to come in for supper. Sure enough, right when we put out the last of the chipped plates Gammy gave Momma and my
real
daddy when they got married, ever-body started up the dirt path like they’d been watching us the whole time which they probably were. I heard someone say they were gonna tear down our house after we left on account of no one wanting to live in a place where a man got murdered even if he did have it coming. We watched them pick through our stuff and somehow we knew no one wanted to buy a dang thing … they just wanted to look at us like we were zoo monkeys. They turned ever-thing inside out and upside down. Some tall string bean giant man I’d never seen before held up a glass pitcher and asked Momma how much she wanted for it and Momma said
best you got
and looked away. When she wiped her eye while she was fishing in her coin purse for change I couldn’t right tell if she got something caught up in there or if she was crying. I never seen Momma cry ever—even when her shoulder got popped out of its socket the time Richard came home and dinner wasn’t ready and he dragged her over to the stovetop to make sure she got it done. Momma always had dinner ready and waiting from then on.

“Look how he’s holding the pitcher, Momma,” I whispered.

I wanted him to get in trouble like me and Emma surely would have if we’d gone and held the pitcher that way. I wanted Momma to grab it back out of his hands. I wanted
him
to get skinned alive like
we
sure as hoot would’ve been. But she looked away.

We watched the Jolly Green Giant carry away the pitcher, dangling it from his fingers. She’d brought it out from the kitchen hugging it to her chest and for a split second I thought maybe she was gonna change her mind about sellin’ it because she didn’t put it on the table right away. She held it gentle to her chest, like it was a hurt dog or something. I pretended I hadn’t seen her do that
because something told me she’d want that un-seen. She never said so but I know Mr. White gave that pitcher to her and Daddy for their wedding. The three of them went to school together when they were kids growing up in Toast. Momma kept that pitcher high up on a shelf where no one could get at it. We never used it
ever
. It sparkled so clean and pretty like it just came from the store. The pitcher lasted longer than both Momma’s marriages.

Momma never went into town because Richard used to say
a woman’s place is in the home
so she didn’t know half the people going through our things. I knew lots of them though. Mrs. Dilley was flipping through Daddy’s old Johnny Mathis records in between staring holes in Momma’s head. I guess Momma noticed it too ’cause she said
take a picture it lasts longer
under her breath on her way up the porch steps in the one dress she owned. When I asked her why she was in her Sunday best she told me
we might be the talk of the town but we got our dignity
. Momma’s the most beautiful woman I ever saw, even with her black eye and cracked lips and a huge bear-claw-like mark on her arm. If you saw her all done up like she used to get for Daddy, you’d swear you’d seen her in the movies. Her skin is smooth without a single solitary freckle. Her mouth looks like an ad on the TV for lipstick. But it’s really her eyes that make people stop and stare. They’re big and blue (extra-blue when she’s mad or been crying) and in school when we got to the chapter on Egypt it was like they’d gone and taken a picture of my momma even though it said Cleopatra was her name. Back in Toast, Mr. White used to say she’d been the
belle of the ball
in high school and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him a bell isn’t what anyone would rightly call beautiful so I just smiled and said
yes, sir
. Mr. White said
you be sure to take care of your momma, y’hear
, when I went to tell him Richard was moving us to Hendersonville.
You’ll be fine out there
, he said that day,
but your mother needs someone looking out for her so you be sure to do that, understand?
I said yes but I didn’t really understand. Momma had a
husband
looking out for her, didn’t she? That’s what I thought at the time. It didn’t take long for me to see what Mr. White meant but by then it was nearly too late.

The people crowded at our things for sale like they were made of gold and found in a treasure chest. A man with a mustache curling up at the ends like a cartoon bad guy was at Momma to sell him the kitchen chairs with plastic seats for
a good price
. She waved him off and walked away but then he jingled change in his pocket and called to Momma that she drove
a hard bargain
like it was a compliment but she didn’t look like she took it that way. After he loaded the third chair into the back of his truck and drove off, Momma called him a
cheap son of a bitch
. Thing is, he was dressed fancier than I ever saw in person—he had spit-shined black shoes without a speck of dirt on them and pants ironed so hard they had a line down the middle—and there he was jawing at Momma to lower the price from three dollars a chair to two. His truck looked good as new—no mud on the tires even. Momma said he probably didn’t use it for work. It was
just for show
. If
I
had a car to drive for show it sure as heck wouldn’t be a truck.