the other when I’m not looking.
“No,” Emma says from the bottom of the stairs. “Carrie,” she calls to me. “No.”
The sound in her voice makes me want to throw up.
Momma’s not here, I think to myself. I’ve got to do as he says.
At the top of the stairs I look around for a safe place to run, but in our house there are none. Except behind-the-couch, but right now I’m too far away from there.
I look into Richard and Momma’s room and inhale. Even from the top of the stairs I can smell it. Momma’s perfume cain’t cover the smell of Richard and his sweaty clothes. Richard is sitting on the edge of the bed that used to belong to my grandmother. The bed is covered with a graying fabric that has a pretty flower pattern sewn on it in the same material. I love to trace that pattern when Momma’s still soft from sleep and me and Emma crawl up onto the bed ‘cause Richard’s not home.
“Come here,” he says. He’s hunched over and is resting his elbows on his knees. When I tiptoe into the room he straightens, and I can see that his pants are unzipped. Now I really want to vomit.
“I said get over here,” he says to me, but I cain’t move my legs. They’re like dandelion roots that won’t let go of the soil. Just as he’s about to say it again, Emma comes in from behind me, pushes me out of the room and closes the door. Just like that. I waited there a few seconds and then I ran behind-the-couch. That’s how much of a coward I am. I let my little sister take the heat for me. I don’t know why Richard would have forgotten to do up his pants before the beating but I try not to think about that. There are no sounds coming from up there but I know it’s bad. Emma never cries when it’s bad. Only when she thinks she can change something does she cry. She couldn’t change this. I put my forehead down onto the tops of my knees and wait for her to come back down but she never does. I am wedged behind-the-couch picking at the yellow line in the plaid pattern, hoping she’s okay. Why hasn’t she come back down yet? I wait. Then I wait some more. Then I think maybe she thinks I went back upstairs to our room so maybe I should go there and look for her to see what that was all about. So I start out from behind-the-couch by digging my heels into the linoleum and pulling my rear end along an inch or two and then repeating the process.
But Emma doesn’t come out of the room for a long time and when she does she doesn’t come looking for me like I come looking for her after it’s my turn for a whipping. I hear her tiny footsteps heading up to the Nest so I scoot out from behind-the-couch and go up after her. Richard’s door is closed so the coast is clear and I take the stairs two at a time. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed and it doesn’t look like she got a beating. It looks more like she got stuck in a rainstorm. Her hair isn’t silky anymore, it’s matted in the back and the bangs in front are damp. Her face is all puffy like she’s been crying, but I listened real hard for that so I’m not sure if that’s what happened.
But her mouth is clamped up like the meat grinder that’s fixed to the edge of the counter in the kitchen, so I don’t think I’ll be finding out any time soon what Richard was so mad about.
I go over to the fan and turn it on, thinking maybe she’ll talk into it like she always does and then I can find out what went wrong, but she just sits there on the bed, so I give up and go for the stamp book, flipping past Romania and getting right to my favorite—Bermuda. I touch it and pretend I’m touching the white sand under the palm tree that leans into the sun. If I could live anywhere in the world, it would be in Bermuda. It’s too pretty there for anything to be wrong, and I bet they even have a law that would keep people like Richard out altogether. ‘Sides, his thin brown hair wouldn’t keep the top of his head from getting burned and his arms with all the veins popping out up and down them would turn beet red.
I look back at the bed and I see that Emma’s curled up like a little baby wanting to get back into her mother’s stomach. She’s trying to be really small, hugging her legs up to her chest like she is.
I hate Richard.
When Richard first met me he patted me on the head and walked on by. I didn’t pay him any mind because I had no idea he’d be here to stay. Momma had dropped some hints—”You better be real nice to my new friend,” “Why don’t y’all go on up and put on those sundresses I bought you last spring”—but I didn’t notice until it was too late.
Emma and I were playing jacks on the front porch when he came by carrying a tin can full of nails, which Momma made such a big deal over—like he was the one who said “This loaf of bread is great but what if we made lines across it and cut it up.” He told Momma the nails were to fix the floorboards that bent up and stubbed our toes when we walked barefoot. Big deal. I could’ve done that. Besides, no one had stubbed their toes since Daddy died so I don’t understand what the fuss was all about. But Richard winked at me and said it’s so my baby sister doesn’t hurt herself. Momma gave us this look so we had to say “Thank you, sir” to him even though his wink looked as fake as the left hand on Mr. Brown, who plays the harmonica outside White’s Drugstore every day.
One day I went with Richard to White’s ‘cause Momma asked us to. It was still early on, when Richard did favors for Momma. “Caroline, why don’t you go along so Richard has some company,” Momma said. But I guess I wasn’t the kind of company Richard must’ve wanted: once we pulled away from the house and Momma was out of sight, the smile went away from his face and he stopped talking altogether.
“Hey there, chile,” says Miss Mary from behind the counter. Then she tilts her head to the side and mumbles to herself loud enough for me to hear. “I don’ know what they be givin’ so much work to them kids at school fo’. Y’all look so tired all the time.” Then her head snaps back upright and she looks over my head altogether. “I’ll be right with you,” she says to Richard.
“I’ll be right with you …” Richard says it like she did but he drags out the end so it’s clear she left something off of the end of her sentence.
“I’ll be right with you, sir,” she says, looking down at her work. Richard likes everyone to call him sir, even people who’re old enough to be his grandma.
Miss Mary’s nails are long and make a tapping sound when she pushes the numbers on the calculator to figure out how much you owe. Sometimes she uses the eraser end of the pencil that usually sits behind her left ear, but that day was a fingernail day. I watch her total up Mr. Sugner from the library that’s also the Toast Historical Society—if you need to know anything about Toast, Mr. Sugner’s the man to talk to. Tap-tappity-tap.
Richard looks as happy to be here as if you’d driven a railroad tie into his foot. He scowls at Miss Mary and shifts from one leg to another, huffing, like it was Mr. Sugner’s fault he was here and not the fact that Momma needs Band-Aids, toothpaste and a cup measure. I got a funny feeling in my stomach when I saw the way he looked at Miss Mary, all mean like she smelled bad, so I went over to the rack that holds dusty postcards that no one’s ever bought even though they’re only ten cents each. They’re not postcards of our town, they’re North Carolina state postcards with pictures of the capitol and a town called Mount Airy.
When I turn around Richard’s nowhere to be seen. I even check the aisle that has diapers and other soft-like things but no luck.
“He ain’t here.” Miss Mary aims a fingernail at a spot to the left of her chin and gently scratches. “Mmm, mmm, mmm.” Her mouth was turned down and she was shaking her head like she thought of him the same way he thought of her.
“Where
