Me & Emma Read online

  Thanks to the stupid Washroom Plan I’ve been getting picked on more than ever in school. My teacher, Miss Hall, says I talk out of turn and that’s just been an open invitation to Patty Lettigo. On the playground at recess she hollers at me, calling me a space cadet. The other kids laugh because to them that’s what it looks like, I suppose. What’s really happening is that I’m thinking of things I have to remember to tell Emma after school lets out and the next thing I know I’m saying them out loud. I don’t set out to talk out loud, it just ends up that way.

  “And that’s why we use long division,” Mr. Stanley is saying, “so we can figure out how many little numbers make up whatever big number is under the line here. Who can tell me how many times nine goes into eighteen?”

  Outside, the buds on the tree branches look like tiny knobs on a television. I wonder what kind of show a tree would want to watch. Nothing involving a saw, I bet.

  “Miss Parker?” Mr. Stanley’s voice reaches out to my head and turns it toward the front of the room but I’m still thinking about Tree TV. “Can you tell us?”

  “What, Daddy?”

  Oh, my dear Lord—what did I just say? What did I just say? Maybe I thought it but didn’t say it out loud.

  “Class, quiet down,” Mr. Stanley is saying to all the kids around me who’re laughing and pointing at me like I’ve just climbed off of a spaceship. “Class, please,” he’s saying, but no one’s quieting down one bit.

  This ringing in my ears makes it sound like the classroom is one big glass jar—the voices echoing from side to side in my brain.

  Mary Sellers snorts her little snorty laugh that always sounds like it’s going to turn into hiccups. My face is on fire.

  “All right, class, that’s enough,” Mr. Stanley finally says, but I cain’t see his face because I’m just looking down at my desktop, tracing the carved “EMB was here” that’s in the corner. Who was EMB? I wonder about this every single day. EMB could have been a boy, but I like to think she was a girl, brave enough to dig lines in her desk when no one was looking. EMB. Maybe she died and this is the only evidence that she lived, but her parents don’t know it and every night they cry themselves to sleep wishing they had just one thing with her initials on it and here it is, right under my fingernail, which, I now notice, is packed with dirt so it looks brown. If I knew who EMB was I could let them know it’s here, this last piece of her. Then they could sleep at night.

  “Caroline, please see me after class,” Mr. Stanley sighs. “Tommy, what is eighteen divided by nine?” And the class is back to normal for everyone else but me. By recess, I’ll once again be the laughingstock of the school.

  Emma is the only one who understands me talking out of turn since she does it, too, sometimes, but when she does it no one picks on her because they know she’ll beat them up after school if they do. Plus she’s pretty, and pretty girls never get into trouble with the other kids. The boys all like them and the girls want to be their friend. So Emma’s got it made. Me, on the other, well I guess I’ll be getting a whole new life out in western North Carolina.

  “Would you like to tell me what’s goin’ on, young lady?” Mr. Stanley says to me after everyone’s filed out of the room.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I say. My face still feels hot and I can’t look him in the eye even though Momma’s drilled it into us since we were weensy.

  “Now, Caroline,” he says in a voice that sounds like warm doughnuts, “you’ve got a lot of potential. You’re a smart young lady. But you’ve got to apply yourself…”

  Apply myself. Apply myself. If one more teacher tells me that, I’ll scream.

  “…and then you can write your own ticket…” He’s saying something about college. Apparently he thinks that’s the key to the universe.

  “…so you can go now, but remember what we talked about, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say to him over my shoulder, bolting out of the room to my locker so I won’t be late for the next period and I won’t have to have another teacher lecture me.

  “Shh, here she comes” is what I hear when I come through the door of Miss Hall’s room. Nothing like hearing that when you’re about to go somewhere you don’t want to be in the first place.

  “You better sit quick, Carrie Parker,” Luanne Kibley says, “or Mommy’ll send you to your room without supper.” The class erupts like a volcano; they’ve been waiting for me.

  “Did you and Daddy have a nice talk?” Mary Sellers sings to me from over the din.

  “Who’s your uncle?” Tommy Bucksmith shouts. “Mr. Streng?” Mr. Streng is our principal. Everyone hates Mr. Streng except maybe Daisy, his one-eyed dachshund who sleeps on a checkered cushion in the corner of his office.

  Where is Miss Hall?

  The skies have turned black outside—the clouds are ready to break open with water, I can just feel it. I hope it waits till after we’ve gotten home. I know I’m just trying to come up with things to think about other than where I am right now, but can you blame me? When I’m a teacher I’ll show up to class on time, that’s for sure.

  “All right, people,” Miss Hall says before she even shuts the door. “Everyone please get out your social studies workbooks and turn to page nineteen. I hope y’all remembered to read this over last night….”

  I didn’t. I don’t even remember her telling us to. What else is new?

  Chapter Three

  Right now I’m in our room with the ceiling that leans in like it’s protecting our beds from the sky. Our room is the best part of the house, but Richard thinks it’s the worst. I suppose I can see his point, because even though it’s only May, it’s hotter than Hades in July and the only window up here has a fan in it that only sucks the air out of the room. When Richard moved in, he stomped up through the house with the boxes from the back of his truck and told us we’d better get on up the stairs with the string that pulls them down from the ceiling. No one’s gonna build our nest for us anymore, he said, so we better start getting used to it. Ever since he called our room the nest, that’s what we call it, too. I didn’t know what was up his sleeve but I went up the stairs first, which is surprising considering how Emma’s normally the brave one. Once we were at the top he pushed the stairs back up—something he still does to this day. Because it’s summer, the hot air in the Nest hits you in the face like the cloud of smelly smoke that shoots out from behind Richard’s truck every time he pulls out from the side of the house. There’s only that one side that you cain’t stand up straight in and that’s where our bed is. Our quilt on the bed we share is patchwork and reminds me of Little House on the Prairie.

  The ceiling has a lot of cobwebs and all I can think of is Charlotte and Wilbur in one of my all-time favorite stories about the pig and the spider who get to be friends. I wonder if spiders can really spell like that in their webs. And since these webs are on the high side of the ceiling that’s not where the bed is, I let them stay…until I see a spider dropping down. Emma loves it up here. She knows now that you can’t jump up and down on the bed and it only took her three bruises to figure it out. She likes to put the window fan on and talk into it really slowly, and to tell you the truth I like that, too. At first she wouldn’t go near it because she thought her hair would get pulled off her head, but now she knows to put it in a ponytail and then there’s no risk. She says things like “I hate you, Richard” and “You will die” and “Leave us alone” right into the fan, knowing he cain’t hear a thing because the fan blades chop the air into little pieces and carry her words out and away from the house. I don’t think she cares if he does hear her, anyway, since sometimes, when he lays into Momma real bad, she shouts right into it before it gets itself up to speed.

  I can hear Richard right now out in the second-floor hallway and I know it’s only a matter of time before he pushes the stairs up again and locks us in here. Momma hates it
when he does this but I don’t mind it anymore. When he pushes the stairs up I know he won’t be bugging me and Emma. He used to do that all the time, but since we’re gonna be moving on and up I think he’s got other things to bug.

  Uh-oh. Momma’s calling us. Here’s the problem—if we call out and let her know we’re up here, then she’ll see that the stairs are up. If she sees the stairs are up, then she’ll know Richard was being mean to us. If she sees that Richard’s been mean to us then she’ll lay into him about it and then he’ll start laying into her and it won’t end up like Little House on the Prairie, let me tell you.

  “We better not answer her,” Emma says, and I’m thinking that’s a fine idea.

  “But then we’ll be stuck up here all day,” I say, and Emma just squinches her shoulders up and then lets them fall back down again and I know it’s settled, whether I like it or not.

  I’m tiptoeing over to the stack of books near the fan, which we cain’t turn on since the noise will alert Momma and then it’s all downhill from there, and I’m leafing through this battered old book of stamps from around the world. Someone who lived here before us left it behind, but I don’t think they missed it since they died and that’s how we came to live here. Anyway, I love to look at the different stamps and picture living somewhere really beautiful. Even though I’m old enough to know better, I think the countries are the colors on their stamps. It’s weird in geography class hearing how Finland is such a dark place since its stamp is so bright and colorful.

  Uh-oh. Momma’s under the pull-string staircase. I can hear her calling out. I look over at Emma but she’s fallen asleep reading again. Richard must’ve been at her last night. When she sleeps that way during the day I know what’s happened the night before.

  There’s that creaking sound the springs make when the stairs are pulled down and I know the day’s not going to end up well for Momma.

  “Caroline? You up there with Emma?”

  I hurry to the top step so she won’t wake Emma.

  “Emma’s asleep,” I hiss to her. “You need something?” I ask real nicely so she’ll forget that Richard’s locked us in again. Maybe then she won’t go near him.

  I can tell by the way she eyes the fold-out stairs and by the way she sighs that she doesn’t have the energy to take up for us today, and I’m glad. Well, sort of glad.

  “I need you in the kitchen,” she says. “I’ve got to go out for a little while and you need to get everything ready for dinner.”

  “Where’re you going?” I ask. “Can I come?”

  “It’s none of your business where I’m going and no you cannot,” she says all in one breath. “Now, come on and get moving.”

  Usually when Momma calls to me and Emma both that means she’s in a good mood, but I guess that’s not true today. Here’s the reason why she only calls on me most times—she likes me better than Emma. We both know it and so does Momma. She’s even said it out loud. “I don’t care what Emma wants to do, I’m telling you I only want you to go,” she says when we go to someplace fun. Or she’ll ask me for favors, not Emma. This really hurts Emma, even though she doesn’t admit it, because when I do the favor for Momma she’s really nice to me in return. Emma wants to be able to have Momma be that grateful to her, but I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.

  I think Momma doesn’t like Emma because she looks just like Daddy and Momma says some things are best forgotten.

  Like the first time Richard called to me from his room. You cain’t make an angry voice into a pretty one, but that’s what Richard is trying to do, I thought to myself at that very moment. Why is he calling me like I’m a little kitten. “Here kitty, kitty,” he calls. Come on up here, he says, like his room’s a fun place to be. “Come here, sweet girl,” he calls.

  “Don’t go up there,” Emma says to me with those eyes of hers that know it all even though she’s two years younger than me.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say, trying not to look scared, turning the day’s events over and over in my head. I didn’t do anything wrong, I think. Breakfast was my turn and I made the eggs just like he said to, I tell myself at the bottom of the stairs. I know from the sound in his voice it’s a trap. It’s the way you call to one of the chickens when it’s dinner. You don’t chase it, you let it come to you. You call it by trying to sound pretty. Here chicky, chicky.

  “Coming,” I answer him.

  The stairs feel steep so I hold on to the banister even though I go up and down them a million times a day without even thinking twice about it.

  “What’s taking you so long, girl,” he hollers, the try for sweetness turning the word girl into a curl in the air. I picture him reaching out with chicken feed in the palm of his hand, waiting for me to peck it so he can grab me with 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.

&nbs
p; 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.