Me & Emma Read online

  We pull up to the house and when the car stops, the cloud of dust the tires make keeps billowing forward, like it thinks the car will catch up. By the time we get out and go to the trunk to unload, Momma’s already slamming into the house calling, “Richard, Richard? Where are you, you son of a bitch!”

  Emma and I take all the boxes out of the back and she makes a neat stack of them just outside the kitchen door but we don’t go inside. No way do we go inside.

  Emma turns and walks out to the meadow and I follow.

  “Hey, wait up,” I call out to Emma. When she sets her mind to it she can out-walk me any day of the week. I guess she has her mind set today.

  I’m out of breath when I catch up to her. We’re on the edge of the meadow where the cattails scratch our legs and the ticks look for ways to jump on board. So we keep moving till we get to the lower grass in the middle.

  “We should just do it,” I say. “Let’s just do it. Before the move. There’s a million and one places we can go to hide and they’ll have to move without us. Richard’s new job starts next Monday and by then they’ll have to give up on finding us.”

  Emma looks at me for a second and then goes back to picking at the grass with her dirty fingers. I can tell she’s listening.

  “Seriously, it’s a good idea and you know it,” I say. “We could leave on Friday, they won’t notice we’re gone until Saturday, they’ll look for us on Sunday and then they’ll have to go. Richard won’t care a whit and Momma will just plan on coming back to look for us later in the week and by then we’ll be long gone.”

  Emma is looking at the tree that stands on the far edge of the meadow from where we’re sitting. We climb that tree a lot, we know every branch, every knot. We know just where to put our feet. We can even do it in flip-flops.

  “No way,” she says.

  “Why not?” I say.

  “Because,” she says.

  “Because why?” I say.

  “You sure don’t think like you’re two years older than me,” she says. That just plain makes me mad.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means we can’t do it. If there’s one thing parents don’t like it’s when kids run away. He’d kill us.” She looks over at me. “He’d kill us.”

  And she looks serious as a heart attack, as Momma always says. But I don’t get it. She’s the one that started talking about running away. I’m going to talk her into it if it kills me, and the first thing I’m going to do when we’re living on our own is get her hair combed. It’s so pretty when it’s all silky and soft, like petals on a yellow pansy. She used to like it when I combed it so I know she’ll like it again someday.

  Right as I’m eyeing her she gets up and walks back toward the house.

  “Stay out here,” I say, but when she keeps on going I get up and follow her. Again.

  We listen at the kitchen door and when we don’t hear anything we open it slowly so it doesn’t creak. We open it just wide enough for us to squeeze through and then we carefully slide out of our flip-flops and walk barefoot across the kitchen floor like it’s made of broken glass. I’m holding my arms out to keep really steady but Emma can just walk that way without the arms. Upstairs we hear Momma and Richard yelling at each other. A thump. The sound of Momma hitting the floor. Each step feels like it takes forever to get past the landing outside their door but finally we make it up to the Nest.

  “What’re you doing?” I ask her.

  “What does it look like I’m doing,” she says back, like we didn’t just have that talk in the meadow.

  She’s taking some of her stuff out of the box she packed just last night. The neat little piles are on the quilt on our bed and I think I’m getting my wish.

  So I go over to my clothes and I pick just the things that I like wearing, not the things Momma gets me in town from the White Elephant, which everyone calls the hospital store ’cause the money they make goes to the hospital like it’s some charity and not a mean old place where they stab you with needles. Those clothes are smelly before we even get them home, and when I tell her I don’t like buying things from the smelly hospital store she calls me little miss fancy again and then makes me wear them for spite. So I leave those in the box and I fold the ones my grandma sent me from the store in Asheville and put them next to Emma’s on the bed.

  We don’t say anything to each other. We just pick and fold and sort and soon we have enough to live in for a week at least.

  “I’m going down to get the big bag,” she says, as though this makes all the sense in the world to me and I guess it does since I am pretty sure we’re running away after all.

  Just then I remember the stamp book and I get it from over by the fan in the window and I put it on top of our pile. I can’t believe we’re really going to do it. I thought I’d talk her into it but I thought it’d take a lot more work than this.

  Emma comes back and the next thing I know we’re loading our things into the big duffel bag. It’s not as full as when Momma packs it up, but then again we’re not as strong as Momma is so we’ve got to make it lighter all the way around, if we’re going to put some distance between us and this life we’re stuck in.

  “There,” she says, sounding just like Momma does when she clicks her seat belt closed after coming out from inside the bank on payday. Momma’s always happiest after visiting the bank on payday, cashing Richard’s check like she does.

  “When’re we going?” I ask my baby sister, figuring she’s gotten it all figured out by now, anyway, so there’s no use me trying to act all bossy.

  “Tonight,” she whispers to me. “After they’re asleep.”

  I know I should be happy about this but all of a sudden I feel like I did the time Tommy Bucksmith hit me with the kickball on purpose. I cain’t take in enough air. Emma, well, she looks better than she’s looked in a long time. I figure I better be brave for her sake, so I am. At least on the outside.

  “What’s Momma going to do without us?” I ask her.

  “What’s Momma going to do with us,” she says. And, just as simple as that, it’s decided for one hundred percent sure. We’re running away and nobody’s going to stop us.

  Chapter Six

  “Shh,” I say to Emma, because she’s making way too much noise for a little girl who’s supposed to be sleeping. It’s two o’clock in the morning and we’re already running late because we both fell asleep at midnight and didn’t wake up until five minutes ago.

  Emma is hopping with one leg in her jeans and the other dangling out, trying to keep the rest of her body from toppling over and making even more noise than she’s making right now. Getting dressed in the dark is harder than either of us thought it would be. Good thing we planned ahead and laid out what we’re running away in. “Shh,” I say again.

  When we’re both dressed, we tiptoe over to the big bag that’s sitting underneath the quilt in a big heap. We knew Momma wasn’t going to come up here, she stopped doing that when I was younger than Emma is now, but we wanted to be safe so we put the quilt over it and stashed it behind some boxes that’re pushed into the corner of the room.

  “You get the end with the handle,” I whisper to her. Emma goes to the end that has a tan strap that’s made out of the same material my sneakers are and she grips it, squatting down alongside the bag, getting ready for balancing it like I showed her to before we went to bed.

  The thing is, it’s much heavier than it felt a couple of hours ago. I don’t know why this is but I don’t like it. We aren’t saying anything out loud because Momma can be a light sleeper, but I’m thinking, Please, Lord, do not let us drop this bag. We’re toast if we do. Please, Lord.

  I look across at Emma and even though it’s pretty dark, there’s a line of light from the moon that hits her face and I see she’s waiting for me to nod like I s
aid I would when I got a good grip on my end. I nod to her and we back up to the top of the stairs and all of a sudden I think they’re too steep. We’ll never get down with this bag the way we’re holding it. Plus my hands are getting sweaty on account of nerves and the bag’s slipping so I bend my knees and hope that Emma sees that I’m lowering the bag. Phee-you, she does and we set it down quietly and just stare at it like we’re both willing it to be lighter. That’ll never happen so I open up my end and start taking stuff out. I cain’t see very well but after two whole handfuls of clothes I try to lift it and it’s like someone waved a magic wand over it and gave us our wish. I tie up the open end and nod at her again from across the big bag and we start again.

  Taking one stair at a time we get down the Nest stairs without making a peep. Now we’re in the danger zone—right outside Momma and Richard’s room. I listen real hard and I think I hear Richard snoring, so I nod to Emma again and this time she can see me because the window on the landing is big and lets in more of the moon’s light. This is going to be the hardest part because the stairs are old wood and sometimes creak when you least expect it—usually when you don’t want them to. Sure enough, on the first stair I hear that dreaded crrrreeeaaak. It’s so loud it might as well be the boat horn Richard once blew right next to my head thinking it would be funny to see me jump. Emma stops right where she is and we both wait to hear if the snoring stops. The door stays closed and even though I cain’t hear Richard I’m guessing he’s still fast asleep. It was a seven-squeak night at the trash bin so we’ve got that going for us. The next three steps are fine. But then, on step five, there it is again. Crrrreeeaaak. This one is lower and sounds like a cow I saw once that was lying on her side trying to push her calf out of her. We stop again and inside I’m praying, Please, Lord, don’t let them wake up.

  This time it’s Emma that nods at me and so, since she’s higher up and can probably see that the bedroom door is still closed, I keep going. After three more quiet steps we’ve made it to the bottom and we’re almost home free. Now it’s the front door we’ve got to worry about since the screen part on the outside can slam shut if you aren’t careful. But tonight we’re more than careful so I think we’ll be in business, like Momma always says. I turn the doorknob of the inside wooden door before I pull it open and now all that’s standing between us and freedom is a rusty metal screen. I push the latch in and open it in slow motion. No, slower than slow motion. I’m opening it so slowly you can’t even tell it’s moving. That’s how careful I am and sure enough, it pays off: no creak! Phee-you.

  Now it’s up to Emma to let it close as slowly as I opened it. She reads my mind and does exactly what I did on the way out. Let me tell you, it’s not easy doing all this while you’re holding a duffel and I’m thinking to myself that when I grow up I’m never going to have a duffel bag. They are too much trouble to hold, if you ask me.

  Emma lets the latch close behind her and we look off down the dirt driveway where Richard’s truck sleeps at night and all that’s in front of us is the rest of our lives.

  It probably doesn’t get dark like this in Bermuda. It’s taking all my energy to squint into the night to see where we’re heading, so I don’t even think about how tired I was a few minutes ago. I’m not hungry, either, and that’s a good thing since we didn’t bring anything along but a half-eaten jar of Jif peanut butter I grabbed at the last minute.

  Everything’s asleep right now; the leaves aren’t even crinkling against one another like they do when it’s daytime and I figure that’s because they’re storing up their energy for tomorrow. Tomorrow. What’re we going to do about tomorrow? I haven’t said as much to Emma, but to tell you the truth I am a little worried about where we’re going to hide when the sun comes up. We’re not moving as fast as I thought we would so I don’t think we’re going to make it to the bus station to catch the 5:55 to Raleigh. I’m going to have to go to plan B. Trouble is I didn’t really think of a plan B so I’m thinking real hard right now. Hmm.

  “Do you think they’ll find us?” Emma asks me.

  “No,” I say, even though I am not really sure.

  “Good,” she says, and she keeps walking.

  “Hey, Em,” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “How come you changed your mind?”

  I’ve been dying to ask her this question since yesterday when we came in from the meadow and she started packing up, but I was afraid to talk out loud about running away in case Richard was at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I don’t know,” she says, but I don’t believe her.

  We walk some more.

  After a long time of walking in the quiet, the bag starts to feel real heavy.

  “When we get up there to the barn, let’s set this down for a minute,” I say.

  The barn up ahead looks taller than it does in the daytime. The pitched roof is cutting into the black sky and it looks like a witch’s den in the picture books we read. In front of the doors with the crisscrossed white wood we let the bag fall to the ground and it thumps like a dead body’s in it. That’s exactly what it was feeling like, a dead body.

  “It’s so heavy,” Emma says, rubbing her arms.

  Then I get my idea.

  “Hey, Em. What if we didn’t take the bag,” I say.

  It’s just an idea, I’m thinking to myself. We’re going to need all the clothes we have in there so I don’t imagine she’ll go for it. Plus we only have fourteen dollars and thirty-eight cents to our names, so buying new stuff is out of the question, even if we went to the White Elephant. Which we won’t. Believe me.

  “We can’t just not have clothes,” she says. And she’s right.

  “But it’s holding us up,” I say in what Momma would call my devil’s-argument voice. I think that’s what she calls it. Oh, Lord, I’m already starting to forget the things Momma says.

  “I know it,” she says, and from the tilt of her head I can tell she’s looking at it to decide what we can do.

  “I got it! What if we take out the clothes we think we’ll really need and we put them on over the clothes we’re wearing and then we won’t have to carry anything,” I say.

  “Yeah!” she says.

  So that’s how come we end up wearing all these layers that’re making me sweat and making Emma look fat.

  Best decision we ever made, though, let me tell you. It feels great not to have to carry anything but the Jif and my stamp book and I know no one really goes in that barn all that much so they won’t find the big bag we left behind. At least not for days. By then we’ll be long gone.

  I sure wish I had thought to bring along a ponytail holder, though, because my long hair is really bothering me. It’s hot against the back of my neck so I am trying to think about what I can use to hold it back.

  Jackpot. Up ahead I see the long arms of a weeping willow and I know I can use one of the thinnest limbs that play the ground like it’s a piano.

  “Just a sec,” I say to Emma, and I bend a branch back and forth to break it since it’s still alive and won’t snap off easily for me. But it’s good that it won’t because then I bend it around my hair in back and sure enough there’s my ponytail. I feel cooler already.

  “Are you scared?” Emma asks me. And before I can even answer her I feel her little hand sneak inside mine.

  “No,” I lie to her. I give her hand a tiny squeeze to let her know it’s okay to let me be the brave one for a change. But I don’t feel very brave. At least not right now in the dark miles away from the Nest. Oh, Lord, what’re we going to do?

  While I wait for a sign from God telling us what to do next, we walk. And walk. And walk.

  Emma has long since let my hand go and she’s trailing behind me so I know she’s real tired. About three times as far as I can throw a rock is the Godsey farm and I know that’s where we’ll hide out. Once, when we
were much younger, Momma took us with her when she went to see Mrs. Godsey about something that made her spitting mad and we played outside while the two of them talked inside. We couldn’t tell what they were saying to each other but the way Momma warned us about bothering them I figure it was top-secret money business. That stuff’s really boring, anyway, so I didn’t care a whit about finding out. I was happy because Emma discovered a hole under their front porch that was just big enough for us to squeeze through. I hope no one got around to fixing that hole since that’s our ticket to safety once the sun comes up. We could even sleep a little if the coast is clear.

  “Hey, Em,” I say. “Momma still hates the Godseys, right?”

  “I don’t know,” she says back. “I think so.”

  “Perfect,” I say. Momma won’t want to come over here to the Godsey farm to look for us so I figure we’ve got all day to plan out where to go later.

  We’re not that far from the front of the house and that’s good news since it feels like the sun’s about to wake up. Also, I bet the Godsey boys are working the fields today and my guess is they’ll be up soon. The Godsey boys have black and sticky hands half the year from all the tobacco they prime. It’s like they never wash or something.

  We stop, trying to size up the side of the porch where the hole was, trying to see if it’s still there.

  “Do they still have that dog?” I whisper to Emma.

  “How’m I supposed to know?” she hisses back.

  “I’m just saying. If they do have that dog still you better get ready to run ’cause his barking’ll wake up the whole house.”

  I can tell Emma’s cranky from no sleep. I’m older so I don’t get as cranky with little sleep.

  No sign of the dog. What was that dog’s name, anyway? I can’t remember. It was something stupid, something a boy would definitely call a dog: Spot, Buddy or something like that.

  I start over to the left side of the porch that looks as rickety now as it did back the last time we were here and sure enough, the hole is still there. Only it looks a heck of a lot smaller than it did when we crawled through it last.