Page 3 of Counting Backwards

“Now?” I balked. “You go on ahead. I’m not ready.”

“Yes, you are,” he said, his eyes roving over me. “You look great.AndI’m skipping coffee this morning. Something new I’m trying.”

Was this something about caffeine and fertility?

He tossed the final velvet throw pillow onto the bed. “Let’s go,” he said, taking the Velcro band for his phone from the top of his nightstand and wrapping it around his arm, just above his bicep.

I glanced back toward the bathroom. These days, I felt like he was suspicious of me every time I went into a bathroom. Even if I’d been imagining the way his eyes bored into my back, I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with another argument about it at that moment. How could I possibly get back in there without tipping him off? The test’s instructions had been very clear that after a certain length of time, the results could no longer be considered accurate. And first thing in the morning was the best time to test. If I didn’t look before we left the apartment, it’d be a full day before I could try again.

“I just have to... I have to...” I started toward the bathroom, feeling so frantic in my need to retrieve the little stick that I completely blanked. I looked back at Vance, whose head was cocked to the side as he waited for me to finish. The harder I tried to think of a word, one single reasonable word to end my sentence in a logical way, the more I struggled. I winced, and the silence started to get weird. All those years of therapy as a child, and apparently panicking and freezing were still a part of who I was. Now that I’dfaltered so conspicuously, anything I did behind a closed door in the bathroom would seem suspect.

“Never mind,” I finally said, forcing myself to think about the big picture. If it meant protecting something between Vance and me, I could wait. There was nothing I could do except give in to him. I beelined for the bedroom door, grabbing my work tote from the floor along the way. “I’m good.”

2

Carrie

1912

It was one of them blindingly bright Virginia summer days. That’s what I remember most about the morning the ladies came to take me away. I was home watching after the babies like usual because Mama was downtown again, looking to find herself a day’s work. Doris was crawling across the dusty floor, stopping now and again to stare at her toes, and I felt a little sorry at the way the milk-white skin of her knees had gone gray from the dirt of the planks. Baby Roy was asleep in the old bassinet we’d got from Miss Jenny, who lived with her brother’s family on the second floor of the house. Our family had two rooms on the first floor, right below them. I was just six years old at the time, you understand, but I loved to look after my own brother and sister, to be the one taking charge. Even if they was only half-related to me, that one-half was enough.

When Doris tired herself out and set to acting fussy, I took her up on my lap and read to her from the newspaper Mama had brought home the week before. Mama told me she’d found the paper lying flat down on the ground on Main Street, where it didn’t matter to nobody, and she knew I’d want to see it. Most of the words were too big for me to make out on my own, but themore times I went over it, running my finger nice and slow under each letter, the clearer it would come to me. There were some pictures that helped me make sense of the writing too, like the advertisement for Old Henry Whiskey. I recognized that picture of the bottle easy.

Doris was too young to care anyhow whether she understood what I was saying. Even if I’d read it all perfect, she’d still be paying more mind to my hair, pulling the dark strands to her mouth. Mama was always after me to tie up my locks with twine, but I preferred to keep them loose. I already knew I wasn’t a pretty girl, not like Lorna Mayfair, a girl my age from up the hill who looked just like one of those dolls behind the glass at the store. My hair was the one thing about me that made me proud, standing out sharp as it did against my white skin. So that’s how we were that afternoon, Doris in my lap, sucking on my hair, Roy still sleeping peaceful, and me studying the photographs in the paper, when there came a pounding on the front door.

I hoisted Doris onto my hip and went looking, figuring it was someone searching for Mr. Gibson upstairs. Folks was always after him about monies he owed. When I opened the door, I found that lady, Miss Drummond, waiting on the splintered porch. She wore a slim skirt and buttoned-up blouse, her pale yellow hair pulled back so tight it gave me a headache just to look at it. There was another lady with her who I’d never seen before.

Miss Drummond looked over my shoulder to see behind me before she even spoke, like she wanted to know what-all was going on inside our little house.

“Hello, Carrie,” she said, her words as crisp and tight as her hairdo. “Is your mother at home?”

I shook my head at her as I squinted out into the sunlight. I didn’t think to ask how she knew my name. “She’s gone out for a workaday,” I said.

The two ladies shared a look at that. I figured they thought I was telling fibs and that my mama was with a man, but she only took up with men on days when she couldn’t find other work. Ever since my da left four years before, Ma did what she needed to take care of us. I’d heard her talking with her friend Sally from up the road. One night, the two of them sat on the steps of our porch, chewing tobacco and taking turns spitting into a can. Ma told Sally that the Olsens, who she cleaned house for, had moved to Tulsa. She shook her head when she said that, then complained that she’d needed to spend the afternoon with a fellow who gave her money for laying down with him.

I didn’t understand back then, but I heard enough folks say that what Mama did with the men caused us to end up with Doris and baby Roy. They said it like them babies were a punishment. Ma didn’t see it that way though. She always talked about my brother and sister being gifts from the Lord during hard times. She needn’t have told me that bit, about them being little treasures, because I knew it on my own. Especially Doris. When she held on to my pinkie finger with her whole fist or looked up at me with her dark round eyes, I knew I couldn’t love anybody more than I loved her.

“We’d like to bring you down to the CHS today for a stay. Do you have any belongings you’d like to pack up before we go?” Miss Drummond said.

Everyone around our parts knew about Miss Drummond and the CHS. She ran the Children’s Home Society, where they took kids whose folks didn’t want them no more. There weren’t no reason why I should be going to a place like that.

“I can’t go nowhere with you,” I told her. “I’m looking after the babies now.”

The woman beside Miss Drummond sucked in a breath so loud it was almost a hiss.

“But you’re only five years old,” the lady said, as if I couldn’t care for my own kin.

“Six,” I said, sticking my chin in the air. “Since last month.”

“Well, why don’t you go gather the other little one, and he can come along too.”

“Ma won’t want us leaving without her knowing about it first,” I told them. “She’ll have my hide about it.” And that much was the truth.

“Oh,” Miss Drummond said, looking real sad. Her eyes went down to the newspaper pages still hanging from my hand. “You like to read?” she asked.

I shrugged, wanting her to leave. “I guess.”

“Hmm.” She seemed like she was thinking on something as she looked again at the lady she’d brought with her. “It’s too bad you can’t come back with us. There’s story time happening in an hour, and Miss Willis always likes to have children read along.”