Page 8 of Counting Backwards

“How come you’re all quiet-like today?” he asked.

I looked at him sideways, noticing his freckled cheeks were pinker than usual. He was one of the shorter boys in the class, and it seemed I was gaining inches on him near every day, tall as I was.

I squinted my eyes back at him, like he was being a numskull. I was quiet most of the time. It’s just who I was, so it wasn’t worth remarking on it like he’d just gone and done. Once, I heard Mr. Dobbs tell his brother that I was a good foster because I kept mostly to myself, didn’t bother nobody—so I didn’t know why Billy was always saying I should speak up more anyhow. I never did understand how a body could think of so many things to say aloud all the livelong day.

“Is it because of your mama?” he asked.

“My ma?” We were nearing the corner of Main Street then, and I stopped right there beside the letter box outside Gilmore’s Furniture. We never talked about my ma. Ever since I came to live with the Dobbs family, I hadn’t been allowed to see her. Not once. Mrs. Alice told me when I arrived that if I wanted to stay on with her family, I had to make sure to be a nice girl and stay away from trouble. She told me Ma was trouble, and that I couldn’t be going to the other side of town, not even for a quick visit with her. Mrs. Alice said she and Mr. John weren’t rich folks, but they had their reputations at least. I hadn’t argued then because I thought for sure Ma would come to see me where I was, so it didn’t matter where I was or wasn’t allowed to go. But in all those years, she never did come see me even once.

Billy looked then like he was choking on a sucker, his eyes getting wide and cheeks reddening.

“What?” I demanded. “What did you hear? You know something, you got to tell me.” Billy had three older brothers, all of them skinny and dark-haired like him, but they was all the most likeable kind of boys, always smiling and goofing off with friends. Their paworked at the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in town, and they always had extra bottles of soda pop to share with friends. It seemed anytime something was going on around town, Billy heard about it from one or another of his brothers before any of the rest of us kids got wind.

That’s why I believed him even when he said something I never would have expected.

“They took her to the Colony for Epileptics. I heard from Roger.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “The Colony?” I said, wondering if he meant the place over in Lynchburg. Kids round our parts liked to tell tales about crazy folk from the Colony coming to Charlottesville and causing all sorts of mischief. We all knew it was pretend when they talked about escaped patients twisting the heads off chickens or snatching children from their beds, but we were afraid of inmates from the Colony just the same. Ma was nothing like any of the monsters from those stories.

“She ain’t epileptic,” I said.

Three ladies toting packages were walking toward us. One of them carried a basket full-up with items from the apothecary. I recognized among her purchases the Slo Poke caramels Mrs. Alice always kept on hand for Mr. John. Loretta had once passed me one of those candies in secret, and I hadn’t forgotten yet the feel of that creaminess against the roof of my mouth. The lady nodded at me as I stepped out of her path.

Billy didn’t answer until they’d moved on.

“No, I figured,” he said, keeping his eyes to the pavement like he didn’t want to say any more. I pushed his arm then, mad, like I was getting ready to fight.

“Say the rest,” I told him.

“Roger said the Colony is where they take ladies who’ve been up to no good.”

I knew what he meant by that. I’d heard enough folks whispering with Mrs. Alice over the years about how Ma had been working on the streets, that she was making a living through immoral behavior with men.

“But why now?” I asked. Even though Ma hadn’t ever come to see me, I’d hoped she’d been doing all right, that maybe she’d found a better way to look after Doris and Roy, maybe a steady job that was keeping her too busy to check in on me. I liked to think she was just saving up her money until the time was right to come and get me.

Billy shrugged, but I kept waiting on him to give me an answer.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Maybe she gave a cop some trouble or something.” He gestured with a tip of his head that we should take up walking again. I twisted my lips but followed along just the same.

Despite the years that had passed, I hadn’t forgot the way Ma could explode when she got angry, her temper turning her into a tornado time and again. If Ma got into a little trouble, she always seemed to make it worse by yelling back too hard. She didn’t let nobody tell her what was what—that was for sure.

As we reached closer to the train tracks and the row of houses behind them, I wondered if there wasn’t something I could do to help her. I never asked Mrs. Alice nor Mr. John for hardly anything, but I thought that time had come.

When I came upon the house, I found Mrs. Alice already waiting for me. I was old enough to know by then that bad days always had a habit of getting worse, and this day was no exception.

Mrs. Alice was standing on the short wooden steps leading up to the back door, the buttons of her navy housedress pulling against her large bosom, her white hair pinned up in a large, loosebun like always. Some strands had come free now that it was getting late in the day.

“You took your time getting back,” she said.

“Ma’am?” I asked, not sure why she was waiting on me anyway. I wondered if I’d left the cheese sitting out on the icebox again, and maybe she was about to have my hide. But what she said instead was the worst kind of surprise.

“Tomorrow’s going to be your last day at school.”

We still had three weeks left before the end of the term.

“Are we breaking for summer early?” I asked.

Mrs. Alice shook her head, like she was frustrated that I wasn’t doing a better job of keeping up. She didn’t like to repeat herself.