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“What?”
“I think about all of the things we wanted to do together, and I promise myself that one day, I’ll do them.”
“Like what?”
“Well, Artemis loved art. As much as I love books. She and I used to talk about traveling around collecting art and books, and how one day, we’d open a store and sell all the stuff we bought. I’m still gonna do it. Even though I won’t have her beside me, it’ll be like doing it together.”
Just thinking about it gives me a small surge of happiness that makes me smile.
I squeeze Graham’s hand. “I know you can’t teach your sister how to read, but maybe one day, you can teach someone else.”
“You really think that?” He’s not smiling, but his eyes aren’t sad anymore.
“Of course. You’re smart, and you can do anything you’re willing to work for.” I echo the words Papa used to say.
“Hmm … I like that idea,” he says, and when his eyes come back to my face, the smile on his lips reaches all the way to them.
“Really? Sometimes, I think all my ideas are weird.”
“Nah … besides the whole jumping off mountains thing … you’re cool. Now, you really gotta stop talking. This book is starting to get good.” He flops back down, and I stare at him holding my book over his face.
I don’t remind him that he’s the one who sat up to talk to me. I don’t care about being right. Not right now, anyway.
My heart is doing cartwheels.
I have a friend.
The Universe
Graham
“Why you got that smile on your face, boy?” My stepfather’s cold voice cuts through the silence at our dining table like an ax splitting wood.
The cup I was bringing up to mouth trembles as my hand starts to shake.
I slide my eyes to my mother first, and as usual, she’s sitting with her head bowed. Her hands rest on the table right in front of her plate, and she just stares at them.
I know what’s coming, and I don’t want my mother to have a huge mess to clean up when my stepfather’s finished, so I put my glass down.
His palm cracks across my cheek just as I’m turning to look at him. It hurts, but I never let him see that at first. When I cry out, it gives him satisfaction, and I mean to deprive him of it for as long as I can. He thinks it means I’m giving up.
He thinks he’s beating the ambivalence out of me.
He thinks he’s whipping the fear of God into me.
If he knew that all he’s doing is strengthening my resolve to see him suffer something terrible, he’d beat me until I was dead. So, after a while, I cry out just so he’ll stop. Not for myself. I don’t think me being alive makes a difference in this world. But, Mama … I don’t know what she would do if I died.
He told everyone that Ellie died because of her past sins. He used Ellie’s death as a weapon against the people in Caine’s Weeping. He told them that holding on to their desire for worldly things would bring similar fates onto their children.
The tiny bits of ha
ppiness, the occasional song on the church piano, the men laughing with each other on their porches—all of it stopped after Ellie died.
In our house, smiling without permission had become a crime. This was the second time I’d been caught smiling. Last time, I got off with a slap and a warning that the next time would be worse.
So, after that, without him saying a word, I get up and go get his belt.
The whipping hurts. It’ll leave welts on my back and the latch of the belt tears into the skin of my shoulders on his harder swings.
