At that, her stepmother raised her head, yawned, and blinked around the car. “Oh, honey, you know your mama is plumb crazy.” Justine closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the window glass, praying as she never had before for God to keep her from putting her hands on another person’s body, lest she kill her stepmother where she sat.
The trip was downhill from there, no fiery redemption. Justine hardly said another word the rest of the drive to Texas, certain that Uncle Thorpe’s premonition was right and that no matter her motives she would die a wretched soul on a roller coaster. Her father’s boy was sticky and kept pulling her hair; her father was awkward and overly polite. The stepmother (if the woman who had disappeared your father, the car, and the bank account could be considered a mother of any sort) wore gold rings and a crop top that showed her freckled chest. She made a big show of feeling sorry for Justine in her long dress.
By the time they got there, Justine felt so nauseous and frightened of dying and going to hell that Six Flags was one of the worst days of her life. She threw up on her father’s shoes while waiting in line for Big Bend, and one of the ticket takers told her she was not allowed to ride because “vomit at these speeds ain’t pretty.” Her stepmother took Justine’s place in line, and Justine held her half brother’s hand as she watched her father and stepmother click up the near-vertical roller coaster track and disappear in joyful screams. She thought her nausea was from fear.
5.
Though she was fifteen and a bonerack, she started showing late. So when it came time to start school that fall, all she knew was that she hadn’t felt right since the day she first talked to her father on the phone. She didn’t let herself think of any reasons beyond that. She started sitting next to Lula in church, leaving John Joseph in the back to trim his nails with his pocketknife and break wind without an audience.
She’d avoided Russell Gibson since the night she snuck out with him. He’d asked John Joseph to have her call him, as if they were merely two star-crossed lovers, but she cut John Joseph off before he could get the words out. She wanted to forget, and she’d almost been successful with the summer so full of Six Flags and penance.
But then for two days straight she couldn’t eat lunch or make it through Ms. Peterson’s fifth-period Algebra 2 class without running to the bathroom to vomit. On the third day, Nurse Sixkiller waited outside the bathroom. Justine was still wiping her face with a rough brown paper towel she’d wet in the sink when the nurse put her wide palm to Justine’s forehead.
“You’re not warm,” she said. “Clammy, maybe.”
Justine tried to push past Nurse Sixkiller and return to class, but the woman had that way of holding down the Earth. She would not budge. Justine acted like she didn’t care about her place at the top of the class, but that was the only thing that kept Lula from putting her in the church school, which she would surely graduate from in no time and be ready . . . for what? Marriage? Justine was no longer interested in a man or boy of any sort. “Ms. Peterson’s going to be upset,” she said.
“Have you eaten?”
Justine shook her head. Nurse Sixkiller took her in with her warm, brown eyes, head to toe and back to belly, before leading her into her office and closing the door. “When was your last period?”
Justine shrugged.
“You don’t keep track?”
Dee and Josie, who’d been getting ready to marry or graduate around the time Justine needed to learn about such things, probably thought Lula had talked to her like she’d talked to them. But Justine’s Lula wasn’t their Lula. She hadn’t told Justine anything.
Nurse Sixkiller handed her a small pocket calendar with a ridiculous yellow smiley face on it. “I want you to mark the day you start from here on out.” She didn’t let go of the calendar until Justine looked up at her. “Let me know?” She seemed finished but then: “Your family is Holiness, right?”
Justine held up the hem of her long skirt and sighed.
“Well, you need to go to the clinic anyway. If you need me to talk to your mom with you . . . or if need be, I can take you to the Indian Hospital. Do you know what you want to do?”
Justine grew hollow. She felt as if all of her insides were spilling out, and she cupped her tight belly to check. Around her, the white-and-green tile floor shifted. She wondered if she might fall, but Nurse Sixkiller placed a hand against the small of her back and kept talking.
“I want you to know there’s a doctor in Tulsa. He will take what money you can pay.”
Justine was out the door before she heard the rest. She understood what the nurse was getting at. She kept going down the hallway and out the big metal doors, leaving her open algebra book on the desk in the back row of Ms. Peterson’s class for good.
6.
When Justine walked in the door and smelled frying wild onions and salt pork, she felt as if she hadn’t eaten in a year. Granny turned from her work over the propane stove and smiled. “Always know when it’s ready, an’it? Rinse this,” Granny said, flapping two old bread bags at Justine. “And get plates.”
Justine washed the bags that had held frozen spring onions and hung them inside out. Then she got hot sauce from the cabinets and a bottle of Dr Pepper, Granny’s favorite indulgence, from the icebox.
“Think there’s beans left in there,” Granny said. “No school?” She handed Justine the plate of pork and began breaking eggs into the cast-iron skillet on top of the long, skinny onions.
“I didn’t feel good.”
“You call Lula’s work?”
“Not yet.”
“Eat. Then better call.” Granny sat down with the wild onions and scrambled eggs, but she didn’t begin to eat. Justine felt the silence between them more than she heard it. She put her fork down on the table and took a deep breath. Granny tilted the hot sauce toward her. When Justine waved it off, Granny asked, “Sick a lot?”
Justine’s heart sank. Had someone stuck a sign to her back? Why had her body chosen today to reveal her secrets to the world? Or maybe it had been blabbing for some time to anybody who cared to listen.
“You okay?”
Justine shook her head.
“Been a long time?”
Justine shrugged.
Granny adjusted her hearing aid, seemed to be thinking. Finally she said, “There’s medicine, but maybe it’s too long already.” She paused again. “I don’t remember where to find it anymore. Celia knows maybe.”
“Before summer,” Justine said. Granny spooned food onto her plate and opened the hot sauce.
“Too long, I think,” she said. “Somebody hurt you?”
Justine couldn’t lie to her, so she said nothing. She hoped Granny would go on eating, but the room grew quiet. Granny covered her mouth with her hand. Grease had made the deep ridges of her nails and swollen knuckles shiny. She took off her glasses and began to wipe her eyes with a dish towel.
Justine could not see Granny cry. She pushed herself away from the table, walked out the door, and began to run in the hot sun. At the road, she turned west and kept going. She did not stop until she came to Little Locust Creek. She took off her shoes and sat on the edge of the bank, crying until her body stopped making tears and the sound of her dry-socket wails made her lonely. Then she wiped her eyes on her blouse and hugged her knees into her chest, seeing where she was for the first time. It had been dark, but this was where he had stopped the car.