I wanted to be your future, she thought.
You are making me the past, he thought.
Diane’s thoughts whirled in her room, trying to figure out a way to make things right between Naomi and Jerome. But she knew better. The silence in the house was two young people stuck in a sea of stubbornness. Like so many of their era, and maybe like people of all times, they had no role models.
Naomi’s entire body was filled with self-loathing when she and Jerome were not talking. Naomi, too, remembered the hunts for artifacts that she now suspected were more about love than arrowheads or bundles in trees. In Jerome’s own child face she had seen the hunger for a place to call home. He didn’t know how deep her own longing ran, or the terror. For Naomi, home could be a prison.
But it had happened anyway. One day—whether looking into trees for treasures tied in the branches or picking up agates on the ridges—she had fallen in love with him, and it had taken her most of her life to admit it.
Not knowing what else to do, she made a list:
Jane Doe bodies, morgue
Psychiatric hospital? Maybe she was committed.
Stop in/visit every homeless shelter
And last but not least:
Who is that man? The one with the scars.
Chapter 13
Riding the bus made Celia sleepy. She closed her eyes, putting her cheek against the soothing chill of the window glass. She folded her hands inside her thighs and dozed off. She was aware of the warm bus, the smell of other poor people around her, someone playing loud music through their ear pods.
She was on her way to visit her mother.
At stops she heard the accordion hiss, felt the bus lower. She was counting the stops as she dozed, feeling back in time as the distance between stops got longer and glimpses of yards furred with weeds and grass, gnarled apple trees, and gutters rusted with moss ran through her mind. In her dreams she was running beside the bus, feeling the wind in her lungs. Then she was tired and rode back inside her body. The butterflies, floating against the window, were tapping. Celia, they said. You are no liar. You never were. Remember that.
“Mom?” She stood on the dime-sized concrete porch, peeking in the broken screen door. Inside was a haze of stale cigarette smoke and the din of the television. “Mom?” This time louder, a little squeak in her voice.
“That you, Celia?”
Her mother’s voice was hoarse with sleep and sickness. Celia could tell in that moment her mother was on the same afghan-covered sofa. It felt like Celia’s heart broke and fell to the ground in pieces, so much she had to crouch to scoop them up and shove them back in her chest.
“Yeah. It’s me.” She saw her hand reach out, slowly. She heard the creak of the screen door, paused. “Teddy isn’t here, is he?”
Silence. A quiet no.
An hour later, Celia stood at the sink, washing dishes. She had picked up the floor, swept cigarette butts, cleaned the foul mess of the litter box. One of the cats was nowhere to be seen, and her mother, slipping in and out of her nod, couldn’t seem to remember when it went missing. Celia hoped it hadn’t been hit by a car. Maybe a nice neighbor had taken it.
Her mother lay on the couch, a dried-out washcloth over her face. Celia took it, wringing it out with fresh cold water and putting it back. Her mother sighed. Celia picked up ashtrays and the dirty clamshell takeout containers with petrified fried rice.
“That you, Celia?” her mother asked again.
Celia stood and looked at her. She didn’t know why she kept coming back. Nothing changed. She remembered a junkie on the street telling her that his brain felt like a fuse, burned out and dry. Maybe her mom had lost her memory, too.
“It’s me, Mom, remember?”
“Oh.” Her mother turned her head. “Can’t you come home, Celia?”
“We’ve talked about that, Mom. You know I can’t.”
“Teddy would forgive you.”
“I didn’t lie.” It took all of Celia to say it. Her mother’s disbelief was like a stone in her throat. Her whole stomach felt filled with the sickness of it. Her mother’s mouth moved, but no words came. After a moment, they did.
“That’s not what the jury said,” her mom whispered.
Celia went into the tiny, messy bathroom. Using her mother’s scissors, she hacked at her hair until it was short again. She liked looking more like a boy—it was safer on the streets. She went back to cleaning the kitchen and left when she was done.
The pavement behind the school was broken with time, sprouting grass from the cracks like whiskers on an old man’s chin. The metal bars of the jungle gym, glossed by decades of dirty hands, cast long shadows.
Celia was hungry. She should have tried to find something to eat at her mom’s house. She thought of the always dirty, crowded fridge, the bags of old meat leaking brown juices. The last thing she was able to teach Alyssa was to make sure and ask the lunch lady if she could help for extra food.
She saw her sister coming out in a group of other girls. Celia was always too dirty, too ashamed, for friends. And once she had reported, everyone knew. Fuck bag, some of the boys called her, and tried to stick their fingers up her shorts. You already did it, so what’s the big deal? Celia hadn’t worn shorts since.
Her sister saw her. An uncertain smile. Celia, filthy in her street clothes, aware now that she smelled. Maybe she was her mother after all. Just dirty in another way.
“Hi, Alyssa,” Celia said. The other little girls tittered nervously. Alyssa stared up at her sister, and her friends left to find their parents. Celia and Alyssa were alone on the blacktop.
“You look nice,” Celia said.
Alyssa was wearing a decent shirt and cleanish pants. Celia could imagine her, closed into their bathroom, trying to stay clean. She had been brushing her hair, but had missed a big spot in the back, and there was a knot. Celia reached for it, but Alyssa jerked away.
Why not you? Celia wanted to cry out. She had done everything to save her sister, yet her sister hadn’t needed to be saved. Was there something wrong with Celia? Had it all been for nothing?
Acquitted, the victim advocate had told Celia after the verdict. She had to explain what the word meant. “You mean he is coming home?” Celia had asked, terror grabbing her throat.
The very next day he did, and Celia couldn’t go to school for a week for the beating that followed his return. Celia didn’t wait for the next beating. Or rape. That was the only good thing she got out of the entire trial—she learned the right words for what Teddy had done. That night she had taken her backpack, some clothes that were soon stolen, and ridden the bus downtown. She had been lucky enough to meet Rich while she was wandering the streets, trying to look tough when really she was so scared.
All for nothing. Because now, as her sister stood before her, Celia didn’t think Teddy had ever touched her. Not in that way, at least. Alyssa was looking up at Celia with something like suspicion. No doubt she was thinking what everyone else said: that Celia had made it up. The jury had said so.
But it was true, Celia wanted to say. I told to save you.
All the way back downtown—walk, buses, walk—Celia engaged in her favorite pastime, which was to daydream. “Dream by day,” her teacher Mrs. Wilkerson once told her. “Dream by night. Your imagination can save you, Celia.” Reality is whatever you chose to see: the face of a gnome in the grass, a construction team of elves on an anthill, the way tree leaves lace together to make messages only you can read.