JOHNNY
I watched my mama sometimes at night, peering around the door-jamb into her bedroom. There was no door and she used to tack a ragged blanket up, but eventually it fell down and she never bothered to put it back. She would kneel by the bed with her back to me and though I couldn’t see her mouth moving, it seemed I could hear the creak of her tongue, the snap of her opening and closing lips like dry twigs underfoot.
I always bowed my head and prayed with her, asking God for the same thing every night. I wanted my father to come for me. I realized at some point that I must have one. I only asked my mama about him once. She was rolling out dough and I was sitting at her feet, flour sifting down on my head as I cut pictures from an old catalogue. I asked, “Do I have a daddy?” Her rolling pin stilled. “Of course,” she said. “Everybody does.” I thought for a second. “What’s his name?” When she answered, her voice was small and hoarse. “John. His name is John.” It didn’t occur to me until later that I had been named after him. Then I asked, “Where did he go?” She put down the rolling pin and stared at the dough. “Far away,” she said. “Across the ocean, to another country where there were children who needed him more than you do.” She stood there for a second longer before turning and walking out the kitchen door. I was sorry without knowing what I had done. I never brought it up again. But even as small as I was, I didn’t believe her. I had my own idea of a father, one who was closer to home and easier to find. Hiding there in the dark I saw him best, a taller version of me with black eyes like mine and nothing like the wild blue of my mother’s. Sometimes I saw him sitting behind a desk in an office wearing a tie. Sometimes I saw him bent over a hoe tending his garden, at a house in the valley where the mountains were a distant, smoky dream. He lived alone, waiting, preparing a place for Laura and me. When we got there, he would let us sip strong black coffee before we left for school on a yellow bus. At night the three of us would sit together watching a television set like the one the Barnetts had in their living room.
One summer I hid in the woods and watched a man walk up the road, shirt off and slung over his shoulder, naked back gleaming with sweat. From a distance I couldn’t distinguish his features, and some object I couldn’t make out dangled from his hand. As he got closer my mouth went dry. I thought maybe God had answered my prayer.
The man stopped in the road near my hiding place to wipe sweat from his brow. He didn’t look the way I had imagined, but I thought he could still be my father. I wanted him to be so badly that I couldn’t keep quiet. I burst out of the trees and skidded down the embank ment. I stood panting before the man and he took a few step-back ward.
“Hey, buddy,” he grinned, eyes wide. “Where’d you come from?”
I wanted to answer but my tongue was numb. I was convinced that I had been saved. The man waited for me to respond. When he saw that I didn’t intend to speak, he held up the big can in his hand and shook it.
“You know where I can get me a little gas? My pickup quit on me back yonder.”
That’s when all the hope drained out of me in a puddle at the stranger’s feet. Standing there in the middle of the road, staring sorrowfully up at the empty gas can, I had no idea how soon I would find my father, or at least a piece of him.
The moon was full that night and I could see everything in my mama’s bedroom, long curls of flowered wallpaper coming down in places and the corners netted with cobwebs, a rocking chair with missing slats. There was a rag rug on the floor, like others scattered all over the house that she would take out and beat in the sun, dust flying around her head in a brown swarm. Under the window was a bureau with yellowed glass knobs that held her nightgowns and the few graying shifts she wore every day. Sometimes I watched her slip them over her naked body before she left the house to wander the mountain or fish along the creek and I never knew when she would be back.
So many nights I had watched my mama kneeling beside the old iron bed, but this time she leaned her back against it so that I could see her face, bowed and silvered in the moonlight. I can only think she must have wanted me to know about the box. I couldn’t tell much about it in the shadows, a small, blackish square that she held open in her hands. Then she turned and looked in my direction. She seemed to stare straight through me. If she had spoken a word, I might have bolted away from there and never gone back. I’m still not sure whether she really caught me spying that night, or if my mind was just playing tricks on me. Even then, with cold shivers running down my spine, I was making plans. The minute I knew she was gone in the woods, I would steal back into her room. I would take the box and look inside. Finally, I would know something about her.
LAURA
At the beginning of our last summer on the mountain, I was outside trying to catch a salamander with a blue tail that kept disappearing under the back steps. It was getting dark and Johnny came to me with a peaked face. I got up quick and dusted off my knees. It worried me if Johnny got upset. My eyes was stinging before he said anything.
“Is she still gone?” he asked.
I nodded.
Johnny’s throat clicked when he swallowed. “I was spying on her last night.”
I balled up my hands into tight fists. Part of me wanted to hear more but the biggest part wished he’d turn around and go back in the house without me.
“I found something,” Johnny said. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what it was. He stood there for a minute trying to work up the nerve to tell me before he finally gave up and said, “Just come on.” I followed him because that’s how it was with us. I would have followed him anywhere. The house was full of gold twilight, brown shadows in the corners. I shivered because it seemed like this was a stranger’s house and not ours anymore. We went in Mama’s bedroom and it felt wrong being in there. I was a little bit scared of her ever since she had changed toward me and Johnny, even though she never hurt us. I thought about her shadow moving in the yard at night. I thought about her arms splitting wood and her teeth tearing at whatever needed tore, fabric or thread or a sealed-up bag.
I snuck with Johnny to her bed. He knelt down like he was fixing to say prayers. I was already crying when I got down beside him. For a minute I couldn’t see where his hand disappeared to. It was gone inside Mama’s mattress. Then I seen there was a slit, puckered around Johnny’s wrist like a mouth with thread teeth. The whole time he was rooting around in the mattress I was begging him in my head not to show me. Sometimes we could hear each other that way, maybe because of being twins. But this time he didn’t hear, or else he ignored me because he didn’t want to know whatever it was by hisself.
His hand came out holding a wood box. It was whittled and I knowed who made it. It was Mama’s granddaddy. She had a whittled bear and a turtle he made setting on the kitchen windowsill that she showed me and Johnny one time. Johnny held out the box to me. I shook my head, so he opened it hisself instead. I didn’t understand at first what I was seeing. It was three hard yellowish pieces pushed through a red ring. I swallowed and my tongue tasted like pennies, like that blood-colored ring was in my mouth.
“What is it?” I asked Johnny. My voice sounded muffled to my ears like when I covered them with my hands. Me and him looked at each other for a second.
“It’s a finger,” he said.
A choking sound came out of my throat. I wished it was possible for Johnny to lie to me, but in my heart I knowed he was telling the truth, even though I’d never seen a human bone. There was a rotted scrap of somebody in the house with me. It had been there before I knowed about it, maybe before me or Johnny ever drawed breath. The whole room was filled with it, a little piece broke off of death. I screamed and Johnny about dropped the box. I scooted back but he put his hand out to keep me from going.