When I finally lost Laura, it was like my mama prying my fingers loose from her dress tail all over again. We had been with the Foxes for a year and another summer had come. I still remember how it felt, watching Laura’s back disappear into a downpour. She was holding Steven’s hand, water running down their faces. Sneaking off with him, the shelter of rain meant to keep me out. To see her fingers laced in someone else’s, not her twin, not her blood, was too much. If I had caught up to them then I might have killed him. Whether or not my nine-year-old hands were able, my heart was capable of it.
I followed them, moving through the rain toward the white haloes of the gas station floodlights. They were running and I hurried to match their pace. When I reached them they were sitting at the edge of the grass, looking as if they were planning to slide down on their bottoms. I thought how fast it would be and how much fun. I pictured Mother Betty’s neck turning blotchy and red when she saw her mud-streaked boy, her disgust for Laura and me showing plain on her face for an instant before she hid it again.
I watched Laura and Steven from a few yards away, cold drops tapping my shoulders like slugs from a slingshot, plastering my shirt to my skin. Their heads were bent close, water dripping from the ends of their hair. I could hear them laughing under the beat of rain. Then she put her hand on his cheek and left a muddy print there. Such an intimate gesture made me sick. I charged at them, feet tramping in standing water. Laura leapt up, face a white smudge in the misty light. Steven knew they had betrayed me. I saw it in his eyes. I covered the mark Laura had made on his face with one hand and shoved him backward. He went over the edge of the embankment and Laura screamed. It was a fairly long drop to the parking lot below. She stared at me openmouthed, disbelieving. Then we went to the edge and looked down. Steven was at the bottom, slick with mud. After a moment he sat up and blinked at us. Then the blubbering started, loud and panicked. He struggled to his feet, slipping and sliding in the muck. I had a sinking feeling when I saw how his arm was hanging. Not because I was sorry, but because I knew it was over for Laura and me. I stood there watching him struggle to climb up as Laura went to get Mother Betty. When she joined me at the edge of the bank she froze for a moment with the rain wilting her beauty-shop curls. Then she pressed her hand to her throat and burst into tears. Laura and I ran off to hide in the musty dark of the doghouse while Steven was at the hospital having his dislocated shoulder moved back into place.
Mother Betty wanted us gone as soon as she got back from the emergency room with Steven, but it took nearly a week for the state to find homes for us. On our last day together we sat in the garden, rich with the smell of loam. Many times over the past year we had slipped off to look at the spot where our mama’s box was buried, with the ring and our father’s finger bone hidden inside. Now Laura sat across from me in the red dress she would wear to the new foster home. We were both leaving, but she was going first.
“We have to run,” Laura said. “Mother Betty won’t see us if we go right now.”
I stared down at the ants crawling over her knuckles. “We can’t.”
“Yes we can. We can go find Mama. We’re bigger now and you’re smart.”
I shook my head. “You heard it the same as I did. They’ve got her locked up in Nashville. And even if they let her out, I don’t want to be with her.”
“Johnny, hush,” she said. “Don’t you love Mama anymore?”
“You know there’s something wrong with her.” Laura’s fingers curled into fists. “No there ain’t.”
“She didn’t take good care of us. She’s not able to.” Laura fell silent. “We can still run away,” she said after a while, but with less conviction. “We don’t have to find Mama. We can just go off someplace else.”
“Laura,” I said. “I can’t take care of us either.” Her shoulders sagged. “What about Mama’s box?”
“You keep it. She gave it to you.”
She looked at me then, studied my face. “Okay,” she said. But it wasn’t.
When Nora Graham came, I followed Laura down the walk to the curb where the car waited, keeping my eyes on the ground. If I looked at her my heart might stop beating. I stared down at her feet, small and square in the dress shoes Mother Betty had bought her. I would never know them again that size. I saw through the patent leather, through the sock to her toes, the nails outlined in dirt because the mountain was never scrubbed out of them. I made myself examine her face, the curve of her nostrils, the wet rims of her eyes. I unwrapped a piece of bubble gum from my pocket and stuffed it into my mouth. I didn’t know what else to do with my hands. “Bye, Johnny,” Laura said. She knew me better than to say anything more. She was letting me go because she thought I wanted her to. I swallowed and strangled on the sweet juice. A cough rose in my throat. Laura looked at me one last time before she got into Nora Graham’s car. When she was gone, I spat the gum onto the sidewalk. From then on, the taste of candy sickened me.
LAURA
At school, me and Johnny started out in the same classroom. I was scared but my brother was in the desk in front of me. The way he held up his shoulders made me feel better. Then we started having to take these tests in a little room. There was a woman with coffee breath. She figured out how smart Johnny was and put him two grades ahead of me. I seen right then he might be gone from me for good someday, just like Mama. When they made us live in different houses, I asked Nora Graham if I could go with Johnny. She claimed it’s hard to keep siblings together in foster care, even twins like us.
That’s how come I went to live with a preacher and his wife. The preacher’s name was Larry Moffett and his wife was Pauline. They was Church of God people. I put on the dresses they gave me and let my hair grow long like they wanted me to. I didn’t mind. It made me more like Mama. When I looked in the mirror it was easier to remember her.
But it was hard at first getting used to living there. I had chores to share with other foster kids. The house was crowded and always loud. The only quiet place was the basement. I went down there to do laundry. It had a washer and dryer under a dirty little window. There was a moldy carton of dishes shoved back in the shadows beside the washer. I took Mama’s box from where it was hid under my mattress and carried it down to the basement in a basket of towels. I pulled the dishes out of the shadows and sorted through them, bowls and gravy boats and teacups with the husks of dead bugs inside. I put the box in a big blue willow soup tureen and shoved the carton back against the wall.
I didn’t get to know the other foster kids that came and went. None of us made friends. We hardly ever talked to each other. We just did the chores and tried to get along with Pauline. I didn’t get to know the preacher either. He didn’t have much to do with us foster kids. We mostly answered to Pauline. She had the longest hair I ever seen, brown and thin with jaggedy ends, and her eyes was two different colors. One was green and one was brown. She had two different ways of acting, too. Sometimes she was nice and sometimes she was mean. One time she was making pies for homecoming. I dropped them trying to put them in a box. Pauline hit my arm with a wet dishrag until it bled. She drove me in the corner calling me names. I thought she wouldn’t quit, until Larry asked where his dress socks was. She turned around and hollered, “They’re on the bed with the rest of your clothes! I swear, Larry, you’re blind as a bat!” I hurried to clean up the mess. When she came back from finding Larry’s socks it was like nothing ever happened.