Now he stood over Mama and me and looked sternly down at me.
“What have you done?” he said again.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I found her.”
“There’s blood all over your hands and when the constable comes he’ll think you killed her and then they’ll hang you,” he said.
“But—” I said.
“You have a very bad temper, don’t you?” he said. “Don’t you sometimes run at your father and hit him with your fists? Don’t you sometimes get so angry that you break the crockery in the kitchen?”
I did, but I didn’t see how this boy could know that. I sometimes ran at Him and punched Him as hard as I could, when I couldn’t bear letting my mama stand between us any longer, and it would make me angrier because He seemed to like me better then. He would say that I had spirit and that at least I wasn’t hiding behind Mama’s skirts. I hated to do anything that made Him happy but I hated it when my mama was hurt too, and sometimes all these feelings would push and pull inside me until I wouldn’t know what to do and I would smash and break things until they went away. Then when it was all over Mama would put her arms around me and hold me until I was better.
“Everyone around these parts knows you have a bad temper, and when they find her”—here the boy jerked his chin at the thing that used to be my mama—“they’ll know it was you because you get so angry all the time and because your hands are covered in blood.”
I looked at my hands then, and though it was dark I could see the stains on them, and I was terrified that what this boy said would be true.
“But I didn’t hurt her,” I said. “I would never hurt her. I love her so much.”
Tears rolled out then, and the other boy smacked me hard.
“Stop crying,” he said. “Boys don’t cry like that. Now listen—you have to come with me. I know a place where you’ll be safe and they’ll never catch you.”
He had me all confused now, tangled up and turned around. I believed that when the constable came they would arrest me and they would throw me in a dark, dark place full of rats until it was time for me to hang.
“If you come with me we’ll go to my island. It’s a special place, only for boys like you and me. And there you can run and play and no one will hit you and you’ll never, never grow up.”
“How can you never grow up?”
“The island is magic,” he said, and he smiled. “And I live all alone there, and I want you to come there and play with me and be my friend for always.”
He tugged me up, tugged me away, and I was confused and scared and already forgetting my mama and her empty blue eyes and her arms thrown out, reaching for me. Peter pulled me away and told me all about the wonderful place that we were to go to, a place that was only for us.
We walked all night and reached the tree and tunnel and then I was so tired, and Mama seemed like she was a story from a far-off time.
We went through the tunnel and I smelled the island for the first time, smelled the trees and the sea and the sweet fruit, and the scent of the city was washed away. And later Peter and I were picking fruit from a meadow and he showed me how to take the skin off with his knife. There were red stains on the knife but I didn’t wonder about them at all, for all I could see was Peter smiling at me.
• • •
Jamie, you’re squashing me.”
“Jamie, let go of him. He can’t breathe.”
I opened my eyes, and found Charlie awake in my lap. Sal leaned over me, tugging at my arms.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re squashing me!” Charlie said, and he pushed at my chest.
“You were dreaming,” Sal said.
I let Charlie go and he scrambled free. I scrubbed at my face with my hands. My face was wet, though I couldn’t tell whether it was from sweat or tears.
“What were you dreaming of?” Sal asked.
“The same thing I always dream. A woman with blue eyes and black hair with her throat cut,” I said. “I didn’t know until today that it was my mother.”
“And?” Sal said, for she knew there was more.
“And it was Peter who killed her.”
I don’t know how I could have forgotten her, forgotten the mama who loved me so much, forgotten how she stood between my father and me and kept me safe. I felt a wrench of shame, that she would be lost to me so easily, that I would run away with a strange boy and leave her there.
I’d left her alone. Alone with the rats who would gnaw at her until someone found her—maybe my father, maybe a neighbor, maybe a happy drunk stumbling into the alley to take a piss.
But Peter had confused me. He had. He’d told me that it would be my fault, that I would be blamed. I was scared and confused and the only person who ever mattered to me was staring up at me with blank blue eyes and his hand offered an escape from the hanging I was sure would come. Who would believe a little boy, especially a boy covered in his mother’s blood?
So when he took my hand it was easy to leave her there, easier to run away from the horror, easier to forget that she loved me, especially with Peter telling me all the time to forget, that nothing from the Other Place mattered, that it was just him and me now.
I’d loved her, and I’d forgotten her. That was partly Peter’s fault, but it was also mine. I’d wanted to forget.
My anger at Peter burned brighter than it ever had, but my grief and my shame were almost worse. I’d remembered my mother only to remember what I’d done.
I’d left her there, her arms thrown out, reaching for me. The last thing she thought of was me and I left her.
To run away with the monster who’d killed her.
Sal gasped and covered her mouth at my words, though I don’t think she was surprised—not really. It seemed precisely the sort of thing that Peter would do, if he wanted someone and there was somebody else in his way.
Peter didn’t care about obstacles, even if they were shaped like people. They were only things to be jumped over, to be knocked down. You didn’t care about them.
He’d done it all so well, really. He’d looked for me—not just any boy would do for Peter—and found a boy who had the potential he wanted. Then watched me, and waited for his chance. And when he had it, he’d killed her, and then twisted me up so I was afraid. Once I was afraid, he could make me do anything he liked, and he made himself my savior, and he made me feel special and loved and then he pushed all the memories of my mother out of me.
Peter had chosen me first. He’d cut me away from the herd and taken me to the island, and I was too much of a boy to remember what I had lost. I could only remember all the days when it was just Peter and me, and we were happy then.
But the song had stayed, the song that my mother sang to me. No wonder he hated it when he heard it. He wanted me to shed all my life in the Other Place like an old skin, but he couldn’t stop bits of it clinging to me.