Bitter Sun - Beth Lewis

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was stuck in the back yard, between Momma and sister. I didn’t stand a chance of catching up with Jenny but I knew where she would go. She was like those starlings, darting and weaving, the best runner in our class. Mr Escott, our phys-ed teacher, said it was a good job I could read and work a corn huller because I wasn’t much good for anything else. The rest of the class had laughed. I’d stared at my skinny arms and legs, my too small gym shorts, and watched the others cross the finish line.

      ‘John?’ Momma said, gently from the back door. ‘Come on inside, baby.’

      She smiled, that full smile that lit up her face and eyes, rosy and glowing with whiskey. The snarl and sneer was gone, like it had never been. A flipped switch and there was my momma again, reaching for me.

      ‘Dinner is on the table.’

      This wasn’t the woman who’d said those things to Jenny and dragged her across the yard. It just wore her face, spoke in her voice. It was the drink. It was the sickness. Not my momma, not really.

      I went inside and sat at the kitchen table. Jenny would be fine. I’d never been able to truly calm her after a fuss like that, I’d never be able to get her to come home if she didn’t want to. Besides, if she was still riled up the fight would start fresh soon as she walked in the back door. It was best for them and me to wait it out, let the anger subside and then find her, cradle her, let her sob it all out onto me instead of watch her beat it out of herself. I knew where she’d go, I’d find her.

      Momma sat down beside me at the kitchen table, smoking a Lucky Strike. She reached to me, brushed my hair back, then flicked out her ash into a chipped cup.

      ‘How was your day, baby?’

      ‘Fine.’ It wasn’t fine. We found a dead body. But I wasn’t ready to say that. It was still too mixed up in my head.

      Momma went quiet as I ate. Her eyes flickered every now and then, like she was thinking of something, wanted to say it, but chickened out. She bit on her lower lip. Jenny did that when she was worried.

      ‘Is your sister all right?’

      ‘I don’t know. I guess,’ I said. ‘She will be.’

      Momma stubbed out the Strike and rubbed her forehead, tucked her hair back, laid her hand over her neck, fidgeted like she had ants crawling all over her skin.

      ‘That girl makes me so mad sometimes, the way she talks to me. If I’d have spoken to my mother like that, ooh she would have kicked me out of her house so fast it’d make your head spin. You heard what that girl said, didn’t you?’

      She shook her head, finally her eyes went to mine, eyelids drowsy with drink. ‘You’d never talk to me like that, would you, baby? You’re my prince. What a good boy you are.’

      She cupped my cheek with her hand. Soft skin. Sweet smell of tobacco and old perfume on her wrist.

      ‘My temper sometimes, I don’t know,’ she said, waving her arm, dismissing it as nothing.

      Then she snapped back to me. ‘Oh! I almost forgot.’

      Momma went to the family room, to the cabinet behind the couch. She pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper. A rectangle, about two inches thick, tied up with string.

      ‘I got this for you,’ she said, skipping back over to me and setting it down on the table. She moved my still full plate and pushed the package closer.

      ‘I saw it in the thrift store on Lexington a month ago and I thought, my John will just love that, so I had them wrap it up and then I went and forgot all about it, can you believe it?’

      A fire lit in my chest. A present. For me? It wasn’t Christmas and my birthday was way back in March and we didn’t have the money for throw-away spending.

      ‘What is it?’ I said. I traced the edges with two fingers, felt a ridge on the right side and a fizz of electric went through me. A book.

      Momma made a dopey face. ‘Open it and see, dummy.’

      I untied the string and ripped the paper away in one tear. My eyes went wide and my mouth dropped open and I couldn’t quite believe it.

      The cover, a pale beige cloth, said, Birds of North America, then smaller at the top, A Guide to Field Identification. Below, three vivid, multi-coloured birds perched on a bright green branch.

      ‘Do you like it?’ Momma said, her hands clasped below her chin. ‘You used to love watching the crows steal the corn and you’re always out gawking at those starlings.’

      ‘I love it,’ I said.

      I flicked through. Pages and pages of exact, perfect drawings and information on habitat and nesting and migration. I couldn’t stop staring. Some birds I recognised immediately. Wrens. Tanagers. But there were so many more. So much more to learn. I wanted to devour it then and there and go searching for them in the fields and trees.

      ‘Are you sure, baby?’

      I looked up at Momma, her eyes on me like she was nervous. Scared she’d got me wrong, that I’d hate it, hate her, but I never could. I went to her and threw my arms around her neck.

      ‘Thank you, Momma. I love it. I love you. It’s the best thing.’

      She hugged me back, hard, and held on for a few seconds before releasing me. She grabbed my face in both hands and kissed me on the forehead. ‘I love you too, my little prince.’

      Then she let me go, said something about her programmes, and disappeared into the family room. A moment later I heard the television blare out The Partridge Family. I cleared my plate while pawing through my book. Stopped when I got to the cardinal. A striking red bird, Jenny’s favourite. We’d seen one, a year or two ago, when we’d gone camping with the Bible Study class down at Fabius Lake.

      A sharp prick of guilt hit my chest and I closed the book and took it upstairs, hid it under my side of the bed. I didn’t want to tell Jenny about it. She’d be upset that Momma hadn’t got her anything and it would spiral into another fight. As I came back downstairs, I listened for Momma’s movements but just heard David Cassidy’s warbling, then I snuck outside.

      I found Jenny down at the Roost, staring into the tiny ripples on Big Lake. With her golden hair and in her pale yellow sundress, she shone in the dark.

      ‘I knew you’d come after me. Eventually,’ she said, but she didn’t seem sad or angry, just glad I was there. Her voice was calm as the lake, quiet as the water. She stared, trancelike, as if red-eyed on Mary Jane. Blood streaked down her shin so I ripped a swatch out of my t-shirt and dipped it in the cold water.

      ‘Here,’ I said, ‘let me clean that.’

      The blood diluted and ran down to her foot, soaking pink into her bobby sock. Jenny didn’t look at me or seem to notice what I was doing, her eyes fixed on a point across the lake.

      ‘It’s so quiet here,’ she murmured.

      Only chirping crickets and the soft lapping of water. No shouting or screaming or hurt feelings. No whiskey slur in Momma’s voice. Just us and our breathing and the darkness. It was like the feeling you get when you duck underwater, everything muffled and thick. The water holds every part of you, keeping you buoyed and enclosed, safe, for a time. You know the world is still out there but it can’t touch you except when you come up for air.

      ‘Do you think she’s lonely?’ Jenny said and I wondered if she meant Momma.

      Then I saw where she was looking.

      Something shifted in that moment. Jenny turned to me, our eyes met. The moon and starlight broke through the canopy enough to highlight the water, define the shapes of the trees, and her, pale against the black. Jenny took my hand and we went to Mora.

      ‘It’s so strange. She looks like she’s sleeping,’ I said, and felt something squirm inside me.

      You shouldn’t

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