The first time Richard hit me I saw stars in front of my
eyes just like they do in cartoons. It was just a
backhand, though — not like when I saw Tommy Bucksmith's
dad wallop him so hard that when he hit the pavement his
head actually bounced. I s'pose Richard didn't know about
the flips I used to do with Daddy where you face each
other and while you're holding on to your daddy's hands
you climb up his legs to right above the knees and then
push off, through the triangle that your arms make with
his. It's super fun. I was just trying to show Richard how
it works. Anyway, I learned then and there to stay clear
of Richard. I try to stay away from home as much as I
possibly can.
It's impossible to get lost in a town called Toast. That's
where I live: Toast, North Carolina. I don't know how it
is anywhere else but here all the streets are named for
what's on them. There's Post Office Road and Front Street,
which takes you past the front of the stores, and Back
Street, which is one street over — in back of them.
There's New Church Road, even though the church that sits
at the end of it isn't new anymore. There's Brown's Farm
Road, which is where Hollis Brown lives with his family,
and before him came other Browns who Momma knew and didn't
like all that much, and Hilltop Road and even Riverbend
Road. So wherever you set out for, the street signs will
lead the way. I live on Murray Mill Road, and I s'pose if
you didn't know any better you'd think my last name's
Murray, but it's Parker — Mr. Murray passed on way before
we got here. We didn't change a thing about the Murray
house: the way in from Route 74 is just grass growing up
between two straight lines so your tires'll know exactly
where to go. The first thing you see after you've been
driving till the count of sixty is the mill barn that's
being held up over the pond by old stilts. We still have
the board with peeling painted letters that says No
Fishing on Sunday nailed up to the tree on the edge of the
pond. Just to the side of that, taking up a whole outside
wall of the mill, is Mr. Murray's old sign that shows a
cartoon rooster cock-a-doodle-doing the words Feed
Nutrena...Be Sure, Be Safe, Be Thrifty. It's getting hard
to read the words of the poster now that a fine red dust
from the dirt outside the mill has settled over it top to
bottom. But you can see the rooster clear as day. Tacked
up to the door of the old mill is this: "WARNING: It is
unlawful for any person to sell, deliver, or hold or offer
for sale any adulterated or misbranded grain. Maximum
penalty $100 fine or 60 days imprisonment or both." I
copied that down in my notebook from school.
"Whoa!" The notebook goes flying out of my hands into the
dirt.
"Betcha didn't see that coming!" Richard laughs at me as I
scramble to pick it up before he gets ahold of it. "Must
be something pretty important, you grabbing at it like
that. Lemme see there," and he pulls it out of my hands
before I can make a squeak about it.
"Give it back."
"Collie McGrath isn't talking to me on account of the frog
incident'...what's the frog incident?" He looks up from my
diary.
"Give it back!" But when I go to try to get it back he
shoves me away, flipping through the pages, scanning each
one with his dirty finger. "Where am I? I can't wait to
see what all you write about me. Hmm," more
flipping, "Momma this, Momma that. Jesus H. Christ,
nothing about your dear ole dad?"
He throws it back down to the ground and I'm mad I didn't
listen to my own self when I thought I shouldn't reach
down to pick it up until he leaves, "cause when I do bend
down again he shoves me into the dirt with his boot.
"There! Gave ya something to write about!" I live here
with my stepfather, Richard, my momma, and my sister,
Emma. Emma and I are like Snow White and Rose Red. That's
probably why it's our favorite bedtime story. It's about
two sisters: one has really white skin and yellow hair
(just like Momma) and the other one has darker skin and
hair that's the color of the center of your eye (that's
just like me). My hair changes colors depending on where
you're standing and when. From the side in the daytime, my
hair looks purple-black, but from the back at night it's
like burned wood in the fireplace. When it's clean, Emma's
hair is the color of a cotton ball: white, white, white.
But usually it's so dirty it looks like the dusty old
letters Momma keeps in a shoe box on her closet shelf.
Richard. Now there's a guy who isn't like anyone we've
read about at bedtime. Momma says he's as different from
Daddy as a cow from a crow, and I believe her. I mean,
wouldn't you have to be likable to make everyone line up
to buy carpet from you like Momma says they did for Daddy?
Richard's not half as likable. I told Momma once that I
thought Richard was hateable, but she didn't think it was
funny so she sent me to my room. A few days later, when
Richard was back picking on Momma she yelled out that no
one liked him and that his own stepdaughter called
him "hateable." When she said it I just stood there
listening to the tick-tick-tick of the plastic daisy clock
we have hanging in the kitchen, knowing it was too late to
run.
Momma says our daddy was the best carpet salesman in the
state of North Carolina. He must've sold a ton of carpet
because there wasn't any left for us. We have hard
linoleum. After he died Momma let me keep the leaf-green
sample of shag that she found in the back seat of his car
when she was cleaning it out before Mr. Dingle took it
away. The sample must've fallen off the big piece of
cardboard that had lots of other squares on it in
different colors so folks could match it to their lives
better. I keep it in the drawer of the white wicker night
table by my bed in an old cigar box that has lots of
colorful stickers of old-fashioned suitcases, stamps and
airplanes (only on the cigar box they're spelled
aeroplanes) slapped on every which way. Sometimes if I
sniff into that shag square real hard I can still pick up
that new carpet smell that followed Daddy around like a
shadow.
Back to me and Emma. Our hair is different colors but our
skin is where you see the biggest difference. Chocolate
and vanilla difference. Emma looks like someone got bored
painting her and just left her blank for someone else to
fill in. Me? Well, Miss Mary at White's Drugstore always
tilts her head to the side and says, "You look tired,
chile," when she sees me, but I'm not — it's just the
shadows under my eyes.
I'm eight — two years older than Emma, but because I'm
small people probably think we're mismatched twins. And
that's the way we think of each other. But I wish I could
be more like Emma. I scream when I see a cicada, but Emma
doesn't mind them. She scoops them up and puts them
outside. I tell her she should just step on them but she
doesn't listen to me. And she never gets picked on by the
other kids. Once, Tommy Bucksmith twisted her arm around
her back and held it there for a long time ("until you say
I'm the best in the universe" he told her at the time,
laughing while he winched her arm backward higher and
higher) and she didn't make a peep. Emma's not scared of
anything. Except for when Richard turns on Momma. Then we
both go straight to behind-the-couch. Behind-the-couch is
like another room for me and Emma. It's our fort. Anyway,
we usually head there when we've counted ten squeaks from
the foot pedal of the metal trash can in the kitchen. The
bottles clank so loud I think my head'll split in two.
Richard starts bugging Momma after about the tenth squeak.
I don't know why Momma doesn't stay out of his way from
squeak eight on but she doesn't. Me and Emma, we've
started a thing we call the floor shimmy where, when we
hear squeak eight we start to scoot our behinds real slow
from the floor in front of the TV toward behind-the-couch.
With the volume up you can't hear us, and Rich-ard's
concentrating real hard on Momma so he doesn't notice that
we're inching toward behind-the-couch. By squeak nine,
we're about two Barbie-doll lengths from the front of the
couch, and just before squeak ten we're sliding between
the cool paint on the wall and the nubby brown plaid back
of the couch. We used to think it was stinky behind-the-
couch, but we don't even notice it anymore. I brought some
of Momma's perfume there once and squirted it twice right
into the fabric so now it smells just like Momma on Sunday.
We live in an old white house with chipping yellow
shutters. It's three floors high, if you count the attic
where me and Emma sleep.
We used to have our own room across the hall from Momma
and Daddy's room, but after he died and Richard moved in
we had to go up another floor. But here's the worst part:
Richard's making us move. I cain't even think about that
right now. When I don't want to think about something I
just pretend there's a little man in my head who takes the
part of my brain that's thinking the bad thing and pushes
on it real hard so it goes to the back of all the other
things I could be thinking about.
Momma says it's trashy to have stuff out front of our
house like we do so she goes and plants flowers in some of
it so it'll look like we've got it there on purpose.
Here's what we've got: three tires — one of them has grass
already growing from the pile of dirt that's in the middle
of it; a cat statue that's gray like a sidewalk; Richard's
old car that he says will come back to life one of these
days, but when it does I think it'll be confused since it
doesn't have any tires on it; Momma's old tin washtub with
flowers planted in it; a hammock Emma and me liked to
swing in when we were really young, but now one side's all
frayed because we never took it inside in the winter; a
bale of hay that smells bad on account of rain rot; a
metal rooster that points in the direction of a storm if
one's coming; and Richard's old work boots. Momma up and
planted flowers in them, too. I've never seen flowers in
boots before, but she did it and sure enough there're
daisies pushing up out of them right this minute. Oh, I
almost forgot, Momma's clothesline is out there, too.
We don't have a front walk to get to the door to the
house. I wish we did. Snow White and Rose Red have a front
walk that takes you through an archway of roses. We just
have grass that's been walked on so much it's dirt. But
then you get to the front porch and that's the part I like
best. It makes a lot of noise when you walk on it but I
like being able to look out over everything. "What're you
doing?" Emma asks. Where she came from I don't know. I
didn't even hear her.
I'm standing here on the front porch, surveying our yard
and all the things we've got. Sometimes I pretend I'm a
princess and that instead of things they're people, my
subjects waving up to me on the balcony of my castle.
"What do you mean what am I doing?"
"Who're you waving at?"
"I wasn't waving."
"Were, too. You're pretending you're a princess again,
aren't you?" Emma sits in Momma's old rocker that's
missing most of the seat. She's smiling 'cause she knows
she nailed me.
"Was not."
"Was to. What color dress you wearing?" I can tell by the
tone in her voice because she isn't making fun of me
anymore, she just wants to hear me talk my dream out loud
so she can dream it, too. She's all serious now.
"It's pink, of course," I say, "and it's got sparkly beads
sewn all over it so it looks like the dress is made of
pink diamonds. And I have a big ole lace collar that's
made by hand. It's not scratchy at all. In fact it's so
soft it tickles me sometimes. The sleeves are velvet,
white velvet. They're even softer than the lace. But the
best part is my shoes. My shoes are made of glass, just
like Cinderella's, and they have diamonds on the tips so
they can match my dress."
Emma's eyes are closed but she's nodding. "And here are my
loyal subjects." I sweep my arm across the railing toward
the yard. "They all love me because I'm a good princess,
not a mean one like my stepsister. I give them food and
money — and I talk to them like they're in my family. My
loyal subjects..." I say this last part to all the stuff
in the yard. Oh, yeah, we also have an old iron bed out
there. It's rusted now but it used to be bright metal.
It's right up front so I pretend it's the river of water
that runs in a circle around my castle and that the front
steps are a drawbridge. I wish the drawbridge could stay
up and keep Richard from coming into the castle.
Uh-oh. Richard's noisy truck is pulling into its parking
space to the side of the house. I cain't tell for sure but
it looks like he might not be in too bad a mood right now.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one.
"Whatchoo up to on this fine North Carolina day?" He's
walking toward us, but I can tell by his speed that he
isn't interested in our answer.
"Nothing," Emma and I say at the same time, both of us
backing up to put more space between us and him. Just in
case.
"Nothing," Richard mimics us with his chin sticking out
extra far. But he keeps on walking past us into the
house. "Libby? Where you at?" I hear him call to Momma
once the porch door slams behind him. "It's payday and I'm
in need of in-ee-bree-ation!" A second later I hear
vacuumed air pop from a bottle and then the sound of a tin
cap pinging onto the counter in the kitchen. Momma's voice
is murmuring something I can't make out.