and Hootsie bring out the rest of the dishes, and we eat breakfast while Mr. Sevier talks about his new music and how just the right tune came to him in the middle of the night. He talks about scores and rests and notes and all kinds of things. Mrs. Sevier sighs and looks out the window, but I can’t help listening. I’ve never heard anything about how people write music down on paper. All the tunes I know come from listening when Briny plays his guitar or harmonica or maybe even the piano in a pool hall. The music always goes deep down inside me and makes me feel a certain way.
Now I wonder if Briny ever knew that people write tunes on paper like a storybook and it gets put in the movies, the way Mr. Sevier talks about. His new music is for a movie. At the end of the table, he moves his hands around in the air and talks wild and excited about a scene where Quantrill’s Raiders ride through Kansas and burn a whole town.
He hums the tune and uses the table for a drum, and the dishes rattle, and I can feel the horses running and hear the guns blasting.
“What do you think, dear?” he says to Mrs. Sevier when he finishes.
She claps and Fern claps too. “A masterpiece,” Mrs. Sevier says. “Of course it’s a masterpiece. Don’t you think so, Bethie?”
I can’t get used to them calling Fern Beth, which they think is her real name, of course.
“Madderpees.” Fern tries to say the word masterpiece with her mouth full of grits.
The three of them laugh, and I just look down at my plate.
“It’s so good to see her happy.” Our new mommy leans around the table to tuck Fern’s hair out of the way so she won’t get grits in it.
“Yes, it is.” Mr. Sevier is looking at his wife, but she doesn’t know it. She’s busy petting Fern.
Mrs. Sevier twirls Fern’s hair around her finger, blending tiny spirals into bigger curls, like Shirley Temple’s. Mrs. Sevier likes it that way best. Most days, I put mine in a braid behind my back, so she won’t get any ideas about doing that to me. “I was worried we’d never get to this point,” she tells her mister.
“These things take time.”
“I was so afraid I’d never be a mother.”
His eyes round upward, like he’s happy. He looks across the table. “She’s ours now.”
No she’s not! I want to scream. You’re not her mother. You’re not our mother. Those dead babies in the graveyard, those are yours. I hate Mrs. Sevier for wanting Fern. I hate those babies for dying. I hate Mr. Sevier for bringing us here. If he’d left us alone, we’d be back on the Arcadia by now, Fern and me. Nobody would be twirling my sister’s hair into Shirley Temple curls or calling her Beth.
I clench my teeth so hard the pain travels all the way to the top of my head. I’m glad for it. It’s just a little ache, and I know where it comes from. I can stop it any time I want. The one in my heart is way bigger. I can’t fix it no matter how hard I try. It scares me so much that I can’t even breathe.
What if Fern decides she likes these people better than she likes me? What if she forgets about Briny and Queenie and the Arcadia? We didn’t have fancy dresses and scooter toys on the porch and stuffed teddy bears and Crayolas and little china tea sets there. All we had was the river, but the river fed us and carried us and set us free.
I have to make sure Fern doesn’t forget. She can’t turn into Beth on the inside.
“May?” Mrs. Sevier is talking, and I haven’t even heard her. I put on a sunshine face and look her way.
“Yes…Mommy?”
“I said, I’m going to take Beth into Memphis for a fitting of special shoes today. It’s important that we correct the leg that turns inward before she’s any older. Once a child is grown, it’s too late, they tell me. That would be a shame, when it’s something that can be cured.” Her head crooks sideways a bit. She looks like an eagle when it’s watching for fish. Pretty, but the fish better be careful. I’m glad my feet are under the table so she can’t see my right leg. We all have the foot that toes