What if they’ve taken her away? What if she threw a fit after we left, and she got herself in trouble?
“Camellia!” I holler, and then listen, but there are only the voices of the other kids. My sister doesn’t answer. “Camellia!”
I’m headed for the side of the house, for the azalea bushes, when I see her. She’s sitting on the corner of the porch with her legs pulled tight to her chest and her face buried. Her black hair and her skin are gray with dirt. It looks like she’s been in a scrape with somebody while I was gone. There’re scratches on her arm, and she’s got a skinned knee.
Maybe that’s why the big boys wouldn’t tell me where she was. Probably they’re the ones she tangled with.
I leave the little kids by the persimmons and tell them to stay right there and not to wander, and I go up the stairs and walk down the long porch to Camellia. My stiff shoes echo against the wood, clack, clack, clack, but my sister never moves.
“Camellia?” Sitting would get my dress dirty, so I squat down beside her. Maybe she’s sleeping. “Camellia? I brought you something. It’s in my pocket. Let’s go out on the hill where nobody can see, and I’ll give it to you.”
She doesn’t answer. I touch her hair, and she jerks away. A little gray cloud puffs out as my hand slides toward her shoulder. It smells like ashes but not like a fireplace exactly. I know the smell, except I can’t place it. “What’d you get yourself into while we were gone?”
I touch her again, and she ducks her shoulder in but lifts her head. She’s got a bump on her lip, and there are four round bruises on her chin. Her eyes are puffy and red, like she’s been crying, but it’s the look inside them that bothers me most. It’s like I’m staring through a window into an empty room. There’s nothing inside but the dark.
The smell comes off her again, and all of a sudden, I know it. Coal ash. Whenever we tied up the Arcadia near railroad tracks, we’d gather up coal that’d fallen off the trains. Heating and cooking. Free for the taking, Briny always said.
Has Briny been here?
As soon as I think it, I know how wrong I am. I know how wrong this is. Something terrible happened while I was gone. “What’s the matter?” I drop down to the porch, too scared to care about my dress. Little splinters poke my legs. “Camellia, what happened?”
Her lips hang open but don’t make a sound. A tear squeezes from her eye and cuts a pink river through the coal dust.
“Tell me.” I lean down to see her better, but she turns and stares the other way. Her hand is knotted in a fist between us. I take it in mine, pry open her fingers to see what she’s holding, and the minute I do, all the cookies and ice cream from the party come up in my throat. Dirty, round peppermints are stuck so tight to my sister’s palm, they’re melted into her skin.
I close my eyes and shake my head and try not to know, but I do. My mind drags me kicking and screaming to Mrs. Murphy’s cellar, into the dark corner behind the stairs where ash coats the coal bin and the boiler furnace. I see thin, strong arms fighting, legs thrashing around. I see a big hand closing over a screaming mouth, the dirty, oily fingers squeezing so hard they leave four round bruises.
I want to run in the house, yell, and scream. I want to smack Camellia for being stubborn and going over by the azaleas when I told her not to. I want to grab her and hold her close and make everything better. I don’t know exactly what Riggs did to her, but I know it’s bad. I also know that, if we tell, he’ll make my sister fall out of a tree and hit her head. Maybe he’ll even do the same to me. Then who’ll take care of the babies? Who’ll wait for Gabion to come back?
I grab my sister’s hand, slap away the peppermints, and let them bounce onto the porch and fall into the flower bed, where they disappear under a trumpet vine.
She doesn’t fight when I pull her to her feet. “Come on. If they see you looking like this when the dinner bell rings, they’ll think you