in western North Carolina.
“Would you like to tell me what’s goin’ on, young lady?” Mr. Stanley says to me after everyone’s filed out of the room.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I say. My face still feels hot and I can’t look him in the eye even though Momma’s drilled it into us since we were weensy.
“Now, Caroline,” he says in a voice that sounds like warm doughnuts, “you’ve got a lot of potential. You’re a smart young lady. But you’ve got to apply yourself …”
Apply myself. Apply myself. If one more teacher tells me that, I’ll scream.
“… and then you can write your own ticket …” He’s saying something about college. Apparently he thinks that’s the key to the universe.
“… so you can go now, but remember what we talked about, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” I say to him over my shoulder, bolting out of the room to my locker so I won’t be late for the next period and I won’t have to have another teacher lecture me.
“Shh, here she comes” is what I hear when I come through the door of Miss Hall’s room. Nothing like hearing that when you’re about to go somewhere you don’t want to be in the first place.
“You better sit quick, Carrie Parker,” Luanne Kibley says, “or Mommy’ll send you to your room without supper.” The class erupts like a volcano; they’ve been waiting for me.
“Did you and Daddy have a nice talk?” Mary Sellers sings to me from over the din.
“Who’s your uncle?” Tommy Bucksmith shouts. “Mr. Streng?” Mr. Streng is our principal. Everyone hates Mr. Streng except maybe Daisy, his one-eyed dachshund who sleeps on a checkered cushion in the corner of his office.
Where is Miss Hall?
The skies have turned black outside—the clouds are ready to break open with water, I can just feel it. I hope it waits till after we’ve gotten home. I know I’m just trying to come up with things to think about other than where I am right now, but can you blame me? When I’m a teacher I’ll show up to class on time, that’s for sure.
“All right, people,” Miss Hall says before she even shuts the door. “Everyone please get out your social studies workbooks and turn to page nineteen. I hope y’all remembered to read this over last night….”
I didn’t. I don’t even remember her telling us to. What else is new?
THREE
Right now I’m in our room with the ceiling that leans in like it’s protecting our beds from the sky. Our room is the best part of the house, but Richard thinks it’s the worst. I suppose I can see his point, because even though it’s only May, it’s hotter than Hades in July and the only window up here has a fan in it that only sucks the air out of the room. When Richard moved in, he stomped up through the house with the boxes from the back of his truck and told us we’d better get on up the stairs with the string that pulls them down from the ceiling. No one’s gonna build our nest for us anymore, he said, so we better start getting used to it. Ever since he called our room the nest, that’s what we call it, too. I didn’t know what was up his sleeve but I went up the stairs first, which is surprising considering how Emma’s normally the brave one. Once we were at the top he pushed the stairs back up—something he still does to this day. Because it’s summer, the hot air in the Nest hits you in the face like the cloud of smelly smoke that shoots out from behind Richard’s truck every time he pulls out from the side of the house. There’s only that one side that you cain’t stand up straight in and that’s where our bed is. Our quilt on the bed we share is patchwork and reminds me of Little House on the Prairie.
The ceiling has a lot of cobwebs and all I can think of is Charlotte and Wilbur in one of my all-time favorite stories about the pig and the spider who get to be friends. I wonder if spiders can really spell like that in their webs. And since these webs are on the high side of the ceiling that’s not where the bed is, I let them stay … until I see a spider dropping down. Emma loves it up here. She knows now that you can’t jump up and down on the bed and it only took her three bruises to figure it out. She likes to put the window fan on and talk into it really slowly, and to tell you the truth I like that, too. At first she wouldn’t go near it because she thought her hair would get pulled off her head, but now she knows to put it in a ponytail and then there’s no risk. She says things like “I hate you, Richard” and “You will die” and “Leave us alone” right into the fan, knowing he cain’t hear a thing because the fan blades chop the air into little pieces and carry her words out and away from the house. I don’t think she cares if he does hear her, anyway, since sometimes, when he lays into Momma real bad, she shouts right into it before it gets itself up to speed.
I can hear Richard right now out in the second-floor hallway and I know it’s only a matter of time before he pushes the stairs up again and locks us in here. Momma hates it when he does this but I don’t mind it anymore. When he pushes the stairs up I know he won’t be bugging me and Emma. He used to do that all the time, but since we’re gonna be moving on and up I think he’s got other things to bug.
Uh-oh. Momma’s calling us. Here’s the problem—if we call out and let her know we’re up here, then she’ll see that the stairs are up. If she sees the stairs are up, then she’ll know Richard was being mean to us. If she sees that Richard’s been mean to us then she’ll lay into him about it and then he’ll start laying into her and it won’t end up like Little House on the Prairie, let me tell you.
“We better not answer her,” Emma says, and I’m thinking that’s a fine idea.
“But then we’ll be stuck up here all day,” I say, and Emma just squinches her shoulders up and then lets them fall back down again and I know it’s settled, whether I like it or not.
I’m tiptoeing over to the stack of books near the fan, which we cain’t turn on since the noise will alert Momma and then it’s all downhill from there, and I’m leafing through this battered old book of stamps from around the world. Someone who lived here before us left it behind, but I don’t think they missed it since they died and that’s how we came to live here. Anyway, I love to look at the different stamps and picture living somewhere really beautiful. Even though I’m old enough to know better, I think the countries are the colors on their stamps. It’s weird in geography class hearing how Finland is such a dark place since its stamp is so bright and colorful.
Uh-oh. Momma’s under the pull-string staircase. I can hear her calling out. I look over at Emma but she’s fallen asleep reading again. Richard must’ve been at her last night. When she sleeps that way during the day I know what’s happened the night before.
There’s that creaking sound the springs make when the stairs are pulled down and I know the day’s not going to end up well for Momma.
“Caroline? You up there with Emma?”
I hurry to the top step so she won’t wake Emma.
“Emma’s asleep,” I hiss to her. “You need something?” I ask real nicely so she’ll forget that Richard’s locked us in again. Maybe then she won’t go near him.
I can tell by the way she eyes the fold-out stairs and by the way she sighs that she doesn’t have the energy to take up for us today, and I’m glad. Well, sort of glad.
“I need you in the kitchen,” she says. “I’ve got to go out for a little while and you need to get everything ready for dinner.”
“Where’re you going?” I ask. “Can I come?”
“It’s none of your business where I’m going and no you cannot,” she says all in one breath. “Now, come on and get moving.”
Usually when Momma calls to me and Emma both that