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 Richard’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.
“Hey, Pea Pop, how’d you like a nice cold orangeade?” Daddy rustled my hair like I was a pet dog. “Lib? It’s payday! Getchur bag, we’re going shopping.”
Payday was always the best day of the month when Daddy was alive. I’d hear orangeade and it was all I could do to fit the tiny metal fork into the hole in the strap on my sandals, I’d be so excited.
“Can I get a large, Daddy?” I called out from the back seat, loud enough to be heard over the wind blowing in through all the open windows in our car.
“You can get a jumbo, pea.” He smiled, and caught my eye in the rearview mirror.
Our first stop was the grocery store. Momma pulled a cart from the stack all folded into one another by the glass entrance. The cold air gave me gooseflesh at first but by aisle two I was used to it.
“Stop swinging your feet, Caroline,” Momma tsked at me, “you’re kicking me in the stomach.” So I tried to keep my legs still while Momma threw food into the cart over my head.
“Momma? Can I pull from the shelves?”
“I guess,” she answered, checking her list, which was long since we hadn’t been to the store in a while. Maybe even since Daddy’s last payday.
“Whole