Forgetting the Lost: Chapter 4
New Days
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New Days
Father had decided that it was time for me to return to church on Sundays. I hadn't been allowed for weeks—not since asking so many questions that the Sunday School teacher had complained to Father—and I had missed it. Not the school part, because Timothy was a better explainer than old Mrs. Haggerty, but I missed the music.
I heard Father tell Mother that the minister would be talking about what happened at The Milners', and that the whole family needed to be present so people wouldn't talk any more than they already were. We didn't have any cousins or aunts or anything, so Mother knew he meant me. Sunday morning, she stayed with me in the bathroom while I scrubbed, and checked my fingernails and teeth before combing the tangles from my hair.
I watched her in the mirror. The way her lips made a thin line across her face made her look older than Father, but her long fingers were gentle. When she finished, her eyes were wet and already looking at the doorway.
"Go get dressed," she told me, and went downstairs to make breakfast.
When we arrived at church, some boys from school ran up to Timothy and Mother shooed them away. The minister waited at the big double doors.
"Deacon!" He shook Father's hand. "You have the whole family today. How wonderful! And our own young hero." He shook Timothy's hand, too, and my brother blushed.
"And good morning to you, young lady." The minister smiled at me. "I am so pleased you're joining us again."
"I like the music," I told him. I also liked the minister's bright blue eyes and fluffy bits of white hair over his ears. The minister had great-grandchildren even younger than me, and he patted my cheek.
"So do I," he winked.
What I liked best about the music was that it made the church solid. Sometimes, when the minister spoke and the adults were nodding and smiling, the pews stayed hard in their tight rows. But sometimes they didn't. Sometimes it felt like the floor was sinking and the wooden pews would get soft and twist like worms going deep in the dirt.
Screaming in church was a sure way to get strapped at home, and crying was only okay when the adults were smiling and crying at the same time. But when the organ played, and the choir sang—or when everyone sang hymns together—that was nice.
On that particular Sunday, Minister Todd didn't need the music. He spoke of bravery and horror, Satan and God, human weakness and strength, and above all else…the sanctity of family. And though I may have fallen asleep in the middle and missed some bits, I think that was the day I realized that the church wanted to be solid, but it was up to the people inside to keep it that way.
After his sermon, the ladies smothered Miriam's mother with good Christian food and prayers, and then found her a respectable job and a tiny house to rent somewhere across the river.
Their good work done, I never saw Miriam or her sister again.
In fact, just after that sermon, there was talk of sending me away, too. We'd returned home from church, and Father had read to us after lunch. He picked passages from the Bible that he thought went well with Minister Todd's own excellent choices. I don't remember what they were, because I was trying too hard to be good. That meant sitting perfectly still beside Timothy and sometimes saying amen, but mostly it meant sitting still and nodding whenever Father looked up.
It was a lot of work for a child who'd grown used to being alone in her room. Except for The Lone Ranger nights, when we all listened as a family…except for Thursday's show, which I hadn't been allowed to hear because I'd gotten Timothy in trouble. And that hadn't been fair. And why did we all listen together? Timothy liked that the good guys won, and I liked Silver—but what did Father like? And Mother?
Maybe she just liked that once a week we were happy at the same time. I looked at her, sitting by the window with her yarn and needles, and she smiled at me. Just for a moment, before she looked down at her work—but she'd definitely smiled at me, not Timothy. I sat up even straighter and tried to pay extra attention to Father so maybe she'd smile again.
That night, after she sent us to bed, she came into my room and locked the window.
"Today was a good day," I said. "And Miss Walker said Monday would be a good day, too."
"Did she?" Mother bent over me, and touched my hair, lightly, as if she might comb it again with her own fingers. "I hope so."
My mouth opened to tell her about the letter, but instead, other words spilled out.
"I have an angel, Mother! Alice tried to save me, but she's just a cat, and it was Lucy! He was so mad, just like the angels in Father's bible! He wasn't there, and then he was, and he comes to see me at night and—"
She slapped me. Just once. Just hard enough to shut me up, because Mother never wanted to hurt me. My eyes watered, and I remember trying one more time—thinking I just had to make her understand and then maybe everything could be like it used to be.
"Lucy's a real angel, I promise! And he knows about the lost ones, too! I told him about Tom—"
She slapped me again, and this time it hurt. Not because she hit hard, but because I knew—I could see—that I'd hurt her.
"I think..." She stared down at me, like the doll with black glass eyes. "I think you need a doctor. I think...Broughton, after all." She brushed my flower petals into her hand like she was sweeping away crumbs. "Yes. Tomorrow you're going to Broughton. Your Father and I think it's for the best. For the family."
And then she switched off the lamp and closed the door tight behind her.
Lucy let himself in through the window a few minutes later. He'd brought a new flower with five pink petals just opening up. We checked for spiders, but they had decided to stay outside, and we agreed that was for the best. Before he left, he took Miss Walker's letter and told me not to worry about Mother.
"Tomorrow is a new day," he reminded me.
And it was. New and strange. Children whispered in class and in the hall, and adults didn't seem to care because they whispered, too. I'd like to think that maybe my memories of that day were unkind, and that perhaps everyone was not telling hushed and gossipy versions of why Miriam and Janie hadn't come to school. And I'd like to think that Timothy's sudden popularity in the schoolyard was because everyone had realized what I'd known all along—that he was nearly perfect in a diseased and decaying world. But even at six, I knew better.
I couldn't help but know, as Lucy and I watched from across the street.
He'd had to come get me from the nurse's office again, and since Mrs. Spivey was still napping on the cot and couldn't tell me to go outside for lunch, he'd led me out the side door to the pine trees across the street.
"Tommy's jealous." I pointed my apple toward the lone, skinny tree at the edge of the yard. The bully was as thin as its trunk, but his elbows poked out from the other side. "He isn't lost anymore, but he's still bad."
"He is not bad, child. His life has not been easy. I hope I have given him peace."
I looked at my apple core and found another nibble near the stem. "He gave me a sandwich, but that doesn't make up for busting Timothy's nose."
Lucy dug a little hole in the dirt with his toes and dropped the core in it. "In time, you may think differently." He handed me a carrot with a frilly green top.
"I won't." I leaned against his leg and scraped the vegetable with my front teeth. "You're supposed to cook these until they're mush," I told him.
"If it were not for Tommy, I would not have found you."
"I found you, remember? I saw you first."
I was tired of talking about Tommy, so we stood quietly watching until he made me follow the other children back inside for class.
But by the time school ended, I'd realized that he might leave me unless I was useful. And so I'd snuck into the backyard and under the bushes to call for him in the woods.
He'd come, but I'd seen in his eyes that I'd been right to worry. His eyes weren't silver at all. They were gray like when a cloud is thinking about raining but hasn't made up its mind.
"There are others," I'd reminded him. "Not just Tommy."
That hadn't changed Lucy's eyes, so I'd put my hands on my hips like Miss Walker did when the class was being slow. "God thinks they're important, too. All the lost ones. He might be mad if you left," I'd warned.
And so Lucy had stayed. And sometimes, I even thought he might have stayed for me. Until I grew up and realized that he'd only stayed for them.
Because in 1941, terror and tragedy struck thousands of miles away—as close as one neighbor killing another—and Father wanted to fight back. He wasn't the only one. Most felt a collective sense of rage and horror that our country—our home—had been violated. And since Father had a gimpy foot, he thought his strong, healthy prodigy should fight for him.
Timothy had just turned fourteen. And I was busy working with Lucy, because more and more lost ones were slipping and melting and decaying all around me. So many that my nightmares were constant. I'd wake in screaming terror at the whole world dissolving, and no one, not even Lucy, could understand. Because I wouldn't tell them. Not my angel, not my brother—not even the new girl in school, Hester, who was brash and funny and wild like I wished I could be.
She had big teeth and a goofy smile that squished her cheeks up to her eyes. She also had two fists and wasn't afraid to pummel the boys who picked on the littler kids. I never saw her actually hit anyone, but we all knew she would if she had to. Hester was solid. Oh, not as solid as Lucy…but she was who she was, and most people weren't. Sitting beside her in class while the world's sickness festered under my feet and sucked at my legs kept me sane. Helped me focus. The hard chair, the smooth pencil, Mr. Laney's irritating habit of sniffing and swallowing every time he paused to gather his thoughts...I remember them all, thanks to her.
"You don't even have to study!" she'd complained the day she found out I'd been bumped two levels. "Did you even do the summer reading?"
"Of course I did," I'd told her. And had more nightmares for doing so. Wells and Poe weren't meant for children, and now Morlocks pulled my bed into the floorboards and bloody hearts beat beneath the azaleas. Mr. Laney wasn't sick—not in the way I knew others were—but sometimes I wondered at the pestilence hidden in our human souls.
Like the darkness in Father's. The jittery-skittish fever that burned like hot sap popping on firewood. He never even looked at me anymore, and we both preferred it that way. But he was always watching Timothy. Insisting that he drink another glass of milk or eat another slice of ham, even though Mother had filled her plate and mine with only potatoes and greens. Throwing a baseball in the backyard became important, and Father threw wildly, making my brother race and leap like Buster used to fetch.
"He loves us," Timothy said on the way to school one morning. "You just don't understand him."
"He loves you," I'd answered, "because you do what he wants."
My brother didn't speak to me the rest of that long day…or week…and eventually he stopped looking at me, too.
I think that would have made me sad, if I hadn't had Lucy.
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