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Carrie

191

It was one of them blindingly bright Virginia summer days. That’s what I remember most about the morning the ladies came to take me away. I was home watching after the babies like usual because Mama was downtown again, looking to find herself a day’s work. Doris was crawling across the dusty floor, stopping now and again to stare at her toes, and I felt a little sorry at the way the milk-white skin of her knees had gone gray from the dirt of the planks. Baby Roy was asleep in the old bassinet we’d got from Miss Jenny, who lived with her brother’s family on the second floor of the house. Our family had two rooms on the first floor, right below them. I was just six years old at the time, you understand, but I loved to look after my own brother and sister, to be the one taking charge. Even if they was only half-related to me, that one-half was enough.

When Doris tired herself out and set to acting fussy, I took her up on my lap and read to her from the newspaper Mama had brought home the week before. Mama told me she’d found the paper lying flat down on the ground on Main Street, where it didn’t matter to nobody, and she knew I’d want to see it. Most of the words were too big for me to make out on my own, but the more times I went over it, running my finger nice and slow under each letter, the clearer it would come to me. There were some pictures that helped me make sense of the writing too, like the advertisement for Old Henry Whiskey. I recognized that picture of the bottle easy.

Doris was too young to care anyhow whether she understood what I was saying. Even if I’d read it all perfect, she’d still be paying more mind to my hair, pulling the dark strands to her mouth. Mama was always after me to tie up my locks with twine, but I preferred to keep them loose. I already knew I wasn’t a pretty girl, not like Lorna Mayfair, a girl my age from up the hill who looked just like one of those dolls behind the glass at the store. My hair was the one thing about me that made me proud, standing out sharp as it did against my white skin. So that’s how we were that afternoon, Doris in my lap, sucking on my hair, Roy still sleeping peaceful, and me studying the photographs in the paper, when there came a pounding on the front door.

I hoisted Doris onto my hip and went looking, figuring it was someone searching for Mr. Gibson upstairs. Folks was always after him about monies he owed. When I opened the door, I found that lady, Miss Drummond, waiting on the splintered porch. She wore a slim skirt and buttoned-up blouse, her pale yellow hair pulled back so tight it gave me a headache just to look at it. There was another lady with her who I’d never seen before.

Miss Drummond looked over my shoulder to see behind me before she even spoke, like she wanted to know what-all was going on inside our little house.

“Hello, Carrie,”

she said, her words as crisp and tight as her hairdo. “Is your mother at home?”

I shook my head at her as I squinted out into the sunlight. I didn’t think to ask how she knew my name. “She’s gone out for a workaday,” I said.

The two ladies shared a look at that. I figured they thought I was telling fibs and that my mama was with a man, but she only took up with men on days when she couldn’t find other work. Ever since my da left four years before, Ma did what she needed to take care of us. I’d heard her talking with her friend Sally from up the road. One night, the two of them sat on the steps of our porch, chewing tobacco and taking turns spitting into a can. Ma told Sally that the Olsens, who she cleaned house for, had moved to Tulsa. She shook her head when she said that, then complained that she’d needed to spend the afternoon with a fellow who gave her money for laying down with him.

I didn’t understand back then, but I heard enough folks say that what Mama did with the men caused us to end up with Doris and baby Roy. They said it like them babies were a punishment. Ma didn’t see it that way though. She always talked about my brother and sister being gifts from the Lord during hard times. She needn’t have told me that bit, about them being little treasures, because I knew it on my own. Especially Doris. When she held on to my pinkie finger with her whole fist or looked up at me with her dark round eyes, I knew I couldn’t love anybody more than I loved her.

“We’d like to bring you down to the CHS today for a stay. Do you have any belongings you’d like to pack up before we go?”

Miss Drummond said.

Everyone around our parts knew about Miss Drummond and the CHS. She ran the Children’s Home Society, where they took kids whose folks didn’t want them no more. There weren’t no reason why I should be going to a place like that.

“I can’t go nowhere with you,”

I told her. “I’m looking after the babies now.”

The woman beside Miss Drummond sucked in a breath so loud it was almost a hiss.

“But you’re only five years old,”

the lady said, as if I couldn’t care for my own kin.

“Six,”

I said, sticking my chin in the air. “Since last month.”

“Well, why don’t you go gather the other little one, and he can come along too.”

“Ma won’t want us leaving without her knowing about it first,”

I told them. “She’ll have my hide about it.”

And that much was the truth.

“Oh,”

Miss Drummond said, looking real sad. Her eyes went down to the newspaper pages still hanging from my hand. “You like to read?”

she asked.

I shrugged, wanting her to leave. “I guess.”

“Hmm.”

She seemed like she was thinking on something as she looked again at the lady she’d brought with her. “It’s too bad you can’t come back with us. There’s story time happening in an hour, and Miss Willis always likes to have children read along.”

I did think a story time seemed like a nice thing to do, nice enough that it might even be worth a walk with Miss Drummond and her friend. Still, I didn’t want to disobey Ma.

“I could leave a note for your mother, if you’d like. As long as she knows where you’ve gone, she’ll think you’ve been responsible. I believe they’re reading Old Mother West Wind today. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Vestry?”

Now, I didn’t know much about different children’s books, but it just so happened that Miss Drummond had mentioned the very same book that Wendy Dinkins was showing off about just the week before. Her rich uncle from Norfolk had sent it, and she wouldn’t let none of the neighborhood kids even touch the drawing on the cover.

Thinking about Wendy’s neat yellow braids, and all them peppermint candies her uncle sent too, I was suddenly gathering up baby Roy out of the cradle. I told Miss Drummond that we didn’t have a pram for ferrying either of the little ones, so she would have to carry Doris.

It wasn’t but two hours later when Ma showed up at CHS.

I was sitting beside Miss Willis, the reading lady, looking at a picture book while two older boys hunched over a small table across the room, working on a drawing together. Miss Willis was asking me questions about the pictures we was looking at, like why was the bunny smiling, and what did I think that bunny was going to do with her bowl of porridge. That was when I heard shouting from down the hall. It only took a few seconds for me to recognize the rumble of Ma’s husky voice, coming loud as if she was using a blow horn.

“You can’t just come to my home and take them all!”

she hollered. “Who do you people think you are, stealing my babies?”

I stood up from the small mat where we were sitting and peeked out the open doorway of the little library room. There was Ma in her work smock. Even from the other end of the hallway, I could see smudges on her arms, and I knew those spots of grime meant she’d got herself some cleaning work for the day. It looked like she’d been sweeping out somebody’s hearth and chimney. She might have gotten paid in kind, like happened sometimes, when she traded her services with folks and came home with a sack of food. I was hungry just thinking on the grits and butter cake she’d got the week before.

My ma was a thick woman, tall too, with dark brown hair she kept short and blunt like the edge of a box, never letting it grow past her ears. Her sleeves were rolled higher than her elbows, probably for the hot day, and her thick muscles were plain to see even from looking at just the bottom half of her arms. I wondered if that skinny Miss Drummond was afraid, standing across from Ma’s big body and all that shouting. But then Miss Drummond took up like she was the one in charge, and I suppose she always was.

“Now, now, Miss Buck,”

she said in a calm voice.

“It’s Mrs.,”

Ma snapped back. “Mrs. Buck.”

Miss Drummond started over. “Mrs. Buck, we were just minding the children for a time so Carrie could come get a sense of the place. You needn’t get out of control. You can go on and take them home as soon as you like. But we hoped Carrie might like to stay on with us here.”

To stay at the CHS? I ought to have known. That Miss Drummond had tricked me. I should have remembered seeing Mallory Johnson’s aunt after seven-year-old Mallory had gone to the CHS. It was only a few days later that the girl was living with a whole new family. Her aunt Tilly had celebrated with a fresh bottle of whiskey in the street, hooting that she no longer had to look after her sister’s brat.

But I didn’t remember. Not then. What I was focused on in that moment was the small wooden shelf that must have held at least eight more books for children. I wanted to know what was inside each one. When Miss Drummond came to ask me what I wanted to do, whether I wanted to stay a little longer, it didn’t take much for her to convince me.

Once I agreed, Miss Drummond went and had a quiet conversation with my mama down the hall. I never did learn what she said to Ma in those hushed whispers, or why Ma agreed. She let Ma take Doris and baby Roy back home, keeping only me. Later, after everything that happened, I told myself that Miss Drummond must have made some awful threats to make Ma leave me the way she did. And Ma must never have realized what-all would happen next or how it would change everything.