“We’ll head to Atlanta tonight,” she informed them. “First taskforce meeting will be bright and early in the morning, and our work starts immediately after that.”
Keith didn’t speak. He simply shut his laptop and rose to standing, clearly having made his decision.
As for Flora, D.D. knew there was never any doubt. Wherever Jacob Ness went, now as before, Flora Dane followed. It was both an impressive show of strength and a sad testimony of survivorship.
“You have the tickets?” Flora asked.
“Our Delta flight leaves out of Logan, nine oh two P.M.”
“We’ll see you at the airport.”
CHAPTER 4
DO YOU HAVE A NAME?
I can almost remember mine. It hovers on the edge of my memory. I lost it the night the Bad Man came, and the gun exploded. Then my mother was gone, and my words went with her.
I see a picture. Hazy, shimmering around the edges. Sometimes I get a fragrance, like a flower. Other times the image dims, becomes silvery like the moon. Then I can hear my mother’s voice, soft and low. Humming. Walking around the house, washing our clothes, stirring the pots on the stove, she was always humming. Sometimes, I try to hum again. I place my hand against my throat, feeling for the vibration. I have a memory of sound, of words, of lips that worked and a mouth that spoke. But no matter how much I focus on my mother’s hum, will her happiness into my throat, I can’t make anything come out.
The Bad Man came. My mother told me to run but I didn’t. And our pack of two is no more.
Girl. That is what they call me now. Girl, do this. Girl, wash that. Girl, come here. Girl, go away.
I picture the bad people as black shadows with narrow eyes. The men, the women, they all appear the same to me: a mass of darkness I walk among every day, fetching this, tending that. I keep my head down, my feet silent as I hobble through the halls, dragging my weak leg behind me.
I have a scar. Long and searing across my temple into my hairline. And my left eye and the corner of my mouth droop, my face appearing slightly melted. But I don’t mind my scar. In the middle of the night, I trace the thick ridges with my finger over and over again. This is my mother. The last piece of her I will ever have. Like the special pottery she had from her own mother. You don’t have to own many things, you just have to have the right things.
“Run,” my mother said.
But I didn’t. I turned. I reached out my arms for her.
The crack of the bullet. My mother falling, myself falling.
The Bad Man standing over me.
Girl, fetch that.
Quiet as a mouse, I do, I do, I do.
* * *
—
I HAVE MY ROOM. A tiny closet with a thin sleeping pad and two threadbare blankets. I sleep in my clothes, because once I didn’t and I was sorry. Besides, the bell might ring. Don’t be slow, never be late. Follow the rules and in return, I get pieces of plain white paper and boxes of beloved crayons. I can’t talk or read or write, but I can draw. Pictures, images, symbols. If I am not washing, fetching, tending, I draw.
Some are beautiful, and I hide them under my sleeping pad, though they always disappear sooner or later. I imagine shadow beasts gleefully feeding sheets of bright color to roaring flames, delighting in their power to rob the world of one more speck of light. But I draw more images of green grass, and blue sky, and red and blue tiles, and fountains that bubble with the sound of laughing children because I believe my pictures can sing, even though the beasts don’t hear them. And the monsters can feed the fire as much as they want, because I always have the pictures in my head, and I can repeat them again and again.
A girl must take her victories where she can find them.
Some of my pictures make me cry. Or maybe I’m already crying when I pick up the crayons, and the colored wax weeps with me. I don’t let these drawings survive. I color the paper black. I scribble so hard the paper tears, the crayon breaks. Still I rub, rub, rub till the very floor trembles with the force of my agony.
Then I tear up the page into the teeniest, tiniest pieces. Bite-sized. And I take all that sadness back inside me, cleaning the floor, sweeping up the shredded bits of wax, because I don’t want to leave any trace of my pain behind.
I don’t want the bad people to know that much about me.
Girl, you are stupid, they say.
I don’t nod. I don’t acknowledge them. I let them believe what they want to believe.
Shadows can hurt. They can rob the world of light and ooze into all the cracks and crevices. But no shadow can last forever.
People are coming.
They murmur urgently.
I listen harder. I try to hear more. I can’t learn any details, but something has changed. A discovery in the mountains, something bad for the shadow beasts—so, maybe good for the rest of us?
People are coming. That much is clear. And the Bad Man is concerned.
I must ramp up my own efforts. Tiny little stolen moments in the bathroom, staring at my reflection above the sink, using my fingers to smash my lips, pull on my tongue. Move, roll, speak. I squish my lips into a perfect rosebud and try to exhale. Puh, puh, puh. I hold my palm in front of my lips, waiting to feel the expulsion of air. But I get nothing.
People are coming and all these years later, I’m the same Dumb Girl I’ve always been.
I know what will come next.
Screams in the middle of the night. Sounds from girls who will never make another sound. I feel it, too—something here, then gone, like a tear in the universe.
At night, I huddle deeper in my closet. Waiting for the door to open. Knowing soon it will be my turn. And I try, because I have to try. Because somewhere way down deep, I am my mother’s daughter and I feel her inside of me, as surely as the bullet lodged in my skull.
I get out my pieces of paper. I try to picture those awful lines I see on other scattered documents. If I could just arrange those shapes in the proper order, form words, sentences, meaning. They’re a code everyone understands but me. The right sequence unlocks language, except I just can’t seem to manage it. The lines run away from me. They have minds of their own, and won’t stay where I put them.
I try to start simply. Names. I want to write the names of the other girls because everyone has a name. Everyone but me, but someday I will get mine back. Until then, the least I can do is remember, make a record of all those who’ve been lost. Maybe these people who are coming, they will care, they will help. If only I could talk, write, grunt.
So I struggle, trying to force my clawed hand to grip the crayon, drag down, across, into the shape of these mystery letters. But I can’t get it. The lines grow blurry. Then they dance, bounce up and down on the paper to prove I don’t own them, I don’t understand them at all.