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40
THAIS
Atticus brought a catfish as long as his forearm from the pond; its silvery smooth body glistened with water underneath the noonday sun as it hung from his fingers by its mouth.
I raised my back from the rocking chair, my mouth already watering.
“Wow,” I said, “that’s a decent-sized fish. Line or pole?”
“This one was all you,” he told me, beaming, holding the fish up higher to display. “What did you bait that line with this time?”
“Just worms,” I said. “Be careful—catfish whiskers are like razorblades.”
Atticus flashed me a smile, and laid the fish on the chopping block; he pulled his knife from his boot.
I was sure that he knew how to clean a catfish, and all about the whiskers being razor-sharp, but he never corrected me.
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
The knife being my cue, I got up.
“I’m going down to the blackberry bush,” I told him and went down the steps. Before Atticus could get the words out, I turned with a big grin and said before he could, “And yes, I’ll be careful!”
He smiled, and I disappeared around the side of the house.
I hummed a song—the same song I always hummed and sometimes hardly realized—as I plucked blackberries from the tangled bush. I thought of my mother and of Sosie and how angry I was that they left the way they did. I loved and missed my mother and sister very much, but it hurt my heart to know they weren’t strong enough to stay in my life. “Maybe Sosie really did believe me dead,” I said aloud, absently dropping blackberries into the bowl cradled in my arm. But she could’ve made sure it was true. I would have. I would have demanded to see my sister’s body before I checked out like that. Damn her! Damn you, Sosie!
I dropped another blackberry into the bowl—my fingers plucked and pulled and separated with more emotion; they were getting tangled in the brambles.
But Momma—she knew we were alive. She knew we still needed her, but she just left. She just left. My fingers stung as they carelessly brushed and scraped against the thorny stalks, but I hardly noticed.
I hated these moments, when I would remember the things I wanted to forget. I wondered if they would ever go away for good. It was why when I, my sister, and my father, left our home in the suburbs and headed for the forest, that I’d made the decision to forget about my mother, to leave her behind:
“Hurry, girls!” my father had said, standing in the doorway with his shotgun on his back. “We have to leave. Now.” He motioned for us; there was anxiety in his face.
I, with a backpack strapped to my back stuffed full of the only possessions I could carry, stopped just as I’d started to rush outside to follow my father and sister.
My mother’s smiling face looked back at me from the wall set behind a 5x7 piece of glass. She sat with her dainty hands on my shoulders from behind. She wore her white-blonde hair loose about her face, and her favorite light pink lipstick. Her arms were covered in a blue blouse that clung to her small wrists. I could even recall my mother’s perfume in that moment—I’d always loved that perfume. I’d always loved that picture. It was taken when I was seven-years-old at a mother-daughter event at grade school. I was so proud to bring my mother to school that day.
“Thais! Now! We have to go!” my father called from the porch.
I looked at that photograph once more. I’d always thought I’d take it with me wherever I went.
“Bye Momma…”
I ran out the front door without closing it, and left the photograph hanging on the wall.
“Ssss!” I hissed, and snapped my hand away from the bush; the bowl fell to the ground. Blood trickled from my fingertip; I put the finger in my mouth and suckled the blood and sting away.
Leaves crunching underfoot sounded behind me and I whirled around, expecting to see Atticus standing there.
It was not Atticus.
My hand shot up, pressed against my chest.
“Hello,” a young man said.
I reached behind me for the gun Atticus told me to always, always take with me. It was not there. I couldn’t fit it behind a one-piece dress like I could a pair of pants.
