“When did she die?”
He didn’t answer. He continued to stare at me like he might, however.
“Recently? No one else knows she died? Is that it? You built that coffin, didn’t you?” I said. “You’ve kept her death a secret.”
“I told you to stop talking about my mother.”
“You can’t leave it like this. Didn’t she have any friends? Don’t people ask after her? Doesn’t she have any relatives, a sister or a brother?”
“I told you, my mother didn’t have any brothers or sisters. She was like your mother. Her mother died a while back, and her father left them when she was only ten. We ain’t heard from him ever.” He smiled. “That’s why we’re so alike, Kaylee. We don’t spend time with relatives, remember? You don’t like your grandparents, and you don’t see your uncles or cousins much.”
“That was my sister who told you that,” I said. “You were talking to my sister, never to me.”
His face hardened again, and he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll play it like that if you want. It’ll be like the very first day you came here.”
“I didn’t come here. You brought me here against my will.”
“We’ll start all over,” he said, not listening. “It will just take a little longer than I hoped. It’s your fault. I’m sure you’re sorry, or you will be.”
He took away the tray even though I wasn’t finished and brought it to the sink. I watched him dump the food into a garbage bag and put the dishes and silverware in the sink. Then he turned, walked halfway to the bed, and paused.
“What you need is a little solitary,” he said. “What you got to understand is what it’s like to live alone wit
h no one to love you and care for you. Maybe then you’ll appreciate me. You won’t starve. There’s food, nothing special, nothing like what we would have together or what you’re used to having, and you got water. You take care of your own scrapes and bruises, too. The fixin’s are in the bathroom. Change those bandages every other day yourself. There’s no tender loving care now. I’m starting a new job. I wasn’t going to take it, but now I will. It’s not close by, so I won’t be home till late. You’ll get so you can’t wait for the sound of my footsteps upstairs. I know how that feels. You won’t hear nothing else but the house creaking. After a while, you won’t even like the sound of your own voice. You won’t even want to think.
“You want to know how I know about all this? My father kept me down here like that for almost two weeks when I was just ten. I didn’t have as much to eat as you do, and I didn’t have anything much to do. My mother was in the hospital. She had a heart thing and had to have an operation. He never told her about what he did to me and never brought me to see her. I didn’t cry while I was down here, at least not loud enough for him to hear. He didn’t let me out until a day before my mother came home, and he warned me not to tell her, or else. He said it would make her sick and she’d die, so I never told.”
He looked at the cat, who was sitting quietly and looking up at him as if he could understand every word. Then he reached down and picked him up.
“Mr. Moccasin won’t even be here for you to talk to. He goes upstairs until I say you’re ready and fit for family.”
He turned and walked out of the basement apartment. I heard the lock click into place.
If someone was mistakenly thought to be dead and woke up just as the coffin was closed over her, the sound would have been exactly the same.
13
Haylee
I fell asleep for quite a while. It was dark outside when I awoke, but the days were shorter now, so I knew it wasn’t that late. My bedroom door had been left partially open, the narrow slice of light from the chandelier in the hallway reaching my vanity-table mirror and reflecting eerie shadows on the wall, shapes that resembled fingers pressed against a glass pane. Kaylee might be looking out from some prison window and dreaming of rescue, I thought. A surge of regret washed over me, but I shook it off quickly.
Then I sat up and listened to see if anything new was happening. My stomach grumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten much today and now I was very hungry, so I got up, turned on the light to wipe the shadows off the wall, washed my face, and ran a brush through my hair. I could see the light blinking on my phone and checked it. There were seven messages. I imagined that the longer this went on, the more courageous our classmates would become. Most were probably afraid to hear bad news or had heard how upset I was and were afraid to talk to me.
Maybe their parents were telling them that they should be calling and offering to do whatever they could for me. That was fine. Later I would have a group of them trailing behind me and doing my bidding so they could think they were helping me cope with the terrible grief.
However, I wasn’t going to return to school for as long as I could avoid it, and I really didn’t expect too many visitors. I was afraid that, at least in the beginning when I did return, I would be treated like someone with a disease, the disease of sorrow. No one would want to invite me to parties or be funny in front of me. Over the next few days, teachers would send work home for me, but I really didn’t care. I was sure I would get away with procrastinating, and if I did do an assignment and did it poorly, they would still give me a passing grade. It would be cruel to do otherwise.
Milk the cow of compassion, I told myself. Enjoy it while you can.
When I started down the stairs, I could smell the aroma of reheated Chinese food. It was only a little past five. When the days were shorter, we ate earlier. The aromas heightened my hunger even more. I didn’t even bother to look in on Mother. To my surprise, she was already sitting at the dining-room table with Mrs. Lofter beside her, hovering over her. She was wearing one of her more colorful blouse-and-skirt outfits, and her hair was neatly pinned back. She wore her favorite ruby earrings and matching necklace, too. She had taken the time to do her makeup. No one who saw her sitting there would think anything even vaguely resembling sadness had entered this house. It was enough to make me pause for a moment and think that maybe it had all been a dream.
“Hey,” I heard.
Daddy appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing an apron and looked quite ridiculous. Was this, too, part of some therapy, his doing domestic work? I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times he had done anything in our kitchen before he had left us. He was never home in time to help and had claimed he was so bad in the kitchen that he would burn water when making tea.
“Hungry?” he asked. “Everyone else was starving, so I got things under way early.” He spoke loudly so his voice would carry into the dining room.
Everyone? I thought. Who’s everyone?