Kate Arden McMullen received her MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Her work has appeared in Paper Darts, The Boiler, Foglifter, and The Pinch. She is assistant director of Hub City Press and lives in Spartanburg, SC.
We were everybody in the kitchen together. Little Lily eating peanut butter straight from the jar at the kitchen table. Digging it out with a white plastic knife. Me trying to get my toenails painted perfect, pretty blue I borrowed from Mag. Daddy at the deep sink taking the head off the brook trout he caught with Mr. Brady. Elis texting on his new phone, the skinny ones that slide sideways. Probably talking to Mag, since they’re kind of dating now. He stops to watch Daddy gut the fish. This big cleaver we got, Daddy rings it sharp across the long steel, raises it, and hacks the heads clean.
These are good trout, the ones that come from the creek down the edge of our property near the Yancey county line. There’s a bunch of people living in tents on the other side. I never seen them but everybody talks about it. Mama says we’re not supposed to call it a cult but Elis says that’s what it is.
This blue polish I got from Mag, she called it robin’s egg. Said it was cute for springtime. Ending February now but there’s snow on the ground. Nice knowing my toes will be pretty in my boots.
Elis asks Daddy, Who’d you say you went out with?
Brady. Daddy’s skinning the trout now, don’t even look up when he talks.
He got that crazy daughter?
Hush.
The Brady girl’s Mag age, same class at the high school. They weren’t friends or nothing. Late last year the Brady girl opened her arm wrist to elbow with a little trimming knife she stole from the art room. She’s on the church prayer list.
She lives with those tent people now, I say.
Lily’s mouth full of peanut butter. What tent people?
Put that away, Daddy says to Lily and takes the jar from her hands. She licks on her fingers.
Who told you that? Elis asks me.
Mag.
She’s lying. That girl’s in a crazyhouse somewhere.
Ain’t your business, Daddy says. He takes another knife and cuts long across the white flesh. Come bread these, Baby, he says to me.
I’m in the middle but everybody calls me Baby. Even though I’m full-grown now Mama says since I got my first-ever period last month.
I make one bowl with cornmeal and one with eggs how Mama taught me. You dip in the cornmeal and then the eggs and then the cornmeal and then the eggs again, and then it’s got to sit.
Daddy likes having us all at the table for dinner like good Christians. Mama used to ride him for working late, missing dinner. Then Daddy got laid off and Mama took the job at the big hospital in Asheville and we don’t see her much now.
Mama when she comes home gets all worried about the tent people. Says it’s too cold to live outside, and they don’t wear much clothes. She went out there one time with some old coats. She said one of the girls is pregnant. She said she thinks about that girl all day, since that’s what Mama does, watches over all the babies in the big hospital.
Baby, can you paint my toes too? Lily asks.
You’re too young, I say.
When then?
Daddy passes me the big cast iron.
Elis stands up. Daddy, I told Trev I’d buy beer tonight, he says.
You got money.
Yeah but—
You got money.
Okay. Elis leans up on the window and squints out. The snow is dirty and patchy on the dark grass. The winter sun makes a big stretchy shadow of the knobby maple where our family dogs get buried. One time Elis shot the trunk with a pellet gun and the little ball stuck in there and the trunk grew around it until it swallowed it.
Daddy scoops the bacon fat from the jar into the skillet and goes out the room. We can all hear him peeing in the bathroom down the narrow hallway.
Lily still chewing on the plastic knife. What tent people? she asks.
Elis grins at her. There’s a bunch of naked ladies living over the trout creek.
Ew, Lily says.
He leans toward her so he’s hanging over her face. They dance all naked around big fires and worship the devil and eat little girls.
Do they, Baby?
No.
Yup, Elis says.
I drop the first trout into the hot pan. The sizzle hits my arms and I jump backward.
Elis laughs.
I don’t like the fish bones, Lily says.
You don’t eat the bones.
The naked ladies do, Elis says. The bones of little girls.
Quit it, I say. Mag says they’re just hippies.
How does she know the Brady girl is out there?
Don’t know. Ain’t you friends with her brother, Elis?
Brady’s just got the one daughter, he says.
I thought she had a brother.
Elis yells down the hall. Dad, Brady have more than one kid?
Daddy comes back in the kitchen, slides past me to check the fish. Set the table, he says. He flips the fish over. Those people ain’t your business, he adds. Then he turns around and finds each of our eyes in turn. Yes?
Yessir, all of us.
We are all of us eating in silence. Mama comes home tomorrow night. Until then Daddy lets Elis drink beer with him at the table. I did the breading good, and the fish is soft in the crunchy crust. Lily is picking carefully through the meat for the small thin bones.
After dinner the house empties, goes dark. Elis leaves, Daddy falls asleep with Lily in his lap and football replays on. I step out on the porch. The dark and cold stings my cheeks red. The trout creek is miles away, but I squint into the night anyway. I don’t see nothing, not even a fire.
. . .
In my parents’ empty room, Mag and I lay like snow angels on the big bed. They called off school because it almost snowed. Elis went off somewhere, and Daddy off trying to find work so he can tell Mama he did. We have the house to ourselves.
I show Mag my painted toenails and she fixes the messed up parts for me. Says I can keep the robin’s egg color since she don’t wear it much. I go put it on my shelf where I keep all my best things: a purple rabbit’s foot, my grandma’s gold ring with the real pearl in it, a pressed pansy, a ticket when Daddy took us to see Hank Williams Jr.
When I come back, Mag is opening my mama’s top dresser drawer.
Stop, I say. I don’t really mean it, and she don’t listen anyway.
Mag lifts everything careful, so nothing gets out of place. I never knew my mama folded her underwear so neat.
What are you looking for?
Mag shrugs.
I take a few steps into the room. For a second, I don’t know why, I hope we get caught.
What are you looking for?
Secrets? I don’t know. Why not?
I sit on the bed, half-watching. How’d you know about the Brady girl living with the tent people? I ask.
Mag moves to the middle compartment of the dresser. I seen her.
Yeah?
Have I ever lied to you?
Yes.
Well, I did.
Mama says one’s pregnant. Do you think it’s her?
Mag shrugs. Maybe. She unfurls a pair of red silk panties from the back of the drawer. Oh my God.
What?
She throws them at me. You’re useless.
The panties fall on the floor and I pick them up, put them next to me on the bed. I guess you never think about your mama being pretty for your daddy. You hardly ever think, that’s her husband, they love each other.
Mag ain’t that much older than me but she’s had three boyfriends before Elis. I thought I was supposed to have a boyfriend by now. Mama is always saying your chance will come, but what does that look like? Bobby Coon took me to the last dance and then he moved across the county. Mama told Elis once that not as many kids are having sex as he thinks but that can’t be right either. I think a girl my age ought to know how it all works, what it’s supposed to be like when a boy wants you, and you want him. How you get to that point where you come together. But nobody ever told me. What happens to me if no one does? I’m already fourteen. Seems late now to ask.
I leave Mag to go check on my sister, find her sleeping on my bed. I lean down over her and get her hot breath in my face. When Mama comes home she sleeps for a long time. Lily and I sit with her sometimes in the dark. My little sister sleeps against me and I watch the light change.
I close the door on Lily sleeping. I don’t notice until I’m back in the hallway that I got Mama’s underwear balled up in my hand.
. . .
Elis lets me drive the truck into town for groceries so I don’t tell Daddy about the cigarettes I know he’s buying. Elis sits on the middle hump of the bench seat, Mag on his other side. They hold hands the whole way, Elis’s thumb rubbing her jeans. I got to remind myself to watch the road. The heater is busted and our breath hazes out in clouds.
A bunch of high school boys stand clumped outside the store, smoking on the stoop. Elis hands me the list and the money and stays outside. Mag splits off to look at makeup.
Tiffany, one of the clerks, calls Hey Baby, and I wave. Mama brought me last year to help Tiffany have her baby, since they couldn’t get to a hospital. That happens to lots of girls out here. One time it went bad and a girl died, but that was a few years ago. Mostly they’re okay.
No school? Tiffany says.
They got worried about the busses in the snow.
What snow? she jokes.
Mag pops her head around the end cap, holding one of those black four-step eye shadow kits. Tiffany, she says, can I pull off that dark purple?
Ooh yeah, Tiffany says. You got to buy that one so I can try it.
I ask, Where’s the veggie oil at?
Tiffany points, then laughs. I’m not supposed to point. Boss gets mad at me.
I won’t tell.
She smiles. How’s your mama?
Busy.
She’s one of my favorite people.
It feels funny to be talking about Mama while I’m wearing her nice undies. I just say, I’ll tell her you said hi.
Yeah please do that.
Yes ma’am.
Tiffany makes a face. Wait til you’re old enough to get ma’amed, Baby. Makes you feel funny.
I can hear Elis and his friends from all the way in here, but not exactly what they’re saying. I can hear laughing. I always wanted to be the kind of girl boys talk about when I leave. I don’t think they’re talking about me. Mag steps closer to the door and leans out. I hand Tiffany my basket and the money and walk over too.
Elis is talking, says, Mag said the Brady girl’s living with those people out by our land.
The crazy one?
Uh huh. Mag says she’s been out there but she lies.
Mag, another boy yells, laughing. Says, You sure lucked the fuck out. He jabs my brother in the ribs and then draws the shape of her with his pointer fingers.
Elis shrugs. Look, she does okay, but the best part is when she wants to talk I just tell her we ought to screw around and she don’t care either way.
Mag turns around and her cheeks are red. I go back to the counter and Tiffany hands me the change. Mag, I say. I mean to tell her it’s okay if she didn’t really see the Brady girl, or go out there to the tent people at all. I don’t know what to do about the other part, what the boys, my brother, are saying.
Mag walks past me and smacks the eye shadow down on the counter. Tiffany rings her up and nobody says anything else.
Elis takes the backroads home, along the trout stream. Mag pulls her new makeup out and puts it on in the mirror. It looks real pretty, even though the road is bumpy.
In the backseat, I try to find the tent people, but Elis drives too fast. I do hope the Brady girl is happy there. She got to just up and go, maybe because everybody already thought she was crazy.
After Mag left yesterday, I got naked in front of the old mirror in my room and pulled on the red underwear. I just stood there looking for a long time.
. . .
Before Mama gets home, after it gets dark, I walk out to the trout creek. I put a big coat over two sweaters, keep my hands deep in my pockets. The just-set sun turns the sky a weird blue, and soon it will be too dark to see much of anything. The closer I get, the more I’m sure there’s a fire out there, a glowy speck getting brighter.
Mama’s panties are on under all my clothes. I don’t know if that’s wrong or gross or weird. They’re a little big, but I like how soft, the color underneath everything, and that they were hidden, like something special.
The trout creek makes a long bend at the edge of our land on the county line. When I was little Daddy told us how to cup our hands around our ears to listen for water. We used to sit on the porch and listen for the trout creek. The fire turns orange and white and yellow. Back from the water shadows move against the light. I can’t see faces and from here they are hardly people at all, just smudges with arms and legs. The tents make low triangles in the background.
The creek is wide here. I put my bare hand in and it cramps hard with the cold. A woman’s big laugh carries from the campsite. Too cold to cross, but where it’s wide it’s shallow. I put one foot in, then the other.
I regret crossing once I make it. Just ankle deep at the bend but my feet prickle and go numb, and the water soaks up my pants. Dumb enough to forget I’d have to go back across after I’m done looking.
More laughing the closer I get, and the shadows turn people-shaped. The tents are in a close circle around the fire, not so big as everyone says the campsite is. I stop when my stomach turns. Nobody is naked, and I’m as happy for them as I am disappointed. I walk a little closer, lean against a tree maybe thirty yards from the tents. I can’t tell if anyone is pregnant.
A girl by the fire is turning the skin from a dead rabbit. Her face is too shadowed to see if it’s the Brady girl. A big shiver runs up my back. The girl at the fire picks up a short-bladed knife and runs it up the rabbit’s belly, pulls its insides free. Someone calls her and she looks up, laughing, her face in full light now but I still can’t see who it is.
The closest tent is backed up against a big tree, and I swing wide to come up behind it. I can see the girl side-on now, while she cracks the rabbit’s rib cage open to butterfly it.
A woman comes out of a tent at the back of the circle, wearing a big long purple coat. Before I can see her face, I know it’s Mama.
She steps closer and closer to the fire, and I get so afraid she’ll see me I turn my face away. When I can make myself look again, the woman is talking to the girl with the rabbit, and she’s not Mama. She’s just in Mama’s big winter coat. One she brought out to the tent people for the cold.
I turn around then. I don’t feel the water when I cross over at the bend. So cold and shivering now that my head hurts. I bite my tongue hard with chattering teeth.
I get inside without anyone seeing me, head straight for the shower. I keep Mama’s underwear on like a bikini bottom. My red panties and my robin’s egg toes. Even after the hot water goes I’m still cold.
Maybe the Brady girl isn’t cold because she is happy. She is running a knife through the gut of a rabbit, bloody to her wrists, and the fire is waiting behind her.
•
