Tomorrow River

Chapter Sixteen

Woody must’ve actually seen Mama in the woods on carnival night.

That’s what the drawing about Mars and the suitcase is all about. That’s why it looks so real. My sister was an eyewitness to my mother’s departure.

I’m filled with sadness, but not completely shocked. I thought for a while that she might’ve witnessed something, but I never followed-up on that. Now, I got no choice. Woody’s picture confirms what I’ve been too scared to admit to myself. Mama’s run off.

I can’t be sure, of course, but admitting this truth about her leaving of her own free will instead of fooling myself into believing that she’ll be back any minute or she’s just taken a trip to Italy or she’s got amnesia or even that she’s been nabbed-I really do feel a little freer. The lies have loosened their hold some. The worst one was thinking that Mama was being held forcibly against her will somewhere dark. Woody and I know all about that.

Our mother couldn’t possibly have known how sad, no-mad- Papa would get when she took off. They were barely speaking to each other around the time she disappeared.

When they were in a room together it was like watching two icebergs scrape against each other in a polar night. Mama must’ve believed that her husband would be so pleased to have a break from his sassy wife that he’d go back to being warm and cuddly, which would be the best possible thing to happen for her beloved girls.

Her leaving was one thing, but an entirely different beast if she’d taken us with her. Mama is only married to him, but Woody and I have Carmody blood running through our veins. We belong to Papa. She knew that His Honor would’ve come after us with the full force of the law. When he found us, he would’ve been disappointed within an inch of our lives.

Woody is still on the edge of the bed, staring down at her drawing of suitcase-toting Mars. I pat her hand and say, “I understand now. You’re trying to tell me in this picture that you saw Mama leavin’ that night from up in the fort, right?” She doesn’t nod yes, but that has to be what happened. “We’ve got to find her. I already searched for her diary. It’s not in the stronghold where it’s supposed to be. There’s got to be something in it that would help us find out where she’s gone off to. I bet she’s been writin’ us every single day with directions on where to find her. Papa must be keeping the letters from us. Or maybe Daryle Lawson didn’t bother delivering them.” Our mailman could author a book entitled I Am Lazy. “Do you know where her diary is, pea? You do, don’t you?”

Woody rushes over to our dresser and I can’t believe she’s had it this whole time. I feel crushed as I watch her rummaging through the drawers. She never kept secrets from me in the past.

When she finds what she’s looking for, she comes back and sets it on my lap. But it’s not Mama’s little blue diary. It’s another one of Woody’s drawing pads. She wants to show me more of her pictures. The pad feels like dead weight. It’s my guilty conscience that’s weighing it down, I know it is.

Since she was born the more delicate of us, I knew that Woody would need the kind of tending that only a mother can provide, so I stepped into Mama’s shoes after she vanished.

Thinking it might help, the way putting on church clothes makes you feel more holy, I put on her cardigan sweaters that still smelled of her Chanel No. 5 and stuck her tortoiseshell combs into the top of my head, strands of her honey hair blending into mine. But to look down and see my legs in her rolled-up pants and to smell her, you know. That was bad.

So I stopped trying to look like her and started doing all the rest of things Mama would have done were she here. I sang show tunes to my sister. Tickled her behind the ears. I even tried to look at her drawings and write something complimentary at the bottom of the page like Mama would have. But the pictures weren’t like the ones Woody used to do of butterflies frolicking over a minty meadow or a rainbow with a pot of glittering gold. After Mama disappeared, my sister’s pictures became so gruesome. I told myself that she was just having a “Blue Period,” like Mr. Pablo Picasso had. I even scribbled things like, “Wow! Look at those snarling teeth. And that ghost dripping blood? Only a genius would think of that” on the bottom of her drawings. I kept thinking this morbidness was only temporary like everything else that was happening to us. Soon, I told myself, Woody’s pictures will get perky again, but they never did. I finally admitted to myself that my once- sunny sister had been sucked into a world of darkness that I couldn’t afford to follow her into. I couldn’t let myself get so despairing again, which these hellish pictures could do to a person if they stared at them. No. Not if I was going to be the one that took care of us. So when Woody tried to show me her drawings, I began closing my eyes or looking away. Said stuff like, “How about a game of tiddlywinks?” or “Let’s go see what E. J. is up to.”

I see now that was not only cowardly, it was another one of my big mistakes.

She wasn’t being morbid. Well, maybe she was just a little, but just like this picture of Mars, I think Woody has also been trying to tell me something important in her art. Something about the night Mama vanished. Like a drawn-out charade. Yes, I’m sure of it.

“I let you down before,” I tell her, biting back the disgust I’m feeling towards myself. What a coward I’ve been. “I’m ready now. Show me.”

When she notices how bad my hands are shaking, she flips open the cover of the drawing pad for me.

The first picture takes the rest of my breath away. It’s our gorgeous mother with her short hair. It makes me recall the morning she lopped it off.

We were sitting on the back porch steps, the three of us. The hose was running across our feet and Mama was humming “Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair” while she trimmed Woody’s and my bangs. When she was done snipping, she let out a sigh, and said, like she’d been thinking about it for a long, long time, “I’ve had just about enough of this.” She gathered the thick coil off her neck and took the shears to it. I had no time to beg her not to, her crowning glory was already lying at my feet. She ran her fingers through what was left. Picked up the hose, doused her head, and shook it. “That’s much better. Lighter. Freer.”

Woody squealed, “You look like the movie actress Mia Farrow,” but I thought she was acting crazy. Had Mama forgotten what Papa had told her about never cutting her hair?

Later that afternoon she came out to the fort with a couple of sandwiches and two soda pops. His Honor was due home from the courthouse at any minute. She called up to us, “Stay put for a while, peas. I fear there are rough seas ahead,” and she wasn’t acting so full of herself anymore.

Woody got dewy-eyed and shouted back all stuttery, “No matter what he says, I love your pixie cut.”

I pretended I didn’t hear Mama as she headed back up to the house heavy-legged. She stopped at the rose garden to give us a weak wave. That’s when I lost my temper and told Woody, “I don’t see what you’re so upset about. She’s bringin’ this on herself. She knows how much he loves her long hair.”

Oh, how I wish I had that afternoon back. I would’ve complimented her, too. Thrown her kisses, shouted, “Good luck” or “Buona fortuna.”

There’s somebody standing above Mama in Woody’s drawing. It’s hard to tell if it’s a man or a woman.

“Who’s that supposed to be?” I ask, pointing to the barely there figure. “Papa?” If I got to face this, she might at least lend a helping hand. She could pick up a crayon and write, Shenny, quit being dumb as a bag of hammers. Can’t you see that’s a picture of ____________________? Is that too much to ask?

Woody jumps off the bed and rushes to the window, starts wildly gesturing. I head to her side and cinch my hands around her waist. I look in the direction of the reading bench and then the clearing that Mama vanished from that sits right behind it. There’s nothing there. My twin is going absolutely bat shit. Flapping her arms and making this weird noise that sounds like a going-dead car battery. Whatever she was trying to tell me about the drawing is long gone. She’s just acting up now.

“C’mon. That’s enough.” I’m tugging with all I’ve got. She can get like this sometimes. Especially after an encounter with Papa. Hard to work with as a piece of Saran Wrap. “Let go of the sill. Let go!” When she does, we fall backward into a heap onto the carpet. We roll around for a while until she straddles my stomach and pins my hands. “Maybe I should sell you to the carnival, not as Mule Girl but… Wrassling Woody.” I laugh, but when she gets her hands around my neck and starts squeezing it’s not so funny anymore. “What are ya doin’? You’re… I can’t… breathe!” I say, chopping at her arms to break her hold.

She lets go and looks down at me, hurt and confused.

That’s when I get what she was gesturing to from the window. It had to be the Minnow place. “Woody, don’t cry.” She’s still sitting on my tummy, her chest heaving and her hair going every which way. Suddenly, I realize I