Tomorrow River

I thought he was going to give in because he took my hands in his, but then he bent my fingers back and pushed me down the rest of the steps. “This… it’s for your own good,” he said, and then the cellar doors banged shut and the padlock snapped closed and it was so dark.

He let us out soon after the morning birds began singing. He always comes before Lou and Mr. Cole report for duty, so they don’t know. Sometimes Papa’s still drunk and will inspect our knees to make sure we were repenting all night long. Sometimes he’ll have slept it off and come begging our forgiveness at dawn. Woody and I never know which of himselves he’ll be when he opens up those root cellar doors, so that’s why we got to kneel, just in case. When the sun came up this morning, he was still drunk.

“C’mon now,” I say, pressing that dangling bandage back onto Woody’s knee. “Up and at ’em.” When she doesn’t make a move to sit up straight, I give her hand a hard tug. “We don’t want Lou reporting to His Honor that we’re being recalcitrant, do we?” Despite the too-hot-for-June morning slicking her skin, my sister shivers. I give her nose an Eskimo rub. “No, pea, we certainly do not.”

Chapter Two

Louise of the Bayou has been acting more like Cleopatra of the Nile.

I guess it was about a month after Mama vanished that caretaking Mr. Cole must’ve mentioned to Papa that Woody and I needed some tending to and he was right. We weren’t eating regular and since neither one of us is exactly sure how to run the washing machine, you could smell us coming long before you saw us.

Papa would take care of us if he could, but he can’t. He’s too busy being sad. So that’s why Mr. Cole, who can read well enough but whose spelling is simply awful, had me sit down on his porch steps and write a letter to his niece in my absolute best penmanship:

Greetings and Salutations Miss Louise Marie Jackson,

How are you? We’ve got a lot in common because I was named after the place I was born the same way you are. Say, would you mind hopping a bus to come do for my sister and me? The quicker, the better?

Though I regret it now, I signed that letter with xxx’s and ooo’s so she couldn’t hardly refuse, could she.

Hoodoo-believing Louise arrived two weeks later on the Greyhound and ended up mostly liking it here at Lilyfield. The weather and the wildlife suit her. It’s not as sweltering and there are fewer skeeters and no gators like there are in Louisiana and she’s having a romance. What Lou doesn’t like about living with us is Papa. She warns Woody and me all the time with wide white eyeballs, “You gals better be sleepin’ with your shoes on. There’s no predictin’ what your pappy will do next. He’s actin’ like the worst kind of zombie there is-one of them irritable half-dead ones.”

Being from the deepest part of the South the way she is, Lou tends to exaggeration so that statement is only partially true. She knows good as Woody and me that Papa is entirely lively when it comes to his rules.

Woody and I come barging into the kitchen to find our housekeeper swaying her seventeen-year-old behind in front of the stove, keeping the beat to “Darlin’, darlin’, stand by me,” which is blaring out of the blue transistor radio that’s sitting on the windowsill above the sink.

I wish I could tell you that Lou looks like three miles of bad road, but she doesn’t. She’s got creamy toffee skin and legs up to here. A round rump. And a good chest, too. Pointy as two cookie cones. But just like folks are always saying, “Pretty is as pretty does,” and she doesn’t do much around here lately except treat Woody and me like two of her not-so-loyal subjects.

Lou ladles the flapjack batter into the black fry pan and gives us one of her dirty looks before she says, “It’s ’bout time. Why ya always gotta go up to that dumb fort anyways?”

On my way over to the sink, I don’t say to her, “Those little wood steps that lead up the trunk of the tree are real loose. Papa can’t get up ’em.”

The reason I don’t tell Lou or Mr. Cole or anybody else about His Honor coming after Woody and me is that I do not want his shiny reputation dulled. Nobody would ever suspect that he’s behaving the way he is towards us. When he goes out and about, it’s as one of the most respected men in this town, but when he’s home, I think being here reminds him more that his wife isn’t. He can’t help what’s happened to him, poor man. The liquor and his missing-Mama feelings are what’re doing him in. They’re getting mixed into some kind of heart- wrecking cocktail. Papa never used to drink all that much, but he started up after his wife vanished and it’s just gotten worse and worse. He’ll get better if I can find Mama. Not a doubt in my mind.

“Forts are for children,” Lou says. “You’re gettin’ too old for that sort of thing. Y’all should be thinking about attractin’ some boys. Look at the two of ya. All ratty and scuffed up. Don’t you know that young women’s got to take care of their skin? Men like it soft.” She smooths suet on hers. “Crawlin’ around on that fort floor, thas what’s wreckin’ your knees.”

“What’s that?” I turn on the sink water good and hard. Holding Woody’s hands beneath the warm stream and doing the same to mine, I point to the faucet and shout back, “Can’t hear you.”

“I know you can, Shen,” she shoots back. “Ya think I’m a fool?”

“I refuse to answer that on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” I say under my breath, wishing yet again we could get back the old Lou. She wasn’t always this harsh. Woody and I took to her the minute she came down those bus steps so timid in a patched gray dress, holding twin sticks of peppermint in front of her. I stepped forward to take her paper sack of belongings and said, “Welcome to the Commonwealth, Miss Louise. Thank you ever so much for comin’.” With a bashful smile, she said, “Yes, ma’am,” so quiet that I had to ask her to repeat herself, that’s how soft-spoken she was back then.

“We got big things ahead of us today,” I tell Woody once I’m done lathering, rinsing, and toweling us off. “Eat good.” I get her situated in her chair at the round wooden table. Tuck a napkin under her chin. Boy, we could use a bath. Her neck’s got a ring around it, so I bet mine does, too.

“I told ya yesterday and the day before that, you girls better be doin’ something useful with your time. Something besides gallivantin’,” Lou rants over her shoulder.

“FYI,” I say. “What we’re doing isn’t called gallivantin’. That means roaming without purpose, and we’re full to the brim with purpose, isn’t that right, Woody?”

Sometimes I throw out a line real quick like that, hoping to catch her forgetting that she doesn’t talk anymore, but like always, my sister doesn’t take the bait. She’s too busy wiggling her fingers through her hair. She’s been doing that sort of thing more and more lately. Repeating a task over and over and won’t stop unless I make her, which I immediately do. Lou will threaten to cut off Woody’s hair again if I don’t.

“FY… FI… gallivantin’… roamin’… call it whatever ya want.” Lou lowers her voice to its muddy bottom. “Ya know good as me, if His Honor finds out I’m lettin’ ya run loose like I is, there’s gonna be the devil to pay.” She reaches for one of my braids and wraps it around her hand. “You get caught runnin’ wild, your pappy’ll blame me. He could send me back home to the swamp, but… hey now, that’d suit you just fine, wouldn’t it, sis?” she says, bending my head back to hers. “Ya better remember that deal we got. Or else.”

What her highness is referring to is the fact that our father made Woody and me vow not to step one foot off Lilyfield. He even hired Miss Bainbridge to come school us but she had to go have a baby. I wish I could, but I can’t tell you exactly why Papa’s been acting more and more like a jailer and less and less like a father. My suspicion is that he’s worried sick that if he allows his precious girls out of his sight we could disappear the same way his beloved wife has. That’s why I recently had to make Lou a turn-in-two-circles-jump-over-a-broom hoodoo promise that if she’d let Woody and me escape while Papa’s out on his ride every morning, I’d do the bathroom scrubbing for her. Papa passes out early most evenings, which has allowed my sister and me to sneak off to town, but I discovered that’s not a good time to ask folks questions since most have settled in for the night and don’t want to be bothered. There’s a lot at stake here and it’s getting more dire by the second. We have to up our ante. Woody and I need to leave Lilyfield during daytime hours if we’re going to shed any light on the subject of Mama’s vanishing.