“Last night I baked corn bread, but the house got so hot I thought the furniture would melt. That old air conditioner doesn’t do squat!”
Breathing heavily with her effort, Dottie began to fasten the string to the other end of the branch.
“Three-C called this morning. Somebody needs to explain to him that he’s never going to be my real dad, not to mention being a dad doesn’t require knowing every single minuscule fact about your child’s life.” Mercedes slid Mo a sideways look. “Your dad’s living proof, right?”
Mercedes knew that Mo had destroyed the Letter. She also knew Mo did not exactly feel great about it, so did she have to bring it up?
“He would just have torn it up himself,” Mo said. “I saved him the trouble.”
Dottie gnawed the end of a green twig. For someone who ate so much candy, her teeth were surprisingly strong.
“Right,” Mercedes agreed. “I’m just saying-”
“Watch this!” Dottie positioned her contraption at arm’s length. Fitting the tip of the chewed-up twig to the string, she arched her back, aimed at the sky, and let fly. The twig made a graceful loop-the-loop and landed at her feet. Dottie scowled, picked up the stick, and tried again. And again.
“Dottie, if you don’t mind my asking, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Bringing the rain!”
Mercedes’s face softened. “Did Da read you that book? That was one of my favorites. Kapiti Plain, where it hasn’t rained so long, all the crops are shriveling up and the animals are dying, so this guy finds an eagle feather and makes an arrow and-”
“And he shoots the clouds and the rain comes pouring down!” Dottie slapped her forehead. “I forgot the feather-no wonder.” She charged off, dry brush crackling beneath her feet.
“At least I don’t have a little sister.” Mercedes stood up. “Things could be much, much worse.” She dusted off her beautiful black jeans. “Da still gets tired by afternoon. I have to make sure she takes her rest. Not to mention takes her pills and rubs the ointment on her feet.” Mercedes counted off her duties on her long fingers. “Three-C says she should have recovered from the surgery by now. He says if she lived with us, she’d be seriously healthier.” She heaved a sigh. “I’m going.”
When Mercedes was gone, Mo tidied up the Den. Every summer till now, Da had fussed over Mercedes as if she were Queen of the Nile. Now it was Mercedes’s turn to be the caretaker. No wonder she was a little grumpy and thoughtless. Not to say coldhearted.
Mo set off to fetch Dottie.
Scat
NOT THAT SHE CALLED her little sister’s name. Not yet.
Clumsy human that she was, Mo struggled to keep upright as she made her way down toward the stream.
Mo tripped over a sticking-up root, tilted backward, landed on her butt, and slid downhill, digging in her heels just in time to prevent scraping her shin against a rusty fender. Flat on her back, dumb as a turkey on a platter.
But then, as she lay there, something began to happen. Slowly, gently, as if she were dreaming with her eyes open, Mo sensed she was no longer alone. The air turned beamy, the rays of the sun weaving themselves into a beautiful quilt. It floated over her, tucked itself in around her. Aah. How safe she felt. Something was watching over her.
The fox, her fox, was nearby. Mo just knew it.
She held as still as she could.
Still as a stone.
Waiting.
Still as a root.
Waiting.
Till at last, with a sigh, she stood back up. She brushed off her backside and broke the woods’ stubborn silence.
“Dottie!”
The only answer was the squawk of a jay. The wild-flowers drooped. The leaves curled in limp cylinders. As Mo made her way downhill, the angle of the slope sharpened, turning stony and treacherous just before it gave way to the pebbled banks of the stream. Dottie was not allowed down here, period, but she was triple not allowed near the water.
“I know you hear me!”
What if she didn’t? How long since Dottie had left the Den? How long had Mo lain there, waiting? She couldn’t be sure.
The lip of the ravine was all shale, stacked neatly as a high stone wall. The only way down was to jump, and Mo did, landing in slick mud. Most summers the stream brimmed from bank to bank, from here to where the land sloped up again, then flattened out to become the Metropark. Normally it was wide enough for a stone to take three or four skips across it, but this year it had dwindled down to a measly trickle.
If it didn’t rain soon, what would the fox find to drink? By now she probably had kits, who’d be thirsty and depending on her.
“Dorothea Wren!” Mo scanned the edges of the water, and sure enough, a trail of small footprints led straight in. “You’re really going to get it now!”
The Metropark was vast, acres and acres of dark woods. Beyond that lay the ball fields, where on week-days the kinds of strangers anybody would have the sense to avoid-anybody but Dottie-hung out and smoked and sold stuff. And then there were the parking lots where teenagers loved to drink beer and squeal their tires and not look where they were going at fifty miles per hour.
Mo splashed across the stream. She staggered through a patch of wild raspberries, the prickers catching at her shorts and scratching her legs. She had one more fleeting thought of the fox, who’d enjoy those juicy berries. But then thoughts of everything except Dottie fell away. Spruce and hemlock grew here, tall dark trees that blocked the sky and made her shiver. Imagine if you were barely bigger than a fire hydrant. Imagine how confusing it would all be then.
Why hadn’t she gone after Dottie right away, instead of lying there so long, waiting for something that never came? Stupid, stupid!
“Dottie!” The two syllables echoed as if flung off the edge of a cliff or against the walls of a cavern. “Dot… teeee!”
The trees began to thin out, and now Mo glimpsed pavement. She ran forward, coming out on a sparkling asphalt desert. No cars. No people. Nothing moved. Two large Dumpsters hulked side by side, like the last things left on Earth.
Mo cupped her hands over her mouth, drew her breath up from her belly, and shouted. “DOTTIE WREN! WHERE ARE YOU?”
A mirage. A hallucination. A rust-colored animal poked up from inside the far Dumpster. Mo froze, her heart beating up in her ears.
“It’s a mama! Her name’s Georgene.” Dottie waved a brown bottle.
“I will kill you,” cried Mo. “I will decapitate you and use your head for a bowling ball! I will…How the heck did you get in there?”
However she’d managed, it must have been easier than getting out. That entailed Mo catching her when she scrambled over the side, odoriferous and soaking-she’d managed to fall into the stream after all. Mo wasn’t even a
