Page 59 of Score
“It’s a trick. Trick. Trick. Trick. Trick. Trick.”
“Will,” Mama hisses, her eyes wide and her hands balled at her sides. “You scaring me.”
“Now you scared of me?” His voice booms, and it’s terrifying, but not because he sounds angry, but because he sounds lost. So scared under it all.
Mama walks over to him, lays her hand on his arm. “Will, let me call—”
“Don’t touch me!” Startling like a spooked horse, he shoves her away, as if her touch were hot coals, and hurls the phone across the room. “Not after what you did.”
It feels like Mama falls back in slow motion. I want to run into the room, but I’m too slow. I’m too late. There’s lead in my feet as Mama falls and her head slams into the edge of the coffee table with a dullthump.
Her yelp of pain sets my feet in motion. I charge into the room, stopping short at the sight of Mama crumpled on the floor, a line of blood streaming from her hairline. Daddy stands over her, blinking rapidly and still pounding his fist into his temple.
“No, no, no, no,” he whimpers, sinking to the floor, eyes squeezed shut and his back pressed to the couch. “Bernie, baby. Bernie. Bernie.”
“Mama.” Tears run into the corners of my mouth as I caress her hair, my fingers coming away smeared with blood.
I take in the shattered cell and the kitchen phone useless on the floor.
“Daddy!” I scream, turning to him. “Where’s your phone?”
He shakes his head, covers his ears, and wails. I scramble across the floor to him at the couch and search his pockets. Nothing, except his old beat-up wallet.
“Your phone!” I sob, panic and tears choking the words. “I gotta call for help.”
I shake his shoulder, but it’s like he doesn’t hear me, like I’m not here.
“It’s in the walls,” he mutters, eyes squeezed shut and hands flattened to cover his ears.
I jump up and rush out the front door. The gravel pathway to Aunt Roz’s has never felt so long. The sharp rocks cut into my bare feet, and I veer into the grass so I can run faster. The gravel gives way to a worn path of Georgia mud. I’ve run so hard that my leg starts cramping by the time Aunt Rosalyn’s neat little house comes into view. I trip up the steps and bang on the door.
The screen door swings open, and Aunt Roz, already dressed for bed in one of her floor-length nightgowns and a scarf tied around her rollers, looks out at the porch suspiciously until she turns on the light.
“Oh, it’s you.” A smile illuminates her plump face. “What you doin’ here this late, Vee Tee? Y’all outta milk again?”
“Help” is all I manage to get out, my voice choked with tears. “Mama fell and Daddy…” I can’t sort out my thoughts long enough to explain any more. “Call 911!”
“Nine-one-one?” Aunt Roz straightens and walks out to the porch. “You say Bernadette fell?”
“Your phone,” I gasp, bent over with my hands on my knees. “He broke the phones. Call 911.”
“Okay. Just hold on.” She disappears for a few seconds, but is back and on her way past me and down the steps with a cell phone pressed to her ear. “Hello, yes. It’s an emergency.”
We take off running down the long path back to my house. She gives the operator our address, barely able to push the words out we’re running so fast.
“What’s the emergency?” I hear the operator saying.
We round the corner and screech to a halt in my front yard. Flames lick along the roof of the house, consuming the weathered wood. The windows are lit red like demon’s eyes and the front door gapes open, the mouth to hell.
Daddy’s sitting on the grass, bent over with Mama cradled in his arms. His sobs sound like a wounded animal and tears twist down his tortured face.
“Bernie,” he whispers, rocking her. “Bernie, baby, wake up.”
But Mama doesn’t wake up. She’s still as an opossum playing dead.
“What’s your emergency?” I hear the operator ask again through the phone.
“F-fire,” Aunt Roz stutters, her eyes fixed on the flames. “It’s a fire and my sister. She fell and hit her head, I think. There’s blood and she…”
