Page 102 of Things We Do in the Dark
“I can’t decide,” Joey said, feeling shy. She had found two she wanted—another Stephen King book calledNeedful Things, and a book by Scott Turow, an author she hadn’t read yet, calledPresumed Innocent—but with the sales tax, she wouldn’t have enough money for both. “Which one would you recommend?”
“Tough choice,” Ginny said with a smile. “So how about you get both, and I won’t charge you the tax.”
Today was Joey’s best day in Maple Sound by far. Oddly, she had Tito Micky to thank for that. All the upstairs windows were open, and she could smell the leaves burning outside. It smelled like a campfire, and it added to her happy mood. She pushed open her bedroom door.
Carson, the youngest boy who’d been left at home that afternoon because he was sick, was sitting in the middle of the bedroom floor. Clearly he was feeling better, because he had a pair of safety scissors in his small hand and was studiously cutting the cover offIf Tomorrow Comes. And if that wasn’t horrific enough, in front of him was a large sheet of bristol board, on top of which lay six more snipped covers, all in a row.
No, not just laying on the board. There was a fat yellow stick on the carpet beside the bristol board that saidELMER’S. Her four-year-old cousin wasgluingthem down, and strewn all around were the books themselves, stripped of their covers, naked and exposed on the carpet like dead animal carcasses.
A white-hot rage unlike anything she’d ever felt before filled Joey’s stomach. This little asshole, who probably had a hundred toys to play with all throughout the house, who had never wanted for anything, who had never felt unsafe, who had never been forced to have margarine and stale crackers for dinner because there was nothing else to eat, was destroying her most precious possessions. Her paperbacks. The only things that had any value to her, other than her necklace.
She would have rather he destroyed the necklace. The necklace might have been forgivable.
“What are you doing?” Joey asked. To her ears, she sounded like someone else, someone who was about to explode.
Carson didn’t pick up on her tone. “I’m making a poster for you, Joey.” He looked up and grinned. “Do you like it?”
No, she did not like it. She did not like it one bit.
Without thinking, Joey snatched the book out of her cousin’s little hands and smacked him, as hard as she could, across the face.
The slap made a sound very similar to the one Lola Celia had given her out by the pond, and God help her, it was extremely satisfying. Joey had never hit anyone before, and oh wow, did it ever feel good to hurl that anger at someone.
But three seconds later, regret replaced her rage as she watched Carson’s little face transform from shock into pain, and then, finally, fear. He was only four years old, maybe half her size, and totally unable to fight back. As Joey looked at him, so small and helpless, and so utterly terrified of her, she saw herself. In this moment, he was Joey, cowering on the floor.
And she was Ruby.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, as the horror of what she’d done sank in. “Carson, I’m so sorry.”
She took a step toward him. He scuttled away from her. Then he opened his mouth, and howled.
The sound was awful, and he wouldn’t stop. Every time she took a step closer, he wailed louder, the tears coming faster, his face growing redder. The cheek where she smacked him was almost maroon. Joey heard Tita Flora call out Carson’s name from somewhere in the house. A few secondslater, she heard footsteps pounding on the stairs as not one, buttwosets of feet rushed up to the second floor.
By the time Tita Flora and Lola Celia arrived at the bedroom, Joey’s little cousin had worked himself into hysterics, sobbing as he scampered straight for his grandmother, burying his head in her robe.
“What did you do?” Tita Flora asked Joey, though it was pretty fucking obvious what she had done. The shape of Joey’s palm was now an angry purple blotch on the little boy’s cheek. “What the fuck did you do to him, you stupid bitch?”
Joey attempted to explain, sputtering and gesturing to the stripped paperbacks. She understood the scene looked bad. Had she thought it through for even one second, she would never have hit him. Carson was a sweet kid, and he adored her. And he was solittle. Joey knew exactly what it felt like to be that small and be hurt by someone you loved, someone bigger than you, and more powerful, who always won, no matter how wrong she might be.
Unsatisfied with her niece’s attempts to answer, Tita Flora’s shrieking grew louder. “Do you think we wanted you here? Look at you, you’re just like your mother,wa’y kapuslanan. You’re going to grow up to be aputa, just like her. If they weren’t paying me to do it, we would never have taken you in, you useless, ungrateful little bitch.”?
Despite her aunt being shorter and wider than her mother and with a less pretty face, Tita Flora’s wrath made her look and sound exactly like her sister. And just like with Ruby, the words were bullets, peppering Joey’s ears and heart with wounds that would never fully heal. The louder Tita Flora shouted at her, in a combination of Cebuano and English, the harder Carson cried. The little boy seemed to understand the gravity of the situation, and that what was happening now to his older cousin might actually be worse than what had just happened to him. He tried twice to go over to Joey, but both times, his grandmother held him back.
Lola Celia was quietly observing the scene with her small, black eyes, her gnarled fingers stroking her grandson’s hair. So far she’d said nothing. Only when Tita Flora finally paused, red-faced and heaving, did herlolafinally speak. Carson had calmed down a little by then, and her grandmother’s tone was soft, almost gentle.
“Sunoga ang iyang mga libro. Ang tanan.”
Joey couldn’t put together what the old woman just said. She knewlibromeant book. Maybe she was trying to remind Tita Flora that Carson should not have cut the covers off Joey’s paperbacks, and was trying to defuse the situation. Things with Lola Celia had been going much better since Joey started helping with the cooking. Maybe her grandmother was actually on her side.
But then she saw a look of understanding pass over her aunt’s face, which then morphed into smugness. No. Whatever Lola Celia had just said, the old woman was definitelynoton her side.
A rope of fear knotted in Joey’s stomach. They were going to kick her out. They were going to call Deborah and tell her what Joey had done, and oh God, Deborah would know, and would turn away from her, because she’d realize Joey was just like her mother.
And then where would she go? She’d be passed over to another social worker, someone who didn’t like her and didn’t care, who’d throw Joey into a foster family who also didn’t care. Or maybe she’d be sent to one of those facilities she’d heard about at school, like a prison for girls, the place where bad seed kids were sent.
Because of course Joey was a bad seed. She’d come from a rotten mother.
“I’m so sorry,” she said desperately. “Carson, I love you, I’m so, so sorry.”
