Chapter Four
Riverbend, Louisiana
My room is one of the only spaces in this house that wasn’t updated.
It’s a time capsule of first-place ribbons and trophies.
Track. Horse shows. Swimming. I only kept the blue ribbons.
Any other color I considered first loser.
But there aren’t any trophies or ribbons from high school.
All these were achieved before Poison Wood.
Before I traded in sports for sneaking around in the dark and stealing shit.
I drop my bag on the wooden floor and beeline for my closet, for another bag.
Old coats line one side of the narrow walk-in closet.
Tucked behind the last one is the suitcase I left here years ago.
No red ribbon on this one. I didn’t want it to stand out.
I pull it out from under the coats and bring it to my old white iron bed.
Dust covers the hard shell of the suitcase.
Good. That means it probably hasn’t been disturbed.
I put it on top of my bed and open it.
The faint smell of lavender escapes, and my stomach knots.
Lavender is supposed to be calming, but it doesn’t calm me.
That’s a smell from my past. The one my mother always used.
That was one of the first changes I made after her funeral.
My father took me to the store with him because he said he needed a girl to help find the cleaning stuff.
A smile spreads across my face. My father is not going to win any favors with feminists.
But I was happy he took me because it gave me a chance to buy all new supplies, including laundry detergent, with new citrus scents.
Then lavender laundry soap reappeared in Poison Wood’s dank basement with washers and dryers going at all hours of the night and girls hiding in its dark corners with booze and cigarettes.
I look down at my old Poison Wood uniform: white starched shirt, blue-and-green plaid skirt, knee socks, tie.
The uniform was a way to even the playing field for the girls was what headmaster Archibald Crowley told us.
What a joke. He didn’t know the playing field was never going to be even at that place, dressed alike or not.
It was what was on the inside that determined the hierarchy among us.
Once Katrina pulled a large pair of silver scissors from the desk drawer in our corner room and started cutting her skirt to make it shorter.
Summer laughed and said, “Me next.” After Katrina cut two inches of fabric from both skirts, she looked at me and pointed the scissors at me.
“What about you?” Something about the moment felt pivotal.
Are you with us or against us type of thing.
My recent acts of defiance aside, I’d spent the majority of my youth looking for praise.
Good girl. Attagirl. Nice job. Only in my last year of middle school had I started to understand negative behavior could get you even more attention.
Defiance and anger became my new norm. I understand now that was the grief of losing my mother catching up to me, but at the time it felt bold and grown up.
But I hadn’t felt so bold when my father caught me with that boy and failed to recognize my behavior for the cry for help it was and shipped me away for someone else not to recognize it, to label it something it wasn’t.
I held out my hand to Katrina. She smiled.
I dig past the clothes and look through the folders containing the articles I cut out in J-school. Then I move past those folders to another that has nothing to do with Poison Wood or Heather Hadwick or Johnny Adair.
I pick it up, my hand trembling.
My mother’s obituary. Her young, beautiful face smiling up from it.
I see a little of myself in her eyes, but that’s it.
I’ve always been told I look like my father.
My mother was soft and willowy. And even though I got her height, there’s nothing soft about me.
I have my father’s sharp eyes and jawline.
Sharp angles that give me an air of authority and trustworthiness on camera.
Similarities people always commented on when I was a kid.
I liked it until I didn’t. Until I tried to claw my way out of his shadow as a teenager, trying to find her own identity.
And now I’ve come full circle.
I drop the obit back in the bin and focus on the other items. Things I’d saved, unlike the articles, before I knew I’d be a journalist. Things girls keep that seem important but now, to my adult eye, seem worthless.
A plaid tie from my uniform. Woven friendship bracelets. A yearbook. Letters from my father.
I pull one out and read it. His letters were always matter of fact.
I smile at this one where he wrote a snake had gotten in the henhouse and eaten one of the hens.
A reminder he said of why I wasn’t allowed to ever name the chickens.
Don’t get too close to things that are easy to lose.
I fold it up and put it back in the envelope.
I dig deeper and find a packet of photos.
Most were of the forest, close-ups of the dew on a leaf, sunrise on the pines, things I photographed when I believed I was artsy and avant-garde.
But among those pictures of the Kisatchie is one of a group of girls.
I hold it up and study it. There are four of us in it: me, Katrina, Summer, and Heather.
But Heather isn’t standing next to us. She is in the background staring at us.
I remember Katrina taking my camera and holding her arm out so the three of us would all be in the shot.
We hadn’t even realized Heather was there.
As I study the photo closer, my heart rate kicks up a notch.
I pull it closer, wishing I could zoom in.
Heather is wearing something around her neck.
Something that looks like a gold locket.
And the memory that comes back is one of me in our corner dorm room and Katrina running in out of breath and flushed and laughing.
“Hide this,” she said as she put a gold necklace in my hand.
“It’s Heather’s. It’s just a prank. She’s so obsessed with it.
And it’s such a piece of shit. I mean it’s not even real gold. ”
I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to tell her I kept cheap things, too, like a hairbrush with dark hair tangled in it.
But I laughed with Kat and loved the look she gave me when I agreed to hide it.
“I knew I could trust you,” she said. She held out her pinkie and I entwined my pinkie with hers, and the moment was sealed.
I kept cheap things too.
I cross the room to the antique dresser against the far wall.
It was my mother’s when she was a little girl.
Its dark wood needs polishing, but other than that it is still in good condition.
It’s the spot where I kept my most cherished memento, my mother’s hairbrush.
I pull it out and hold it to my nose. It no longer smells like her.
I’m not exactly sure what she smelled like anymore.
Like her scent, tangible things about her seem to fade every year.
One thing that doesn’t fade, though, is a memory of this brush.
It was spring of my freshman year. We were in the gym for a school-wide meeting on proper behavior in public places.
The day before, one of the younger girls had been caught shoplifting in Natchitoches.
We were all on the bleachers whispering to each other and ignoring B.O.
as she droned on about proper young lady etiquette when something clattered into the middle of the gym floor.
I froze. It was a hairbrush.
B.O. bent down and picked it up. “All right. Who threw this?”
I heard the giggling behind me. Then I saw Katrina in the front row, doubled over laughing. The brush had gone missing the day before from under my mattress, where I kept it. My cheeks burned.
“I think it’s Rita’s,” Summer yelled down from beside me.
“Stop it,” I whispered to her.
“Well, it is,” she said loudly. “Isn’t it your mom’s?”
A few of the other girls started laughing.
“No,” I said.
B.O. looked up at me, and I remember the pity in her eyes as she held it out. I walked down in front of the entire school and took it from her, then ran.
I put the brush back and shut the drawer and walk to the dormer windows on the opposite wall. I look out into the dark night. This place is so far from city lights the stars look electric. And it’s quiet. Too quiet.
In summer, the nights here are loud with bull frogs and cicadas, but during winter, it quiets to the point it feels like a totally different place.
I exhale and open my phone and shoot off a text to Carl.
Any updates?
The reply comes back quickly.
Yes. Husband questioned. Mulholland wants to talk to you also. How’s Judge Mac?
I think of my dad and the way he looked in the ICU.
Stable. I think.
Good. Have you called Dom?
My head and heart are fighting again. My head is saying be professional, protect your career and Carl. But my heart is saying learn more first, protect your past. But it’s not just about protecting my past. It’s about protecting my only family, my father.
I know I’m too close to this story, but at the same time, that closeness could help. I can be objective. I know I can. I can look at it through a different lens now. But there’s a soft voice in the back of my head asking me what the hell I think I’m doing out on this tightrope.
Calling him first thing tomorrow.
Carl doesn’t respond, and I don’t push it.
I rub my face. I need to sleep. This day. But it’s not just this day. It’s the days that preceded it too. I’m starting to feel heavy, like I’m carrying a backpack full of rocks.
And one of those rocks is the memory of my mother in this house, in this room. Being in this space is such a double-edged sword. On one side, it feels comfortable and familiar, but on the other side, that familiarity is so sharp it cuts me.