A Choir of Ill Children Read Free Page A

line. “Yes.”
    I feel the slow-drifting chill begin to prickle my scalp. I know better than to ignore Drabs now. “What’s he saying?”
    Drabs turns in his seat with his mouth open but the tongues are abruptly upon him. Maybe I’ve brought this on us simply by asking. Whatever he wants to tell me is important to him and he tries to fight. Sweat streams across his face and his fingers twitch like a handful of wasps. I grab the steering wheel tighter and whisper, “Leave him alone, damn you.”
    Entreaties don’t matter much in the presence of the Lord. There is no petition, and I’ve always known it. Drabs hurls himself hard against the passenger door, the spirit bearing down on him, as he yells in a language I feel I could almost understand if only he’d slow down a little.
    I pull up to his long dirt driveway and wheel around toward the back. I get out and ease him into a wet patch of yard so he won’t hurt himself. The chickasaw plum and sparkleberries sway against my shoulders. The words rush from him furiously until he’s foaming at the mouth, choking on them.
    The muscles of his face are being yanked in directions they shouldn’t go. He tumbles and bounces viciously, flails sideways underneath a willow tree, and rolls through the brush until he’s eventually lost behind the glowing green cypress.
    I smoke half a pack of cigarettes waiting to see if he’ll come back, but he never does.

C HAPTER T WO

    I N THE DEEPEST HOUR OF THE NIGHT, MY MOTHER used to dream of Cole unfolded from Sebastian and Jonah, arising in the moonlight to stand complete and alone. They smile at each other and hug, and I wind up with pangs of spite making me grit my teeth.
    It’s a dream that has somehow been passed on from her to me. Cole speaks in a singular forgiving voice, full of love, saying my name as though there is an extra meaning there that I don’t yet realize.
    But I’m not falling for it. We have expectations and are prepared to do what we must to meet them. The dream is destined to become nightmare, of course. Mama turns and her mouth is red, the blood leaking out onto the floor. She needs help but she doesn’t want it, and I can’t get anywhere near her. She spins aside and is lost in the shadows. When Cole speaks my name from the doorway he is glancing down at the bed where I have replaced him among the others.
    I can barely flap my dwarfed and bent arms, these diminutive bony legs wreathed around theirs. Our kneecaps clatter together. I can’t see anything but the glaring eyes of Sebastian and Jonah, who hate the way that I hate, and who do horrible things to me inside our shared ten-pound brain.
     
    O NE OF THE ROADHOUSE GIRLS FROM L EADBETTER ’ S shows up at the house to tell me she’s pregnant.
    I don’t remember her face at all, not even when she moves, in spasms, to kiss me like we’re longtime lovers.
    But when she sits in the love seat on the porch alongside me, subtly shifting her weight to show the inseam of her thigh, a suddenly clear and painful memory hits. She is Betty Lynn, and she’s barely nineteen.
    Her youth hangs off her like baby fat. She thinks she’s sly and now she’ll have something to tell the other kids down at the Piggly Wiggly and Doover’s Five & Dime. It looks like her mother did her makeup and hair this afternoon. She went light on the eye shadow, heavy on the rouge. Her flowered print summer dress has been freshly pressed and she smells faintly of an old lady’s dull perfume.
    I can just see her mama giving her pointers on what to say and do now. Don’t scare him off, don’t be threatenin’. Reel him in slow like a catfish and don’t jerk the line. This is gonna be her one big break in life, Mama talking with hairpins jutting from between her teeth, telling Betty Lynn how to act in order to get a man, combing out her knotted curls. This is a chance for money and family. To get out of the river bottoms and live in a mansion. For something different to happen in a