in the morning sam is sat by lucy with shoulders straight and solemn. sam commences to talk as if speech is a coin hoarded for these past three months.
“wasn’t doing nobody good buried,” sam says as lucy folds her blanket.
“it’s stupid superstition,” sam says as lucy picks grass from her dress.
“it won’t even matter,” sam says as lucy combs her hair with her fingers and braids it as best she can. “you know what happened to that dead snake of yours? ba took the thimble back. i sawhim. and nothing happened, right? right?”
a week ago lucy would’ve lapped up these confidences. now they turn her stomach.
“he told me that the living need silver more’n the dead,” sam says as lucy prepares to head to town. “he told me a long time ago not to bury him proper.” sam says, quieter, “said he didn’t deserve it. i swear, i meant to leave the coins with him anyhow, but that night it was like he told me himself. over the grave. didn’t you hear him?”
lucy studies sam from one side, from the other. hard as she squints, she can’t see where sam’s stories end, where sam’s lies begin. if there is, to sam, any difference.
“wait,” sam says, gripping lucy’s elbow. “and ma. he said that ma—”
lucy pushes sam away. “don’t. don’t talk to me about ma.”
sam doesn’t come forward again. lucy steps back. they stare at each other. lucy steps back, and steps back, and back, and a part of her rejoices, a part of her already in sweetwater, already rehearsing her orphan’s story—a small, clotted part of her relieved that sam won’t be there, that sam with sam’s strangeness won’t have to be explained
lucy turns.
one last time sam calls. the fear unmistakable. “lucy—you’re bleeding.”
lucy puts a hand to the back of her dress. it comes away wet. she lifts her skirt to find her underdrawers bloody too. yet somehow, beneath, the skin is unbroken. she feels no pain despite the slick between her thighs. sniff her fingers and there, beneath the copper tang—a richer rot.
ma said there’d be cake to celebrate this day, and salted plums, and a new dress for lucy. ma said this day would make lucy a woman. the blood trickles free, leaving a hollow ache. just another thing lucy loses with little pain. though there is no cake, no celebration, she feels with a certainty heavy in her body the truth of what ma said: she’s no longer a little girl.
sam’s face is stripped younger by horror, as if lucy wields a new and frightful power. for the first time lucy, looking at her little sister, feels pity course through her along with the blood. this is a different sort of leaving behind.
“i’ll come back soon enough,” lucy says, relenting. “i’ll bring something to eat. after i find work.”
sam drifts away as lucy washes the stain. when the fabric is as clean as it’ll get, and wrung only slightly damper than the damp day, when she’s stuffed grass in her underdrawers and swallowed cold water to ease her stomach, she squints down the bank. catches sight of the figure in the trees.
“i’m heading to town now,” lucy calls.
the figure lifts its head.
“you’ll be here?” lucy says.
she meant it as a command. but the distance between them, and the river’s crashing, unmake her meaning. what she says comes out a question.
