Children of Exile (13 page)

I reached the doorway before the mother could stop me. I stood there, gazing in, breathing hard.

Bobo was on the bare floor, sprawled flat on his back, his toes peeking out from under the blanket. He had the back of one hand resting on his forehead—Fred-mama used to joke that Bobo always slept in positions that made it look like he
was about to recite Shakespeare. But he had his other hand against his mouth, his thumb on his bottom lip, the tip of the thumb braced against his upper teeth.

Bobo had pretty much stopped sucking his thumb when he was three. I could remember Fred-daddy explaining this to me: how kids sucked thumbs to comfort themselves, and gradually they realized they didn't need that comfort, or they discovered more mature ways to find it.

Bobo sucking his thumb again was a bad sign.

It wasn't just the safety of his arms and legs I needed to worry about.

The mother yanked me backward.

“Answer me when I speak to you,” she demanded, standing practically nose to nose. “What happened to the suitcases you were going to pick up?”

Our suitcases. This morning they had been a huge concern for me. I'd wanted clothes to change into, a comb to unsnarl my hair, Bobo's toy boat to keep him happy. I'd wanted every bit of Fredtown those suitcases represented. But in my rush to check on Bobo, I'd completely forgotten about them.

“What suitcases?” the father growled.

“Didn't you tell him?” the mother asked, scowling at me. She turned to the father. “You and Rosi were supposed to pick up the suitcases she and Bobo brought from . . . you know. They were still at the airport.”

“I forgot,” I said. Our Fred-parents always wanted us to own up to our mistakes, but somehow that was easier back in Fredtown. Probably because our Fred-parents never glared at us so furiously. “I'm sorry. I was thinking about . . . other things.”

I couldn't tell her how worried I'd been about Bobo. Not without sounding like I didn't trust her to take care of him.

“She looks like a grown-up, but she acts like an idiot child,” the mother told the father, her voice mocking and angry. “Why, if
we'd
raised her, she'd know to use her head. She'd remember the things we told her.”

I wasn't used to being talked about as if I weren't even there.

I wasn't used to being called ugly names. “Idiot” wasn't just worse than “dumb”; it felt a thousand times worse.

“I know it's my fault,” I said, hanging my head. “Just tell me where to go at the airport and I'll get both suitcases, all by myself.”

I thought that was a good offer—I was being Rosi the Responsible again, just like back in Fredtown. But both the mother and the father recoiled.

“You can't go out by yourself
now
,” the mother said. “It's almost dark.”

“I doubt those suitcases are still there, anyhow,” the father said heavily. He sank into the chair I'd seen him in the night before. Then he turned toward the mother. “You
know anything that isn't nailed down gets stolen. Why didn't you bring them home yesterday when you got the children?”

“
She
didn't tell me they had suitcases,” the mother said. “How was I to know?”

I flinched.

“And I didn't know they wouldn't just be brought to our house,” I said. My voice sounded weak and pleading. “That's how things would have been done in Fredtown. That's how things
were
done when we went to the airport there. A truck came around and picked up everyone's luggage, so no one had to carry it. I'd never been anywhere before but Fredtown. I didn't know anything would be different here—”

“Don't talk to us about that Fredtown!” the mother screamed.

I saw her swing her hand back. I saw it coming toward me. But I didn't move this time.

She'll stop herself,
I thought.
She wouldn't ever really hit me. No adult does that.

The palm of the mother's hand slammed against my face. She'd slapped me. The mother—no,
my
mother—had slapped me.

From inside Bobo's room I heard a cry.

“Rosi?” he called out. “Fred-mama?”

I saw the mother's face stiffen—outrage hardening over fury.

“I'm right here,” I called to Bobo. I tried to keep my voice soothing and calm, even as my check throbbed.

Bobo pushed his way past the hanging cloth in the doorway of our room. His eyelids drooped sleepily and his curls stuck out at odd angles. One of the curls was plastered to his cheek.

“I had a nightmare,” he whispered. He blinked at the mother and father. “Oh.”

Was his nightmare that we'd left Fredtown and our Fred-parents, and come here? Was it that the home we'd talked about and longed for our entire lives had turned out to be a terrible place? A place where people were broken and damaged and scarred, and his real mother could slap his sister—and might even slap him sometime too?

“Nightmares aren't real,” I told Bobo. I made my voice firm and convincing, to be a guarantee against the creepiest dream. “Remember how . . .” I wanted to say:
Remember how Fred-mama and Fred-daddy told you that all the time?
But the mother had slapped me just for talking about Fredtown. I didn't want her to slap me in front of Bobo.

I settled for, “Remember how many times I've told you that?”

“You told me that,” Bobo parroted.

He really wasn't awake yet. He probably hadn't heard the mother arguing with me.

He probably hadn't heard her slap me.

She slapped me!
echoed in my head.
She really, truly, actually slapped me!

I was numb. But I had to think about Bobo. I had to think about protecting him now more than ever.

I crouched down in front of him.

“Nightmares aren't real,” I said again. “Here you are with your real mother and your real father—and me—and everything's fine. . . .”

I dared to glance up toward the mother. Her face was like a storm cloud, but she didn't say or do anything.

She wouldn't hit Bobo,
I told myself.
She loves him more than she loves me, so she'd never hit him.

But what could I do if she did?

Late that night
a knock came at our door. We'd already eaten supper—a stiff, awkward event I was even less hungry for than lunch. I hadn't complained about being forced to help with preparation and cleanup while Bobo was allowed to play. Now he was pretending a stick was a motorcar, and zooming it all around the floor. I sat in a corner with the book Fred-mama had given me to read on the plane. But I wasn't reading that book even now. I was thinking hot, angry thoughts:
If the mother asks me where this book came from, I'm just going to come out and tell her. And I'm going to tell her she has no right to blame me—or Bobo—for having good memories of Fredtown. It's not our fault where we grew up. It's not our fault we were taken there or brought here . . .

I wasn't used to having hot, angry thoughts in my head. I didn't know what to do with them. So that knock at the door was a good distraction.

That's what I thought, anyway. The mother and father
stiffened, and the mother clutched the father's shoulder.

“Nobody comes visiting this late at night,” the mother said.

She's scared,
I thought, hearing her voice tremble.
She's scared of a
knock.

I didn't want Bobo to hear her fear—or to be exposed to whatever she was afraid of—so I called softly, “Hey, Bobo, drive your twig-car over here and we'll make a ramp for it to jump over.”

I was behind the table. It was the farthest I could get from the mother and father and still be in the house with them. It was also the farthest corner from the door.

But Bobo was already scrambling up joyfully, racing to the door, just like he always did anytime our bell rang back in Fredtown.

“Whooo is it?” he called. “Which friend has come to play?”

I saw the mother and the father both jump up, ready to stop him. But Bobo was clever with latches. He already had it unhooked and was pulling the door toward him.

Edwy stood in the darkness on the other side of the door. And . . . he had our suitcases with him.

“Edwy!” Bobo exclaimed, an expression like sunshine bursting over his face. Bobo had always loved Edwy.

The mother and the father sprang up and stood on either side of Bobo. The mother even put her hand on Bobo's
shoulder and angled her body ahead of his, sending a clear message:
Bobo is ours! Stay away from him!

“I brought the suitcases for you and Rosi,” Edwy told Bobo.

“Who are your people, boy?” the father growled. “And why did
you
have Rosi's and Bobo's suitcases?”

Edwy's eyes darted to the side.

He's going to lie,
I thought. Edwy and I may have avoided each other for an entire year, but I still knew him really well.

“I just saw nobody had picked these up yet,” he said, shrugging. “I thought I'd do Rosi and Bobo a favor.”

“Humph,” the father grunted. As if he didn't believe Edwy any more than I did. “And your people? Who are your parents?”

Edwy has green eyes, like me,
I thought. The mother did too, so maybe it was only kids with green eyes that the father didn't like. Maybe the father had learned about genetics in school, like Edwy and I had, and he was asking about Edwy's parents to figure out more about Edwy.

Even thinking that seemed crazy, but I stood up and started inching toward the door. It felt like I might need to protect Bobo again.

Or maybe Edwy.

“I can't say I've actually heard my parents speak their names,” Edwy said, laughing the same way he always did in
class back in Fredtown when he hadn't done his homework. “They told me to call them Mother and Father.”

I saw the mother elbow the father over Bobo's head.

“Then what's your last name?” the father growled.

“I know!” Bobo burst out. “It's Watanaboneset! This is Edwy Watanaboneset! I remember, because Edwy makes a funny about how it should be ‘Want-a-your-bone-set-if-you-mess-with-me?' ”

I'd never heard Edwy make that “funny.” It must have been something he started in the past year. I couldn't believe he'd said that around a little kid like Bobo.

I was close enough to the door now to see the mother's face go dark.

“He's a Watanaboneset,” she muttered.

“That pack of thieves,” the father agreed, scowling just as bitterly.

Don't talk like that in front of Bobo!
I wanted to scream. And,
Edwy never even met his parents until yesterday! How can you be mad at him because of who his parents are?

“Thank you for bringing our suitcases,” I said instead, stepping up behind Bobo. “That was a nice thing to do. You even figured out where we lived.”

Edwy's eyes met mine.

“You know I'm good at finding things out,” he said. His words seemed to carry more weight than their actual
meaning. He tilted his head, and I thought maybe that was supposed to be some sort of secret signal meant only for me. Maybe he'd found out something he couldn't talk about in front of the parents and Bobo.

Or maybe I was just imagining that. I wasn't much good at reading secret messages in people's eyes. Back in Fredtown, we hadn't needed them.

The mother looked back and forth between me and Edwy.

“Okay,” she said. “We have the suitcases now. Hand them in. And then you can leave. It's too late at night for
honest
people to be out and about. Or standing in doorways, talking.”

“Fine,” Edwy said, shrugging again, as if he didn't even notice that she had insulted him.

He shoved the suitcases in through the doorway, and the mother shut the door on him so quickly, she almost smashed his fingers.

“My toys! Thanks, Edwy!” Bobo said, falling upon his suitcase and knocking it to the floor. He began struggling with the zipper.

I could barely watch, because the mother and the father turned on me.

“Don't ever speak to that boy again,” the mother said. “Stay away from him.”

“He comes from a bad family,” the father said. “A very bad family.”

“He's my friend!” I protested, even though I wouldn't have used that word to describe Edwy back in Fredtown. “He brought us our suitcases!”

“His family probably stole them,” the mother said, scowling harder. “They steal everything. They probably took all the valuables out, and then he just brought you what they didn't want.”

I looked down at Bobo, who had his suitcase open on the floor and was already cradling his toy boat in his arms.

“Bobo, are all the toys you packed in there?” I asked.

“Sure,” Bobo said. He didn't bother looking. I knew Bobo: As long as he had his hands on the toy he wanted at that particular moment, he could have a hundred others waiting to be played with, or none at all, and he'd be equally happy.

“Bah, toys,” the father said. “It's clothes people steal. Clothes and jewels and . . .”

The mother reached for my suitcase.

I don't know what made me stop her. Nothing in my life in Fredtown had made me good at being secretive. I'd never wanted to hide anything from my Fred-parents. But suddenly I couldn't bear the thought of the mother touching the clothes Fred-mama and I had folded together.

“Look, I'll go put my things away in my room right now,” I said, grabbing my suitcase before the mother had a chance to. “If anything's missing, I'll let you know. And we can make Edwy give them back.”

“Nobody can make the Watanabonesets do anything,” the father muttered.