I leave Grace’s house and ride past the trailer park, where my dad and Hattie are asleep. My days always start like this—before everyone else’s, in the moments when the only thing lighting Eulogy is the casino on the waterfront. Today, I’m a little earlier than usual, so I take the time to ride straight down to the water. Carefully, I lay my bike down on the sidewalk and kick my flip-flops off before walking down the rickety wooden steps to the beach.
My Mississippi beach is very rarely love at first sight, but an endearing, prodding kind of affection. Despite her lack of natural beauty, there are many like me who love this place more than she deserves. It’s the kind of place people on a budget choose for vacation. Thanks to the line of sandbars trimming the shore and our proximity to the Mississippi River, our water is brown and murky. Nothing like Florida’s blue-green waves. But a family like Grace’s can get a lot of vacation for their buck if they’re willing to overlook the imperfections.
Sand kicks up around my ankles until I reach the water’s edge. I press my toes deep into the sand as the cool water rinses over them briefly before pulling back. The moon hangs in the sky, chasing the horizon, as the sun whispers along the waterfront.
Water has always been my siren song. Any kind of water—oceans, lakes, pools. There’s something about being weightless that makes me think anything is possible. My whole body exhales in a way that it can’t when I’m standing on land.
The brightening horizon reminds me that I have somewhere to be. Shaking sand from my feet, I run back up to the sidewalk and slide my flip-flops back on.
A continuous stream of tears rushes down my cheeks as I direct my handlebars around the corner and down the hill to where Charlie waits in his truck. I hate crying. I mean, most everyone does. But some people, like Hattie, feel better after a good cry. When Hattie cries, it’s like watching a snake shed its skin. Tears somehow let her regenerate, whereas crying only makes me angry I cared so much to begin with.
“You’re late,” Charlie calls. He wears his usual uniform of coffee-stained undershirt and twenty-year-old jeans. With his shaggy thinning hair, he looks like an old white guy who either traps little kids in his van or grows weed in his backyard. Thankfully it’s the latter.
I squeeze the brake on my handlebars and push the tears back into my eyes with my other fist. “Overslept.”
I don’t have a history of being late, so Charlie shrugs it off. Maybe a five a.m. start time is earlier than most teenagers could commit to, but I treasure all my little jobs. My paper route, busing tables at Boucher’s, and working whatever under-the-table cash gigs I can find. I guess, growing up, most kids wonder what they will do for a living. But for me, there was never any worry over what the job would be, just how soon I could start.
Charlie loads the basket on the front of my bike with papers for the second half of my route, while I fill my messenger bag. Charlie is the kind of man who will always look like a boy, and the uneven whiskers lining his upper lip don’t do anything to help the matter.
“Going for the mustache look?” I ask.
He strokes what little facial hair he has. “Wanted a change. You like?”
“Change is good,” I tell him as I swing my leg over my bike and wave good-bye.
I weave up and down the streets on my route, letting my memory guide me until almost every house has a paper waiting in its yard. The routine of it keeps the thought of Grace at bay, at least for a little while.
At the corner of John Street and Mayfield, I pass Eulogy Baptist, a bright-white building with perfectly manicured lawns and flower boxes under each windowsill. Dim light from the back office bleeds into the street, and I wonder if Reverend Don is getting in or leaving.
I turn the corner down Clayton Avenue, pedaling as I lean back in my seat and gently tap the brake while I careen to the bottom of the hill. It’s in this moment when I always feel like I’m flying. But then the bottom of the hill brings me back to reality.
Standing in front of my last house, which was recently added to my route, is a black woman in an unzipped terry-cloth cover-up with a bright-yellow bathing suit underneath, watering her flower bed. I always love morning people. They feel solid and reliable. Not like my mom, who sleeps past noon if no one wakes her up. Grace wasn’t a morning person either. It was a small detail that always bothered me for some reason.
Grace. Grace, who I might not ever see again. I feel the tears begin to threaten.
“Mornin’,” says the woman as the paper hits her lawn.
“Mornin’,” I call back, pedaling past.
“Hey!” she shouts. Something hits me square in the shoulders, knocking the wind out of me.
“What the hell?” I mutter to myself as I loop back around to find I’ve been hit with one of my own papers.
As I reach down to pick it up, the woman’s voice says, “Ramona Blue! Get back here!”
Her voice. I know it. And that nickname. Ramona Blue is what my dad called me when I was a little girl, because he could never get me out of the water. It’s a name not many people know.
The woman walks to the edge of her yard and as she does, I see past the ten years of wrinkles. Dropping one foot to the ground, I stop my bike from rolling any farther as memories trickle back. “Agnes?”
“You get your heinie over here and gimme a hug!”
I drop my bike right there on the curb and fall into an embrace.
Agnes used to come down every summer from Baton Rouge with her husband and their grandson, Freddie, who they were raising. She was as much a part of my childhood memories as my own grandmother until the summer I turned nine and they just stopped coming. That was the first time I’d really understood that even if it feels like summer lasts forever here in Eulogy, Mississippi, it doesn’t.
I can’t think of many moments when I’ve looked in the mirror and taken an inventory of all the ways my body has changed. But here and now with Agnes squeezing me tight, her forehead barely brushing my chest, I feel like I’m some giant cradling a baby doll.
Agnes pulls away but holds my shoulders tight, examining me. She tugs on my long, wavy ponytail, and says, “Of course I’m not surprised. Your daddy always did let you get away with everything short of murder.”
My cheeks burn, and even though the ache in my chest is as heavy as an anchor, I smile. She’s referring to my hair. Ramona Blue with the blue hair.
Depending on when you catch me, my hair could be any shade ranging from royal blue to turquoise. I was thirteen the first time I dyed it with Kool-Aid mix and a little bit of water. To no one’s surprise, I was sent home from school, but my dad came to the rescue despite how much he hated what I’d done to the blond locks I’d inherited from my mother. He fought with my principal until the whole ordeal had eaten up more time than it was worth. And my hair’s been blue ever since, thanks to Hattie and her amateur understanding of cosmetology.
Today, though, I am in need of a dye job. The sun, salt water, and plain old time have left my hair a powdery shade of turquoise.
“You sprung up like a weed.” She shakes her head, and I wonder what it is she’s seeing in her memory of me. She points to my empty messenger bag. “Last house on your route then?”
I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You come hungry tomorrow morning.” She pats my belly. “We’re gonna have us a big ol’ breakfast.”
“I can do that,” I say. “Okay.”
Agnes’s lips spread into a wide, knowing grin. “Freddie is going to die.”
Freddie. All my memories of him are sun bleached and loud, but I try not to let myself be fooled by the past. Growing up can change you.
Hugging Agnes may have made me feel tall, but nothing makes me feel as large as home sweet trailer. Like always, I duck my head to pass through the front door of our trailer and walk down the narrow hallway leading to Hattie’s bedroom and mine. They used to be one room, but with help from our uncle Dean, Dad blew out part of our hallway-facing wall, put a door in, and then added a plywood wall to divide our space on Hattie’s twelfth birthday. After that, he bought her a wardrobe at the Salvation Army and all of a sudden our shared bedroom had become two.
I began to outgrow this place somewhere around the summer before ninth grade. I’d always been tall, but that last growth spurt tipped me over from tall to too tall. The ceilings of our trailer stretch as high as seven feet, which means my six-foot-three frame requires that I duck through doorways and contort my body to fit beneath the showerhead in the bathroom.
Inside my room, I rest my bike against my dresser, and just as I’m about to flip on the lights, I notice a lump lying in my bed.
“Scoot over,” I whisper, tiptoeing across the floor.
Hattie, my older sister by two years, obliges, but barely. “Tyler is a furnace,” she mumbles.
I slide into bed behind her. Always the little sister, but forever the big spoon.
We used to fit so perfectly into this twin bed, because like Dad always said: the Leroux sisters were in the business of growing north to south, and never east to west. But that’s no longer the case. Hattie’s belly is growing every day. I knew she was pregnant almost as soon as she did. So did Dad. We don’t waste time with secrets in our house.
“Make him go home,” I tell her.
“Your feet are so cold,” she says as she presses her calves against my toes. “Tommy wants to know if you can come into work early.”
“Grace left.”
She turns to face me, her belly pressed to mine. It’s not big. Not yet. In fact, to anyone else it’s not even noticeable. But I know every bit of her so well that I can feel the difference there in her abdomen. Or maybe I just think I can. Wrapping an arm around me, she pulls me close to her and whispers, “I’m so sorry, Ramona.”
My lips tremble.
“Hey, now,” she says. “I know you can’t see this far ahead right now, but there will be other girls.”
I shake my head, tears staining the pillow we share. “It’s not like she died or something,” I say. “And we’re going to keep talking. Or at least she said she wanted to.”
“Grace was great, okay? I’m not saying she wasn’t.” Hattie isn’t Grace’s biggest fan—she never has trusted outsiders—but I appreciate her pretending. “But you’re gonna get out of here after graduation and meet tons of people and maybe figure out there are lots of great girls.”
Maybe a few months ago, Hattie would’ve been right. Up until recently, the two of us had plans to get out of Eulogy together after graduation. Not big college plans. But small plans to wait tables or maybe even work retail and create a new life all our own in a place like New Orleans or maybe even Texas. A place without the tiny little trailer we’ve called home for too long now.
But then Hattie went and got pregnant, and even though neither of us have said so out loud, I know those plans have changed.
Tyler is here for now, but I can’t imagine he’s anything more than temporary. My plans were never extraordinary to begin with, and now that Hattie has my niece or my nephew incubating inside of her, they’re even less important. Hattie’s my sister. She’s my sister forever.
“And I can’t kick Tyler out, by the way,” she adds.
I shake my head. “Yeah, you can. Just tell him to go home.”
“This is sort of his home now.”
I prop myself up on my elbow and open my mouth, waiting for the words to pour out. But I’m too shocked. And horrified.
She loops a loose piece of hair behind my ear, trying to act like this is no big deal. “Dad said he could move in,” she whispers.
There are so many things I want to tell her in this moment. Our house is too small. Tyler is temporary. There will be even less room when the baby comes. I don’t need another body in this house to tell me that it’s too small and we’ve all outgrown this place. And yet I feel like I’m the only one of us who sees it. I’m the only one wondering where we go from here.
But with my legs dangling off the foot of my twin bed, I can’t help but feel that the problem is me. And that, somehow, I have outstayed my welcome here.
Internally, I am screaming, but on the exterior the only sign of life is the tears beading at the corners of my eyes. “Is it dumb that I’m really upset about the Olympics being over, too?”
She laughs. “It depends. Is that why you’re crying?”
“No . . . maybe a little bit.”
Hattie wraps her arms around me and pulls me to her like Mrs. Pearlman’s old Maine coon does with her kittens when they’re done feeding. It’s a momentary reminder that I’m the actual little sister. “I bet you could’ve been good enough for the Olympics if you’d ever even tried.”
“Shut up,” I tell her, fully aware that she’s being so nice to me because I’m a mess of a human being right now. I’ve always loved the Olympics. Most kids were obsessed with SpongeBob or Transformers or One Direction, but something about Team USA and the swim team in particular always felt magical to me. It was like every person on that team was the star of their own Cinderella story and the whole country was rooting for them to get the prince—or princess. In fact, sitting on my dresser is an old Michael Phelps Wheaties box with Missy Franklin’s face taped over his; she rules and he drools, obviously.
“You’re the best swimmer I know, Ramona Blue.”
I roll my eyes, but my lids feel heavier than they did a moment ago. “You don’t even know any swimmers. You’re the best amateur hairdresser I know and I don’t see you styling the rich and famous anytime soon.”
“I’m just saying.” She yawns. “You don’t have a tiny human in your body. You can still be whatever the hell you want.”
I roll my eyes again and yawn back at her. I wish it were that simple. “I need to get some rest before our shift.”
I close my eyes, waiting for her breathing to deepen. I will always love Hattie for her undying faith in me, but even from a very young age, I knew what it meant to be the kind of person with the time and resources to be something like a swimmer or a gymnast or a freaking speed walker. (Yes, race walking is totally an Olympic sport.) My sport—the special skill I’ve developed my whole life—is surviving, and that doesn’t leave much room for following Cinderella dreams.