The next morning I brought Mylie outside with us while Daddy and I were working in the garden. I was trying to pick blackberries—about as well as you can pick blackberries when Mylie is involved, sneaking green ones into your bucket and smooshing the ripe ones all over her hands and face—while Daddy did pest control, picking bugs off the potatoes and squash and spraying insecticidal soap on the aphids and spider mites. He muttered under his breath the whole time, all annoyed about a big nest of mites making a home in his herb garden, so that hardly any were getting big enough without ending up speckled with yellow spots.
“Ain’t nobody wanna buy polka-dotted herbs for two bucks a bunch,” he said, cutting off a handful of yellowed mint sprigs and tossing them into a trash bag.
I didn’t answer, just swatted Mylie’s hands away from my bucket. She was trying to pilfer berries from my bucket to put into hers, and I didn’t like having to pick twice as much for half as many.
I snuck a sideways glance at Daddy, where he was frowning over his row of basil plants, which were starting to sprout tall green flower stalks. Nobody had said a word that morning at breakfast about Mama being sick—but when Daddy had shaken one of Mama’s pills out onto his hand and slid it across the table toward her, she’d pretended not to even notice, just chewed and swallowed her food like a machine, every bite the same size, never meeting my eyes or making a sound that didn’t come from eating.
After breakfast she’d picked up her book and gone back into her bedroom and lain down on the bed, just like yesterday, the ceiling fan fluffing her hair like little wings around her head.
The air outside felt too thick and hot to breathe, though it didn’t stop Mylie howling like a little baby wolf and stealing more blackberries out of my bucket. Her shirt was already covered in big, dark purple stains. Yesterday I’d snuck to the trash and tossed the dress she’d painted green. Mama and Daddy hadn’t noticed, but I thought they might start suspecting something if Mylie’s clothes kept disappearing at this rate.
Daddy rubbed at his forehead and stood up, stretching and yawning at the same time. He was at least ten years younger than Mr. Ben, but lately he looked nearly as old as Grandpa Kelly, his face sagging into exhaustion and his eyes painted with bruises underneath. I couldn’t decide if I felt more sorry for Daddy or more angry with him. Shouldn’t he have done more, held on to being mad a little longer, made Mama see sense and reach for that pill bottle again?
He looked over and caught me scowling, my hands resting on my blackberry bucket. A little smile slipped into his eyes, tugging up one side of his mouth just the tiniest bit, smoothing out all those lines and bruises.
“What’s eating you, Della?” he asked, wiping sweat off his face. I was pretty sure that by the end of this heat wave all of Daddy’s shirts would be just as ruined as Mylie’s.
I looked away and picked a few more berries. The ripest ones came off their stems like a knife through butter, slick and easy. Mylie grabbed one beside me and popped it into her mouth, sucking all the juice out of it and then spitting the pulp onto my knee.
“Yuck,” I said, rubbing the chewed-up berry off. It left a big purple track on my skin, slippery and wet. A bee buzzed past me, burying itself into a blackberry bush.
Daddy was still looking at me, his arms folded and his eyebrows pulled up into question marks.
I sighed, but I found my mouth opening anyway, the words wanting to be said, lining up like numbers in an equation. “You shoulda made Mama take that pill this morning.” Those words hung there on the thick morning air, ballooning up between Daddy and me, so that neither of us even cared that Mylie had found a stick and started digging a hole in the dust between the blackberry bushes.
The smile slipped out of Daddy’s eyes, and he rubbed at his forehead again. “I can’t do that, sweetie,” he said, and I knew he was doing his best to beam love over to me in little waves, but I wasn’t ready to feel it.
“Why not?” I slapped away a skeeter trying to land on my face.
“Della, sweetheart, what else do you think I should have done—tied your mama down and forced the pill down her throat?”
I didn’t answer.
“Honey, even if I could do that, I wouldn’t,” said Daddy, his spray bottle forgotten at his feet. “Your mama is a grown-up woman and she deserves our love and respect, even when she’s sick. I’ve gotta let her have her agency, the chance to make her own choices—even if it’s hard for me. Even if I don’t like the choices she’s making.”
He looked down at his shoes, his eyes far away. “Even if it’s making life harder for the rest of us.”
All his words sounded squeezed and strained, like it was costing a lot for him to get them through his teeth, but I didn’t care. It definitely wasn’t hurting him enough, if he was still saying them. Otherwise, he’d find a way to make Mama change.
“Without those pills, Mama isn’t anything. She isn’t a mama. She isn’t in her right mind at all. She’s—” I stopped, took a deep breath. “She’s crazy!”
“That’s not fair, and it’s not true or kind either,” said Daddy sternly. “Pills or no pills, she’s still your mama. She’s still herself—it’s just buried a little deeper. She’s not crazy, honey, she’s sick. You gotta understand, Della, as hard as it is for us, it’s ten times harder for your mama. When she gets like this—it hurts her, honey, inside and out. More than it hurts either of us. She’s struggling, and she needs our love.”
He sighed, the reprimand going out of him, his shoulders and his face crumpling down till he looked like an old man again. “But I want you to know something. I told your mama this last night, too. I don’t agree with the choices she’s making right now, but the law says that if she’s not willing to seek treatment, her doctors and I can’t force her to get it unless she’s threatening to hurt herself or somebody else. But if it comes to it, I’m ready to make other arrangements for you and your sister.”
My breath came in short little jumps. What did Daddy mean, other arrangements? “You mean like—sending us away from home?”
Daddy’s mouth tightened. “I hope not. But keeping you and your sister safe is my top priority, honey, and if it comes right on down to it, having you stay somewhere else for a little while might be the only option.”
“But that won’t make anything better!” I felt like my thoughts were spinning somewhere way above my body, hardly even noticing when Mylie squished a handful of ripe berries up against my cheek. “You can’t do that, Daddy, you can’t!”
Yesterday, I’d told Arden the thing that scared me most was the idea of Daddy walking out on us all—but now, squatting in the dirt with blackberry juice all over my hands and face, this new idea scared me even more.
“Della, hon, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know that we’re gonna get through it. And we’ll still be a family, no matter what—even if your mama has to go back to the hospital, even if you and Mylie have to go stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a week or two. All right?”
I didn’t answer.
“Della?” Daddy asked. I nodded, quick and sharp, my jaws glued shut.
With a giggle, Mylie scooped up two big handfuls of dusty dirt and dumped them, laughing, all over every single berry in my bucket.
Later, after we’d all liked to die of heat exhaustion working the farm stand, I put Mylie down in her crib for a nap. “Go to sleep,” I ordered, handing her a big sippy filled with milk, but Mylie threw it to the floor outside the crib and started crying anyway. I minded Mylie plenty, but it was Mama who had the knack for getting her to take a nap.
“Go to sleep!” I said again, hoping that maybe Mama would hear Mylie and come take over. I picked the cup of milk up off the carpet and handed it back, but Mylie just threw it again, hitting me square in the forehead.
“Ouch!” I yelled, but that just made Mylie howl even louder.
“Dumb baby,” I muttered, rubbing the place the cup had hit. It was probably gonna bruise. I stalked off to the bedroom door and sat in the doorway for a few minutes, hoping maybe Mylie would calm down and decide to curl up and go to sleep.
She didn’t. Instead, her screaming just got louder and louder until I felt like it was going to rupture my eardrums even with my hands over my ears, and I gave up and picked her back up out of the crib. When she finally fell asleep, curled up like one big wet hot patch on my lap, her shoulders were still shuddering.
I put Mylie in the crib a second time and wandered into the kitchen, filling myself a glass that was more ice than water. Mama’s pill bottle sat there on the table, shining orange in the summer sunlight, glowing like it was trying to remind me just how badly my plan to fix my mama had failed. No matter what I said or did, she was just getting worse and worse, giving up and checking out and spiraling downhill so fast it made my breath catch.
At this rate, she’d be in the hospital by next week.
A memory swam into my mind—Miss Lorena sitting at her kitchen table Thursday evening, laughing and telling me that doing homework kept her brain from getting lazy and forgetful as she got older. My fingers tightened against the slick glass in my hand; I took another sip, feeling the cool water slip down my throat and settle into my belly. Outside the kitchen window I could see a plume of dust kicked up by Daddy’s tractor as he drove through the peanut fields.
Maybe I’d been going about it all wrong. Maybe what Mama’s brain needed wasn’t rest—maybe it was the opposite. Maybe the only thing all my helping had done was keep Mama from needing to work her brain as much.
Maybe she was getting sicker so fast because of me.
I drank up the rest of the water as quick as I could, till my insides felt sloshy and full, and then set the glass in the sink and hurried back into my bedroom. My backpack was stuffed under my bed, where it had lain ever since I’d kicked it there after school let out in June. I pulled it out as quietly as I could and then turned it upside down over my bed: a math workbook, a spiral notebook that had bent in half and lost most of its pages, a bunch of gum wrappers, and a pencil case filled with colored pencils tumbled onto my sheet. In her crib across the room Mylie stirred and whimpered a little; I froze, but she stayed still after that.
I eased open the dresser drawer and pulled out a pair of shorts and two tank tops. If it was hot inside, it would be even worse out there—for a minute I hesitated, thinking about all that heat. But I couldn’t stay here, following the breeze from the fans while Mama got worse and worse.
I had to do something, and this was the only thing I could think to do.
I rolled the clothes up and stuffed them into my backpack, then tossed the math book and a pencil after them. I wished I hadn’t given the Emily Dickinson book back to Miss Lorena—I’d need something to think on besides Mama. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and opened the bedroom door, careful to go slow past its creaky spot.
The door to Mama’s room was still half-open. I tiptoed past it, pausing only a second to peek inside and make sure she was in there, reading on her bed and ignoring the world, and then snuck a tube of sunscreen and a little bottle of bug spray out from under the bathroom sink. In the kitchen, three peanut butter sandwiches in little plastic bags went into the backpack, too, along with a plastic bottle filled with water from the tap.
I’d opened the fridge and reached my hand in to grab a Tupperware filled with juicy red watermelon bites, but at the last second I put it back down and took a couple of peaches and stubby little carrots, still all covered in dirt, instead. The sight of that watermelon just took me right back to yesterday morning. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to eat watermelon again without seeing Mama’s panicky face, hearing her nonsense talk about watermelon seeds, watching her slip that pill down into her pocket.
When I’d got my backpack all zipped up and over my shoulder I snuck back into my bedroom. I stood by Mylie’s crib, watching her sleep, for a long minute. There were two fans in here, but even then she was so sweaty I could tell she was going to leave a big damp patch on the sheet. I wondered if Mama would even notice.
I reached my hand into the crib, resting my fingers just the tiniest bit against her back so I didn’t wake her up. “Bye-bye, Mylie baby,” I whispered, my words swept away by the breeze from the fans so even I could hardly hear them. “I know you aren’t gonna understand why I have to leave. And I know it’ll probably just make things harder right at first—but I’ve got to do something to help Mama get better, and I’m all out of other ideas. Maybe with me gone, she’ll remember why she’s got to be our mama.”
Standing there, feeling Mylie’s back rising and falling—gentle as butterfly wings—as she breathed, I felt a little drop of doubt creeping into me, making the backpack on my shoulders feel twice as heavy and the air coming through the bedroom window twice as hot. Maybe this new idea wouldn’t help Mama any more than the last one had. I thought of Mylie last Saturday morning, screaming and screaming in her crib, all alone and upset.
But the honest, deep-down part of me knew that even if running away didn’t help Mama one bit, I couldn’t bear to stick around and watch her keep on getting sicker.
“I’m sorry, Mylie baby,” I whispered, kissing my fingertips and then pressing the kiss onto the top of Mylie’s head. “I’ll be back soon.”
I went to the front door, just in case Daddy or Thomas were in sight of the backyard. The metal of the doorknob was cool under my fingers. I stood up as tall as I could, feeling that backpack pulling at my shoulders, and turned the knob.
The outside heat hit me like an oven, ten times worse than the hottest room in our house. The sun was bright today, shining down so hot and strong it felt like it was burning my skin already, everywhere it touched. Still, I took a deep breath and stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind me.