When dinner is ready, I serve it up on the large white plates I find in the cabinet. We eat on the couch because Sadie wants to watch a movie and Edison wants to make Sadie happy. The little lightning bolt sits squarely between us, leaving half a cushion’s distance between herself and me. She doesn’t realize that her test will only work out in my favor. After we take her home, Edison will thank me for being so patient with her, for being sweet. We’ll topple into bed and I’ll show him how perfect we are for each other.
Sadie picksSnow Whitefor us to watch. It’s digitally restored, and the fair princess is all soft lines and gentle ballads. The evil stepmother glowers down from her throne, doomed to fail.
The message is a little on the nose, but she’s a smart girl. I’ll have to be extra cautious around her. She doesn’t afford me much chance to do this. She barely looks at me all evening. She huddles close to Edison, determined to prove that he belonged to her first.
“Thanks for dinner,” she says, when the credits are rolling and I stand to collect the plates.
“It was great, Jade,” Edison says, slapping his hand to his taut stomach. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a home-cooked meal.”
“I know,” I tease him. “I’ve seen your fridge.” I wish he would call me by a nickname—anything but Jade. But Edison sees something valuable in my nom de plume because he associates it with me. It’s beautiful to him, and it sparks a recognition like the first chords of a favorite song.
It hurts in some inexplicable way that I can’t tell him I’m Sissy. That isn’t my legal name, the one that the state gave me when I was found abandoned. It isn’t the name I wrote on my tests at school, or when I was applying for jobs at sixteen. It isn’t even what my foster families called me. But it’s the most important name I carry. My sisters gifted it to me because I was the baby, the littlest sister, and it stuck. Moody got her nickname shortly after. And Iris picked her nickname for herself.
When we were ten, Iris was placed with an elderly foster mother, and it was the only placement she liked because there were no other children and the woman had no spouse. Most of Iris’s placements were a mystery to Moody and me, but I saw the change in her each time we were reunited for visits. I saw her anger building, her childhood powerlessness slowly morphing into something sharp. But in this place, where she spent nine tranquil months, she was as close as she’d ever be to a typical, happy child. The woman lived behind her flower shop and she taught Iris all about botany. The irises she sold were a deep indigo, bold and stark. There were more than two hundred species of them, the old woman told her. They were a favorite in gardens, and soft to touch, but all of them are deadly.
“Did you do your homework?” Edison asks.
“Yes,” Sadie tells him. Her voice is bright and sweet when she talks to him. Familiar. Nothing at all like the shy mumbles she’s given me thus far.
I bring the plates to the sink, and as soon as I run the water, Edison calls out, “Jade, don’t wash the dishes. You’ve done too much already.”
“I don’t mind,” I say. I work a smudge off his plate with my thumb. I want to cook for him, bring him a cold glass of soda as he puts his feet up on the couch. I want to take his clothes out of the dryer—his work shirts, his church clothes, all the little traces of his presence, and press them to myself as I fold them up and arrange them in neat rows.
When his body is lying lifeless before me, I’ll take care of him in much the same way. I’ll trim my DNA off his fingernails and I’ll tell him that I forgive him for scratching and fighting me. I know it isn’t his fault. I know it’s just the stubborn instinct to survive. I’ll remove his clothes and launder them. I’ll wipe away the waste that he expels. I’ll pull his teeth with the pliers from his toolbox in the garage.
I would like to keep him whole and bury him in one piece. I’ll have to fold him, knees to chest, so that he’s as small as possible when rigor mortis sets in. He’ll be easier to transport that way. He’ll fit neatly in the fifty-gallon trash bags he keeps in the garage for his construction waste.
Sadie is so quiet that I don’t hear her approaching until she’s standing beside me. “I can do the dishes,” she says, and I know that Edison told her to come in here and help me.
“Thanks, honey,” I say, although every inch of her is an intrusion. “You wash and I’ll dry. How’s that?”
She nods, staring down at the drain.
“Eddie said you like to sing.” It surprises me when Sadie opens her mouth; she’s been so quiet all night.
“Just a little here and there,” I say.
She nods. “That’s cool.”
I study her. Graceful swan neck, hair in every shade of yellow and white and gold. Pert nose. All shyness. The kind of child who will impress mothers when their sons bring her home after school.Can I help you clean up, Mrs.so-and-so? We’re just doing our homework. Oh yes, I’d love to stay for dinner.
“Do you like music?” I ask, because this is a chance for us to connect and for me to score a point with Edison. Of course she likes music. Everyone on the planet does.
“I play violin at school.” Was that—is that a smile on her face? It’s gone already. “I’m not very good.”
“I have a guitar,” I tell her, and it is a victory when she looks at me with light in her eyes. Music, she is drawn to. I will have to test this. When her favorite songs are playing on the radio, does she let herself go and sing more than she speaks?
“Hey, Sades, it’s getting late, kiddo.” Edison is in the doorway. “I told your dad I’d have you back by ten.”
It’s nine forty-five. “Oh,” I say, wincing apologetically. “Edison, I think my car is blocking you in. Do you want me to take her?”
Edison looks at Sadie, who shrugs. She’s retreated back into herself. She doesn’t want to commit to an answer, doesn’t want to be the reason that anything does or does not happen.
Sadie hands me the last dish, and I nudge her with my elbow conspiratorially. We’re going to be friends, I’ve decided. I’m going to learn about the violin and the music she likes, and I’m going to make her trust me. “Go get your shoes and meet me in the car.”
Once Sadie has gone outside, Edison grasps my wrist and reels me to him. “Thank you for being so patient with her,” he says. He nudges my forehead with his, and my arms go up around his shoulders, our bodies swaying in our own little dance.
“She’s a good kid,” I say.
