DeWitt is on the phone with his daughter, Beth. She’s going through a rough patch, has been going through one for years. He worries for her, and for her children, Dan and Jeanette.
“Elizabeth,” he says, over and over. He only uses her full name when he means business. “You can always come home.”
Ernest hasn’t even seen his grandkids since they were very small, but Dan’s a teenager now, and Jeanette is in the eighth grade. They’ve been living in Charlotte, North Carolina. But now Beth’s lost her job. As Beth tries to explain that she’ll be fine, she’s sure to find a job soon, his attention is lured away. Ernest watches Sheriff Hudson get out of a car parked next door, where he greets another officer waiting in an unmarked cruiser. What on earth is going on?
Over the phone, Beth simply thinks her father has lost interest in the conversation. If she had known the police car was there, if she had guessed the scene unfolding, she might have had time to ossify her heart before the story breaks. But she doesn’t hear.
In the derelict house next to the park, Gilmer Thurber also fails to hear the car in the alley behind his house. But his sister hears. Encoded into her DNA, generations of women help her feel the vibrations, to suss out whether the driver is friend or foe. This is an unfamiliar engine: not a family member. The engine cuts off, and the silence that follows is terrifying. The best she can do is crouch down in her living room, ball herself, still her breath, diminish the space she occupies, and hope she will be overlooked. This tactic seldom works for her, but still she tries.
Her brother, Gilmer, goes about his business in the basement unbothered.
As soon as his officer is stationed near the front, Sheriff Hudson makes his way up the walk to the back door of the Thurber house. He has to knock three times, has to call out that he has a warrant for Gilmer’s arrest, before Thurber’s sister, as wan and frightened as a half-skinned rabbit, opens the door.
Elizabeth DeWitt
4
My babysitter, Mrs. Thurber, is old and mean. She makes me drink water standing by the kitchen table. She won’t let me sit down. After I drink the water, she pushes me back outside to play. She won’t let me in until lunch at eleven.
She has toys, but she won’t let us play with them. She lives next door to the park, but she never takes us there. I play with the other kids in the yard. There’s another girl whose name is also Beth. And there’s a boy, Mikey. He has long hair and thick, dark eyebrows like a grown-up. I like him because even though he’s white, he’s nice to me. We make a game out of jumping over the dog doo in the grass. We run, jump, and don’t land on the dog doo. Some of it’s soft and some of it’s hard if you poke it with a stick.
“You two are gross,” the other Beth says. She tells Mikey, “You shouldn’t let her make you gross.”
I don’t know what time it is, but I have to pee. I knock on the door and call to be let in. Then I whine. Then I cry. I can’t hold it anymore, and when I let go where I stand, Mrs. Thurber yells at me, then sits me in the corner with my wet underwear on my head. She makes me wear a diaper for the rest of the day.
Her kids still live at home. They both look the same age as my mom and dad. The girl child, she’s growing a baby in her belly, even though she’s not married. You don’t ask questions about it. I like to watch her chewing her breakfast. She chews on one side only, her jaw sticking out, popping. I try to chew crooked like her.
The man child lives in the basement. He walks around the house, the yard, wearing just a little swimsuit, and his belly moves like Jell-O.
After lunch, I hide in Mrs. Thurber’s coat closet. It’s hot in here, crowded with smelly coats. It’s also dark, and I focus my eyes on