One Dark Body by Charlotte Watson Sherman

Author:Charlotte Watson Sherman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sweet Inspiration Press
Published: 2020-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

SECTION 5

Blood Memory

I

Nola

NOLA TWISTED IN THE OLD WHITE SHEETS on Miss Marius’s bed. She hadn’t dreamed of her mother in years. Her mother had been so real Nola could smell the lilac scent of her body, even now. She sat up and eased her tired legs over the side of the high wooden bed. She never should have suggested walking from the train depot, she thought, as her toes pulsed in a wrathful chorus.

The girl would not be easy..

She had figured on some small anger, not this cool indifference, this sugar-coated fury inside a shell.

She would have to break her open, find some small hole and push through. She did not have much time. She could feel him, see the shape of him in the heavy Pearl air. There on the road she could’ve almost touched him. She knew El was near.

She moved to the front window and pressed her face against a cool pane. The sky began to break into fiery colors. She tried to recall the song her father used to sing to her so many years ago, some sad song about red moons and people turning in on themselves. Though she focused on that memory and the picture of him she carried inside her mind, she could not invoke the sound of his voice.

She walked softly out of Miss Marius’s room and down the hall to the room Septeema shared with the other children. She opened the door and stepped inside.

The light breathing of the children surprised her. They slept like those a breath away from stepping into other worlds.

Septeema took up the least space in the big bed. She slept on her side, back to the others, arms hugging her body as if she were protecting herself, even in sleep.

Nola touched her face lightly. Septeema did not stir.

“She’s El all over,” she whispered, surprised. “El and her grandma, for sure.”

Nola lowered her face to Septeema’s. She smelled the warm metallic scent of hate in Septeema’s mouth.

Septeema opened one eye, then the other, and stared. Nola brushed her lips against her cheek and straightened, then walked quickly from the room.

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