Dedication
For those who find the beauty
in a life they didn’t choose or expect
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part One
Hands
Clay
Jonah
The Attic
Lounge
Town Facts
Pedaling
Snowstorm
Gwen
Straws
Snowflake
Mom’s Lawyer
Tray Art
Trap
Bumper Stickers
Soup Kitchen
Snowman
Jonah
Line
Hunter
Birthdays
Dead End
Coffee
The Eddy
Hippies
Memory Metal
Team Meeting
Fiddle Music
Fleas
Cold
Ears
Elinor
Sounds
River
Gwen
Friends
Soup Kitchen
Termites
Mom
Jonah
The Deal
Logs
In the Belly of the Whale
O
River Rats
Rainie
Locker
Lip
Gun Safe
O Man
White Noise
Rooms
Daredevil
No
Logs
The Nurses Talk about Me
Crossing the Line
Fudge
Beavers
Lawsuit
Hurricane Chaser
French Braids
Ghost Town
Three Things about Hunter
Mom
Schedule
What We Have to Say
Three Things about the Kennebec
Dad
Blee-ah
Trust Your Hands
Music
Weight
Words
Toothache
Part Two
Bangs
Sides
Dr. Kate
On the Record
The Night Before
Headwater Courthouse
Jonah
Courtroom Decorum
Recess
Witness
Firearm
Clay
Cross
Arthur
Snorkel Man
Truth
Headwater Courthouse Day Two
Jonah After
Hair Trigger
Part Three
Where Are You, Clay?
Jonah
Birchell
Cows
Limbo
Team Meeting
The Fidgets
Surprise
Wish Time
Ring
Harmonica
My Presents
After the Party
Clay
Magic Lotion
Part Four
Audrey
Liv
What Form?
Nuummite
Jonah
Cans
Soul
Wish
Moms
I Meet an Organic Baby Cow
Trailer
Part Five
Moo
For Sale
At the Great Water Place
Tornado
Verdict
Part Six
Driver’s Ed
Plant Obsessed
Summer
Ashes
River
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Betty Culley
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Hands
My brother Jonah’s nurses
say I have
good hands.
I don’t tell anyone that
my hands are only good
when they want
to be good.
I can feel them changing.
Not thinking whose body
they are connected to—
me, the good girl, Liv.
Not noticing,
when they’re inspired,
how they are
getting me in trouble.
Jonah’s hands are still now,
even though he’s only seventeen.
It’s not his choice anymore—
hands under the covers
or on top.
We get to decide—
Mom, the nurses,
and me,
his fifteen-year-old sister.
Is that how it is in families,
one child with bad hands,
one child with good?
Jonah’s bad hands found a gun
in Clay’s attic.
Waved it in the air,
twirled it around his fingers,
held it to his head.
That’s not a toy.
It could be loaded.
You know my dad,
Clay told Jonah.
Clay is a serious boy,
not a daredevil
like Jonah.
He wouldn’t climb
the cell phone tower
barefoot,
just because it was there.
Clay knows
he doesn’t have superpowers.
Mom’s lawyer says it’s best
if Clay doesn’t come here
anymore.
Even though he lives
right across the street.
Clay
When Clay’s door opens,
it happens.
My hands are above my head,
waving,
then they are beckoning.
Clay takes a step forward
like my hands have the power
to move him.
Then an invisible force
pulls him backward,
back into his house.
I think he smiles at me.
Maybe not with his mouth,
but definitely with his eyes.
After he disappears,
my empty hands
hold each other,
doubling their strength.
Jonah
Jonah’s nurses love him.
They bathe him, comb his hair,
put him in blue shirts
to match his eyes.
Above and beyond,
my mother says grimly,
when I point it out—
like it’s a fault.
I lie next to Jonah
and kiss the palm of his hand.
Smack Smack
His face changes
just a little
when I kiss him.
For the past five months
the living room is Jonah’s—
a hospital bed
nurse stuff
Jonah’s liquid food.
Mom doesn’t like it
when I call Jonah’s formula pump on wheels
his Food Truck
When I call his suction machine
Suck-It-Up
When I call the new nurses
Contestants
in the JONAH PAGEANT.
Mom says we’re lucky
to get any nursing help
at all,
out here in the little mill town
of Maddigan, Maine.
I think,
can you still
call us a mill town
if the mill is closed?
I greet the new nurse,
Vivian.
I like her black curly hair
twisting out of its bun.
I like her dark eyes that pause on me,
and her long eyelashes that blink
closed and open, closed and open.
I see her notice the dishes in the sink,
the stains on the linoleum floor,
the laundry piled on the kitchen table,
but look past them to Jonah.
See her pick up Jonah’s hand
and kiss it,
just like I do.
Jonah’s face relaxes,
and Vivian gets my vote.
Mom is suing Clay’s father
for a million dollars
for the loss of a son.
Jonah is still here, I say to her.
She gives me a hard look.
I know you are not that stupid.
I AM that stupid, I answer,
giving her back my own hard look.
I do know how expensive it is
to be helpless.
How many things don’t count
as necessary.
A wheelchair ramp
A wheelchair van
Clothes, air-conditioning, prayer cards.
Everything has to be for my brother now.
Jonah doesn’t ask for anything,
but he needs everything.
The Attic
How it happened.
Clay’s mom, Gwen, says,
Boys, could you please
bring down the boxes of
Halloween decorations
from the attic.
Then we hear the shot.
It’s only afterward
that we know it was
THAT shot—
not Clay’s dad’s
weekend target shooting
in their backyard.
BOOM
It sounds so close.
It’s a Saturday, but
I should have known
this BOOM
was different.
Target shooting is
boom boom boom
boom boom boom
boom boom boom.
This is one BOOM.
Even inside our house,
Mom and I
hear Gwen’s screams.
Then we see her
in front of her house,
still screaming.
When Jonah is carried
out of Clay’s house
there are so many people
around him,
moving so fast
to get him into the ambulance.
My hands hide themselves
in fists.
Part of me
wants to yell at Jonah,
What stupid thing
have you done now?
I’m not going to cover for you
this time.
Clay walks
out of the house,
then is gone in a police car.
His head is down
and I can’t see his face.
Lounge
At the hospital
Mom and I wait
in a room.
Two years ago,
we waited in a room
like this one
after Dad had his heart attack—
me and Mom and Jonah.
The hospital has special rooms
for people to wait
for bad news.
The woman who showed us
to the room
called it a “lounge.”
Would you like something to drink,
while you’re waiting in the lounge?
she asks us.
No,
Mom says,
with not even a thank-you.
What are my choices?
I ask the lounge woman.
Mom hits out at my arm
with a snap of her hand.
Tea, coffee, water, juice, milk,
the woman lists.
I’ll take apple juice,
if you have it.
She brings me a tiny can
of apple juice
and pours it into an even tinier
paper cup.
It’s warm
and tastes like metal.
Different bad-news people
give us updates.
He’s in surgery.
He’s holding his own.
They are getting ready to
close up.
The doctor will be out
to talk to you soon.
Each time it’s just
one person
in the doorway,
Mom lets out a sigh.
I remember, too,
when we waited to hear
about Dad,
and two people came
together.
That must be a bad-news rule.
One person never brings
the worst news
alone.
The whole time
I’m waiting in the lounge,
I keep expecting
Jonah to knock
at the door—
dressed in jeans
and a T-shirt—
having somehow convinced
his doctors
that they have gotten
the wrong patient—
that it was all
a big mistake.
Town Facts
Dad was born here
in Maddigan,
in a farmhouse
on the edge of town.
It burned to the ground
when I was little.
Now it’s just a field
with tall grass.
That’s where the house was,
Dad told us,
every time we drove by.
It was the same
with other places in town.
The bakery
used to be a barbershop.
The pizza place
was a shoe store.
The way he talked,
everything was once
something else,
with only Dad to remember
what it was.
Jonah would joke,
Is this going to be on the exam, Dad?
I didn’t pay much attention
to Dad’s town facts.
Now, if I want to know,
he’s not here to ask.
Pedaling
The nurses call it
range of motion.
Vivian takes Jonah’s
arms and legs
through the motions
he used to make
on his own.
One motion
for his legs
looks like he’s pedaling
a bike.
It was Jonah
who taught me
how to ride my bike.
The bike had
old training wheels,
so bent
they barely touched the ground.
Dad tried first.
He gave the bike a hard push,
and yelled,
You got it, Liv. You got it.
I didn’t get it.
I won’t let you fall,
Jonah said,
and ran next to me,
cheering,
Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal.
Every time I swayed,
he was there
to grab the handlebars,
until my feet learned
to do it
on their own.
Vivian slow-motions
Jonah’s legs.
Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal.
Snowstorm
At school
I stop hearing the teachers’ voices.
It sounds like buzzing in my ears,
all the words blending together
into one big GRAH
coming out of their mouths.
I stop taking notes.
What’s the use
in writing
GRAH GRAH GRAH?
Behind my book in geometry class
I make snowflakes.
Fold and fold, fold and fold,
and cut out little triangles.
There are triangles in geometry.
GRAH GRAH GRAH.
Mr. Sommers points to them
on the blackboard.
A girl next to me raises her hand
and answers.
BLIH BLIH BLIH
My paper snowflakes are astonishing.
Open all the folds and LOOK—
by snipping away some of the paper
I created something that is more
than just a piece of paper.
How can there be more when there is less?
Mr. Sommers is standing behind my seat
admiring my snowflakes
or not.
I see him remember Jonah,
the boy in his geometry class
two years ago—
wavy brown hair like mine,
and blue eyes instead of my
muddy ones,
the school’s star
pole-vaulter and triple jumper.
My whole life
I’m always two grades
behind Jonah.
I lift up a snowflake.
One for you, Mr. Sommers, I say,
and he takes it
as if he can’t
say no to me.
My best friend, Rainie,
says it’s illegal
to put things
that are not mail
into a mailbox,
but I stuff the snowflakes
in Clay’s mailbox
at the end of his driveway.
Our Number 23 mailbox
faces his 24.
I was ten
and Jonah was twelve
when Clay moved in
across the street.
Jonah saw
a boy his age,
skateboarded
down our driveway
across the road
and up Clay’s driveway
to introduce himself.
Clay’s hair was
lighter than brown
darker than blond
and he was just a little bit taller
than Jonah.
It was fall
and Jonah
picked a pear off a tree
on Clay’s front lawn
and handed it to him.
Jonah and Clay
started talking,
and I didn’t think Clay
noticed me
standing in front of our house,
but suddenly
he held up the hand
that had the pear,
and waved it at me.
That’s the way it was
with Clay and me—
he was Jonah’s friend,
but he never acted like
I wasn’t there.
I hope it is Clay and not his parents
who find the storm.
Gwen
People in town write letters to the paper.
“A man has a right to have guns in his house.”
Even Gwen has a gun—
a small one she keeps in her purse.
No talking back to your mama now,
Jonah said to Clay,
after Gwen told the boys
she carried a handgun
to protect herself,