Telling the secret wouldn’t make those things go away, but it’s too late to tell now and it’s not like any of her children would understand. Things were different in 1962. Some things. Other things are the same. Any time Marla thinks about the secret she’s vague like this because details are the problem. Details are always the problem.

  * * *

  Gottfried insisted on going all the way across town to the farmers’ market and she doesn’t like leaving the painter boy in the house by himself. But Gottfried wanders and squeezes grapefruits and asks vendors about which cut of pork is best, and he stops and samples the new peanut brittle on sale at the candy booth.

  “We have to get home,” she says.

  “I’m just tasting this. It won’t take that long.”

  “I mean we should leave now.”

  “Why leave? I wanted to get some fried chicken at that place.” He points to the fried chicken stand. Marla’s heart sinks. She thinks of her father and what he’d say about people who ate fried chicken.

  “I don’t want that boy in our house alone for too long.”

  “He’s not alone. Malcolm’s there.”

  Marla nods because when Gottfried has an idea about food, she knows she can’t change his mind.

  When he asks if she’d like fried chicken, she says no, and skips eating anything at all, which is dumb because she knows she’s hungry and if she doesn’t eat when she’s hungry, she can get so dizzy that sometimes she faints.

  She ignores her stomach and waits for Gottfried to finish.

  “We have to go, okay? Now.”

  Gottfried looks at her, concerned. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I wanted to get some of that milk I got last time. The nut stuff. I’ll grab it and then we can go.”

  Marla breathes in and exhales slowly. The market spins. She feels warm. Probably a hot flash. Marla hasn’t had a hot flash in years. She walks behind Gottfried to the booth where they sell cashew milk and her eyes try to focus, but trying just makes her more dizzy. She closes her eyes and hopes.

  She doesn’t hear Gottfried buying two pints of milk. She sees it through blurry eyes and she feels the counter under her elbow as she leans. But she can’t hear.

  I’m having a stroke. I can’t make it to the car. I’m going to pass out. I’m going to die because Gottfried had to have his soul food. I feel like I’m melting in this coat. Too warm for a coat. I can’t move my arm to unbutton it. I can’t move my eyes. I can’t see. I can’t hear.

  I’m going to die in the farmers’ market surrounded by immigrants and Amish people. This is not where I wanted to die. I never told Gottfried about the blood.

  He’ll never know unless I tell him. He has no idea what he married.

  * * *

  Marla hears the clatter of the antique stand’s jewelry rack. She feels earrings and necklaces fall on her. She reaches for anything to grab hold of, but nothing is there. She can’t tell if she’s on the floor or floating. She’s dying. She knows that. She’s dying with a secret that has swallowed her up.

  Loretta Has Found a New Holloway

  The ambulance cast isn’t on set yet, so Loretta grabs a small cardboard jewelry box from her bedroom and starts to collect the fleas that are jumping over her mother’s barely breathing body. She tries to find the one who does flips. She catches about five and puts the box lid on. Then she opens it to test the new talent. The flipper is there. He tries to escape with a somersault the minute she opens the box.

  “This won’t make Gerald very happy,” she says, “but you’re perfect. He’ll see that. He’ll know it’s for the good of the show.”

  Sirens sound in the distance as Loretta puts the jewelry box in her backpack next to the circus lunch box. She knows how to do this. She’s rehearsed the last scene of Act Two a hundred times. Even the unscripted parts. The unscripted parts are her favorites. Life is about going off script anyway.

  Wardrobe has dressed her mother in a pair of flannel pajamas that don’t match. Loretta looks around for a bathrobe and finds the worn fleece one her mother wears every day. She puts it around her mother’s shoulders and grabs the new afghan Loretta gave her for Christmas and puts it overtop. As the sirens grow louder, she realizes that she should go to the bathroom now because she doesn’t want to pee by accident in the ambulance.

  The sirens still sound far enough away.

  She stops in her room and takes care of the curse. She’s breathy and flushed by the time she gets to the bathroom and pees. Sirens grow louder. She checks to make sure her pits don’t smell and she puts on deodorant anyway. She uses her mother’s so she’ll smell like her. Goes back to her room for her two bags—one, a backpack with her circus equipment and the troupe; the other, a suitcase with everything she wants to keep from her room inside it.

  Sirens stop—now it’s just the sound of a truck barreling down the stone lane—and Loretta steps onto the porch of the wagon and waits. It’s there she gets a new idea for a dress. Thin straps, and sequined—maybe red. Something about the color red is right for now. The powder blue was a child’s life. Now she’s a circus woman, not a circus girl. Things have changed. And if her mother doesn’t live through the day, things will change more by nightfall.

  * * *

  The wagon feels like a stranger’s house with strangers in it. No one ever comes in except their cast of three. And the fleas. And a few times, police or the landlord. Loretta sits in her mother’s chair in front of the TV. The TV is off. She was told to sit here by the ambulance men who know the script better.

  She doesn’t hear what they’re saying even though they’re loud and are clearly saying things—just not to her. Soon, they have her mother on a stretcher and are maneuvering her down the steps of the wagon and sliding her into the back of the truck. Only when they look like they’re leaving without her does Loretta speak.

  “I’m coming with you,” she says.

  “Um—”

  “I have to come with you,” she says.

  “You can ride up front,” the guy says.

  “No problem.” Loretta walks slowly, taking each step in a measured, dramatic stride, lugging her two bags with her. She walks in front of the ambulance and they seem to be waiting for her, which is not an ambulance’s job, waiting. The driver is mesmerized, though, as if Loretta were already wearing her red-sequined gown. She can see him saying something to her, but she can’t hear over the roar of the crowd. Act Two is over. Act Three is going to be the best ever.

  CanIHelpYou?: Kiss Me I’m Irish

  “Welcome to Arby’s. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Want to try our limited-time Irish green Jamocha shake?”

  No one ever says yes to the shake. The only green I’m selling today is between five and seven. Ten customers for me—five of them new since Jake Marks got another two quarter ounces off me last week. I don’t trust that kid, but I’m five hundred bucks away from buying my own car.

  We do what we do to get what we need.

  And I need a car.

  My mother seems to think I need an Easter dress. I’ve never understood this because we don’t go to church on Easter. All we do is go to her mother’s house and pose for stupid pictures and then eat ham and three kinds of potatoes.

  * * *

  I try Ian three times, but he’s not answering his phone. I’m pretending I don’t care but I do. When I see him in school he’s nice and all, but he stays after for debate club and we don’t walk home together anymore. This happened last year, too, so I try not to get paranoid.

  It’s not that, though.

  He said this thing to me about two weeks ago, right after the CallYouLater guy. It was a day or two after, and I was still kind of obsessed.

  Kidnapped girls. I can’t get away from them.

  He rolled his eyes at something I’d said. About maybe going into the police and talking to them about it.

  “You’re so white.” That’s what he said.

  I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I stopped thinking about the maybe-kidnapped girl and started thinking about how white I am. So white. I am so white.

  If you’re best friends with the black kid, you don’t have to notice you’re white, you know? I never thought of myself as white when I was around Ian and I never thought of him as mixed race. He was just Ian. But we’re not in fourth grade anymore.

  Being one of five black kids in a high school of all white kids is not like fourth grade at all.

  Being a black boy growing into a black man here in this white town is not like fourth grade at all.

  I talked about going to talk to the police the same as I’d talk about going to Arby’s for a Beef ’n Cheddar. So convenient.

  There’s another complication.

  I’m definitely in love with him.

  You think this is some typical white-girl thing. Being attracted to the black kid in school. Maybe you think it’s part of my badassery, as if Ian were some symbol for me being cool, same as scoring you Percocet. That’s how the other white kids treat him. The football players make friends with him during a group project and in the hallways they can say, “Hey, bruh! What’s up?” and they never have to think about how white they are. They get to run stop signs, drink beer, and do all kinds of stupid shit and they never think about why they get away with it. I guess I do that, too. Maybe I’m just another white kid to Ian, now. But what Ian and I have—or had—was different. I can feel him kissing me on the couch in his living room as if it just happened.

  Loretta, Act Three: Cold Open

  “I just want to see her!” Loretta yells. “She’s my mother!”

  The actor playing the nurse behind the desk tells Loretta that she’ll have to wait. She’s said this eleven times already, and it’s not even noon. She tells Loretta to go take a walk. Tells her she will take care of Loretta’s suitcase. Tells her it will be a while. Tells her to not worry. Asks her if there’s anyone else coming to take care of her.

  “I take care of myself, thank you very much.”

  Loretta does a double take at the nurse. Makeup did a great job on the dark circles under her eyes. Then Loretta walks out the door of the emergency room. She gets to the sidewalk and opens her flea circus lunch box and asks the troupe which way she should turn. They can’t agree, so she closes the lid again and goes right.

  She doesn’t come into the city very often. The sets are well built and realistic. Beautiful. There are restaurants here with food from other places. One is Greek. One is Thai. One is Moroccan. Loretta wishes she had enough money to try any of these but all she has in her pocket are four dollar bills and two packets of Arby’s horseradish sauce. She walks past a few clothing stores for ladies like her teachers. A tattoo parlor. A lawyer’s office. A music shop. A pet store with a sign that says REPTILES A SPECIALTY!

  She comes to a thrift shop—mostly woven scarves and modest clothing in the window—but something tells her to go inside. There’s a rack of prom dresses in the back. Or dressy dresses. Formal things with tulle and satin, a pair of matching bridesmaid dresses. Something sparkles at her. Red. Red sequins. And Loretta grabs at it like there are hundreds of shoppers when she’s the only customer in the store.

  She holds it up to her body and it’s probably too big but that’s better than too small. It’s ankle length—no more bared knees—with a slit up the right side, but not too high up. The straps are spaghetti style but thicker—an inch maybe—and sturdy. She makes a joke in her head about lasagna straps when the actor playing the woman at the counter asks, “Can I help you with anything?”

  “I want this dress.”

  Look at Loretta. Look at her unwashed hair and her dirty teeth and her bitten-up skin and her ears too big for her head. Look at her lunch box and her eyes that shine as if she were not the thing you see before you but the thing she sees in her mind. Ringmistress.

  “It’s a pretty dress,” the woman says.

  “I have to have it,” Loretta says.

  “God finds mysterious ways.”

  Loretta scowls. “Well, he can’t just show up and buy me this dress.” She walks toward the counter still holding it close to her chest. “I have three dollars.”

  The woman laughs. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s got a price tag of thirty.”

  “I have three dollars,” Loretta says.

  The woman just gives her a pathetic smile, then purses her lips. “You’re barely a size one if I was to guess. That’s a ten, easily.”

  Loretta looks at her sideways. “You check dress size on every customer before you sell them things? This is the weirdest store ever.”

  They stand, staring at each other.

  The woman finally buckles. “I’ll take three dollars.”

  Loretta throws in one of the two Arby’s sauce packets for good measure and doesn’t even stay for a bag or a business card. She doesn’t say thank you, either, because that bitch just took three of her last four dollars.

  * * *

  Loretta heads back toward the hospital with the dress wrapped around her neck, her face framed by red sequins.

  When she walks through the emergency room doors, the first actor she sees is her father. The second actor she sees is a police officer. The third actor she sees is the nurse who told her she’d keep her suitcase safe.

  This was in the script, so she’s not surprised.

  None of them see her, so she turns and walks back out the door and finds another entrance to a different part of the hospital. She asks an actor who’s playing the role of security guard where the nearest bathroom is and goes inside and locks the door.

  She slips her new dress over her T-shirt and lets it fall down over her hips and legs; the fabric is silky on her bare bottom and legs. She spins and trips over the extra at the lowest hem. She gathers the slack in the straps and says, “About four inches.” That’s how much she’d have to take off before she could wear it without tripping over it.

  Five minutes later, Loretta is walking down the sidewalk again. She has her dress on over her clothes and the straps have two slipknots in them, like single-petal flowers on each shoulder.

  When she arrives back in the emergency area of the hospital, the woman who was minding her suitcase isn’t behind the counter anymore. A new actor plays the part now. Makeup must be practicing black circles today because this actor has them, too.

  “Do you still have my suitcase?” Loretta asks.

  “Are you Loretta?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mom wants to see you,” she says. “Come on back.”

  As they walk through the hallway, the woman turns to her and says, “I love your dress.”

  “Thank you,” Loretta says, and curtsies once in each direction, bowing her head so she doesn’t get hit in the face with thrown roses.

  The Shoveler: Marla Really Has a Thing for Easter

  I don’t really know what to say to Mom when we sit down to eat on Saturday night. I’ve changed so I’m no longer covered in my yellow mistake. I’ve showered the embarrassment off my skin and it’s down in the sewers now.

  I don’t have much to say to Mom, really. Since the whole thing at school, we haven’t talked a lot, and I’m so busy at Marla and Gottfried’s house we never see each other.

  “These mashed potatoes are different.”

  That’s what I decide to say. These mashed potatoes are different.

  “I added onions and cheese,” she says. “Are you working every day this week again?”

  I nod while chewing on my different mashed potatoes.

  “You must be making a fortune,” she said.

  “They really have a thing for Easter,” I say. “So I have to work until I get it done because I guess they decorate? Don’t know. Easter is a big deal. That’s all I know.”

  Mom stops eating and looks at me. I give her the why-are-you-looking-at-me-that-way face. “What’s their last name?” she asks.

  I shrug even though I know that Marla and Gottfried’s last name is Hemmings. It makes me think about last names. Mom’s and mine is Smith. Mom always says her name in a weird way, stressing the Smith part. Amber SMITH. That’s how she says it.

  I just say mine like normal people say their names.

  “Weird that they’re that into Easter,” she says. “Do they have a big party or something?”

  “They barely talk to me,” I say. “I’m just the painter.”

  “You’ve been there most days for two months. You’d think they’d be nicer.”

  “They’re nice. They just don’t talk to me. I’m working,” I say.

  “Huh,” she says. “I knew a family that made a big deal out of Easter when I was growing up. I always found it weird. Must be super religious, eh?”

  “Not really.”

  “Huh.”

  “How’s the car lot going? Did you sell anything this week?”

  Mom shakes her head. “I just do the paperwork. I told you that already.”

  “Did you ask them about a cheap car for me?”

  She shakes her head and chews. “Forgot,” she manages, with a cheekful of mashed potato/onions/cheese.

  “Maybe I can come over one day and talk to the guys. There’s a car auction near here. I bet they could find me something cheap.”

  “I’ll ask them on Monday,” she says, but I know she won’t ask them on Monday because she probably wants me around and not in my own car going to work or other places. I’m growing up. I’m all she has. And she can’t shoplift me in the deep pockets of her spring coat.