Chapter 2 - The Medicine Jar and the Cold Bread
The wind off the river carried the smell of wet soot and rotting autumn leaves. Emma kept one hand clamped firmly around the torn strap of Lily’s jacket and the other wrapped around the purple cat coin purse inside her pocket. Her small knuckles were raw and pink from the rain, aching with the kind of dull, thumping cold that stayed deep inside the bone long after you came indoors.
“Emma?” Lily whispered, her voice barely louder than the hum of a passing delivery van.
“Keep walking,” Emma said, without turning her head. “The steps get slippery when it drizzles.”
They turned down Elm Alley, a narrow trench between two four-story tenements where the sun never quite reached, even in July. Here, the puddles were oily, swirling with iridescent ribbons of spilled motor fluid from the auto repair shop at the corner. At the end of the alley, three concrete steps led down below street level into the basement apartment they shared with Clara.
The wooden door was swollen from moisture. Emma leaned her whole thirty-eight-pound frame against it until the warped frame groaned and the rusted brass latch clicked open.
Inside, the silence was heavy. It was not a peaceful quiet; it was the suffocating, watchful stillness of a sickroom.
A single floor lamp stood in the corner, its yellowed fringe shade casting a faint circle of amber across the worn linoleum. On the sofa, buried beneath three layers of faded quilts and an old brown trench coat, Clara Wilson lay with her eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell in short, rattling hitches, each breath sounding like sandpaper dragged across dry pine. On the small plastic nightstand beside her sat an empty glass amber pill bottle, lying on its side next to an unplugged oxygen concentrator that had ceased humming four days ago when the utility company cut the secondary breaker.
Lily immediately slipped out of her sneakers, leaving them neatly by the door. She moved on tiptoe, careful not to let the floorboards squeak, and knelt by the edge of the sofa.
“Grandma?” Lily breathed.
Clara’s eyelids fluttered. They were paper-thin, laced with delicate blue veins. When she opened them, her eyes were cloudy with fever, but the instant they found Lily’s face, a faint, tender light surfaced from somewhere deep inside her frail frame.
“My little birds,” Clara rasped, her voice like crushed dry leaves. She extended a trembling, spotted hand, her knuckles swollen from rheumatoid arthritis. Lily pressed her cheek into Clara’s cool palm. “You shouldn't have been out in this weather. I told you... I told you to stay on the porch.”
Emma stepped forward, her posture rigid, her chin set in the stubborn line that Clara always said belonged to someone who had lived through a war. Slowly, deliberately, Emma reached into her pocket, pulled off the double-wound rubber band, and emptied the purple cat purse onto the faded floral quilt.
The coins clinked softly. Three dimes, two nickels, three pennies, and the quarter with the sticky edge.
“Forty-three cents,” Emma said, her voice steady, defying the tremor in her knees. “From Barlow’s. We found thirty-one cans by the playground and twelve behind the diner.”
Clara looked at the small pile of silver and copper. Her lip quivered, not with disappointment, but with an agony so profound it seemed to pull the breath right out of her lungs. She reached out and pulled both girls toward her, wrapping her thin arms around their shoulders. The fabric of her nightgown smelled of peppermint ointment, menthol, and the sweet, terrible scent of failing lungs.
“Oh, darling,” Clara whispered into Emma’s damp curls. “You brave, sweet girl. You shouldn't be counting pennies for pills. You ought to be drawing pictures. You ought to be learning your letters.”
“I know my letters,” Emma murmured into Clara’s collarbone. “I know how to spell *Digitalis*. That’s what’s on the amber jar. The man at the drugstore with the white coat said it was four hundred and thirty dollars without the card. I counted. That’s four hundred and thirty dollars more than forty-three cents.”
“Hush now,” Clara choked out, swallowing the sob that threatened to shatter her composure. “God makes a way where there is no road, Emma. He always does. Your mama used to say that when the snow was high and we had nothing but cornmeal in the tin.”
At the mention of their mother, Lily pulled a small, worn object from under her shirt. It was an oval silver locket hanging from a frayed piece of blue yarn. She didn't open it; she just held it between her thumb and forefinger. Sarah Wilson had died when the twins were barely three, taken by an aggressive pneumonia after working double shifts at a commercial laundry to pay for an apartment with heating that never worked. Clara had taken them in, fighting the county foster system with every shred of her remaining strength.
A harsh coughing fit suddenly seized Clara. Her body curled inward, trembling violently as she pressed a stained handkerchief to her mouth. Emma rushed to the sink, turning the squealing faucet to fill a chipped plastic cup with cold tap water. The pipes shuddered, groaning through the walls, spitting out a brown-tinged stream before running clear.
When Emma brought the cup back, Clara could barely lift her head to sip. A tiny spot of bright crimson stained the corner of the white linen handkerchief. Clara quickly tucked it beneath the pillow, but Emma saw. Emma saw everything.
“I’m going to make the toast,” Lily said quietly, her voice trembling as she retreated toward the two-burner hotplate in the corner. There was half a loaf of white bread left in the plastic sleeve, the crusts already hardening into cardboard.
Emma stood over her grandmother, watching the way Clara’s breath caught at the top of every inhalation. The landlord, Mr. Miller, had pounded on the door yesterday morning, shouting through the thin wood that if the six hundred dollars in back rent wasn't paid by Friday noon, the locks would be changed and their belongings set on the curb. Friday was tomorrow.
Emma walked back to the entryway, where their wet pink jackets hung on two rusted nails. In the bottom of her pocket, beneath the purple purse, her fingers touched a folded piece of thick, creamy paper.
She had found it two weeks ago, tucked inside the back cover of Clara’s heavy leather Bible. It was a letter Sarah had written six years ago, never mailed, covered in elegant, flowing script. On the reverse side was a small sketch of a stone fountain with three leaping dolphins, and underneath it, a sequence of bold, masculine initials: *A.V. - Always Yours, S.* Beside the initials was an address printed on an old receipt: *Vance Plaza, 100 Financial Way.*
Emma couldn't read all the long, grown-up words in the letter—words like *consequences*, *sacrifice*, and *unconditional*—but she knew what the address meant. That was the shining glass castle uptown, the one they could see from the playground across the river, rising into the clouds like a spear of blue ice.
Emma looked back at Clara, whose eyes had slipped shut again, her breathing shallow and ragged.
*Forty-three cents won’t save anybody,* the man at the scrap yard had said.
May you like
Emma took the piece of paper from her pocket. She picked up a stub of a blue crayon from the windowsill. With tongue pressed between her teeth, her small, chilled fingers began to write on the blank margins around her mother's old handwriting.
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