“What are you doing?” Joey asked. To her ears, she sounded like someone else, someone who was about to explode.
Carson didn’t pick up on her tone. “I’m making a poster for you, Joey.” He looked up and grinned. “Do you like it?”
No, she did not like it. She did not like it one bit.
Without thinking, Joey snatched the book out of her cousin’s little hands and smacked him, as hard as she could, across the face.
The slap made a sound very similar to the one Lola Celia had given her out by the pond, and God help her, it was extremely satisfying. Joey had never hit anyone before, and oh wow, did it ever feel good to hurl that anger at someone.
But three seconds later, regret replaced her rage as she watched Carson’s little face transform from shock into pain, and then, finally, fear. He was only four years old, maybe half her size, and totally unable to fight back. As Joey looked at him, so small and helpless, and so utterly terrified of her, she saw herself. In this moment, he was Joey, cowering on the floor.
And she was Ruby.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, as the horror of what she’d done sank in. “Carson, I’m so sorry.”
She took a step toward him. He scuttled away from her. Then he opened his mouth, and howled.
The sound was awful, and he wouldn’t stop. Every time she took a step closer, he wailed louder, the tears coming faster, his face growing redder. The cheek where she smacked him was almost maroon. Joey heard Tita Flora call out Carson’s name from somewhere in the house. A few seconds later, she heard footsteps pounding on the stairs as not one, but two sets of feet rushed up to the second floor.
By the time Tita Flora and Lola Celia arrived at the bedroom, Joey’s little cousin had worked himself into hysterics, sobbing as he scampered straight for his grandmother, burying his head in her robe.
“What did you do?” Tita Flora asked Joey, though it was pretty fucking obvious what she had done. The shape of Joey’s palm was now an angry purple blotch on the little boy’s cheek. “What the fuck did you do to him, you stupid bitch?”
Joey attempted to explain, sputtering and gesturing to the stripped paperbacks. She understood the scene looked bad. Had she thought it through for even one second, she would never have hit him. Carson was a sweet kid, and he adored her. And he was so little. Joey knew exactly what it felt like to be that small and be hurt by someone you loved, someone bigger than you, and more powerful, who always won, no matter how wrong she might be.
Unsatisfied with her niece’s attempts to answer, Tita Flora’s shrieking grew louder. “Do you think we wanted you here? Look at you, you’re just like your mother, wa’y kapuslanan. You’re going to grow up to be a puta, just like her. If they weren’t paying me to do it, we would never have taken you in, you useless, ungrateful little bitch.”
Despite her aunt being shorter and wider than her mother and with a less pretty face, Tita Flora’s wrath made her look and sound exactly like her sister. And just like with Ruby, the words were bullets, peppering Joey’s ears and heart with wounds that would never fully heal. The louder Tita Flora shouted at her, in a combination of Cebuano and English, the harder Carson cried. The little boy seemed to understand the gravity of the situation, and that what was happening now to his older cousin might actually be worse than what had just happened to him. He tried twice to go over to Joey, but both times, his grandmother held him back.
Lola Celia was quietly observing the scene with her small, black eyes, her gnarled fingers stroking her grandson’s hair. So far she’d said nothing. Only when Tita Flora finally paused, red-faced and heaving, did her lola finally speak. Carson had calmed down a little by then, and her grandmother’s tone was soft, almost gentle.
“Sunoga ang iyang mga libro. Ang tanan.”
Joey couldn’t put together what the old woman just said. She knew libro meant book. Maybe she was trying to remind Tita Flora that Carson should not have cut the covers off Joey’s paperbacks, and was trying to defuse the situation. Things with Lola Celia had been going much better since Joey started helping with the cooking. Maybe her grandmother was actually on her side.
But then she saw a look of understanding pass over her aunt’s face, which then morphed into smugness. No. Whatever Lola Celia had just said, the old woman was definitely not on her side.
A rope of fear knotted in Joey’s stomach. They were going to kick her out. They were going to call Deborah and tell her what Joey had done, and oh God, Deborah would know, and would turn away from her, because she’d realize Joey was just like her mother.