Judge Stone by James Patterson - 10
Nova Jones UNION SPRINGS, ALABAMA Nova Jones ran down the cracked concrete steps and headed across a weedy strip of green yard. She’d barely made it to the sidewalk when the door to their apartment building flew open. “Nova! Get back here!” She turned, squinted up at the figure of her mama. Mama was...
Nova Jones
UNION SPRINGS, ALABAMA
Nova Jones ran down the cracked concrete steps and headed across a weedy strip of green yard. She’d barely made it to the sidewalk when the door to their apartment building flew open.
“Nova! Get back here!”
She turned, squinted up at the figure of her mama. Mama was standing in the doorway, frowning down on her, like Nova done something wrong.
Nova said, “You told me to go to the dollar store, Mama!”
“You get back here and take your brother. I can’t have him underfoot.”
Nova walked back up the steps, moving slow and dragging her feet. “He won’t mind me, Mama.”
“You make him mind. Caden, get over here! You’re going with your sister!”
Mama opened the door, pulled Caden through the opening. Squatting on her haunches, she shook a finger in the toddler’s face. “When you go in the store, you don’t touch nothing. You hear me?”
Nova wanted to scream. She just couldn’t do it. No way she could carry Caden all that way. She’d been cramping again, pain coming and going, and spotting blood. Dr. Bria said it might happen. Told her to come back to see her if it did. But how was Nova supposed to do that? How would she explain it to her mama?
“Mama!” Nova’s voice rose to a whine. “I can’t carry him. It’s too far!”
“Take the wagon!”
Her mama pointed at an ancient toy wagon, its red body covered with a coat of rust. Nova sighed as she climbed back up the steps, picked up her brother, and carried him to the wagon.
“Don’t you fall out,” she said, giving him a glare.
Mama called from the door. “Don’t be lazy, pick up your feet! I don’t want to wait all day for you to get back here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“If they give you any trouble about using my EBT card, you ask for Sherree. She knows you’re just helping me out.”
Nova kept her mouth shut. It wasn’t that easy, using Mama’s card when she wasn’t there to approve it. More than once, the women working at the store had refused, saying Nova wasn’t authorized. And how could Nova argue with that? It was Mama’s card, not hers.
No point in fighting about it with Mama. Nova had a better chance winning an argument with the cashier at Dollar General. Mama didn’t put up with any back talk.
She picked up the handle, gave it a pull. Her baby brother had to grab both sides of the wagon to keep from spilling out. He didn’t cry, though, didn’t complain. He crowed with laughter, giggling like a crazy boy.
Nova smiled. It was hard to stay mad at Caden. Not his fault Mama was acting so cross.
Not Caden’s fault that Nova was feeling bad, either. He was a sweet baby, a funny little guy. Nova loved babies. She hoped the Lord would understand that, when she stood before him on Judgment Day. God would know it wasn’t all her fault. God saw everything, so he knew what got done to her.
Nova tugged on the wagon. She wasn’t going to think about that. Going to push that memory clean out of her head.
She talked to Caden over her shoulder. “You want me to show you something pretty? Pretty trees and flowers?”
He let out a happy squeal. “Pretty!”
Her spirits lifted. She took a right at the intersection, taking the long way. So there’d be more to see.
An old run-down house up the block had the biggest lilac bush in town. The bush sat in full sun on the corner of the property, crowding the sidewalk. No telling how old it was. When they reached it, Nova stopped the wagon. Picked her brother up and propped him on her hip.
“See those purple flowers? That’s old-fashion lilac. Old Missy Mabel, who used to live here, she told me so. And it smell sweeter than anything.”
She pulled a branch toward them, tickled the boy’s nose with a lilac bloom. “Smell it,” she whispered.
He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose and rubbed it. Nova clicked her tongue, dropped him back in the wagon.
“Boys don’t know nothing about perfume. Lilac is the sweetest thing there is.”
As she pulled the wagon away, the boy made a grab for the bush.
“Mine!” he cried, indignant.
“No, Caden. That lilac ain’t ours. We got to leave it alone. These flowers belong to somebody else. We just get to look.”
She felt a sharp twinge of discomfort in her belly. It made her pause. Felt like the cramping that had started up yesterday, when she was at the big breakfast at Missy Mary’s farm. Nova wondered whether something was bad wrong with her, maybe she should turn the wagon around and go home.
Then an image of her mother’s face appeared in her head. She pulled the wagon onward.
Nova stepped onto the strip of green around a telephone pole. Plucked three plants and showed them to her brother.
“This is the plain old dandelion. Just a weed, folks say. But it’s pretty, right?”
“Yellow.”
“Yes! And it has a nice smell. You try it.”
She let him hold the yellow head while she showed him another plant. “This is white clover. Grows all over, animals eat it. And I think it smells sweet, too. I’ll make you a necklace sometime. Tie the stems together. And look at this.”
She held up a three-leafed clover. Popped it into her mouth, chewed and swallowed.
“You can eat it! An old auntie at church told me. Clover is good for you. She said it cleans the blood.”
Nova took the white clover and yellow dandelion back from the baby—because she knew that Caden would chew down on them, if he took the notion. “You can have all the dandelions and clover you want. They’re wild, see?”
She picked up the handle, started pulling the wagon again. Noted the pink and white dogwoods, still in full bloom. Cornus florida.
Nova learned the fancy name for dogwoods when she looked it up on the computer at school. They’d always been her very favorite trees, as long as she could remember. Judge Mary had lots of dogwoods. It made Nova happy, knowing that they grew wild at Missy Mary’s farm. If Nova could find a wild dogwood, she’d break off a blooming branch, put it in a jar of water by her bed. Her very own sprig of flowers and green leaves.
As she pulled the wagon along, the pain in her belly got worse. Like yesterday, but stronger this time. Felt like menstrual cramps. Bad ones.
She stopped, bent over, grabbed her knees for support. Caden started to fuss. Making loud noises that threatened to turn into full-out wailing.
Nova straightened up, walked over to a patch of clover. She picked a handful of white clover, tossed it in the wagon. “You can have all that. It’s yours. When the weather gets hot and school is out, I’ll take you to the railroad tracks. We’ll pick pink coneflowers. They grow wild, all summer long. And black-eyed Susans, as many as we want. We’ll fill this wagon with wildflowers. They don’t belong to nobody, so they’re for everybody.”
The baby was distracted. He clapped his hands, picked up a clover and waved it.
Nova tried to carry on, pulling the wagon down the road. But she couldn’t stand up straight. She was doubled over with the cramping pain.
When the blood stained her shorts, she didn’t know what to do. She was in agony, couldn’t go on to the store, didn’t have the strength to go back.
She pulled the wagon off the road, into someone’s yard. Got the baby out of the sun, under the shade of a tree. A dogwood tree.
She sat in the grass, panting. Tears started running down her face, she hurt so bad. Nova had to get home, some way. But she couldn’t just lie there in the grass. Caden could crawl out of that wagon, get into the street.
Nova got on hands and knees, then got to her feet. Grabbed the handle of the wagon, then started walking. She stumbled down the sidewalk, bent over, pulling the wagon behind her.
Seemed like it took years before she made it back to her street and dragged the wagon up the walk. Nova sobbed as she clutched Caden’s hands to tug him up the steps. Kept on putting one foot in front of another until she made it inside the front door of their apartment.
Caden toddled off, crying, “Mama!”
Nova dropped to the floor of the front room and curled up in a ball. Mama stepped out of the bedroom. The minute she saw Nova, Mama screeched like she saw a snake ready to strike.
“Nova! What you up to? Where’s them things I told you to go get?”
Nova could barely whisper the answer. “I’m sick, Mama.”
“Quit putting on a show. You just lazy! You not sick when you got up this morning. Now get up and go on back to the dollar store, like I told you.”
Nova knew she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t stand up and walk, not even if someone set the house on fire. She closed her eyes, wailing with the pain.
Her little sister had crawled under the table. She called out to Mama. “Nova making the floor dirty, Mama. Making a big mess!”
The blood flow was heavy, making a big swipe of red on the floor. Dirty, like her sister said, but Nova couldn’t clean it up. She clutched her belly while she moaned and cried.
All the noise made a neighbor come across the hall, to see about the commotion. Nova heard old Missy Potter squawk in the doorway. “Starla Jones! You got to call for help!”
“Mind your business! She just playing.”
“That girl needs the doctor. Call 911!”
Nova didn’t know how much time passed before she heard the siren out in the street. She was certain she was dying, waiting for either the angels or the devil to come. When two men came instead, and put her on a stretcher, she thought she was dreaming.