Before We Were Yours

Rill waits on the shantyboat to hear word of her mother and the babies struggling to be born. Meanwhile, she tries her best to care for her siblings. When Zede, the doctor, arrives at her door, he does not “chase round the bush with his words” but instead tells her simply and directly: “Queenie’s babies didn’t make it” (53). It was not the fault of Briny or the midwife, Zede tells Rill. Nothing could’ve been done. Zede explains that “the babies just wasn’t meant for this world, that’s all” (53). Queenie is still incoherent on pain meds at the hospital, Zede tells Rill. No one has even told her about the loss of the babies. Rill imagines the suffering her mother will feel, thinking: “I know Queenie. She won’t be alright. Nothing makes her happier than a brand-new, sweet baby to cuddle” (54).

Because Briny and Queenie are not yet ready to come home from the hospital, Zede brings someone to watch over the kids, a teenager named Silas. Rills discover that Silas “has seen a bit himself,” once he eats some breakfast with them and begins to “tell tales of riding the rails and thumbing his way across five states” (56). When the younger siblings ask why he left home, Silas explains that his stepfather drank and beat him. Silas tells the kids to “[b]e glad if you got a nice mama and daddy. […] Don’t ever get it in your head to leave them” (57). Rill and the others certainly don’t intend to.

Silas and Rill begin playing house a bit, Rill fussing in the kitchen while Silas wanders cautiously outside to fish. The two engage in some flirtation but are abruptly interrupted by the sound of a stranger approaching the shantyboat. It’s a police officer at the door, and he pushes his way through. Silas tries to tell the officer that he is there alone while the younger kids jump off the boat and into the river. The officer is not alone, however, and the police with him soon round up all the other siblings. Camellia puts up the biggest fight, hiding in the outhouse and getting covered in waste. One officer tries to grab Rill, licking his lips and hissing: “Ain’t you a pretty little river rat?” (63). The children are all loaded onto a motorboat and taken to Memphis where a car is waiting for them. A woman, Miss Tann, looks them over and smiles appreciatively at the “lovely bunch of foundlings […] Five precious blonds with curls. How perfect” (67). Rill tries to tell the woman her youngest brother’s name but is scolded: “Restrain yourself from answering questions unless you are asked” (68).

Avery goes to visit her grandmother in the stately, exclusive facility where Grandma Judy now resides and where “[n]ot just anyone is allowed to enter” (69). Unlike the nursing home where her Senator father had his PR visit, this home sports “a sprawling front lawn” and “it’s easy to picture Scarlett O’Hara fanning herself beneath the moss-draped live oaks” (69). Grandma Judy’s new home is the best place that money and fame can buy.

Avery is glad to see that her grandmother is alert and upbeat when she arrives at her tidy, cheerful little room in the “Memory Care Unit” (70). Grandmother and granddaughter make pleasant chit chat. Then, after asking Grandma Judy if she knows a woman called May Crandall, Avery shows Grandma Judy the photo she took with her phone. To Avery’s surprise, “[m]oisture wells up in her eyes” (73). Grandma Judy touches the image, whispering “Queenie” (73). She then tells Avery, “They can never know about Arcadia” (73). Avery is puzzled, all the more so when Grandma Judy tells her: “Be careful, Rill” (74). Avery isn’t sure what this means or if Rill is a name, but the spell is broken when an orderly come in, delivering coffee. Grandma Judy returns abruptly to the present day.

Rill and her siblings are shuffled into a “big white house […] that reminds [Rill] of Sleeping Beauty’s castle” (76). There are children out in the yard, groups of them, yet they scatter when Miss Tann appears. Camellia demands to know when they are going to the hospital to see Briny and Queenie, and Miss Tann promises to take them: “If you’re good. Am I understood?” (77). However, Camellia is disobedient when told to march inside and to sit silently in the hallway, waiting to be bathed and cleansed of “the river and […] vermin” (77). Another woman, Miss Murphy, appears and pronounces it a very productive day. Rill notices that Miss Murphy stinks of whiskey when she comes close to the children to expect them. Both of the woman fuss over the children, especially their blond ringlets. Delighted, Miss Murphy says aloud, “They’re darling, aren’t they? And young. They might not stay long. We’ve a viewing party planned next month. I’ll expect them to be ready” (83).

Rill doesn’t know what is going on, but she knows that it’s bad. She channels her thoughts towards the bird she notices flittering around the window, willing the bird to “[f]ly away. Go on home” (83), as she herself wishes she could do. Rill is asked to explain her name, and she tells the women that her father gave it to her, that he named her after the river and its pretty song. The woman decides this won’t do, that she needs “a real name for a real girl” (81) and tell her that she is now “May.” All the siblings are then told to strip naked and get ready to be bathed.