The Right Thing by Amy Conner

protruding teeth bore a strong resemblance to the pet rabbit Joel Donahoe kept in a cage in the backyard.
    â€œAfter she left, Poppa threw this picture away, but I fished it out of the garbage can.” Starr took the photograph from me and kissed her mother through the glass. “My momma used to be the Soybean Queen of Avoyelles Parish, you know. After we come here, sometimes she’d put makeup on me and her when Poppa wasn’t home so’s we could be pretty together. She always said everything looks better when you got your best face on. But Poppa didn’t like it. He came home early that last time and made us wash it all off. He gave me a whuppin’, then he made her put every bit of her makeup in the trash and she cried.” With another kiss, Starr shoved the picture under her mattress again. “I wonder where she’s at all the time, Annie. I surely wish she’d come home again, but Poppa says she’s not gonna.”
    â€œI’m sorry.” It was all I could think of to say, but Starr nodded.
    â€œI know,” she said.
    Wrapped in each other’s misery, we sat on Starr’s bed for at least another minute before we realized that for the first time in nearly three weeks, we were together again. We looked at each other shyly. I couldn’t help but smile then.
    â€œWant to see what I got in my hope chest?” Starr jumped up off the mattress and opened the suitcase. Crammed inside it was a long net veil spangled in silver sequins, Starr’s Little Miss Princess Anne Look-Alike tiara wrapped in tissue paper, a gold-flowered porcelain bonbon dish, six cheap violet sachets, a pair of scuffed ivory satin pumps (“Momma says maybe I’ll grow into ’em”), a stiffly crumpled bouquet of pink plastic roses, a white leather Bible with a stain on the cover, shiny pearl pop beads, a yellowed Vogue wedding dress pattern, and the earnest beginnings of a quilt made from Starr’s pageant sashes.
    Starr carefully lined these items up on the mattress with pride. I stroked the quilt made of satin sashes as she rewrapped the tiara in tissue paper. “Starr, can I stay here with you?” I asked, feeling hopeful. At that moment, even the thought of her father’s return was preferable to what I was sure I’d be facing at home.
    â€œYou can stay while I make dinner, but you’ve got to go home after,” Starr said. “Your momma will worry about you.”
    â€œNo, she won’t,” I said, the knowing like an icefall in my heart. “She’ll be glad if I never come back. I can’t do anything right, never, no matter how hard I try. Look at what happened at Lisa’s house!” In my mind I was certain—however confused that certainty—that my natural wickedness was somehow at the epicenter of my mother’s endless anxiety. And then there was my grandmother. How was I ever to explain myself to that terrible old woman now? I couldn’t say why, but as surely as I knew my own name, I knew that even from her wheelchair over on State Street, she used me to feed a rapacious appetite for domination. Without the words to express them, these were all feelings, merely, but feelings that rivaled the dark malignity of certain fairy tales, the ones I read with a stirring of recognition and fear.
    â€œHuh. All mommas worry about their little girls,” Starr said, sounding practical. She picked up the sash quilt and folded it. “That’s how come I know my momma’s coming back someday. She just needs a vacation.” She was changing into a too-big sweatshirt and a pair of old corduroy pants that looked like they’d once belonged to a boy twice her size.
    I shivered. My throat was scratchy from crying, and I was so tired. “Can I have a glass of water?”
    â€œSurely,” Starr said. “Come on in the kitchen. I’m cooking supper.”
    During that long afternoon my throat grew