The Ever Part of Always

Sticks

The gold dust trickled in a slow, steady stream through the cupped, gritty palm of Keely Rosalie Tucker. Little globs stuck in the corners of her bent knuckles as she tried to slip the precious glitter into the silver mesh bag, a retired purse of her grandmother’s, which Keely had unretired from the Goodwill sack. Keely’s forehead was streaked with sweat and yellow-flecked sand. Gathering gold dust was serious business that demanded total concentration, and timing was crucial. It had to be completed before the sun reached the highest point in the sky. She must remember and utter the words exactly as her grandmother taught her nearly five years ago, on her fifth birthday. Only the wind could catch the whispers of the sounds and whistle them far away to that place no one has ever been, where mists are hung with rainbows and trees are ribboned with stars. There, unicorns breathe purple air, nibble gently on the glittery fruit, and line clouds with slivers of their laughter—awaiting the distant call of a child.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing? If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: change your clothes before you start playing out here in this dirt pile. Get in the house and do it right now. One! Two!” Keely didn’t want her mom to get to three, which meant automatic grounding and even louder yelling.

“I’m going. I’m going.” The tears slipped silently inside Keely’s eyes. The moment was gone again. Would it ever be right? Her mom would never understand. How could she when Keely was not sure she understood it herself?

Keely stood and brushed off the precious sand from her favorite outfit—dark indigo, boot-cut jeans, and a stripy red and white T-shirt, layered with last year’s faded blue, double-pocketed, western shirt—sleeves rolled up. Her gray and white skinny striped socks, reserved for good days, peeked out at the ankles from deep purple, laceless, “look-alike” Converse sneakers. All of the pieces, past birthday gifts from her grandmother, were bought on final clearance at Wal-Mart or Target stores in Memphis. However, Keely was the one who put the outfits together to match her mood. Her bangs nearly covered her brows, and she took a moment to flip back her self-made, slightly lopsided, double ponytails—the one on the left side riding higher above her ear than the right—unveiling the deep emerald eyes flashing with resignation. Small clumps of mahogany hair escaped the red scrunchies, scrunched too tightly against her head.

As she turned to walk toward her house, she realized she had forgotten her gold dust bag and returned to fetch it from the other side of the dirt pile. A loud, familiar voice challenged her, “Hey, dimwit! Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you. Get over here and scrape the mud off my bike. You know what I’ll do if you don’t do it now. Gads, I can hardly believe that I’m allowing such a loser like you to touch my bike. You’re too stupid to realize the special honor I’m giving you, but my daddy always told me to be kind to dumb animals, and that’s what I’m doing. You know, they should call you Dum-dum Tucker, or better yet, Dumbo, cause you’re so slow and so dumb. Dumbo, Dumbo, D-u-m-b-o, Dumbo is your name-o,” sang Darrell. “Don’t try to use grass either. Polish the fenders with your shirt.”

Darrell was the biggest kid in the fourth grade and Bully was his middle name. He teased kids, trying to make them cry; stole cookies and puddings from lunch boxes; and twisted arms, giving out “rope burns” as presents if any kid told the teachers. Darrell preyed on the weaker ones, those who were afraid of him and never fought back. Unfortunately, he was Keely’s neighbor and lived four houses down the alley from her. Harassing and teasing her were Darrell’s main hobbies, and he was constantly following her so he could yell mean things and try to make her cry.

At the moment, Keely stood in no man’s land, as Gramps used to call that space where you never wanted to be—too far from the house to make it, even in a dead run, and out of earshot to call for her mom’s help. She turned toward Darrell, a few steps away. There was no escape.

Keely’s inaudible sigh joined the tears within the secret pool in her heart, where she tried to store all of the bad things. She heard her own heart pounding with fear. “I’ll do it, Darrell.” She slowly approached the big, black bike with a bolted-on metal strip to replace a broken pedal and fading decals of flames curling across the fenders. She longed to tell him to take back the words, but Darrell had threatened her before, and she knew he would do it again if he were disobeyed. Her grandmother, Gramms to Keely, taught her this trick of sliding bad words into a bottomless pool deep within herself, drowning their pain, but it didn’t always work, and this was one of those times when she wasn’t succeeding. The pain kept rippling, boiling on top of the bubbles, refusing to sink, like other times when her mom lashed out at her with angry words or when her teacher put her in the punishment, time-out corner for four hours for missing all of the spelling words. As she recalled those incidents, her chin trembled ever so slightly and a sigh escaped, and with it, a single tear.

Darrell’s reaction was immediate. With a bounding leap, he was on her, beating the ground around her with the intricately carved, driftwood cane he always carried, letting it land just in front of her forearms with every third whack to scare her even more. Keely backed away from the stick. She was more afraid of the cane than Darrell, as it appeared to have dragons’ heads and devils engraved by the sea, their voices bruising her with each stroke. “You’re nothing! You’re worthless! You’re stupid!”

Darrell’s own words were dim ricochets of ones she had heard before—“I saw that tear. I'll give you something to cry about.”

And he did. The words left welts on her arms, even though the stick never touched her.

After Darrell finally left, Keely attempted to open the battered, repeatedly mended kitchen screen door and slip in the back door. She wanted to shuffle unnoticed by the kitchen, where her mom sat sorting the bills into the pay-now and pay-later piles, with the pay-later pile even higher than normal this month. Keely self-consciously yanked on the rolled-up sleeves of her layered shirt, trying to stretch them into long ones to cover the imaginary dragon and devil bites, and wiped away her tears of fright with her fist. Her mom had enough problems but could never resist the urge to turn Keely’s problems into Keely’s fault. This was no exception.

“Well, Keely, what happened to you? Have you been crying? Did that nasty neighbor kid threaten you again? I saw him earlier hanging around the alley on his bike and told him to keep out of our yard. I thought I told you to stay out of Darrell’s way so he couldn’t tease you. When will you ever learn to leave bullies like him alone and keep your mouth shut so he won’t use that as an excuse to bother you? I’ve talked to his mom and tried to get her to control him, but that hasn’t worked, so it’s up to you. Run away. Don’t let him bully you.”

“But—”

“Don’t ‘but’ me, Missy,” her mom continued...