A grandfather was teaching his grandson about how to live. He explained that inside everybody is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil: he is anger, envy, sorrow, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
And, the grandfather continued, the other wolf is good: he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
The grandson thought about this for a while then asked, “Which wolf will win?”
His grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”
—traditional Cherokee story
Part I
CHAPTER 1 Audrey
July 1943
By the middle of the afternoon, the day was so hot that Audrey’s only relief was to suck on a chunk of frost from the freezer and let the cold stream of water dribble down her neck. She was lazing on an old chair on the back porch, dressed in shorts and a light-blue tee, her feet tucked under her sticky thighs as she watched Harry. At six, her little brother seemed oblivious to the sultriness. He was happily playing one of his make-believe games in the parched grass.
Shifting uncomfortably, she considered engaging Harry in a game of hide-and-seek. That would be something to do, anyway, to alleviate her boredom. Despite their four-year age difference, they had fun together and were pretty much each other’s only friends. Whenever they played the game, Harry liked to hide near the Ritters’ house next door, but Audrey always made a beeline for the thick woods behind the field that abutted their backyard. Whenever Harry took too long to find her, she would caw like a crow, and he would follow the sound only to brag later that he’d found her all on his own.
She never minded, though.
Audrey eyed the lush treetops of the faraway woods, knowing the air would be much cooler under their leafy expanse. She felt the familiar tug to seek their comforting shelter, to get far away from their house and the woman inside. Her eyes shifted to the screen door.
Only a few weeks ago, Mother had ordered her and Harry to keep out of the woods, Audrey’s favorite place in her small world.
“I ain’t raisin’ no clodhoppers,” she’d said. “You both stay out of them woods from now on.”
Audrey didn’t know what clodhoppers were but, being so poor and all, figured maybe they were just that. She knew not to question Mother about why they couldn’t play in the woods anymore or about anything else, either. Worse yet would be complaining to her daddy. That would only lead to more trouble.
Mother’s demand had come the day after Grandmother Hamilton moved away. She’d just up and left without a word of goodbye, off to live with a friend somewhere else, leaving them to live in the house she’d owned forever. But instead of being happy, Mother had been ornery as a bear, much worse than her normal surly self. Audrey figured she was mad because her own mother had not said proper goodbyes to everyone. Mother was big on good manners although she had none herself to speak of.
Audrey couldn’t have cared less that the old lady was gone. Her grandmother had never paid any attention to her or Harry, and now, at least, the only yelling that went on was between Mother and Daddy. Even better, Audrey and Harry had their own rooms up on the second floor.
She swiped the sweat from her top lip and stretched out her tanned, gangly legs, still deciding if standing was worth the effort. Sighing, she unstuck her bottom from the chair, blew the frizzy bangs off her forehead, and pulled herself up. She pressed an ear to the screen door. Quiet—only an electric buzz from their old fan hummed in the kitchen. When she ambled into the yard toward Harry, he was examining a ladybug as it crawled around the tip of his finger.
“Hey, wanna play hide-and-seek with me?” Audrey twirled curly ponytail strands while she admired the way his golden hair glinted in the sunshine. Her own locks were black as night. “C’mon, you can count first.”
After ensuring the bug had crept unharmed onto a blade of grass, Harry looked up at her, his face grimy with a mixture of sweat and dirt, and sniffed. “Okay. But Mama said no woods. Remember?” He eyed her with suspicion. “You can’t go there. You know how Mama gets when you don’t do what you’re told.”
Audrey snuck a glance at their dreary clapboard house, a two-story shack, really, that people pointed at when they drove by on Illinois Highway 6. She always pictured the motorists shaking their heads, saying things like “Do people really live there?” and “What a damn shame.” But everyone in Willowdale knew Clarence and Edith Scott and their kids lived in the place. The town’s three thousand residents never gave their house a second glance. Most of the paint had peeled off, but just the other day, Daddy had said nobody could afford to take care of such things with a war going on, except for the rich folks.
Audrey tapped Harry on his head while calculating the risks of disobeying their mother. “I’m sure Mother won’t care,” she said, keeping a straight poker face.
His long stare meant he was not convinced, but Audrey wagged a finger at him.
“Let’s say Mother comes outside. You holler somethin’ loud, like ‘Here I come,’ and I’ll run back through Mr. Ritter’s yard like I’d been hidin’ behind one of his trees near the woods.”
Mother did not approve of Alfred and Gertrude “Gertie” Ritter, but she at least allowed Harry and Audrey to play in their yard. They had been a young couple back when Mother grew up in the house and had never had children of their own. Mrs. Ritter and Grandmother Hamilton had been lifelong friends, and Audrey figured Mrs. Ritter might be the only person who actually missed her grandmother.
Harry still looked skeptical, but he bounced to his feet, looking adorable in a Superman T-shirt. When he stretched his arms out, his belly showed. “You hide first,” he said with a grin that revealed two missing teeth. “I’ll count to a hundred. Don’t go too far.”
As Harry covered his eyes and began calling out numbers, Audrey ducked under a sagging clothesline and scurried behind their dilapidated toolshed, careful to avert her eyes from the woodpile as she passed. That was a superstitious habit she’d fostered years back. When Mother whipped her, those long, spindly branches hurt the most, and she didn’t want to acknowledge their existence. Unfortunately, Daddy kept plenty of chopped wood to feed their fireplace and kitchen stove—one of the few things Mother had said he ever did right.
Across the yard, Harry was counting, but Audrey slowed, unable to resist glancing at the sticks. She reconsidered whether playing a game was worth the risk of another lashing. Mother never tolerated any form of disobedience—unless Harry was the one disobeying. Audrey lifted her gaze to the woods, where dense foliage blocked out the blazing sun’s rays, and she mopped her face with the neck of her shirt.
Mother was in the house. She would never find out.
Within minutes, Audrey had crouched behind a fat oak tree that shaded her like a giant green umbrella. Five minutes went by. She swatted a fly and waited some more, but after ten minutes, there was still no sign of Harry. Cupping her hands, she called out, “Caw, caw,” feeling like one of those Army buglers playing reveille. After cawing two then three more times, Audrey figured chances were good that actual crows were winging their way to her spot. If Harry had decided it was too hot to play, she would fix him good for that, leaving her waiting.
Audrey got to her feet and wiped her sweaty brow.
She wouldn’t have been surprised if her brother was playing a trick on her. Harry was smart for a kid.
Then she froze, holding her breath.
Snap. Snap. Twigs were cracking loudly under someone’s hefty footsteps—too heavy to be Harry’s—and the sound was coming from behind her, from the deeper part of the woods. She shivered. A pair of eyes was on her back. She could feel them.
Whirling around, Audrey saw Mother quickly advancing, snapping young saplings as she sure-footedly tromped over them, so close that she would reach her within seconds. Her eyes darted to the long switch tightly clasped in Mother’s plump right hand.
She screamed.
Despite tree limbs scraping her arms and legs, Audrey ran as fast as she could through the trees then sprinted across the field and into her yard. Mrs. Ritter was kneeling in her flourishing garden, a floppy hat covering her face. If only Audrey could fly into that sweet old lady’s arms and be wrapped in her protective embrace while inhaling the calming scent of her lavender water. But she knew better. Mother always said that Mrs. Ritter and her husband were dirty Krauts and that because America was fighting them in Europe, she could not talk to either of them.
Audrey raced up the porch steps and scurried through the kitchen. On her left, the stairway door was ajar. She threw it open and blasted up the stairs, barely noticing Harry and her daddy chatting in the small living room, what Mother called a parlor. The blaring RCA radio drowned out their words. Daddy liked to listen to the big bands on the afternoons he wasn’t drinking down at Lucky’s.
Once upstairs, Audrey frantically surveyed her room—a rocking chair, nightstand, washbasin, the narrow closet draped by a flimsy yellow curtain. Her eyes swerved to the space under her bed and then back to the closet, both places she’d hidden before.
She hugged herself and shut her eyes, knowing her hiding place didn’t really matter.
Mother always found her.
***
An hour passed.
Audrey was propped up in bed, pretending to read a library book. Suppertime was near, and her stomach was growling, but she’d seen no sign of her mother. She tiptoed to the bottom of the stairs, where she’d left the door open, and eavesdropped. Mother was rattling around in the kitchen.
“Get in here and sit, Audrey. We’re about to eat supper.”
Like always, Mother had sensed her presence, an uncanny ability that unnerved Audrey. But her voice was pleasant enough, so Audrey slid into one of the four empty chairs tucked under their wobbly kitchen table. She always sat with her back to the far window, which faced the rest of the house, while Harry claimed the seat opposite her—putting the stairway, parlor, and hallway directly behind him.
Mother had pinned her gray-streaked tendrils into a bun and slicked them into place, her preferred old-lady look, which stretched her rough skin taut. Daddy had told Audrey that when he wed Mother, she’d been real pretty, with hazel eyes that sparkled, ebony hair like Audrey’s, and a teensy waist “just perfect for dancing.” If Mother had a figure, it was hidden under baggy house dresses, but a person could still detect the rolls of fat that Daddy called “her spare tires.”
As Mother stirred a frying pan on the stove top, Audrey pressed old crumbs scattered on the table onto her thumb. They rarely had enough food to eat, so she felt no shame in licking them off like a hungry mouse. Harry and her daddy lumbered in to join her, and Audrey shot her brother a look, but he acted as though nothing had happened. Soon, the four of them were slurping vegetable soup and dipping bread crusts into their bowls. Harry chatted away, and her parents grunted one-word responses—all perfectly normal—and Audrey felt her shoulders and stomach relax, tension melting off her lithe frame. She emptied her bowl and kept herself from licking it clean.
For the rest of their evening, Mother did not speak to her, which was fine by Audrey. After she and Harry visited the outhouse, they headed upstairs even though the night was still too hot for sleeping. Daddy had said warm air was lighter than cold, so the heat rose to the rafters and baked their bedrooms long after sunset. Audrey did not beg to sleep in the parlor, where several windows meant a better chance for soft breezes. Distance between her and Mother seemed wise, just in case.
Alone in her room, Audrey eagerly scanned a few chapters of The Ghost of Blackwood Hall and let Nancy Drew’s cleverness and antics buoy her spirit. One of the few joys of her summer was walking to the Willowdale town library. Inside those walls, the surroundings seemed so much cooler, with dozens of fans blowing in different directions, whooshing the tantalizing, musty smell of old books across marble-floored aisles.
Her eyelids drooped. Audrey set the book on the floor, turned off her bedside lamp, and yawned, happy that her stomach was full. Clad in a thin nightgown, she stretched then rolled over to face the open window overlooking the backyard. She’d never had a screen, but the arrival of an occasional June bug did not bother her. The night was clear, and she could see the stars and the lightning bugs floating about in their carefree way, with no worries at all except for when to glow.
Audrey’s skin prickled then, with the odd sensation she was being watched.
She twisted her head, expecting to see Harry, who often snuck into her bedroom when he got scared, and her eyes widened. Still in her daytime frock, Mother had just closed the door behind her and was approaching Audrey’s bed. She said nothing, just opened her palm to reveal two long, narrow strips of yellow ribbon.
Puzzled at first, Audrey pushed up onto her elbows. “What are you doing?”
“Lie down and put your arms over your head.”
Half of Mother’s face was cast in moonlight, the other half lost to the shadows, which made her features seem distorted, even disfigured. But before Audrey could ask why, Mother grabbed one of her arms and pulled it above her head, quickly wrapping one of the strips around and around her wrist. Confused, Audrey thrashed about, bouncing and kicking, swinging her other arm wildly. But Mother was larger, stronger, and quicker. She tied that wrist to Audrey’s wrought-iron headboard as fast as any cowboy could rope and tie a calf. Audrey sobbed, pulling against the cloth handcuff to loosen it, trying to ease her wrist through.
It held firm.
“Be still, Audrey,” Mother ordered.
She would not—could not—be still.
“Please, please, Mother, is this about the woods? I won’t go there again. I’m sorry. Mother, don’t.” Snot flowed like lava from Audrey’s nostrils. Tears rolled off her cheeks and trickled onto her neck.
The room was too dark to see well, but Audrey scanned her mother’s face to help her understand what was happening, to find an emotion that explained the casual cruelty of what she was doing. Mother’s eyes were black and as cold as those of any dead carcass Audrey had seen flattened along the highway in front of their house.
Then Mother put a finger to her lips. Audrey lay still, her cheeks streaked with tears and her heart drumming like a tiny bird’s. She gave up the fight. If she screamed, Harry might come to her, but he would be terrified at seeing her like that. Daddy would do nothing to intervene. He never did anything. Her mother stepped back to study her handiwork.
Suddenly, Audrey understood Mother’s behavior at dinner. She’d been luring her into feeling safe, deceiving her until later. Audrey wanted to scratch her, slap her, kick her square in her big fat gut, but she knew Mother’s reaction would be far worse than what she herself could dish out.
“Hush. You believin’ you got away with going against me?” Mother whispered, low and sinister like some gangster in a movie. “Think again.” She whisked the sheet up to Audrey’s chin and tucked it loosely around her shoulders. “Might get chilly tonight, so let’s get this on you right now.”
The bedsprings squealed as Mother settled onto the mattress. Audrey turned her head away. Only moments before, she’d been enjoying the moonlight, imagining what being a firefly was like. With her luck, someone would drop her into a glass jar and not bother to poke air holes into the lid.
“Listen.” With her fingers, Mother tipped Audrey’s head back toward her.
Audrey did not resist, but she kept her eyes closed.
“How many times have I told you not to disobey me?” Mother asked. “I’ve told you and told you since you was little.” She sighed as though the ordeal was hers, not Audrey’s. “It’s important to never question me. You hear? Ever. Don’t care how old you get.”
For as long as Audrey could remember, Mother had insisted on obedience from her—which was never the case with Harry—and told her that one day, they would be rich if she did what she was told. That would be her reward.
The springs groaned with relief, giving way as Mother eased off the bed. Audrey knew what she had to say. “I’m really sorry. I p-p-promise I’ll be good.”
But her pledge was met with silence.
She opened her eyes to find the door had been closed and she was again alone. Immediately, Audrey tested the tethers, which were loose enough that she had some slack but tight enough that she couldn’t break them. She managed to turn the lower half of her body onto one side, and she inched closer to the headboard to give her arms relief. Then she curled her legs to her chest to form a ball, just like a roly-poly poked into submission.
The bedroom was as quiet as the hushed evening outside her window. The katydids and tree frogs had ceased their incessant, jubilant concert. Audrey took several shuddering breaths and closed her eyes, letting her arms sag into the restraints. She allowed her head and shoulders to go limp and wished that somehow she could go numb both inside and out. Sniffing loudly, she pinched her lips together and blinked furiously.
Her mother did not love her. That was the ugly truth Audrey had never wanted to face.
She had her own awful truth too. She hated the woman. Working to earn her mother’s love was useless as that had always been reserved for Harry—such love didn’t even include her daddy. Audrey’s body stiffened as her heart hardened, chiseled into a block of ice.
Mother thought she could control her. Mother did not think Audrey would ever fight back.
But Mother was wrong.
She might’ve been only ten, but Audrey was determined that she would control her own life one day. She would. She had to.
Mother would see—she would show her, no matter the cost.
