She caught my wobbling chin in firm fingers tipped with claws. “And you got that miracle,” she said softly. “I’m starting over. You should, too. I love you, honey. But not enough to give up my freedom again. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“Do you even care? Do you care about me at all? About what I did for you?”
Her eyes looked deep into mine, and it was like seeing a different version of myself through a fun-house mirror. Those were my dark-blue eyes, but they glittered madly and had no wrinkles, no crow’s-feet, no purple smudges. That was my nose, my cheekbones. The hair was different, a bright auburn chestnut instead of my dark brown, but everything else was like seeing a doctored photograph. Just as I had once been a better, younger, more refined version of her, now she was an improvement on what I’d become.
“Oh, sugar.” She dropped my chin, stood on the bench, hopped onto the table to get around me, and landed on the floor with more energy and grace than I’d ever seen in an octogenarian. “I care. I’m grateful. But we don’t need those kinds of ties between us anymore, weighing us down. I guess you never thanked me for giving birth to your mama, but I did it anyway, and here you are. Let’s just move on.”
“Move on?” The tears had turned to rage at whatever this . . . thing was. This creature my grandmother had become. I didn’t see love and affection in her eyes, that proud warmth she used to exude when she saw me. We were strangers. And it was unbearable. “How can I move on when my grandmother doesn’t love me anymore?”
Catarrh and Quincy were openly laughing, and everyone in the dining car was staring at us. I stood, just so we’d be on equal ground. My old, failing hips popped with a crack in the silence, reminding me that even though I was only thirty-two, I felt, looked, and acted like a fussy old lady. My hands were in fists, but Ruby just crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at me.
“Love isn’t a debt. We’re even, sugar. I gave life to your mother, and now your man gave me a new life. I like you fine, I just don’t want to be your pet grandma, dragged around on a leash. I got to find myself on my own. I got plans.”
“We’re not even. You have no idea what I’ve given up for you! Years of my life here, my body, whatever beauty I had. I don’t want a pet grandmother; I want a friend. You owe me that much. And you never even said thank you.”
She considered me, bit the inside of her cheek the way she’d always done when she was thinking hard about something that wasn’t easy. I’d seen her do it a million times in the Piggly Wiggly, her hand hovering over the cart as she decided what had to be put back to stay on budget.
“Thank you, Letitia.” It came out formal and cold, as if she had become the willful child and I the foolish old woman who demanded undeserved respect. “I’ll find a way to make it up to you. Just don’t hate me too much.”
My head fell forward as the tears came back. “I don’t hate you. I just miss you.”
“You never knew me,” she said, and the door slammed behind her.
5
Dressed in a Bludwoman’s low-cut gown and wearing a hideous mauve turban, I rearranged the phony props in my fortune-telling booth for the hundredth time, shining a spot on my crystal ball and fanning out the tarot cards in a perfect arc. As Criminy’s wife, I had to put in my time working in the caravan or suffer horrible gossip and social ignominy. Last night, I’d had a hissy fit in line and run off to another planet, so tonight’s performance was not up for discussion. I kept waiting to see Ruby among the carnivalleros or maybe wading through the moor grass to investigate her first magical night at the caravan, but thus far I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of her, not since she’d stormed away.
Far across the field, the bus-tanks vomited forth their city-dwelling occupants, and I took deep breaths and rubbed my hands, glad at least that there were no germs in Sang, as I’d be handling the flesh and coin of hundreds of strangers tonight. The props were fake, but my ability to see truth when touching people was one hundred percent real.
Soon I was utterly surrounded by the crowd, unable to hunt for a dapper auburn-haired Bludwoman as I gave out fortunes cheerful and bleak, boring and tragic. One woman who seemed no older than I looked would die within the week of what Sang physicians would call an apoplexy, but there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Her aging heart would give out, and she would fall to the cobbles in an alley while tossing out scraps to the bludrats.
“Try to stay inside,” I said with a pasted-on smile. “And treat yourself this week. You deserve it. Your family will see a windfall soon, so spare no expense.”