We skipped rocks until dinnertime. Mama skinned my hide that night. She’d called and called for me to come to dinner, had Tappy look for me. Carol Ann and I were too busy to hear. We skipped rocks, whistled through pieces of grass turned sideways between our thumbs, and dug for worms. I showed her how to bait a line and she’d nearly fainted dead away when I put a warm, wriggling worm in her hand. Tappy found us right after sunset, took me home screaming over his shoulder. The joy I felt wouldn’t be suffused by Mama’s switch. Never again. I had a friend, and her name was Carol Ann.

It was the first of many concessions to her whims.

***

“My Goodness, Lily, can’t you try to look happy? You’re all sweet and clean, and we’ll have some ice cream after, if you’re good. Alright?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled, sullen.

Mama had me spit shined and polished for a funeral service at church. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to run off to the river with Carol Ann, skip rocks, have a spitting contest, something. Anything but go to church, sit in those hard pews and listen to Preacher yell at the old folks who couldn’t sing loud enough because their voices were caked with age and rot.

I didn’t think that was fair to them. I remember my Granny vaguely, who smelled like our attic and had a long hair poking out of her chin. She’d scoop me in her arms and sing to me, her voice soft like the other old folks. I liked that, liked to hear them whisper the words. It made the hymns seem dangerous in a way. Like the old folks knew the dead would reach out of their very graves and grab their hands, pull them down into the earth with them if they sang loud enough to wake them.

Mama wasn’t hearing no for an answer today. We walked the quarter mile to the Southern Baptist, greeted our brothers and sisters, sat in the hard pews and celebrated the death of Mrs. O’Leary. Preacher made sure we knew that we were sinners, and I felt that vague guilt that I was alive and Mrs. O’Leary was dead, though it was supposed to be glorious to have passed to the better side.

We finished up and put Mrs. O’Leary in the ground. I tried hard to hold my breath in the graveyard so no spirits could inhabit me, but the graveside service took so long I had to breathe. I took small sips of air through my nose, felt my vision blacken. Mama pinched my upper arm so hard I gasped.

I gave up trying to hold my breath. All the ghosts had been waiting, watching, patiently hovering, anticipating the moment when I took in a full breath of air. They’re inside me now; they inhabited my soul, tumultuous and gray. I tried to fight them, until I couldn’t find any more reason to.

I begged to be allowed to go home, to be with Carol Ann, but Mama kept a firm grip on my arm while I cried. Folks thought I was grieving for Mrs. O’Leary. I was grieving for myself.

Mama decided homemade ice cream was just as good as the Dairy Dip, after all.

***

One day a massive storm came through. The trunks of the trees were black with wet, the leaves in green bas-relief to the long boned branches. Storms frightened me—the ferocity of the winds, the booming thunder felt like it was tearing apart my very skin, shattering my soul. Carol Ann and I had taken refuge in my room. She rubbed my stomach, trying to calm me, crooning under her breath. Nothing was working. I was shaking and sweaty, low moans escaping my lips every once in a while. Carol Ann was at a loss. She stood, leaving me on the floor, and went to the window.

“Come away from there, Carol Ann.” My voice sounded panicky, even to me. She turned and smiled.

“Don’t be a goose, Lily. What, do you think the wind’s going to suck me right out that window?”

A flash of lightning lit up the room and the thunder shook the house. I whimpered in response, my eyes begging her to come back to me. She turned and stared out the window, ignoring my pleas.

Then she whirled around, a wide smile on her heart-shaped face. “I have an idea. Let’s be blood sisters.”

“Blood sisters? What’s that?”

“What? You’ve never been blood sisters with anyone before, Lily? My goodness, where have you been hiding all these years?”

“There’s no one to be sisters with, Carol Ann. You know that.” I felt vaguely superior for a moment, but she ended that.

“We need a knife.”

“Why?”

“My Lord in heaven, Lily, how do you think we’re going to get at the blood?”

So I snuck out of my room, slunk down the stairs, gripping each with my toes so the wind didn’t whisk me away when it tore the roof off the house. The storm was loud enough that Mama didn’t hear me go into the kitchen, get a knife from the rack next to the stove, and make my way back up the stairs into my room. Carol Ann’s eyes lit up when she saw the knife, the five-inch blade sharpened to a razor’s edge.

“Give that to me.”

I did, a sense of wrongness making my hand tremble. I think I knew deep in my heart that Mama wouldn’t want me becoming blood sisters with anyone, no matter what the course of action that led me there. But that was Carol Ann for you. She could always convince me to see things her way.

Carol Ann took one of my sheer cotton sweaters, a red one, and laid it over the lamp, so the light fragmented like a lung’s pink froth and the room became like thin blood. We sat in the middle of the floor, Indian-style, facing each other. She made sure our legs were touching. I was scared.

“Okay. Stop fretting. This will only hurt for a second, then it will be all over. You still want to be my blood sister, right?”

I swallowed hard. Would this make us one? I didn’t want that. No, I didn’t want that at all. A tiny corner of my mind said, ‘Go find your Mama, let Carol Ann do this by herself.’

“I think so,” I answered instead.

“You think? Now Lily, what did I say about you thinking? That’s what I’m here for. I do the thinking for both of us, and everything always turns out just fine. Now quit being such a baby and give me your arm. Your right arm.”

I didn’t want Carol Ann to think I was a baby. I held out my arm, which only shook for a second.

Carol Ann was mumbling something, an incantation of sorts. Then she held up the knife and smiled. “With this blade, I christen thee.” She ran the blade along the inside of her right arm, bright red blood blooming in the furrows created in her tender flesh. She smirked, a joyous glow lighting her translucent skin, and took my arm. The point of the knife dug into the crook of my elbow. “Say it,” she hissed.

“With this blade, I christen thee.” My voice shook. She drew the knife along my arm and I almost fainted when I saw the blood, dark red, much darker than Carol Ann’s. Then she took my arm and her arm and held them together. We stood, attached, and walked in a circle, eyes locked, blood spilling into each other.

“Our blood mingles, and we become one. You are now as much Carol Ann as I am, and I am as much Lily as you are. We are one, sisters in blood.”

Redness slipped down my elbow. Spots danced merrily in my vision.

Carol Ann’s eyes sparkled. “Quick, we need to tie this together, let our blood flow through each other’s veins as our hearts beat together.”

She grabbed a sock off the floor and wound it around our arms, dabbing at the rivulets before they splashed on the floor of my bedroom, then beckoned me to lay down next to her. I put my head in her lap, my arm stretched and tied to hers, and she held me as our blood became one. I felt at peace. The ferocity of the storm seemed to lessen, and I felt calm, sleepy even.

“LILY!” The scream made me jump. It was Mama. She saw what Carol Ann and I had done. I didn’t care. I was tired. It was too much trouble to worry about the beating I was going to get.

I didn’t get to see Carol Ann the rest of that muggy summer. Mama sent me away to a white place that smelled of antiseptic and urine. I hated it.