Revived Spirits by Julia Watts Read Free Book Online

out. She says Daryl planted the stuff in her car.”
    “Do you believe her?”
    “I don’t know.” Caylie’s eyes well up. “I want to believe her. Before she started using, she was a really good mom. But when the drugs started, so did the lies. I guess I don’t know whether or not I can trust her again.”
    I nod. What a sad thing for a kid to have to say about her own mother. “When she got arrested, did the police do a drug test?”
    “Yeah, and she didn’t pass.” She looks around, then leans across the table. “But I’ll tell you something. When the cops took me out of that house, I couldn’t pass a drug test neither. If you’ve lived in a house where somebody’s cooking, the meth gets everywhere—in the walls, on the furniture, on your clothes and hair, and on your plates and cups and forks. So even if you ain’t using it, it still works its way into your system. The police had to burn all my clothes, all my blankets, even my stuffed animals I’d had since I was little. It was all poisoned.”
    I reach across the table to pat her hand, and when I do, her pain roars through me like a speeding train. I see two female police officers dressed in hazardous material gear, ordering her to strip, turning on a hose, and telling her to wash with a special decontaminating soap. They turn the hose on her again, and across the yard, I see her clothes, her bedding, and her teddy bears all in a burn pile, her childhood going up in flames.
    When I pull my hand away, it’s shaking. “I can tell you’ve really been through a lot,” I say.
    Caylie nods. “I’m still going through a lot. I shouldn’t complain about living with Mamaw and Papaw. Their house is clean, and Mamaw cooks me a good breakfast and supper every day. But they ain’t used to having a young person around all the time, and they think that everything that’s of this world’s a sin. My mom was raised that way, and she left the church as soon as she left home. She said she was gonna raise her daughter to believe in God but also to know how to live in the world.”
    “And now you’re having to live the same way she did growing up.”
    Caylie smiles a little. “No fair, huh?”
    “Nope. Do you ever get to see your mom?”
    “Yeah. The jail allows visitors on Sunday afternoons. So every Sunday we go to church, then we eat lunch, and then we go see Mama out at the jail. She don’t hardly look like herself. She can’t wear makeup, and the color’s growing out of her hair. She has to wear this ugly orange jumpsuit.”
    I try to picture my own mother under those conditions. “I can’t imagine what that would be like.”
    Caylie looks right at me. “But you could if you looked inside my head, right? Is what people say about you true—that you can look inside people’s heads and see the truth?”
    “I can look inside people’s heads and see what’s there. I don’t guess that means it’s always the truth. Why do you ask?”
    “Because there’s something else I wanted to ask you. I was thinking...if you was to come to the jail with us one Sunday, do you think you’d be able to see into my mama’s mind?”
    “Why would I do that?” I ask, surprised and uneasy.
    “Because,” Caylie says, her voice choked, “I want to know if she’s telling the truth when she says she’s innocent, that she was set up. I want to know if she means it when she says she wants to be a real mother to me again.” A tear runs down her cheek.
    “Those are the kinds of things I might be able to tell if I met her,” I say.
    Caylie’s eyes shine. “So you’ll come with us on Sunday?”
    There’s a hitch in this plan that Caylie doesn’t seem to have thought about. “ Caylie , your grandparents know who I am. They warned you to stay away from me. So how are they going to feel about the Witch Girl showing up to visit the jail with them?”
    “Oh,” Caylie says, like I just hit her in the stomach. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
    “Is there any