The fol­low­ing is a pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished story by Dinah.

Fam­i­lies eat their own stories. They are cir­cu­lat­ed, ad nauseum, told and retold until no one knows to whom they truly belong. 

This story is my mother’s. Or it was. She is dead now. 

I was a child when I heard it. I would curl next to her, burying myself into her sides when frightened. 

Or rather, it was a san­i­tized version I heard. Later, when I was older, I heard the truth. So, I suppose, now the story is mine. 

# 

It takes place when my mother herself was a child, in the 70s. My mother and her friend Sue had a choice: they could play Barbies, roller skates, jump rope, or the woods. On this par­tic­u­lar day, they chose the woods. They rode their bikes down from their sub­ur­ban homes to the edge of the creek that bor­dered two neigh­bor­hoods. In my mind, they are like the chil­dren from Stranger Things, with their oddly wide-set bike handles and their ten­den­cy to roam. 

Although that is not quite right, since the girls must have been bare­foot. That is how my mother lost a toe, several years later—it caught in a bicycle chain. She liked to fright­en my friends with the sight of the severed appendage. She would kick off her shoes and wiggle them, and all the little chil­dren would shriek and run away, and then creep back for a second look. 

Sue and my mother threw down their bikes and made their expe­di­tion through the under­growth, avoid­ing the mine­field of sweet­gum balls. It was summer, so every­thing was leafy and green, and drip­ping with humidity. 

“Wait for me!” my mother shouted. 

Sue had already reached the creek bank. Other chil­dren liked the creek too. Some­times boys would occupy its shores, throw­ing mud at each other and then at the girls, if seen. My

mother and Sue hated them with a passion, invaders to the sacred place as they were. But this time the girls were alone. 

My mother scram­bled over a fallen log. As she dropped down, her foot brushed against some­thing unfa­mil­iar. She jerked away and stum­bled back­wards. Her first thought—cop­per­head!—was mer­ci­ful­ly incor­rect. She inched closer, but the hollow place under­neath the log was dark and she couldn’t make any­thing out. She took a stick and poked at it. Nothing moved, but she knocked against some­thing solid. 

My mother, on hands and knees, crept closer and peered into the dark­ness. This time, she saw something. 

The some­thing she saw was bones. Large bones. Human bones. 

My mother’s breath came quick. She had long expect­ed to find bones, or trea­sure, or some mys­te­ri­ous fairy tome in these woods. Her day had come. 

But, she must be only cau­tious­ly hopeful. One time before she had come across the skull of a dragon, only to find that it was, in fact, that of a dog. 

“Where are you?” Sue shouted. My mother jumped. 

“I’m over here! I think I found some­thing, you better come see!” 

She care­ful­ly fished out some of the bones with her stick. The skull rolled onto the leafy ground. Although covered in rotting plants and dirt, it was unmis­tak­ably human. “Oh my good­ness ‚” Sue said. She was breath­ing hard. I picture her as a blonde, with watery eyes and a kind smile. Although, of course, she was would not have been smiling at the time. 

My mother poked the skull with her stick. It rolled. Both girls shrieked. For the first time, my mother felt fear.

# 

The girls waited in Sue’s base­ment. It was dark and humid. The carpet was covered in Barbie-scenes, the dolls posed with blow-up furniture. 

I would later inherit these dolls. My friends and I shunned these dolls; they were for girly-girls, which we clearly were not. So they went mostly ignored in their card­board-box home, occa­sion­al­ly brought out to serve as extras in other dolls’s adven­tures, or to be sub­ject­ed to more delib­er­ate torture. We once decap­i­tat­ed one with an Exact‑o knife after trying her for witch­craft. I had wanted to burn her at the stake, but my mother forbad it. The card­board box is still tucked away in a distant corner of my closet. I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of it. 

Sue absent­ly picked up one Barbie, then set it down. My mother had her arms wrapped around Sue’s family dog. She buried her face in the dog’s warm fur. 

At first, Sue’s mother had not believed their story of the bones. She had insist­ed on seeing them. When she did, she went very white, and went to call the police. The girls hid in the base­ment, and waited. 

“What do you think hap­pened?” Sue said. 

My mother tugged at the dog’s fur. The kindly creature—a golden retriev­er, perhaps—submitted to it without protest. 

“I don’t know,” she said. A thought occurred to her, a very clever one too. “Prob­a­bly someone just left the bones there ‘cause they didn’t want to pay for a funeral. I saw on the news that coffins cost thou­sands and thou­sands of dollars.” 

Sue was uncon­vinced. “I bet it was a little girl. Like us, but younger. And she was killed.” “Why?” 

Sue shrugged. “I just know.”

# 

Sue was right. My mother over­heard her parents talking about it weeks later. They didn’t want to tell her any­thing, so she lis­tened in at their door. The bones were a little girl’s, a little bit younger than my mother. She had gone missing a year before, from a dif­fer­ent part of town. The police had never found any evi­dence before this in con­nec­tion with her case. 

“That’s awful,” my grand­moth­er said. 

“We should be careful with her, at least until the police … No going out after dark,” my grand­fa­ther said. 

My mother was indig­nant. She liked to roller skate in the evenings, when the asphalt was cooler. 

# 

In my mother’s version, they never did find out what hap­pened to the dead girl. My mother told me that she would peri­od­i­cal­ly look to see if there was new infor­ma­tion on the case. There never was. 

# 

In my version, it was Sue’s father. He killed the girl, and other little girls, too. When the police came to take him away, Sue and my mother were jump-roping in the front of their house. They watched as the police took Sue’s father, hands cuffed and shoul­ders hunched. Sue screamed, and tried to run at him, but was held back by her white-faced mother. On the way home, my mother was in such a rush that she caught her bare toes in the chain of the bicycle, and severed her big toe. Her own parents had to rush her to the hospital. # 

But all this does not matter. My mother is dead.

#