All Fall Down Read online

  All of this is bad trouble. Sunny hangs back, thinking on this, while Patience heads for the giant silver refrigerator with two doors. She opens them. Inside is all white light and shelves of food, more food than Sunny has ever seen, ever. Patience is already reaching on her tiptoes for a jug of milk. She brings it down and pours two glasses. She gives Sunny one.

  “Here.” Patience drinks hers.

  Sunny shifts the kitten to the crook of her arm and takes the glass. She sips it cautiously, and Penny laughs again. She pushes the glass hard into Sunny’s teeth.

  “It’s not bad, stupid. “

  Sunny’s had sour milk so many times she can hardly think of what good milk tastes like—sweet and cold. Like this. She gulps it. The kitten’s little head turns, tiny tongue creeping out when a drop splashes on its fur. Sunny should give the kitten some milk, but it tastes so good and feels so nice in her belly, she doesn’t want to.

  “It’s never bad right from the fridge,” Patience says as if she’s telling a secret. “Only in the dinner hall, sometimes.”

  Sunny holds out her glass. “More?”

  Patience pours more, then puts the jug away. She drinks another glass herself. “Give some to the kitten.”

  “How?”

  “Put it on your finger.”

  Sunny does. The kitten’s pink tongue scrapes her skin. She giggles. She gives it more milk, then drinks some herself.

  Patience has opened a drawer and is rustling around inside it. This makes Sunny more nervous than when she took the milk from the fridge. Patience holds up a flat rectangle in brown paper. Silver foil on the ends. Sunny can’t read the white letters on the brown paper.

  “Chocolate,” Patience whispers. “A whole bar! I’m taking it.”

  “No!” Terrified, Sunny again squeezes the kitten too tight. “You can’t take anything from the kitchen! Thieves don’t get through the gates!”

  “You stole milk,” Patience points out.

  Sunny’s stomach clenches. Outside in the sunshine, she was too hot, but here in the shadows all of a sudden she’s so cold her teeth chatter and click. She presses the kitten’s soft fur under her chin.

  “You gave it to me!”

  Patience shrugs. She rinses both glasses in the sink and puts them with the others in the big plastic bin on the counter. “You drank it.”

  Sunny wants to cry. Patience is right. She doesn’t cry, though. She hushes herself. Listens with her heart, but can hear nothing. The kitten squirms.

  “C’mon. Let’s go back before Fleur notices we’re missing.” Patience leads the way, saying over her shoulder, “If you’re going to keep that kitten, you’re gonna have to keep feeding it.”

  Sunny touches the soft fur. Holding this kitten reminds her of holding a baby, all sweet and soft and full of love. Her own baby! She puts a hand on her belly, which should feel too full from the milk but has a lot of room left in it. Always room left in her belly. One day, Sunny will bleed from down there like Mama does, and she’ll go to Papa and see if she can be the one true wife, get him another true son. That would be a baby of her very own to love and feed.

  But until then, maybe she can practice on this kitten.

  “I’m going to put it in my room.”

  Patience’s eyes get wide. “You’ll get caught!”

  Sunny shakes her head. “No. Not if you don’t tell.”

  For once, Patience doesn’t look like she’s going to be mean. She nods. “Okay. I won’t tell.”

  “Will you help me get the milk? If I let you play with the kitten?”

  “Sure. I guess so.”

  Together, they sneak down the hall and up the stairs toward the bedrooms. Not all the rooms have closets, but this one does. Closets are worldly, made for keeping material things when you have too many to keep in a box under the bed or in a dresser drawer. This closet is empty but for a metal rod and a few shelves and an empty shoe box Mama put in there so long ago she’ll never remember it.

  Sunny takes a towel from the drawer and tucks it into the box. The kitten on top. She thinks about how the kitten has to breathe. “Should I put the lid on?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so.”

  They settle on pushing some holes into the top of the box with a pencil, then putting the lid on the box and the box in the closet. The kitten is mewing a lot. Sunny closes the closet door and presses her ear to it, listening, but she can barely hear it.

  She turns to Patience, excitement tumbling all her words together. “We’ll have to feed it every day! And when it gets bigger, we can train it to do tricks!”

  “Cats don’t do tricks, stupid.”

  “Papa’s dog did tricks.”

  They’re both silent while they think of Papa’s dog, the one John Second sent through the gates.

  “You’re going to get caught,” Patience says. “We’d better go outside.”

  In the hot summer sunshine, Fleur and Henry are still on their blanket, but now they’re just talking. Patience takes Sunny behind the greenhouse and tears the wrapping off what she took from the kitchen. She breaks the stuff inside into a soft square that leaves brown smudges on her fingers. It’s like poo. She offers it to Sunny.

  Sunny shakes her head. “Ew!”

  “You should eat it, it’s good.” Patience shoves the whole piece in her mouth, chewing.

  Sunny risks taking the piece Patience holds out next. Patience wouldn’t eat poo, would she? Oh, it’s not poo at all, it’s sweet! So sweet, and Sunny’s mouth dances with happy when she gobbles it up. Together they eat the whole thing and lick their fingers clean.

  “Chocolate,” Sunny murmurs, flat on her back, her belly so tight it might just bust.

  “It’s good. I told you.”

  “Why don’t we ever have any for dinner, if there’s some in the kitchen?”

  Patience shrugs. “It’s for Papa and his true sons and his one wife.”

  Papa’s one wife died like his dog. Papa said she tried to get through the gates all on her own before she was ready, so her vessel was here but what was inside, the secret voice, was still there, too. Stuck in the ground forever.

  “Papa doesn’t have a one wife now,” Sunny said.

  “Maybe it’ll be me.” Patience has chocolate all around her mouth. “Or you.”

  Sunny frowns. “We’re too little.”

  Patience shrugs. “We won’t be forever. If you are Papa’s one wife, you get a lot of good things. I think I’m going to be his one wife, when I get older. Then I don’t have to even worry about getting through the gates.”

  Sunny doesn’t understand everything there is to know about the world beyond, but that doesn’t sound right. Still, she’s not going to fight with Patience. The other girl will pinch or shove her. And besides, now Sunny’s stomach hurts bad.

  Fleur is calling them. Patience gets up first. Sunny follows slowly. The sun beats down on her head. She drags her feet in the dirt.

  Henry’s gone, and Fleur has her clothes on again. She’s going to take them all inside for afternoon meditations. She lines them up, all the kids who aren’t babies in the nursery or old enough to have chores. Patience, Sunny, River, Willow, Praise.

  Fleur’s white blouse has long sleeves and lots of buttons. Her skirt is long, with more buttons down the front. Her belly pushes out the front of it, because Fleur’s going to have a baby. Her hair was all down around her shoulders, but now she ties it on top of her head as she tells all the kids to get in line. She’s sweating.

  Sunny’s tummy groans and twists. Fleur looks at her. “Sunny, what’s wrong?”

  A burning bad taste rushes up Sunny’s throat and out her mouth. She spews the chocolate all over the grass, almost on Fleur’s bare feet. Even over the sound of