Unto These Hills by Emily Sue Harvey

his upstairs bedroom window. Our gazes locked in that heartbeat and my fingers instinctively moved to cup my ringed finger. I’d insisted on giving him a lock of my hair. He’d solemnly put it in his wallet, taped to the back of my picture. Seeing my gesture from his window, his lips had curved, ever so slowly into a bittersweet smile…. My throat knotted at the memory.
    Daddy said very little during all this time on the road, except to issue reprimands to Sheila. He seemed to have lots on his mind. I suspected it had to do with the fact that seeing us again reminded him more of Mama. But then, seeing him did us the same way.
    Sheila’s whimpering and crankiness revved up again half way across North Carolina. Suddenly, the car screeched to a stop, barely swerving to a curb and out of the path of traffic.
    Francine, limp with slumber, flew from her seat into the floor, as did Timmy. I sat in the front beside Daddy, so I collided with the dashboard, barely escaping injury when my palms quickly cushioned the impact.
    Daddy pivoted about sharply and reached over the seat to haul Sheila from where she’d been thrown against the back of the passenger seat to where their noses nearly met. “Shut the hell up,” he ordered in a voice I barely recognized as his. “I’ve put up with your sniveling long enough.”
    His glare dissolved Sheila’s grief into a hysterical hiccup. Snuffling and gulping back her sobs, she peered glassy-eyed at him and I realized in that moment what moving had cost her. Dear God, she had so little.
    Daddy seemed geared to continue ranting but instead released her, threw up his hands and turned away, muttering as he cranked the engine, “Why the hell am I fighting to keep you?” Then, he muttered through clenched teeth, “You’re not even mine.”
    I couldn’t bring myself to turn and look at Sheila, who shrank into the backseat corner. The viciousness of it was too much to handle.
    If Daddy realized the impact of his words on Sheila or the rest of us, he didn’t let on.
    I remember thinking Mama’ s reduced his existence to one not only lacking direction, but wisdom as well.
    Years later, before her death, Nana would reveal the irony of that statement. Mama’s goodbye note had revealed her bitterness that Daddy, on their first night together upon his homecoming from the war, had betrayed his promise to never again mention Ruby’s unfaithfulness, one that resulted in Sheila’s conception.
    Of course, Mama was good at rationalization. That she already carried on a hot, steamy affair with the doctor was beside the point. That she lied through her teeth every day of her life meant nothing, as did her abandoning Sheila to Daddy’s care, knowing she was not his. What did matter, in her self-absorbed mind, was that Daddy broke a promise.
    Hah!
    And so, nobody repeated those hateful words. We seemed to accept that if we ignored them, they would go away.
    “…you’re not even mine.”

Chapter Five
    Oil. The fragrance of Chicago.
    Everything was strange, from the color of dirt, what little I saw, to the smell of the atmosphere.
    Riding through downtown Chicago, I had my first experience with claustrophobia, certain I was going to die of suffocation. Tall buildings blocked out the sky. I had to look straight up to see blue and the air tasted like petroleum.
    On Thanksgiving Day, we moved in with Aunt Dottie. Thus began my year in purgatory, one that passed in a blur. The apartment building, held up by flanking twin apartment structures, faced a mental asylum whose spear-tipped black fence bore portent of my odyssey there…the smell of baked turkey assailing us as we hauled beat-up suitcases up the stairs…both Daddy’s sisters, dark and exotic as plump Spanish flamenco dancers, working as cocktail waitresses at the same lounge, The Top Hat, Daddy’s new drop-by-after-work hangout…Daddy’s absence freeing Francine and Cousin Brandy to streets, men, and deadly cigarette indulgence…. Aunt