My mother came in on Wes’s arm, in her navy church coat and the brooch she always wears, a small enamel bird. We got her a seat in the front row of the bleachers, on the end, where she could see and where the aisle was close.
She sat with her purse on her lap, very straight, like she was waiting for a sermon.
Addie was number twenty-six. She wore the green dress from her cousin’s wedding and her good shoes, and she sat with her hands flat on her knees and her eyes on the stage.
She didn’t look at us. She had that look she gets, the one where she is already somewhere else.
I did not see Melissa come in. It wasn’t until about the fifth round that I felt something, and I turned and looked up the bleachers.
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She was in the top row, by the door, alone, in her camel coat with her gloves in one fist. Doug wasn’t with her.
She sat the way you sit in a church you are not sure you belong in.
Addie spelled every word like she was putting down cards. Chrysanthemum. Embarrass. Maneuver. She went slow, then fast, then slow again, and every time she finished one she looked at the pronouncer and waited until the judge said, “That is correct.”
Between rounds twelve and thirteen there was a little pause while they reset the table. My mother turned in her seat and looked up at the top of the bleachers, all the way back.
She looked for a long moment. Then she said, in her clear church-bulletin voice, “Where’s Missy?”
My heart stopped. “Up there, Mama,” I said, and I pointed. “Top row, by the door.”
My mother lifted her hand and waved. She did it slowly, the way you wave to a train. She smiled, with her whole face, that smile she had before the strokes.
I looked up. For a moment I thought my sister would move.
She did not. She sat with her gloves in her fist and turned her face to the gym wall, and I saw her shoulders move once.
That was all of it. I will not make it more than it was. My mother settled back and said, “She looks tired, that one,” and went back to watching the stage.
Round thirteen. Four spellers. Addie went up to the microphone and the pronouncer said her word, and the word was silhouette. She asked for the definition, and for the language of origin, and the sentence.
She asked for the word again. I watched her lips move without sound.
She began. “S-i-l-o-u-e-t-t-e,” she said. Silence. Then the bell. A small, clear ding.
She had left out the h. She stood there with her hands at her sides, and I saw her understand it in about a second, and I saw her decide what to do about it.
She nodded once to the judge, thanked the pronouncer, and walked off the stage with her back straight, to the chairs where the second-place seat was.
She did not cry. A boy named Everett Satterfield, a seventh grader from Hardin Springs with thick glasses and a mouth full of braces, spelled mnemonic on the next round and won the whole thing, and Addie stood and clapped for him with her hands over her head.