The Eye
  By Carol Becvarik

Mama always said, “One rotten apple spoils the barrel.” And she said it looking straight into me and my brother’s eyes. His left eye and my right eye. This was just before she would take the butter paddle in her hand, turn us around to look at the yellow wall and smack our butts. It didn’t matter to her that Ralph was the only one who had taken money out of her purse. I was guilty cause I lived in the house. “Eve,” she would say when it was my turn, “This is to keep you on the right path so on Judgment Day you won’t have to worry. I know you’re a good girl.”

Maybe that’s why she didn’t do anything the day the police came to our house on Smith Place. Mama simply stood at the front door behind the aluminum screen, her hair pulled back in a tidy bun. Her eyes turned to look back into the house when she called out my name, “Eve.” Pushing open the screen all she said was, “Here she is.”

My brother told me two days later, Mama cried all the next day after she read the headlines in the journal, Local Girl Burns Down the Sears Building.

Mama didn’t come to the trial. And all the letters I wrote were returned with a note, “Moved Address Unknown.” The first couple of returned letters were in Mama’s handwriting; then about a month later someone else started writing, “Moved Address Unknown.”

After I was released, I moved thousands of miles away to Washington State. I have never gone back. I figured I didn’t want to know if they really moved or not.

I have never told my husband, the kids that call me mama, or my friends. All they know is I have always been the Apple Lady who owns The Good Apple Farm.