(Casey)
I watched Momma walk down the slippery rocks and step into the water. Brother John was holding her hand, but she didn't look like she even needed his help. Momma held her head up so high, her long brown hair falling all the way down her back. She looked just like the Queen in one of her made-up Fairy Tales. Sometimes, when Momma is crying so hard, I brush her hair until I think my wrist might break. It always calms her down, eventually.
Tonight, Momma was calm all on her own. She didn't even make a face when the water was all the way up to her waist and it must have been so cold. Momma hates the cold. She always cries more in the wintertime.
The people crowded around the river's edge, pushing me back. I shoved past grown-up hips and elbows until I was out front again. I made it just in time to see Brother John grab Momma behind her neck and pull her down into the water. The water was so dark and still for a minute, that it almost looked like it had swallowed her up for good. I held my breath with her. Brother John pulled her back up again. She looked over at me and we both breathed out. Miss Ginny was knee-deep in the water holding up a towel for Momma, but she walked right past her. Momma walked straight to me and hugged me until we were both soaking wet. We just stood there like two crazy ladies- hugging and crying for I don't even know what. I always cry when Momma cries. Don't get me wrong, I am not a baby anymore. I can read and write and cook two different dinners.
But still, there I was, crying my eyes out and hugging my Momma for all of those church folks to see down by the Obed River.
*******
(Joey)
It's way too cold for swimming. But Momma went anyway. I wanted to go in the water too, but Miss Ginny told me I couldn't. Casey looked real scared when Momma went under the water, but I wasn't. She is always calling me a baby, but she isn't even two whole years older than me. Momma can swim all the way to the bottom of the pool at Aunt Sissy's house. She can also triple knot my tennis shoes and flush a toilet with her foot. No way was she going to sink in that river. And I was right, she came right back up. And you know what? She came up exactly the same as she went in. Miss Ginny was saying that she was gonna be a different person from now on. I'm glad she was wrong about that. What if she went under like Momma and came out looking like some freaky alien or something? Gross.
And then they cried- Momma and Casey. Casey says that I am a cry baby, but at least I cry for a reason. They just cry for nothing, Women!
*******
(Miss Ginny)
No, I didn't cry. I thought I might, but I held it together for Rachel and those babies. She didn't even look like the same woman I met last year. She was definitely having a come-apart the day I met her and no one should be judged by their come-aparts, but I'm afraid she was. Not by me or Brother John or Jesus, but a lot of other folks cannot see past it. Like they're so perfect. Like they have never had a bad day or made a bad decision. Ladies were clutching their pearls with one hand and picking up their stones with their other hand the day Rachel and I walked down to the front of that church. All the whispering got her so upset that I thought she was going to run back out of the church.
I might have slipped and given her a secret or two about her judges to keep her head straight. Just a little gossip about those good ladies. Like how Roberta Jones buys cherry pies from the Amish Bakery 20 miles away and enters them into the Church Baking Contest and how Sarah Butler and her sister have been cheating at BINGO for a decade now and how Theresa White killed her first husband. Ain't none of us perfect.
So she did it. She gave her heart to Jesus and went down to the Obed River on a Sunday night to get baptized.
*********
(Theresa White)
I have a good mind to write a letter. I'd report it to Jesus Himself if He had an earthly address. Watching that woman get baptized in the same waters as my precious niece was sickening.
I was there last year when she had her breakdown or hissy fit or whatever you want to call it. Her check was declined at the Save-Mart and she had to walk out of there with those babies and they were screaming about all of the food that they were leaving behind. Bless their hearts, they cannot help who their Momma is. As soon as she gets outside, she snaps right there in front of the windows of Save-mart for everyone to see. She beats the snot out of the little one- Jimmy? No, something like that. Anyway, she is smacking him and then the older sister tries to stop her so she starts hitting her too.
What a sight! My niece pulled out her phone to take video for some reason, maybe in case the police needed it as evidence. Anyway, Ginny Stuart marched right out of the store and grabbed Rachel's hand and wouldn't let go until she calmed down. Then she got down on her knees and prayed with that girl. Imagine that! A woman her age on her knees on the sidewalk!
I have no idea why such a godly woman has taken up with trash like Rachel. But I feel like I should write a letter. My first husband, God rest his soul, was a Deacon at the church back in the 70's. He could have done something about it. If there was one thing that man was good at it was writing letters.
***********
(Brother John)
Therefore we are buried with Him by Baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of life.
-Romans 6:4
***********
(Rachel)
I don't feel any different. I mean, I am not sure what I was expecting- maybe trumpets or something? The kids looked so scared. I should have explained what was happening to them. But I cannot bear to get their hopes up. This last year has definitely been better. Easier. But, still hard. Sometimes the demons and the angels are banging their drums so loud in my head, I can't tell who is who.
And, I relapse.
Ginny gives me all of these Bible verses about how strong God is and I know I can do it with Him. But then I start to wondering. Wondering why He would even care in the first place.
Ginny promises He does.
He promises He does.
So, we start again. I was hoping that I would come up out of that water and never want to do anything but right again. Or at least that I would know right when I see it.
Ginny says to be patient.
God tells me that He loves me.
At least I got to see the look on Theresa White's face when I came up out of the water and wasn't swallowed up by the depths of Hell mid-baptism.
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Friday, February 20, 2015
Leave No Man Behind
Danny had dug the hole- ankle deep and covered in leaves- the day before, when he was setting booby traps for his little brother. It was, he thought, his own stupid fault. Running his tongue over his lips, he could taste blood and grass.
"Just go! Save yourself," he choked on the sob that was rising in his throat. "No reason for us both to get whipped." He tried to push himself up, but his sprained wrist gave way beneath him, slamming his chin into the ground again. He bit his tongue.
"No!" Mike screamed and turned back towards his older brother. He looked down at the Pop-tart on the ground between them. It must have flown out of Danny's hand when he fell.
The bus's brakes squealed. Both boys blinked away tears and turned towards the yellow beast as it slowly rolled down the street, spitting diesel fumes angrily.
"She'll kill you for sure this time," Mike said, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "Momma said the next time we miss the bus, we're a goner."
"I," Danny swallowed blood, "don't care."
The bus screeched. The doors opened half-way, hesitated, then swung open.
They had 10 seconds to get to the bus.
"I love you, buddy." Mike said and turned on his heel.
"Wait! You're leaving me? For real? Leave no man behind! Ever! Don't you remember anything daddy taught us?" Danny screamed at his brother's back.
Mike shrugged without turning around and disappeared behind the bus.
"I hate you! You're a no good coward. Just like Daddy!"
Five, four, three, two...the doors swung shut. The bus spit smoke and turned the corner just as Danny heard his mother's heavy steps on the front porch.
He didn't look up as she walked towards him. He focused on her bare feet sinking into the grass inches in front of his face. She lifted him up by his backpack straps and carried him towards the house, swinging him like a sack of groceries.
Danny spit blood and closed his eyes, the front door slamming shut behind them.
"Just go! Save yourself," he choked on the sob that was rising in his throat. "No reason for us both to get whipped." He tried to push himself up, but his sprained wrist gave way beneath him, slamming his chin into the ground again. He bit his tongue.
"No!" Mike screamed and turned back towards his older brother. He looked down at the Pop-tart on the ground between them. It must have flown out of Danny's hand when he fell.
The bus's brakes squealed. Both boys blinked away tears and turned towards the yellow beast as it slowly rolled down the street, spitting diesel fumes angrily.
"She'll kill you for sure this time," Mike said, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "Momma said the next time we miss the bus, we're a goner."
"I," Danny swallowed blood, "don't care."
The bus screeched. The doors opened half-way, hesitated, then swung open.
They had 10 seconds to get to the bus.
"I love you, buddy." Mike said and turned on his heel.
"Wait! You're leaving me? For real? Leave no man behind! Ever! Don't you remember anything daddy taught us?" Danny screamed at his brother's back.
Mike shrugged without turning around and disappeared behind the bus.
"I hate you! You're a no good coward. Just like Daddy!"
Five, four, three, two...the doors swung shut. The bus spit smoke and turned the corner just as Danny heard his mother's heavy steps on the front porch.
He didn't look up as she walked towards him. He focused on her bare feet sinking into the grass inches in front of his face. She lifted him up by his backpack straps and carried him towards the house, swinging him like a sack of groceries.
Danny spit blood and closed his eyes, the front door slamming shut behind them.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
DRY
The man looked down at the ground as he walked. He kicked up clouds of dust that would swirl around his ankles before settling into the cracks carved into the leather of his boots. His skin, as dry as the parched earth beneath his feet, itched. But he didn't scratch. He focused his unblinking eyes on the ground before him, on the dust he kicked up. One step, then another. The dirt road was so familiar that he seldom needed to look up to get his bearings. The same road. The same town. The same dust. The man himself was the only thing that seemed to change. The lines around his eyes and mouth had grown deeper, his steps heavier. Running a dry tongue over chapped lips, he looked up.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
The widow was squatting in her yard, pulling weeds from a dead flower garden.
"Good morning, Ma'am," the man said.
She shielded her eyes from the sun, looking up at the man. "Not much good about it I reckon."
"Reckon not." The man said. The widow yanked a drooping weed from the ground. The man grunted a goodbye and began down the road again.
Rain had not fallen for 87 days. The town and the people in it were withering away. It would have to rain soon enough, they said. It couldn't go on like this forever. The man knew better. The fire that burned in his belly and seared his throat could go on forever, he had no doubt about that.
The man slowed his steps as he approached a dog in the road. Its brown matted fur was covered in dust from the passing traffic. He nudged the dog with the toe of his boot, but it didn't move. He pushed harder and the dog rolled over, looking up at the man with one eye. "Get!" The man said. But the dog sighed and plopped its head back to the ground sending a cloud of dust into the air.
The road dead-ended at the General Store. Without looking up, he walked to the back of the store picked up a bottle and headed to the counter. He rubbed the smooth glass with his thumb as he waited to pay.
"You sure about this son?" the clerk asked.
The man pushed the bottle towards him without answering.
"Ah well, it was only a matter of time I suppose. How long you make it this time?"
The man threw money on the counter, grabbed the bottle and turned towards the door. He stopped with his back to the clerk. "It was 87 days. I made it 87 days this time."
"That right? Well ain't that something." The clerk laughed.
Outside, clouds began to gather as the man twisted the cap off of the bottle. A loud clap of thunder woke the dog lying in the street. The man tilted the bottle back. Cold hard rain pounded the ground in the widow's flower garden. She jumped to her feet and began to dance as he emptied the bottle.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
bus 222
Jenny’s vagina was going to explode.
And the worst part, she thought, was that she had not even gotten to use it for anything interesting yet. Ricky held her gaze as he walked down the middle of the bus. He passed 3 empty seats before stopping next to her and dropping his backpack in the middle of the aisle.
“Good morning,” he said and sat next to her. Jenny thought they should get married in the fall, next to the lake behind her grandfather’s house.
“Good morning,” She said. He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. Maybe they should get married on the beach. At night.
Two weeks ago she thought that her head might explode when he sat next to her. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her temples. In less than 5 seconds she had memorized everything about him. He smelled like Irish Spring. He had a scar in the shape of a half moon under his right eye. His jeans were pegged perfectly. She was infatuated.
Last week she was convinced that it was her heart that couldn't handle the pressure. Her heartbeat so fast and so strong that her ears were ringing. She thought that she saw him looking at her chest and was worried that he could see her heart thumping through her sweater. He let his hand rest next to hers on the seat of the bus. He reached up and pulled a bug out of her hair. He touched her arm when he spoke to her. There always seemed to be some reason to touch her. They would have three kids; two girls and one boy.
Yesterday he had leaned in close to tell her a dirty joke. She felt his lips brush against her ear. She did not understand the joke but laughed anyway. The blood drained from her head and her heart and all seemed to rush down there. It was going to explode. They would live in the black part of town because it would be safer there.
“You eat breakfast?”
Jenny shrugged. “Nah, not hungry.”
“I’m starving, woke up too late for breakfast again this morning.”
“You want a Pop-Tart?” Jenny asked pulling the backpack out from underneath her seat.
“Shit yeah, what kind?”
Jenny bit her bottom lip. It was so cool the way he cursed- like he didn’t care who heard him.
She unzipped the backpack and emptied the contents out onto the seat between them. At the bottom of the backpack was a crushed foil wrapper holding the ruins of what had once been two frosted cherry Pop-Tarts. Their foreheads touched as they looked down into the bag.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Ricky said, his breath blowing a long blonde strand of hair from Jenny’s forehead. They would skip their honeymoon and use the money to buy a convertible.
He tore open the foil and poured the crumbs into his mouth. Jenny held her breath and watched from the corner of her eye.
“Ah, thanks,” he said and tossed the empty wrapper back into her backpack. He looked down at her lap and smiled. Reaching out, he took her hand in his, pulling it towards him. What a lovely way to explode, Jenny thought. He lifted her hand in the air and looked down at the Trapper Keeper in her lap. Her hand gone, he could read what she had scrawled across the plastic cover in History class the day before. “Jenny loves Ricky 4Ever” in permanent marker.
Ricky started to laugh. He laughed so hard and for so long that tears rolled down his cheeks and he held onto his sides as if he was afraid that he would split open down the middle if he let go. The bus stopped and he wiped the tears from his cheeks.
“Sorry,” he said. “Thanks for the Pop-Tart.” He stood up to leave and turned his back to Jenny.
“You’re welcome,” was all she intended to say. She couldn’t tell where all of the blood had gone; it seemed to have vanished altogether. She sat in the seat, too drained to follow Ricky off of the bus and tried to think of a way to regain her dignity. She wanted to hit him, to kick him, to spit on him for embarrassing her; but the blood had drained from her legs, she couldn’t move.
And the worst part, she thought, was that she had not even gotten to use it for anything interesting yet. Ricky held her gaze as he walked down the middle of the bus. He passed 3 empty seats before stopping next to her and dropping his backpack in the middle of the aisle.
“Good morning,” he said and sat next to her. Jenny thought they should get married in the fall, next to the lake behind her grandfather’s house.
“Good morning,” She said. He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. Maybe they should get married on the beach. At night.
Two weeks ago she thought that her head might explode when he sat next to her. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her temples. In less than 5 seconds she had memorized everything about him. He smelled like Irish Spring. He had a scar in the shape of a half moon under his right eye. His jeans were pegged perfectly. She was infatuated.
Last week she was convinced that it was her heart that couldn't handle the pressure. Her heartbeat so fast and so strong that her ears were ringing. She thought that she saw him looking at her chest and was worried that he could see her heart thumping through her sweater. He let his hand rest next to hers on the seat of the bus. He reached up and pulled a bug out of her hair. He touched her arm when he spoke to her. There always seemed to be some reason to touch her. They would have three kids; two girls and one boy.
Yesterday he had leaned in close to tell her a dirty joke. She felt his lips brush against her ear. She did not understand the joke but laughed anyway. The blood drained from her head and her heart and all seemed to rush down there. It was going to explode. They would live in the black part of town because it would be safer there.
“You eat breakfast?”
Jenny shrugged. “Nah, not hungry.”
“I’m starving, woke up too late for breakfast again this morning.”
“You want a Pop-Tart?” Jenny asked pulling the backpack out from underneath her seat.
“Shit yeah, what kind?”
Jenny bit her bottom lip. It was so cool the way he cursed- like he didn’t care who heard him.
She unzipped the backpack and emptied the contents out onto the seat between them. At the bottom of the backpack was a crushed foil wrapper holding the ruins of what had once been two frosted cherry Pop-Tarts. Their foreheads touched as they looked down into the bag.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Ricky said, his breath blowing a long blonde strand of hair from Jenny’s forehead. They would skip their honeymoon and use the money to buy a convertible.
He tore open the foil and poured the crumbs into his mouth. Jenny held her breath and watched from the corner of her eye.
“Ah, thanks,” he said and tossed the empty wrapper back into her backpack. He looked down at her lap and smiled. Reaching out, he took her hand in his, pulling it towards him. What a lovely way to explode, Jenny thought. He lifted her hand in the air and looked down at the Trapper Keeper in her lap. Her hand gone, he could read what she had scrawled across the plastic cover in History class the day before. “Jenny loves Ricky 4Ever” in permanent marker.
Ricky started to laugh. He laughed so hard and for so long that tears rolled down his cheeks and he held onto his sides as if he was afraid that he would split open down the middle if he let go. The bus stopped and he wiped the tears from his cheeks.
“Sorry,” he said. “Thanks for the Pop-Tart.” He stood up to leave and turned his back to Jenny.
“You’re welcome,” was all she intended to say. She couldn’t tell where all of the blood had gone; it seemed to have vanished altogether. She sat in the seat, too drained to follow Ricky off of the bus and tried to think of a way to regain her dignity. She wanted to hit him, to kick him, to spit on him for embarrassing her; but the blood had drained from her legs, she couldn’t move.
“You’re welcome N****r.”
Ricky made it from the front of the bus to her seat in the back in three long strides. Without a word, his hand flew out and slapped her in the face.
She pressed the palm of her hand against her warm cheek. It stung a lot. But, she thought, an exploding vagina probably would have stung a lot more.
Ricky made it from the front of the bus to her seat in the back in three long strides. Without a word, his hand flew out and slapped her in the face.
She pressed the palm of her hand against her warm cheek. It stung a lot. But, she thought, an exploding vagina probably would have stung a lot more.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The Laundry Room Romance
Juanito squatted next to the trashcan and inhaled deeply on his cigarette. The rain fell in a sheet in front of him. Robert always made them take the gutters off before they started work on a roof for no other reason than he could charge the owners a “gutter-moving fee.” Robert must have known that it was going to rain today, no one else was at the site when Juanito was dropped off that morning. He pulled his phone out of his pocket to call Robert and ask him to come pick him up, but he already knew what he would say, “What’s the matter baby cousin? Was your head so far up your ass this morning that you couldn’t see the clouds?” Robert collected American style insults and asking people if their head was up their ass was his new favorite. He managed to work it into conversation several times a day. Like most of these sayings, Juanito wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but it still pissed him off.
“Pendejo,” Juanito said and stood up, shoving the phone back in his pocket.
The house was vacant, a rental property between occupants. He began to pace back and forth underneath the eave, reaching his hand out and letting his fingertips graze the waterfall coming from the half-finished roof. Sticking close to the side of the house, he rounded the corner into the back of the house and looked down the sloped walkway that led to the laundry room. Juanito had found one of the other roofers taking a nap between the washing machine and the dryer on the first day at the site, curled up on the floor like a cat. He was going to wake him up but Robert laughed and said to leave him there. It was getting dark and the men were packing up to leave. Robert taped a note to the kid’s boot that said “You are fired Sleeping Beauty” and they left him there.
The door to the laundry room was cracked and water was running inside from the saturated ground. Juanito sprinted across the yard, his boots kicking up water in front of him on the concrete walkway. He stuck his head inside and saw that the water was pooling in the back of the room and the yellow linoleum floor was already beginning to curl up at the edges. The owner was going to be pissed. Juanito stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him. He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a limp cigarette. It was damp but he was still able to light it. The air in the laundry room was thick and the smoke from his cigarette clung to his skin and hung in a cloud around his head. Juanito climbed up on the washing machine and opened the window behind it. Kneeling on the lid of the washing machine, he pressed his forehead against the screen and breathed in deeply.
The water ran off of the roof of the laundry room and gathered in a trench that ran the 6-foot length of the yard, forming a river that disappeared underneath the fence. Juanito squinted his eyes and watched the river. The sound of the rain left so gradually that he did not realize the rain had stopped until the flow of the river slowed and then stopped altogether. Juanito sat back on his heels and lit another cigarette, his eyes fixed on the now stagnant water.
Beyond the river, beyond the fence, beyond the ditch that separated the houses, in another house up on a hill, another world, a teenage girl stepped out onto the back porch that faced Juanito and looked up at the sky. She smiled and leapt forward, clearing the porch steps and landing squarely in the mud underneath. She laughed as the mud splattered up her rain boots and the legs of her jeans. Juanito froze, afraid that any movement would draw her attention over the fence.
She looked down at her own feet as they forged a path through the mud and disappeared from Juanito’s line of vision. Seconds later, he heard the sloshing sound of her boots on the other side of the laundry room. He ducked beneath the window and slid off of the washing machine. He eased up onto the dryer and leaned against the other window. The girl was standing with her back to the door to a laundry room identical to his hideout. She pulled off her boots and wiped her muddy hands on the seat of her jeans before laying her hand on the doorknob of the laundry room. Her hand froze as she looked over her shoulder towards Juanito. He ducked his head before she spotted him, pressing his face against the top of the dryer. When he heard a door open beyond the fence, he slowly raised his head again. Of course she hadn’t seen him, Juanito thought, how could she have? It felt like thousands of miles separating them. She left the door open. Waiting until she had her back turned, he opened the window over the dryer.
The girl stood staring at the back wall of the tiny building, her head cocked to the side for several minutes. The room looked empty- no washer, no dryer. Juanito wondered what she saw in the blank wall. The girl suddenly came to life, seeming to do several things at once. She pulled her long blonde hair back in a ponytail, turned on a radio that he could not see, shed her gray sweatshirt and started dancing all at once. Juanito sat back on his heels on the edge of the dryer, adding to the distance between him and the girl. He sensed something strange about her, she was moving to quickly, like she was stuck on fast forward. She turned to what must have been a table on the side of the room and began moving things around with her unnatural speed, humming along with the radio to a song that Juanito had never heard before. Her work began to slow and then she stepped away from the table and stood directly in front of the doorway. The sky was still gray with clouds and the light behind her seemed to be projecting her like a movie. Juanito watched as she held her arms over her head and arched her back, stretching before turning her back to him again.
Grabbing something from the table, she slashed the wall in front of her, leaving a trail of bright blue paint. The wall came alive underneath her hands. The shape of her torso underneath the thin tank top, the swell of her hips, the way her ponytail swayed from side to side as she painted- they all disappeared as Juanito watched the images appear on the wall. She painted for hours without stopping until finally she threw her paintbrush on the floor beneath her and spun on her heels to the door. She walked out of the laundry room and grabbed her boots, running through the muddy yard in her socked feet.
Juanito waited for an hour for her to return before leaving the laundry room and crossing the yard to the fence that separated the houses. He paced back and forth along the fence, waiting for a sign from the family in the other house. He walked over the corner of the yard and climbed up on an overturned wheelbarrow to peer at the girl’s house. It was dark; everyone had left or was sleeping. He pulled himself over the fence and easily jumped over the water in the ditch that separated the properties. He climbed to the top of the girl’s fence and landed in a squat, perched close to the ground. No lights came on inside the house. With his eyes on the house, he ran across the yard to the laundry room and jumped inside. Inside, he leaned against the wall and gently pulled the door shut. The light from the bare bulb dangling overhead seemed to penetrate Juanito’s eyelids as he pinched them shut. Unaccustomed to the light, he opened one eye and reached out for the light switch on the wall. He was going to turn off the light when he noticed the painting over the switch. A woman sat at a table, leaning on her elbows. Her long black hair hung loose down her back as she stared ahead of her. Underneath the table was a young boy, his head resting on her barefeet.
Juanito reached out and traced the outline of the woman on the wall. Her sharp profile, the single tear that ran down her cheek. He sucked in air and stepped closer, his nose pressing against the wall.
“Mamma?” he whispered. He looked beneath the table at the shape of the sleeping boy in the blue pajamas. Tucked in the crook of the sleeping boy’s arm was a red blanket that spilled out onto the floor around him. It was the night that his father did not come home from work. His mother sat at the table all night waiting for him. He slept on the floor waiting for his mother.
Juanito closed his eyes and stepped into the middle of the room. He was afraid to open them. The wind picked up outside of the room and he sensed the light flickering. After several deep breaths, he opened his eyes and looked down at the floor. Slowly, carefully, he raised his eyes to the wall directly in front of him- first at the wall in its entirety and then at each image alone. The vibrant colors painted Juanito’s childhood, but not in chronological order. Directly above the lonely image of his mother, was his sister’s wedding just before he moved to the U.S. Most of the guests’ faces were too undefined to identify, but he could pinpoint his mother and sister, holding hands and laughing. Juanito laughed out loud when he saw his uncle bent over behind the gift table vomiting. Tio never could hold his liquor.
That girl, Juanito thought, must be an angel. He took his time, pouring over each painted scene, struggling to remember all of the details, to fill in the wholes left by the artist. He paused to say a prayer of thanks when he reached a scene of several shirtless youths fishing in a spring. Warmth spread over every inch of his skin as he recalled the heat of the sun hitting his bare back when he went fishing with his brothers.
Juanito took small shuffling steps as he studied the mural of his life. When he reached the back wall, the wall that he watched the angel paint from over the fence, he became disoriented. Initially, he believed the river to be the Rio Conchos. If he followed the spring where they fished as children, it would lead him all the way to the Rio Conchos. Stepping back, he realized that it was the Rio Grande. The wide river cut down the wall, separating his life in Mexico from his life in the U.S. Standing at the edge of the river was a young woman. Unlike the other painted figures, who were all painted in profile, she was facing Juanito. She seemed to be staring right at Juanito. Her hair was pulled into a thick braid that fell over her shoulder. Her coffee-colored eyes were half-closed and one corner of her mouth was raised slightly in a smile. He raised his hand to her image, but pulled it back before touching the wet paint. His hand balled into a fist and he punched the wall just above the girl on the wall.
“Camila!” He gasped and fell to his knees. He began to hyperventilate and held tightly to his waist as if speaking her name sucked all of the air from his lungs.
She stood at the edge of their village the night he left. He was worried that she was going to cry but she didn’t. Her eyes seemed focused on something above his head as he spoke to her. He was going for her, he said. He could do more away than he could if he stayed. He could earn enough to start a life together. He would be home before the spring. He leaned in to kiss her and only then did she meet his eyes. She smiled and said “I will not wait forever Juanito.” Not forever, he assured her- six months at the most.
Juanito stood and forced himself to follow his life across the river. Two years in this country. The colors dulled, losing the vibrant shades of his youth until finally they all seemed to be shades of grays- the gray women that he met in bars and took back to his gray apartment that he shared with 8 other men. The days spent working for Robert from dawn to dusk. Even standing on the roof with the sun high in the sky, his skin was always gray.
No, Juanito said to himself, this artist is not an angel. She must be a demon, conjured from hell. He turned to the table behind him and picked up a tube of black paint. Taking off the cap, he squeezed the thick black paint onto his palm and smeared it on the gray images, blocking them out. When the tube of paint was empty, he stood back and looked at the room. Better this way, he thought, better that I died when I crossed that river than turned into gray. He looked down at his blackened palms and began to cry.
He sat in the floor, leaning against the black wall and fell asleep staring at the mural of his youth. He dreamed of Camila.
He woke to the sun reaching in through the window and the sound of the roofing crew setting up in the house behind him. He decided not to look up at the mural again before he left. He could not take her work with him, the artist, the angel, the demon, so he was going to have to leave it here. Robert’s voice carried over the fence. “Where in the hell is Juanito? I swear that cousin of mine has his head up his ass!”
He knew that he couldn’t stay. He could run all the way back to Mexico if he had to, but he could not walk around with his head up his ass anymore. Camila said that she would not wait forever, but maybe he still had time. He stood at the edge of the Angel/Demon’s driveway, turned south and began to run.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
“Pendejo,” Juanito said and stood up, shoving the phone back in his pocket.
The house was vacant, a rental property between occupants. He began to pace back and forth underneath the eave, reaching his hand out and letting his fingertips graze the waterfall coming from the half-finished roof. Sticking close to the side of the house, he rounded the corner into the back of the house and looked down the sloped walkway that led to the laundry room. Juanito had found one of the other roofers taking a nap between the washing machine and the dryer on the first day at the site, curled up on the floor like a cat. He was going to wake him up but Robert laughed and said to leave him there. It was getting dark and the men were packing up to leave. Robert taped a note to the kid’s boot that said “You are fired Sleeping Beauty” and they left him there.
The door to the laundry room was cracked and water was running inside from the saturated ground. Juanito sprinted across the yard, his boots kicking up water in front of him on the concrete walkway. He stuck his head inside and saw that the water was pooling in the back of the room and the yellow linoleum floor was already beginning to curl up at the edges. The owner was going to be pissed. Juanito stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him. He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a limp cigarette. It was damp but he was still able to light it. The air in the laundry room was thick and the smoke from his cigarette clung to his skin and hung in a cloud around his head. Juanito climbed up on the washing machine and opened the window behind it. Kneeling on the lid of the washing machine, he pressed his forehead against the screen and breathed in deeply.
The water ran off of the roof of the laundry room and gathered in a trench that ran the 6-foot length of the yard, forming a river that disappeared underneath the fence. Juanito squinted his eyes and watched the river. The sound of the rain left so gradually that he did not realize the rain had stopped until the flow of the river slowed and then stopped altogether. Juanito sat back on his heels and lit another cigarette, his eyes fixed on the now stagnant water.
Beyond the river, beyond the fence, beyond the ditch that separated the houses, in another house up on a hill, another world, a teenage girl stepped out onto the back porch that faced Juanito and looked up at the sky. She smiled and leapt forward, clearing the porch steps and landing squarely in the mud underneath. She laughed as the mud splattered up her rain boots and the legs of her jeans. Juanito froze, afraid that any movement would draw her attention over the fence.
She looked down at her own feet as they forged a path through the mud and disappeared from Juanito’s line of vision. Seconds later, he heard the sloshing sound of her boots on the other side of the laundry room. He ducked beneath the window and slid off of the washing machine. He eased up onto the dryer and leaned against the other window. The girl was standing with her back to the door to a laundry room identical to his hideout. She pulled off her boots and wiped her muddy hands on the seat of her jeans before laying her hand on the doorknob of the laundry room. Her hand froze as she looked over her shoulder towards Juanito. He ducked his head before she spotted him, pressing his face against the top of the dryer. When he heard a door open beyond the fence, he slowly raised his head again. Of course she hadn’t seen him, Juanito thought, how could she have? It felt like thousands of miles separating them. She left the door open. Waiting until she had her back turned, he opened the window over the dryer.
The girl stood staring at the back wall of the tiny building, her head cocked to the side for several minutes. The room looked empty- no washer, no dryer. Juanito wondered what she saw in the blank wall. The girl suddenly came to life, seeming to do several things at once. She pulled her long blonde hair back in a ponytail, turned on a radio that he could not see, shed her gray sweatshirt and started dancing all at once. Juanito sat back on his heels on the edge of the dryer, adding to the distance between him and the girl. He sensed something strange about her, she was moving to quickly, like she was stuck on fast forward. She turned to what must have been a table on the side of the room and began moving things around with her unnatural speed, humming along with the radio to a song that Juanito had never heard before. Her work began to slow and then she stepped away from the table and stood directly in front of the doorway. The sky was still gray with clouds and the light behind her seemed to be projecting her like a movie. Juanito watched as she held her arms over her head and arched her back, stretching before turning her back to him again.
Grabbing something from the table, she slashed the wall in front of her, leaving a trail of bright blue paint. The wall came alive underneath her hands. The shape of her torso underneath the thin tank top, the swell of her hips, the way her ponytail swayed from side to side as she painted- they all disappeared as Juanito watched the images appear on the wall. She painted for hours without stopping until finally she threw her paintbrush on the floor beneath her and spun on her heels to the door. She walked out of the laundry room and grabbed her boots, running through the muddy yard in her socked feet.
Juanito waited for an hour for her to return before leaving the laundry room and crossing the yard to the fence that separated the houses. He paced back and forth along the fence, waiting for a sign from the family in the other house. He walked over the corner of the yard and climbed up on an overturned wheelbarrow to peer at the girl’s house. It was dark; everyone had left or was sleeping. He pulled himself over the fence and easily jumped over the water in the ditch that separated the properties. He climbed to the top of the girl’s fence and landed in a squat, perched close to the ground. No lights came on inside the house. With his eyes on the house, he ran across the yard to the laundry room and jumped inside. Inside, he leaned against the wall and gently pulled the door shut. The light from the bare bulb dangling overhead seemed to penetrate Juanito’s eyelids as he pinched them shut. Unaccustomed to the light, he opened one eye and reached out for the light switch on the wall. He was going to turn off the light when he noticed the painting over the switch. A woman sat at a table, leaning on her elbows. Her long black hair hung loose down her back as she stared ahead of her. Underneath the table was a young boy, his head resting on her barefeet.
Juanito reached out and traced the outline of the woman on the wall. Her sharp profile, the single tear that ran down her cheek. He sucked in air and stepped closer, his nose pressing against the wall.
“Mamma?” he whispered. He looked beneath the table at the shape of the sleeping boy in the blue pajamas. Tucked in the crook of the sleeping boy’s arm was a red blanket that spilled out onto the floor around him. It was the night that his father did not come home from work. His mother sat at the table all night waiting for him. He slept on the floor waiting for his mother.
Juanito closed his eyes and stepped into the middle of the room. He was afraid to open them. The wind picked up outside of the room and he sensed the light flickering. After several deep breaths, he opened his eyes and looked down at the floor. Slowly, carefully, he raised his eyes to the wall directly in front of him- first at the wall in its entirety and then at each image alone. The vibrant colors painted Juanito’s childhood, but not in chronological order. Directly above the lonely image of his mother, was his sister’s wedding just before he moved to the U.S. Most of the guests’ faces were too undefined to identify, but he could pinpoint his mother and sister, holding hands and laughing. Juanito laughed out loud when he saw his uncle bent over behind the gift table vomiting. Tio never could hold his liquor.
That girl, Juanito thought, must be an angel. He took his time, pouring over each painted scene, struggling to remember all of the details, to fill in the wholes left by the artist. He paused to say a prayer of thanks when he reached a scene of several shirtless youths fishing in a spring. Warmth spread over every inch of his skin as he recalled the heat of the sun hitting his bare back when he went fishing with his brothers.
Juanito took small shuffling steps as he studied the mural of his life. When he reached the back wall, the wall that he watched the angel paint from over the fence, he became disoriented. Initially, he believed the river to be the Rio Conchos. If he followed the spring where they fished as children, it would lead him all the way to the Rio Conchos. Stepping back, he realized that it was the Rio Grande. The wide river cut down the wall, separating his life in Mexico from his life in the U.S. Standing at the edge of the river was a young woman. Unlike the other painted figures, who were all painted in profile, she was facing Juanito. She seemed to be staring right at Juanito. Her hair was pulled into a thick braid that fell over her shoulder. Her coffee-colored eyes were half-closed and one corner of her mouth was raised slightly in a smile. He raised his hand to her image, but pulled it back before touching the wet paint. His hand balled into a fist and he punched the wall just above the girl on the wall.
“Camila!” He gasped and fell to his knees. He began to hyperventilate and held tightly to his waist as if speaking her name sucked all of the air from his lungs.
She stood at the edge of their village the night he left. He was worried that she was going to cry but she didn’t. Her eyes seemed focused on something above his head as he spoke to her. He was going for her, he said. He could do more away than he could if he stayed. He could earn enough to start a life together. He would be home before the spring. He leaned in to kiss her and only then did she meet his eyes. She smiled and said “I will not wait forever Juanito.” Not forever, he assured her- six months at the most.
Juanito stood and forced himself to follow his life across the river. Two years in this country. The colors dulled, losing the vibrant shades of his youth until finally they all seemed to be shades of grays- the gray women that he met in bars and took back to his gray apartment that he shared with 8 other men. The days spent working for Robert from dawn to dusk. Even standing on the roof with the sun high in the sky, his skin was always gray.
No, Juanito said to himself, this artist is not an angel. She must be a demon, conjured from hell. He turned to the table behind him and picked up a tube of black paint. Taking off the cap, he squeezed the thick black paint onto his palm and smeared it on the gray images, blocking them out. When the tube of paint was empty, he stood back and looked at the room. Better this way, he thought, better that I died when I crossed that river than turned into gray. He looked down at his blackened palms and began to cry.
He sat in the floor, leaning against the black wall and fell asleep staring at the mural of his youth. He dreamed of Camila.
He woke to the sun reaching in through the window and the sound of the roofing crew setting up in the house behind him. He decided not to look up at the mural again before he left. He could not take her work with him, the artist, the angel, the demon, so he was going to have to leave it here. Robert’s voice carried over the fence. “Where in the hell is Juanito? I swear that cousin of mine has his head up his ass!”
He knew that he couldn’t stay. He could run all the way back to Mexico if he had to, but he could not walk around with his head up his ass anymore. Camila said that she would not wait forever, but maybe he still had time. He stood at the edge of the Angel/Demon’s driveway, turned south and began to run.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
check engine light
Suze focused on the light on her dashboard, narrowing her vision to block out everything else- the kids, the school, the other parents’ cars all disappeared. The sound of honking from the mini-van behind her seemed to be coming from miles away. The small red light in the shape of a car engine stared back at her- CHECK ENGINE! The light, she felt, was entirely unnecessary at this point. The fact that the car was dead as hell was a good enough indication that something in the engine should be “checked.”
Yet, there it was. The damn car could not muster enough energy to ignite the engine and limp out of the way of the other cars, but it did have enough life left in it to power that one light. Check Engine. Yes, she thought, she should check that engine. Maybe she could pop the hood, jump out of the car and wave the other drivers around her and take a look at the engine. Maybe, if she had gone to community college (to learn a proper trade like heating and air conditioning as her stepmother had suggested) instead of double majoring in French and Philosophy, she would have some clue of how to pop the hood in the first place. Maybe, if her husband had not cut up her credit cards the night before, she could have called a tow truck. As it was, all she had was three kids, eleven dollars in cash in her Winnie-the-Pooh Diaper Bag that she had been using as a purse, and a non-running SUV with the fantastically helpful advice that she should check her engine.
“Come on Mom! Make the car go. This is barrassing,” one of the girls whined from the backseat. Suze was not sure which one.
“You mean embarrassing honey. I would make the car go if I could,” Suze held her breath and turned the key in the ignition again. Nothing. Check Engine.
“Why don’t you just call Daddy? He could fix it,” another voice whined from the backseat. Or maybe the same voice.
Suze snorted and closed her eyes. “Daddy is busy and would prefer that we handle these things ourselves. We are not children for Crap’s sake.”
“Okay, one: You just swore. Two: you owe another dollar to the swear jar. And three: We are children.” While this whiny voice sounded just like the other two, it was easy for Suze to determine the source. Only her middle child felt the need to speak to her in lists as if she were too simple to understand statements in a more complicated form. The degree in French and Philosophy seemed to be as useful in mothering as it was in car maintenance.
Suze tried to start the car again. Check Engine.
The Crossing Guard jogged over from the crosswalk waving her Stop Sign in front of her. Stop. This was easy enough for Suze to obey, even without any training in a proper trade, she could stay stopped, had no choice in the matter.
“Well good morning!” The Crossing Guard shouted as she leaned her head in the driver’s side window.
“Good Morning Miss Billie,” the girls said from the backseat.
“What’s going on here? We’re causing quite a traffic jam,” Miss Billie said.
“Our car won’t go,” a voice said from the backseat.
“Oh dear, you should have that checked out,” Miss Billie said.
Suze smiled. “Yes, I think I should.”
The mini-van behind Suze honked again and Miss Billie frowned waving them around the stalled SUV.
“Maybe you should turn on your hazards to let people know what’s going on here,” Billie said lowering her stop sign.
“Oh,” Suze looked down at the steering wheel but was unable to see anything beyond the check engine light. “Um, I’m not sure…” she focused on the angry red light again.
“Dear, don’t you even know where the hazards are on your own vehicle?” Miss Billie leaned in and reached across the dash, blocking the light for a moment as she pushed a small switch behind the steering wheel. She began to straighten up and then froze as she focused on the plastic containers in the passenger seat. They held 24 cupcakes. Eight had pink icing with purple polka dots. Eight had blue icing with green polka dots. Seven had purple icing with blue polka dots. And one sugar free chocolate cupcake for the little girl in the class with diabetes. Her daughter had been very specific about what she wanted to bring to class for her the Spring Party and Suze had stayed up until three in the morning making them.
“Uh-Oh,” Miss Billie said shaking her head.
“I’m sorry?” Suze asked looking down at the cupcakes.
“Are those for school?” Miss Billie asked.
“Yes,” Suze said, pulling her gaze from the cupcakes to the light on the dashboard.
Miss Billie threw her head back and laughed. She laughed and snorted and slapped her leg while Suze and her daughters all turned their attention to the cupcakes stacked neatly in the passenger seat.
“Oh dear, you are not having a very good morning are you?” Miss Billie asked between snorts.
“I don’t get what is so funny.” Suze
said.
Miss Billie quickly became serious; she reached in the car and patted Suze’s hand saying “Honey, you can’t bring homemade foods into the classroom anymore. They have to be store-bought, still in a sealed container on account of food allergies and the like. Why, your little one there is in class with my very own niece and she has the diabetes, I hate to think what would happen if she got a hold on one of those things and didn’t know what was in it.”
“Are you shitting me?” Suze asked, staring at the light on her dashboard.
“Mom!” three voices whined from the backseat.
Miss Billie straightened up and took her hand off of Suze’s. “Well, I hardly think that kind of language is necessary. I don’t see how you didn’t know in the first place- all of the other parents know the rules.”
Suze laughed and said “Maybe if they had sent the note home in French.”
“What?” Miss Billie asked.
“I have three children in this school. They each come home with an average of 2 notes from the school a day. That is 30 notes from school a week. Thirty! No, I don’t read them. I don’t read them because I find them mind-numbing and redundant and because I have more important things to do- things like bake 24 damn cupcakes in three different color schemes including one sugar-free cupcake for that diabetic niece of yours, who I’m sorry to say, if she is diabetic and doesn’t know by the age of ten that cupcakes contain sugar without a damn label from a store, is not long for this world. So what I am saying is, maybe if the note had been written in French, I would have found it interesting enough to read!” Suze reached for her key and turned it in the ignition before she caught sight of the light on the dash reminding her that she was stuck there.
“Damnit!” Suze yelled, hitting the steering wheel with the palm of her hand.
Miss Billie stepped away from the car and gripped her stop sign with both hands. “Are you threatening my niece?”
Suze sucked in her breath and looked into her rearview mirror. “Unbuckle girls, you’re walking from here.”
“But Mom! I was supposed to bring cupcakes, everyone is going to freak out!”
“One: the first bell already rang and two: we need you to walk us in and sign the book after the bell rings.”
Suze tightened her grip on the steering wheel and watched as Miss Billie trotted across the street and threw the Stop sign into her backseat.
“Get out and walk to school. Now.” Suze said.
“But what do we tell the office when they want you to sign the book?”
“You tell them to take that book and shove it up their…”
“Mom!”
“You tell them that your mother is having a nervous breakdown and will be happy to sign the book when she is finished.”
Suze sat quietly as the girls jumped out of the car and one of them, probably the middle one, slammed the door behind her. Miss Billie did a U-turn and stuck her middle finger out of her window as she drove off. Suze grabbed the container of cupcakes and threw her car door open. She ran into the street and began throwing the cupcakes at Miss Billie’s car. Two purple iced cupcakes splattered against her back window before she turned the corner. Suze reached down and grabbed the last cupcake before dropping the container on the street. She took a bite and turned back to her impotent SUV.
“Ugh!” she spit the cupcake out and looked down at her hand. It was the sugar-free cupcake. “Gross,” she said as she chunked the cupcake down the street. She got back into her car and closed the car door behind her. After trying twice more to start the car, she reached into her diaper bag/ purse and pulled out her cell phone. She began to dial her husband’s number but snapped the phone shut. What could he do? He did not have any money either. He could not get her car started and with his bad back, he certainly could not push it off of the road into the school’s parking lot.
“He should have gone to trade school,” Suze said licking the sugar-free icing from her fingers.
She dumped the purse out into the seat and looked through the contents. Before she opened the door, she had neatly lined her possessions along the dashboard. They were, as her middle child would say- one: a cell phone; two: a full bottle of prescription diet pills; three: a wallet containing checks to an overdrawn bank account; and four: one diamond engagement ring and one gold wedding band. Suze rolled up the eleven dollars in cash and stuck it down into her bra like she had done when she was in college and could not be bothered with carrying a purse. She left the keys in the ignition and stepped out onto the pavement and for the first time since she had purchased her eighty-dollar running shoes the year before- she ran. It seemed that the teenage salesclerk had been lying; the gel cushioning did not actually make every step feel as if she were running barefoot on the clouds as he had promised.
While the impotent SUV sat on the side of the road with the driver’s side door open and Suze’s belongings lined up neatly on the dashboard, Suze herself ran. She focused on the sound of her footfalls on the pavement without paying any attention to where she was headed. Her instincts seemed to be guiding her feet only AWAY- away from the elementary school where her daughters stood in the office, in their matching hairbows, explaining to the secretary that their mother was busy with her nervous breakdown. Away from Miss Billie who was sitting in her driveay writing her letter of resignation to the school board on the back of a grocery list, blaming out of control parents for her early departure. Away from the corner office in the back of town hall where the first selectman, her husband, was slowly and carefully unbuttoning the red silk blouse of Sherry Crowder, the wife of the second selectman. Away from her own house where Sammy, her husband’s golden retriever, was standing on the kitchen table licking the purple icing from a mixing bowl and ignoring the utility man that had come into the backyard to shut off the power for non-payment. Suze ran away.
Residents would not normally pay much attention to a young woman jogging on a Friday morning. But anyone outside that day took note of Suze. They would later tell Chuck Baker, the police chief that they noticed a woman running down the street in her pajamas and running shoes. They noticed her, they would say, not only because of the pink and green striped pajamas that she was wearing, or because she was crying, or because her long blonde hair was not pulled back but matted with sweat and sticking to her forehead, but because she was not jogging- she was running. She was running as if she were being chased even though they could see no person or car or dog chasing her. Suze ran down the middle of the street and never bothered to look behind her. Suze was running like a crazy person.
Suze didn’t feel crazy. She didn’t feel much at all beyond the endorphins. Her feet pushed on; turning down one street but not another until the sun was high above her and she had run well past the town limits. Suze ran until, without warning, she could not run anymore. Her knees buckled beneath her and she collapsed on the sidewalk. Lying on the sidewalk in her sweat-soaked pajamas, she determined that the salesclerk at the shoe store had lied to Suze, had, in fact, probably never run anywhere in shoes with that particular kind of gel insert. This, Suze thought, is not what feet would feel like after running barefoot through the clouds. The absurdity of the salesclerk’s promise did not take away from the sting of his betrayal. What did he care? She bought them. The gel in these shoes has near-magical properties and this particular SUV is the most dependable thing on the road and sure honey, I will love and cherish you until death parts us. Everyone was selling something and Suze was always so eager to buy it.
When her heartbeat was approaching normal, Suze opened her eyes and sat up on the sidewalk. Looking around, she realized that she was completely unfamiliar with her surroundings and turned to look behind her in an attempt to remember how she had gotten there. At this point, she felt as crazy as the people watching her run that morning had told the Chief she was.
The sidewalk where she sat cross-legged was littered with cigarette butts and there was a half-eaten Twinkie in its wrapper under her left foot. Suze grabbed the Twinkie and shoved it in her mouth, spitting out a piece of the plastic wrapper before swallowing it whole. She cursed her throbbing feet and the lying salesman as she stood up. There were two men sitting at a table in front of a gas station staring at her, one man’s hand had frozen in midair holding a rook over a chessboard- ready to strike. They did not seem disgusted or frightened of Suze, they stared at her with more curiosity than contempt. She straightened out her pajama top and pushed the sweaty hair from her forehead as she limped over to the men. Her raw feet were threatening to give out completely and land Suze on the sidewalk; but her mind had once again gained control over her body and she willed them on, with forced robotic movements- step, step, step, stop. The men sat silently as Suze approached. She cleared her throat and forced a smile, unaware of the cream from the smashed Twinkie on her upper lip.
The younger man- more of a boy Suze realized as she neared- smiled back at Suze and leaned back in his chair. “Nice shoes,” he said looking at her feet.
“They don’t really feel like clouds you know,” Suze said.
“Um, okay,” the young man said turning to look over his shoulder and hide his face. His shoulders shook gently as he tried in vain to stifle his laughter.
Suze’s face reddened, “Would it be possible for me to get some water in this establishment?” her voice was hoarse and the effort of speaking made her feel weak. How long had she run without drinking? She had no idea what time it was or even what day it was; maybe she had been running for years. She looked down at her hands expecting them to be wrinkled and covered in age spots, but sighed in relief and rubbed her finger where her wedding ring had once lived. Her hands were still 35 years old. Pretty young, Suze thought, to have a total mental breakdown. Her own mother had not cracked until she was well into her fifties. Suze met the young man’s eyes again and wondered if there was a check engine light blinking on her forehead, a bright red light in the shape of a brain blinking furiously if not too late. You should probably get that brain checked out, Suze.
“There is a restroom around back, the key is hanging on the wall,” the man holding the chess piece said. He looked back down at the game and dropped the piece loudly. He grinned, exposing some of the whitest teeth Suze had ever seen. “Check Mate boy, Check Mate!!”
Suze limped off to the restroom as the two men laughed and reset the chessboard. The water in the faucet was lukewarm and had an acidic taste to it but Suze stuck her head under the faucet and drank from it until she began to feel light-headed and then let the warm run over the back of her neck. She avoided looking in the mirror as she used paper towels to dry off her face and neck. Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, Suze noticed that the chipped porcelain of the sink basin was covered in dried vomit. Stepping out of the restroom into the bright afternoon, she was feeling hungry and tired, but optimistic.
“Thank you for the water!” Suze waved to the men playing chess as she turned towards the wooded area across the street from the gas station. Food would have to wait, Suze decided, she limped into the trees until she was no longer visible from the road and dropped to her knees under a pine tree. She took off her pajama shirt, rolled it into a ball and shoved it under her head. Her tank top left her arms bare and gave her no protection from the pine needles and sticks on the ground but she fell asleep before she could notice.
“Are you sure this is her?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know mom, maybe we should look around. Could be there are more white ladies in their stripey pajamas and Nikes sleeping in the woods tonight.”
Suze kept her eyes closed and listened. There was a smacking sound and then the boy laughed. She had heard that laugh before. It was the young man from the gas station; which meant that it hadn’t been a dream. Smiling she rolled over on her back and looked up at her visitors.
“Hello,” Suze said, sitting up and shaking the pine leaves and sticks from her shirt before pulling it over her head.
The woman gasped and stepped back reaching out for her son’s arm to steady her.
“Ma, what’s wrong?” the boy asked.
The woman shook her head and leaned forward shining her flashlight in Suze’s face. “Dear Lord, it is you,” she whispered.
Suze shielded her eyes with her hand and stood up, the flashlight following her as she rose. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
The woman laughed. “Suzy? Suzy Edwards?”
“Yes,well I was,” Suze leaned to the right, trying to see the woman behind the flashlight.
The woman lowered her flashlight and tossed it onto the ground. Suze
blinked, watching as the woman, now partially obscured by the white glow burned into her vision, dropped her hands to her side for a second before putting her fisted hands squarely onto her hips.
“Ready? Okay!” the woman stepped forward and began clapping. “Bang-bang, choo-choo train come on Mustangs do your thang. Get it, get it, get it, get it, got it, got it, got it, got it, Uh! and let it roll!” She stopped clapping, and put her hands back onto her hips. Her cheer was answered only by applauding crickets and laughing owls for several seconds.
The boy looked from his crazy mother to the crazy white lady, hoping that one of them would start to make some sense eventually.
A smile spread across Suze’s face and she jumped up and down clapping until she paused and assumed the same stance that his mother had taken, hands on hips. “Ready? Okay” she clapped. “Beat 'um! Bust 'um!” the boy’s mother joined in “Beat 'um bust 'um that's our custom! Woo Hoo! Go Mustangs!” The women ran towards each other and hugged, jumping up and down in unison.
“So, um, did you two meet in the nervous hospital or something?” The boy asked and bent over to pick up his mother’s discarded flashlight.
Suze let go of the woman and held her at arm’s length, examining her face. “Marie Washington? I cannot believe it. You look amazing. How are you?”
Marie waved her son over. “Ronnie! Come over here son, I want you to meet a dear old friend of mine.”
He hesitated and shook his head. “Ma?”
“Ronnie, come over here!” Marie said.
Ronnie walked towards the women and held out his hand. Suze extended her hand to Ronnie and then pulled it back, she looked down and examined the dirt and dried blood on her palm, suddenly aware of her state- standing in the woods in the middle of the night in filthy pajamas.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Suze said, still staring at her own hands, rubbing the ring finger of her left hand. “I seem to be having some sort of an episode today.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and straightened her shoulders, looking at Marie again. “Where am I?” she asked.
“Where are you?” Marie glanced at Ronnie.
He shrugged and lowered his hand. “You’re in Tempest Miss Suzy. Tempest, Tennessee.”
“I am afraid that I do not know where Tempest is exactly. You see, I left Library Road early this morning,” Suze looked up at the sky as it turned a deep red behind the trees; the sun was just rising on Saturday. “Oh, yesterday morning then, but I am not sure where I have gotten myself. I just went for a run and…well…I stopped here.”
“Library Road? In Eden? No, you couldn’t have Suzy,” Marie said.
“I told you Ma, she came running right up the sidewalk out there,” he motioned over his shoulder. “She was all out of breath and wild-eyed, she fell down and ate a Twinkie right off the ground.”
Suze winced. “I’m sorry ma’am but that’s what happened.” Ronnie said.
“But Suzy, Eden is more then 20 miles east of here, surely you didn’t just run all of the way here. You must have hitched for part of the way or something,” Marie said.
Suze shook her head. “No I ran. The check engine light came on and I just ran.”
Marie reached out and took Suze’s hand, leading her back towards the street. Ronnie lagged behind the women, shaking his head.
“So wait, you two were like friends? You grew up together in Eden and went to school together and…you were friends? At that Catholic school?” Ronnie asked.
“Our Lady of Sorrows- they closed it down a few years ago. The Penetcostals had a big tent revival outside of the Shop & Save and converted all of the Catholics- even Father Terrance, and none of them would send their kids to the school anymore” Suze said.
"So where do all of the white people send their kids to protect them from the urban kids in high school? Surely they aren't sending them to West Cental?" Marie asked.
"Some do, but most homeschool."
“But y’all were friends? Ma? You and this white lady?” Ronnie asked.
Marie stopped walking and looked at Suze. “Well, more colleagues than friends I guess, why are you so worried about it, makes no matter now. She needs our help and it is our Christian duty to help her,” Marie started off toward the street again. “I can’t believe my own son came home laughing about this crazy white woman he saw talking about walking on clouds and then lay down in the woods,” Marie turned to face Ronnie, still holding Suze’s hand. “And you just left her there, left her there for the wolves. Didn’t show her anymore kindness than you would have a stray cat!” Marie tightened her grip on Suze’s hand and marched down the street.
“But Ma! You hate white people! What did you expect me to do? Carry a stray white lady home for supper?” Ronnie shouted.
“I know that I am suffering from an episode, but please do not speak about me like I am some sort of wounded animal that needs to be put down,” Suze said. She shivered and pulled Marie closer, whispering in her ear. “You don’t think that this is like…that I am like…is this like what happened to my mother you suppose?”
“What was wrong with your mother?” Ronnie asked. Both women jumped; they had not heard him run up behind them.
Marie lowered her voice. “Mrs. Edwards, Suzy’s mother, she had a few episodes of her own while we were in high school. The last one before they sent her off to the nervous hospital was at the Homecoming game senior year. Suzy was standing at the top of the pyramid and the crowd was screaming and cheering and then Mrs. Edwards came out of nowhere, running out on the field. Child, she was naked as a jaybird and had Bible Verses written in marker all over her body,” she turned towards her son and smiled. “I mean all over. And the football coach and Father Terrance were chasing her but she was so fast sprinting across that field. They finally wrestled her to the ground right in front of the stands and she was rolling around the ground and singing the school’s fight song and…” Marie stopped and turned to Suze. “Oh Suzy, I’m so sorry, that must have been awful for you.” Ronnie had fallen behind again and was breathing in quick gasps, trying to suppress his laughter. Crazy white women.
Suze stared ahead, ignoring Marie’s apology. “So, do you hate really hate white women?” she asked.
Marie laughed. “Some I guess.”
“Yeah,” Suze said. “I guess I hate some white women too.” The women walked in silence until they reached Marie’s home- a tiny blue house with a chain-link fence. Two of the three concrete steps were crumbling and had to be stepped over to get to the porch.
Marie walked Suze straight to the bathroom and turned on the shower. “Suzy why don’t you go ahead and get cleaned up,” Marie pointed to the shower and then to the small closet in the corner. “Towels and washcloths in there, soap is in the shower. Leave your clothes on the floor and I will set some clean clothes outside the door. Take your time.” Marie held her breath as she walked by Suze and closed the door behind her.
Ronnie watched his mother walk to the garage, holding Suze's clothes in front of her in one extended arm and covering her nose and mouth with the other. He waitied for her at the kitchen table, picking at the chipping paint on the corner of the table- a habit that she had long since given up on stopping. He waited while she poured herself a cup of coffee and kicked the chair across from him out for her to sit.
“Well?” She said.
“Well?” Ronnie repeated.
“Well, I can tell that you have some questions just burning a hole in your tongue, so why don’t you just go ahead and ask them,” Marie said.
“I don’t even know where to start…. I mean, you were a cheerleader? You had white friends? I don’t believe it.”
“It is a long story Ronnie.”
Ronnie held up his hands. He had the time.
Marie sighed and swirled the coffee in her cup. “Do you remember Grandma talking about Uncle Dennis winning that essay contest in school?”
Ronnie didn’t but he nodded anyway so Marie continued.
“Well he did win originally. They sent the essays off to Nashville and his was chosen as the Regional winner. He was invited to read it at the Governor’s luncheon. Momma and Daddy cried when he brought home the letter. Some of the folks at OLS didn’t like that he won though.” Ronnie opened his mouth to speak but Marie held up her hand before he could ask. “OLS? Our Lady of Sorrows, the school that Uncle Dennis and I graduated from. So, anyway, they didn’t want him representing the school at such a fancy event. They thought he sounded too urban, which I guess they meant too black. So they came up with a way to disqualify him. They said that they had an anonymous tip that he had not written it himself and they sent Tim O’Connor instead.”
“O’Connor? Let me guess, he was a well-spoken Mexican dude?” Ronnie asked.
“Yeah, right, so this white dude goes and meets the governor and Macy’s won’t take back the suit that Grandma had bought for Uncle Dennis and we were all so angry, I thought that your Grandfather was going to blow up the school- he was so mad he couldn’t see straight. But not your Uncle Dennis- he could see just fine,” Marie paused to wipe a tear from her cheek and then continued. “He was so smart you know? Like you. He was smart enough to win that essay contest a hundred times over, never would have used someone else’s work. So your Uncle looked up the name of a big law firm in Nashville and typed up a letter, designing some fancy letterhead with the firm’s name on it and everything. He wrote a letter to the Catholic Diocese and Father Terrance threatening to sue the school for discrimination. It said that the firm had gotten an anonymous tip that their anonymous tip had been fabricated and that the school and the diocese had been under investigation for their lack of diversity. The letter read well, big words and lots of commas and all so they didn’t seem to notice that it didn’t make much sense legally,” Marie smiled.
“Cool,” Ronnie said. “So why were you a cheerleader again?”
“Oh, sorry, I forgot where I was going. After the school got the letter, they apologized to Momma and Daddy, held a special assembly for Dennis, saying that they were mistaken, he had won the contest. He got to wear his suit so Momma was happy. But the school started what they called a diversity campaign. There were 17 black kids in that school, all of us on scholarship, and each and every one of us was appointed to something. We were made class delegates and student ambassadors. I was moved up from the Junior Varsity to the Varsity cheerleading squad and made co-captain of the squad before my first practice.”
”Wow,” Ronnie said. “Were you that good?”
“Not really,” Marie said. “That was the problem. The white kids were pissed, they thought we didn’t deserve to be in those positions,” Marie sighed. “Some of us did and some of us didn’t.Suzy wasn’t any better than me, but she had more experience, she had the respect of the other girls.”
“So why did you take the job?”
Marie shrugged. “Because it upset Suzy and her friends so much. And I hated white girls.”
Suze was standing in the hallway combing through her wet hair with her fingers and cleared her throat. Ronnie and Marie looked up and smiled.
“Feeling better?” Marie asked, pulling out the chair next to her.
Suze walked around the table, bypassing the offered chair and leaned against the wall. “So what did end up of our Dennis, he seemed to have such a promising future.”
Marie put her hand over her son’s, willing him to be quiet. Suze seemed to have heard their entire conversation and experience had taught Marie that the outwardly calm crazy woman was much more dangerous than the one in the throes of an “episode.” That woman was plotting.
“He’s dead,” Marie said.
Suze put her hand over her heart and sat down across from Marie. “Oh, I am so sorry, I hadn’t heard. Was he...” she looked around the room and leaned in closer to Marie and Ronnie. “Was he murdered?”
“Yes, I suppose he was,” Marie said. Ronnie remained silent.
“Do you know who did it?” Suze asked, still whispering.
Ronnie began picking at the chipping paint again, ignoring his mother’s gaze as she answered.
“I guess that depends really. Some people would say it was Hussein, some Bin Laden, some might even say it was Bush that did it. But I guess, technically speaking, it was a ten-year-old Iraqi boy that somehow managed to operate a rocket launcher almost as big as he was.”
Suze gasped, placing her hand over her heart again. “Oh, I am so sorry for your loss. He was such a smart man. But, you know, he died a hero’s death. Thank God for him and all of the other soldiers like him.” Suze returned her hand to her lap when she finished.
Marie slammed her fist down on the table with such force that Suze jumped out of her chair. But Ronnie seemed to have known what was coming, he did not flinch.
“And what in the Hell does that mean? A Hero’s death? He died a damned fool’s death! Shot down by a child!” she stood abruptly, paying no attention to the chair that fell to the floor behind her. “He bled to death in a desert thousands of miles away. Momma died of heart failure a month after his funeral and daddy died of a stroke two months after that. All of the love and work that they poured into that damned fool spilled out onto the sand over there. A lifetime of sitting by his bed when he had a fever, taking him to baseball practice, filling out scholarship applications, second jobs,third jobs to pay for any college textbooks that the scholarships didn’t cover. For what? Anyone could have been shot down like that? Any damn fool,” Marie stopped and turned to Ronnie. “A hero’s death my ass.”
Ronnie stood and picked up his mother’s chair. “I am sorry Miss Suzy, you will have to excuse my mother. She does not approve of my decision to join the Marines after my 18th Birthday next month. My choice to serve my country is far from heroic to her.” He nodded and walked out, slamming the front door on his way out.
Marie, still shaking, sat down and put her face in her hands, twisting her short hair between her fingers.
“Oh sweetie, I am so sorry, really, I can see why you’re upset. But you should be so proud. He is so brave- and so young yet. Seventeen? Did he drop out of high school?” Suze scooted her chair closer to Marie and put her hand on her shoulder. As soon as she touched her, Marie jerked away.
“No Suzy, he did not drop out. He graduated early, took accelerated courses all the way through high school. He is just as smart as my brother Dennis was, maybe even more so,” she paused, letting her hands fall to the table. “You know, I think that this may have been his plan all along- to graduate early so he could ship off right after his birthday. The fool.” She shook her head and began to cry.
Suze sat silently next to Marie while she cried. A few minutes later, Marie jumped up and disappeared into the garage. When she returned, her face was dry. “I just put your pajamas in the dryer, you should leave as soon as they are dry, you’ll hear the buzzer go off in a bit. The phone is next to the refrigerator; you should call someone and make arrangements. I am going to a meeting at church and I want you gone when I get home,” she turned and walked into the hallway.
Suze jumped out of her seat. “Why do you hate white girls Marie? I know we were competitive in High School and all, but I never did anything to you, nothing to deserve this kind of hatred. It is not like I am some kind of racist or anything. All of us cheerleaders were perfectly civil to you.”
Marie turned slowly and breathed in, closing her eyes before speaking. “Excuse me? Civil? Not racist? So, I am just like any other of your old classmates? If you were sitting here at Lisa Cook’s table tonight and not mine and you heard that her brother was dead, would you just assume that he had been murdered?”
Suze started wringing her hands. “Lisa didn’t have a brother- two sisters remember? The slutty one and the one with the wonky eye…what were their names?”
Holding up one hand, Marie walked back into the kitchen. “Don’t avoid the question Suzy. Okay, if you were sitting in Kim Denton’s kitchen and her son wanted to join the military at seventeen, would you assume that her son had dropped out of high school?”
Suze smiled. “He’s gay.”
“What?”
“Kim Denton’s son Jerry, he’s gay. He must be about the same age as your Ronnie; y’all were both pregnant at graduation right? You about three months, Kim maybe a little further along, she was starting to show if I recall.”
Marie nodded.
“So anyway, she married the father, Joey Thomas, and they are married still- real upstanding citizens in Eden you know. No one mentions the situation in which little Jerry was conceived. So anyway, last summer he tells them that he is gay right in the middle of the Homeschool Parents Association election meeting. Kim was running for secretary I believe. She fainted and Joey started crying like a baby. They made Jerry sit there and had a big prayer meeting right there in the high school cafeteria and decided to send him off to Memphis to Love In Action.”
“What?”
“You know, Love in Action, its like a reform school where they are supposed to turn your gay kid straight.”
“Did it work?”
“I don’t think so. He had an affair with this Filipino nurse that came in to give all of the kids their flu shots the first week that he was there. They ran away, he got emancipated, moved to Vermont and he works as a live model at a Hollister store out there. That skinny thing walks around the store with no shirt and pants all hanging down looking serious and not talking to anyone,” Suze sat back down. “At least, that’s what I hear.”
Marie threw her head back and laughed. “Well I guess growing up hasn’t been easy on any of us has it? What about you? How did you end up in the middle of the woods in your pajamas not even knowing what town you were in?” Marie asked.
Suze glanced down at her ring finger and shrugged. “I don’t really know to be honest. R.J., you remember R.J. right? Well he and I got married after college and we have three girls. And lately it’s just been…I don’t know…unfulfilling. I am almost certain that R.J. is having another affair and I guess that doesn’t bother me so much but he lost a lot of money somehow, he says it was in stocks but I just don’t know Marie. It was A LOT of money. But mostly I think I am just so bored you know? Bored. Bored. Bored.” Suze looked up, tears in her eyes.
“No Suzy, I can’t say that I do know,” Marie said.
“I don’t go by Suzy anymore, we aren’t kids. People call me Suze now.”
“And do you find that Suze is a more mature name than Suzy? Does ‘Suze’command the respect of the other bored housewives out in Eden?”
“You are not very friendly Marie, you never were. That is why none of the other cheerleaders cared for you- not because we were racist.”
Marie cocked her eyebrow and crossed her arms.
Suze smiled. “Oh Marie, we are grown women now, lets just put all of these silly teenage jealousies behind us.”
“Jealousies?”
“Come now, I’ll admit that I was jealous of you- you were so pretty, so smart, so witty that even the teachers seemed enamored with you,” Suze said.
Marie uncrossed her arms.
“And you Marie, do you think that maybe these claims of racism were born out of a young girl's jealousy?”
Marie remained silent.
“There was nothing of mine that you wanted? Nothing of mine that you couldn’t have?” Suze asked, smiling.
“You were whiter, I couldn’t be whiter.”
“That’s all?” Suze asked.
“You said yourself- I was prettier than you, smarter, wittier, what else could I have wanted?” Marie asked.
“Oh come off it Marie, we all knew that you wanted R.J. It was only natural, he was the quarterback you were the head cheerleader- sorry, co-head cheerleader. It was obvious, you just threw yourself at him and of course you feel bitter about it especially the way things turned out for you.” Suze opened her arms, gesturing to the tiny yellow kitchen.
“Oh, I could have had R.J. had I been so inclined,” Marie said.
“And what makes you say that Marie?”
“Because I did.”
”You did what?”
”I did have him.” Marie smiled.
Suze’s hands balled into fists, her fingernails digging into her palm.
Marie continued. “You had mono and were out of school for weeks. Remember? Wasn’t that about three months before graduation?”
Suze looked from Marie to the picture of Ronnie hanging on the refrigerator. Ronnie, Marie's son, born six months after graduation- Ronnie with the green eyes and the dimples just like R.J.’s. Ronnie. “Ronnie? R.J.? Oh God, Ronnie…is he… is Ronnie’s name Ronald James?”
“It was kind of my own little joke I guess. I knew that he would never claim his son but I wanted to give them some kind of connection,” Marie said. “Look, I am sorry, I shouldn’t have told you like this. I knew that y’all got married, but then when we saw you out in the woods…I mean, you weren’t wearing a wedding ring. I never thought you were still together, he was such a slimeball.” Marie stepped towards Suze.
“You whore!” Suze yelled and lunged for Marie who, not expecting the attack, was not able to dodge the first blow. Just seconds into the fight, Marie realized the advantage that she had over Suze- one that she did not have in high school with her long, relaxed hair- her hair was short, very short, too short to get a good hold. Suze, on the other hand, still wore her hair long- long enough for Marie to grab, twist around her fist and hold her head at arm’s length while Suze hissed and scratched at the air. Marie swung her free hand once, hitting Suze in the temple, stunning her. Her arms stopped clawing at the air and went limp and her legs buckled underneath her.
Marie looked down at her former classmate curled into a ball at her feet holding her head and crying. She smoothed out her skirt and checked her watch. “Now I don’t have time to change, going to be late for the meeting at church. You can let yourself out.”
Suze sat up and listened as Marie opened the front door and called over her shoulder, “No hard feelings Suzy. I guess growing up was hard on all of us.” Marie left, slamming the door behind her as her son had done- Suze’s stepson.
The buzzer on the dryer sounded and Suze pushed herself up off of the floor, the throbbing in her temple dulled as she walked into the garage and pulled her clothes out of the dryer. Minutes later, she was sitting on the front porch in her pajamas, lacing up her running shoes. She stood, stretched and then took off down the driveway and paused before her feet led her left down the sidewalk. Ronnie was sitting outside of the gas station again, setting up the pieces on the chessboard. He smiled and waved when he saw Suze approaching. “You want to play a quick game before your run?” He gestured to the board.
Suze ran in place and waved back, “No, thanks Ronnie, I am think I am going to run home.”
”Run all the way to Eden?”
Suze jumped in place and said “Sure, it is not so bad really, these shoes might really feel like running barefoot on the clouds- I never have run on the clouds so who is to say it doesn’t feel like this.”
"Did my mother calm down? How is she?"
Suze laughed "I don't know Ronnie, I think her check engine light came on. She began running again, calling over her shoulder “Good luck in Iraq Ronnie!”
He watched as she disappeared around the corner and shook his head, laughing to himself. “Must be another episode. Crazy white women.”
Sugar & Boo
The headlights from the black 1986 Lincoln Town Car grew too quickly in the trees ahead of Suze as the car sped towards the gas station on the corner. She saw a cat’s eyes reflected in its beams just as she turned to see Ronnie round the corner of the gas station. She raised her hand to wave to him but he did not see her as he sprinted, the Lincoln just inches behind him. He was so fast that his feet barely seemed to have time to touch the ground between strides.
“Now that is a runner,” Suze said to herself. “What kind of shoes are you wearing?” She called to Ronnie as he disappeared into the woods ignoring her.
The car spun sideways and the passenger side door flew open. A man jumped out and disappeared in the woods behind Ronnie.
“Ronnie? You okay?” Suze called, stepping backwards. The cat meowed in response but Ronnie was silent. Suze shrugged and turned back towards home and began to jog.
A man got out of the backseat of the car and jogged towards her. He was already breathing heavily as he crossed the fifteen feet that separated Suze from the car.
“Hey! You Ronnie’s friend?” he said as he put a hand on her shoulder. Suze didn’t turn around, but easily ducked from under his grasp and ran across the street towards the woods, towards Ronnie. She wasn’t sure if he would help her if he could or why she needed his help, but she knew that the big guy following her was trouble.
She heard the cat howl as the man kicked it behind her in the dark. She started to turn to check on the cat but was stopped short when the man grabbed her hair and pulled her to the ground.
“Tits? What are you doing? We got the kid down here!” a voice called from the street.
The man looked down at Suze on the ground and took an inhaler out of his pocket. He shook it before inhaling deeply. She was surprised that she wasn’t crying, or screaming, or fighting, or running. She stared up at the man. His dark head was bald and she could make out the wrinkles on his scalp in the moonlight. “I’m some runner,” Suze thought. “I was just caught by a 300-hundred pound middle-aged asthmatic guy.” And then, she started to cry- not because she was being lifted up by a stranger and thrown over his shoulder, but because running was something else that she could not do right. Like marriage. Like motherhood.
“There was a witness but I caught her,” Tits yelled between gasps as he trotted with the white lady over his shoulder. She was completely limp and he would have thought he had already killed her if he didn’t hear her crying. He began to worry that she was going to snot all over the back of his new suit and picked up the pace.
Suze kept her eyes open, focusing on Tits’s ass as she bounced up and down. She winced as he threw her into the trunk. A short man with light skin and slicked back hair stood next to Tits, looking into the trunk.
“Who the hell is she?”
“Dunno, she knows Ronnie and she saw us so I grabbed her,” Tits took another drag from his inhaler.
“Did you happen to notice that she was white?”
Tits rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I saw that.”
“How many white people live in Tempest Tits?”
“None.”
”You think someone might miss her? Like the FBI might come looking for her?”
Tits shrugged and grabbed Suze’s left hand, holding it up. “ No wedding ring, no husband. Besides, people go missing all the time. Ronnie is about to go missing.”
“Ronnie’s black.”
“I know Marv, I’m only half-blind.”
Tits turned back to Suze and she noticed his left eye was pale and cloudy. She had been outrun by an obese, asthmatic, middle-aged, visually impaired man. “Oh no,” she groaned and lifted her hands to hide her face before her cries turned into sobs.
Her movement startled Tits and Marv and they drew their guns and aimed at Suze. She did not realize this because she was covering her face and sobbing.
“Is she carrying?” Marv asked.
“No,” Tits said.
“Did you check?”
“She’s in her jammies,” Tits shrugged and tucked his gun back into his holster.
Marv handed Tits his gun and quickly ran his hand over Suze’s body, feeling for hidden weapons under her pajamas. His hands ran up her legs and she quickly slapped them away.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“You got anything on you Kitten?” Marv smiled, revealing a gold tooth.
Suze looked down at her legs, realizing for the first time that she was in the trunk of a car and that she wanted to live even if she wasn’t going to be a runner.
”No, and I don’t know what business you have with Ronnie and I don’t care. This is just a mistake. If you’d let me call my husband, I’m sure we can straighten everything out.” She lifted one leg over the back of the car and moved to step out of the trunk.
Tits pushed heavily down on her shoulder and she fell backwards.
“How do you know Ronnie?” Marv asked.
“He’s my stepson. I think,” Suze said.
Someone behind her snorted and she turned to see Ronnie lying behind her, with his hands and feet tied and tape over his mouth. “Oh my God! Ronnie? What happened? Oh shit, these are bad guys! I knew it. Ronnie, you have to help me, I don’t belong here.” She ducked as Marv and Tits closed the trunk. She continued talking to Ronnie in the darkness as she felt the car shift with the weight of Marv and Tits and then begin to drive. “Who are these people? Ronnie? Why are they so mad at you? Are they going to let me go?” She paused and waited for his response. “Oh, you can’t talk can you?” She reached out in the darkness and found Ronnie’s face. As her fingers traced the line of his jaw, she was startled by how much his face was shaped like RJ’s. Same square jaw, same long thin nose, she ripped off the tape covering his mouth. Same full lips. She felt Ronnie flinch as her fingers traced the curve of his upper lip.
“Are we going to make out now?” Ronnie asked.
“Sorry,” she dropped her hands.
“No problem, mom.” Ronnie said.
“Stepmom,” Suze said.
“Uh-huh.”
“You think that I’m crazy don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your mom is crazy too.”
“I know.”
”And mean. She is crazy and mean.”
“Uh-Huh.”
“Forget it,” Suze said as she tried to turn on her side, facing away from Ronnie. There was enough room to turn the upper half of her body awkwardly and press her face against the back of the car but her legs were still on top of his with nowhere else to go. She felt his body jerking beneath her and heard him grunting.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying to remove the rope from my hands with my teeth,” he said.
“Oh,” Suze said and remained still, with her nose bent sideways against the metal as she pushed her body as far away from him as the trunk would allow. He struggled for several more minutes before going still.
“Did you get it?” Suze asked.
“No,” Ronnie said.
The car turned sharply to the left and threw Ronnie’s body against hers. She could feel his breath against her hair when he asked “Do you think you might assist me in untying my hands? That might increase our odds of survival significantly.”
“Oh, sure,” Suze twisted her body again and began to pull at the rope around Ronnie’s wrists. “Who are those guys?” She worked one side of the rope to the top of his fist and tried to pull it over but it wouldn’t move any further.
“Marv and Tits.”
“Yeah, I got that part. What do they want from you?” Suze forced her finger under the rope, pressing down the flesh between his knuckles and slipped the rope over the top of his hands. He quickly pulled the rest of the rope loose and reached down to untie the rope around his ankles.
“They are just following orders, Sugar wants to make sure that I don’t go off to war.”
Suze began to laugh and couldn’t stop. After a full minute of filling the trunk with strange barks and guffaws she wound down and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“Miss Suzy?”
Hiccup. “Yes?” Hiccup.
“You really are crazy aren’t you?”
Suze stifled a sob. “Yes. I wasn’t always but I think I am having a nervous breakdown. My car brokedown in front of the kids” Hiccup “ and I get the hiccups whenever I laugh” Hiccup “and it so freaking embarrassing.”
“Your car brokedown? That must have been so hard for you, what with the hiccups too. I thought that you might have been having a nervous breakdown because you were kidnapped by gangsters and thrown in the trunk of their car. But no, you’re right, car trouble and hiccups are much worse.” Ronnie began to work on the ropes binding his ankles again.
Hiccup.
Ronnie straightened his body out in the trunk and kicked his feet free from the rest of the rope as the car came to a stop. “We’re here. They are going to go get Sugar and come out and open the trunk, can you switch places with me so I am closer to the front?”
Hiccup.
“Are you awake?”
“You are just as much of a smart ass as your dad,” Suze said.
“What? Sugar? There ain’t anything at all smart about that man.”
”No, RJ, your dad. Who is Sugar?”
“The man that might be about to kill both of us.”
Hiccup.
Suze squeezed her eyes shut as Ronnie pulled her close to him and maneuvered his own body around hers in the small space. They could hear the voices as the men approached the back of the car. They listened as the key turned in the trunk and the metal groan as the lid began to lift. The trunk opened about 6 inches when Ronnie’s hand shot out and grabbed Marv’s tie and pulled forward hitting Marv’s head against the trunk and knocking him out. He fell forward shutting the trunk again.
“That was not how that was supposed to happen at all,” Ronnie said.
Hiccup.
They heard Marv’s body slide off the back of the car and the key begin to turn in the lock again. The lid flew open this time and Tits and another man stepped back, pointing their guns into the trunk.
”Hello Ronnie.”
“Hello Sugar.”
“Who is your friend?” Sugar asked, nodding to Suze.
“Oh, that’s Miss Suzy, my mom’s friend,” Ronnie said.
Suze propped herself up on her elbow and held a hand out to Sugar. “It is actually,” Hiccup “ Suze. I am Ronnie’s stepmother.”
Sugar tucked his gun behind his back and took her hand. “Well that practically makes us family doesn’t it then? I am Sugar. Ronnie’s stepfather.”
Ronnie snorted. “Crazy white lady, crazy pimp and baby Ronnie makes three. Aren’t we just a happy family?”
Suze let Sugar help her out of the trunk, stepping over Ronnie. He was her height, maybe a little shorter. He clasped her hand in both of his own smooth impeccably manicured hands. Suze glanced down at his shiny purple alligator shoes. Everything else around them, including Suze’s own running shoes, was covered in a thin layer of dust from the dry earth that the Lincoln had kicked up. Sugar alone was standing there as clean and shiny as the day he was born.
Ronnie threw his legs over the back of the car and leapt out of the trunk, landing next to Suze.
Marv groaned and began to crawl away from the car, stirring up a cloud of dust around his body. Tits turned to help him but Sugar held up a hand “Tits, could you be so kind as to escort Ronnie and his friend inside. Take them to the girls’ room and see to it that they are comfortably detained until I have a chance to speak with them and work this whole mess out,” Sugar waved his hand in the air as if it were a matter simply resolved. “I have to run and pick Boo up from her piano lessons.”
Ronnie balled his hands into fists and stepped towards Sugar.
In one smooth motion, Sugar pulled his silver revolver out of the holster and held the long barrel against Ronnie’s temple. Ronnie froze.
“Now, I thought you wanted to kill yourself out in the desert like your uncle, but if you want to eat a bullet here and now, I can make that happen for you son.” Sugar said through clenched teeth. “But it doesn’t look like your pretty lady friend here has the stomach to watch you die. Do you Miss Suzy?”
“It’s Suze.” Hiccup.
Ronnie relaxed his hands and dropped his shoulders while Sugar slowly lowered his gun. Tits and Marv grabbed Ronnie and Suze by the arms and walked them towards the door to Sugar’s Shack.
“I’ll tell Boo that you said ‘Hello’ then,” Sugar called out.
Suze reached out to grab Ronnie just as he spun out of Marv’s grasp and charged towards Sugar. Tits pushed Suze to the ground and all three men aimed their weapons at Ronnie. No warning shot was fired. All three triggers were pulled and all three bullets found their mark, Ronnie fell to the ground. Suze lay in the dirt in front of the Sugar Shack and watched as Ronnie bled out into the dust much like his uncle had done before him.
“What did you do? Oh God, No! What did you do?” Suze held her hands over her own ears as she screamed and watched in horror as Ronnie’s blood carved a path through the dirt and inched closer to her. Mercifully, a purple pointy-toed alligator shoe stepped between Suze’s face and the blood just as it was about to reach her. Suze focused on the shoe and waited for the shot, surprised that the hiccups seemed to be gone.
“Shut this bitch up, take her inside and find out her story.” Sugar said.
Suze closed her eyes as Tits lifted her from the ground and carried her inside. She knew that it was Tits because she could hear him wheezing as he carried her. He threw her into a supply closet and quickly closed the door.
“Damn, I can’t believe he killed Ronnie,” Tits said.
“Shut up, ain’t none of our business anyhow,” Marv said.
“Why do you suppose he ain’t killed Miss Suzy yet?”
Inside the supply closet, Suze hiccupped loudly.
“I don’t know Tits, maybe he’s sweet on her, maybe he was late picking up Boo. Like I said, it ain’t none of our business anyhow, now shut up. We got to get rid of Ronnie’s body before they get back. Sugar will kill us too if Boo gets here and sees her brother’s body in the parking lot.”
Suze curled into a ball on the floor of the supply closet. Sugar had referred to her as Ronnie’s “pretty lady friend.” It had been years since anyone had called her pretty. She fell asleep trying to imagine a life as Mrs. Sugar in which she shined his alligator shoes every night after he went to sleep and wash the blood out of his fancy suits and found herself hoping that he would shoot her instead, bury her next to Ronnie.
“Miss Suzy,” Tits was shaking Suze’s shoulders. “You dead or alive? Come on, wake up Miss Suzy.”
“I am alive I guess,” Suze said rolling over on her back.
“Good, Miss Boo wants to meet you.” Tits helped Suze to her feet and led her down the narrow hallway to a closed door. The door had a blue star painted in the middle of it and the words “dressing room” were written in blue marker beneath the star. Tits knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” a little girl’s voice answered from behind the door.
“It’s Tits, er, I mean Reginald, Miss Boo, I brought the white lady.” Tits’ voice wavered.
Suze heard giggling and little footsteps hurry for the door as it flew open. The little girl in the doorway slowly looked up and down, checking Suze out and not bothering to hide her disappointment. She sighed and squared her shoulders, looking Suze in the eye.
“Hello, I am Denise Marie Washington,” she extended her small hand to Suze. “But everyone calls me Boo, I don’t know why.” Boo shrugged. “I am ten years old.”
Suze looked down at Boo’s hand but did not take it.
“I’ll let you ladies talk then,” Tits said. “Boo, I don’t think she is going anywhere but you got your pistol gun in case she cause you any trouble?”
“Yes Reginald.” Boo rolled her eyes.
“Okay, your daddy is in a meeting and he will be back here in an hour, so you need to have her back in that closet before then.”
“Yes Reginald.”
“I mean it Boo, your daddy will have all of our hides if he knows you was playing with his friend here without his permission.”
”Yes Reginald.” Boo took Suze’s hand and pulled her into the room, shutting the door on Tits. She led Suze across the room to a row of six red vinyl chairs facing a large vanity. The room smelled like stale perfume and cigarettes. Suze stared into the mirror. Her face was tear-streaked and dirty and the right side of her head was matted down with Ronnie’s blood. The blood had simply flowed around Sugar’s shoe to reach Suze.
“Sit.” Boo ordered.
Suze sat.
“This,” Boo gestured to the room around her, “is the room where the exotic dancers get ready for the shows. They perform on Friday and Saturday nights and everyone loves them, even the Indians come out of the woods to see their shows. My momma used to be the best dancer that daddy ever had before she found Jesus. He misses her something awful, won’t let any of the other girls use her station. Says their ass isn’t good enough to occupy her chair,” Boo nodded to the chair at the end of the row. A wig sat on a pedestal and several dusty glass bottles were lined up against the mirror. A plastic tray held the remains of Marie’s show make-up. A shrine to her lost soul, her life before she found Jesus.
“You smell like blood,” Boo wrinkled her nose and sniffed Suze’s hair. “Smells like the ladies room when all the dancers get their monthly, happens the same time every month on account of they all live together in that trailer out back.”
Suze looked down the line. The mirror in front of each chair was labeled with the name of the dancer it served. The mirror in front of her belonged to “Cherry” and was followed by “Krystal,” “Bouncie,” “Kandy,” “Karamel,” and, finally, “Marie.”
Boo noticed Suze reading the names and leaned forward, whispering in Suze’s ear. “Those aren’t their real names, you know. Those are their sexy names. Krystal been dancing so long that she says she forgot what her given name was.”
She put her hands on her little girl hips and walked around the chair, surveying Suze. “You know, you wouldn’t look so bad if you cleaned up a little. Daddy talks about getting a white girl in the show sometimes but says they’re more trouble than they’re worth, says they’re never satisfied, always wanting something else.”
Suze looked at Boo in the reflection. Boo reached for the hairbrush next to her pistol on the vanity and started dragging it through Suze’s filthy hair.
“Momma used to have long hair. I’d brush it for her at night.” Boo sighed. “You know my Momma?”
Suze stared ahead.
“Nah, my momma wouldn’t care nothing for a crazy lady like you. She’s crazy for Jesus. That’s what daddy says. I used to live with her and my brother until I was seven. Momma worked as a secretary at the Middle School out in Monroe County but her car broke down and she didn’t have no way to get to work so my brother came and asked daddy to borrow some money to buy her a car- momma and daddy separated when she got pregnant with me, that’s when she found Jesus. So anyway, my brother didn’t know any better than to borrow the money from a crook like daddy so he took it and bought a car off of the Indians and gave it to her- he was just as proud as he could be to give it to her. Well, Momma just started crying ‘cause she knowed right off what had happened. My Momma is smart, always knows everyone’s business. Marv and Tits came up the next morning and said they needed the money back. Well, we didn’t have it and the Indians weren’t going to buy the car back from Momma so Marv said that they was going to kill Ronnie and Momma freaked out. They said that Daddy was willing to let her work it off if she come back to the Sugar Shack to work and she said she promised Jesus she wouldn’t dance no more.” Boo pulled down hard on knot of blood-matted hair, pulling out a patch of hair. Suze didn’t flinch. “Well daddy said he was going to have to take me as payment. That was funny cause he never cared much for me before that. I guess he thought Momma couldn’t let him do it. I knew it though, once Momma promises something to Jesus, she ain’t never breaking that promise. My brother wanted to come instead of me but Sugar said that he didn’t have no use for him.”
“Your brother is dead,” Suze said.
“Really? He die in the war?” Boo asked.
“No, they shot him- Marv and Tits and your daddy.”
Boo’s hand froze, holding the brush in the air over Suze’s hand. “Oh, that’s too bad.”
“Were you close to your brother?”
“No, he never came out here after I moved in until last week when he came to talk to daddy. He asked him how much momma would have to pay him to get me back. He said that he was joining the army and that he was going to get himself killed over there in the desert on account of they gave him some life insurance and momma would get lots of money if he was killed. He expected it wouldn’t be too hard to get himself shot over there. He said it was his fault I was here and Momma cried all the time. I was glad to hear that she cried all the time about me.”
“So now she won’t have you or your brother? Sugar took everything from her.”
“No, she still got Jesus.” Boo said.
“I suppose so.”
Boo turned to the vanity and pushed her pistol aside to reach the plastic box containing make-up. She rubbed Suze’s face with a dry washcloth, trying to wipe away the dirt and blood in her hairline before applying rouge to her cheeks.
Suze and Boo sat in silence as Boo applied make-up with a heavy hand. “Your about the same size as Karamel I think,” Boo said and skipped over to a rack of colorful costumes. She returned with a pair of cut-off denim shorts and a toddler sized pink tee shirt that said “I got some sugar at Sugar’s Shack.”
“Put those on.”
Suze stared down at the clothes in Boo’s hand. Boo reached for her pistol and held it by her side. “Just do what I say.”
Suze peeled off her bloody sweat stained pajamas and put on the stripper’s clothes.
Boo stepped back, scratching her leg with the barrel of her gun before returning it to the vanity. She shrugged. “Well, you’re no Karamel, but it is better. Daddy might want to put you in the show for the Indians tonight. He might even fall in love with you and ask you to marry him. Can you dance?”
Suze shook her head.
“What’s your sexy name?” Boo asked.
“I only have one name.”
“What is it?”
“Suze.”
Boo smiled. “Sooooze. Sounds like smooth. That can be your sexy name too.” She turned and led Suze to the door and out into the hallway where Tits was waiting for them.
“Looking fine Miss Suzy,” Tits wheezed.
“No Reginald, it’s Sooooze,” Boo said.
Boo held out her hand and this time Suze shook it. “Good luck Suze. If daddy shoots you, tell Ronnie and Jesus that I said hello.” She winked and laughed before turning around and going back into the dressing room.
Tits walked Suze back to the supply closet and pushed her inside. He didn’t notice Boo’s pistol in the back pocket of her borrowed stripper’s shorts.
For the first time since she had arrived in Tempest, Suze allowed herself to think of her own daughters. Did her husband have a life insurance policy for her? She didn’t think that they were valid if she was murdered and certainly not if her body was hidden in the woods to rot with Ronnie’s.
Tits opened the door to the supply closet. “Sugar needs to talk to you.”
Suze stepped out and allowed herself to be led down the hall, past the dressing room where she could hear Boo and the dancers laughing. They stopped in front of a huge door with the word “office” written on the door in marker.
Tits knocked. “It’s me Sugar, I brought your special guest.”
“Let her in Tits, you go and tell the girls to quit their cackling and get ready.” Sugar called.
Tits opened the door and pushed Suze into the room.
Sugar looked up from the papers on his desk and sucked in his breath. “I see you’ve met my Boo, this,” he pointed to her smooth hair and painted face, “looks like her work.” He walked around the desk and faced Suze. “I guess I should find her more suitable company now that she is old enough to know what is going on around here,” Sugar shook his head and gently pulled Suze to him. “You seem like a classy lady Miss Suzy. Have you ever danced professionally? I think,” he brushed a strand of hair away from her face, “that I might have a chair for you in the dressing room, I’d just need to clear out some of Marie’s old things.” Suze stiffened in Sugar’s arms and he let his arms fall away from her and took a step backwards. Suze quickly reached out and pulled him back to her with one arm. The other arm held Boo’s gun against Sugar’s stomach and pulled the trigger. Sugar fell backwards just as Tits burst through the door. Suze shot Tits in the throat and ran out the door. The dressing room door was open and the dancers were trying to pull Boo away from the door, but she held onto the frame. Suze waved the gun and grabbed Boo by the hand and dragged her to the front door.
Outside, Marv was sitting on the hood of the Lincoln staring at his watch. He stood when he saw them approaching.
“What’s going on Boo?” He asked.
Suze shot him in the chest before Boo could answer. She threw the gun on the ground next to his body and pushed Boo into the front seat of the Lincoln, scooting in behind her. Boo covered her face with her hands as they drove over Marv’s body and away from Sugar’s Shack.
Suze parked the car in front of Marie’s house and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Marie was sitting on the front porch reading- probably waiting for Ronnie to cool off and come back home. She looked up from the Bible in her lap and her mouth fell open. Slowly rising from the chair, Marie’s hand flew up to cover her mouth.
“Boo, this is very important. Did anyone else work for your daddy?”
“Just the dancers,” Boo said, she was looking out of the window at her mother, who seemed to be frozen on the front porch with her Bible in her hand.
“I don’t expect that they will give me any trouble. No other men?” Suze asked.
Boo shook her head.
“Okay then,” Suze handed Boo the keys to the Lincoln. “Don’t turn around, but Ronnie’s body is in the backseat. Your Momma is going to want to bury him someplace proper. You tell her that Sugar and Marv and Tits are all gone. And you tell her that I’m sorry about Ronnie, he was a good boy.”
Boo nodded.
Suze reached across the seat and opened Boo’s door. The little girl jumped out of the car and ran up the steps to the porch, jumping into her mother’s arms. Marie and Boo fell to their knees and held each other, crying.
Feeling awkward watching such an intimate reunion, Suze quietly opened her car door and stepped out onto the street. She turned back towards the main road that led out of Tempest. She began to jog towards the gas station but stopped and looked down. Her barefeet were covered in blood. Not her blood. Maybe Ronnie’s, or Sugar’s, or Tits’, or Marv’s blood was caked all over her bare legs and Karamel’s shorts. The “Sugar’s Shack” logo beneath the drying blood was no longer visible. Suze walked on, careful to avoid any broken glass on the sidewalk.
A station wagon pulled up alongside her but she looked straight ahead. The car stopped and several women got out. Suze went limp when they grabbed her from behind and bound her arms and legs behind, blindfolded her, and taped her mouth. The women threw her body into the back of the station wagon and sped away.
Suze was barely aware of the fact that she was being carried into a cool building and her body laid on the floor. She felt many hands on her as they stripped away Karamel’s clothes and began washing the blood from her skin and hair. No one spoke to her but they were singing. The songs were old hymns and were familiar to Suze, but it was impossible to tell how many voices there were or how many hands were attending to her.
They dressed her again, this time in a long dress made out of a heavy scratchy fabric. Suze did not fight.
“Suze honey, my name is Sister Estelle. Marie called us and told us that this was an emergency situation and you needed a cleansing. We burned down Sugar’s Shack and are out looking for his girls. We’ve had our eyes on that place for a long time, but Sugar would never let us come near it, not since we got Marie on the side of the Light.”
“No,” Suze said. But she did not know what she was refusing.
“This may hurt, but we got to get rid of those demons in you before you hurt anyone else,” another woman’s voice said.
“No, no, no!” Suze said.
“We found you walking down the street covered in the blood of others, out of your mind. Four men have died since you got to this town. Don’t tell me no woman,” Sister Estelle said. Suze tried to sit up but was pushed down by several pairs of hands.
The women began to pray, Sister Estelle was leading them. A distant voice began to wail. The women were holding Suze down and saying in unison “Evil leave this place, leave this body, leave this soul!” Several more hands appeared and began to slap and punch Suze as she struggled. The distant wailing grew closer and Suze could make out words between the wails. “It’s no demon, it’s me. It is I am It is I am It is I am….” As the voice grew louder, she realized that it was her own voice and blacked out.
The Sisters and the Strippers
She awoke in her own front yard, wearing her stained but washed pajamas and running shoes. She sat up and looked around. There was a handwritten note pinned to her shirt that said, “This soul has been cleansed by the women of the Greatest Deliverance Tabernacle. Handle with care. Have a Blessed Day.”
Suze stood on shaky legs just as the front door to her house flew open and her youngest daughter ran out squealing. “Mommy!! You’re alive!” She threw her arms around Suze’s waist and held her tight. R.J. appeared in the doorway looking relieved and Suze crumpled Sister Estelle’s note in her hand as he stepped out onto the front porch and waved.
“Thank God!” R.J. said, squinting into the sun. “I don’t even want to hear it right now, I am sure that you have an excellent reason for assaulting the crossing guard and then running off to God knows where, but I don’t have time to hear it.”
Suze looked down at her youngest daughter and smiled. “Sorry to worry everyone. I’ve had quite the adventure.”
“This little adventure did not cost anything did it?” R.J. asked.
“Cost?”
“Yes Suze, cost. As in money. As in money that we do not have.”
Suze opened her mouth to answer but her words were lost in the sound of tires screeching on the pavement behind her. She turned to see the Lincoln as it stopped abruptly half on the sidewalk and half on the street.
“What in the hell?” R.J. jumped down the porch steps and jogged across the yard towards the car.
Marie threw open the door and stood up. Her hair was sticking up and she had tear streaks running down her cheeks. She held up a single hand to R.J., stopping him.
“Hello R.J.” Marie said and turned to Suze.
“You been cleansed?” she asked.
Suze nodded.
“Good, I need your help.”
“What’s the matter? Where’s Boo?” Suze said peering into the back of the towncar.
“Oh my God! Is that Ronnie? You drove all the way out here with his body still back there?” Suze stepped back.
“Whoa! Body? What’s going on here?” R.J. asked.
“R.J, you remember Marie Washington from High School?” Suze turned and faced her husband.
“Um, well, maybe, I seem to recall a Marie…” R.J. looked down at his watch. “I am going to let you ladies catch up, running late for work.”
“Okay honey, have a good day,” Suze called turning back to Marie. “Marie and I are just going to bury your only son and then I expect we’ll get some coffee or something, talk about our old days on the cheerleading squad. You know, lady stuff.”
R.J. stopped but did not turn around to face the women. He stood still for several seconds and held his breath, giving himself time to acknowledge that he had a son, his son was dead and his wife knew. She knew about Marie. She might even know about some of the others. Slowly, painfully, he willed his left leg to move and then his right. He reached his front door and crossed the threshold, not allowing himself to turn around and look at his wife, children and former lover before shutting the door behind him.
“Are these your girls?” Marie asked.
“Yes. Marie, this is Hanna, Haddie and Hope,” Suze paused letting each girl wave as their name was said. “Ladies, this is Miss Washington, mommy and daddy’s friend from school.”
“Nice to meet you,” Haddie, the middle girl said.
Marie nodded and then looked back at Suze. “Boo is gone. The Indians took her.”
“What? Why? Are you sure?” Suze asked. She reached out and pulled her youngest daughter to her.
“The Indians. Sugar sold her to them before you killed him. They showed up right after you left. I tired to chase them into the woods, but I can’t do it alone Suzy.”
“Momma! You killed somebody?” Haddie asked.
“No.” Suze said.
“Yes.” Marie said.
“Was one of them that guy?” Hope asked. She had wandered over to the Lincoln and had her face pressed against the back window.
“No, she killed the guy that killed him,” Marie said.
“Oh, so Momma killed the bad guy,” Hope said.
Suze rolled her eyes and turned back to Marie. “Why did you come here? You need to call the police or the FBI or something.”
“I thought that you might appreciate it if I did not involve the police right now. And it might be too late by the time they showed up. Nobody can find the Indians unless they want to be found.”
“But you think that I could find them?” Suze asked.
“I think they are going to find you. And when they do, that might be our only chance to get to Boo.”
“Why are they going to find me?”
“Because, they were looking for you when they got Boo, told me that Sugar had sold you to them too.”
“That is ridiculous. I wasn’t his to sell.”
Marie shrugged. “Neither was Boo or Bouncie or any of the other girls, but he did.”
“Was mommy for sale?” Hope asked.
“Of course not honey, Daddy bought me a long time ago. This is just a misunderstanding.”
“We need to call the police.” Suze said, turning back to the house.
“They won’t believe you Suze!” Marie called. “And even if they do, there is no way this could end well for you, not after what you did to Sugar, Marv, and Tits.”
Haddie, Hope and Hanna giggled. “Tits!” Hanna said.
Suze stopped and looked up at her house. She could not see R.J. but she could imagine him inside, pacing back and forth in the bedroom.
“Girls, get your bags, Miss Marie and Mommy are taking you to school and then we need to run some errands.”
“You going to kill some more people Mommy?” Hope asked.
“Only if I have to honey.”
“I wouldn’t leave them behind if I were you Suzy. If they come looking for you and can’t find you, they might be in danger.”
Suze pressed her hand against her forehead and closed her eyes.
“Mommy? Should we go get daddy?” one of her daughters asked. She sounded far away. Suze tried to shake her head but the movement made her dizzy.
“No,” Marie said. “Your daddy is no use to us.”
Suze smiled at Marie. “Hasn’t been any use in some time now. Girls get your shoes, we are going for a ride.”
“Not with that dead guy!” Hope shrieked.
Suze’s SUV wasn’t in the driveway; it was still dead in street behind the school. She walked over to her husband’s Buick and popped the trunk.
“Marie, you mind if we move Ronnie for now?”
The two women carried Ronnie’s body and dropped him in the trunk of his father’s car. Hope reached out and threw a handful of marigolds that she had picked from the flowerbed onto his body just before Suze slammed the trunk.
Haddie stuck her head out of the open window of the Lincoln and waved at her mother. “Momma, it smells like crap back here and Hanna doesn’t even have her booster seat. I am getting daddy.” She started to open the door but Suze slammed it shut.
“Shut up Haddie,” she said to her daughter.
Haddie was about to protest again but Hope put a hand over her mouth and whispered. “Don’t! Momma kills people.”
Haddie stuck her tongue out at her sister as the Lincoln did a U-turn in front of their house.
“How do you think the Indians are going to know where I am? What are we going to do when they find us? Do you have a gun?” Suze asked.
Before Marie could answer, Haddie leaned up from the back and asked “Why do y’all keep on saying Indians? I thought we were supposed to say Native American now.” She looked at Marie. “You know, like Miss Washington is an African American.”
“They aren’t Native Americans, not really. Not Indians either,” Marie said.
“Why do you call them Indians then?” Suze asked.
Marie shrugged. “That is what they call themselves.”
“Why? What are they?” Haddie asked.
“Hippies. Or Ex-hippies I guess. They moved out there in the seventies and set up camp. Wanted to live off of the land, get back to their roots, remove themselves from the trappings of modern society. After a couple years, they must have gotten bored with that and decided to try a life of drug dealing and gunrunning. They still keep to themselves though and grow their own food. They have some of the best tomatoes, I always stock up when they come down to the Town Market Square on Tuesdays.”
“So these fake Indian drug dealers that kidnapped your daughter, they can grow a mean tomato? Huh.”
“Yes,” Marie said.
“Bullshit,” Haddie said and crossed her arms.
“Suzy, you need to teach your daughter some manners before I leave her on the side of the road.”
“Shut up Haddie,” Suze said. The women sat in silence for several minutes before Suze spoke again. “It does sound like bullshit though.”
“Sugar has been doing business with them for sometime. They cannot keep women in their camp. Every baby born for the last 20 years has been male. The women they bring in either get sick or go crazy and run off. Sister Estelle says that God cursed them for living in the darkness of the woods. Says that they need to come out into the light.”
Suze and Marie sat up straight and looked around anxiously as the car neared the woods on the Tempest border. Suze saw movement behind the trees but it disappeared into the trees before she could tell if it was one of the “Indians.”
Marie parked the car in front of the only two-story building in Tempest, The Greatest Deliverance Tabernacle. Sister Estelle was waiting in the doorway. Two more sisters were standing behind her, hands on their hips.
Inside, the sisters led the women to the front of the church where the women of the congregation were praying over a row of guns and ammunition covering the first pew.
“Whoa. You ladies mean business,” Suze said, looking down at the guns.
“Hello Suze, you are looking better,” Sister Estelle said.
“Thank You,” Suze said. She looked down and realized that she was still wearing her pajamas.
“Suze, I’d like you to meet my Sisters in Christ. This is Ester, Ann, Hilda, and Rose,” Estelle said the names in quick succession and each woman nodded as she was introduced.
“Nice to meet you all,” Suze said. She tried to match each name with a face but they were all in their sixties with light brown skin and short gray hair. The Sisters in Christ looked enough alike to be actual sisters. They checked weapons and divided up the ammunition. Each sister tucked a pistol into an ankle holster that was concealed beneath their long full skirts and had a second weapon in their handbag.
“Um, Miss Rose, are we all going out to find the Indians? Will anyone stay behind?” Suze asked, touching the woman lightly on the arm.
“Child, I’m Ann. That is Rose over there,” Ann nodded to a woman with a Bible under her arm near the front door. “Sister Rose, your piece is showing.” Ann called to her friend. Rose looked down at her right ankle. Her skirt was tucked behind the holster, revealing the handle of her gun. She shook her leg until the fabric was free and smiled at Ann from across the room.
“We aren’t going anywhere. The Indians are coming here,” Ann said and handed Suze a gun.
“Why are they doing that?” Suze asked, examining the weapon in her hand.
“Because we put out word that you were hiding here.”
“They going to start a war for me?”
“Yes. Well, you and Marie and your girls. Sister Estelle made the deal just this morning.”
“What? She what?”
“Didn’t Marie tell you the plan? A deal this big, they are going to want to send all of their strongest warriors to collect. That will leave the other girls at the camp with just one or maybe two guarding them. Three of our Sisters have been watching them out there all day. Going to collect them as soon as they head this way.”
“I never agreed to this! I have to get my daughters out of here. What do you think they will do when they don’t get us and they realize that the others are gone? How could you bring my girls into this? Hannah! Hope! Haddie! Where are you girls?” Suze started to look around frantically for her daughters.
“Your girls are safe. Our girls are not. My daughter Michelle, she goes by Bouncie now, she is out there. And Rose’s grandbabies Karamel and Kandy and Estelle’s daughter Krystal. And of course you know about Boo. They are all out there and we are going to get them back.”
“You are all crazy! They will never let you. They will come back for them and then they will come for my girls, you had no right to make this deal! They were never yours to sell.”
“They will not come for anyone. We are going to kill them. Kill them all,” Ann said. “I am sorry that we brought your girls here but you left them didn’t you? Took off running in your pajamas without a single thought as to what might happen to them. They are safer here than they would have been at home, raised by that demon of a husband you left them with.”
“What do you know about my husband? We are getting out of here. Girls! Where are you?” Suze spun around.
Ann laughed. “I know more about your husband than you do. Now calm down, your girls are safe. And you will be no help to them in this state. Sister Louise just called and said that the Indians are on their way. You should go into the bathroom there,” Ann nodded towards a small room behind the organ, “and collect yourself. When you come out and have calmed down, I’ll give you some bullets for that gun and we’ll get this over and then you and your girls can be home in time to have supper on the table for that demon of a husband.”
Suze caught the hiccup in her throat and forced it back down. Squaring her shoulders, she walked to the tiny windowless bathroom and closed the door before collapsing on the floor and sobbing.
In the bathroom, she saw a navy blue dress hanging on the back of the door. It had pink and white flowers embroidered on the sleeves and around the waist. She took off her pajamas and pulled the dress over her head. It was made for someone much shorter and wider than Suze but she cinched the tie in the back as much as possible and strapped the ankle holster that had been underneath the dress on the hanger to her leg. She splashed cold water in her face and stared at herself in the mirror.
There was a knock on the door and Sister Estelle spoke softly through the door. “Sister Suzy, the Indians are almost here and your girls are asking for you.”
Suze opened the door and stepped out into the church.
“Oh, doesn’t that look nice!” Estelle said and clapped.
“Where are my girls?” Suze asked.
“Over there,” Estelle pointed to the back of the church. “They need to be where the Indians can see them so we can get them to come inside. Once they are here, Rose and Marie will lock the door and we will attack. I am going to be up front, Hilda and Ester are going to be in the back corners. Do you want to stand back here, behind the organ? They just need to be able to see you from outside the front door.”
“No. I am going to stand in the back, with my daughters.” Suze said.
“Okie Dokie,” Estelle winked and held out a half-empty box of bullets. “You will be needing these then. God Bless you girl. Let’s get this over with and get our girls home as quick as possible then. Don’t worry; they will not be ready for this. No one ever suspects the church ladies.”
Suze took the ammunition and turned to join her daughters.
Hannah reached out and grabbed Suze’s dress. “Mommy, are we going to be okay? That lady made us talk to Jesus in case we met him today, she said we didn’t want the first place we talked to Him to be at the Pearly Gates. Isn’t that heaven momma? Are we going to die?”
“No,” Suze put the extra bullets into the pocket of her dress.
“Are you going to kill people?” Hope asked.
“Yes.”
“But only bad guys, right?”
Suze looked down and tucked a piece of hair behind Hope’s ear. “I don’t know baby. I am going to kill whoever I need to kill to get us out of here.”
Haddie whistled. “Daddy is going to be pissed.”
“I don’t care what your daddy thinks.”
“I’m going to tell him that you said that,” Haddie said.
“Okay. But right now I need you girls to get down on the floor because the bad guys are here.” Suze felt her hand twitch behind the pew. She realized that she wanted the fight to start. She was looking forward to killing the bad guys.
Rose smiled as the Indians filed into the church. Suze bit her lip to keep from laughing. Thirteen men walked in, they were all barefoot and wearing leather vests decorated with feathers and beads. The chief, a man with graying hair and blue eyes, wore a large headdress that looked like something from a costume shop.
The chief held a hand up to Estelle and said “How.”
Suze snorted.
“Ah, the women. Nice,” the chief said.
Suze squeezed Hannah’s hand and the girl dropped quickly down to the ground. Her sisters followed her. Once her daughters were lying on the ground, Suze raised her hands and shot the chief between his eyes. By the time he had fallen to the ground, Suze had also killed the two men standing behind him. She stepped out into the aisle, drawing the fire away from her daughters. Marie shot several men as they turned to escape. Only three of the men were armed. One of the Indians, a teenage boy with blue eyes identical to the chief, managed to shoot Sister Estelle in the leg before being shot by Ann and Rose from behind.
The Indians were dead in less than two minutes. Too short, Suze thought as she tucked her weapon into the ankle holster.
She walked over to where Estelle lay bleeding and leaned over her. “I am not sure that you got all the demons out after all Sister Estelle.”
“I reckon not, but you wouldn’t have been too much good to us if I got them all.” Estelle said, smiling weakly.
While Suze was in the bathroom changing out of the blood-soaked church dress and into her pajamas, Sister Louise showed up with Boo and the strippers. Boo was happy to be reunited with her mother. But the strippers didn’t look like they were quite ready to be rid of their demons either.
Marie and Boo nodded as Suze and her daughters walked outside but the women did not speak. Hannah, Hope, and Haddie were asleep in the back of the Lincoln when Suze passed through Eden. As she carried her sleeping daughters to the hotel room, she laughed at the thought of R.J. finding the body in his trunk. After all of these years, he was going to have to deal with his son.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Yet, there it was. The damn car could not muster enough energy to ignite the engine and limp out of the way of the other cars, but it did have enough life left in it to power that one light. Check Engine. Yes, she thought, she should check that engine. Maybe she could pop the hood, jump out of the car and wave the other drivers around her and take a look at the engine. Maybe, if she had gone to community college (to learn a proper trade like heating and air conditioning as her stepmother had suggested) instead of double majoring in French and Philosophy, she would have some clue of how to pop the hood in the first place. Maybe, if her husband had not cut up her credit cards the night before, she could have called a tow truck. As it was, all she had was three kids, eleven dollars in cash in her Winnie-the-Pooh Diaper Bag that she had been using as a purse, and a non-running SUV with the fantastically helpful advice that she should check her engine.
“Come on Mom! Make the car go. This is barrassing,” one of the girls whined from the backseat. Suze was not sure which one.
“You mean embarrassing honey. I would make the car go if I could,” Suze held her breath and turned the key in the ignition again. Nothing. Check Engine.
“Why don’t you just call Daddy? He could fix it,” another voice whined from the backseat. Or maybe the same voice.
Suze snorted and closed her eyes. “Daddy is busy and would prefer that we handle these things ourselves. We are not children for Crap’s sake.”
“Okay, one: You just swore. Two: you owe another dollar to the swear jar. And three: We are children.” While this whiny voice sounded just like the other two, it was easy for Suze to determine the source. Only her middle child felt the need to speak to her in lists as if she were too simple to understand statements in a more complicated form. The degree in French and Philosophy seemed to be as useful in mothering as it was in car maintenance.
Suze tried to start the car again. Check Engine.
The Crossing Guard jogged over from the crosswalk waving her Stop Sign in front of her. Stop. This was easy enough for Suze to obey, even without any training in a proper trade, she could stay stopped, had no choice in the matter.
“Well good morning!” The Crossing Guard shouted as she leaned her head in the driver’s side window.
“Good Morning Miss Billie,” the girls said from the backseat.
“What’s going on here? We’re causing quite a traffic jam,” Miss Billie said.
“Our car won’t go,” a voice said from the backseat.
“Oh dear, you should have that checked out,” Miss Billie said.
Suze smiled. “Yes, I think I should.”
The mini-van behind Suze honked again and Miss Billie frowned waving them around the stalled SUV.
“Maybe you should turn on your hazards to let people know what’s going on here,” Billie said lowering her stop sign.
“Oh,” Suze looked down at the steering wheel but was unable to see anything beyond the check engine light. “Um, I’m not sure…” she focused on the angry red light again.
“Dear, don’t you even know where the hazards are on your own vehicle?” Miss Billie leaned in and reached across the dash, blocking the light for a moment as she pushed a small switch behind the steering wheel. She began to straighten up and then froze as she focused on the plastic containers in the passenger seat. They held 24 cupcakes. Eight had pink icing with purple polka dots. Eight had blue icing with green polka dots. Seven had purple icing with blue polka dots. And one sugar free chocolate cupcake for the little girl in the class with diabetes. Her daughter had been very specific about what she wanted to bring to class for her the Spring Party and Suze had stayed up until three in the morning making them.
“Uh-Oh,” Miss Billie said shaking her head.
“I’m sorry?” Suze asked looking down at the cupcakes.
“Are those for school?” Miss Billie asked.
“Yes,” Suze said, pulling her gaze from the cupcakes to the light on the dashboard.
Miss Billie threw her head back and laughed. She laughed and snorted and slapped her leg while Suze and her daughters all turned their attention to the cupcakes stacked neatly in the passenger seat.
“Oh dear, you are not having a very good morning are you?” Miss Billie asked between snorts.
“I don’t get what is so funny.” Suze
said.
Miss Billie quickly became serious; she reached in the car and patted Suze’s hand saying “Honey, you can’t bring homemade foods into the classroom anymore. They have to be store-bought, still in a sealed container on account of food allergies and the like. Why, your little one there is in class with my very own niece and she has the diabetes, I hate to think what would happen if she got a hold on one of those things and didn’t know what was in it.”
“Are you shitting me?” Suze asked, staring at the light on her dashboard.
“Mom!” three voices whined from the backseat.
Miss Billie straightened up and took her hand off of Suze’s. “Well, I hardly think that kind of language is necessary. I don’t see how you didn’t know in the first place- all of the other parents know the rules.”
Suze laughed and said “Maybe if they had sent the note home in French.”
“What?” Miss Billie asked.
“I have three children in this school. They each come home with an average of 2 notes from the school a day. That is 30 notes from school a week. Thirty! No, I don’t read them. I don’t read them because I find them mind-numbing and redundant and because I have more important things to do- things like bake 24 damn cupcakes in three different color schemes including one sugar-free cupcake for that diabetic niece of yours, who I’m sorry to say, if she is diabetic and doesn’t know by the age of ten that cupcakes contain sugar without a damn label from a store, is not long for this world. So what I am saying is, maybe if the note had been written in French, I would have found it interesting enough to read!” Suze reached for her key and turned it in the ignition before she caught sight of the light on the dash reminding her that she was stuck there.
“Damnit!” Suze yelled, hitting the steering wheel with the palm of her hand.
Miss Billie stepped away from the car and gripped her stop sign with both hands. “Are you threatening my niece?”
Suze sucked in her breath and looked into her rearview mirror. “Unbuckle girls, you’re walking from here.”
“But Mom! I was supposed to bring cupcakes, everyone is going to freak out!”
“One: the first bell already rang and two: we need you to walk us in and sign the book after the bell rings.”
Suze tightened her grip on the steering wheel and watched as Miss Billie trotted across the street and threw the Stop sign into her backseat.
“Get out and walk to school. Now.” Suze said.
“But what do we tell the office when they want you to sign the book?”
“You tell them to take that book and shove it up their…”
“Mom!”
“You tell them that your mother is having a nervous breakdown and will be happy to sign the book when she is finished.”
Suze sat quietly as the girls jumped out of the car and one of them, probably the middle one, slammed the door behind her. Miss Billie did a U-turn and stuck her middle finger out of her window as she drove off. Suze grabbed the container of cupcakes and threw her car door open. She ran into the street and began throwing the cupcakes at Miss Billie’s car. Two purple iced cupcakes splattered against her back window before she turned the corner. Suze reached down and grabbed the last cupcake before dropping the container on the street. She took a bite and turned back to her impotent SUV.
“Ugh!” she spit the cupcake out and looked down at her hand. It was the sugar-free cupcake. “Gross,” she said as she chunked the cupcake down the street. She got back into her car and closed the car door behind her. After trying twice more to start the car, she reached into her diaper bag/ purse and pulled out her cell phone. She began to dial her husband’s number but snapped the phone shut. What could he do? He did not have any money either. He could not get her car started and with his bad back, he certainly could not push it off of the road into the school’s parking lot.
“He should have gone to trade school,” Suze said licking the sugar-free icing from her fingers.
She dumped the purse out into the seat and looked through the contents. Before she opened the door, she had neatly lined her possessions along the dashboard. They were, as her middle child would say- one: a cell phone; two: a full bottle of prescription diet pills; three: a wallet containing checks to an overdrawn bank account; and four: one diamond engagement ring and one gold wedding band. Suze rolled up the eleven dollars in cash and stuck it down into her bra like she had done when she was in college and could not be bothered with carrying a purse. She left the keys in the ignition and stepped out onto the pavement and for the first time since she had purchased her eighty-dollar running shoes the year before- she ran. It seemed that the teenage salesclerk had been lying; the gel cushioning did not actually make every step feel as if she were running barefoot on the clouds as he had promised.
While the impotent SUV sat on the side of the road with the driver’s side door open and Suze’s belongings lined up neatly on the dashboard, Suze herself ran. She focused on the sound of her footfalls on the pavement without paying any attention to where she was headed. Her instincts seemed to be guiding her feet only AWAY- away from the elementary school where her daughters stood in the office, in their matching hairbows, explaining to the secretary that their mother was busy with her nervous breakdown. Away from Miss Billie who was sitting in her driveay writing her letter of resignation to the school board on the back of a grocery list, blaming out of control parents for her early departure. Away from the corner office in the back of town hall where the first selectman, her husband, was slowly and carefully unbuttoning the red silk blouse of Sherry Crowder, the wife of the second selectman. Away from her own house where Sammy, her husband’s golden retriever, was standing on the kitchen table licking the purple icing from a mixing bowl and ignoring the utility man that had come into the backyard to shut off the power for non-payment. Suze ran away.
Residents would not normally pay much attention to a young woman jogging on a Friday morning. But anyone outside that day took note of Suze. They would later tell Chuck Baker, the police chief that they noticed a woman running down the street in her pajamas and running shoes. They noticed her, they would say, not only because of the pink and green striped pajamas that she was wearing, or because she was crying, or because her long blonde hair was not pulled back but matted with sweat and sticking to her forehead, but because she was not jogging- she was running. She was running as if she were being chased even though they could see no person or car or dog chasing her. Suze ran down the middle of the street and never bothered to look behind her. Suze was running like a crazy person.
Suze didn’t feel crazy. She didn’t feel much at all beyond the endorphins. Her feet pushed on; turning down one street but not another until the sun was high above her and she had run well past the town limits. Suze ran until, without warning, she could not run anymore. Her knees buckled beneath her and she collapsed on the sidewalk. Lying on the sidewalk in her sweat-soaked pajamas, she determined that the salesclerk at the shoe store had lied to Suze, had, in fact, probably never run anywhere in shoes with that particular kind of gel insert. This, Suze thought, is not what feet would feel like after running barefoot through the clouds. The absurdity of the salesclerk’s promise did not take away from the sting of his betrayal. What did he care? She bought them. The gel in these shoes has near-magical properties and this particular SUV is the most dependable thing on the road and sure honey, I will love and cherish you until death parts us. Everyone was selling something and Suze was always so eager to buy it.
When her heartbeat was approaching normal, Suze opened her eyes and sat up on the sidewalk. Looking around, she realized that she was completely unfamiliar with her surroundings and turned to look behind her in an attempt to remember how she had gotten there. At this point, she felt as crazy as the people watching her run that morning had told the Chief she was.
The sidewalk where she sat cross-legged was littered with cigarette butts and there was a half-eaten Twinkie in its wrapper under her left foot. Suze grabbed the Twinkie and shoved it in her mouth, spitting out a piece of the plastic wrapper before swallowing it whole. She cursed her throbbing feet and the lying salesman as she stood up. There were two men sitting at a table in front of a gas station staring at her, one man’s hand had frozen in midair holding a rook over a chessboard- ready to strike. They did not seem disgusted or frightened of Suze, they stared at her with more curiosity than contempt. She straightened out her pajama top and pushed the sweaty hair from her forehead as she limped over to the men. Her raw feet were threatening to give out completely and land Suze on the sidewalk; but her mind had once again gained control over her body and she willed them on, with forced robotic movements- step, step, step, stop. The men sat silently as Suze approached. She cleared her throat and forced a smile, unaware of the cream from the smashed Twinkie on her upper lip.
The younger man- more of a boy Suze realized as she neared- smiled back at Suze and leaned back in his chair. “Nice shoes,” he said looking at her feet.
“They don’t really feel like clouds you know,” Suze said.
“Um, okay,” the young man said turning to look over his shoulder and hide his face. His shoulders shook gently as he tried in vain to stifle his laughter.
Suze’s face reddened, “Would it be possible for me to get some water in this establishment?” her voice was hoarse and the effort of speaking made her feel weak. How long had she run without drinking? She had no idea what time it was or even what day it was; maybe she had been running for years. She looked down at her hands expecting them to be wrinkled and covered in age spots, but sighed in relief and rubbed her finger where her wedding ring had once lived. Her hands were still 35 years old. Pretty young, Suze thought, to have a total mental breakdown. Her own mother had not cracked until she was well into her fifties. Suze met the young man’s eyes again and wondered if there was a check engine light blinking on her forehead, a bright red light in the shape of a brain blinking furiously if not too late. You should probably get that brain checked out, Suze.
“There is a restroom around back, the key is hanging on the wall,” the man holding the chess piece said. He looked back down at the game and dropped the piece loudly. He grinned, exposing some of the whitest teeth Suze had ever seen. “Check Mate boy, Check Mate!!”
Suze limped off to the restroom as the two men laughed and reset the chessboard. The water in the faucet was lukewarm and had an acidic taste to it but Suze stuck her head under the faucet and drank from it until she began to feel light-headed and then let the warm run over the back of her neck. She avoided looking in the mirror as she used paper towels to dry off her face and neck. Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, Suze noticed that the chipped porcelain of the sink basin was covered in dried vomit. Stepping out of the restroom into the bright afternoon, she was feeling hungry and tired, but optimistic.
“Thank you for the water!” Suze waved to the men playing chess as she turned towards the wooded area across the street from the gas station. Food would have to wait, Suze decided, she limped into the trees until she was no longer visible from the road and dropped to her knees under a pine tree. She took off her pajama shirt, rolled it into a ball and shoved it under her head. Her tank top left her arms bare and gave her no protection from the pine needles and sticks on the ground but she fell asleep before she could notice.
“Are you sure this is her?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know mom, maybe we should look around. Could be there are more white ladies in their stripey pajamas and Nikes sleeping in the woods tonight.”
Suze kept her eyes closed and listened. There was a smacking sound and then the boy laughed. She had heard that laugh before. It was the young man from the gas station; which meant that it hadn’t been a dream. Smiling she rolled over on her back and looked up at her visitors.
“Hello,” Suze said, sitting up and shaking the pine leaves and sticks from her shirt before pulling it over her head.
The woman gasped and stepped back reaching out for her son’s arm to steady her.
“Ma, what’s wrong?” the boy asked.
The woman shook her head and leaned forward shining her flashlight in Suze’s face. “Dear Lord, it is you,” she whispered.
Suze shielded her eyes with her hand and stood up, the flashlight following her as she rose. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
The woman laughed. “Suzy? Suzy Edwards?”
“Yes,well I was,” Suze leaned to the right, trying to see the woman behind the flashlight.
The woman lowered her flashlight and tossed it onto the ground. Suze
blinked, watching as the woman, now partially obscured by the white glow burned into her vision, dropped her hands to her side for a second before putting her fisted hands squarely onto her hips.
“Ready? Okay!” the woman stepped forward and began clapping. “Bang-bang, choo-choo train come on Mustangs do your thang. Get it, get it, get it, get it, got it, got it, got it, got it, Uh! and let it roll!” She stopped clapping, and put her hands back onto her hips. Her cheer was answered only by applauding crickets and laughing owls for several seconds.
The boy looked from his crazy mother to the crazy white lady, hoping that one of them would start to make some sense eventually.
A smile spread across Suze’s face and she jumped up and down clapping until she paused and assumed the same stance that his mother had taken, hands on hips. “Ready? Okay” she clapped. “Beat 'um! Bust 'um!” the boy’s mother joined in “Beat 'um bust 'um that's our custom! Woo Hoo! Go Mustangs!” The women ran towards each other and hugged, jumping up and down in unison.
“So, um, did you two meet in the nervous hospital or something?” The boy asked and bent over to pick up his mother’s discarded flashlight.
Suze let go of the woman and held her at arm’s length, examining her face. “Marie Washington? I cannot believe it. You look amazing. How are you?”
Marie waved her son over. “Ronnie! Come over here son, I want you to meet a dear old friend of mine.”
He hesitated and shook his head. “Ma?”
“Ronnie, come over here!” Marie said.
Ronnie walked towards the women and held out his hand. Suze extended her hand to Ronnie and then pulled it back, she looked down and examined the dirt and dried blood on her palm, suddenly aware of her state- standing in the woods in the middle of the night in filthy pajamas.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Suze said, still staring at her own hands, rubbing the ring finger of her left hand. “I seem to be having some sort of an episode today.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and straightened her shoulders, looking at Marie again. “Where am I?” she asked.
“Where are you?” Marie glanced at Ronnie.
He shrugged and lowered his hand. “You’re in Tempest Miss Suzy. Tempest, Tennessee.”
“I am afraid that I do not know where Tempest is exactly. You see, I left Library Road early this morning,” Suze looked up at the sky as it turned a deep red behind the trees; the sun was just rising on Saturday. “Oh, yesterday morning then, but I am not sure where I have gotten myself. I just went for a run and…well…I stopped here.”
“Library Road? In Eden? No, you couldn’t have Suzy,” Marie said.
“I told you Ma, she came running right up the sidewalk out there,” he motioned over his shoulder. “She was all out of breath and wild-eyed, she fell down and ate a Twinkie right off the ground.”
Suze winced. “I’m sorry ma’am but that’s what happened.” Ronnie said.
“But Suzy, Eden is more then 20 miles east of here, surely you didn’t just run all of the way here. You must have hitched for part of the way or something,” Marie said.
Suze shook her head. “No I ran. The check engine light came on and I just ran.”
Marie reached out and took Suze’s hand, leading her back towards the street. Ronnie lagged behind the women, shaking his head.
“So wait, you two were like friends? You grew up together in Eden and went to school together and…you were friends? At that Catholic school?” Ronnie asked.
“Our Lady of Sorrows- they closed it down a few years ago. The Penetcostals had a big tent revival outside of the Shop & Save and converted all of the Catholics- even Father Terrance, and none of them would send their kids to the school anymore” Suze said.
"So where do all of the white people send their kids to protect them from the urban kids in high school? Surely they aren't sending them to West Cental?" Marie asked.
"Some do, but most homeschool."
“But y’all were friends? Ma? You and this white lady?” Ronnie asked.
Marie stopped walking and looked at Suze. “Well, more colleagues than friends I guess, why are you so worried about it, makes no matter now. She needs our help and it is our Christian duty to help her,” Marie started off toward the street again. “I can’t believe my own son came home laughing about this crazy white woman he saw talking about walking on clouds and then lay down in the woods,” Marie turned to face Ronnie, still holding Suze’s hand. “And you just left her there, left her there for the wolves. Didn’t show her anymore kindness than you would have a stray cat!” Marie tightened her grip on Suze’s hand and marched down the street.
“But Ma! You hate white people! What did you expect me to do? Carry a stray white lady home for supper?” Ronnie shouted.
“I know that I am suffering from an episode, but please do not speak about me like I am some sort of wounded animal that needs to be put down,” Suze said. She shivered and pulled Marie closer, whispering in her ear. “You don’t think that this is like…that I am like…is this like what happened to my mother you suppose?”
“What was wrong with your mother?” Ronnie asked. Both women jumped; they had not heard him run up behind them.
Marie lowered her voice. “Mrs. Edwards, Suzy’s mother, she had a few episodes of her own while we were in high school. The last one before they sent her off to the nervous hospital was at the Homecoming game senior year. Suzy was standing at the top of the pyramid and the crowd was screaming and cheering and then Mrs. Edwards came out of nowhere, running out on the field. Child, she was naked as a jaybird and had Bible Verses written in marker all over her body,” she turned towards her son and smiled. “I mean all over. And the football coach and Father Terrance were chasing her but she was so fast sprinting across that field. They finally wrestled her to the ground right in front of the stands and she was rolling around the ground and singing the school’s fight song and…” Marie stopped and turned to Suze. “Oh Suzy, I’m so sorry, that must have been awful for you.” Ronnie had fallen behind again and was breathing in quick gasps, trying to suppress his laughter. Crazy white women.
Suze stared ahead, ignoring Marie’s apology. “So, do you hate really hate white women?” she asked.
Marie laughed. “Some I guess.”
“Yeah,” Suze said. “I guess I hate some white women too.” The women walked in silence until they reached Marie’s home- a tiny blue house with a chain-link fence. Two of the three concrete steps were crumbling and had to be stepped over to get to the porch.
Marie walked Suze straight to the bathroom and turned on the shower. “Suzy why don’t you go ahead and get cleaned up,” Marie pointed to the shower and then to the small closet in the corner. “Towels and washcloths in there, soap is in the shower. Leave your clothes on the floor and I will set some clean clothes outside the door. Take your time.” Marie held her breath as she walked by Suze and closed the door behind her.
Ronnie watched his mother walk to the garage, holding Suze's clothes in front of her in one extended arm and covering her nose and mouth with the other. He waitied for her at the kitchen table, picking at the chipping paint on the corner of the table- a habit that she had long since given up on stopping. He waited while she poured herself a cup of coffee and kicked the chair across from him out for her to sit.
“Well?” She said.
“Well?” Ronnie repeated.
“Well, I can tell that you have some questions just burning a hole in your tongue, so why don’t you just go ahead and ask them,” Marie said.
“I don’t even know where to start…. I mean, you were a cheerleader? You had white friends? I don’t believe it.”
“It is a long story Ronnie.”
Ronnie held up his hands. He had the time.
Marie sighed and swirled the coffee in her cup. “Do you remember Grandma talking about Uncle Dennis winning that essay contest in school?”
Ronnie didn’t but he nodded anyway so Marie continued.
“Well he did win originally. They sent the essays off to Nashville and his was chosen as the Regional winner. He was invited to read it at the Governor’s luncheon. Momma and Daddy cried when he brought home the letter. Some of the folks at OLS didn’t like that he won though.” Ronnie opened his mouth to speak but Marie held up her hand before he could ask. “OLS? Our Lady of Sorrows, the school that Uncle Dennis and I graduated from. So, anyway, they didn’t want him representing the school at such a fancy event. They thought he sounded too urban, which I guess they meant too black. So they came up with a way to disqualify him. They said that they had an anonymous tip that he had not written it himself and they sent Tim O’Connor instead.”
“O’Connor? Let me guess, he was a well-spoken Mexican dude?” Ronnie asked.
“Yeah, right, so this white dude goes and meets the governor and Macy’s won’t take back the suit that Grandma had bought for Uncle Dennis and we were all so angry, I thought that your Grandfather was going to blow up the school- he was so mad he couldn’t see straight. But not your Uncle Dennis- he could see just fine,” Marie paused to wipe a tear from her cheek and then continued. “He was so smart you know? Like you. He was smart enough to win that essay contest a hundred times over, never would have used someone else’s work. So your Uncle looked up the name of a big law firm in Nashville and typed up a letter, designing some fancy letterhead with the firm’s name on it and everything. He wrote a letter to the Catholic Diocese and Father Terrance threatening to sue the school for discrimination. It said that the firm had gotten an anonymous tip that their anonymous tip had been fabricated and that the school and the diocese had been under investigation for their lack of diversity. The letter read well, big words and lots of commas and all so they didn’t seem to notice that it didn’t make much sense legally,” Marie smiled.
“Cool,” Ronnie said. “So why were you a cheerleader again?”
“Oh, sorry, I forgot where I was going. After the school got the letter, they apologized to Momma and Daddy, held a special assembly for Dennis, saying that they were mistaken, he had won the contest. He got to wear his suit so Momma was happy. But the school started what they called a diversity campaign. There were 17 black kids in that school, all of us on scholarship, and each and every one of us was appointed to something. We were made class delegates and student ambassadors. I was moved up from the Junior Varsity to the Varsity cheerleading squad and made co-captain of the squad before my first practice.”
”Wow,” Ronnie said. “Were you that good?”
“Not really,” Marie said. “That was the problem. The white kids were pissed, they thought we didn’t deserve to be in those positions,” Marie sighed. “Some of us did and some of us didn’t.Suzy wasn’t any better than me, but she had more experience, she had the respect of the other girls.”
“So why did you take the job?”
Marie shrugged. “Because it upset Suzy and her friends so much. And I hated white girls.”
Suze was standing in the hallway combing through her wet hair with her fingers and cleared her throat. Ronnie and Marie looked up and smiled.
“Feeling better?” Marie asked, pulling out the chair next to her.
Suze walked around the table, bypassing the offered chair and leaned against the wall. “So what did end up of our Dennis, he seemed to have such a promising future.”
Marie put her hand over her son’s, willing him to be quiet. Suze seemed to have heard their entire conversation and experience had taught Marie that the outwardly calm crazy woman was much more dangerous than the one in the throes of an “episode.” That woman was plotting.
“He’s dead,” Marie said.
Suze put her hand over her heart and sat down across from Marie. “Oh, I am so sorry, I hadn’t heard. Was he...” she looked around the room and leaned in closer to Marie and Ronnie. “Was he murdered?”
“Yes, I suppose he was,” Marie said. Ronnie remained silent.
“Do you know who did it?” Suze asked, still whispering.
Ronnie began picking at the chipping paint again, ignoring his mother’s gaze as she answered.
“I guess that depends really. Some people would say it was Hussein, some Bin Laden, some might even say it was Bush that did it. But I guess, technically speaking, it was a ten-year-old Iraqi boy that somehow managed to operate a rocket launcher almost as big as he was.”
Suze gasped, placing her hand over her heart again. “Oh, I am so sorry for your loss. He was such a smart man. But, you know, he died a hero’s death. Thank God for him and all of the other soldiers like him.” Suze returned her hand to her lap when she finished.
Marie slammed her fist down on the table with such force that Suze jumped out of her chair. But Ronnie seemed to have known what was coming, he did not flinch.
“And what in the Hell does that mean? A Hero’s death? He died a damned fool’s death! Shot down by a child!” she stood abruptly, paying no attention to the chair that fell to the floor behind her. “He bled to death in a desert thousands of miles away. Momma died of heart failure a month after his funeral and daddy died of a stroke two months after that. All of the love and work that they poured into that damned fool spilled out onto the sand over there. A lifetime of sitting by his bed when he had a fever, taking him to baseball practice, filling out scholarship applications, second jobs,third jobs to pay for any college textbooks that the scholarships didn’t cover. For what? Anyone could have been shot down like that? Any damn fool,” Marie stopped and turned to Ronnie. “A hero’s death my ass.”
Ronnie stood and picked up his mother’s chair. “I am sorry Miss Suzy, you will have to excuse my mother. She does not approve of my decision to join the Marines after my 18th Birthday next month. My choice to serve my country is far from heroic to her.” He nodded and walked out, slamming the front door on his way out.
Marie, still shaking, sat down and put her face in her hands, twisting her short hair between her fingers.
“Oh sweetie, I am so sorry, really, I can see why you’re upset. But you should be so proud. He is so brave- and so young yet. Seventeen? Did he drop out of high school?” Suze scooted her chair closer to Marie and put her hand on her shoulder. As soon as she touched her, Marie jerked away.
“No Suzy, he did not drop out. He graduated early, took accelerated courses all the way through high school. He is just as smart as my brother Dennis was, maybe even more so,” she paused, letting her hands fall to the table. “You know, I think that this may have been his plan all along- to graduate early so he could ship off right after his birthday. The fool.” She shook her head and began to cry.
Suze sat silently next to Marie while she cried. A few minutes later, Marie jumped up and disappeared into the garage. When she returned, her face was dry. “I just put your pajamas in the dryer, you should leave as soon as they are dry, you’ll hear the buzzer go off in a bit. The phone is next to the refrigerator; you should call someone and make arrangements. I am going to a meeting at church and I want you gone when I get home,” she turned and walked into the hallway.
Suze jumped out of her seat. “Why do you hate white girls Marie? I know we were competitive in High School and all, but I never did anything to you, nothing to deserve this kind of hatred. It is not like I am some kind of racist or anything. All of us cheerleaders were perfectly civil to you.”
Marie turned slowly and breathed in, closing her eyes before speaking. “Excuse me? Civil? Not racist? So, I am just like any other of your old classmates? If you were sitting here at Lisa Cook’s table tonight and not mine and you heard that her brother was dead, would you just assume that he had been murdered?”
Suze started wringing her hands. “Lisa didn’t have a brother- two sisters remember? The slutty one and the one with the wonky eye…what were their names?”
Holding up one hand, Marie walked back into the kitchen. “Don’t avoid the question Suzy. Okay, if you were sitting in Kim Denton’s kitchen and her son wanted to join the military at seventeen, would you assume that her son had dropped out of high school?”
Suze smiled. “He’s gay.”
“What?”
“Kim Denton’s son Jerry, he’s gay. He must be about the same age as your Ronnie; y’all were both pregnant at graduation right? You about three months, Kim maybe a little further along, she was starting to show if I recall.”
Marie nodded.
“So anyway, she married the father, Joey Thomas, and they are married still- real upstanding citizens in Eden you know. No one mentions the situation in which little Jerry was conceived. So anyway, last summer he tells them that he is gay right in the middle of the Homeschool Parents Association election meeting. Kim was running for secretary I believe. She fainted and Joey started crying like a baby. They made Jerry sit there and had a big prayer meeting right there in the high school cafeteria and decided to send him off to Memphis to Love In Action.”
“What?”
“You know, Love in Action, its like a reform school where they are supposed to turn your gay kid straight.”
“Did it work?”
“I don’t think so. He had an affair with this Filipino nurse that came in to give all of the kids their flu shots the first week that he was there. They ran away, he got emancipated, moved to Vermont and he works as a live model at a Hollister store out there. That skinny thing walks around the store with no shirt and pants all hanging down looking serious and not talking to anyone,” Suze sat back down. “At least, that’s what I hear.”
Marie threw her head back and laughed. “Well I guess growing up hasn’t been easy on any of us has it? What about you? How did you end up in the middle of the woods in your pajamas not even knowing what town you were in?” Marie asked.
Suze glanced down at her ring finger and shrugged. “I don’t really know to be honest. R.J., you remember R.J. right? Well he and I got married after college and we have three girls. And lately it’s just been…I don’t know…unfulfilling. I am almost certain that R.J. is having another affair and I guess that doesn’t bother me so much but he lost a lot of money somehow, he says it was in stocks but I just don’t know Marie. It was A LOT of money. But mostly I think I am just so bored you know? Bored. Bored. Bored.” Suze looked up, tears in her eyes.
“No Suzy, I can’t say that I do know,” Marie said.
“I don’t go by Suzy anymore, we aren’t kids. People call me Suze now.”
“And do you find that Suze is a more mature name than Suzy? Does ‘Suze’command the respect of the other bored housewives out in Eden?”
“You are not very friendly Marie, you never were. That is why none of the other cheerleaders cared for you- not because we were racist.”
Marie cocked her eyebrow and crossed her arms.
Suze smiled. “Oh Marie, we are grown women now, lets just put all of these silly teenage jealousies behind us.”
“Jealousies?”
“Come now, I’ll admit that I was jealous of you- you were so pretty, so smart, so witty that even the teachers seemed enamored with you,” Suze said.
Marie uncrossed her arms.
“And you Marie, do you think that maybe these claims of racism were born out of a young girl's jealousy?”
Marie remained silent.
“There was nothing of mine that you wanted? Nothing of mine that you couldn’t have?” Suze asked, smiling.
“You were whiter, I couldn’t be whiter.”
“That’s all?” Suze asked.
“You said yourself- I was prettier than you, smarter, wittier, what else could I have wanted?” Marie asked.
“Oh come off it Marie, we all knew that you wanted R.J. It was only natural, he was the quarterback you were the head cheerleader- sorry, co-head cheerleader. It was obvious, you just threw yourself at him and of course you feel bitter about it especially the way things turned out for you.” Suze opened her arms, gesturing to the tiny yellow kitchen.
“Oh, I could have had R.J. had I been so inclined,” Marie said.
“And what makes you say that Marie?”
“Because I did.”
”You did what?”
”I did have him.” Marie smiled.
Suze’s hands balled into fists, her fingernails digging into her palm.
Marie continued. “You had mono and were out of school for weeks. Remember? Wasn’t that about three months before graduation?”
Suze looked from Marie to the picture of Ronnie hanging on the refrigerator. Ronnie, Marie's son, born six months after graduation- Ronnie with the green eyes and the dimples just like R.J.’s. Ronnie. “Ronnie? R.J.? Oh God, Ronnie…is he… is Ronnie’s name Ronald James?”
“It was kind of my own little joke I guess. I knew that he would never claim his son but I wanted to give them some kind of connection,” Marie said. “Look, I am sorry, I shouldn’t have told you like this. I knew that y’all got married, but then when we saw you out in the woods…I mean, you weren’t wearing a wedding ring. I never thought you were still together, he was such a slimeball.” Marie stepped towards Suze.
“You whore!” Suze yelled and lunged for Marie who, not expecting the attack, was not able to dodge the first blow. Just seconds into the fight, Marie realized the advantage that she had over Suze- one that she did not have in high school with her long, relaxed hair- her hair was short, very short, too short to get a good hold. Suze, on the other hand, still wore her hair long- long enough for Marie to grab, twist around her fist and hold her head at arm’s length while Suze hissed and scratched at the air. Marie swung her free hand once, hitting Suze in the temple, stunning her. Her arms stopped clawing at the air and went limp and her legs buckled underneath her.
Marie looked down at her former classmate curled into a ball at her feet holding her head and crying. She smoothed out her skirt and checked her watch. “Now I don’t have time to change, going to be late for the meeting at church. You can let yourself out.”
Suze sat up and listened as Marie opened the front door and called over her shoulder, “No hard feelings Suzy. I guess growing up was hard on all of us.” Marie left, slamming the door behind her as her son had done- Suze’s stepson.
The buzzer on the dryer sounded and Suze pushed herself up off of the floor, the throbbing in her temple dulled as she walked into the garage and pulled her clothes out of the dryer. Minutes later, she was sitting on the front porch in her pajamas, lacing up her running shoes. She stood, stretched and then took off down the driveway and paused before her feet led her left down the sidewalk. Ronnie was sitting outside of the gas station again, setting up the pieces on the chessboard. He smiled and waved when he saw Suze approaching. “You want to play a quick game before your run?” He gestured to the board.
Suze ran in place and waved back, “No, thanks Ronnie, I am think I am going to run home.”
”Run all the way to Eden?”
Suze jumped in place and said “Sure, it is not so bad really, these shoes might really feel like running barefoot on the clouds- I never have run on the clouds so who is to say it doesn’t feel like this.”
"Did my mother calm down? How is she?"
Suze laughed "I don't know Ronnie, I think her check engine light came on. She began running again, calling over her shoulder “Good luck in Iraq Ronnie!”
He watched as she disappeared around the corner and shook his head, laughing to himself. “Must be another episode. Crazy white women.”
Sugar & Boo
The headlights from the black 1986 Lincoln Town Car grew too quickly in the trees ahead of Suze as the car sped towards the gas station on the corner. She saw a cat’s eyes reflected in its beams just as she turned to see Ronnie round the corner of the gas station. She raised her hand to wave to him but he did not see her as he sprinted, the Lincoln just inches behind him. He was so fast that his feet barely seemed to have time to touch the ground between strides.
“Now that is a runner,” Suze said to herself. “What kind of shoes are you wearing?” She called to Ronnie as he disappeared into the woods ignoring her.
The car spun sideways and the passenger side door flew open. A man jumped out and disappeared in the woods behind Ronnie.
“Ronnie? You okay?” Suze called, stepping backwards. The cat meowed in response but Ronnie was silent. Suze shrugged and turned back towards home and began to jog.
A man got out of the backseat of the car and jogged towards her. He was already breathing heavily as he crossed the fifteen feet that separated Suze from the car.
“Hey! You Ronnie’s friend?” he said as he put a hand on her shoulder. Suze didn’t turn around, but easily ducked from under his grasp and ran across the street towards the woods, towards Ronnie. She wasn’t sure if he would help her if he could or why she needed his help, but she knew that the big guy following her was trouble.
She heard the cat howl as the man kicked it behind her in the dark. She started to turn to check on the cat but was stopped short when the man grabbed her hair and pulled her to the ground.
“Tits? What are you doing? We got the kid down here!” a voice called from the street.
The man looked down at Suze on the ground and took an inhaler out of his pocket. He shook it before inhaling deeply. She was surprised that she wasn’t crying, or screaming, or fighting, or running. She stared up at the man. His dark head was bald and she could make out the wrinkles on his scalp in the moonlight. “I’m some runner,” Suze thought. “I was just caught by a 300-hundred pound middle-aged asthmatic guy.” And then, she started to cry- not because she was being lifted up by a stranger and thrown over his shoulder, but because running was something else that she could not do right. Like marriage. Like motherhood.
“There was a witness but I caught her,” Tits yelled between gasps as he trotted with the white lady over his shoulder. She was completely limp and he would have thought he had already killed her if he didn’t hear her crying. He began to worry that she was going to snot all over the back of his new suit and picked up the pace.
Suze kept her eyes open, focusing on Tits’s ass as she bounced up and down. She winced as he threw her into the trunk. A short man with light skin and slicked back hair stood next to Tits, looking into the trunk.
“Who the hell is she?”
“Dunno, she knows Ronnie and she saw us so I grabbed her,” Tits took another drag from his inhaler.
“Did you happen to notice that she was white?”
Tits rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I saw that.”
“How many white people live in Tempest Tits?”
“None.”
”You think someone might miss her? Like the FBI might come looking for her?”
Tits shrugged and grabbed Suze’s left hand, holding it up. “ No wedding ring, no husband. Besides, people go missing all the time. Ronnie is about to go missing.”
“Ronnie’s black.”
“I know Marv, I’m only half-blind.”
Tits turned back to Suze and she noticed his left eye was pale and cloudy. She had been outrun by an obese, asthmatic, middle-aged, visually impaired man. “Oh no,” she groaned and lifted her hands to hide her face before her cries turned into sobs.
Her movement startled Tits and Marv and they drew their guns and aimed at Suze. She did not realize this because she was covering her face and sobbing.
“Is she carrying?” Marv asked.
“No,” Tits said.
“Did you check?”
“She’s in her jammies,” Tits shrugged and tucked his gun back into his holster.
Marv handed Tits his gun and quickly ran his hand over Suze’s body, feeling for hidden weapons under her pajamas. His hands ran up her legs and she quickly slapped them away.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“You got anything on you Kitten?” Marv smiled, revealing a gold tooth.
Suze looked down at her legs, realizing for the first time that she was in the trunk of a car and that she wanted to live even if she wasn’t going to be a runner.
”No, and I don’t know what business you have with Ronnie and I don’t care. This is just a mistake. If you’d let me call my husband, I’m sure we can straighten everything out.” She lifted one leg over the back of the car and moved to step out of the trunk.
Tits pushed heavily down on her shoulder and she fell backwards.
“How do you know Ronnie?” Marv asked.
“He’s my stepson. I think,” Suze said.
Someone behind her snorted and she turned to see Ronnie lying behind her, with his hands and feet tied and tape over his mouth. “Oh my God! Ronnie? What happened? Oh shit, these are bad guys! I knew it. Ronnie, you have to help me, I don’t belong here.” She ducked as Marv and Tits closed the trunk. She continued talking to Ronnie in the darkness as she felt the car shift with the weight of Marv and Tits and then begin to drive. “Who are these people? Ronnie? Why are they so mad at you? Are they going to let me go?” She paused and waited for his response. “Oh, you can’t talk can you?” She reached out in the darkness and found Ronnie’s face. As her fingers traced the line of his jaw, she was startled by how much his face was shaped like RJ’s. Same square jaw, same long thin nose, she ripped off the tape covering his mouth. Same full lips. She felt Ronnie flinch as her fingers traced the curve of his upper lip.
“Are we going to make out now?” Ronnie asked.
“Sorry,” she dropped her hands.
“No problem, mom.” Ronnie said.
“Stepmom,” Suze said.
“Uh-huh.”
“You think that I’m crazy don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your mom is crazy too.”
“I know.”
”And mean. She is crazy and mean.”
“Uh-Huh.”
“Forget it,” Suze said as she tried to turn on her side, facing away from Ronnie. There was enough room to turn the upper half of her body awkwardly and press her face against the back of the car but her legs were still on top of his with nowhere else to go. She felt his body jerking beneath her and heard him grunting.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying to remove the rope from my hands with my teeth,” he said.
“Oh,” Suze said and remained still, with her nose bent sideways against the metal as she pushed her body as far away from him as the trunk would allow. He struggled for several more minutes before going still.
“Did you get it?” Suze asked.
“No,” Ronnie said.
The car turned sharply to the left and threw Ronnie’s body against hers. She could feel his breath against her hair when he asked “Do you think you might assist me in untying my hands? That might increase our odds of survival significantly.”
“Oh, sure,” Suze twisted her body again and began to pull at the rope around Ronnie’s wrists. “Who are those guys?” She worked one side of the rope to the top of his fist and tried to pull it over but it wouldn’t move any further.
“Marv and Tits.”
“Yeah, I got that part. What do they want from you?” Suze forced her finger under the rope, pressing down the flesh between his knuckles and slipped the rope over the top of his hands. He quickly pulled the rest of the rope loose and reached down to untie the rope around his ankles.
“They are just following orders, Sugar wants to make sure that I don’t go off to war.”
Suze began to laugh and couldn’t stop. After a full minute of filling the trunk with strange barks and guffaws she wound down and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“Miss Suzy?”
Hiccup. “Yes?” Hiccup.
“You really are crazy aren’t you?”
Suze stifled a sob. “Yes. I wasn’t always but I think I am having a nervous breakdown. My car brokedown in front of the kids” Hiccup “ and I get the hiccups whenever I laugh” Hiccup “and it so freaking embarrassing.”
“Your car brokedown? That must have been so hard for you, what with the hiccups too. I thought that you might have been having a nervous breakdown because you were kidnapped by gangsters and thrown in the trunk of their car. But no, you’re right, car trouble and hiccups are much worse.” Ronnie began to work on the ropes binding his ankles again.
Hiccup.
Ronnie straightened his body out in the trunk and kicked his feet free from the rest of the rope as the car came to a stop. “We’re here. They are going to go get Sugar and come out and open the trunk, can you switch places with me so I am closer to the front?”
Hiccup.
“Are you awake?”
“You are just as much of a smart ass as your dad,” Suze said.
“What? Sugar? There ain’t anything at all smart about that man.”
”No, RJ, your dad. Who is Sugar?”
“The man that might be about to kill both of us.”
Hiccup.
Suze squeezed her eyes shut as Ronnie pulled her close to him and maneuvered his own body around hers in the small space. They could hear the voices as the men approached the back of the car. They listened as the key turned in the trunk and the metal groan as the lid began to lift. The trunk opened about 6 inches when Ronnie’s hand shot out and grabbed Marv’s tie and pulled forward hitting Marv’s head against the trunk and knocking him out. He fell forward shutting the trunk again.
“That was not how that was supposed to happen at all,” Ronnie said.
Hiccup.
They heard Marv’s body slide off the back of the car and the key begin to turn in the lock again. The lid flew open this time and Tits and another man stepped back, pointing their guns into the trunk.
”Hello Ronnie.”
“Hello Sugar.”
“Who is your friend?” Sugar asked, nodding to Suze.
“Oh, that’s Miss Suzy, my mom’s friend,” Ronnie said.
Suze propped herself up on her elbow and held a hand out to Sugar. “It is actually,” Hiccup “ Suze. I am Ronnie’s stepmother.”
Sugar tucked his gun behind his back and took her hand. “Well that practically makes us family doesn’t it then? I am Sugar. Ronnie’s stepfather.”
Ronnie snorted. “Crazy white lady, crazy pimp and baby Ronnie makes three. Aren’t we just a happy family?”
Suze let Sugar help her out of the trunk, stepping over Ronnie. He was her height, maybe a little shorter. He clasped her hand in both of his own smooth impeccably manicured hands. Suze glanced down at his shiny purple alligator shoes. Everything else around them, including Suze’s own running shoes, was covered in a thin layer of dust from the dry earth that the Lincoln had kicked up. Sugar alone was standing there as clean and shiny as the day he was born.
Ronnie threw his legs over the back of the car and leapt out of the trunk, landing next to Suze.
Marv groaned and began to crawl away from the car, stirring up a cloud of dust around his body. Tits turned to help him but Sugar held up a hand “Tits, could you be so kind as to escort Ronnie and his friend inside. Take them to the girls’ room and see to it that they are comfortably detained until I have a chance to speak with them and work this whole mess out,” Sugar waved his hand in the air as if it were a matter simply resolved. “I have to run and pick Boo up from her piano lessons.”
Ronnie balled his hands into fists and stepped towards Sugar.
In one smooth motion, Sugar pulled his silver revolver out of the holster and held the long barrel against Ronnie’s temple. Ronnie froze.
“Now, I thought you wanted to kill yourself out in the desert like your uncle, but if you want to eat a bullet here and now, I can make that happen for you son.” Sugar said through clenched teeth. “But it doesn’t look like your pretty lady friend here has the stomach to watch you die. Do you Miss Suzy?”
“It’s Suze.” Hiccup.
Ronnie relaxed his hands and dropped his shoulders while Sugar slowly lowered his gun. Tits and Marv grabbed Ronnie and Suze by the arms and walked them towards the door to Sugar’s Shack.
“I’ll tell Boo that you said ‘Hello’ then,” Sugar called out.
Suze reached out to grab Ronnie just as he spun out of Marv’s grasp and charged towards Sugar. Tits pushed Suze to the ground and all three men aimed their weapons at Ronnie. No warning shot was fired. All three triggers were pulled and all three bullets found their mark, Ronnie fell to the ground. Suze lay in the dirt in front of the Sugar Shack and watched as Ronnie bled out into the dust much like his uncle had done before him.
“What did you do? Oh God, No! What did you do?” Suze held her hands over her own ears as she screamed and watched in horror as Ronnie’s blood carved a path through the dirt and inched closer to her. Mercifully, a purple pointy-toed alligator shoe stepped between Suze’s face and the blood just as it was about to reach her. Suze focused on the shoe and waited for the shot, surprised that the hiccups seemed to be gone.
“Shut this bitch up, take her inside and find out her story.” Sugar said.
Suze closed her eyes as Tits lifted her from the ground and carried her inside. She knew that it was Tits because she could hear him wheezing as he carried her. He threw her into a supply closet and quickly closed the door.
“Damn, I can’t believe he killed Ronnie,” Tits said.
“Shut up, ain’t none of our business anyhow,” Marv said.
“Why do you suppose he ain’t killed Miss Suzy yet?”
Inside the supply closet, Suze hiccupped loudly.
“I don’t know Tits, maybe he’s sweet on her, maybe he was late picking up Boo. Like I said, it ain’t none of our business anyhow, now shut up. We got to get rid of Ronnie’s body before they get back. Sugar will kill us too if Boo gets here and sees her brother’s body in the parking lot.”
Suze curled into a ball on the floor of the supply closet. Sugar had referred to her as Ronnie’s “pretty lady friend.” It had been years since anyone had called her pretty. She fell asleep trying to imagine a life as Mrs. Sugar in which she shined his alligator shoes every night after he went to sleep and wash the blood out of his fancy suits and found herself hoping that he would shoot her instead, bury her next to Ronnie.
“Miss Suzy,” Tits was shaking Suze’s shoulders. “You dead or alive? Come on, wake up Miss Suzy.”
“I am alive I guess,” Suze said rolling over on her back.
“Good, Miss Boo wants to meet you.” Tits helped Suze to her feet and led her down the narrow hallway to a closed door. The door had a blue star painted in the middle of it and the words “dressing room” were written in blue marker beneath the star. Tits knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” a little girl’s voice answered from behind the door.
“It’s Tits, er, I mean Reginald, Miss Boo, I brought the white lady.” Tits’ voice wavered.
Suze heard giggling and little footsteps hurry for the door as it flew open. The little girl in the doorway slowly looked up and down, checking Suze out and not bothering to hide her disappointment. She sighed and squared her shoulders, looking Suze in the eye.
“Hello, I am Denise Marie Washington,” she extended her small hand to Suze. “But everyone calls me Boo, I don’t know why.” Boo shrugged. “I am ten years old.”
Suze looked down at Boo’s hand but did not take it.
“I’ll let you ladies talk then,” Tits said. “Boo, I don’t think she is going anywhere but you got your pistol gun in case she cause you any trouble?”
“Yes Reginald.” Boo rolled her eyes.
“Okay, your daddy is in a meeting and he will be back here in an hour, so you need to have her back in that closet before then.”
“Yes Reginald.”
“I mean it Boo, your daddy will have all of our hides if he knows you was playing with his friend here without his permission.”
”Yes Reginald.” Boo took Suze’s hand and pulled her into the room, shutting the door on Tits. She led Suze across the room to a row of six red vinyl chairs facing a large vanity. The room smelled like stale perfume and cigarettes. Suze stared into the mirror. Her face was tear-streaked and dirty and the right side of her head was matted down with Ronnie’s blood. The blood had simply flowed around Sugar’s shoe to reach Suze.
“Sit.” Boo ordered.
Suze sat.
“This,” Boo gestured to the room around her, “is the room where the exotic dancers get ready for the shows. They perform on Friday and Saturday nights and everyone loves them, even the Indians come out of the woods to see their shows. My momma used to be the best dancer that daddy ever had before she found Jesus. He misses her something awful, won’t let any of the other girls use her station. Says their ass isn’t good enough to occupy her chair,” Boo nodded to the chair at the end of the row. A wig sat on a pedestal and several dusty glass bottles were lined up against the mirror. A plastic tray held the remains of Marie’s show make-up. A shrine to her lost soul, her life before she found Jesus.
“You smell like blood,” Boo wrinkled her nose and sniffed Suze’s hair. “Smells like the ladies room when all the dancers get their monthly, happens the same time every month on account of they all live together in that trailer out back.”
Suze looked down the line. The mirror in front of each chair was labeled with the name of the dancer it served. The mirror in front of her belonged to “Cherry” and was followed by “Krystal,” “Bouncie,” “Kandy,” “Karamel,” and, finally, “Marie.”
Boo noticed Suze reading the names and leaned forward, whispering in Suze’s ear. “Those aren’t their real names, you know. Those are their sexy names. Krystal been dancing so long that she says she forgot what her given name was.”
She put her hands on her little girl hips and walked around the chair, surveying Suze. “You know, you wouldn’t look so bad if you cleaned up a little. Daddy talks about getting a white girl in the show sometimes but says they’re more trouble than they’re worth, says they’re never satisfied, always wanting something else.”
Suze looked at Boo in the reflection. Boo reached for the hairbrush next to her pistol on the vanity and started dragging it through Suze’s filthy hair.
“Momma used to have long hair. I’d brush it for her at night.” Boo sighed. “You know my Momma?”
Suze stared ahead.
“Nah, my momma wouldn’t care nothing for a crazy lady like you. She’s crazy for Jesus. That’s what daddy says. I used to live with her and my brother until I was seven. Momma worked as a secretary at the Middle School out in Monroe County but her car broke down and she didn’t have no way to get to work so my brother came and asked daddy to borrow some money to buy her a car- momma and daddy separated when she got pregnant with me, that’s when she found Jesus. So anyway, my brother didn’t know any better than to borrow the money from a crook like daddy so he took it and bought a car off of the Indians and gave it to her- he was just as proud as he could be to give it to her. Well, Momma just started crying ‘cause she knowed right off what had happened. My Momma is smart, always knows everyone’s business. Marv and Tits came up the next morning and said they needed the money back. Well, we didn’t have it and the Indians weren’t going to buy the car back from Momma so Marv said that they was going to kill Ronnie and Momma freaked out. They said that Daddy was willing to let her work it off if she come back to the Sugar Shack to work and she said she promised Jesus she wouldn’t dance no more.” Boo pulled down hard on knot of blood-matted hair, pulling out a patch of hair. Suze didn’t flinch. “Well daddy said he was going to have to take me as payment. That was funny cause he never cared much for me before that. I guess he thought Momma couldn’t let him do it. I knew it though, once Momma promises something to Jesus, she ain’t never breaking that promise. My brother wanted to come instead of me but Sugar said that he didn’t have no use for him.”
“Your brother is dead,” Suze said.
“Really? He die in the war?” Boo asked.
“No, they shot him- Marv and Tits and your daddy.”
Boo’s hand froze, holding the brush in the air over Suze’s hand. “Oh, that’s too bad.”
“Were you close to your brother?”
“No, he never came out here after I moved in until last week when he came to talk to daddy. He asked him how much momma would have to pay him to get me back. He said that he was joining the army and that he was going to get himself killed over there in the desert on account of they gave him some life insurance and momma would get lots of money if he was killed. He expected it wouldn’t be too hard to get himself shot over there. He said it was his fault I was here and Momma cried all the time. I was glad to hear that she cried all the time about me.”
“So now she won’t have you or your brother? Sugar took everything from her.”
“No, she still got Jesus.” Boo said.
“I suppose so.”
Boo turned to the vanity and pushed her pistol aside to reach the plastic box containing make-up. She rubbed Suze’s face with a dry washcloth, trying to wipe away the dirt and blood in her hairline before applying rouge to her cheeks.
Suze and Boo sat in silence as Boo applied make-up with a heavy hand. “Your about the same size as Karamel I think,” Boo said and skipped over to a rack of colorful costumes. She returned with a pair of cut-off denim shorts and a toddler sized pink tee shirt that said “I got some sugar at Sugar’s Shack.”
“Put those on.”
Suze stared down at the clothes in Boo’s hand. Boo reached for her pistol and held it by her side. “Just do what I say.”
Suze peeled off her bloody sweat stained pajamas and put on the stripper’s clothes.
Boo stepped back, scratching her leg with the barrel of her gun before returning it to the vanity. She shrugged. “Well, you’re no Karamel, but it is better. Daddy might want to put you in the show for the Indians tonight. He might even fall in love with you and ask you to marry him. Can you dance?”
Suze shook her head.
“What’s your sexy name?” Boo asked.
“I only have one name.”
“What is it?”
“Suze.”
Boo smiled. “Sooooze. Sounds like smooth. That can be your sexy name too.” She turned and led Suze to the door and out into the hallway where Tits was waiting for them.
“Looking fine Miss Suzy,” Tits wheezed.
“No Reginald, it’s Sooooze,” Boo said.
Boo held out her hand and this time Suze shook it. “Good luck Suze. If daddy shoots you, tell Ronnie and Jesus that I said hello.” She winked and laughed before turning around and going back into the dressing room.
Tits walked Suze back to the supply closet and pushed her inside. He didn’t notice Boo’s pistol in the back pocket of her borrowed stripper’s shorts.
For the first time since she had arrived in Tempest, Suze allowed herself to think of her own daughters. Did her husband have a life insurance policy for her? She didn’t think that they were valid if she was murdered and certainly not if her body was hidden in the woods to rot with Ronnie’s.
Tits opened the door to the supply closet. “Sugar needs to talk to you.”
Suze stepped out and allowed herself to be led down the hall, past the dressing room where she could hear Boo and the dancers laughing. They stopped in front of a huge door with the word “office” written on the door in marker.
Tits knocked. “It’s me Sugar, I brought your special guest.”
“Let her in Tits, you go and tell the girls to quit their cackling and get ready.” Sugar called.
Tits opened the door and pushed Suze into the room.
Sugar looked up from the papers on his desk and sucked in his breath. “I see you’ve met my Boo, this,” he pointed to her smooth hair and painted face, “looks like her work.” He walked around the desk and faced Suze. “I guess I should find her more suitable company now that she is old enough to know what is going on around here,” Sugar shook his head and gently pulled Suze to him. “You seem like a classy lady Miss Suzy. Have you ever danced professionally? I think,” he brushed a strand of hair away from her face, “that I might have a chair for you in the dressing room, I’d just need to clear out some of Marie’s old things.” Suze stiffened in Sugar’s arms and he let his arms fall away from her and took a step backwards. Suze quickly reached out and pulled him back to her with one arm. The other arm held Boo’s gun against Sugar’s stomach and pulled the trigger. Sugar fell backwards just as Tits burst through the door. Suze shot Tits in the throat and ran out the door. The dressing room door was open and the dancers were trying to pull Boo away from the door, but she held onto the frame. Suze waved the gun and grabbed Boo by the hand and dragged her to the front door.
Outside, Marv was sitting on the hood of the Lincoln staring at his watch. He stood when he saw them approaching.
“What’s going on Boo?” He asked.
Suze shot him in the chest before Boo could answer. She threw the gun on the ground next to his body and pushed Boo into the front seat of the Lincoln, scooting in behind her. Boo covered her face with her hands as they drove over Marv’s body and away from Sugar’s Shack.
Suze parked the car in front of Marie’s house and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Marie was sitting on the front porch reading- probably waiting for Ronnie to cool off and come back home. She looked up from the Bible in her lap and her mouth fell open. Slowly rising from the chair, Marie’s hand flew up to cover her mouth.
“Boo, this is very important. Did anyone else work for your daddy?”
“Just the dancers,” Boo said, she was looking out of the window at her mother, who seemed to be frozen on the front porch with her Bible in her hand.
“I don’t expect that they will give me any trouble. No other men?” Suze asked.
Boo shook her head.
“Okay then,” Suze handed Boo the keys to the Lincoln. “Don’t turn around, but Ronnie’s body is in the backseat. Your Momma is going to want to bury him someplace proper. You tell her that Sugar and Marv and Tits are all gone. And you tell her that I’m sorry about Ronnie, he was a good boy.”
Boo nodded.
Suze reached across the seat and opened Boo’s door. The little girl jumped out of the car and ran up the steps to the porch, jumping into her mother’s arms. Marie and Boo fell to their knees and held each other, crying.
Feeling awkward watching such an intimate reunion, Suze quietly opened her car door and stepped out onto the street. She turned back towards the main road that led out of Tempest. She began to jog towards the gas station but stopped and looked down. Her barefeet were covered in blood. Not her blood. Maybe Ronnie’s, or Sugar’s, or Tits’, or Marv’s blood was caked all over her bare legs and Karamel’s shorts. The “Sugar’s Shack” logo beneath the drying blood was no longer visible. Suze walked on, careful to avoid any broken glass on the sidewalk.
A station wagon pulled up alongside her but she looked straight ahead. The car stopped and several women got out. Suze went limp when they grabbed her from behind and bound her arms and legs behind, blindfolded her, and taped her mouth. The women threw her body into the back of the station wagon and sped away.
Suze was barely aware of the fact that she was being carried into a cool building and her body laid on the floor. She felt many hands on her as they stripped away Karamel’s clothes and began washing the blood from her skin and hair. No one spoke to her but they were singing. The songs were old hymns and were familiar to Suze, but it was impossible to tell how many voices there were or how many hands were attending to her.
They dressed her again, this time in a long dress made out of a heavy scratchy fabric. Suze did not fight.
“Suze honey, my name is Sister Estelle. Marie called us and told us that this was an emergency situation and you needed a cleansing. We burned down Sugar’s Shack and are out looking for his girls. We’ve had our eyes on that place for a long time, but Sugar would never let us come near it, not since we got Marie on the side of the Light.”
“No,” Suze said. But she did not know what she was refusing.
“This may hurt, but we got to get rid of those demons in you before you hurt anyone else,” another woman’s voice said.
“No, no, no!” Suze said.
“We found you walking down the street covered in the blood of others, out of your mind. Four men have died since you got to this town. Don’t tell me no woman,” Sister Estelle said. Suze tried to sit up but was pushed down by several pairs of hands.
The women began to pray, Sister Estelle was leading them. A distant voice began to wail. The women were holding Suze down and saying in unison “Evil leave this place, leave this body, leave this soul!” Several more hands appeared and began to slap and punch Suze as she struggled. The distant wailing grew closer and Suze could make out words between the wails. “It’s no demon, it’s me. It is I am It is I am It is I am….” As the voice grew louder, she realized that it was her own voice and blacked out.
The Sisters and the Strippers
She awoke in her own front yard, wearing her stained but washed pajamas and running shoes. She sat up and looked around. There was a handwritten note pinned to her shirt that said, “This soul has been cleansed by the women of the Greatest Deliverance Tabernacle. Handle with care. Have a Blessed Day.”
Suze stood on shaky legs just as the front door to her house flew open and her youngest daughter ran out squealing. “Mommy!! You’re alive!” She threw her arms around Suze’s waist and held her tight. R.J. appeared in the doorway looking relieved and Suze crumpled Sister Estelle’s note in her hand as he stepped out onto the front porch and waved.
“Thank God!” R.J. said, squinting into the sun. “I don’t even want to hear it right now, I am sure that you have an excellent reason for assaulting the crossing guard and then running off to God knows where, but I don’t have time to hear it.”
Suze looked down at her youngest daughter and smiled. “Sorry to worry everyone. I’ve had quite the adventure.”
“This little adventure did not cost anything did it?” R.J. asked.
“Cost?”
“Yes Suze, cost. As in money. As in money that we do not have.”
Suze opened her mouth to answer but her words were lost in the sound of tires screeching on the pavement behind her. She turned to see the Lincoln as it stopped abruptly half on the sidewalk and half on the street.
“What in the hell?” R.J. jumped down the porch steps and jogged across the yard towards the car.
Marie threw open the door and stood up. Her hair was sticking up and she had tear streaks running down her cheeks. She held up a single hand to R.J., stopping him.
“Hello R.J.” Marie said and turned to Suze.
“You been cleansed?” she asked.
Suze nodded.
“Good, I need your help.”
“What’s the matter? Where’s Boo?” Suze said peering into the back of the towncar.
“Oh my God! Is that Ronnie? You drove all the way out here with his body still back there?” Suze stepped back.
“Whoa! Body? What’s going on here?” R.J. asked.
“R.J, you remember Marie Washington from High School?” Suze turned and faced her husband.
“Um, well, maybe, I seem to recall a Marie…” R.J. looked down at his watch. “I am going to let you ladies catch up, running late for work.”
“Okay honey, have a good day,” Suze called turning back to Marie. “Marie and I are just going to bury your only son and then I expect we’ll get some coffee or something, talk about our old days on the cheerleading squad. You know, lady stuff.”
R.J. stopped but did not turn around to face the women. He stood still for several seconds and held his breath, giving himself time to acknowledge that he had a son, his son was dead and his wife knew. She knew about Marie. She might even know about some of the others. Slowly, painfully, he willed his left leg to move and then his right. He reached his front door and crossed the threshold, not allowing himself to turn around and look at his wife, children and former lover before shutting the door behind him.
“Are these your girls?” Marie asked.
“Yes. Marie, this is Hanna, Haddie and Hope,” Suze paused letting each girl wave as their name was said. “Ladies, this is Miss Washington, mommy and daddy’s friend from school.”
“Nice to meet you,” Haddie, the middle girl said.
Marie nodded and then looked back at Suze. “Boo is gone. The Indians took her.”
“What? Why? Are you sure?” Suze asked. She reached out and pulled her youngest daughter to her.
“The Indians. Sugar sold her to them before you killed him. They showed up right after you left. I tired to chase them into the woods, but I can’t do it alone Suzy.”
“Momma! You killed somebody?” Haddie asked.
“No.” Suze said.
“Yes.” Marie said.
“Was one of them that guy?” Hope asked. She had wandered over to the Lincoln and had her face pressed against the back window.
“No, she killed the guy that killed him,” Marie said.
“Oh, so Momma killed the bad guy,” Hope said.
Suze rolled her eyes and turned back to Marie. “Why did you come here? You need to call the police or the FBI or something.”
“I thought that you might appreciate it if I did not involve the police right now. And it might be too late by the time they showed up. Nobody can find the Indians unless they want to be found.”
“But you think that I could find them?” Suze asked.
“I think they are going to find you. And when they do, that might be our only chance to get to Boo.”
“Why are they going to find me?”
“Because, they were looking for you when they got Boo, told me that Sugar had sold you to them too.”
“That is ridiculous. I wasn’t his to sell.”
Marie shrugged. “Neither was Boo or Bouncie or any of the other girls, but he did.”
“Was mommy for sale?” Hope asked.
“Of course not honey, Daddy bought me a long time ago. This is just a misunderstanding.”
“We need to call the police.” Suze said, turning back to the house.
“They won’t believe you Suze!” Marie called. “And even if they do, there is no way this could end well for you, not after what you did to Sugar, Marv, and Tits.”
Haddie, Hope and Hanna giggled. “Tits!” Hanna said.
Suze stopped and looked up at her house. She could not see R.J. but she could imagine him inside, pacing back and forth in the bedroom.
“Girls, get your bags, Miss Marie and Mommy are taking you to school and then we need to run some errands.”
“You going to kill some more people Mommy?” Hope asked.
“Only if I have to honey.”
“I wouldn’t leave them behind if I were you Suzy. If they come looking for you and can’t find you, they might be in danger.”
Suze pressed her hand against her forehead and closed her eyes.
“Mommy? Should we go get daddy?” one of her daughters asked. She sounded far away. Suze tried to shake her head but the movement made her dizzy.
“No,” Marie said. “Your daddy is no use to us.”
Suze smiled at Marie. “Hasn’t been any use in some time now. Girls get your shoes, we are going for a ride.”
“Not with that dead guy!” Hope shrieked.
Suze’s SUV wasn’t in the driveway; it was still dead in street behind the school. She walked over to her husband’s Buick and popped the trunk.
“Marie, you mind if we move Ronnie for now?”
The two women carried Ronnie’s body and dropped him in the trunk of his father’s car. Hope reached out and threw a handful of marigolds that she had picked from the flowerbed onto his body just before Suze slammed the trunk.
Haddie stuck her head out of the open window of the Lincoln and waved at her mother. “Momma, it smells like crap back here and Hanna doesn’t even have her booster seat. I am getting daddy.” She started to open the door but Suze slammed it shut.
“Shut up Haddie,” she said to her daughter.
Haddie was about to protest again but Hope put a hand over her mouth and whispered. “Don’t! Momma kills people.”
Haddie stuck her tongue out at her sister as the Lincoln did a U-turn in front of their house.
“How do you think the Indians are going to know where I am? What are we going to do when they find us? Do you have a gun?” Suze asked.
Before Marie could answer, Haddie leaned up from the back and asked “Why do y’all keep on saying Indians? I thought we were supposed to say Native American now.” She looked at Marie. “You know, like Miss Washington is an African American.”
“They aren’t Native Americans, not really. Not Indians either,” Marie said.
“Why do you call them Indians then?” Suze asked.
Marie shrugged. “That is what they call themselves.”
“Why? What are they?” Haddie asked.
“Hippies. Or Ex-hippies I guess. They moved out there in the seventies and set up camp. Wanted to live off of the land, get back to their roots, remove themselves from the trappings of modern society. After a couple years, they must have gotten bored with that and decided to try a life of drug dealing and gunrunning. They still keep to themselves though and grow their own food. They have some of the best tomatoes, I always stock up when they come down to the Town Market Square on Tuesdays.”
“So these fake Indian drug dealers that kidnapped your daughter, they can grow a mean tomato? Huh.”
“Yes,” Marie said.
“Bullshit,” Haddie said and crossed her arms.
“Suzy, you need to teach your daughter some manners before I leave her on the side of the road.”
“Shut up Haddie,” Suze said. The women sat in silence for several minutes before Suze spoke again. “It does sound like bullshit though.”
“Sugar has been doing business with them for sometime. They cannot keep women in their camp. Every baby born for the last 20 years has been male. The women they bring in either get sick or go crazy and run off. Sister Estelle says that God cursed them for living in the darkness of the woods. Says that they need to come out into the light.”
Suze and Marie sat up straight and looked around anxiously as the car neared the woods on the Tempest border. Suze saw movement behind the trees but it disappeared into the trees before she could tell if it was one of the “Indians.”
Marie parked the car in front of the only two-story building in Tempest, The Greatest Deliverance Tabernacle. Sister Estelle was waiting in the doorway. Two more sisters were standing behind her, hands on their hips.
Inside, the sisters led the women to the front of the church where the women of the congregation were praying over a row of guns and ammunition covering the first pew.
“Whoa. You ladies mean business,” Suze said, looking down at the guns.
“Hello Suze, you are looking better,” Sister Estelle said.
“Thank You,” Suze said. She looked down and realized that she was still wearing her pajamas.
“Suze, I’d like you to meet my Sisters in Christ. This is Ester, Ann, Hilda, and Rose,” Estelle said the names in quick succession and each woman nodded as she was introduced.
“Nice to meet you all,” Suze said. She tried to match each name with a face but they were all in their sixties with light brown skin and short gray hair. The Sisters in Christ looked enough alike to be actual sisters. They checked weapons and divided up the ammunition. Each sister tucked a pistol into an ankle holster that was concealed beneath their long full skirts and had a second weapon in their handbag.
“Um, Miss Rose, are we all going out to find the Indians? Will anyone stay behind?” Suze asked, touching the woman lightly on the arm.
“Child, I’m Ann. That is Rose over there,” Ann nodded to a woman with a Bible under her arm near the front door. “Sister Rose, your piece is showing.” Ann called to her friend. Rose looked down at her right ankle. Her skirt was tucked behind the holster, revealing the handle of her gun. She shook her leg until the fabric was free and smiled at Ann from across the room.
“We aren’t going anywhere. The Indians are coming here,” Ann said and handed Suze a gun.
“Why are they doing that?” Suze asked, examining the weapon in her hand.
“Because we put out word that you were hiding here.”
“They going to start a war for me?”
“Yes. Well, you and Marie and your girls. Sister Estelle made the deal just this morning.”
“What? She what?”
“Didn’t Marie tell you the plan? A deal this big, they are going to want to send all of their strongest warriors to collect. That will leave the other girls at the camp with just one or maybe two guarding them. Three of our Sisters have been watching them out there all day. Going to collect them as soon as they head this way.”
“I never agreed to this! I have to get my daughters out of here. What do you think they will do when they don’t get us and they realize that the others are gone? How could you bring my girls into this? Hannah! Hope! Haddie! Where are you girls?” Suze started to look around frantically for her daughters.
“Your girls are safe. Our girls are not. My daughter Michelle, she goes by Bouncie now, she is out there. And Rose’s grandbabies Karamel and Kandy and Estelle’s daughter Krystal. And of course you know about Boo. They are all out there and we are going to get them back.”
“You are all crazy! They will never let you. They will come back for them and then they will come for my girls, you had no right to make this deal! They were never yours to sell.”
“They will not come for anyone. We are going to kill them. Kill them all,” Ann said. “I am sorry that we brought your girls here but you left them didn’t you? Took off running in your pajamas without a single thought as to what might happen to them. They are safer here than they would have been at home, raised by that demon of a husband you left them with.”
“What do you know about my husband? We are getting out of here. Girls! Where are you?” Suze spun around.
Ann laughed. “I know more about your husband than you do. Now calm down, your girls are safe. And you will be no help to them in this state. Sister Louise just called and said that the Indians are on their way. You should go into the bathroom there,” Ann nodded towards a small room behind the organ, “and collect yourself. When you come out and have calmed down, I’ll give you some bullets for that gun and we’ll get this over and then you and your girls can be home in time to have supper on the table for that demon of a husband.”
Suze caught the hiccup in her throat and forced it back down. Squaring her shoulders, she walked to the tiny windowless bathroom and closed the door before collapsing on the floor and sobbing.
In the bathroom, she saw a navy blue dress hanging on the back of the door. It had pink and white flowers embroidered on the sleeves and around the waist. She took off her pajamas and pulled the dress over her head. It was made for someone much shorter and wider than Suze but she cinched the tie in the back as much as possible and strapped the ankle holster that had been underneath the dress on the hanger to her leg. She splashed cold water in her face and stared at herself in the mirror.
There was a knock on the door and Sister Estelle spoke softly through the door. “Sister Suzy, the Indians are almost here and your girls are asking for you.”
Suze opened the door and stepped out into the church.
“Oh, doesn’t that look nice!” Estelle said and clapped.
“Where are my girls?” Suze asked.
“Over there,” Estelle pointed to the back of the church. “They need to be where the Indians can see them so we can get them to come inside. Once they are here, Rose and Marie will lock the door and we will attack. I am going to be up front, Hilda and Ester are going to be in the back corners. Do you want to stand back here, behind the organ? They just need to be able to see you from outside the front door.”
“No. I am going to stand in the back, with my daughters.” Suze said.
“Okie Dokie,” Estelle winked and held out a half-empty box of bullets. “You will be needing these then. God Bless you girl. Let’s get this over with and get our girls home as quick as possible then. Don’t worry; they will not be ready for this. No one ever suspects the church ladies.”
Suze took the ammunition and turned to join her daughters.
Hannah reached out and grabbed Suze’s dress. “Mommy, are we going to be okay? That lady made us talk to Jesus in case we met him today, she said we didn’t want the first place we talked to Him to be at the Pearly Gates. Isn’t that heaven momma? Are we going to die?”
“No,” Suze put the extra bullets into the pocket of her dress.
“Are you going to kill people?” Hope asked.
“Yes.”
“But only bad guys, right?”
Suze looked down and tucked a piece of hair behind Hope’s ear. “I don’t know baby. I am going to kill whoever I need to kill to get us out of here.”
Haddie whistled. “Daddy is going to be pissed.”
“I don’t care what your daddy thinks.”
“I’m going to tell him that you said that,” Haddie said.
“Okay. But right now I need you girls to get down on the floor because the bad guys are here.” Suze felt her hand twitch behind the pew. She realized that she wanted the fight to start. She was looking forward to killing the bad guys.
Rose smiled as the Indians filed into the church. Suze bit her lip to keep from laughing. Thirteen men walked in, they were all barefoot and wearing leather vests decorated with feathers and beads. The chief, a man with graying hair and blue eyes, wore a large headdress that looked like something from a costume shop.
The chief held a hand up to Estelle and said “How.”
Suze snorted.
“Ah, the women. Nice,” the chief said.
Suze squeezed Hannah’s hand and the girl dropped quickly down to the ground. Her sisters followed her. Once her daughters were lying on the ground, Suze raised her hands and shot the chief between his eyes. By the time he had fallen to the ground, Suze had also killed the two men standing behind him. She stepped out into the aisle, drawing the fire away from her daughters. Marie shot several men as they turned to escape. Only three of the men were armed. One of the Indians, a teenage boy with blue eyes identical to the chief, managed to shoot Sister Estelle in the leg before being shot by Ann and Rose from behind.
The Indians were dead in less than two minutes. Too short, Suze thought as she tucked her weapon into the ankle holster.
She walked over to where Estelle lay bleeding and leaned over her. “I am not sure that you got all the demons out after all Sister Estelle.”
“I reckon not, but you wouldn’t have been too much good to us if I got them all.” Estelle said, smiling weakly.
While Suze was in the bathroom changing out of the blood-soaked church dress and into her pajamas, Sister Louise showed up with Boo and the strippers. Boo was happy to be reunited with her mother. But the strippers didn’t look like they were quite ready to be rid of their demons either.
Marie and Boo nodded as Suze and her daughters walked outside but the women did not speak. Hannah, Hope, and Haddie were asleep in the back of the Lincoln when Suze passed through Eden. As she carried her sleeping daughters to the hotel room, she laughed at the thought of R.J. finding the body in his trunk. After all of these years, he was going to have to deal with his son.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
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