Borderlands (22 page)

They helped her to their car, a magnificent white Cadillac convertible. The top was down and the car shone like the moon. She sat between them and gave directions to her place. Her head began clearing as they sped through the cool night air. She thanked them for their help. The tall one just kept on driving and the little one said think nothing of it, darlin, and they took her thirty miles out in the boonies and raped her.

11

At first she tried to fight, but the taller one pinned her arms behind her, and the little one, the one named Mort, licked her ear and whispered into it that she best cut the crap if she knew what was good for her. And in that instant she knew he was right—knew right then and there that she either did what they wanted or they’d make her do it anyway and be all the rougher about it. So she quit the fuss and did what they wanted.

They were at it for a couple of hours, having fun with her every which way and passing a bottle of Old Crow between them, making her take a drink every once in a while herself. “It’s a party, sunshine,” little Mort said. “
Ever
body drinks at a party.”

When they’d finally had enough they drove her home. Tucson, the tall ropy one, did the driving, pushing the Caddy up over ninety on the long stretch of highway back toward Laredo. She hoped with all her might that a state trooper or a Ranger would spot them and pull them over, but of course there wasn’t a cop to be seen.

Mort snuggled up close with his arm around her on the drive back and asked if she was all right. She nodded and kept her eyes straight ahead, watching the dark road zooming under the Caddy’s headlights.

He pressed some money in her hand. “Here honey,” he said, “buy yourself some new things, okay?” They had made a mess of her clothes. She’d seen Tucson tuck her panties into his pocket. Mort added to the money in her hand and said, “Some
real
nice things, okay?”

In front of the house he held the car door for her like a little gentleman. For a moment she had the awful feeling he was going to walk her to the door, maybe kiss her goodnight. But he simply got back in the car and tipped his hat and said, “Thank you, honey, thank you,” like the whole thing had been her idea for cheering up a couple of lonely trailhands.

Tucson, who’d humped on her like he was trying to kill something with a stick, never said a word. Just drove fast and raped hard and stole women’s underwear. Mort was something slimy she’d like to see run over by a car, but Tucson was something else. He was something she wanted to see tied up tight and then have at him with a steak knife and book of matches.

She stood at the side of the road, clutching her torn shirt to her sore breasts, and watched the Caddy drive off into the morning mist. She was afraid to curse them yet, even in her mind, for fear they might somehow hear her thoughts and wheel the Caddy into a quick U-turn.

She locked her jaws against the pain and made her way to the door. Before going inside she wadded the bills in her hand and flung them into the shrubbery under the front window. She went in the bathroom and bent over the toilet but finally had to put her finger in her throat to make herself throw up. In the mirror she saw that her cheekbone under her left eye was swollen darkly. She brushed her teeth for fifteen minutes, then undressed and got under a steaming shower and scrubbed herself thoroughly with a washcloth as hard as she could stand it.

And standing there with the shower cascading over her head, she cried. Cried loudly and long, wailing and sobbing and gasping for breath and wiping webs of mucus from her nose. Cried from the depths of her battered heart.

The humiliation! It felt like something jammed in her windpipe. Just took what they wanted. Like she was nothing but some …
thing
. Some thing they could do whatever they wanted with. No asking, no nothing. Just
took
it.

Worse. Let’s face it, girl, it was worse than that. They’d both seen it. Seen it and heard it. That goddamned red blazing moment when she’d suddenly arched up under that Tucson bastard and dug her fingers in his back. They’d seen it and they’d heard the sound she made and they’d known it wasn’t pain.

God
damn
them.

Them?
God damn
her
. Filthy, weak, stupid …

Why didn’t she just go back inside and ask Sparky to take her home?

Christ’s sake, she’d been hit in the face, she couldn’t think straight.

She was clear enough in the head to appreciate that nice Cadillac car.

Get
them. Get the bastards. Call the police. Right now.

Yeah, sure, the police.
Real
good idea. Two words against one.

Call them anyway. Do it.

Are you simple, girl, or what?

All her idea, your honor. And if you don’t mind us saying so, the lady had herself a real fine time for a fact. She didn’t hardly want the party to end. She wasn’t the least bit put out till afterwards when we paid up. Claimed it wasn’t enough. Damn if it didn’t seem like a lot to us.

And the judge: I know the story, boys. Heard it a thousand times if I heard it once. Lots a these working girls don’t know when to leave well enough alone. You, girl: don’t let me see your painted face in here again.

Case dismissed. But the boys wouldn’t be happy about her putting them through all that. They’d sure enough come around to discuss it with her. How stupid can you get, girl, showing them where you live? Letting them bring you right to your front door?

O lord, they’d probably come around to see her again anyway, since they’d seen how much she enjoyed it and all. When they’d seen it touch her, Mort had kissed her on the nose and laughed.

What to do?

You kidding?
Go
. Hit the road. Skeedaddle. Ride, Sally, ride.

She stayed under the shower until it turned cold, then dried off and did the best she could for the shiner with makeup. She put on her best skirt and blouse and packed the rest of her clothes. She tucked her tightly-rolled savings—two hundred and twenty dollars—into the toe of a spare shoe and slipped the shoe in the suitcase.

She went out the back door and crossed the yard and knocked on the rear door of the Santiagos’ house. Joselita and Moise were having breakfast, already dressed for work. They said they would be very happy to give her a ride to the bus station in town. She had a cup of coffee with them and said she was going to visit her grandmother in Houston. They said that was nice, families should always stay close. They politely averted their gaze from her bruised eye.

She finished her coffee and went back to the house to get her suitcase. She took a last look around, made sure all the lights were out and all the taps turned off tight. She was halfway across the yard again when she stopped, set down her bag and went around to the front of the house. She knelt on the wet grass and probed the shrubbery under the window—pricking her finger on a thorn and staining the hem of her skirt—and soon found the wadded money. Six twenty-dollar bills. She stood up and folded the money carefully and slipped it into her bra.

I mean, she thought … after all.

III

GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM

1

Dolores is drowning.

The murky water is bloodwarm and tastes of salty copper. Far above her upturned face the surface glimmers dimly. She flails weakly with exhausted arms, kicks feebly against a bottom of soft mud. She can hold her breath no longer and her lungs begin to rip. She tries to scream and the foul water rams into her mouth like a boot heel …

She bursts awake—pushing up on her elbows, gasping, kicking at the sheets entangled about her legs, for a moment longer still feeling her chest being crushed under a lack of air before she realizes where she is.

She falls back on the sweat-damp pillow with a huge inhalation which she releases in a long hissing sigh.

Oh man. Oh that damn dream.

Her heart hammers on her ribs. Her throat burns. A headache hacks at her skull like a hatchet.

Easy, sweetie. It’s only morning. Calm down.

An oily cast of orange sunlight oozes through the window blinds and casts black stripes on the opposite wall. Already the bayou humidity has begun to congeal the air. She is sheathed in sweat.

She turns her face from the window and stares at the open closet door. The closet seems larger than usual somehow. She puzzles over this for a minute before she understands.

Billy Boy’s clothes are gone.

Wake up, girl. Things are happening here.

She tries hard to recall the night before, fuzzily remembers drinking bourbon from the bottle while she watched TV. She hadn’t seen Billy Boy in, what, two days … no, three. And now she vaguely recollects reeling into the bedroom and …
oh yeah …
Ellis Corman, the next-door neighbor … peeking over into her bedroom again from his bathroom window, the hairy-ass pecker-wood. So this time she left the blind up and turned on both dresser lamps to give him better light to see by and turned the radio on loud and dropped her robe and danced all around the room in just her panties to the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” kicking her legs up high and shaking her ass and titties and just generally giving that horny sonofabitch a hell of a show, letting him drool over what he couldn’t have … And then … and then Della Corman was at her own bedroom window and looking over at her with her mouth open big enough to hold a watermelon. And then Della was gone from the window and a second later busting through the bathroom door and Ellis nearly jumped five feet in the air with his eyes like golf balls as Della came in whacking at him with both fists and he was all hunch-shouldered and ducking and sidestepping and finally managed to get around her and out of there and Dolores remembers standing naked at her window and laughing …

And then Della Corman was at the bathroom window hollering “You filthy
whore
!” and yanked the blind down and snapped off the bathroom light.

The fat-assed bitch. Dolores had been of a mind to go over there and snatch her bald headed but decided to have another little drink first …

She remembers nothing more.

Billy Boy must’ve come in after she passed out.

She sits up and swings her legs over the edge of the bed and kicks over a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam as a bolt of red pain flares in her skull. She cradles her head in her hands and watches the bourbon spread and vanish in the cracks between the floorboards.

Sweet Baby Jesus. The little sonofabitch did it. Got his hat and gone.

She stands up, sways dizzily for a moment, then staggers naked across the hall and into the bathroom. She reemerges wearing a man’s blue workshirt, only slightly too big for her, and goes into the living room. The kids are sitting on the floor watching television cartoons. Bugs Bunny.

The volume of the little black-and-white is barely audible. Bugs Bunny gnaws at a carrot. The kids don’t even smile at the action on the set, just watch it blankly while they eat sugar-coated cereal by the handful from the box set between them. On the screen Yosemite Sam is hopping with rage and shaking a cutlass in Bugs’ face. Bugs does not look too concerned. The kids don’t even glance at her.

She goes into the kitchen and sees a note stuck to the refrigerator door with a pink wad of chewing gum.

Just like him to use gum. Goddamn bubblegummer. What else can you expect from somebody named
Billy Boy
, for Christ’s sake?

Sorry slim. No more for me. Your probly sick of it too so I guess I’ll move on down the road. You got great looks, you’ll do all right. I’m a low life I know. Luck to you and the kids
.

Little prick didn’t even sign it. Lowlife is right. All of you. Lowlifes. Good goddamn riddance.

On the kitchen table is a loose-leaf sheet of paper beside an empty Old Crow bottle. She steps over for a look. “Dear Daddy” is scribbled in a barely legible hand across the top line. The rest of the sheet bears a big X. She crumples the page and tosses it in the direction of the full garbage pail.

Yesterday’s pot of coffee is still on the stove. She gives it a shake and finds it’s yet holding about a half-cup, so she turns on the burner under it. On top of the three-day pile of dishes in the sink are two empty bottles of Pearl. She just bets he didn’t bring them in with him and goes to the refrigerator and looks inside and sees that, sure enough, the little bastard drank her last two beers.

She goes to the kitchen doorway and leans against it, her head throbbing. “You kids see Billy Boy this morning?”

They remain fixed on the screen, seem not even to have heard her, though she knows they did.

“
Hey!
I’m talking to you! You seen Billy Boy today?”

“Yesssss,” the girl says without looking away from the TV. Nearly six years old, she is older than her brother by a year.

“
Well?
What’d he say?”

“Nothing much.”

“Mary Marlene!”

The girl cuts her a fast look. “
Nothin!
He give me and Jesse fifty cent apiece to keep real quiet and not wake you up.”

She suddenly thinks of the car. She strides quickly to the front window and pulls aside the curtain and sees through the screen that the Ford is gone from under the big magnolia in the front yard where she always parks it for the shade. The bastard said the car was hers, he got it for her. Liar. Oh how they lie. She catches the fragrance off the white blossoms. A ship’s horn blares sonorously out on the channel. Purple thunderheads are already building high over the gulf.

She turns back to the girl. “What else did he say? Mary Marlene!
Look
at me when I’m talking to you!”

The girl glares at her mother, her mouth in a tight little line.

“I want to know what else he said. Tell me exactly.”

“
Nothin!
Said he hadda go to Houston or someplace. Give me and Jesse fifty cent each and said we could spend it on
whatever we want
!”

“I’ve told you about taking that tone, missy.”

The girl shrugs and turns her attention back to the television. Beside her the boy watches the screen with his jaws slack and snot shining under his nose. That one’s a dummy for damn sure, Dolores thinks, a purebred fool. And she feels an immediate rush of familiar guilt. What kind of mother thinks such things about her own child?