Dirty South Drug Wars (4 page)

A bird perched in a tree nearby made some pretty annoying sounds with its throat. Using a book I’d abandoned on the table, I nearly fell off the balcony in my attempt to murder the poor bird with the tales of Edgar Allen Poe. The pages fluttered as the book fell to the ground, and we fell off our chairs onto the balcony in laughter.

We took turns yelling obscenities to the lake, laughing as the curse words bounced off the surface and echoed through the dark woods.

Minutes after finishing off her melted ice cream, Lucy passed out in my bed, her slender body somehow producing the loudest snores I’d ever heard in my life.

Crawling back outside, the effects of the weed fading away, my forgotten worries crept back into my brain. As I leaned on the balcony rail, my face tilted toward the moon, my mind flashed back to the events of the day: my uncle finding my mother with a Montgomery, the fighting, the threats, and the things Davis Montgomery said about his nephew.

Was he talking about Tanner?

I still remembered him, the handsome twelve-year-old boy from the funeral home. The past four years I’d thought of him almost obsessively, sketching his face in my sketchbook, his brown eyes haunting my dreams. The vast amount of time I spent daydreaming about him was absurd, but I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to him after all these years. Who had he become? Was he still that same sweet boy who handed me a bouquet of white lilies at my father’s funeral?

I wondered if Tanner Montgomery was anything like me. Was he unhappy with the way things were or the family he was born into? Or did he soak up the attention, like so many of my cousins did, using it to his advantage? Maybe he was like Brodie, taking full advantage of the girls who relished his bad boy image. Did he ever get kicked while he was down? If I were lucky, I’d never find out, because as pathetic as my life may have been, I valued it far too much to get involved with a Montgomery.

Or so I thought.

My mother and I never got along after the day she was caught with Davis Montgomery. After two days of hiding out at a friend’s house, she finally came home, and Lucy really let her have it.

My sister ran on two levels: high and low. There was no in-between when it came to my sister and her mood swings.

Lucy screamed at our mother, calling her everything but a child of God as she threw anything she got her hands on. Books, magazines, knickknacks, and Mama’s angel collection went flying. There was no stopping Lucy when she went on a tirade, so it was best to not interfere.

Lucy told Mama the same thing she’d told me: I was more of a mother to her than our mother had ever been. Lucy’s words didn’t enrage our mother or cause her to attack Lucy the way she’d attacked me. Mama simply stood there and cried, glaring at me in accusation from where I sat on the stairway. Eventually she pushed past me and holed up in her room.

Lucy locked herself inside her room after that. We didn’t see hide nor hair of her for two days until I pried open the door to find her naked as the day she was born. Her body trembled in a corner while she stared blankly at the ceiling. She was in the midst one of her breakdowns and mumbled about someone following her.

With a heavy sigh, I pulled her to her feet and carried her to the shower. She quivered as the warm water washed over her. Lucy fell to the floor of the shower and drew her knees up to her chest, rocking back and forth in a fetal position. With bright blue eyes fixed and void of emotion, she mumbled below her breath. I joined her in the shower fully clothed and grabbed one of her limp, wet hands, whispering comforting words in her ear. Reddish strands of hair hung in lifeless clumps from her head. Blunt-cut bangs were plastered along the paleness of her forehead. I brushed them away.

Lucy had begun experimenting with more serious, dangerous drugs, mostly uppers. This made it difficult to determine if her behavior was an effect of the drugs or if she was having one of the many breakdowns she’d had since she was a small child. I begged her to tell me if she was on something, but she said nothing until I mentioned pumping her stomach again. That seemed to snap her out of the wonderland where she enjoyed dwelling.

She stood on two slippery legs, hollering about nasal tubes and charcoal, darting out of the shower and face-planting on the giant flower-shaped rug on the bathroom floor. I chased after her, grabbing one slick foot before she wiggled out of my grasp and disappeared behind her bedroom door. The sound of her dresser being shoved against the opposite side of the door caused me to give up my feeble attempt to capture her.

“What’s going on?” my mother asked in a weary voice, stumbling from her bedroom.

“I think you need to send Lucy back to Behavioral Health,” I whispered, still angry with my mother, but she was the key to helping my sister get healthy. “She’s getting worse. And I don’t think it’s the drugs making her act the way she does.”

“Your sister is fine. She’s just an emotional person. She’s like me that way.” Mama dragged her tired fingers through her short, auburn curls.

My face grew red. “Mama, she goes days without sleeping. She’s always paranoid, talking about someone following her around when no one’s there,” I said. “Last week she jumped in the lake while I was gone to the store, and she swam lap after lap. She knows she’s not supposed to swim in the lake or pool when no one’s here. What if she got a cramp and couldn’t make it to shore? She might drown next time!”

Mama rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Rue, your sister is energetic and a tad eccentric. Geniuses are eccentric. You should stop being so jealous of her. It’s very unbecoming of a young lady.”

I ran my fingers through my damp hair. “I’m
jealous
of her? Mama, I just found her curled up in a corner, naked. That’s only after she didn’t come out of her bedroom for two days. Now she has the dresser shoved in front of the door to barricade me out. And you call that
eccentric
?”

“What do you suggest, Dr. Monroe?” Mama asked. She walked into the bathroom, stripped off her pajamas, and kicked them to the corner of the room, right where they’d stay until I took them to the wash. “Don’t you think I’d know if something was really wrong with Lucy? I’m a nurse, Rue. I mean, I know you
think
you know
everything
, but you don’t. Clearly.”

“I don’t know everything but I do have a pretty good memory. And if I remember correctly, the last time Lucy was admitted into Behavioral Health, the doctor diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. Remember? She was on those pills for a while and they really helped.”

“That doctor is a quack.” Mama glared at me as she held onto the wooden door. “I’m not putting Lucy on those pills again. She acted like a zombie. There’s nothing wrong with her. End of discussion.”

Mama slammed the door in my face, and the heavy wood bumped the end of my nose. I rubbed at it, growing angrier, and kicked the door with my bare foot.

Our arguments increased over the next couple years. I wondered if she’d secretly be happy with me turning eighteen. Maybe she’d kick me out of our home and onto the streets. Nah, my family wouldn’t let that happen. She’d be dead before I got to the end of the driveway. She was lucky Amos and my other uncles had only disowned her from the Monroe family. Things could have been so much worse; at least he hadn’t killed her. I shivered as I remembered his words from the church. My uncle was a scary man, and also a man of his word. As much as he loved me like his own child, I didn’t doubt he’d end my life if there were any chance I was mixed up with a Montgomery.

As it turned out, she didn’t kick me out. She left herself.

The year I became a junior in high school, my mother announced she’d found a new, higher paying job at a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. It was a two-hour drive one way from where we lived.

Horror overcame me at the thought of uprooting my life and spending my last years in a huge school in an unfamiliar city. My worries were unfounded because my mother dropped an even bigger bombshell; she never even planned on taking us with her.

“
Rue
is eighteen now. And you girls keep making it very clear how you don’t need me since
Rue
does everything around here,” my mother told us one night as we sat in the living room.

I stared through the sliding glass doors at the lake outside. It was a still night, not a ripple breaking the surface of the water.

“A friend of mine from nursing school lives in Birmingham.” Mama wrinkled her nose at the smell of food I had cooking on the stove.

She never did like fried cabbage, which was why I cooked it once a week. Cabbage really did stink, but it was a smell worth enduring if it meant getting some kind of attention from my mother, even if it was negative attention.

“I’ll just stay with my friend while I’m there.” She shrugged. “I’m working a seven day on, seven day off schedule, so I’ll be home every other week.” Smiling at us, her eyes twinkled with a happiness I hadn’t seen in a long time.

I swallowed the lump that formed in my throat at the sight of that smile. The thought of Lucy and me spending every night home alone was somewhat worrisome, but my mother would be happier, so I nodded in response. We were home alone most of the time already, although not for a week at a time. I’d agree to just about anything as long as we got our mama back, our mama who spent time baking cookies with us and building sandcastles on the small beach area our daddy had constructed near the lake.

She left us near the end of my junior year and Lucy’s sophomore year; her red sports car was packed to the gills with her belongings. With a childlike squeal, she hugged Lucy and me so tightly she knocked the wind from our lungs. After a kiss on our cheeks and a mumbled “I love you” I hadn’t heard in years, she was gone.

We stood on the wooden deck that spanned out across the front yard, staring at the deserted road until the sun sank in the horizon. The sky burst into swirls of reds, pinks, and oranges past the lake, bringing a heron-blue light with it. The soulful sounds of crickets and whip-poor-wills sang from the trees that surrounded the property. Lucy and I eventually wandered inside where we both collapsed on the massive soft leather couch and fell asleep beside one another, just as we’d done as children.

*

Two lonely, teenage girls with multiple mommy and daddy issues could be a very dangerous thing when left to their own devices. Unfortunately, I became one of the stereotypes. It wasn’t my fault. Not really.

Mayhaw was a very small town, full of old biddies who thrived on nothing more than gossiping. Kids around here were very careful with their hook-ups. If someone had sex, it seemed everyone knew it before they even had time to pull their drawers up. That was why when we needed a little physical release, we did it with someone from out of town. And we used an alias. My alias was Mandy. One should also have an accomplice when pulling these stunts, and mine happened to be my cousin, Josie.

I didn’t mean to sound like a whore or anything, because I wasn’t. I was still carrying my V-card proudly. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t done everything
but
the dirty deed. My alter-ego sometimes found a willing participant, being the hormonal girl she was, but actually having sex was one thing I planned on waiting for. They said you always remembered your first, and I didn’t want to remember some nameless guy grunting on top of me in the cab of his crappy truck for the rest of my life.

The school year had just ended, and I spent my days working at my grandmother’s cake shop, surrounding myself in swirls of frosting and the scent of buttercream icing. I licked my lips and swirled icing from a bag with a star tip, topping a cupcake with the thick chocolaty goodness before I placed it inside a deep box. Closing the lid with a sigh, I brought the box out to the front of the store where a short, stocky woman with a huge grin stood by the cash register, debit card already in hand. Lucy rang her up and thanked her, and the woman left the store, one finger already pulling the tab to open the box.

“I hate working the register.” Lucy leaned on the countertop, a frown on her face.

“Yeah, but you’re temporarily banned from cake decorating,” I said.

I walked over to the shelves full of waiting cakes behind the counter and frowned at the order forms taped to the side. There were several to be picked up that day.

“I swear, I screw up one kid’s fifth birthday cake and y’all act like I committed an unforgivable sin,” she cried, perking up as the bell rang over the door. She plastered a fake grin on her face and chatted with the woman and small child who entered the store.

I removed a large cake from the shelf, sat it on the counter, and popped the lid open for the woman to view. After a smile of approval, she offered her thanks, paid Lucy, and took the cake. The little boy grinned up at me, missing his two front teeth. I giggled at his cute face as they disappeared through the door.

Lucy slumped against the counter and began to whine again.

“You made him a titty cake, Lucy.” I raised an eyebrow. “Your screw up was a titty cake.”

Josie appeared from the back room. Her pink apron was coated in a fine dusting of confectioners’ sugar, and she grinned at the mention of the infamous fifth birthday titty cake.

“It’s not my fault your writing looks like chicken scratch.” Lucy picked at her long, red nails.

“How do you misread ‘Happy Fifth Birthday, Trevor!’?” I began to rearrange the display of lollipops on top of the counter, snorting and shaking my head at the silly memory.

“I thought it said ‘draw titties’ on it. I didn’t know you wanted me to draw ‘kitties’ on it. I thought maybe it was for some pervy old man or something! What five-year-old boy wants kittens on his birthday cake?” Lucy scooted off the stool, crossed her arms, and glared at me. “Boys like dump trucks and tractors on their cakes, not kittens. If you ask me, I was doing that kid a favor. He needed to man up a little bit.”

“Please, Lucy. Just admit it. You were lost in la la land and didn’t pay attention to what Rue wrote on the order slip.” Josie laughed, dusting her hands off on the apron. “I forgive you though. The look on Nana’s face! I thought Nana was having a heart attack that day,” she said with a grin. “And that mother, hitting you over the head with her umbrella. That was a good day.”

A crash sounded from the back of the store. We all cringed and walked to the back room to find our nana struggling through the door with an armload of pans. A couple fell to the ground, and I scrambled around my cousin and sister to help.

“Come help an old woman out,” Nana hollered as even more pans clattered to the floor.

I snatched a few up and tossed them into the large nearby sink. Nana made her way to the sink and dropped the rest of the pans into it.

“Are you still alive, you old bag?” Josie asked when she entered the room and raised one eyebrow at our grandmother.

Nana turned, glared at her, and shoved her thin glasses up her nose. Her blue eyes burned holes in Josie’s skull. Josie looked unfazed as she met Nana’s glare.

“Well, look who it is!” my grandmother cooed in a sugary sweet voice. “My sweet little grandwhore, I mean granddaughter.”

“Hey, Crypt Keeper. How are things down at the cemetery?” Josie reached out and pinched Nana’s cheek.