Sister Mine (14 page)

I smile at him.

“Until you realized horses shit wherever they want to.”

“Didn't you have a childhood dream?” he asks me.

Surviving my childhood, I think to myself.

“Sure. I wanted to be a rock star,” I throw out to appease him.

He concentrates on the careful eating of his cookie.

“All I know is ever since the accident, he's got it in his head that being a miner isn't good enough anymore. That he needs to prove himself to the rest of the world and be somebody.”

He scrunches up his nose when he says the word “somebody.”

“Before the accident Dusty had never been farther than Centresburg. After the accident he was flown first class to Hollywood to be on
The Tonight Show.
He went to Disney World. He got a letter from the president and had dinner with the governor. He was on TV and the cover of
Time
magazine. He was famous. And then all of a sudden he wasn't.”

I don't point out that the same thing happened to Lib and Jimmy and E.J. and Ray and none of them have felt the need to be somebody, but they're all a good deal older than Dusty and I think they're happy just to be alive.

“Before all that happened he never questioned his life. Any part of it,” Clay adds.

“Sometimes it can be a good thing to be exposed to more and question your life.”

“Sometimes it's not. They ruined him.”

“Who is ‘they' exactly?”

He gestures with the final remaining bite of his cookie at the car dealership across the road with its American flag the size of a barn undulating in the breeze like a patriotic sea above the seemingly endless rows of gleaming SUVs.

“Everybody who isn't us.”

He finishes eating and looks inside the bag for a napkin. I've already anticipated the need and hold one out to him.

“Now all he has to live for is this lawsuit,” he says.

“What do you think about the lawsuit?”

“I don't think there's any way to assign blame in something like this. Cam Jack runs unsafe mines and nobody does anything about it. Coal mining is a dangerous profession; the miners know this. What it boils down to is Cam Jack has more money than God. Why shouldn't the Jolly Mount Five have some of it for themselves and their families after what they went through?”

“So it's a noble cause. Sort of like Robin Hood robbing from the rich to give to the poor.”

“Except there's no robbing. They'd come by the money honestly. A jury of their peers would award it to them because they earned it.”

Did they earn it? I ask myself. And if so, how much did they earn? What is the market value of a man's sanity these days? What is considered reasonable compensation for spending four days entombed on a cold rock shelf a mile beneath the earth's surface in impenetrable darkness and absolute silence, his tongue swollen with dehydration, his stomach hardened into a starving knot, his breath coming in shallow pants, his nose assaulted by the smells of shit, piss, puke, fear, and sweat and the sickly sweet scent of blood and rot coming from the gangrenous leg of his delirious friend? Should it be more or less than the amount of money Cam Jack's investments earn in a day?

I think about Shannon and the bidding war over her unborn child. Eighty thousand dollars from Family X, or will she be able to get ninety thousand from the Jamesons? Is this a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a child when the world is filled with so many unwanted ones or is it ridiculously low? Shouldn't the price tag be millions of dollars? Or is a child worth anything at all if its own mother is willing to sell it?

He finishes wiping the yellow icing from his fingers, crumples the napkin into a ball, and puts it in the empty bag.

I notice him glance at his spit-shined black boots to make sure there are no crumbs on them.

“Did you change that lady's tire yesterday?” he asks me.

“Yeah. She was a piece of work. Thanks for that.”

“You made some money, though, didn't you?”

“Sure. Now I can afford four days of health insurance.”

“That's not funny, Mom. I've got to get back to work.”

“Clay. Wait. I have something to tell you. Your Aunt Shannon's back.”

“What? Aunt Shannon? She's back? Here?”

“Yes.”

“I don't understand.”

“She just showed up yesterday at my house.”

“After all these years? She just showed up?”

“Yes.”

He opens his mouth to speak again but nothing comes out. He looks genuinely stunned.

I wonder what's going through his head. Clay was only five years old when we moved out of Dad's house and left Shannon behind, but he had been very attached to her by then and used to follow her around full of the blind devotion and intense fascination that all little kids feel for older kids who pay the slightest bit of attention to them.

Shannon had grown fond of him, too, even though she'd been outwardly jealous at first. It took some time but eventually his solemn brown eyes and the serious way he wrinkled his silky-smooth forehead like a troubled puppy whenever she asked him a question won her over. Plus as they both grew older I knew she enjoyed being adored, even if the only reasons for it were because she could ride a two-wheeler and was allowed to stay up past eight o'clock.

Clay's presence in the house changed a lot of things for us, most notably our relationship with Dad. Once I had a baby of my own, I finally stood up to him. Shannon and I never talked about my sudden surge of maternal strength. I always thought she must have been thankful for it because it benefited her, too, but over time, long after she had disappeared from my life, I began to wonder if she might have hated me for not standing up sooner. Did she ever wonder why I didn't stand up for her? Or myself? Or did she already know the reason?

I did my best to protect her. I kept her out of Dad's way as much as possible. I distracted him from her when I could, offering my own body as an alternate punching bag in the same way I might have enticingly waved a juicy piece of raw meat in front of a ravenous dog who was contemplating a bowl of dry kibble.

But it wasn't within my power to tell him to stop. I assumed she understood this. For seventeen years I felt I had no right to tell him he couldn't beat me and my sister because he was our father and I believed we belonged to him as surely as his lunch pail.

My son, on the other hand, belonged to no one but himself. He would be a man someday. No one could own him. Not even me, his mother. But as his mother I had a responsibility to him, and it was to make sure he would never experience any harm or misery that it was in my power to prevent.

I never saw my dad hit my mom, but I heard the fights. My mother's screams and crying; my father's cursing and shouting; the thumps and thuds and sounds of things breaking—they were all part of the sound track of my life that I'd listen to, hiding in my room with my eyes closed against the horrible possibility of what the picture must be.

I think my mother thought I wouldn't be affected by the violence if I didn't see it. Or maybe that I wouldn't hate my father for hurting her if I didn't witness it with my own eyes. She was wrong on both counts.

I knew from my own experience that letting Clay see his mommy or his revered Aunt Shannon, who could pop a wheelie on her blue two-wheeler, get belted across a room by his grandfather would be harmful to him. I also knew that listening to it happen while he sat helpless and mute in another room would be a form of misery so pervasive and permanent he would wear it for the rest of his life like a skin.

I had never been allowed to make any decisions in regard to Shannon and me because our destinies had been set, but once Clay came along I was presented with a choice: a mother's duty or a daughter's sentence.

Clay never knew about the abuse Shannon and I endured when we were younger. Because of this, after we left Shannon with Dad, I couldn't talk to Clay about my fear that the beatings might have started again, and after Shannon's disappearance I couldn't share my awful suspicions with him about what my dad might have done to her.

All I could do was tell him she ran away and then do my best to hide my grief and fear while listening to him ask all the questions I asked myself: Why would she run away? Why wouldn't she come here? How could she leave us?

I didn't have answers for either of us. Eventually, he stopped asking.

Now I brace myself, wondering if he's going to start asking those same questions again, or break out into some sort of difficult emotional reaction I'm not equipped to deal with, or throw a bunch of accusations at me like E.J. did. But what I get is a big smile.

“Mom,” he says and gives me a hug, “you must be so happy.”

“Well, yes,” I say a little uncertainly as I return his embrace.

“Is she okay?”

“She's fine. And she's going to have a baby any day now.”

“A baby? That's great.”

His smile grows.

“The baby will be my cousin, right?”

His excitement is contagious. I smile back at him, but my thoughts quickly turn bittersweet as I remember him showing the same kind of enthusiasm every time I'd tell him I was going on a date and he'd get his hopes up that this newest man would turn out to be a potential dad.

I also know that there's the possibility his cousin will be sold.

“Can I see her?”

“Of course you can see her. I'll talk to her when I get home. What are you doing tonight?”

“I'm busy tonight. Maybe later this week.”

“I assume this means you're not coming to Isabel and Jimmy's.”

Clay and I have a standing invitation to Sunday dinner. Clay rarely goes anymore. I plan to go today to tell them about Shannon.

“No. I'm working.”

He shakes his head, still smiling.

“Wow. That's unreal. Aunt Shannon just showing up out of the blue.”

He thinks about it a moment longer and the smile begins to fade. His happy gaze falters slightly.

He slips his sunglasses back on before I can see any substantial hurt or betrayal in his eyes.

“It's supposed to snow,” he tells me in his deputy voice, glancing at my bare legs. “You should put some pants on.”

I watch him turn on his heel and begin walking back toward the building.

I have no idea what he does outside his job, and I only know what he does at his job because I used to have one similar to it. It's hard for me to believe sometimes that this is the same person who used to write me two-page, single-spaced, intricately detailed accounts of everything he had done and thought during the day and leave it for me on the coffee table along with a bottle of One-A-Day vitamins and a calcium supplement on the nights I worked a shift that ended past his bedtime.

I've always thought of boys and men as completely separate beings and girls and women as part of the same whole. Looking at a little girl I can always envision the resulting woman, like a cake before it's been frosted, but I'm never able to see a man in a little boy's face.

A boy becomes a man: The expression used to frighten me. I didn't like to think that one day Clay would become a man. I was very attached to the little boy he already was. It sounded like an act of sorcery. A wand would be waved, some smoke would appear, and my sweet, grinning, gangly, doting little boy would disappear forever and in his place would be a big, hairy, serious man who I would continue to love and hopefully understand but who would be a stranger to me.

This was basically what happened, aside from the smoke.

Chapter Twelve

T
ALKING WITH CLAY
does me some good. His attitude toward Shannon's return helps me push aside some of my darker feelings and lets in a little light. I should concentrate on the positive. She's alive and well and that's better than being dead. She's back and that's better than being away. She's going to have a baby she's planning on selling, but that was before she showed up here; maybe I can help her get her act together and with Clay's help we can convince her to keep his cousin.

In order to feel this way I have to basically ignore everything I heard her say to Pamela Jameson, but I'm able to keep my hopes up long enough to stop by the mall and buy a few things for the baby.

On my way back to my car, I notice two Marines in dress uniform getting out of a Honda Civic.

They're impossible to miss: tall, straight, handsome, impeccably clean, perfectly pressed, their chests covered with medals, their gold buttons gleaming, their hats a shade of white I've never seen except on certain brides.

They stand next to their car, exchange a few words, and look around. Their respective heads turn in opposite directions, searching the parking lot.

As I trek across the parking lot watching them, my phone rings. Caller ID shows that it's Lib's mom, Sophia Bertolli.

Sophia is still capable of driving herself around despite being in her eighties, but from time to time her arthritis acts up and the pain in her knees becomes so great she can't even push an accelerator pedal.

“Hi, Sophia.”

“Shae-Lynn? Is that you?”

She always sounds surprised when people answer their own phones.

“Yes, it is. How are you?” I shout.

She has terrible hearing.

“Good. What are you up to today?”

“Not much. Do you need a ride?”

“I need a ride,” she tells me.

“Okay. When do you need it?”

“Mm Hmm,” she says.

“When would you like me to pick you up?” I try again.

“I drove myself to church and back but now my knees hurt and I'm supposed to go to Lib's house for supper.”

“Would you like me to give you a ride?”

“That would be nice.”

“How about I pick you up in an hour?”

“Mm hmm,” she says. “All right then. Good-bye.”

I have no idea if this means she thinks I'm coming or not, but regardless I know she'll be there when I arrive.

One of the Marines appears to spot something of interest. He lightly taps his partner's chest with the back of his hand to get his attention and points out two large, unshaven young men in baggy jeans and ball caps: one wearing work boots and a NASCAR T-shirt, the other in gym shoes with rips down the side and a stretched-out red sweatshirt that's been washed so many times it's pink now, but I'm sure he still regards it as red because he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd wear pink.

The Marines begin striding toward the boys, their legs moving in precise tandem, arms stiff at their sides, backs and necks held straight, yet somehow their heads appear pushed forward slightly like they've picked up a scent and their noses are leading them. They suddenly check themselves, slow down, and try to act casual.

They make contact. They're all chatting now. Smiles are being exchanged. They seem to be pulling off the casual act as well as it can be done by someone wearing flashy red and gold epaulettes and a hat like a 1950s milkman's while standing not far from the gutted front of a Sears anchor store with a huge, faded, peeling
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS
sign plastered across the doors.

I wonder what they're saying. I could make a good guess. I've been the object of recruitment myself, many times, in both my professional and personal lives.

The roads to Sophia's house are weathered, cracked blacktop, their shoulders shattered from decades of heavy coal trucks traveling over them.

Just when I think I have every pothole memorized, a new batch appears each spring. I try to miss as many as possible, jerking my steering wheel this way and that like I'm in the middle of an obstacle course, all the while making sure I stay as close to my side of the road as possible.

The traffic out here is sparse but deadly. When the occasional vehicle does come barreling from the opposite direction, it's usually driving straight down the middle of the road. I'm used to it and I've got good reflexes but the danger's still there.

A moron in a green GMC Yukon that's roomier than the kitchen in my old D.C. apartment comes tearing around a curve, causing me to swerve hard to the right, and I almost end up in a ditch.

I'm so busy swearing a blue streak and giving him the finger as I watch him disappear over a hill in my rearview mirror that I don't see the kids and their wagon until it's almost too late.

I swerve again, this time into the middle of the road to avoid hitting them. If there had been a car coming in the opposite direction, we'd all be dead.

I slow down and drive about a hundred feet before I have to pull off to the side of the road. My heart is beating like crazy.

I crane my neck around and watch them approach me. It's a little girl pulling a little boy in a beat-up red wagon. She's giving me the finger.

I recognize the pale, skinny legs and the glint of something sparkly.

I get out of my car and start stalking toward them.

“What are you doing?” I shout.

“What are you doing?” Fanci shouts back at me.

“Do you know how dangerous it is to be out here on these roads?”

“It's only dangerous when people drive like assholes.”

I look down at Kenny. He's sitting calmly in the midst of a bunch of rocks, holding a big thick stick about four feet long across his lap. Fanci's pink kitty purse lies near the front of the wagon.

He's wearing jeans and a coat. I check out Fanci next. She interprets my roving stare to be an appreciation of her outfit and lets the hand holding the wagon handle drop casually to her side, puts the other hand on her hip, and arches her back in what I'm sure she thinks is a pose of devastating sexiness.

She's wearing a pair of tiny bright pink shorts that look like they're made from rain slicker material and a cropped pink tank top with the words “I love Paris” emblazoned across the front in sparkly red stones, half of which no longer sparkle. A few are missing.

The T-shirt's sentiment raises my spirits temporarily, and I'm about to ask her how much she knows about the French capital and if she'd like to go there someday when I realize with a sinking heart that it's not the city the shirt is touting but the Hilton heiress, the latest female celeb to lend her name to pre-teen slutwear.

“It's starting to get cold,” I tell her. “It might even snow later. You need to go home and put some clothes on.”

Her arms and legs are covered in goose bumps.

She gives me one of her unnerving, unsmiling appraisals.

“So do you.”

“What are you doing out here, anyway?” I change the subject. “You're miles from home.”

“We weren't at home. We were visiting our cousins but we hate our cousins so we're doing this instead.”

“Who are your cousins?”

“None of your business.”

“Why are you visiting them if you hate them?”

“Our dad made us go so he could sleep.”

“What about your mom?”

She glances at Kenny, who doesn't show any sign of opening his mouth and tells him to shut up.

“What's with the stick?” I try another topic.

“It's a dog-beating stick. There's a lot of dogs around here,” she states flatly.

“You got something against dogs?”

“I got something against wild dogs and people's dogs that come running at you when you walk by their house and want to rip your throat out. Dogs are supposed to be nice. They're supposed to like kids like Kenny.”

I look down at him.

“Nice rocks, Kenny,” I comment.

I pick up a piece of the coal debris and rub my thumb over its dull black glimmer.

“This one's a pretty one,” I say.

“You can have it,” he tells me.

“Thanks.”

I slip it in the pocket of my sweater. It's the first time I've heard him speak.

“Why don't you let me give you a lift back to your cousins' house?”

“You're making the offer so that means we don't have to pay?”

“You don't have to pay.”

“Then take us to the mall.”

“No way.”

She looks at Kenny. They have a silent conversation conducted with their eyes and pulse rates.

“Then take us home,” she says.

They don't have to give me directions to their house. I visited it years ago when the Centresburg police searched it after I pulled Choker over for speeding and DWI (Driving While an Idiot) and discovered his van was full of TV sets and stereo systems he'd been stealing for the past month and then had no idea how to hock.

It's a small shoebox-shaped house set in a small clearing off a mile-long stretch of dirt road that used to lead to a bridge that used to cross a creek that used to continue on to a tipple that used to pour coal into the railroad cars waiting on the tracks next to it. The bridge is gone now. The road and railroad tracks are overgrown with weeds. The tipple has collapsed into a heap of cracked timbers and brown rusted metal that's been consumed by the forest. When the trees lose their leaves in winter, its remains can be glimpsed lying on the hillside like the decaying carcass of some huge beast.

The house is surrounded by a sea of junk: old mowers and appliances; two empty rabbit pens; a dented gray metal filing cabinet; bald tires; rusted sheet metal; black Hefty bags filled with beer cans; rolls of pink insulation; a picnic table without benches; a swing set without swings; and a disturbing number of gnome lawn ornaments without heads.

Fanci and Kenny get out of the car and follow me around to the back of my car.

“I lost my mom when I was six,” I tell Fanci as I unload their wagon and dog-beating stick.

“So?” she says.

“Did you ever find her?” Kenny asks me.

“She died.”

“Oh,” he replies, his face falling for an instant, but he brightens up quickly. “We know where our mom is.”

“Shut up, Kenny,” Fanci snaps at him.

“Where is she?”

“She's taking a break. When dad got out of jail she said it was his turn to take care of us for awhile.”

“And how's that going?”

“It ain't none of your business,” Fanci says.

“Right. I forgot.”

I hold out one of my yellow business cards to Fanci.

“Here. You never know when you'll finally be able to pay for a ride.”

She eyes it, then takes it without looking at me and slips it into her pink kitten purse.

Choker opens the front door wearing tube socks and an old green terry cloth robe with two dark patches on the front where the pockets used to be. The matching belt is missing, too. The robe's cinched around his waist with the brown leather belt and American flag belt buckle that he usually uses to hold up his jeans.

He squints against the daylight. I can hear a TV droning inside the house.

“What the hell?” he greets me.

I put a foot on the bottom step and he moves back behind his door.

“I don't want you around here.”

I did a real number on his face. I wonder how he explained it to his kids or if they even bothered to ask.

“Get in the house,” he tells them and they hurry inside.

“I'd like to call you a retard, Choker, but I realize that's not politically correct so I'm just going to say you're patriotically challenged.”

“What are you talking about?”

I gesture at his truck parked in the yard right up against the house. It's covered in bumper stickers: Proud to be American. Born in the U.S.A. God Bless America. Red, White, and Blue: These colors don't run.

“Who are you trying to impress with your Americanness? Other Americans? Why don't you go drive this thing around Baghdad?”

“Fuck you,” he says.

“This is a nice little setup you've got here, Choker. You've really been able to spread out.”

“I need my space.”

“Right. You're one of those free-range rednecks I've been hearing about.”

He scratches at his missing ear.

“Hank Penrose's kid calling me a redneck? If that ain't the kettle calling the kettle…a kettle.”

I smile at his attempt to remember the old adage.

“Don't hurt yourself.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing. I was just dropping off your kids.”

“You better stop messing with my kids,” he says.

“Where's your wife, Choker? Did she spurn you, too?”

“I mean it. Stay away from my kids. I ain't doing nothing wrong with them. I love them. I'd never beat on them the way your old man did you.”

He slams the door on me.

I pound on it with my fists and kick at it a few times and jiggle the handle, but my enthusiasm quickly passes.

My rage is immense, but my rage against him is half-hearted.

I close my eyes and find my safe place. I settle into the soft, plump cushions of the couch. I feel the heat from the fire warm my cold bare feet searching for the comfort of my mom's rag rug next to my bed on a winter's morning. I hear the puppy's faint whines as he twitches in his sleep chasing rabbits in his dreams. I smell the fresh-baked cookies and taste the sweetness of cocoa on my tongue. I look out the window and see raindrops as big as silver dollars splatter against the glass that's lit from behind by flashes of lightning.

I look again and see a face.

The shock is so great I jump up from the couch and spill hot chocolate all over myself.

No one has ever tried to look in or get in.

I want out. I need out. But I don't know how to do it. There's no door. I've never tried to leave before. I've always stayed as long as I could. I've always wished I could stay longer.