The Heart is Deceitful above All Things (3 page)

‘I got ice cream,' I whisper.

‘Just because I convinced them not to kill you.' She looks over at me. ‘If I hadn't taken you from your foster, your momma and daddy, where you think you'd be?'

I choke on a hiccup. She pats my back a little too hard.

‘They didn't try to stop the social worker from taking you away, now, did they?' she asks me softly. I look out at the mountains rising and falling into each other, little gray wood shacks lodged between them like food caught between teeth. They hadn't tried to stop the social worker from taking me. They'd even turned away fast from the car once I was in it. As I screamed and banged on the back windshield for them, I saw my daddy hug my momma with both arms, her head on his chest, and they walked back toward the house, they didn't turn around.

‘How many times did you go cryin' and throwing tantrums like a spoilt baby if you didn't get your way, huh?'

I look up at the clouds, too gray and weighted to be floating over the mountain peaks. ‘Be a good boy and don't cry for Momma,' she had said lots of times. I usually ended up crying, though.

‘Why do you think the police got you when you ran away, not your foster, not your momma and daddy, huh?'

I watch a yellow dog chasing what looks like a long-tail fox through the burnt orange bushes near the road.

‘I begged the cop not to take long sharp knives and stick them in your eyes so they pop like grapes.' She reaches down to her bag, pulls out and lights another cigarette. ‘I had to pay them, too.' She pulls up her
bag. ‘See my wallet in there . . . go on.' She pats my shoulder, a cigarette ash falling down my shirt. I reach into her bag. ‘The wallet with the red heart on it, open it.' I pull the Velcro lips apart; she reaches over and pulls the money out from inside. ‘You know what a hundred-dollar bill looks like?' She glances at me. I nod, my Daddy had shown me, Ben Franklin and kites. She blows a plume of smoke straight up.

‘See any one-oh-ohs in there, kid?' she says, the cigarette dangling in her mouth.

I shake my head and swallow a hiccup.

‘Ain't in there, right? . . . Huh? . . . Answer me, darlin', I ain't gettin' any younger.'

‘No,' I mumble. Her red-nailed hand scrunches them up back into the wallet. ‘Well, you said it, kid, no one-oh-ohs, you got your proof. You know who got the one-oh-oh? Huh?' She turns from the road and looks at me while sealing up the pink heart-covered wallet. I breathe in deeply to try to smell the musty, leathery smell of my daddy's wallet. I put my hand on her wallet, but it's not the smooth, worn skin warmed from his back pocket.

‘Get offa!' Her hand knocks mine. ‘Little thief, trying to get everything. You better not have taken none.'

I blink at her, too disoriented to cry. She drops the wallet into her bag at her feet.

‘So you saw for your own self ? No goddamn one-oh-oh. So guess who got it?' She jabs me with her elbow. I look out my window.

‘The cops, the policeman, he has it, I had to give him all that, one-oh-oh, to not . . .' She pushes me lightly. ‘You listenin'? I had to pay them not to strap you down and put you in the electric chair.'

I've seen the electric chair on one of those cartoons I'm not supposed to watch. A cat got tricked into one, strapped down, and the switch pulled. His skeleton glowed, his eyes bulged out, and after, he was just a pile of ashes.

‘I've done you a favor taking you . . . so it's up to you . . . we can go to the police and turn you in. If I take you to your fosters, they're only going to call the police and get you arrested.'

My stomach is cramped. Everything looks strangely lit and too shiny under the greenish, mold-colored sky. The clouds aren't even trying to clear the mountains anymore, they're too loaded down with dark, smashing into the treeless peaks.

‘If I didn't take you when I did, you'd be hung up on a cross. They teach you about Jesus?'

I nod a small yes. When I'd stayed at my baby-sitter Cathy's house, I saw a picture of Him. He was almost naked, with nails in him, on a cross, and if I moved my head back and forth, his blood flowed, his head tilted more, and his eyes closed, then popped open, looking out in an accusing stare.

‘The police will nail you up on the cross, if they don't give you the chair.' She spits on her cigarette, tucks it behind her ear, and reaches out, takes my
hand, and opens it in her lap. I watch her press a long red fingernail into my bandaged palm.

‘They drive the nail in here.' She presses harder. My hand curls up around her finger, but I don't try to move it.

‘Your momma and daddy will hammer another nail in right here . . .' She drops my hand, lifts my T-shirt, and presses her long nail below my ribs. She twists her finger in.

‘And they'll stick one here . . .' She slides her nail under my shirt to my chest, under my throat, and digs it in.

My head is shaking, racing all His blood out, draining him, till it crashes like waves and surrounds the big white house with my parents inside and carries them all away forever.

‘I want to stay with you,' I whisper.

‘Well, we're not that far from the police station . . . they'll be real glad to get their hands on you again.'

I swallow loudly, feeling her hand resting on my throat, pressing.

‘I want to stay with you,' I whisper again.

‘What did you say?' Her nail flicks against my skin.

When I asked Cathy why He was like that, she told me it was because He loved me and because I was a sinner. Jesus died like that, suffering for me.

‘No policeman.'

‘You don't want me to take you to your foster parents?'

I shake my head a small no.

‘You better learn some manners, kid . . . if I'm not going to turn you in.' Her nail slides up my throat to under my chin, lifting my head toward her.

‘Ma'am, you say. Understand? You say ma'am, you say sir, you say thank you, you say please . . . you were rude with your fosters and they got rid of you. You're rude to me and we go right to the police, you hear?'

I avoid her eyes, looking past her to the dark clouds tumbling ahead.

‘Ma'am,' I repeat just like the coffee-colored maid would call my momma.

‘Yes, ma'am, please let me stay with you, thank you. Is that what you mean to be saying?'

A dry swallow squeezes down my stretched-up neck like a snake digesting a rat.

‘Ma'am . . .' My voice cracks. ‘Thank you, please, no policeman . . .'

She pulls her nail away, and my head drops some.

‘So, if you ever cry about your fosters again, we go straight to the police. You hear?'

I nod, staring vaguely at trees starting to bend and shake in the wind. Her hand flies up quickly and slaps the top of my head, bouncing it back against the seat. ‘If I take the time and energy to waste my breath speaking to you, you damn well better afford me the courtesy of replyin'.'

I don't understand her, so I nod again, sucking on
my lips to still them from shaking, and I taste the salty ooze running from my nose.

Her fist bangs down on my shoulder, knocking me sideways to the seat.

‘You answer when I talk to you,' she says loudly but calmly above me.

I stay down on the seat, my stomach releasing a horrible trembling that spreads throughout me. A loud sob fills the car.

‘Don't you dare cry!' Her hand searches in my hair. ‘I've had about enough of you crying to last me a lifetime.' She yanks my head up by my hair and then pulls my face back to look up into hers. Her eyes gleam like glazed blue enamel, her mouth turned into a red semismile.

‘If you cry any more, not only will I give you something to be really cryin' for . . .' She shakes my head. ‘I will drive you straight to your foster parents and watch while they and the cops nail you up, set you on fire, and chop you up, while everyone cheers and laughs and spits at you. Understand?'

A car horn blares at us; she lets go of my hair and swerves back to her side of the road. The other car is still honking as we pass.

‘Jesus!' She grabs the cigarette behind her ear.

The click of her lighter sounds bizarre in the sudden silence inside the car.

There are many times I've cried when I didn't have to, when I'd only bumped myself lightly or something,
but I'd wail anyway, nice and loud to let them know I'd been injured and to punish them for letting me get hurt in the first place.

They're not here to come running, and if they were, they wouldn't just walk in the opposite direction while they sent me away again. This time they'd laugh and spit and do to me what I did to Jesus. They'd tell me I was a bad boy, and I'd watch them rip down, off my chart, all my stars.

I feel my tears cut off, stopped up somewhere below my throat. I swallow hard and flush them away.

‘So should I turn around, kid?' She puffs a few times. I start to nod but stop myself.

‘Yes, please, ma'am. Thank you,' I say clearly.

‘Very good!' She pats my head hard. ‘We'll turn you into a good boy yet . . . now all we gotta do is make sure the cops or nobody don't get you before that time.'

She rolls up her window as the first few heavy drops of rain splat inside her door. The car fills with her smoke, and she pats my leg softly.

‘You know, we only have each other from now on, you see. I fought for you. You'll have to fight for me. I'm all you got.' She smiles.

And I watch the big yard with the white house with the room with dinosaur-covered walls and a racing car bed, and shelves of toys and charts with stars and a smiling momma and daddy, I watch it fold up neat like a gas station map, and I bury and hide it like a treasure map.

The car slows some, the tires screeching as she turns around on the black road top.

I watch the storm sky, a bruised blue black, following right behind us.

We have to leave, have to pack up right away and go. The digital clock on the Formica counter says 3:47
A.M
. I stand in front of her, rubbing my eyes. She hangs up the phone; it was them again, my fosters. They've called almost every night for the last week since I first got here. I don't cry and reach for the phone anymore. Last night I didn't even jump out of bed when the phone rang, I only got out of bed because she called me to the phone. I stood and waited, my thumb anchored in my mouth, Bugs Bunny pressed to my chest, while she nodded and shook her head as she listened to and repeated all the bad things I'd done and how they wanted me to go to jail. I didn't ask to speak to them. I waited until she hung up, waited to see what she would decide.

‘They really want me to turn you in.' She pats the phone. I press my face into the stuffed rabbit's fake fur; he smells like saliva and pee.

‘But we're a team, right?' She sips from the open beer next to the phone. I shift my weight from leg to leg.

‘While I was at work you did all I asked you to, didn't you?' She pulls the black web net off her pulled-up hair and unpins the Sarah nametag that has a smiley face off her short pink dress.

I nod. I had made myself a peanut-butter-and-jelly
sandwich, and I washed the dishes standing over the sink on a chair, the way she showed me. I hadn't let anybody in, and I put myself to bed at eight
P.M
., as she said.

‘All the lights was on,' she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I have to pay for the electricity around here. You see any sugar daddy pickin' up the tab?' She gazes around the room, then sits on the couch, crossing her feet on the coffee table. ‘You think I like dealing with coked-up truckers all night? Letting them feel my ass for their goddamned quarter tip?' She kicks an empty can off the table toward me, drags deeply, and blows smoke out through her nose. ‘So you can be burning my money up?'

I shake my head and stare at her sneakers, dirty white with silver laces. ‘No social workers dropped by, right?'

‘No,' I mumble.

‘Mind!' She leans forward.

‘No,
ma'am
.'

‘You didn't answer the phone, right?'

I shake my head no, then quickly add, ‘No, ma'am.'

‘When they come again, what do you say?' Her foot taps.

‘When you're at work I got a baby-sitter.' I think of Cathy, and falling asleep listening to her talking and laughing on our telephone.

‘'Cause they're just testing you. You answer wrong and you go straight to the jailhouse. You hear me?' She knocks off another empty can with her foot.

‘Yes'm,' I whisper.

‘You are so spoilt, and you don't know it. Well, it's all over with now. I'm all over your shit, kid.' She reaches in her dress pocket and pulls out some crumpled dollars. ‘Fifteen fuckin' dollars, okay? Fifteen! How the fuck am I gonna feed you with this shit?!' She kicks the money off the table. ‘Goddamn spoilt brat.' She leans over her lap, folding her arms around her head. I stand there watching the quivers traveling down her spine like a breeze rippling water, listening to the little gasps escaping her. She raises her head, her eyes dripping black ink. ‘Get the fuck into bed!' she screams.

‘We gotta go, we gotta get the fuck outta here.' There are garbage bags partially filled on the kitchen floor. She unplugs the clock and drops it in.

‘Get dressed . . . go, hurry!' She waves her arm at me. I go into my room, flick on the light, and dig out my clothes from the milk crates. They're all clothes I've worn already. I don't have my own hamper here. When I told her all my clothes were dirty and showed her the pile, she said if she wears her clothes until they're ready to walk, so can I. I feel comforted by the dusty smell of my clothes as I put them on.

‘Goddamned social workers telling me what to do,' I hear her mutter. ‘Stuck-up cunts, fuck them, fuck them . . . let's move it in there, kid!'

She comes into my room with a big black garbage bag.