Waiting for Christopher (16 page)

She was out the door and around the doublewide before Feena saw her coming. Then they were walking side by side, Feena trying to walk faster to leave her behind. “Hey.” The woman reached for Feena’s arm and hung on with the grip of a drowning swimmer. “Wait, will you.”

But Feena didn’t. She deliberately picked up speed, on the totally irrational theory that if she could just get in front, the woman would drop off and fall away, a racer acknowledging defeat.

“Listen, you gotta slow down.” The woman was chugging along the gravel walk, her heavy footfall slower than Feena’s, out of sync. “I need you to stay.” Her voice trailed away, got lost in a flurry of breathless coughs. “Please!”

Feena slowed, turned.

“My old man,” the woman said, stopping, inhaling as if the stifling air were food and she hadn’t eaten for days. She turned, too, nodded toward the distant trailer, where a looming figure was standing on the steps, his eyes shaded under one hand. Although Feena couldn’t be sure, there was something familiar about the way he stood, his size. “If he sees me with someone, he’ll leave me alone. Please,” the woman repeated.

Feena turned back but slowed down even more, until they fell into step together. Just as in the laundromat, anyone who didn’t know, anyone who stumbled on them this way, would have assumed they were friends.
An afternoon jog
, Feena thought, furious with herself for having come back.
Just us girls
. Though it was obvious the woman had no idea who she was, Feena still kept her face averted, concentrating on the chalky stones under her feet.

“He don’t dare touch me if there’s witnesses,” the woman told her, breathing easier now. “You know?”

That explained why she had rushed up to Feena last time, why she’d insisted on helping with the laundry.

“My name’s Delores, Delores Pierson,” the woman told her. “Who you visiting, anyway?”

Feena didn’t even try to make up a lie. “Can’t you call the police?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“Your husband,” Feena said, blinking into the sun. “Can’t you tell the police what he does to you?”

“The cops? What good would that do?” Delores Pierson didn’t stop walking but glanced down the street behind them again.

Feena looked back, too. The trailer seemed strangely domestic from a distance. The cracks and dirt didn’t show in the bright sun, only the red plastic begonia in the pot on the stoop. The man had disappeared from the steps.

“The cops don’t do nothing,” Delores said, turning back, walking more slowly now. “Last time I called, they come over and one of them puts his hand on my old man’s shoulder. He talks real soft to him, real friendly. Then he looks at me. ‘I know everything will be all right now,’ he tells me. ‘I know you don’t want no trouble.’

“Like it’s my fault.” She stopped, dug into her jeans pocket. When she came up empty, her voice broke. “Like as long as I don’t want trouble, I can keep my teeth in my head. You know?”

Feena wished there were laundry to pick up, a basket to grab, to rush off with.

“I’m gonna get out, though.” Delores wiped her face, started walking again. “My cousin’s gonna fix me up with a job in Atlanta. I’m heading up there soon as I get my kid.”

Feena willed her face to stay frozen. “Your kid?”

They had gone the length of one side of the court, turned now to their left, and started down another. “Uh-huh.” Delores’s face was red with exertion, her arms and forehead glistened with perspiration. “Don’t no one believe me, but they’ve taken my baby.”

“‘They’?”

“Kidnappers, that’s who.” Delores wrapped her arms around herself, slowing again. Her voice took on a singsong quality, as if she’d told this to herself over and over. “Ain’t no other way Christopher would go and disappear. You know?

“I have him trained good. He knows to mind. And he knows to wait for me.”

“You left him alone?” Something kept pushing Feena to the edge of safety, made her need to be sure. “All by himself?”

The singsong stopped, and the little girl was back in Delores’s voice. “No,” she said, “not for real. It’s like a game we play. You know? I mean, sure, I tell him if he don’t mind me, I’m leaving. But he knows that’s only talk. He knows I ain’t doing nothing but blowing steam.

“That’s how come he wouldn’t run off on his own. I know somebody’s gone and took him. I looked everywhere. And my old man? He’s been all over town, too. Only he don’t half believe me hisself. You know?… Hey, wait. Where you going?”

Feena didn’t want to hear any more. She wanted to be back with Christy and Raylene. She didn’t wave this time, just took off as soon as she saw the trailer park gates. Took off and didn’t look back.

Raylene was right; Feena saw that now. She never should have come here. Everything was confused, everything was worse, like a sore that starts to heal until some fool rips it open. Some fool named Feena Elizabeth Harvey.
Damn
, as Raylene would say. Just plain damn.

S
he was back to keeping secrets. It had felt so good to have someone to come clean with, someone she could tell the whole story to. Now Feena was holding things in again. She could never admit to Raylene that she’d been to the trailer court, much less that she’d actually talked to Christy’s mother.

It was hardest at night, before one of them went home and the other settled down with the baby. That was the time when, more and more, the two girls talked. While Christy slept in the narrow bunk, they relaxed in the slow velvet space between afternoon and night, the time before the mosquitoes and no-see-ums set in. They sat in the benches on each side of the table, their voices low so as not to wake the baby, and compared notes—on books, on boys, on things Feena never dreamed she’d be able to share with anyone. Once, she’d even managed to tell Raylene about the dream she’d had. About how she’d watched Jane and Janie sail off on the old ship.

“Lord,” Raylene had told her, chuckling. “As many times as I read those books, I never did picture the two of them in the same boat!” She shook her head. “That quiet, white-bread Jane.” She’d grinned and looked almost sheepishly at Feena. “Don’t get me wrong, now. I like Jane; it’s just she’s more of a thinker than a doer, see?”

Feena had nodded. She couldn’t help loving the way Raylene talked about characters as if they were real people, someone she knew.

“And Janie? Well, it’s almost like she figures thoughts would slow her down.”

Feena had to admit, dreams didn’t always make sense. “I guess it
is
pretty silly,” she’d said.

“And the way they talk,” Raylene went on. “Jane’s words are so perfect, so beautiful, I figure she lies awake all night just cooking up what she’s going to say next day.” She’d laughed again, then, remembering Christy, lowered her voice. “Now Janie—everything she says, it has the Old South in it. She sounds just like my grandma.”

“Well, I only—”

“Course,” Raylene had interrupted, reconsidering the proposition she’d just rejected, “I guess they could spell each other some. I mean, Janie could set Jane straight every time she panics.” She’d grinned then, as if she might have been joking all along. “And Jane, she could get a crazy idea once in a while that would start Janie thinking. Yeah, they might do all right, after all.” Finally, that look of hers, that steady, no-nonsense look. “They just might pull it off, those two.”

And didn’t it take two? Feena not telling Raylene about her visits to the blue trailer—wasn’t that like Jane holding out on Janie? What if she
was
thinking crazy? What if a single word from Raylene could set her straight, make her sane and sure? Each afternoon, when Raylene put down her orange soda, leaned back, and asked, “So, girlfriend, which way the world throw you today?” Feena almost told her, almost dumped her guilt, her confusion, in Raylene’s lap. Like Christy with that smile of his: “Fix.” But she didn’t.

And if Raylene noticed a difference in Feena, the way she grew suddenly quiet when Raylene crowed about how happy the baby was, how much weight he was gaining, she never let on. Even though Feena stopped aiding and abetting her plans to sneak Christy into daycare when the “heat” was off, even though she no longer laughed when Christy did as he’d been taught and called Raylene “Mama Ween,” Raylene seemed oblivious.

If Raylene hadn’t fallen quite so effortlessly into the role of parent, things might have been different. If Feena hadn’t missed home so much, hadn’t begun to feel she’d forgotten what it was like to be a kid, the pressure might not have built up the way it did. And maybe if Raylene hadn’t been over an hour late two weeks into their “split shifts,” things wouldn’t have gotten out of hand. Of course, then Feena would never have known. Never have guessed that a train could gather speed and come out of nowhere, crushing everything in its path. That she could look up in bewilderment and realize she was that train.

It started slowly. She was aware only that she had to light the lantern and that her mother would be wondering where she was. She noticed, too, that Christy was fussy, unusual for a child who took almost every setback and disappointment in stride.

He had spilled juice on one of his books, not
Mama’s Music
, but another of his favorites. It had upset him, and he’d tried for minutes on end to rub the purple stain off the picture of a polar bear. He used a paper towel, as he’d seen Feena do the day before. Bent over the book, his face damp and determined, he scrubbed away until both the towel and the page threatened to dissolve into nothing.

He complained loudly when Feena swept up the book, just in time to save the bear from extinction. “Baa,” he insisted. “Bear take baa.”

“No, Christy,” she’d told him. “The bear can’t take any more baths. He’s had enough.” She put the book on a shelf out of his reach. “Let’s let him dry.”

But he continued to whine, looking constantly up at the shelf above him. “Baa?” he asked plaintively. “Mo baa?”

Feena, preoccupied, pushed him aside. “No, Christy. Not now.”

He retreated for a minute, but then came back, his arms loaded with the cartons, spoons, and paper cups he used for building. “Pay,” he announced. “Feen pay.”

A large, feather-headed moth had fallen in love with the candle, Feena noticed, and was beating itself against the lantern grate. “No,” she said, without looking at Christy. “I don’t want to play right now.” Where was Raylene, anyway? Had something gone wrong?

“Pay!” Christopher unloaded his building materials onto her lap. “Want pay!”

She brushed the junk off her knees. “Take it away, Chris,” she said. “Go play on your bed.” Between the moth’s persistent thumping and Christy’s whining, Feena could hardly think. What would she tell Lenore? And how was she ever going to study for that geometry test? She found her backpack, took out the math text, but Christy’s hand was on the page almost before she opened to it.

“Weed,” he said, changing tack. “Feen weed.”

“No.” Still, she didn’t look at him. “This isn’t that kind of book. Raylene will read to you later, okay?”

“Ween,” he told her now. “Want Ween.” He brushed himself against her repeatedly, like the moth throwing itself at the light. “Want Ween! Want pay!”

Finally, Feena looked down at him. And suddenly his smallness, his dependence irritated her.
I’m not who you think I am
, she wanted to tell him.
Stop looking at me like that
. “Don’t you understand?” She moved him out of the way, so his shadow wouldn’t fall across the book. “I can’t play all the time.”

He closed in again, an afflicted expression on his small features; he grabbed her hand and thrust himself back against her until the pressure of his slight body seemed almost unbearable. She wanted to bat it away just as she’d pushed the cartons and blocks out of her lap. His tiny hand in hers was too much—too hot, too moist, too heavy.

Feena’s blood pumped into her head and hands. She felt tingly, as if one more touch would send her flying out of herself. But that small hand kept coming back.

When she actually lifted his fingers off hers and grabbed him by the shoulders, she felt lightheaded, powerful. “Don’t you know I have other things to do,” she told him, “other things to think about besides you?”

It must have been her stern tone. Or maybe the way she’d pushed him away from the book. Anyway, he started crying, sudden, silent tears that surprised them both. He stood his ground, though, dabbing at his eyes. “Pay!” he sobbed, indignant. “Feen pay!”

He hadn’t napped all day, and it was well past his dinnertime. But Feena was beyond patience and excuses. She grabbed his shoulders again, turned his chin up so he’d have to see her, have to understand. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” His bones were like a kitten’s or a bird’s between her fingers. “What did I say, Chris?”

Christy’s face, his angel’s face, darkened then. Still crying, he shut his eyes and turned away from her. He put his arms around his head, crouched the way he had at the amusement park. He was protecting himself … from
her
! And why did the anger get worse then? Crawling into her throat like a meal she couldn’t keep down? Why did Feena want to shake him, make him know she would never hurt him?
Make him stop. For god’s sake, just make him stop!