What I Remember Most (4 page)

Alice, My Anxiety, was not happy now. She was not calm, and I was pushing her down as hard as I could.

It was cold, and I put on two sweatshirts, two pairs of wool socks, two pairs of sweats, and my jacket. I brought one of the blankets into the sleeping bag with me and put the other over the top. The silence was so loud. What I wouldn’t give for a neighbor’s barking dog . . .

My fitful sleep was broken by someone breaking into my car.

Glass shattered on the passenger side window. I sat straight up, absolutely and instantly terrorized. I tried to move, but my legs were stuck in my blankets and the sleeping bag.

I heard two men outside the window laughing. Evil laughing.

“Come on out, sweetie!” one called out. “Play with me!”

“We’re gonna have some fun, lady. We seeeeee you! Don’t try to hiiide!”

“Aren’t you a pretty little bitch?”

Through a rush of searing panic, I could tell by their slurred voices that they were drunk or high, or both.

I saw a hand shoot through the broken window, running up and down the side of the door, searching for the automatic lock.

“Hey! You were fuckin’ right, Turley. She’s got red hair.”

“How are the tits? Titty tit tits.”

I kicked out of my sleeping bag. By shots and by fire, I was not going to get stuck here.

“Here she comes!” The passenger door opened, and a man wearing a black knit hat poked his head in. The driver’s side door, now unlocked, opened too, and a second man with the same horrifying black knit hat poked his head in also.

My breath caught when I saw them, those black masks freezing my blood.

“Come on out, baby. We’re gonna have some plain fuckin’ fun!”

“Fuckin’ fun!”

I swallowed hard, hysteria closing my throat. I was behind the two front seats, but they had all the advantage. I could try to escape out a side door, but they’d be there in a second. I’d left the keys in the ignition, and I’d left the gun in the glove compartment. Stupid. Why am I so stupid? I had had the gun next to me every night before this one.

One of them burped. The other giggled and burped back, then his expression changed. “Get out of there, bitch! Move your ass!”

“Don’t make us come get you!” he singsonged.

They reeked of pot and liquor, sweat and mortal danger.

The one on the right opened the side door, near to where I was. He had a rope—
a rope
—linked around his neck. I hate ropes. Oh, my shouting spitting Lord, I hate ropes.

I instinctively moved back. I could scream, if my throat would move, but it wouldn’t help, no one would hear.

“Give me a second,” I said, my voice strangled.

“Give her a second,” the one near me said, his voice mimicking mine, his black head bobbing. “A second for what? You want to put on some lipstick or something? Grab a condom? We don’t use no condoms, lady. I wanna feel you.”

“Feel you, feel you,” the other one sang. “Feel you. Me first this time.”

“No. I’m first.”

They started to jokingly argue with each other, as if I wasn’t a person, a woman, but a bull cow they were bidding on.

“I . . .” I tried to think through a haze of tingling fear that was rapidly turning into rage. I was about to be attacked by two stoned, violent men wearing full black masks. My blood was curdling, my body stiff with fright, but who the hell did they think they were? I currently hate men. All of them. I do. I hated
him
most of all, but these two were right there with him.

Another wave of liquor and pot rolled through. I wanted to gag. I hate pot and its skunklike smell.

Get the gun.

It was them. I knew it.

Shoot it.

I heard their voices, louder than my fear, in my head.

“I have some pot, hang on,” I said, breathless.

“Pot!” One of the vermin laughed. “Hey, bring the pot. We’ll stick it to you, a threesome, ya know? And we can all light up together. We can put the joint in your vagina slit and smoke it. We can flip you like a sausage and smoke it from your butthole. Butt. Hole.”

I kicked my legs from my sleeping bag, then scrambled into the front seat. The man who had opened the side door, shut it, and went to the front. “Where ya goin’, Miss Titties? I want a titty in my mouth.”

“Titty!” the other said. “Bite it! Titty bites.”

Shoot them, Grenadine!
I heard them again, as if they were sitting right by me.

The masked men were so scarily stoned. I put my fingers on the handle of the glove compartment. “It’s in here. We can get stoned together. You’re right. It’ll be fun. Right up my vagina.”

The one next to me, inches away now, his breath rancid, said, “This be my night, this be my night, how about yours, Jason?”

“This be my night, too. We got a redhead and we got free vagina pot. And don’t call me, Jason, Turley.”

They laughed.

Both of them stopped laughing when I pulled the gun out and put the barrel smack on Turley’s forehead.

“Shit!” they both screamed simultaneously.

“Back the fuck off or I will shoot,” I said, rage ripping through my body. I wanted to kill them, I did. I don’t come from much, but I’ve been taught to fight, and shoot, and survival instincts are as much a part of me as my intestines.

The man, high as a kite but slow, tried to grab the gun. I moved the gun to his shoulder, although that was a gift he did not deserve, and pulled the trigger. He fell straight back.

I turned the gun on the second one as he lunged through the driver’s side at me and shot him, too. He fell straight back, screaming, like his demented, violent buddy. Too bad for them.

I yanked the passenger door shut, the glass that was still stuck to the rims of the window crashing to the seat and pavement. I kept the gun in one hand, then whipped over to the driver’s seat. I slammed that door, transferred the gun to my left hand, turned on the car, and reversed like a bat out of hell.

Both of them stood up, yelling and swearing, each holding onto their wounds. They stumbled back to their car. I didn’t like the looks of that. They would come after me, I knew it.

I hit the brakes, turned to the right, rolled down the window, steadied my shooting hand, and shot out the back tire. The car heaved, then flattened out, listing to the left.

They both flattened themselves to the ground.

I shot out the driver’s window, which clipped through the front window, too, glass splitting into that otherwise silent night. I shot a bullet toward the engine.

In between I heard those sons of bitches swearing to “fucking kill you!” as they lay facedown, cowering on the ground. For fun, I shot again, close to Jason’s head, then Turley’s.

I heard them scream again. They deserved that. They were lucky I didn’t kill them, but I didn’t want the mess.

I took off.

Damn.

They’d wrecked the window of my car.

They’d wrecked my house. It wasn’t much of a house, but still. It was all I had at the moment.

I desperately needed my own roof and my own toilet.

And a locked door.

I was truly pissed.

I parked my car in a neighborhood for the rest of the night, teeth gritted, nerves shot. I put the driver’s seat down but didn’t sleep. I reloaded the gun and left it on my lap.

I could call the police, but I wouldn’t. It was self-defense, no question, even though I had shot off a number of “excess” shots. I liked the police, sometimes, but I didn’t always trust them, or their “procedures,” or the government, especially now. I also didn’t want the publicity, the press, and I didn’t want
him
involved, or his henchmen.

I did, however, worry about those stoned creeps doing that to another woman. That was a major problem. They tried it with me; they would go after someone else. Clearly, I was not their first victim.

Would being shot teach them a lesson? I hoped so, but I doubted it. I had not shot to kill, they should be grateful for that. I could so easily have put them six feet under, and when I thought of their future victims, I wished I had. It’s not in me to kill anyone, and that’s what had prevented me from shooting them both through their brains.

I would not blame someone else for shooting them through their brains, though, not at all. And it could be argued that I had failed The Sisterhood. Had I killed them, this wouldn’t happen to any other woman.

I didn’t like failing The Sisterhood and I sat in that bleak failure for a long time. We women do have an obligation to each other, especially against vomitous and raging men.

I also thought about the police tracing this event to me.

I had had the .38 for years, same with the bullets. The man who gave it to me, Timmy Hutchinson, who I have known since I was a kid, was not exactly enamored with law following—none of the Hutchinsons were. It was unlikely that he had bought the gun from a legitimate dealer, but if the gun was traced to him—highly unlikely—there was no way he would tell a police officer he had given it to me.

But I didn’t have only a gun problem. This was a small town. If my attackers told police that a red-haired woman shot them, it wouldn’t take long to find me. If they went to a hospital, the doctors would call the police, as they do with all gunshot victims, unless they could concoct another story.

I wasn’t too worried about their going to the police. I’d bet my pounding heart that each of those monsters had a rap sheet. If they went to the police and told on me, they knew I would tell what they had done. Black masks. A smashed window. Pot, alcohol, attempted rape.

They’d be arrested, tried, and jailed.

They knew that. So what would they tell the doctors? It was an accident?

Would they later track me down on their own? Would they try to take revenge? That made my spine stiffen. They might. And if they were following me, I wouldn’t even know. I hadn’t seen their faces. They could even live here in town and start stalking me once those shoulders were bandaged up.

I climbed into the backseat of my home-on-wheels. I opened up the sleeping bag’s zipper so I wouldn’t get trapped again and climbed in. It was too cold to sit in a car without covers. My body shook, from cold and shock.

The black masks and that rope taunted me all night long. The sound of my car window breaking into a million pieces played again and again in my head, their singsong, vicious voices ping-ponging through my fear.

I tried to think about painting or creating a collage.

All I saw was a blank, white canvas with bullets shot clean through.

I ate the bacon and fruit at six in the morning. When McDonald’s opened I washed up as best I could in the bathroom. I brushed my hair and ignored the two light, white scars near my hairline.

I wrapped my hair into a braid and put on makeup. My bruises were almost completely gone, so I was glad about that. My eyes looked exhausted, the lids heavy, the skin puffy. Even the green color seemed dimmer. Whatever.

I wet my washcloth, added a little soap, and closed the door of the bathroom stall. I washed the Big V and my rear while squatting over the toilet. I had to. I had been so scared last night, I squirted pee and I could smell it on myself. When no one was in the bathroom, I pulled up my pants, rinsed out the washcloth, went back in the stall, rinsed off the Big V over the toilet, dried off, then put my washcloth and towel back in their baggies. Gross.

You know you’re on a slippery edge when you’re cleaning your privates in McDonald’s.

I would have to go to the Laundromat immediately.

I dried off, then put on fresh underwear, socks, jeans, a thick white sweater, and hoop earrings. It’s extremely important to me that I don’t appear homeless, washed up, and poor. I can’t do it again. I washed my hands one more time, then headed out to the counter.

I bought a huge coffee, dumped in six creams, and sat in the back, hoping to disappear. I decided I could not eat another can of peaches, and I also deserved a treat for surviving last night, so after my coffee I drove to the grocery store and bought yogurt, with a coupon, milk, and two bananas, and I felt better. I also bought duct tape.

I used the plastic bag from my groceries to hold the glass I picked out of my car. I put one of my black plastic bags over the window and secured it with the duct tape. I poked a small hole through the center of it so I could see to the right, then drove around town, trying to find another place that might hire me. I needed a second job because I needed an apartment pronto.

I received my first check from Tildy, which was not large, but she’d told me in three months I’d get a two dollar an hour raise. “If you last that long with some of these turd mouths.”

Waiters and waitresses are taxed at their regular tax rate and then another 8 percent of all the food they sell. This means our checks are pathetic. I did, however, have my tip money in my glove compartment, and it was adding up.

I drove about ten minutes outside of town and saw a sprawling brick building with corner-to-corner windows and a peaked roof, surrounded by lawn. The sign above two red barn doors said H
ENDRICKS
’ F
URNITURE
in black block lettering. There were pine and maple trees around the building, the leaves of the maples red, burgundy, and brown.

Aha! I knew about Hendricks’ Furniture. They made high-quality, hand-carved, exquisite wood furniture. Built for log cabins, rustic mountain retreats, hotels, upscale fishing lodges, higher end restaurants, and homes whose wealthy owners could afford it. Hendricks’ Furniture had been featured in many magazines and newspapers. It was expensive but totally worth it. It was furniture you would push out if your house caught fire.

I hadn’t known that their headquarters was out here. This was dandy news.

I parked in the parking lot at the farthest end. I would wait until ten o’clock, then I would walk in and apply.

What could I tell a furniture store owner that I could do? I could sell their furniture on the floor. Did they do that? I could be a receptionist. I could take orders over the phone. I could . . . I could . . . could what? I could do marketing for them . . . advertising. Maybe. I could learn. I could cold call companies and see if they were interested in the furniture. I could not handle a saw, though—that was a fact, Jack—but I could learn.