Wire Mesh Mothers (13 page)

Yes. She’ll understand,
thought Kate.
Keep talking. You’re good at that. Thank God Mistie is obedient. The girl will never know she was there.

“I would be happy to drive you wherever you want to go,” said Kate. “I have no reason to say anything about this little…fiasco…to anyone. I’m just glad we are both all right. We’ve both had a fright. People do silly things when they are scared. Women do. Little girls do. It happens.”

The girl ran her free hand across her mouth, scratching off the drying puke. She wiped it from her fingers onto the dashboard.

“Did you say little girls?” she said.

“I suppose I should say young woman. You’re not a little girl, are you?”

The girl put her foot up on the dashboard in the dry puke. Her shoe was an old man’s leather shoe. She spit on it, and rubbed what looked like blood from the toe with the heel of her hand, then she licked the hand.

“I’m a teacher,” Kate pressed. “A teacher and a mother. I want you to know I hold no ill-will toward you. I know young people. I know some times they do things they later wished they hadn’t. Well, everyone does that, in fact. Things they wish they hadn’t. Things they wish they could go back and do over. I don’t hold grudges. Let’s put this all behind us. Where can I drive you?”

“You’re a teacher? Teach where?”

“Pippins Elementary.”

The girl stared for a moment. Then she nodded, her head bobbing up and down on her neck like a felt-covered toy dog in the rear of a jacked-up automobile. The movement was chilling. She said, “Hey, teacher, show me your woolly.”

Kate said, “Show you what?”

“You heard me.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re a teacher at Pippins and you don’t know kids’ rhymes?”

“Kids rhymes?”

“You know ‘Little Bo Peep?’”

“Yes. Of course.”

“You know ‘Old McDonald?’”

“Yes.”

“Say it. Say ‘Old McDonald.’”

Kate swallowed dry air. “Well. Okay. ‘Old McDonald had a farm,
ee
-
yi
-
ee
-
yi
-oh. We’re really wasting time….”

The girl jabbed the gun into Kate’s neck.

“On that farm he had a cow,
ee
-
yi
-
ee
-
yi
-oh.”

“Say the ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’”

“Mary had a little lamb his fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.”

“Yeah. Now say the ‘Aunt Molly.’”

A fresh lance of pain shot through Kate’s jaw to her eyes. Her molar pounding as if trying to drive itself up by the roots. Tears sprang, but she blinked them back. Play the little game with this girl and then it’ll be done with. Play cool and she would let Kate go. Of course she would let Kate go.

“I don’t know the ‘Aunt Molly,’” she said honestly.

“I bet,” said the girl. She put her hand on Kate’s knee, and pushed the skirt and coat hem up to Kate’s thigh.

“Think real hard.” Chills of fear sprang up under the fine nylon of her pantyhose.

Kate slid her leg out from under the girl’s touch, but the girl grabbed Kate’s knee and pulled it back. Cold air rushed up between her legs. “Think real hard,” the girl repeated. “Come on. ‘Went downtown to see Aunt Molly….. Say it. You know it.”

“I don’t. I…I’ve never heard it before.”

“We used to say it over at the Elementary School on the playground. Weren’t you listening?”

“I…no.”

“‘Went downtown to see Aunt Molly, paid two cents to see her woolly. Hair so black I couldn’t see the crack. Made her give me my two cents back.’ Use to sing it to make the girls mad, me and Whitey and Buddy.”

“Listen,” said Kate. “Let’s be reasonable. Let’s….”

“Reasonable? You said I was a little girl. Little girls ain’t reasonable, are they?”

“You’re a young lady. I misspoke.”

“You don’t know what I am. But I want to see what you are. Show me your woolly.”

“Wait,” Kate lifted her left hand carefully. “First promise me you’ll put the gun away. You’ll get out of the car like this never happened and walk off. You won’t look back, you’ll….”

“I don’t have to promise you shit,” said the girl. “Pull down your fucking underpants.”

Kate reached for the hem of her skirt, which was already to her hip. She took hold to hike it to her waist. She couldn’t.

“I can’t.”

The girl pulled a knife from her ankle and flicked it open against the steering wheel. It snapped into place with a little click. The blade spit dull sparks in the gray light of the pine woods outside.

“No no
no
no
, please,” said Kate. “Wait…!”

The girl knocked Kate’s legs farther apart with her fist and thrust the knife to the crotch of her panty hose. Kate could feel the very tip on her mound.

No
no
no
no
no
!
Kate slammed herself back against the seat, her knees instinctively coming together, but then a flash of sharp heat on her left inner thigh caused her to open them again.

“I’ll cut you again, you mother-fucking shit, just try me,” said the girl. “You got couple holes now, I’ll give you a couple more.”

Kate, sobbing now, “Please, don’t, wait, okay, wait!” Her heels dug into the floor mat but there was nowhere to go. “Stop this. You don’t need to do this!”

The girl slit open the panty hose at the center then across the tops of both legs. She sliced the navy blue cotton briefs free at both hips and, with the blade, peeled them away. Kate felt the cold air on her exposed flesh and hair.

“Fuckin’ what I thought,” said the girl. “You’re just another cunt!”

Kate closed her eyes. This will be over soon. This will. It can’t go on much longer.

“Close your legs,” said the girl. “You smell like a whore!”

Kate closed her legs. She could feel the blood from the nicked thigh, like a warm oil, smearing the other. “All right,” she said through bile and salt. “You saw what you wanted to see. Now, let me go. There is nothing I can do for you.”

“You gonna drive me.”

“Yes, I said I’d be happy to drop you off somewhere. Just tell me where you live or where you want to go.”

“Not drop off. You drop me off you’ll just tell on me like you did that time.”

What time? What time?

The girl picked a Tootsie Roll from the floor, wiped the vomit off on Kate’s shoulder, and tore the wrapper off with her teeth. She took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. The dark wax stripes on her face were smudged. Drops of sweat dotted the line of her dark eyebrows. The gray eyes steady on Kate, the thoughts behind them indecipherable.

Try again. I can do this.

“Where do you need me to drive you, what is your name, I’m sorry, did you tell me your name?”

“Didn’t tell you.” Chewing, slowly.

“Where do you want me to drive you?”

“Texas.”

“You don’t mean the state of Texas.”

Quietly this time, as if confident in her complete control of the situation, tapping the side of the gun with her pinky as it moved in a slow wave up and down along Kate’s torso. “Don’t tell me what I don’t mean.”

“I have some cash. Enough, I think, to buy a bus ticket to Texas. There’s a station in Emporia. I could get you to Emporia. Do you have relatives in Texas?”

“Do teachers ever shut their fat lips?”

Kate rolled her lips in between her teeth.

“Texas, and you’re driving me. But first you’re cleaning up this vomit shit. Mothers like to clean, don’t they? See ‘em on television all the time, happy to be cleaning vomit, happy to be cleaning toilets, happy to be cleaning their babies’ smelly butts.”

The girl glanced over the back at the quilt. “Wipe it up with that.”

“No, I may have some Wipe-
Its
in the glove box if you’ll just look….”

The girl said, “Fuck that,” and pulled up the quilt.

The girl looked at Mistie. She looked at Kate and shook her head. The gun imitated the head, shaking slowly.

Tsk
tsk
tsk
.

She said, “Well, now, what the fuck you got hiding here, little Miss Teacher?”

T
he girl said the “f” word again and stared at Mistie. The girl looked scary, with red all over her face. Mistie remembered on the Princess
Silverlace
show once that a bad witch tried to cast a spell on the princess and steal all her people’s cattle. The witch had disguised herself with paint and feathers so people would think she was a goose. She looked just like this girl except there were no feathers. Maybe this girl was a bad witch. Maybe she was going to put a spell on Mistie now that the blanket was pulled away.

Mistie put her hands over her face. She could smell the chocolate on her palms and she licked them. Maybe the girl would go away if she didn’t move. Sometimes her Daddy went away if she didn’t move. Mostly he didn’t go away but sometimes he did.

Don’t move.

Be
vwery
,
vwery
quiet.

S
he remembered.

Fifth grade, three years ago. The oldest in the class at twelve because she had failed third grade for not coming to school enough. The official record had said she’d missed sixty-seven days. Tony’s Mam had protested briefly that her daughter was sick and had good excuses for missing, but then let it go. To protest a retention with any conviction required coming in and talking to the teacher, the guidance counselor, and the principal. That was too much for Mam. That would take a good couple hours out of her day. That would cut into her beer and her
Price is Right
and her sofa time.

Retained, then, Tony - still Angela - was the tallest girl in the class. The others were a good four inches shorter, a year dumber, and, the only good thing for them, flatter. They didn’t like Angela and she didn’t like them. They called her
lezbo
behind her back because she cut her own hair short and never wore skirts. She called them hussies, cunts, pussies, whatever caught her fancy at the moment to their faces. She spent a lot of time on the bench in the office.

Angela made friends with a couple boys in the class, Buddy and Whitey. Buddy was a goof-ass who couldn’t read very well. Whitey was a black kid with a burned up face. They were almost her age but not quite. She told them what to do and they usually did.

It was during Spring Fling. Spring Fling was an annual PTA fund-raiser, a mini-carnival held the last Friday in May. Classes were let out after lunch, and the kids who had brought money were free to run around the school grounds, buying cupcakes at the kindergarten bake sale or tossing nickels to win stuffed animals at the third grade booth. There was face painting and a water balloon toss. There was a popcorn vendor set up by the cafeteria workers and PTA moms selling lopsided clumps of cotton candy on white paper cones. Kids who didn’t have money wandered around begging the other kids for a loan, manned the various grade-level booths, or plopped themselves down on the playground swings and slide and pretended they didn’t care.

The day was hot, hotter than a set of fried jumper cables, and Angela, who had brought three dollars she’d swiped from her mother’s wallet, was spent-out and was now perched atop the wooden climbing tower. She wore a pair of cut-offs, a baggy tee-shirt to hide her embarrassingly mature chest, and rubber flip flops. From her vantage point a good fifteen feet above the ground, she could watch the comings and goings of the kids who still had money. Over at the water balloon toss on the blacktop two boys had gotten into a scuffle and the teacher was breaking it up. There was a long line at the face painting booth, little guys bouncing in sneakers and waving the little American flags bought at the fifth grade flea market booth. A clump of fifth graders had won packs of baseball cards and they’d found shade by the special education trailer for a swap meet. Scents of cotton candy and butter and hot earth drifted across the playground.

“Somebody lost a balloon!” called Buddy. He was below Angela, sitting in the shadows under the tower. He didn’t have any money, either. He had tried to borrow some from Angela but she wouldn’t share.

The balloon was bright pink, and had lost just enough helium to keep it barely above kid’s-head level. A breeze spun it in lazy circles, it’s string trailing like a kite tail, across the blacktop and over the grassy playground to the wooden climbing tower.

“Look, balloon!” Buddy repeated.

“I see it,” said Angela.

The balloon whirled and dipped, raised up and drifted low. Written on one side was the name of the sponsor who’d donated the balloons to Pippins Elementary, “Southwestern Citizen’s Bank.” Angela leaned out from the tower, holding tight with one hand, and grabbed the string as it flitted by.