Wire Mesh Mothers (27 page)

That’s all right, I’ll find something soon. She was caught in a brief and vicious wave of shivers and thought, I’ll never be warm again. I’ll stay cold.

But that’s okay. It’s good to be cold.

The little bitch.

She went into the bedroom.

The girl was standing at a tilt near the door, her fingers clutching the edge of the blue drape. She was likely cramping. Kate wondered how damaged she was. She hoped it was a lot. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to go any farther. “Where are your fucking clothes?” the girl said.

“Wet.”

“Sit down.”

Kate sat beside Mistie. Mistie was tied with pillowcases at her wrists and ankles. The child stared at the blank television screen as if by sheer will she could bring the show back on. The bedspread was crumpled where the girl had flopped back and forth. One pillowcase-less pillow was on the floor.

The girl came up between the beds and slapped Kate across the mouth. Kate’s own hand came up to retaliate, but stopped short as the knife slashed the air inches from her nose. The girl turned it slowly in her hand. It winked in the low-watt bulb overhead. “Who said you could talk to me in the bathroom? Now, I’m gonna tell you what we’re doing next. Tomorrow morning, we’re
outa
this shit hold called Mobile. We’re finding us a car and we’re driving straight through to Texas. I don’t know what the hell I’ll do with you when I get there, but you can bet your asses I’ll kill you if you give me any trouble between now and then.” She stiffened, groaned, then shook her head as if to clear it. “Get those socks you left in the bathroom. Can’t leave you
loose
.”

“No.”

The girl was quick, up on the bed and grabbing at Mistie’s hair and jerking her neck back, exposing the soft throat. The blade trembled less than an inch from the skin. “Oh, I think you will. One wrong move, teacher, and we can all sing like Baby Doll, ‘Mama had a baby and its head popped off.’”

Kate retrieved the socks from the bathroom floor and sat back on the bed. The socks were still dripping. She wrung them out over the floor, not taking her eyes off the girl as she did. The socks weren’t long enough to be a garrote. Pity. If they were, she could have hidden them in her jeans in the morning to strangle the girl later.

“Tie your ankles, and Baby
Doll’ll
get your wrists like before.”

Within the minute, Kate was immobile in her towel drape and her sock restraints, propped up against the headboard. Mistie was curled up beside Kate, humming. The girl had used the phone cord, which she’d cut apart, to tied Kate’s arms to the headboard. Mistie was tied to Kate’s right arm. Her stare was vacant, like a child going to slaughter. Kate’s insides roiled.

The girl had stood back to appreciate her handiwork, and then turned on the television to national news. She climbed onto her own bed, clutched a pillow to her chest, and watched the screen.

There was a riot reported in Los Angeles, with several teenagers captured for shooting an officer. A fire in Arizona, begun, it was believed, by the incredibly dry conditions over the past month. Thousands of acres already destroyed. A blizzard in North Dakota. A mall Santa in Chicago found guilty of child molestation.

“Yeah, okay,” the girl said to the set. “What about Pippins? What about the gasoline man? What about us, huh?” She put a pillow between her knees and let a breath out through her teeth. Oh, yes, she was hurting.
Very, very good.

She went quiet then as a commercial played, then another, another, and the news came back. It was a story about Americans in upstate New York going to Canada for their prescription drugs.

“Virginia’s good as Canada! Go to Virginia!”

The national weather report, the dry weather in the southwest, the snow across the mid-west. Clear and cold in Virginia, cloudy in Alabama and Texas.

The news went off.
Wheel of Fortune
came on. The girl reached over for the theft-proof remote and clicked the T.V. off. She put one hand under her head and looked at the ceiling. “Tomorrow I’ll get a fucking car. Tomorrow, I’ll get to Texas. No more of this screwing around.”

Kate said, “Truth or dare?”

The girl’s head turned in Kate’s direction. “You got a death wish?”

“Truth or dare? You like the game, don’t you?”

The girl sat up quickly, her focus seeming to go out then in with the effort. She wiped sweat from her brow with her sweatshirt sleeve.
WWJD?
Kate thought. Well, he wouldn’t be gouging himself with a knife handle and cutting up teachers in the shower of the Mobile South Motor Inn. But then again, maybe He would. As a girl, Kate had attended a Presbyterian church with her family in Norfolk; she’d heard how the God of Moses could flip out and go pretty damn nuts when things didn’t turn out His way.

The girl nodded at the knife by her pillow. “You forget I got that?”

“No, but I notice your gun is gone. Tough deal, huh? Truth or dare?”

The girl stared.

“You into your own game? You can dish it out but can’t take it?”

“There’s nothing I can’t take.”

“Truth or dare, then.”

A laugh of disbelief, but an expression of curiosity. “Okay, bitch, I’ll go for it this once. Dare.”

Kate heard her teacher’s voice speaking, the voice of calm. She didn’t even have to count to ten on this one.
Deidra if you could see me now. Donald, if you had any idea.
“You’re clearly an independent girl, someone who knows her own mind. You don’t need us. I dare you to let us go.”

“Wrong!” The girl sat up.

“Okay, fine.” Kate felt one eyebrow go up into a benign point, a good addition to the act. “Then I get a truth.”

The girl said, “What truth?”

“Why do you hate yourself so much?”

“I don’t hate myself you stupid bitch. I’m the best thing in this motel room.”

“What you did to yourself in the bathroom, the way you talk. It’s obvious you hate what you are.”

The girl shook her head and chuckled darkly. She pulled up her sweatshirt to show an Ace bandage strapped across her breasts. “What I got ain’t what I am! See this? If I had the money I’d get ‘em cut off. Fat and skin, that’s all they are, but oh, don’t the men think they’re something? Looking, wanting to touch, screw what you want, right? You got ‘em, Baby Doll’s gonna have ‘em even if she doesn’t want ‘em. Think there would be a pill now, one you could take to pop these fuckers down to nothing.”

“You wish you were a boy, then?”

Dig harder, Kate. She has a knife. You have a brain.
“There are biological explanations for that, you know. No need to be ashamed.”

The sweatshirt came down. “You’re so ignorant! I don’t want to be a boy, I just don’t want to be a girl. I want to be nothing, just a person. That make sense to your little mind?”

“Why don’t you want to be a girl?”

“You aren’t listening!” The girl leaned over and stared at Kate, one hand taking up the knife, the other set of fingers balled into a fist and shaking at Kate. Then the next moment she drew back slightly, and her tone evened out. Her wide eyes hitched in what looked like a wave of pain. “You’re playing with me. You can fuck off.”

She rolled from the bed and turned off all the lamps. There was the sound of her dropping to her bed, mumbling something into her pillow. Kate listened until the girl’s breathing had changed from consciousness to sleep.

But Kate remained wide awake, riding the turbulent and delicious rush of anger.

I’m going to kill her. Oh, you bet.

T
he motel room was hellishly dark. A thin strip of pale light generated from the “Mobile South” sign across the parking lot cut through the center of the wall by the door where the drapes didn’t quite meet. The cheap digital alarm clock beside the lamp read two forty-nine. In the room next door, the television droned and a couple was going at it, given the rhythm of the thumping on the wall. The familiar grunts and little squeals of delight. These people were enjoying it, all right.

Kate thought about Donald. He hadn’t touched her since the incident last July. The incident.

Don’t think about that. Don’t think about your screw-ups, not now not now there’s no time there’s no need. You’ve got a hell of a lot of other more important things to think about.

She bore her head down to her shoulder, trying to block out the sounds next door.

She remembered.

The last time she and Donald had had sex was in June, a good six months ago, a Sunday afternoon. Donnie was home from
Heyden
-Ricketts for two weeks, on the stipulation that he would be under his parents’ supervision the entire time. Kate didn’t know where Donnie was; Donald had let him take the Mercedes riding as long as Donnie promised not to get into any trouble and to be back by dinnertime. Of course, Donnie had promised. “Nothing to worry about, Dad,” he’d said. Kate was furious, had scolded Donald for playing so loosely with the rules and expecting things to turn out all right.

They had been in the kitchen, sunny it was that afternoon, with light pouring through the bay window and bouncing along Kate’s collection of copperware on the wall rack. Donald had brushed back Kate’s hair and tried to brush away her concerns. “He’ll be okay,” he’d whispered. “Don’t be anal, hon. Really.” He kissed her. He helped her down to the smooth, tiled floor and made love to her. Screwed her, whatever. She had watched out the window, watched the Queen Ann’s lace down in the field as it waved in a breeze, watched the goldfinches flutter amid the purple thistle and periwinkle chicory blossoms. She did not respond to Donald except to lift her rear when her hiked up sundress got uncomfortably bulky, but he hadn’t noticed.

They were done by the time Donnie returned – he had come back as promised, but two hours late and smelling of gasoline that he said he’d accidentally spilled on himself while topping off the Mercedes at the Exxon up the road. Kate detected an under-scent of pot, but said nothing. Donald didn’t seem to notice or didn’t want to say he’d been wrong.

It was then she knew she couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t let this man, who cared so little for her concerns, who had long ago forgotten what she was in light of what he wanted her to be, touch her anymore. Be intimate with her. She’d cried for hours that night, and told Donald it was because Donnie would take the bus back to Philadelphia the next day.

In early July, she came home from a grocery shopping trip to Emporia with a torn blouse and ripped hose. And a story. She had been raped. A man had forced himself into her car and made her drive into the countryside where he slapped her around and took advantage of her. She hadn’t resisted, but had not gone to a hospital and had not called the police. The moment she’d reached the McDolen house she’d showered to wash the man’s smell and touch away. Donald had been doting, but had not insisted she tell the police.

“We’ll deal with this,” he said as he tucked her into bed and kissed her nose. “We can get through this without having to bring the public into our private lives.”

The blouse was burned in the kitchen sink. Donald had brought Kate a snifter of burgundy and had fluffed the pillows.

It worked. Whenever Donald had even looked amorous, Kate had said, “I can’t. I just remember him, slapping me, touching me, I’m sorry, Donald,” and Donald would back off.

Next door, the couple giggled and thumped, bang, bang, bang, bang. Newlyweds, maybe, or an unmarried couple. A sound of unabashed joy, thwacking through the motel wall.

For a moment, Kate wished Donald was there. A rush of something, nostalgia perhaps, remembrance of his British Sterling and his warm shoulder.

She shook her head and turned her attention to the girl’s shallow, nocturnal breathing on the other bed. Maybe she would rupture, maybe hemorrhage to death. Kate could always hope. The maid would come in, then, and find them tied up. It could be over soon if the little bitch would just up and die.

She offered a prayer to that effect. And then prayed the couple next door would have an argument and stop the infernal fucking.

T
ony woke at three-nineteen according to the motel room’s plastic clock, cramping and sweating. She felt her way into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, certain she had only a few minutes to live. But she couldn’t die there in a stupid Mobile motel, if she was going to die it would have to be in Texas.

She panted and tried to ride the waves of pain. It was worse than any flu she’d ever had. It was worse than the food poisoning she’d gotten after eating some of
Mam’s
spoiled Thanksgiving turkey. It was worse than any female pain she’d had before. She breathed deeply, slowly, the air hitching in her lungs.

The cramps subsided. She wiped the damp from between her legs but didn’t flush. She didn’t want to wake Baby Doll. That kid had been through a lot.

Not that Tony liked her or anything.

T
he old Chevy Nova was rusted along the sides, across the roof, and on the driver’s side floor, so much that the rubber floor mat sagged in several spots and Kate knew if she pulled it up, she’d be able to see spots of the road beneath them. It was some joke of the gods that it had an engine and transmission decent enough to keep the machine moving forward. They were in Mississippi, driving west on Route 575 near the southern border.