Wonder When You’ll Miss Me (12 page)

I picked up my mother's cleaver.

“Here,” she said, and spread the pink chicken out on the butcher block.

I didn't move.

“Fat girls are hungry, Faith.”

Wham!

The flesh resisted, but my cleaver sliced right through. My cleaver did its job, cleaved the meat in two.

Fat girls are hungry.

Again.

And she was right. It felt good. It felt really good.

 

American history. Heart hammering. Jenny Sims's ponytail dripped down her back, all honey and highlights.

“Cut it off. Take a buck knife and shave the back of her head.”

“Missy Groski would be better off with her mouth stapled shut, with your initials in her cheek.”

“And what about the guys…
Knife to face, blade splitting flesh. Think of how smooth that would feel…
”

The fat girl whispered all of these things to me. Whispered and whistled inside my head.

“If I go find them—the circus—” I said over my shoulder. “Will you come?”

“You think you can leave me behind?” Her eyes squinted to nothing beneath their enormous folds of flesh. She spat a watermelon seed and it bounced off the concrete wall and lay shiny on the floor in the corner of the classroom. Juice dripped down her chin.

“I'm coming,” she whispered. “You need me like you wouldn't believe.”

My heart was so goddamn loud. In her hand she held the cleaver, its blade newly sharpened, gleaming.

“Another present,” she said.

I felt dizzy.

But I took the knife from her.

 

And I found myself in the middle of the hallway, people streaming around me like I was a rock in their river, with that cleaver in my hand. And I held its handle so tightly that my knuckles were white, all bone. The tiny gold knife from before wasn't nearly as heavy. Wouldn't have done the job. This knife had substance to it, weight. This knife was angry, it wanted to celebrate its sharpness against something soft and giving, to split flesh from bone. The knife wanted to find them and make them cry. The knife ached, burned to make something happen. And it needed me to do it. It was warm and smooth in my palm.

The fat girl whispered small things, soothing things. Her words burned a path through my head.

My heart stomped and thudded, loud enough to extinguish the noise of the people around me. I had stopped breathing. I didn't need to breathe. I had an angry knife and a mission, a purpose. I had something that needed to be done. I pushed through the crowd, seeing none of them, shoving my way towards the courtyard, where Tony Giobambera sat on his customary bench enjoying his very last ten-fingered cigarette.

S
HE
led me to him, to where he smoked on the rock, leaning back on that hand, its fingers spread perfectly, the ring shiny in the morning light. Classes were changing, there was so much noise. A fight broke out across the courtyard and Tony turned to look. He didn't see me coming. I stood there, frozen, and then I swung at him.

The knife passed through his face, through one edge of those beautiful lips and the whole of his rough cheek and clean through. Blood poured from the enormous gash and I dropped the cleaver and ran.

I heard it clatter and I heard screams and I didn't know if they came from me or the fight or from him. From the torn mouth of Tony Giobambera. I didn't look back, just ran as fast as I could, as if that was what I'd been training for all these months. Through the trees behind school, past the old binder factory warehouse, to the abandoned service station with an unlocked bathroom. The fat girl knew what she was doing, where to go, I saw her up ahead.

Blood had poured out of him.

We threw out my T-shirt, my jeans. My purple backpack had a change of clothes, a few necessities. The fat girl murmured softly as she cut my hair short and spiky, then slathered on peroxide and held my hand. She whispered calm soothing things she thought I'd want to hear. It burned my scalp, but I didn't say a thing, didn't cry, didn't even wince. After she rinsed my hair in the rusty water, I got sick in the toilet and along the side of the dirty wall. The smell was unbearable, but neither of us complained. We heard sirens go by.

“Look, Faith,” the fat girl said, and pulled a finger from her pocket.

I had to look away. It was impossible, that pale white thing. I had only sliced his cheek. I had only cut his face. It was impossible and unreal, and proof all at the same time. When I turned back it was gone, she'd tucked it away somewhere.

Outside, we had changed the world forever.

“We have to go when it gets dark,” she said. And then she whispered the things she thought I'd need to know in order to become a new person. In order to leave Faith behind.

Later, I don't know when, we made our way through the dense woods to the highway, where I stood on uncertain legs in my new persona and stuck my thumb out. They would be looking for us. They would be looking for me. It was time to leave. All that planning, all that preparation and here we were on the side of the road, my thumb stuck out and my life forever different.

Tony Giobambera's face swam before my eyes. I saw his fingers splayed on the rock and the cleaver. I saw myself pull back and begin to swing and then the fat girl snapped her fingers and pointed towards the car that had passed us.

“Stay with me, Faith,” she said. “Stay here.”

I managed enough of a smile to tell her that I understood.

 

I got us a ride from a college kid named Monty who was sadder than me and a talker. He was so sad and he talked so much that nothing was required of me except staring out the window, and the occasional
Uh-huh
.

He was headed home, to Memphis, Tennessee, where his mother was dying; he'd just received the call and had been driving all night from D.C. He was grateful for my company. So grateful that west of Statesville he thrust his hand between my legs.

Faith would have been paralyzed but Annabelle was not.

I slapped him hard on the side of the head and punched him in the arm. He swerved, but apologized profusely.

In the backseat, the fat girl smiled.

 

In Asheville, the fat girl showed me how to shoplift. We took makeup and a shiny magazine from a drugstore and then experimented with our loot in the bathroom of a pool hall across the street. Annabelle was a girl on
TV, in magazines. Annabelle knew how to line her lips and wear a push-up bra. I walked out calmly, eyes lashy and blue-lidded, lips shiny and pink, blush streaking its way up my cheeks.

I looked good. And right now that was the important thing. That was going to get us wherever we needed to go.

 

We found a bus station and bought a ticket to Nashville. “Keep to the cities,” the fat girl advised. “We need to disappear, not show up uninvited.” The ticket was expensive and I protested, thinking we should hitchhike again, but she talked me out of it.

“Soon enough,” she said. “Might as well get as far as we can before we go attracting attention.”

While we waited for the bus to leave, we found a Goodwill and bought me a short denim skirt, scuffed black cowboy boots, a long underwear shirt, and a tight yellow sweater. The fat girl kept uncrossing my arms from over my chest.

“There is nothing wrong with your breasts,” she said, making me blush. “Show them off, for Chrissake, it'll distract people from your face.” We ditched my old blue parka for a worn black leather jacket. The fat girl produced a pair of tights. I considered myself in the dusty mirror. I was pretty sure I looked at least nineteen.

“The key to looking older,” the fat girl said, “is to try and look younger.” I turned to the right and then the left, examining.

I walked out of there a whole other person. No more Faith. Faith was tucked away in my backpack along with almost six hundred dollars, most of which I'd earned.

I was Annabelle and I was going to be okay.

We walked a few blocks to a diner. I wasn't so hungry but the fat girl was. She had all of my pancakes and half my bowl of fruit. Several people around us were reading newspapers.

“Do you think…?” But I didn't have to finish. The fat girl shook her head and took a huge bite of pancake.

“Soon,” she said with her mouth full.

 

The bus was slow and steady, lurching to a stop in every small town along the way. I slept almost the whole way there. It was dusk when we left and I couldn't see much as we passed through the mountains. Sleep was a
heavy black blanket that wrapped itself around me and I didn't struggle and I didn't dream. Outside Knoxville the fat girl prodded me to get out and stretch my legs, but I was tired, so tired. She huffed and went herself.

I woke a few more times to the hazy dawn outlines of indistinguishable small towns. Sometime later I felt fingers move lightly over my nipples, move in circles, and then a hand gripped my arm and I lurched awake, unsure of where I was.

A man was staring at me, his face inches from mine. His eyes were black and bottomless and he had a mean little black goatee.

“You dropped something,” he whispered with sour breath.

I tried to shake him free but he had me tightly. He bent down and picked up my tattered magazine and thrust it towards me. “Here,” he said. I felt the ghosts of his hands on my chest.

“Let go of me.” It came out loud and strong. I saw some of the other passengers stir. He smiled and released my arm but stayed where he was, settled in the fat girl's seat.

I didn't know what to do. Outside we passed pine trees and churches, field after empty field soon to be planted again. I reached down for my backpack and pushed past him into the aisle, stumbling over his long legs. I expected him to grab me but he didn't. I tugged my skirt down and glared at him. There was an empty seat farther back, next to an old woman the color of cinnamon who was snoring with her mouth open and her head against the window. I sat next to her, stiff and violently awake, bag in my lap. Ahead of us, his close-cropped black hair poked above the seat back. My skin still crawled with the feeling of fingers.

 

When we arrived in Nashville the man rose and exited the bus without looking back at me. I sat for a minute to let as much distance grow between us as I could, but the lady next to me stood and told me to move.

“Don't you
want
to go?” She clucked and shook her head in wonder. “Been on this bus all
night.
”

Once outside, I didn't know what to do except walk quickly. I saw a donut shop and headed for it, my backpack slung over one shoulder. Inside, the fat girl stood nibbling the sprinkles off a glazed jelly donut.

“Where the hell have you been?”

She shrugged and licked her fingers one by one. “Get yourself some coffee, Faith.”

“Annabelle.”

“Whatever.”

We sat at a small orange-and-pink table in the corner. Outside there were just buildings, low commercial sprawl, one store after the other. It felt so different than Gleryton. I took a long drink of the sweet milky coffee. Down the street I saw a man in a shaggy blue bathrobe walking a goat.

The fat girl sighed and put her palms flat on the table. “Shall we check the papers?” she said.

I had almost forgotten. I nodded and dug around for some change to buy us one.

We spread it flat on the table. I looked for a picture of the rock where Tony had always sat smoking, of our own low wall. I looked for a picture of my face or a headline—
TERRIBLE INCIDENT AT LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL
or
SEARCH FOR VIOLENT GIRL CONTINUES
, but I found nothing.

Were they after us? Had men in uniform sifted through the contents of my room while my mom stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, shaking her head? After all the messy trouble I'd caused, was she relieved to have me gone? Did she miss me?

“We should probably stay here a day or two,” the fat girl said. “Unless you want to head to Atlanta tonight.” The fat girl had a map in front of her and rested her big soft chin on her fist, her elbow on the table.

“I guess. Whatever you think.”

“Look, it's Sunday, we can move pretty undetected on a Sunday. Monday and Tuesday we'll have to be more careful. But I'm thinking we could stay here a few days anyway, until the middle of next week, maybe. Try and figure things out. Figure out what to do.”

I nodded. I didn't care, but I didn't tell her that. I was trying to remember the name of the tattoo shop where Charlie had gotten his falcon when he lived here. It was a one word name, I thought. How many tattoo shops could there be?

 

Many.

I thought it was a guy's name: Fred's or Lou's or something like that. There turned out to be six tattoo shops with guy's names. We got directions and walked long enough that my feet began to ache, but we were lucky right off the bat.

The first one was boarded up. But we found Mike's Tattoos and that sounded just about right to me. I didn't quite know what I was going to ask, but the fat girl whispered her encouragement.

“Annabelle,” she said.

A short, bored-looking guy was behind the counter. His neck was circled in black-ink barbed wire. I looked at the designs on the wall, sketches of things to etch into your skin and photographs of customers' tattoos. The room was small but crammed with images and the photographs were unsettling in their anonymity: fragments of bodies served up for scrutiny, without the faces that belonged to them. I was stuck on the Chinese characters for a while, their bold strokes on people's wrists and the backs of necks. If you inscribed something on your body that didn't mean what you thought it meant—the character for misery mislabeled “happiness,” for example—would you doom yourself to whatever you asked for?

“Look,” the fat girl pointed out a smutty cartoon barnyard scene complete with farmer, milkmaid, and livestock. I found the Statue of Liberty holding a beer above her head. She was in a section of cartoony tattoos: big-boobed girls in tight T-shirts in various suggestive poses on motorcycles. Some of them were sort of cute in an embarrassing way.

I walked the circumference of the room, trailing my hand behind me along the plastic-covered wall. I stopped at a photograph of angel's wings outlined across the broad canvas of a man's back. You could see the skin was puffy and red, there was a little blood in the picture, the tattoo must have been fresh. And then something else caught my eye. Three photographs in a row: a brown-and-red falcon. A band of Gypsies. A chest with three chickens tattooed on it: a light blue, a pale green, and a pink.

Holy shit.

The fat girl noticed me riveted and came to see what had my attention.

“You see something you like?” the guy called.

The fat girl kicked me. “No,” I said. It was difficult to focus. “Actually, I'm looking for a guy named Charlie,” I said. “These are his tattoos.”

The counter guy came out from behind the counter to see what I was pointing at. Color streamed over his skin. Oceans and mountains climbed his arms. “Do you know him?” I asked. “He used to live in Nashville. He's with the Fartlesworth Circus. I want to find them.”

The guy scratched at the black-ink barbed wire drawn around his neck. “No,” he said. “But I've only been in Nashville about eight months. Ben Dixon's the one you ought to talk to,” he said. “He'll be in here in about an hour. He does a lot of circus people. He did everything on this wall.”

 

While we waited, a couple of skinny redneck girls pushed through the front door and bells tinkled. They wore lots of makeup and were dressed alike: skintight acid-wash jeans and white sweatshirts. They both had stiff blond hair that stood up in a claw in the front. Counter Guy came out to help the girls. One wanted a heart but couldn't decide if it should have a name inside or just initials. The other wanted a motorcycle.

“I know what I want, I want a motorcycle,” she said about six times until her friend finally told her to shut up.

And then this guy walked in, tall and skinny, roped in tattoos with a shaved head and small silver hoop earrings—about ten on each ear. “She's been waiting for you,” Counter Guy said, pointing at me over the tall hair of the rednecks.

Ben had the sleepy expression of someone who'd just woken up. “Hey,” he said. “Let me put my coat away and I'll be right back. Did you already pick out a design?”

I didn't know what to say. The fat girl pinched my calf.

“Ow, yes.” I nodded as he disappeared into the back.

“Why'd you do that?” I whispered, but she shook her head.