“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.
43
The 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 u
p 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.
44
Tony 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.
45
The 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.
The girl had not died last night, curse it all. Another joke of the gods. She was alive and kicking and more determined than ever to make Texas. She’d left Kate and Mistie in the motel room in the very early morning and had returned with this vehicle. She didn’t say where she’d found it, but Kate guessed some used car lot, from the “inner circle of value” near the back where most shoppers wouldn’t bother to look. She’d hot-wired it and brought it back to Mobile South Motor Inn as the sun was coming up. She’d instructed Mistie and Kate to take whatever they could from the place, especially the pillows because they were soft, and all the towels from the bathroom. She ordered Mistie in the back seat, Kate in the driver’s seat, and they were good to go.
The girl hadn’t died. But Mistie was sick.
Kate had noticed it in the rearview. Mistie’s skin was pale, her lips were cracking. She no longer repeated her little poems to herself. She was no longer reaching down with bound hands to rub herself between her legs.
The radio in the Nova didn’t work. Neither did the speedometer. Kate drove at what she thought was 55, knowing that if she tried to speed to catch a police officer’s attention, the teenager would do her best to take them all down before they were caught.
If she’d only died. But there’s still time before she gets to her friends in Texas. I’ll keep my eyes open, you betcha. I’ll watch for every opportunity.
Kate licked her bottom lip, savoring the image of the girl dead on the side of the road.
Mississippi in December was worse than Alabama in December. Kate had the window rolled down to let some of the sticky air in. Kate thought air might help Mistie feel better; what had she eaten yesterday that might have not agreed with her? Kate couldn’t remember. When she called back to Mistie to see how she was doing, the girl in the passenger’s seat stopped cleaning her fingernails with her knife and said, “Want a third stripe on your stomach? Hey, enough and we’ll have, like, an American flag. That’s thirteen, right? We can salute you.”
Kate didn’t answer and the girl didn’t seem concerned that she didn’t. The wounds on her abdomen were already closing, and it was amazing how little she thought of the discomfort when she had other things to occupy her mind. They drove another twelve miles, cutting through swampy grasslands and small farms dotted with Brahma cattle and white egrets. Mistie slumped in the back, her head rolling to and fro as if watching a tennis match.
“Truth or dare?” Kate asked. She put her left hand out into the wind. She had gotten permission from the girl to tear off the sleeves of her sweatshirt, and her arms were grateful for the small favor. Her pits smelled, but no longer did Kate feel chagrin. It was almost a good thing, a feral thing.
“Drop it you know what’s good for you.”
“Something to pass the time.” She liked the sound of her voice; it was gritty, unfamiliar. “I’m bored, I don’t know about you.”
“You’re bored? You’re cut and beat, and you’re bored?” The girl eyed Kate with lowered lids, then, “Yeah. Why not. Truth.”
“Who are the people you’re going to see in Texas?”
“Why you want to know?”
Kate shrugged. She didn’t really want to know, but getting the girl to relax even a little would help when she had the chance to bash her in the brains with the loose steering wheel once she was able to work it free. “Small talk.”
The girl licked sweat from her top lip and frowned out the window. She said, “Not friends. I’m going to see my father. He’s a ranch owner, he owns almost half of Texas. He’s a bad ass. He sells cattle. He’s a drug baron, too, like those guys in Mexico and has more money than God. He kills anybody who gets in his way. He wrote for me to come visit him, so I figured after the gasoline guy got shot, it was as good a time as any.”
“How about that,” said Kate.
The girl’s head whipped about. “You don’t believe me?”
“Why wouldn’t I believe you? You seem like the daughter of a drug baron to me.”
“Yeah? You fucking with me?” The girl’s nostrils flared, then calmed. “Truth or dare,” she said.
“Truth,” said Kate.
“Why you have that kid in the back of your car? You don’t have a daughter so it wasn’t clothes. And trust me, I got a great dare if you lie this time.”
Kate glanced down at the speedometer,
forgetting it was broken. The needle rode zero. Why was Mistie in my car? Yes, Alice and Bill. Ontario. I was taking her to them. She sexually abused and I was doing a good thing.
“I wanted to give her a nice, warm meal,” said Kate. “I was taking her home so she could have dinner with my husband and myself.”
“Your son? Forget about him? Or you do keep him locked up?”
“He doesn’t live at home.”
“Why not?”
“He’s off at school. Philadelphia.”
“Rich ass school, huh? Southampton schools ain’t good enough for a McDolen?”
“Possibly.”
The girl shook her head slowly, accusingly. “Why’d you say that thing about the clothes last time I asked?”
“I was nervous. You had a gun, remember.”
“I don’t believe you anything you’ve told me ‘bout Baby Doll. They’re all lies.”
“Believe what you want. It’s true.”
“It’s not true. Nothing you told me’s true. So I got a dare for you.”
Yeah, dare me, bitch. Not for much longer. Give it to me, I don’t care. I’m biding my time.
“Next town, next phone booth, you’re calling your husband and tellin’ him what you did.”
This wasn’t what Kate expected. “What did I do?”
“Got Baby Doll, were skippin’ out with her, taking her somewhere to be in a kiddie porn ring. They got those in Richmond, you know. And Washington, DC. Teachers got lots of chances to get kids for kiddie porn rings. Lots of money in it. Teachers do it, and clowns. And priests.”
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