by Tawni O'Dell
I’m afraid Clay isn’t going to understand, because I’m not so sure I understand anymore either. And if he doesn’t understand, I don’t know what I will do.
A mother’s love is not warm and cuddly like a soft blanket as it’s popularly portrayed. It’s a fierce, rabid love, like having a mad dog living inside you all the time. If it’s rejected, it can’t be locked away and left to slowly starve to death over time, but has to be yanked out immediately and murdered.
I don’t know how any woman survives this.
It’s almost four in the afternoon and I still haven’t found the nerve to call him when I get a call from him.
“Hi, Mom. Do you have a minute? I could use your help with something.”
“Sure,” I answer with my heart in my throat.
“I’m out at Meade Mercer’s place. He called about this little girl beating the crap out of one of his dogs with a big stick. Fortunately I was in the area so I could take care of it and prevent it from becoming something much bigger than it needs to be.”
I laugh.
“You’re always in the area, Clay. Do you realize that? We’re going to have to put it on your tombstone: Here lies Clayton James Penrose. Beloved son and deputy. Fortunately, he was in the area.”
He doesn’t respond, and it suddenly occurs to me for the first time since he became a deputy and started always being in the area that maybe he’s in the area because of me. Could he be keeping an eye on me?
“When I asked her what her name is and where she lives so I can take her and her brother home she said she didn’t have to tell me,” he goes on. “She gave me your business card and said to contact you instead. I think she wants you to act as her lawyer.”
He pauses.
“Does any of this make sense to you?”
“Yes, I know who she is.”
“Great. Who is she?”
“Why don’t you let me take care of it? I can be there in ten minutes. I don’t want to break cabbie confidentiality.”
Meade Mercer has a skinny, crooked, sprawling farm that’s been carved out of several hundred wooded acres on either side of Route 12 about ten miles to the east of Jolly Mount proper. His cows are precariously scattered on steep green hillsides along with an occasional gnarled, wind-warped tree and a couple of retired, shaggy workhorses.
The barn and the house are almost completely stripped of their original white paint. A sprinkling of flakes is all that remains, but it clings stubbornly to their gray weathered sides like a bad case of wood dandruff.
Meade is standing with Clay next to the road at the bottom of the driveway leading to his house. He’s wearing a blue and gray checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a pair of gray work pants, shiny at the knees, stained with a half dozen substances ranging from cow’s blood to axle grease.
I’ve known Meade since I was a little girl. I used to bring Shannon over here to play with his barn cats.
He takes off his ball cap when I get out of the car and start walking toward them. He’s bald and has a face like a big, pale raisin.
Fanci’s leaning against Clay’s cruiser with her arms crossed belligerently across her chest. Kenny is sitting inside their red wagon holding the dog-beating stick across his lap.
A big brown mutt with a square jaw and red-rimmed eyes lies in the grass, panting, about twenty feet away from us. He looks more exhausted than injured.
“What happened?” I ask.
Meade takes out a handkerchief from one of his pants pockets, wipes the top of his head with it, and puts his cap back on.
He spits a brown stream of tobacco behind him and enlightens me.
“That little girl over there beat the bejesus out of Roger with a stick, that’s what happened.”
“I assume Roger’s the dog.”
“Course.”
“I think she might be afraid of dogs,” I tell them confidentially.
“A kid who’s afraid of dogs might hit a dog once to get him to go away. She beat the bejesus out of him. I had to stop her,” Meade explains.
“Who is she?” Clay asks me.
“Her name’s Fanci. That’s her brother, Kenny. They’re Choker Simms’ kids.”
Both men look at her. Both of their faces remain impassive. I can’t see Clay’s eyes behind his sunglasses or Meade’s eyes hidden in the shadow of the bill of his cap but the way Meade’s chewing slows down and the way Clay clears his throat show more sympathy than a flood of words from most men.
I walk over to Fanci.
She has on her glittery plastic shoes and a pair of tight sweatpants in a satiny turquoise material that’s been snagged in a lot of places and a matching zip-up jacket with a racing stripe. Her nails are painted silver and she’s wearing silver eye shadow, too.
“Kenny’s afraid of dogs,” she tells me.
“No, I ain’t,” Kenny pipes up.
“A dog bit him once and now he’s afraid of them,” she explains.
“A dog bit me once,” he confirms, “and now she’s afraid of them.”
“I’m not afraid of dogs.”
“You are, too.”
“If I was afraid of dogs would I be able to beat them up?”
“You got a big stick. They got nothing.”
“They got teeth.”
“You got teeth, too.”
She shakes her head in exasperation.
“You see how dumb he is?” she asks me.
“So what happened with the dog, exactly?” I try again.
“He came at us.”
“Of course he did,” Meade says as he joins us. “That’s what he’s supposed to do.”
“Is Roger on a chain?” I ask.
“He don’t need a chain. He knows he’s not allowed to go on the road. If she’d’ve stayed on the road he would’ve never come at her.”
“I was on the road,” Fanci shouts at Meade. “I told you. He came at us when we were on the road.”
“But he would’ve stopped at the road,” Meade tells her.
“How was I supposed to know he was gonna stop? He looked like he was gonna kill us.”
“That’s what he’s supposed to look like.”
The two of them lock eyes. Meade breaks the stare first. He turns and spits again.
He’s reached the moment when he has to decide if he’s going to go easy on her because he knows what kind of man her father is or if he’s going to go hard on her because he knows what kind of man her father is.
“You go on home,” he tells her, “but I don’t want you to come by here no more. He’s a good dog. He was doing his job.”
“Is that okay with you, Deputy?” I ask Clay.
He nods his assent.
“How about I give you and Kenny a ride?” I say to Fanci.
“We don’t want to go home just yet.”
I think about the great heap of my sister lying in my guest room like a belligerent whale. I was only home long enough to change my clothes, but she shouted more obscenities at me than I usually hear in a year.
She’s ready to blow. I told her to call me if she starts having contractions.
I don’t want to go home either. At least not alone.
“How about coming to my house?” I suggest. “We’ll make some popcorn and watch a movie?”
“You got anything good?”
“I think I have something you’ll like.”
Clay puts the wagon in the back of my car.
I take the opportunity to ask him if he can meet me tonight in front of the J&P building at seven. I can’t get up the nerve to tell him why.
I tell him it’s a surprise. He tells me he has to work until ten but he can take a break at seven.
Fanci is waiting for me at the front of the car looking like she wants to say something. I assume it’s going to be a disappointed comment about my ensemble or lack of one: jeans, my Frye boots, a Capitol Police T-shirt, and my dad’s old J&P windbreaker with PENROSE written across the back in yellow block le
tters.
She fixes me with a pair of dark, defiant eyes.
“Truth is maybe the dog would’ve gone away but Kenny called it,” she says finally.
“Here doggie. Here doggie,” she calls out suddenly with exaggerated enthusiasm, grinning idiotically, and clapping her hands on her thighs in what I assume is an imitation of her brother.
“Why would he do that?” I ask her. “I thought you said he was bit by a dog once. Shouldn’t he be afraid?”
She shakes her head.
“He was real little. He don’t remember, but I do. He don’t understand about things that can hurt him. He still trusts everything.”
“I suppose it’s not good to trust everything,” I agree, “but it’s not good to not trust everything, either.”
“It’s my job to protect him.”
“Yes it is, but it’s also your job to teach him how to decide what he should trust and what he shouldn’t. It’s called having good judgment.”
She asks if she can sit up front this time. I’m not sure if she reaches the legal height and weight requirement for a front seat passenger in a vehicle equipped with air bags but I figure the drive can’t be fraught with any more danger than every moment of the rest of her life outside my car.
“What’s all this?” she asks me, shifting her feet around in the garbage on the floor of my car.
I glance at the snack cake wrappers and empty bags of chips.
“I’m working on my anti-stress badge.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I’M STANDING IN MY KITCHEN waiting for the microwave popcorn to finish popping while Kenny and Fanci are arguing in front of my TV over whether they’ll watch Pirates of the Caribbean, Naked Gun, or Bambi when the shouting starts. It comes from Shannon’s room, where Shannon is supposed to be taking a nap, and is comprised almost entirely of cuss words.
I start heading toward her room but she meets me in the hall with a wild look in her eyes.
“What’s going on?”
“My water broke.”
“Ah, great. That’s just great.”
All I can think about is the mess and the expense. I’ll have to get a new pullout sofa. Nobody’s going to want to sleep on old amniotic fluid.
“Come on. I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
She leans forward and braces herself against the wall while drawing in a gasp of pain.
“It’s too late,” she pants.
“What do you mean, it’s too late?”
“Once my water breaks, my babies come pretty fast.”
She puts one hand under her immense belly and holds on to the guest room doorjamb with the other.
“What are you looking at?” she screams at me. “I told you I was going to have the baby today.”
“I thought you were joking. No one knows exactly when they’re going to have a baby.”
“I do.”
“Then why didn’t you make plans?”
“These are my plans.”
“To have it here?”
“You were a cop. You know how to deliver babies.”
“I also know how to do body cavity searches. It doesn’t mean I want to do them.”
She lets out a shriek.
“Okay. Come on. Let’s calm down,” I tell her.
“Little girl,” she shouts over my shoulder, “get me some blankets.”
I turn around and find Fanci standing behind me.
“No,” I tell her. “We’re not going to ruin my blankets. Go in the shed out back. There’s a big blue tarp.”
“I’m not having my baby on a tarp,” she screams at me.
“Yes, you are,” I scream back.
I feel a tug on my jeans. Two big, frightened eyes are staring up at me.
“I want to go home,” Kenny says.
“No,” Shannon barks at him and starts lumbering toward him. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”
He ducks behind my legs.
Fanci hasn’t moved yet. Shannon pins her against the wall with her belly.
“This is what happens when you have sex, little girl,” she snarls at her. “If you have sex this is what’s going to happen to you.”
Fanci’s impressive composure shatters. Her face becomes a mask of pure childish terror. She wriggles free of Shannon’s bulk and sprints out of the house toward the shed.
“Oh, God,” Shannon moans.
“We have to boil water,” I tell Kenny.
“She wants Cup-a-Soup?”
“No, it’s to sterilize things.”
“What’s that?”
I start rummaging through my house looking for anything useful. I get a knife, scissors, salad tongs, clothespins, a bottle of whiskey.
Kenny follows me around like a puppy while Gimp remains firmly entrenched beneath the kitchen table.
“What do you need that for?” he asks about the Jack Daniel’s.
“We might have to hit her over the head.”
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because this is a happy time,” I tell him honestly, even after I push aside the image of knocking Shannon unconscious with a bottle of JD. “This is fun. This is good. When this is all over, we’re going to have a baby.”
He doesn’t look all that convinced, but he trots after me as we take our equipment into Shannon’s room.
She’s sitting propped up on the bed with every pillow in my house behind her, blowing out air like a stalled locomotive.
“You’re going to ruin my pillows,” I moan.
“I’ll buy you new pillows,” she spits at me. “I’ll buy you a new bed. I’ll buy you a new fucking house.”
“Watch your language,” I tell her. “There’s a little kid here.”
“You think I care about a fucking little kid? Why is there a little kid here?”
“Can we hit her yet?” Kenny asks.
“Not yet.”
Fanci shows up, almost as out of breath as Shannon. She’s holding a bright blue plastic tarp in her outstretched arms.
“No way,” Shannon shouts when she sees it. “I’m having a baby, not pitching a freakin’ tent.”
“Just set it there, Fanci,” I tell her. “Can you go get a cold, wet washcloth?”
“Oh, God,” Shannon screams.
She grips the comforter until her knuckles turn white.
“Are you okay? Maybe I should call an ambulance. One could be here in a half hour.”
“No! I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong. What do you expect? It hurts. Don’t you remember?”
“How far apart are your contractions?”
“I don’t know. Do you see me sitting here with a stopwatch? I guess a couple minutes.”
Fanci returns.
“Put it on her forehead,” I tell her.
She gives me a look of absolute disbelief.
“Do it,” I command her.
She moves hesitatingly toward Shannon’s side and gingerly places the washcloth on her forehead the way she might pet a cobra.
“Okay,” I tell my sister, “let’s see what’s going on here.”
Fanci and Kenny spend the next twenty minutes standing near the door doing their best not to look at Shannon while the contractions grow closer together. I tell them they can go into another room, but they want to stay. I tell them they can sit down, but they want to stand. Kenny leaves once and comes back with the bag of popcorn. Every time Shannon screams, Fanci turns paler and Kenny plugs his ears with his buttered fingers.
When Shannon starts pushing, her face turns a deep purplish red and a blue vein pops out on her forehead. Amazingly, she still manages to have enough energy to swear and scream despite the effort it takes to expel an eight-pound human being from her uterus.
I try to be as encouraging as I can and I try to keep her focused on the work, not the pain.
“There’s the top of his head,” I say excitedly.
Kenny shows some interest, but Fanci
looks like she’s going to faint.
“Wait, Shannon. Wait for the contraction. Bear down with the contraction.”
“Go to hell! Are you telling me how to have a baby? You’ve only had one. Big fucking deal.”
“You’re going to tear,” I tell her. “You want me to cut you?”
I hold up the knife so she can see it.
“I’d be happy to cut you.”
“Don’t cut me. I don’t need to be cut. Just let me push it out. I want it out. I want it out. Out. Out. Out.”
“I don’t get it,” Fanci speaks for the first time since bringing the washcloth. “What are you talking about? Where are you going to cut her? Where is it coming out?”
“You know what you’ve got between your legs, little girl,” Shannon tells her through gritted teeth while her vein pulses ominously on her forehead. “Use your imagination.”
Fanci’s waxen face takes on a tinge of green.
“That’s impossible,” she says.
“You’re almost there, Shannon. You’re almost there. Here’s his head. I see his face. Oh my God, there’s his little face. A shoulder.”
I cradle the tiny head and put my hand out as the rest of the body enters the world. He’s perfect. And he’s a she.
“It’s a girl,” I cry.
Kenny comes running over.
“How can you tell?” he asks excitedly.
Fanci stays where she is.
“Congratulations,” she says weakly.
Her knees finally give out, and she sits down hard on the floor.
“What’s wrong with her?” Kenny’s enthusiasm wanes. “She’s covered in gunk. Why is she purple? She’s all wrinkly and ugly.”
“She’s not ugly,” I defend her as I busy myself cleaning her off and making sure she can breathe.
Her eyes are wide open and staring but she hasn’t made a peep yet.
“What is that?” Kenny shouts suddenly.
“The umbilical cord,” I explain. “It brought the baby food while she was inside her mom.”
Kenny rushes over to his sister, grabs her by the hand, and tries to drag her to her feet.
“Fanci, you gotta see this. It’s the grossest thing ever.”
She stays on the floor.
“Fanci, come here. I need someone to hold the baby while I cut the umbilical cord.”
“Cut?”
“Come on. You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to.”
