by Rilla Askew
Deceitful, that’s what she was. Deceitful and selfish. Irritable. Angry. A terrible mother. A piss-poor Christian. A lousy wife and daughter, if you came right down to it, and around and around her mind went. She envied Catholics sometimes, she really did. They went to confession, said a few prayers, it was finished; they didn’t have to keep lugging their guilt around. Carrying it and worrying it, the dadgum gerbil on the wheel. Sweet drove into the Walmart parking lot with her heart racing, her mind tumbling—in complete contrast to the slow, deliberate way she got out of the car.
She walked the aisles at a terrapin pace, reading labels, comparing prices, not because she wanted to go slow but because the store was vast and she couldn’t remember what they needed, couldn’t think straight, and then there was the long checkout line, the trek back across the asphalt lot like across a frozen desert, the stop at Braum’s for milk and ice cream, another stop in Wister to get gas; it had been like one of those dreams—she couldn’t seem to get finished, she couldn’t reach her destination. The end part was like a dream, too, a bad one, when she pulled into town and saw, yonder in front of her brick house at the intersection where Main Street crosses the highway, her husband’s big Silverado parked in the drive.
He was sitting in the front room in his greasy work clothes. The minute she saw his face, she knew Carl Albert had told—not just that Mr. Bledsoe was hurt and in the hospital, but that it had happened when she’d left him alone the whole day. While they argued—and it was not pretty, all the old stuff dragged up and spread around: What kind of woman are you, what kind of mother? Don’t be blaming me, Tee, you’re the one gone all the blessed time, you expect me to take care of everything! No, come back here, come back here, you listen to me: I’m the one who takes care of things, I’m the one who puts food on the table! Oh, that is sure right, Mister I-Take-Care-of-Things, I don’t see you wiping that old man’s behind every stinking morning! You hush that nasty mouth!—and on and on, around and around, and the whole time Carl Albert hunkered like a whipped dog on the divan in the front room. Sweet was so furious and guilty and defensive she paid him no mind until the phone rang in the kitchen. She and Terry glared at each other a beat, and then he went to answer it. Sweet turned her heated glare on her son.
“I don’t suppose you also happened to tell your daddy about y’all getting suspended from school?” The faintest headshake no. “Go get your cousin. Y’all are going to face that little bit of music right now!” Carl Albert didn’t move. Terry came back and switched on the television. Sweet felt an awful dread pulse through her. But it wasn’t her own haggard face talking back to the smiley brunette brandishing her microphone. In the yard of the little rent house stood Misty Dawn with her frowning daughter on her hip. She was plainly, Lord help us, in her chattering mode. “Yeah, it could be that,” Misty said, nodding. “It could be a lot of things. Grandpa seen how they treated my husband, for starters. Juanito wasn’t speeding or anything, they popped him for illegal lights, but everybody uses those blue lights. You’ve seen them, right? They’re just, like, a decoration, they sell them at Walmart, how could they be illegal? But then, you know, he don’t have a driver’s license or anything, so they arrested him. They promised I could see him Friday—I had to bring our marriage license down and everything—but then they put them all on a bus at three o’clock in the morning and shipped them someplace and when I got to the jail, he was already gone!” Tears welled in Misty’s lovely eyes. The reporter nodded sympathetically, then crooned, “Your husband hadn’t committed a crime, you say, but there are those who would point out that being in this country illegally is breaking the law.” Misty’s eyes narrowed; the slow, sullen look slid down. “My husband’s been here since he was fourteen. He don’t know how they live in Jalisco.” She opened her mouth to say more but the clip cut away to the reporter signing off from a parking lot somewhere, not Misty Dawn’s yard. The phone rang again in the kitchen. Sweet glanced at her husband, who acted like he didn’t hear it, so she went to answer. Ida Coley wanting to know if that was Sweet’s sister Gaylene’s oldest girl she’d just seen on the Channel 6 News.
“Yeah,” Sweet answered faintly, and then for some reason corrected her: “Her only girl. And it’s Channel 2, Ida, not Channel 6.” She’d already hung up before it occurred to her that Misty Dawn might be on another channel, too. She hurried back to the living room. Terry was on his feet in front of the recliner with the remote in his hand. On the screen Arvin Holloway stood bull-bellied next to the jail with a bunch of microphones before him. The phone rang. She hurried back to the kitchen. This time it was Brother Oren saying he would give the church an update at tonight’s prayer meeting, they’d be sure to keep the prayer chain going, was there any word yet about when Mr. Bledsoe’s surgery might be? Sweet told him the time, blessed him silently for not mentioning the TV news as she hung up, and immediately the phone rang again. A reporter from the Tulsa World wanting to know if he could get a comment for tomorrow’s paper. Sweet punched the disconnect button, left the receiver off the hook, stood in the kitchen fuming, listening to the shifting garble of voices in the front room as her husband clicked through the channels.
All at once she realized why her son had been cowering like a whipped pup ever since she got home. She didn’t have to walk back through the empty bedrooms or check the bathroom, the bare carport and vacant yard—though she did do these things, twice, before she told Terry—but she knew before she ever took a step out of the kitchen that Dustin was gone again.
“Great,” Terry said when she told him. “That’s just great.”
Sweet stared hard at her son. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” he wailed. “How come you always think I did something? Everybody’s always blaming me for everything. I been sitting here the whole time!”
Terry had his keys out. “Do you want to go or should I?” The steadiness in his voice said truce. He looked exhausted. Sweet hesitated one long aching moment, turning from her waiting husband to her son huddled on the divan, hurting and frightened. The old familiar tenderness swept her. “It’s all right, honey,” she said. “I’m not blaming you.” Her eyes met her husband’s. “I guess we should all go.”
Sweet called his name until she was hoarse. Terry walked halfway out to the dump ditch, calling. They honked the truck horn. They searched Daddy’s house, the barn, the smokehouse, the storm cellar, while Carl Albert sat in the truck with his head down, whether sulking or crying, Sweet couldn’t tell. “He’ll turn up,” Terry said finally, coming toward her from the back of the house.
“It’s getting dark, Tee. He’ll be scared. Let’s go around again.”
“I spent forty minutes out here last time, and him hiding from me the whole while.”
“Just once more. I’ll check the barn. You go look in the smokehouse.” Sweet started across the barnyard. “What’s this?” She pointed to the ground, the faint groove in the soft dirt she hadn’t noticed before: a single row of bicycle tire tracks running into the yard from the gravel road, but the track didn’t turn and go out again; rather, it vanished halfway across the yard as if the bike had been whisked away in midair. “Whose is that?” Sweet said. “Dusty doesn’t have a bike.”
They both began to call his name again, louder now, retracing their steps. Carl Albert got out of the truck and joined them, his face red and swollen. He tagged after his daddy, stayed right at his heels. Sweet stopped in front of the open barn door. “Maybe we should call the sheriff.”
“No!” Terry stood near the truck with Carl Albert. “We’ll find him, honey. He’s just playing a joke on us. Right, son?” He had his hand on Carl’s shoulder. The boy nodded, his face puckered in the fading light. Sweet flipped open her phone. “What are you doing?” Her husband’s voice was wary.
“Calling the sheriff.”
“Don’t do that!” Terry started toward her. “You can’t trust that s.o.b! Son of a gun was supposed to round up M
exicans! Period!” Abruptly Terry stopped.
“Round up Mexicans,” Sweet said. “When? What are you talking about?” At once her father’s words in the break room rushed back to her. Ask him. But Sweet did not need to ask. She stared at her husband standing with his head tucked in the graying light, his old burgundy Farm Bureau cap tugged down over his hair. The puffy pale thumbs under his eyes. The fear in them. Of course. She’d known all along, she just hadn’t known that she knew: her husband was the one who’d turned her daddy in.
Thursday | February 21, 2008 | 1:30 P.M.
State Capitol Building | Oklahoma City
The confluence was perfect. Monica couldn’t have scripted it better if she’d conjured it herself. Her bill sailed through committee, of course, as she’d known it would, but she was particularly brilliant in her presentation, she thought—passionate, with a touch of quiet outrage—and the tribal members standing around the edges of the committee room lent an air of drama to the thing. It required the greatest delicacy, the most nuanced wording possible, for her to clarify that this new bill, HB 1906, had absolutely nothing to do with oppressing any minority but only with preserving Oklahoma’s heritage and saving taxpayers money. Charlie had warned her about the rumblings among the state’s powerful tribes over the English Only provision, so when the committee chair stopped her in the hall to inform her that the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Creek Nations had all sent representatives, she’d merely smiled. “You know and I know that Oklahomans want this bill, Fred. They want these enhancements. I don’t anticipate any problems.”
And indeed there’d been none. Gazing placidly at the unsmiling brown faces ranged across the back of the room, she had managed to glide smoothly past the “official state language” provision with only a brief mention of the positive fiscal impact of eliminating costs for bilingual services, segueing seamlessly to asset seizure: “It’s no different than properties used in drug crimes,” she told the committee, although her senses were acutely tuned to the varied audience members crowding the room. “House Bill 1906 will authorize local law enforcement to seize properties used in violation of HB 1830. Clearly this will also provide a positive fiscal impact for the counties because the properties can then be sold to help offset the costs of enforcement.”
Then she moved on quickly to the provision requiring school administrators to report the numbers of undocumented students in their districts. When Representative Jemison, expressing tribal concerns about the English Only provision, moved to strike title, Monica acquiesced graciously: “We certainly have no objection to framing the measure in such a way as to emphasize that there’s no intention here of impinging upon the use of Native American languages—absolutely not. Our concern is solely for the Oklahoma taxpayer. We simply want to eliminate the burden of bilingual services and translator costs, but I’ll be pleased to work with you on developing appropriate language, Representative Jemison. By all means.” She couldn’t tell if this mollified any of the Indians, but the members of the judiciary committee seemed pleased, and the bill passed out of committee without objection.
But the great fun, the marvelous convergence, was the fact that at the very moment she was procuring unanimous passage out of committee of House Bill 1906, affectionately known as “Son of 1830” for how it built on her previous anti-illegal immigration measures—at that precise moment, the Latimer County D.A. was giving his own curt little presentation in Wilburton. Florid-faced Tom Waters read a statement in a deadly dull monotone from the courthouse steps: Felony charges had been filed against two Oklahoma citizens arrested under the provisions of the Oklahoma Tax Payers Protection Act, otherwise known as House Bill 1830, the preliminary hearing was set for the next available court docket on March sixth, he would not be taking questions, and then he’d turned and walked quickly back inside the courthouse—all of which Monica had been privileged to witness on the majority floor leader’s new iPhone as they made their way toward the Fourth Floor Rotunda.
Today’s lunch was being provided by FFA students from all over the state, and Monica was so in the zone she barely groaned when she saw they were having barbecued brisket—again. She smiled warmly at the pimply Future Farmer heaping coleslaw and baked beans on her plate, took the barbecue-slathered bun and made her way toward a crowded table, where she received warm commendations from members of both sides of the aisle. The toughest part, really, was having to drag herself away from all the accolades for the HouseTV interview.
The kid running the camera started to shoot her with nothing but a blank wall for backdrop, and she had to reposition herself so that she was framed by the busy rotunda, but then, unfortunately, she happened to glance over her shoulder and realized that the Indians were standing in the food line behind her, looking just entirely too dignified and offended. Later, when she reviewed the footage on her office computer, she decided that this was what accounted for the slight note of defensiveness in her tone. Well, defensive was too strong a word, but she did detect a whiff of self-protectiveness in the way she answered the anticipated arguments before they’d ever been stated: “For too long,” she said briskly, “the federal government has shirked its duty by failing to pass laws acknowledging English as the official language of this country. Oklahoma taxpayers have been forced to pay for bilingual drivers’ tests and other services. This measure is in support of English, not in opposition to any group!”
And she’d been smiling too sincerely. Charlie was going to nail her on it. Never apologize, never explain.
Well, never mind. She’d been brilliant in committee—he could have come down and watched her do that—and she would be even more brilliant on the floor next week when 1906 came up for a vote. She’d have plenty of opportunity to eradicate any lingering taint of defensiveness. Besides, who watched www.HouseTV.gov anyway? Only political junkies and fanatics. It was the public media that mattered, and that little campaign had just barely begun.
Today was Thursday, sadly, a less than optimum news day, but at least it wasn’t a Friday—what a waste that would have been. And tonight’s reception was being hosted by ConocoPhillips at the Petroleum Club, now, how good a timing was that? Ordinarily most legislators would be rushing home for the weekend, but no one wanted to miss such a powerful opportunity for hobnobbing. Virtually every member of both the House and Senate would be there—not to mention all the state’s biggest movers and shakers.
True, illegal immigration was perhaps not on the top of the oil bigwigs’ to-do lists, but she knew the media glow would still be upon her. She was going to have lots of opportunity for networking tonight!
Charlie came into the bedroom with her iced chai and a plate of cheese as she was reapplying her makeup. She would have preferred a good stiff Tom Collins, but she couldn’t take a chance on anyone at the reception smelling liquor on her breath. Lips pursed at the mirror, Monica nodded toward the two outfits laid out on the bed, a dress and a suit in her signature colors. The nod said to her husband: you pick.
When she first came to the capitol she’d worn a lot of red and black, until she happened to look down from the gallery one morning and realized that every middle-aged female on the House floor, all nine of them, wore some version of red and black. The next day she’d switched to the aquamarine-turquoise-sapphire-seagreen motif she’d been wearing ever since, and really, the colors were perfect; they showed off her eyes, highlighted her hair. Charlie stabbed a thumb at the suit rather than the cocktail dress, and of course he was right. In fact, why had she ever bought that scoop-necked just-this-side-of-revealing slinky thing? Well, because it looked damned good on her—but where could she ever wear it? Certainly nowhere professional, and as Charlie so often said, there was nowhere a legislator went that wasn’t professional. Well, no matter, it wasn’t designer anyway; she’d drop it off, tags and all, at the Goodwill drive-through in McAlester this weekend, take the deduction on next year’s taxes.
“Did you see Waters’s little press
conference this morning?” Charlie settled back on the mound of pillows, grabbed the remote off her side table.
“I did,” she said.
“What did I tell you?”
“You said he’d be falling all over himself.”
“And was he?”
“He was. Which pair?” She held up a set of turquoise-and-silver earrings and a set of plain silver. He nodded at the turquoise. She returned her gaze to the mirror, holding herself in check. Why bother pointing out that it had been her own little jewel of a press conference that had forced the D.A.’s hand? Charlie would only say, Well, of course, babe, what did I tell you? She heard him chuckling behind her. “What?” she said, turning. Charlie wagged the remote at the TV.
“That right there is why Waters is going to want to move the trial to McAlester. You watch.” On the screen a stocky man in a brown jacket and tan Stetson stood on the same courthouse steps where Waters had given his terse little announcement. Good grief, Monica thought, can’t anybody in this state be even the least bit more creative than to hold every damn press conference on courthouse steps? “That’s the sheriff who conducted the raid,” Charlie said. “Waters is not going to want him holding forth to the media every day, believe me. He’s a braggart and a blusterer, you’d never get him to shut up. The media would eat him up with a spoon. If Waters is going forward with this thing, he damn sure wants a conviction, and that fool right there could blow the whole deal.”
