Kind of Kin

by Rilla Askew

  She’d been fighting the feeling for days. The empty apartment with Charlie gone didn’t help. All she could think about was that there was not going to be any change-of-venue trial in McAlester this summer, no high-profile platform from which to showcase her talents—nothing, in fact, to look forward to after the end of session but the long sweltering summer stretching ahead. Rotary Club breakfast every first Tuesday. Biweekly grocery shopping trips to the Walmart. Friday nights eating out at Western Sizzlin. Charlie had promised her a cruise, but how long could that last—ten days? Two weeks? It would be months before campaign season got into full swing—months of doing nothing but trying to hide out from the miserable heat inside their mildewed grotto. She gazed at her reflection, not really seeing herself. She felt bereft, as if she’d lost her best friend. And, really, maybe she had.

  No! She wouldn’t look at it that way. Kevin would come around. He would! This was just a temporary little snit. It was sheer coincidence that Kevin’s avoidance of her started right when those images of the kid started getting plastered all over the news. Or more likely it was the influence of that cute little Brazilian stylist Javier. Or Puerto Rican. Or whatever the hell he was.

  Furiously Monica stuffed the folded paper back inside her clutch bag. She was too keyed up to study the notes now; she would look them over during dinner. She plucked out her lipstick and comb. At least, Monica thought, uncapping her lipstick, the illegal Mexican is sitting in a holding pen in Pauls Valley this minute. He’d be on a bus back to Mexico within the month—Immigration and Customs Enforcement had assured her of that. One less lawbreaking illegal alien in this state. People would remember. And anyway, Langley was right about one thing: history moves fast. Or in any case, news stories do. Already the story about the lost Brown kid was subsumed by the hysteria over rising gas prices, the presidential primaries, that woman in Idaho who’d slaughtered her kids. Monica reached for her wineglass, drained it. She narrowed her eyes at the mirror, turning her crown to catch the light. Oh, really, the color wasn’t bad. A little brassy in this poor light, maybe, but she would find a new stylist to fix that.

  When she emerged from the ladies’ room, she momentarily panicked. Where was everyone? She peered down the long corridor toward the east wing, where servers were clearing away the wine and hors d’oeuvres tables. Oh no, oh no, she couldn’t be late! Quickly Monica clicked along the echoing corridor in her new designer heels. She snatched a full wineglass from one of the caterer’s serving carts as she passed it and had arrived at the entrance to the banquet hall before she realized she’d left her teal jacket on the stall door. But the crowd was already murmuring within; she could hear the seductive clink of silverware on china, wine bottles kissing crystal goblets. Never mind. She would retrieve the jacket later—after her presentation, on the podium, in the spotlight, with the enormous sweeping sunset canvases all around. Oh, what was it that she supposed to say? She had such a hard time remembering things when Charlie wasn’t here to write her speeches. But she would have plenty of time at the banquet table to check her notes, surely. Monica glanced around, stepped into a recessed alcove, where a bronzed sculpture of several wild cowboys on horseback was illuminated on a mahogany display table. For a moment the dark dread rushed over her. She gulped the rest of the wine, bent down to set the empty glass on the floor behind the sculpture. She must have stood up again too quickly, she told herself, because she found herself swaying slightly as she turned to enter the great hall.

  Saturday | March 8, 2008 | 7:45 P.M.

  Sweet’s house | Cedar

  When I came back in the kitchen after my shower, Aunt Sweet had an old sheet on the floor underneath the tall wooden stool and her scissors and comb laid out on the counter. “Climb up here,” she said. She put a towel around my shoulders. She walked around me a few times, combing my hair down wet over my nose and making it tickle. “All right,” she said. “We’ll go out to the farm in the morning and get you something decent to wear.” I pushed the hair away and twisted around to look at her. “Well, if I don’t take you out there,” she said, “you’re liable to run off again.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “You’d better not. Turn around.”

  I took a big breath. I tried to sit still. I had my eyes closed. “You could come stay at our house,” I said. “When Grandpa gets out? We got the middle bedroom that nobody sleeps in.”

  “We’ll see,” she said and kept combing my hair down and cutting it. It felt kind of good, her combing my hair down and cutting it, over and over. Almost like I remember from when I was a little kid in Tulsa, laying in the bed next to my mom.

  “Aunt Sweet? Do you remember my mom?”

  The scissors stopped cutting. I could feel her in front of me, very still. I kept my eyes closed. I thought maybe if I didn’t look at her. “Yes,” she said after a second. “Of course. She was my sister.”

  “Was she part Indian?” I said.

  It took her a while to say something. The scissors still hadn’t started snipping. “What makes you ask that?”

  “From her picture.”

  “I don’t know, Dustin. It’s possible. Anything’s possible.” She started cutting again.

  Why don’t you know, why don’t you know, why don’t you know. I couldn’t say it out loud though. “Is she . . .” I started, but I couldn’t say that, either. It was stupid.

  “Is she what?”

  “Never mind.” I had my eyes open then, but I wasn’t looking at her. Little snuffs of my hair were all over the blue flowered sheet on the floor. The words that had popped in my mind to say were: Is she coming back? I knew how crazy that sounded, and anyway, I knew she wasn’t. That’s what being dead is. But maybe she wasn’t ever coming back the other way, the spirit voice way, like Señor Celayo called it. Because ever since I woke up in the hospital I haven’t heard her or felt her, not once. I know that’s what I been waiting for.

  “Dustin.” Aunt Sweet put her hand under my chin and raised it. She looked at me real slow a minute. It was like Grandpa, I had to keep looking back even if I didn’t want to. Then she started cutting again. “You favor her quite a bit, did you know that?” She was making her voice light. “She was a skinny thing, like you.” Combing it down, cutting, moving around the slow circle. “Gaylene was a chatterbox, though, that’s one way y’all differ. And a real wigglewort. You couldn’t make that kid sit still.”

  “What else?” I said.

  “Well, um, she did good in school. In the beginning. You know, till, well, till she got older. She was a good memorizer like you are. She was stubborn. I think you take after her that way a little bit, too. God knows your sister does.”

  “How old was I when she brought me to Grandpa’s?”

  “Three and a half. And she didn’t bring you. Daddy drove up to Tulsa and got you. He tried to get Misty Dawn to come, too, but she didn’t want to leave her school. All her friends.” Aunt Sweet stopped. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, the scissors sticking out away from her head. “I really don’t want to talk about that old stuff, honey. Here, let’s look at you a minute.” And she stood back and eyeballed me, combed my hair a few times. “Pretty darned good if I do say so.” She unwrapped the towel from around me real careful and used the end of it to flap at the back of my neck to get the hairs off. Then she came around and did my face. “Shut your eyes,” she said, and brushed the tail of the towel on my forehead and then leaned over and blew really soft on my eyelids, flipped the towel a little again.

  “How come?” I said. “How come Grandpa went to Tulsa and got me?”

  “Go put that T-shirt in the hamper and get a pair of clean pajamas out of the drawer.”

  I didn’t move and I didn’t say anything.

  “Dustin, go do like I said now.”

  I just kept sitting. I had my head down.

  “That stool’s liable to make for a mighty uncomfortabl
e night’s sleeping.”

  But I still didn’t say anything. Then Aunt Sweet dropped the towel on the floor, went over to the other stool by the counter and sat. “Dustin, listen. Your mother loved you, but she couldn’t take care of you. She couldn’t take care of herself. Or Misty Dawn, either, for that matter. That child was snatched up by the hair of the head, which accounts for a lot. I know that. I try to take that into account.”

  “What does that mean, snatched up by the hair of the head?”

  “She didn’t have any raising. She didn’t have anybody trying to help her grow up right, Misty Dawn just basically had to raise herself. Your granddaddy wasn’t going to see that happen to you.”

  “Why didn’t she have anybody?”

  “Because your mother . . . had other priorities.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Gaylene was a lousy mother. She was no kind of mother at all.”

  “That’s not true! Y’all think I don’t remember but I do. She was soft and sweet and good, she rubbed my back when I went to sleep—she was good!”

  “Shhh, you’re right, Dusty, shhh, of course she was, see, that’s why it’s no use to talk about that old stuff, it makes everybody want to cry, shhh, it’s all right, it’s all right . . .” She was trying to hug me but I wouldn’t let her. I jumped down from the stool and went along the hall to my cousin’s room.

  Saturday | March 8, 2008 | 8:00 P.M.

  Sweet’s house | Cedar

  “Oh no,” Sweet said as she watched her nephew disappear into the bedroom. What the devil was the matter with her, blurting out words like that? Hadn’t the kid been through enough? She started to go after him to see if she could settle him down some, but then she thought, no, given his nature it would be kinder actually to just leave him alone. She moved the barstool off the sheet, bent down to fold in the ends, gathered the sheet and the towel, and took them out to the carport. She stood behind the Taurus and shook out the sheet. Her feet in her socks were cold. She was trembling a little, her teeth chattering, but she stood a while with the wadded sheet in her arms. Help me, Lord. Help me to be better. Help me to at least for once in my life get some control over the crap that comes out of my mouth.

  Inside the house she carried the rolled-up sheet and towel toward the bathroom. Her son’s bedroom doorway was dark. She hesitated a moment in the hall. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” His voice came from down low, on the floor, where the air mattress lay.

  “You want ice cream?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you change your mind.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Dustin . . .” But what could she say? To apologize, or lie, would not fix the pain, the trouble, the old relentless facts. “Your granddaddy’s sure going to be glad to see you,” she said.

  The boy didn’t answer. Sweet went on to the bathroom and stuffed the sheet and towel in the hamper, returned to the kitchen, and started unloading the dishwasher. The dishes weren’t dry yet but she snapped open a dishtowel, swiped hard at each plate and bowl before putting it away. It was because of Misty Dawn’s phone call. She’d just been too angry to watch herself, to think what she was saying. Sweet dumped the silverware basket on the counter, started tossing the different utensils into the drawer. It had taken her several minutes before she’d even thought to dig out the phone book and look up the area code she’d scribbled down. 504. Southern Louisiana. What were they doing in Louisiana? Arkansas she might have figured, Texas even. And now Misty Dawn expected her to drive to Tulsa and pack up all that stuff and ship it? No! How would she even get in the house? And what if the police saw her? That could get everything stirred up again. They would want to know what she was doing at the house of an illegal alien who’d recently been deported—and what if they figured out Juanito had snuck back, tried to reinstate the harboring charges against her? No! She wasn’t going to do it! She had to get her daddy’s assault case taken care of! And Dustin, she had to get him back in school, settle on some kind of a regular schedule; she couldn’t be gallivanting off to Tulsa to take care of what should have already been taken care of! A sudden fierce resentment welled in her, old and sickening and familiar as her own life.

  She tossed the last fork in the drawer, went to the front room and sat. She did not unmute the mute button. She dragged the Bible over. In the past, with her heart in this much turmoil, she would have gotten out the stepladder and jerked everything down out of the hall closet and dusted the high shelf, or waxed the kitchen floor, or cleaned out the fridge. Now she sat in the flickering half-light of the Cartoon Network and held the thick old family Bible, just sat there and sat. Evidence of things changed.

  So much had changed these past weeks: living alone now, no husband no father no son. One thing that had not changed was this old familiar rage. Even in death her sister took no responsibility. Even in death Gaylene left Sweet to take care of everything, including her children—left Sweet to have to try to fix what could not be fixed. And look where trying to fix things had gotten her! Two nights in the county jail, sitting up all night, not sleeping, afraid to touch anything, the air foul with the stink of urine and used tampons, dank with concrete, brightly lit.

  The girls, though, had been all right. The girls had been fine. Sweet had not expected that. What had she expected? She didn’t know exactly, but certainly not who they’d turned out to be: five white girls from around the county, ranging in age from nineteen to twenty-seven, all talkative, all eager to spill their stories. They told Sweet how things were run here, when she could expect to get a shower, what time the lousy morning coffee would come. They told her to try to avoid being in a transfer alone with the sheriff unless she wanted him pawing all over her, or unless she wanted to negotiate for more smokes. They talked about their kids. How much they loved them. How much they missed them. How they were going to do things different when they got out. Each girl had a long convoluted tale about how she’d got there in the first place, each one, according to her own testimony, through no fault of her own. Their stories were all pretty much the same, though, all with two things in common: motherhood and drugs. The same as Gaylene. Or to put it more accurately, motherhood and drugs and good-for-nothing men. Too bad they didn’t have drug court back in the days when Gaylene was getting started, Sweet thought. Maybe if she’d gone to jail instead of running off to Okmulgee, the end of the story would have been different. Pregnant at fifteen, strung out at sixteen, dead at thirty-two.

  Oh. Oh, the pain was still so terrific. The pain was never going to go away. It hadn’t lessened in all these years, had only become harder, a weeping sore turning slowly into a calcified cyst. Even now the memory kicked like a gut punch: the image of Daddy in the dark carport, shoulders heaving, drenched to the bone, the grief in his face so sudden and gaunt and ferocious she knew before he opened his mouth what he’d come to tell. Not where, or exactly when, but who and how. She knew it was her sister dead at last, because of the drugs.

  It’s not your fault, Sweet had told him when Gaylene first started ditching school, staying out all night. Not your fault when she ran off to Okmulgee, vanished; they didn’t know where she was, if she was alive or dead. Then, when Gaylene did come home, bringing her bald little nervous fatherless baby with her, and began right away stealing checks from the back of Daddy’s checkbook, sneaking into his pockets at night, “borrowing” the truck without asking, staying gone for days, weeks sometimes, taking anything, basically, that wasn’t nailed down, Sweet quit saying not your fault. She said why? “Why do you keep helping her, Daddy? Why do you keep letting her come back?” And Daddy said, “You raise not the child you want but the one you’ve been given.”

  “Right, Daddy!” Sweet had snapped at him. “Well, congratulations! What you’ve been given is a garbage head!” That’s what the kids at school called her, because Gaylene would shoot or snort or smoke or swallow anything, any sort of
garbage; she did not even have a drug of choice—drugs were her drug of choice, and if she couldn’t get drugs, she huffed glue, gasoline, aerosol paint. Or she would drink.

  Jaja?

  It’s all right, Sissy. I’m here. You’re dreaming. Go back to sleep.

  In the flickering, silent room, Sweet felt her sister’s skinny arm coming around her, the tiny hand reaching for her, while Daddy’s voice raged in the next room, the familiar thumps and thuds and curses. Oh, she would have protected her! She would have saved her from everything! But Sweet couldn’t fix anything, she couldn’t make it stop, no matter what she did, not for Daddy, not for Gaylene once she got started. How could you reconcile it? That beautiful trusting child and the person Gaylene became? She was like a changeling, like the drugs had stolen that child and put something soulless and lifeless in its place, an empty gourd. You raise not the child you want but the one you’ve been given. But you don’t—how can you? Gaylene had been given everything—everything!—and she gave nothing back! She’d left nothing behind in her hurtful wake but helplessness and fury, judgment and sorrow—and fear, always the fear of that late-night phone call. And in the end Daddy was the one who’d received it, long years after Sweet had quit hoping, quit trying, quit even being afraid. He’d climbed in his truck and driven over in a raging thunderstorm to tell her. His shoulders shaking in the dark carport, his cap dripping.

  Saturday | March 8, 2008 | 8:00 P.M.

  Latimer County Jail | Wilburton

  Inside the crowded cell, Bob Brown’s heart ached. His head and neck and shoulders. All around him the voices of young men bounced and rattled, a card game, an argument. Soon the laymen from Prison Ministry on Wheels would be here to conduct Saturday night church. After that, the inmates would settle down. At least until the wee hours when the drunks in the drunk tank would start hollering, or moaning, or singing out loud. The isolation in the drunk tank used to bother him. The constant din here in the main run was worse. He and Garcia had been moved here the evening before their preliminary, and they’d stayed up all night, praying, rejoicing, because wasn’t that the very thing they’d been waiting for, that preliminary hearing? How very strange then, that the harboring charges should all be dropped, Jesús Garcia released, and no way now for them to make a stand against that law or change one thing about it. But Dustin was home safe, and that was worth everything. Even if Brown himself was still in jail, still being held on the contempt charge, and now there were these new charges, too, a new preliminary date set.