The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  “She never told me a specific town, just East Texas. She’d always say she’s from nowhere in particular and traveled all her life.” Remember, it’s no one’s business where we come from and where we’re going.

  “So why did she come here if it’s all the same to her? I can imagine better places, all things being equal. Just picking a city from a map.”

  “Maybe it was random. Beaumont, you said? Your father?”

  “He lived in Beaumont, then he went to Mexico. I don’t know exactly when or why. He didn’t come back until years later, and then he married my mother not long after.”

  “Can you ask him about my mother?”

  Bobby’s face freezes. “Oh, hell, Dahlia, that ship’s sailed a long time ago. Señor Ramón de la Vega can’t remember much about anything.”

  “Go for a drive with me,” I say and slide off the truck bed.

  “Like where?” Bobby’s always up for anything, like a dog who gets up when you get up, stirs when you stir, loyal by my side.

  “There’s something I want you to see. Down 2410. I’ll tell you where to turn.”

  We drive with the windows rolled down and when we reach 2410, the sun has climbed to its highest point in the sky, egg yolk–like and round, unwavering. But for a few wispy clouds drifting by, the sky is a perfect azure.

  When I tell Bobby to pull over by the bench and I point to the overgrown driveway, he looks at me, puzzled.

  “Where?” he asks. “There’s no road.”

  “There’s a dirt road, trust me. I’ve been here. Just park by that line of trees.”

  He slows to a crawl and the branches swipe the truck’s windows, whip at them, but then they clear and eventually barely hit the cabin.

  To my right, there’s movement. It’s not as if a deer ran by or a person hid in the thicket; it’s more like a shimmer of mist, diffused and ethereal. The trees and the surroundings take on the inaccuracy of a poorly rendered photograph, but as the shimmer dissipates, I’m no longer sure of what I’ve seen. Or if I’ve even seen anything. It’s hot and I’m overtired. The sun rises. The sun sets. Nothing is ever as complicated as we make it out to be.

  Bobby parks by the bench. We get out and I walk ahead. Bobby follows closely behind me, but when he sees the farmhouse, he stops.

  “Is this private property?” he asks.

  For a second I see the boy he used to be, adventurous, carefree, now a man who can’t even enter an abandoned property without thinking misdemeanor trespassing, but maybe I’m judging him too harshly.

  “Abandoned,” I say and hope he won’t ask any further questions. I’m not ready to lay it all out on the table just yet.

  “I didn’t even know this place was out here and I know just about every inch of Bertram County.” He pauses, then gives me the benefit of the doubt. “How’d you find out about it?”

  Back-then-Bobby would never dig that deep.

  “It’s where I found my mother’s purse, out in the road, by the bench,” I say.

  “I see” is all Bobby says.

  I was here before at sunset, but now for the first time in the brazen light of day. When I step onto the front porch, I see the rafters are rotting, and another decade or so and there’ll be rats roaming freely in and out through holes in walls. I cup my hands and look through the window.

  “What do you think this is?” I ask and point at it.

  “I don’t know, a jar with rotten pickles?”

  “I’m serious, Bobby. Look closer?”

  “Damn.” Bobby’s voice is soft, he’s dragging the word out. “Looks like bugs, like a bunch of legs and bodies . . . spiders maybe? No wait, the bodies are . . .”

  I remain silent as not to put words in his mouth.

  “Crickets. It’s a bunch of crickets in a jar. What the hell?”

  “You ever heard of such a thing? Why would people put crickets in a jar?” I wait for Bobby to answer and then realize he’s no longer standing next to me. Bobby is at the front door. He jangles the rusty doorknob, then twists it. When it doesn’t budge, he gently leans his entire body into it. It screeches and whines but still doesn’t move.

  I lean against the porch and look toward the dirt road that leads to the house. I wonder who stood at this window, washing and drying dishes, looking out. There’s the old barn to the right, a tree to the left, the path snaking toward the road. Something catches my eye—nothing extraordinary by any means, just something that doesn’t seem to fit in the otherwise flat landscape. The tree—a cypress judging by the delicate, light green foliage—sits in front of a rudimentary fence that has partially collapsed. Its trunk is scaly and shredding and has a lot of rough ridges and fissures. In front of the tree the soil is raised; two oval shapes with a slightly concave top emerge from the ground, much like a mesa.

  “What’s that?” I ask and point toward the mounds.

  Bobby steps off the porch and we walk toward the cypress. We kneel down and gently put our hands atop one of the mounds. It’s pressed and hard as if it has been there for decades.

  “It doesn’t seem natural,” Bobby says and scans our surroundings. “It’s not recent, that’s for sure. It’s completely overgrown, looks like it’s been here for years. But I don’t know what it is.”

  I put my hand atop the mound next to it as if the soil can talk.

  “Look,” Bobby says. His voice is strained. “There’s more.”

  “More what?” I ask and wipe the dirt off my hand.

  “There’s another mound, over there.” He points down the fence line. There’s one more, bigger. Longer. More pronounced. “There are three of them.”

  When I get up I feel dizzy. “Break down the door for me. I want to go inside.” I reach for his hand.

  Bobby remains close just long enough for me to get a whiff of soap and detergent. He then turns and makes for the front door, this time putting all his weight into it. The door gives a few inches, and just as he is about to repeat the motion, I panic.

  There is pressure behind my eyes and I see a psychedelic whirlwind distorting the building’s angles and something pulls away the ground from up under me. Again I feel as if I’m receiving a message of sorts, a vision for sure—like I did in the hospital when I spoke to Jane, and all those other times, in the shower, in bed, more than I can remember at this point—and I surrender myself completely to it.

  My body gives in to itself, like a marionette void of strings controlling its movements from above. My muscles turn rigid and stiff, performing repetitive jerking movements, and I hear my foot hit the porch post, rhythmically as if to communicate by Morse code. I see a white shadow out of the corner of my eye. It seems to be levitating a foot off the ground, translucent, shimmery. I fall to the ground, knees first, but I can hear sounds like soft bouncing branches in the wind, then the words become clearer, more sharply focused.

  Dahlia. Dahlia. Dahlia.

  I wake to the image of dusty boot tips and Bobby’s voice repeatedly calling my name. He grabs me underneath my arms and props me with my back against the porch railing.

  “Help me up,” I hear myself say.

  “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “I’m fine, just help me up.”

  I stand and take a few steps. When I look up, toward the door, I see the white shadow lingering. I blink and then it’s gone. I can feel gravity—can one feel gravity?—and the earth’s rotation, as if the entire planet is attempting to align itself.

  —

  I recover, I blame the heat. Dehydration. Bobby drops me off at the gas station. I feel like a dog—my nose focuses on a scent but I’m not sure where the scent is taking me.

  I cruise down the streets of Aurora, keeping an eye out for Help Wanted and Now Hiring signs in windows. I pull into the parking lot of the Aurora animal shelter. As I approach I realize the sign on the door is nothi
ng more than a flyer stating their primary mission is finding forever homes, proudly advertising their ninety-five percent adoption rate. That doesn’t change the fact that the building is filthy, smells of drool, and is, most of all, noisy. It’s no longer the pound but Aurora’s Forgotten Paws, a city-run adoption shelter. They are hiring and I take an application from the counter. Cleaning motel rooms or cages, it’s all the same to me.

  The room where they keep the small dogs is nothing but kennels stacked on top of one another, newspaper-lined, with tipped-over water bowls in the corner. Some kennels contain one dog, most of them two, some three. All of them seem to be some sort of Chihuahua mix with bulging eyes and large ears that perk upright. They curl up with their backs to me but the ones that acknowledge me raise hell. A tsunami of barks, shrill and high-pitched, makes we wonder how anyone sticks around long enough to make any kind of connection with any of them.

  I walk down a concrete walkway framed by about ten large kennels on each side. Here, everything is made of concrete and the echo multiplies the noise. I am surprised none of the dogs are spinning in circles or chewing their mouths bloody on cage doors. It’s a loud and sad place; ear-piercing sharp barks and deep bays merge into something that makes me anxious and my ears ring.

  I put my hand flat on the chain-link cage door of a shepherd-like female who looks like she’s given birth recently. She doesn’t lift her head and remains still like a statue. One of her eyes is off in color, not like a Husky with one blue and one brown eye, but gray and clouded. Tallulah, the sign on the kennel door reads, age five to seven, sixty pounds. Her nipples are enlarged and the skin around her belly is loose. I wonder what happened to her litter. An animal control officer in a navy blue uniform appears next to me. Behind him, he drags a large black dog on a leash. After he shoves the dog into an empty kennel, the officer latches the gate and smiles at me.

  “Here to adopt?”

  “I was actually looking for a job.”

  “Did you complete the course?”

  “There’s a course?”

  “Required by law. Humane Animal Control Course.”

  I don’t say anything, ignore the tug in my chest. Paperwork.

  “Well, let me know if you have any more questions.”

  The baying of two spaniel-looking medium-sized dogs across from where we are standing becomes unbearable and my eyes twitch. The officer walks down the hallway, leading the female I’d observed on a leash out of her kennel. Tallulah, the dog with the cloudy eye, is digging her paws into the ground, her belly only an inch or so from dragging along the concrete floor. The white portion of her eyes is showing at the corners.

  My mind is moving faster than my thoughts can interpret. I’m stuck on fast forward and the volume is jammed right up. I know what’s happening, she knows what’s happening. “Wait,” I say and catch up with the officer just as he loops the leash around the dog’s neck to get a better grip. “Where are you taking her?” My breath is coming out in short spurts.

  He pinches his lips. “We need to make room for more intakes, she’s been here a while and is just not adoptable. Her time’s up.”

  “I’ll take her,” I call out. “I’ll take her with me right now.” I don’t know what just came over me. The dog, all sympathy aside, is probably blind in one eye and has numerous health issues. I don’t have the money for a vet but she moves my heart with a strength that is unknown to me; her saggy stomach with teats full of milk, the fact that she has just given birth not too long ago, the absence of her litter, the cloudy eye. I hope she’s got some grit left in her.

  After I sign the papers and acknowledge the neuter contract, we leave the shelter. She keeps her body close to the ground, her tail tucked under, and refuses to jump into the car. I walk her around the parking lot, I try to get some momentum going but every time I get close to the car door, she shuts down and refuses to budge, lowering her head and digging her paws into the ground. We are at it for quite some time but finally she leaps in, but immediately attempts to make an escape, not realizing that I’ve tied the leash to the headrest. She freaks and jumps from the backseat to the passenger’s seat—as far and as high as the leash allows—and it finally gets caught between her legs. She struggles like an animal in a trap, jerking her limbs.

  I start the car and I hope that eventually she’ll run out of steam and I drive and allow it to play out. After a mile or so she cowers down in the passenger seat, panting hard, her tongue reaching all the way to the cushion, dripping with saliva. Her scent is yeasty and fermented, but not at all unpleasant. Another mile and Tallulah stops drooling. The stiff fur on her back relaxes and when she stops shaking altogether, I rub her head and her scruff. Eventually sheer exhaustion makes her curl up in the seat, and her eyes close.

  At home, Tallulah sniffs the entire perimeter of the kitchen, partly curious about her surroundings, partly suspicious, I assume. I settle down on the couch, and after a few more rounds around the house, Tallulah becomes bold and settles by my feet. She lies on her side, panting heavily. She keeps one eye on me, the other on the front door.

  From above, I hear closet doors and drawers open and close in my mother’s room. I’m suddenly exhausted. The image of the crickets in a jar returns to me. Maybe it’s really a thing, something people do around here, and I just haven’t heard of it, like dream catchers above beds or wind chimes on porches, some sort of custom I don’t know about. I stretch out on the couch and fall asleep to the sound of my mother rummaging through her piled-up boxes above me.

  I jerk awake when I hear a noise coming from the top floor. Judging by the lack of light coming through the blinds, it must be somewhere around three or four in the morning. Above us, a door slams shut as if caught by a rogue draft. Tallulah stops panting, as if tensing for what’s to come. There’s thumping and banging and an occasional pushing of boxes across the floor and I wonder if she’s been at it all night. There’s a clatter as if she’s dropped a drawer of silverware, followed by a loud crash.

  Tallulah begins to bark, sharp and short, one bark after the other.

  Smoke drifts toward my nostrils—another episode, another blackout, whatever it is that comes over me. I wait for something else to happen but my body feels normal except for the pressure in my bladder. The smoke remains.

  I feel panic rise up and my mouth goes dry. The house is on fire.

  Fourteen

  QUINN

  THE buttercups began to blossom in the spring and didn’t let up until August. Their abundance gave Quinn hope that she might get pregnant soon. The world around her was in bloom and every morning the grass was thick and wet with dew, stood almost three feet tall, the stems hairy and hollow, swelling with juices and full of life. Yet every month she bled worse than the one before. It was a debilitating pain accompanied by a throbbing and cramps that radiated from her belly button through her body to her lower back and down her thighs. The worst part was the inability to get out of bed for days at a time. It usually started off with her thighs aching, a harbinger of the fact that she didn’t conceive and hope had died yet again. It wasn’t just her body, but her mental capacity to cope was reduced; there were frequent plumbing problems that she handled just fine any other day. A busted pipe in the kitchen usually meant Nolan grabbing the tools and Quinn running for a bucket and a handful of towels, but during those weepy days she was in tears within seconds, convinced she’d drown in this farmhouse altogether. She’d sob and cry and lament and then the bleeding would start and ahead of her would be ten days of searing pains, headaches, and more tears. September came and by then the soil was parched and the meadow lay in shades of browns yet again. Quinn watched Nolan drag the tow-behind brush cutter over the grass, severing everything in its wake.

  Things were not how they used to be between them. All Nolan knew was there was no pregnancy, not when they’d moved to Creel Hollow Farm and not after that, and it had become clear to him that the
re never would be one. Month after month he watched Quinn bleed profusely, soak two or more pads every hour, unable to stand, never mind the cooking and cleaning.

  Nolan waited on her hand and foot for the first few years but eventually he left her to her own devices and began tinkering around the farm. He did random work like replacing rotten parts of the wood fence and an occasional barn rafter; he sold a few bales of hay and it was all fine and well because as far as Quinn knew the farm was paid for and they were living off the proceeds from his aunt’s estate sale years ago. There was no mortgage, county taxes were low, water came from the well, vegetables were given to them from neighbors, and at times there were dozens of wooden crates of vegetables stacked in the corner of the kitchen. Washing and preparing them took half a day; peaches and strawberries were always in abundance. When the tenth year of their marriage passed, the only time they left the farm was on Sundays, to church and then lunch. Afterward, they’d go grocery shopping and spent the rest of the week hardly speaking to each other.

  At night, Quinn pulled the covers up to her chin and rolled toward the darker side of the room. She hated the moon, hated how she was forced to watch it wane, then wax, then wane again, as if it was reminding her of her life passing. All night, every night, she tossed from side to side, Nolan sleeping next to her, her side of the bed becoming a chaotic tangle of covers. She’d wake up just as tired as when she went to sleep. More often than not she’d panic during those nighttime moments when her guard was down, when there was nothing to protect her from the shadows, and she closed her eyes and breathed slowly and rhythmically, counting, forcing her heartbeat to slow, willing her brain to stop firing frenzied messages, attempting to contain the dread that spread quicker than she could possibly breathe it away. The nights had become longer and longer over the years and dark thoughts tumbled through her mind, thoughts of chores she had already resolved, like the leaking pipe underneath the kitchen sink, but they reemerged to be examined over and over again. There were things she wasn’t supposed to forget, like the sheets on the clothesline she’d left out overnight, but the more forgetful she became, the more her thoughts nagged at her. After an eternity of nighttime with chirping crickets and howling coyotes, the room began to flood with light, the birds sang, and Quinn threw back the covers and stumbled out of bed to face another day.