Criminal

by Terra Elan McVoy

  “What you doing?” Bird asked, not looking up from her sewing.

  “I’ve done enough lazing this weekend.” I forced my voice to be even. “I thought I’d do some cleaning up.”

  “Girl, you always welcome to it.” She smiled.

  “I thought maybe you could show me your haul from yesterday, too.”

  “Oooh.” Bird let it out in a long breath. “We going to need a couple hours.”

  We smiled at each other again—I could feel how weak mine was—and I left her and Jamelee in the buttery kitchen.

  In the garage, I found a rake among a few other rusty tools. I took it outside to the dried-out yard, even though there wasn’t much in the way of work for me to do. At least there were enough dried leaves on the ground from the one little magnolia for me to push into a pile, plus those big grenade-looking pods. I raked them together as best I could, put them into my garbage bag. I also spent time plucking up the trash that people had dropped by the sidewalk on their way down to the bus stop—chip bags, Gatorade bottles, and grease-spotted napkins. Those I shoved into the bag too, wishing I’d thought to bring out latex gloves.

  After that I set out for my real, intended task: cleaning out Bird’s car. Dee had taken everything important from it yesterday, but that news report and what Kenyetta said scared me. Dee told me they weren’t going to be asking any more, but I wanted to make sure that if they did come around, there wouldn’t be anything else for them to find.

  Besides Jamelee, Bird’s car was her pride and joy. She’d bought it, cash, with her own money last year and had it custom painted so dark purple it was almost black, with a sparkly shimmer underneath the paint. There was a gold racing stripe down both sides and some Hindu symbol painted on the back that she told me meant “strength.” She had it washed almost every week and drove it like a grandma, five miles under the speed limit. Though she was okay with me driving it from time to time, I knew better than to ask too often, and when I did, I made sure to keep it full of the expensive gas. She babied that thing that much.

  Inside the car was a different story. Inside was where Bird let the chaos show in spades. The back was the worst: floor jammed with KFC bags and cups from Bird’s other job, plus fruit bar wrappers and old Cheerios dropped by Jamelee. Receipts. Phone numbers for people Bird finished projects for months ago. Plus extra baby clothes (one tiny shirt with a big juice stain on the front), dried-out baby wipes, and even a pair of shoes I think Bird forgot she had. One single pink sponge curler, under the driver’s seat, was so old it had a brown crust along one edge. I didn’t know where half the stuff came from, and I knew Bird didn’t either.

  One thing I was glad I did find was a cigarette butt and crumpled-up pack of Dee’s smokes. Bird would’ve killed me if she’d known I’d let him smoke in the car—even if I didn’t really remember letting him do it—but now it seemed even more important to get it out. There couldn’t be any proof he was in here. I shoved it deep under the rest of the trash in my bag. I almost wanted to text him, tell him what I’d found and how I’d helped, but he’d said not to contact him yet. I’d save it for a surprise later.

  After I cleared everything out from the floor, it looked much better. I almost wanted to vacuum it out. But I knew cleaning it up too good would make her raise her eyebrow and wonder if something was up.

  Whenever I got to a pause in the cleaning, I checked the glove compartment. Three times, four. Each time, I didn’t want to even touch the latch, but I had to, just in case there was something left. But there never was, of course. Only the car owner’s manual and Bird’s insurance card in a little plastic bag. A flashlight.

  As a last effort, I took the hem of my T-shirt and wiped off the steering wheel, the stick shift, and all the seats. I wanted to spray the whole thing down with Clorox, but Bird would think that was too strange. I kept chanting in my head, over and over, Dee said they aren’t going to ask us anything else. And I had to believe him. He’d taken care of most everything. But now I was taking care of him—us—just a little more: the way he counted on me to. All that would happen now was we’d get further and further from this whole thing, and one day—maybe—I could forget.

  CLEANING OUT BIRD’S CAR INSPIRED ME. AFTER I SHOVED everything from the car deep in the trash barrel and put it on the curb for morning pickup, I aimed for the back room—my room. I tried to keep things decent in general since this wasn’t really my house, but there were clothes all over the floor and ruined magazines, plus fast-food bags and trash from us eating dinner in bed. Dee’s ashtray needed emptying, and I knew those sheets could use changing too.

  “You sure you want me to interrupt?” Bird said at the door. “You seem on a tear.”

  I tried to cover up the fact that she’d startled me.

  “Feels good to make things nice, you know?” I was holding a wrinkled pillowcase in my hand and worked at folding it into a tidy square.

  “Guess that was some date yesterday then, huh?” She stood there, easy, against the frame of the door.

  “What do you mean?” Fold. Crease. Fold.

  “You and Dee, all lovey-dovey. Like nobody keep you two apart.”

  “He’s like that.” I swallowed. “You just don’t get to see him much is all.”

  She snorted. “Oh, I see him. But really more I mean you. Moving faster around the room all the time. Like something in you is on fire.”

  I thought I could tell her then. That she’d understand I’d had no idea what was going to happen when we left the house yesterday, what he was going to do. After all, she knew, from Jamelee’s daddy, all about how you could think things were one way and find out they were another. She knew about doing what you had to do for what you loved most. But I also knew the kind of grudge she took hold of. And Bird already disliked Dee plenty.

  “You just—take such good care of me, you know?” I said. “And I’m happy we could all hang out this weekend, I guess. I mean, it makes me happy.”

  Another snort from her. “You know I ain’t never going to stop you helping me with the load around here.” She smiled down at Jamelee, who had crawled down the hall to see what we were up to.

  I swallowed. “I’d do anything for you, Bird.”

  Her gaze came up to me then. Probably it was my imagination, but it felt like her eyes were gripping me: seizing my bones and making my heart stop.

  “Tell me what you think about these ridiculous curtains on clearance Mel talked me into getting, then.” She laughed, picking the baby up from the floor and strolling down the hallway, leaving me with the pillowcase still in my hand and my next breath caught in my throat.

  I DIDN’T LIKE GOING DOWN THE STREET TO MOMMA’S house, but twice a month I had to. My stepdad Gary had told that me turning eighteen legally freed me from her life, but he hadn’t ever explained how to shake her off me for good. Based on the mail we got, he hadn’t figured out how to himself either, even from as far away as a twenty-year jail sentence he’d already served five years on. This time I was doing more than checking in, though, and taking care of the few bills there were to pay. After Bird tried on outfit after outfit for me and dressed Jamelee up in her new clothes too—both of them so cute and adorable—I knew I had to get Dee’s trash even farther away from them. So, even though it was close to dinnertime, I told Bird I needed to go down to my momma’s. She shrugged and said she’d wait for me to eat, and I left the house out the front door quick, grabbing the trash bag by the curb. Then I snuck around back and walked down the street.

  Cherry, my momma, lived one block behind and two blocks over from Bird’s place. She owned the house outright, thanks to my grandma, who had taken care of me once Cherry started her addiction for real. Of course, it wasn’t until Grandma died that I realized exactly how much else she’d taken care of and what I would have to from then on, after. Thanks to Grandma’s money, though, there wasn’t a lot to pay for anymore, outside of food and regular expenses. But Cherry’s and my phone plan had been linked for years, and even aft
er I dropped out of school and started working at the hair salon, it always seemed too expensive or too complicated to change it. There was the insurance, too, which I knew from Grandma was important to keep up. I had let the cable get cut off, though. She could watch static over there, for all I cared.

  Most of the house was dark when I got there, which wasn’t a surprise. A single dull porch light on and one farther in the house—the light over the kitchen sink. I dropped the trash from Bird’s car into the bin outside the garage and let myself in the back kitchen door. Right away I could tell Cherry wasn’t home, though it wasn’t clear how long she hadn’t been. Around about sixth grade, when we first moved here, Cherry started getting . . . sick. Sometimes she was sick at home, and other times she had to go somewhere else. How long she’s actually been on drugs I don’t know, still. When I turned thirteen, Gary went to jail on his Long Bust, and things got weird in other ways I couldn’t put my finger on. Afternoons, Grandma would show up at school instead of Cherry, taking me over to her house to spend the nights that would sometimes last for days. Other times, Momma would be excited and in a good mood, and we’d have parties over at our house. Full of people. Usually loud and very happy. When she remembered in the mornings, she’d send me to school. Other days I’d be “sick” too and just stay at home and watch TV with Cherry and her friends. Lots of them men, like she had forgot about Gary altogether.

  Grandma would cook me dinner. She’d take me clothes shopping sometimes. But then Grandma got sick for real, and I didn’t see her for long stretches of time. I’d ask Cherry to take me to see her and she’d say Grandma was too unwell for any company. I thought maybe Grandma needed someone to care for her the way she’d taken care of us, but anytime I said anything, Cherry would get mad and say she wasn’t the bad daughter I was accusing her of being. And then Cherry went away too, this time for five months. I was on my own in the house, but I did okay. I’d met Bird by then, and though she was five years older than me and could already afford to rent her own house, somehow we took a shine to each other and made fast friends.

  By ninth grade, I had it pretty much figured out. I went over to see Bird more times than not, cleaning up and helping around in exchange for dinner or a place to sleep where there’d be some company. Grandma died sometime that year. Most of what I remember about then is that Cherry wore a yellow dress to the funeral. I was the one who talked on the phone to the ladies from church, coordinated all the casseroles that came to our house. Momma didn’t actually say she didn’t want to handle things, but she didn’t take on anything herself, either. Grandma’s lawyer called all the time, and I got so tired of telling him that Momma was still sick that one day I pretended to be her. I don’t know if she remembers signing the papers. I don’t know, still, if I did a right job in everything. But now Momma has her house and her own car, and though there’s the insurance we have to pay and the phone, there isn’t much else.

  Finding all the mail was still a challenge. Sometimes it’d be in a tidy stack under a pile of CDs and dirty hand towels, other times it would be scattered from the back door to the bedroom, like some kind of treasure trail for me to follow. Today it was all in a mound next to the kitchen sink—a lot of it damp. Most of it was things neither of us needed to see, but I was the only one who was checking.

  I walked through the bare, beige house to Cherry’s room. After that time she was passed out in there, it was a habit in me to always check, before moving down the hall into my own room. Usually Cherry’s door was open and the room was empty: her bed made or unmade, with her pale rosebud sheets. Sometimes just the mattress, bare. Maybe a blanket, bunched up. Grandpa’s old desk cluttered with her various things. Wads of money sometimes, which I never touched. Clothes on the floor often, but other times everything picked up. Always the sense she’d been here, and hadn’t. That other people had been here too, but weren’t anymore. Today, there was an empty pill bottle just under the bed and two half-full glasses of water on the bedside table. I wondered the things I always wondered, and that never did any good. Had she been arrested? Was she in jail? Was she at someone’s house—say Bo Jenkins’s or Halfway Carl’s? Had I just missed her? Had she walked out the door, ready for work, or cloaked in perfume and someone’s arms?

  Cherry. Her bleach-blond hair like mine. Her thin-lipped laugh. The way she sounded young even if she didn’t look it. Teaching me to paint my nails. Yelling at me to mop the floor. Showing me how to pour beer for grown-ups—making sure the amber liquid went down the side of the glass so it wouldn’t foam too much on top. Pressing a freshly hot iron against my forearm, her bony hand gripping down on my wrist, because I was sixteen by then, had dropped out of school, and wouldn’t fork over my whole paycheck.

  I went down the hall, past the dark, shadowed mouth of the bathroom, to my own room. We were like roommates, really, even when I was in middle school and Gary was here. Two girls sharing a bathroom, no real art on the walls, nothing that made this house seem like anyone’s. Her toothbrush, and mine, in the same fluted glass from an old set of Grandma’s. Both of us hostessing her friends in our nightgowns. Neither of us giving up all our secrets to each other.

  Standing in the doorway of my bedroom, I looked around and tried to guess what she might’ve stolen this time. I had a fireproof lockbox in my closet—she knew it was there, knew she couldn’t get into it, and sometimes this made her mad—but it didn’t really matter because the things Cherry stole were strange. Months used to go by before I realized a pair of earrings was missing. Or a lip gloss from the back of my dressing table drawer. Gloves from the pockets of an old thrift store coat I’d hated. Once, a two-dollar bill that was pressed in a scrapbook, shoved under my bed since we moved here. I’d only noticed it was gone when I pulled out the album, wanting to show Bird how skinny I used to be, back before Grandma started feeding me regular. Before Gary got arrested and Cherry started getting really bad.

  I didn’t know why I was caring about it all now. It didn’t matter what Cherry took from me. Now anything I truly cared about, I made sure to keep out of her reach. Including myself. And yet, looking down at the bed where she’d tucked me in, where some nights—even after I was too old—she bent close with her low-cut T-shirt and her lipstick and her glassy eyes, I felt some kind of . . . missing, maybe. Needing. Wanting her to somehow be different. To fold me in, hold me close, and tell me how she would make it all okay. But missing a momma you never had felt strange, too.

  I went to the closet, the dresser drawers, to see if there were any different clothes I’d want to take. Most of my things had been moved over to Bird’s, but there was always some leftover dress, some sweatshirt. I moved around the room quickly, ignoring the safe because it only had a couple crisp hundred-dollar bills in it anyway, and I wanted to save those, in case. I knew, at that point, Cherry wouldn’t be home at all, but I acted as though she might be, at any moment.

  TWO DAYS LATER AT THE SALON WHERE I WORKED, I HAD my gloved hands deep in relaxer when the glass door swung open. Coming in the door were two guys who were definitely not there to get their hair done. And I knew they knew. I knew they were coming to arrest me, and maybe Dee had been taken already. Panic washed over me and made it hard to stand up, let alone stand still. I thought of my phone, in my purse in the back room. Dee. I had to get to Dee. I tried to keep my eyes on what I was doing with this girl’s hair, but all I could hear was their low voices, talking to my boss, Alessia, at the front counter. They said my full name. Nicola.

  After a minute, Alessia came over and started putting gloves on next to me.

  “Girl, let me take over that for you a minute,” she whispered. “These men want to talk to you.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was mad or scared or trying to help me. I took off my gloves, one by one. Trying not to go too slow. But trying not to hurry.

  THEY DIDN’T ARREST ME. ONLY HAD QUESTIONS. QUESTIONS about my relationship with Dee, about this “Bird” person—what was his real name and could they talk to hi
m. It made me mad, for a second, knowing Dee had said anything about her at all. But of course he’d had to. We’d talked about that on the drive to the station. And we had been at her house. I gave them her real name and address, thinking I’d have to call her right away when I finished talking to them. They asked me other things, like what was the name of his gym and what kind of car did he have. Those things were all easy to find out, so I knew I couldn’t lie about them. I could tell from what they were asking me—Did you know he had a gun?—that they already knew enough anyway.

  But they weren’t arresting me. Instead they brought out this plastic bag with a crumply piece of notebook paper in it.

  “Miss Dougherty, do you know who Nicole Palmer is?”

  I looked at the paper. A letter. In Dee’s handwriting. Words on it like forever and baby and I will protect you always.

  Her name hit me. Nicole. Practically the same as mine. “Who?”

  “We found this letter at her home. While we were investigating a crime scene.”

  Who? What? “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t know Nicole Palmer, who lives at 247 Abbey’s Ferry?”

  She lived there? “No, sir, I do not.”

  More words swim off the page. Darling. My love. Never give you up.

  “And, Miss Dougherty, would you be willing to give a sworn statement here, telling us that Denarius Pavon was with you on August twenty-third and the twenty-fourth? The entire day?”

  “Not on Friday, when I was at work. But he picked me up. We were together all weekend. And the morning of the twenty-fifth, too. That’s when he got called and went in.”

  “All right, Miss Dougherty,” the one who’d been writing everything down said. He handed me a card. “If you think you have any more information you’d like to tell us, you call this number.”