Criminal

by Terra Elan McVoy

  My mouth knew to skip over these things, though my mind didn’t.

  The next morning, he was on me before I was even awake. Hungry. Needing. Full of love. He finished and we went into the kitchen and I made biscuits. I felt happy, calm. It had been so nice that Bird and Dee got along the night before, that he was in such a good mood. We ate together, tired and bleary but laughing. Dee went to the gym and Bird and I cleaned up, got Jamelee ready so they could go out shopping with Bird’s grandma Rose and auntie Melora. I gave the baby a bath so that Bird got some time on her own. And I let myself get a little dressed up too, thinking about what Dee and I might do together, by ourselves.

  When Ms. Rose and Melora came to get Bird, I saw Dee pulling up along the curb too. I expected him to come in, but he didn’t. Just Bird’s auntie and grandma, without knocking. They stood in the kitchen telling me I should come with them, but I said I was having a special weekend with my boyfriend instead. I saw Melora give Bird a look, but Ms. Rose shook her finger at me in a sly way and laughed. Dee finally got out of his truck as we all came out of the house. He had some kind of overnight bag in his hand, which I know he didn’t have when he left. It wasn’t the same thing he put his gym clothes in, either. I wondered if we were going to a hotel somewhere.

  Bird and them all said hello to him, polite, but he didn’t smile much back. As they drove off, Ms. Rose hollered out the window to Dee, “You take her somewhere nice.” He lifted his hand, watching them. I was glad I’d had time to put on one of my cute tops and made sure there were plenty of condoms around. As I stood next to Dee in the driveway, everything felt very . . . special.

  I didn’t say nearly all of that either. Mostly just that Dee got back from the gym as Bird was leaving. That I knew they’d be away all day.

  As soon as they were gone, he asked me did I have those wigs he asked me for before.

  “We going to a costume party?” I was feeling light and sassy. But he just scowled, so I told him they were in the closet.

  I’d ordered the two wigs, special, from the salon weeks ago: one short brown—almost like a man’s—and the other a long flowing red one. I didn’t know why he needed them. These exact styles. All he’d said when I asked was, “I gotta do something.”

  I brought them to him. He nodded and took them off their foam heads. He stuffed them into his bag, which I could see had clothes in it, most of them black.

  I asked him what was up.

  “It’s a surprise.” He kind of smiled. “Let’s go.”

  I asked him where we were going.

  “Just on a drive.”

  When I locked the door behind us, I saw him looking at Bird’s car.

  “How long’s Bird gone?” he wanted to know.

  “Probably all day,” I told him. I put my arms around his waist and rubbed my face between his shoulder blades. Let my hands move down toward his belt buckle. I wanted to go back in the house, restart what we had going on this morning.

  “Let’s take her car, then,” he said.

  I thought he was right, Bird’s car would be more exciting, but that we should check with her first. Maybe on this occasion, since it was special, she’d be okay with it.

  He put his hand on my wrist as I reached for my phone.

  “Baby, you know she don’t like me.” He was smiling down at me. Sexy. Winking.

  I told him okay, but we had to get her some gas while we were out.

  I skipped over the parts about the wigs and the clothes to the police. I didn’t want them to know he’d been planning it, thinking ahead. But everything about Bird’s Mustang I made sure to say all of. So they understood Bird had no idea we’d taken her car, didn’t know anything about it.

  We got in, and Dee put the bag at his feet. We held hands, sweet. He told me to head to the interstate. Dee put the stereo on, loud, but the pulsing music felt good. A kind of holiday, just the two of us.

  I didn’t pay much attention to what we passed or even, really, how long I was driving. It just felt good, letting Dee lead me wherever he wanted. A surprise. Eventually he told me to get off the interstate, and we drove some more, turned, drove, turned. I didn’t really know where we were, but there were brand-new strip malls and steak houses and the biggest Walmart I’ve ever seen. Eventually he told me to slow down, turn into a subdivision. There was a brick sign at the entrance, the name in cursive. The houses were bigger and newer and farther apart than the ones in our neighborhood. We took another turn and he told me to stop the car just past this yellow house with a pretty front porch. Full of plants. I had no idea who lived there. I thought maybe it was a party, though there weren’t many other cars around. Was I finally going to meet his family? His friends? Again, I was glad I’d gotten a little dressed up.

  He looked out my window. “You see down there?”

  He was pointing slightly behind us, between two other houses. I don’t remember what they looked like, but the grass between them was bright and damp. I thought, for a second, I wanted to lie down in it with Dee.

  He told me to follow the road we were on all the way to the stop sign, go through it, and then take the very first left into a cul-de-sac that ended on the other side of those two houses.

  “When I tell you,” he said, “you drive over there, and I’ll meet you.”

  I was starting to get a strange feeling. I asked him what he was going to do.

  “Don’t you trust me?” he said.

  “Yes, of course,” I said right back.

  He took out the short brown wig and handed it to me. That, and a big, mildew-smelling flannel shirt. “Then put these on.”

  I was trying to keep the idea in my head that this was some kind of funny game—maybe some elaborate trick to play on his mom or something—but I didn’t like the creepy way it was feeling. When I asked him about it again, though, he got mad.

  “Just put it on and shut up,” he said.

  So I put on the wig and watched him as he pulled a billowy ladies’ blouse out of the bag and took off his T-shirt. He put on the blouse. For a strange reason I wanted to laugh, but the serious look on his face, and the way he kept looking around at the other houses, it wasn’t funny at all. He took out a black miniskirt and put that on too. Tights. His boots back on over those. I knew then something was really wrong.

  But when I told him I wanted to leave, he got angry. Yelling things like “shut the fuck up,” and “keep your ugly mouth shut,” and “you’ll do what I fucking tell you to do.” Everything around me got sharp and bright. I was blinking, fast, feeling really scared but not knowing what to do. My heart was racing. This was no romantic getaway.

  I paused. Those disguises—I’d skipped over them in my story, but it made me feel the same strangeness thinking of them again. How intentional it all seemed. But then I took a breath and remembered my purpose. All I needed to do was give them enough to keep them away from Bird. Just to tell them we were there, but not her. At the scene. I told them Dee was acting strange, and I was scared. I couldn’t help that part because it was so true.

  He put the wig on and reached into the bag again. Two guns. I started freaking out. He grabbed my wrist, squeezing hard. I thought he might punch me, but he didn’t. Instead he leaned in, kissed me hard.

  “I gotta do something,” he told me. And it was hypnotizing, how sure and calm he was. “I need you to be cool. I need you to help me do this. Just this one thing. Don’t ask me any more questions, all right? Just do what I tell you. When I say, drive past the stop sign, and turn into the cul-de-sac, and wait for me there. That’s all you have to do.”

  I asked him was he robbing somebody. Was this for his gang. He put his hand over my mouth, and I could see his eyes, wide and deep. For a minute I couldn’t see anything else.

  “I need you, baby,” he said.

  My pulse was pounding in my neck, but his hand on my mouth, the pressure of his eyes on me, made everything less crazy. A car came down the road behind us. I saw it in the rearview, and I guess I was stil
l freaked out a little bit because for a minute I thought it was going to ram us from behind. I wanted to get out of there, get me and Dee away, and I started the car, which made Dee start cussing again, but then the car behind us started slowly backing into the driveway. In front of the yellow house.

  Dee told me to get ready and gripped the guns tight up against his chest.

  He wouldn’t look at me anymore. He put his hand on the door handle. Through the window I could see the car in the driveway come to a stop.

  Dee said, “Go now. Go, go, drive,” and at the same time he was somehow out, slamming the door shut. This all happened in about two seconds. I watched him cross the street. Four strides, five, and then up the driveway, aiming the guns out straight. I heard the shots, loud and fast, and my foot just automatically went down hard on the gas pedal because I didn’t want to see what was happening. Bird’s Mustang lunged down the road, pulling me with it. For a minute I didn’t know what to do with the wheel and was afraid I was going to crash. The shots kept coming. It was like they were following me. I could barely stay on the road.

  The turn for the cul-de-sac came up quick, and I almost missed it. I thought I might’ve hit a mailbox. I was blinking, blinking so hard. Like I couldn’t see. The second I stopped where Dee told me, he came running from between the houses, just like he said. His long red wig-hair was flying, and I remember thinking, “He looks like a god.” Like he was some kind of angry majestic Mexican god of fire or war. And then the driver’s side door yanked open and he was pushing me across the seat, bruising me, banging my knee on the shift, shoving me into the passenger’s side. The car jolted forward again as he started driving, and he threw the guns in my lap, told me to put them in the glove compartment. He was breathing hard and I knew not to ask him what had happened. I knew what happened. And I didn’t want to know at all.

  We hauled out of the subdivision, and were back on the interstate in no time. I was shaking, breathing ragged, so stunned I couldn’t scream or cry or say anything. His bag was at my feet, a gaping hole of black. I felt the heat of the guns in my lap, and I had to get them off me. I knew enough, though, even in all of it, to hold them with the edge of the smelly flannel shirt so I wouldn’t leave any print behind. I slammed the compartment door shut, but it felt like they were sitting there, steaming, watching me.

  Finally I could talk. I asked Dee what the hell just happened.

  I barely told them any of this. Definitely not about Dee’s guns. Only that a car came up behind us, Dee got out, I heard gunshots, freaked out, and drove away. I told them Dee caught up with me around the corner, out of breath, and we left. I told them he didn’t say much to me and that we just drove. Because in reality I’d screamed, “What did you just do?” and he answered me in a crazy, too-guilty sounding way. Right now for them, and Bird, I just needed to get the record straight. But I didn’t have to tell them exact.

  He didn’t answer right off. And for that minute, I thought he was going to blow up at me. But then I looked over at him, and he was smiling. This big, beautiful, happy smile. He grinned like that and slapped his hand down on my thigh, started hollering, “We did it, baby!” and, “Woo-hooo, we fucking did it!” Like he just won the lottery and couldn’t believe it. He kept laughing, ripping the red wig off and throwing it at my feet, saying, “Oh my God,” and, “We did it right on.” I couldn’t believe how happy he was.

  I asked who he’d shot. I was still shaking, but seeing him so excited made me shake less. He told me it was just somebody who got what he deserved. A thing that needed to be done.

  “I thought you were going to freak,” he said, leaning over to kiss me on the side of the face. “Asking those questions, bugging out, but man, it was perfect.” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel, giddy, narrating how he got out of the car, just walked up to him and then BLAM BLAM. He held his fingers into gun shapes. He would not stop grinning. He looked at me, so proud.

  “And you. Fuckin’ Ciree can’t even drive like you sometimes, babe, I swear.”

  I couldn’t help smiling too then. His happiness was like something you could catch. Beside him, I felt all the fear fizzling. I told him how crazy he seemed, running between those houses.

  “Baby, I was crazy!” he screamed, raising himself off the seat and shrieking at the windshield, face full of victory. “Totally fucking crazy, man.”

  He laughed like a kid. A kid being tickled so bad he might wet his pants. It was scary, and terrible, and . . . awesome. I thought of the other girl then, his old girlfriend. The one he came back to me from—and no wonder. I knew she had never seen him like this, this wild. Or if she had, it had made her too afraid. She would have thought he was a monster. Nobody else could see and understand and love this part of him. This, I knew, was all for me.

  His hand squeezed my thigh, kneading, moving higher and higher, up to the curved place just before the bottom of my fly.

  “I got an idea,” he said, smiling that wild smile.

  Before long we were in the far-right lane, blinker clicking. The tight, quiet sound of Bird’s car was a cocoon around us. We exited into a rest stop, and his hand pressed harder. I felt my eyelids flutter briefly shut.

  He found a parking space, back by picnic tables too far away for any families to want to use. We were in the shade, under a big tree, far away from all the other cars. At the other side of the lot, there were fat ladies in zip-up suits climbing out of vans to walk their tiny dogs and men hitching up their belts on their way to the bathrooms, but nobody could see us.

  Dee murmured in my ear, his tongue flicking. “We did it,” he said, leaning in to my neck and pressing his hand between my thighs. “You didn’t fuck up.”

  I put my arms around his neck, pressed him closer to me. He was electric, and I wanted to feel his buzz all the way to my bones. His hands started roving, mouth on me all at once, and I didn’t want to wait. I climbed over into the backseat, lay myself down, already undoing my jeans. I thought he was a god over me, full of power. And I knew I was the only place he had to put all his energy. I knew, so clearly, that I was the only one who could take it all in, who could open up and give him what he needed.

  I didn’t say it like that, though.

  “We drove straight back to Bird’s,” was all I told them. “And you know the rest from my statement before.”

  While they finished writing, I could feel their judgment on me, their quick-glancing eyes saying, Why didn’t you call the police right away? Why did you wait so long to say something? But in remembering, and in telling them what they needed to know, that golden feeling I’d had with Dee came back over me—the feeling of being a kind of temple for him. I was someone who worshipped him and understood him, in all the ways he needed and deserved. I could feel them hating me, thinking I was wrong, but they’d never had Dee’s hands on them, never felt him as completely as I had.

  They could judge me all they wanted. But they would never understand.

  AFTER THAT, EVERYTHING MOVED VERY FAST. I TOLD THEM what they needed, they wrote it down, and then suddenly the young policeman was standing up and saying, “Nicola Rachelle Dougherty, you are under arrest for being party to the murder of Deputy Duane Palmer. You have the right to remain silent. . . .”

  I was stunned. For one, it was strange to hear that cops really did that part. The whole thing, just like on TV. About can and will be held against you. Given a lawyer if you can’t afford one. But more shocking than that was that they were arresting me at all. I didn’t know they could, didn’t think they might. It hadn’t been in my head at all when I went to the station this morning. All I wanted was to get them away from Bird. But now they were putting handcuffs on me. It was really happening, and I couldn’t believe any of it, real as all the details around me felt. There was a hand gripping me above my elbow, guiding me down a hall. A cold hard office chair. Waiting for hours for someone to process my papers. Cinder block everywhere. Picture taken. Fingerprints. STD test. Thick strong bodies moving around me
. Another long hallway. Facing too many people—mean and bored—inside the drunk tank, and more waiting. A door clanging shut. Just like TV. And just like TV, it was like watching it happen to someone else.

  Except it really was me.

  HOURS. MORE HOURS AND HOURS OF WAITING. IT WAS impossible to tell how long it was, because every minute took forever. I stared at the floor mostly, trying not to see the things behind my eyes, but not wanting to look around either. At people sitting there or leaning against the wall. Some of them talking about what they were in for. Some of them saying this was bullshit. Some of them not the kind of people you’d expect to see in a place like this at all. Some exactly what you’d imagine. Every now and then, one of them getting called out because someone had posted their bail.

  All I could think, even though I knew it was foolish, was that I hoped I’d get to make my phone call before they got to Dee. I hoped he really had gotten out of town. I imagined the sound of his voice when he answered, what I might say. What words of strength he might give to me: I’ll wait for you, you’ll wait for me. It’ll be okay. It wasn’t like I wanted to warn him. Only to tell him that I was sorry and that though I hadn’t told them much, I hadn’t had any choice about what I did say. When they finally came to get me, I pressed the numbers slow, my throat clenched around tears. But his phone went straight to voice mail.

  “Dee.” I tried not to shake, knowing this might be my last chance to explain. But it was hard to talk, thinking I would probably never hear from him again. And he might not even listen to the message. “I love you so much. I love you so much still, and I will always. I’m so sorry, but I had to. I didn’t have a choice. But I love you, baby, and I miss you and I’m so sorry.”

  There wasn’t anything else to say. Especially not with an officer standing there, watching me.

  “No lawyer, huh?” she said after I hung up.

  I shook my head.