The Memory Thief

by Rachel Keener

  By the time I was eight, I couldn’t read anything but my own name. Even that was memorized. I didn’t know the sounds letters made, just that when I saw Angel spelled out, it meant me. I had blond hair and the dumb eyes of a baby calf. Teachers whispered, “She’s an innocent, bless her heart,” as they huddled together on the playground. I didn’t know what it meant. Only that they treated me differently. Never spoke sharply. Never kept me in at recess if I hadn’t finished my papers.

  Then one day Mr. Swarm saw me trying to hold the front door open with one hand and pull myself up with the other. All while carefully keeping my legs from touching Daddy’s car, parked twelve inches away. Black Snake trailer floated on cinder blocks, stacked three feet off the ground. Sometimes I’d just stay outside and hope somebody would come along to pull me up.

  Mr. Swarm walked over to a pile of scraps, old fences, and tractor parts sitting at the end of our trailer. He pulled out two cinder blocks and stacked them together. Then put one more in front of them.

  “Just made you a set of steps outta farm trash.” He laughed.

  That day Mr. Swarm taught me something my teachers hadn’t. Good answers were out there. And there was no telling where they might be hiding.

  By the end of second grade, I was reading on a first-grade level and digging through all the trash around me. I looked at everything, even the silly dot-to-dots our teacher liked to call art. I listened to everything, even the old DAR women who came to brag how their dead great-granddaddies fought in some war. I could never be certain where my next cinder-block tower would come from. The one that would help me up. Lift me to a higher place.

  II

  I wish I could show you Janie next. I wish I had tucked her, along with the other memories, safe inside my pocket. So I could hold her up to the light between us and make her shine again. Like she must have once, so many years ago.

  Momma and Daddy liked to pretend it was the State’s fault. That somehow the State ruined Janie after it took her for a few months when she was a baby.

  “She used to be the best girl,” Momma would sob on a bad whiskey night. “Sweet baby, never cried when her diaper was wet. Slept through the night right from the beginnin’. Some Nosy called the State, though. Said she was too skinny. That lady came with her clipboard, had the nerve to open up my fridge and look in my cabinets without askin’. Took Janie that same day. Didn’t see her for near six months. Till Daddy got better work and we could show off all the new milk in the fridge. When Janie came home, though, she was different. Was a danger in her eyes. No tellin’ what was did to make her that way.”

  Momma and Daddy liked to threaten that the same thing was going to happen to me, was going to ruin me, too, every time a teacher sent a note home for them to stumble through.

  “You gittin’ lazy at school?”

  “No, Daddy.”

  “You mopin’ round like a broke-down dog?”

  “No.”

  “Keep it up and the State’ll come. Give you to strangers. Gave Janie to a gook family. Ain’t no tellin’ what they done to her all them months. Made her eat dog and such.”

  Once, I asked Janie about it.

  “They’re lyin’ ’bout the dog part,” she said. “I was just a baby, but if I ate dog I’d know it. You hear me, Angel? I’d know a thing as big as that.”

  I nodded. Janie always spoke with the force and grit of a strong cussword, even if she was just saying hello. That force alone made me believe her. And compared to my own baby voice and to Momma’s hoarse whisper, I wondered if it was the gook family that taught her how to do that. And I wished they’d teach me, too.

  In spite of being ruined by the State, it was Janie that taught me the important things a girl needs to know. Like how to dance sexy. How to swallow a strong drink. And how to be a thief and a sweet little girl at the very same time.

  Her dancing lesson came late one summer night when I was prowling through the bacca. I heard noises coming from an old shed on the corner of Swarm field. Laughter. Cusswords. I crept up to the side of the shed and peeked through the slats.

  I saw Janie. Dancing in the middle of every farmhand I knew except for Daddy. She was singing Elvis, like Momma did whenever she felt sexy. The farmhands were passing brown bottles around, reaching out and tugging at her bra straps. Yelling whoo-eee if they got the job done, before she tugged it back. But my eyes kept returning to Janie. Beautiful fifteen-year-old Janie. The way she slid her hips in circles, the way her flat hair was curled and teased like a dark crown on her head.

  I followed her home that night and finally named the smell around her. The one I’d wondered about for months. It was dead flowers. Like the ones Mrs. Swarm refused to water at summer’s end.

  The next morning I opened Janie’s underwear drawer. Tried her black bra on. Looked in the mirror, at the way the cups dangled on my flat chest. I tried to slide my hips in circles. Whispered Elvis.

  Janie walked in and saw me. My first thought was to run. Because she’d know I spied on her and cuss me good. Then I saw her smile. She walked over to me, joined in the song.

  “Like this, Angel,” she said, as she slithered so sexy around the room. “Move your body like this.”

  We spent the morning singing Elvis and being sexy.

  “You’re too young now,” Janie said. “But look at this.” She pulled out a sock from her underwear drawer. It was filled with money.

  “One day soon, you can do this, too. An’ if we put our money together, you and me, we could git out of this place, easy. We could make more than Daddy in a week, the two of us. You’re too little to know it now, but men are gonna love you for that white hair of yours.”

  We practiced in the bacca. The two of us twisting and sliding up and down the rows. In her mind, Janie was dancing herself as far away from Black Snake trailer as she could get. I was just dancing to be like Janie. After harvest, we went to the barns. We kept warm humming Elvis and dancing for each other. When winter ended, I could move like a woman.

  One night that spring, Janie went to the dancing shed. I knew what she was doing, and I wanted to come with her. She told me I wasn’t old enough.

  “I know all the right moves,” I begged. “See, watch this.”

  I let my face melt into what Janie called her naughty smile. I kept my shoulders still as my hips began to move round and round.

  “You ain’t old enough,” she said.

  “But think of all the money we could git,” I tried.

  She shook her head. “Soon. But not yet. You’re just ten years old.”

  “I turn eleven tomorrow.”

  “Well, look at you,” she said with a smile. “Almost a woman after all.” She hugged me. “Listen, I’ll buy you somethin’ good with the money I earn tonight. For your birthday, okay?”

  I nodded sadly and watched her walk across the field. Toward that falling-down shed, where men and money waited. The next day, though, I didn’t think about my birthday. Something much more important than me was taking all of the attention. Daddy’s car.

  It wouldn’t start. It sputtered, clanked, and smoked. But it would not start.

  “Needs a real mechanic,” Momma yelled. “Not a man that tinkers on tractors.”

  Daddy slid out from underneath it long enough to yell back, “Woman, you need to git more money from ’em. You know you could if you scared ’em enough.”

  It was The Birthday Fight. The one they had every year. About the money and where it all went. Whether they could demand more. But that day the fight was worse than before. It was Saturday; there was no escape for us in school. Momma and Daddy had started drinking early. And then the car died.

  Momma stormed out of the trailer when she heard the gears grind and then bang as something misfired. She yelled at Daddy about how he had ruined the one chance life had given them.

  “Had one good chance to make a go of it. And all we got left is a broke-down car. We had a fightin’ chance in this life, handed down like a gift from heaven.
And you blew it. Just like you always do.”

  He threw a wrench at her. Missed. She threw it back with good aim. We could hear him groaning as he dug in the car for more weapons. Me and Janie were sitting on the couch sharing a box of dry cornflakes. Janie turned to me as she grabbed her purse.

  “The bacca,” she whispered. “Run, Angel!”

  Hand in hand we ran through muddy fields. We stopped for breath and listened. Heard Momma scream and ran farther. Until it was quiet, and we knew that we were safe.

  It was a spring night. I’d been ready for bed, dressed only in an old T-shirt and underwear. Sitting on the ground, I started to shiver. And sob. Janie rolled her eyes and cussed.

  “Sorry, Janie. Don’t know why.” Momma and Daddy fought like that all the time. Maybe I cried because it was my birthday. Or maybe it was that I knew what the fight was really about. The word they used was money. But all I heard was Angel, yelled over and over.

  Janie pulled a bottle out of her purse. Took a long drink and handed it to me. “This makes it better,” she whispered. “Drives ’em out of your head. It’ll drive the cold out, too. Happy birthday, Angel.”

  It took some practice, but Janie was a good coach. I slept well that night. I found warmth. I felt safe, too, more than ever before. And from that night on, whenever I’d find Momma or Daddy passed out drunk, I’d slip the whiskey from their hands. Pour just enough to not be missed into an empty coke bottle. Then, if it was summer, I’d bury it in the fields. Winter, I’d hide it in the barn. Like a teddy bear, or a best baby doll. Something to get me through the darkest nights.

  I never ran out of whiskey, because Janie taught me how to be a good thief. Under her watchful eye, I took whatever was in reach. She taught me how to escape if I was caught. Like when a teacher caught me sneaking snacks home in my pocket. “Next time, tell her you want to mail ’em to the hungry African kids you saw on TV. Teachers love that kind of thing,” Janie told me. She taught me how to be sweet and good around the Swarms, so that they wouldn’t ever suspect me of thieving. “Open up your eyes wide, don’t let ’em ever squint, it looks like you’re plottin’. And find ways to say things like ‘Good mornin’,’ ‘How are you,’ and ‘God sure gave us a lovely day.’ ”

  Her lessons began that first supper under the sycamore tree, when I was five years old. Janie whispered in my ear, “If we ever gonna git anything good in this world, it’s gonna be ’cause we’re smart enough to take it when nobody’s lookin’.”

  Then she took my spoon and tucked it in my pocket.

  “Leave that till later.”

  While Momma and Daddy chased out the rats and unloaded old farm equipment from the trailer, Janie pulled the spoon from my pocket.

  “Feel how heavy.” She placed it in my hand. “That’s real silver, Angel. Daddy can sell that easy at any pawnshop. We just gotta buff out them marks there.” Neither one of us could read the marks. But years later, I remembered that spoon. It said Swarm.

  “These people are richer than they know,” she said. “You keep your eyes open. You keep fillin’ your pockets. And when Momma starts bearin’ down on you like she does, you hand her that spoon with your best smile.”

  “How do I know what to take?” I asked.

  “Whatever glitters,” she said. “And don’t take it all. That’s what people expect a thief to do. Leave somethin’ behind, and they’ll think they just misplaced the rest of it.”

  “Are we thieves, Janie?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “We sure ain’t Swarms.”

  More than dancing, even more than drinking, thieving came easy to me. Maybe it was because the small TV we had worked only when it stormed, and even then only picked up two channels. Or that our radio played fuzzy country music, but only if we held it high over our heads. Maybe it was because whenever I handed my gifts to Momma, her face would melt into something soft, even gentle, as she held the treasure in her palm. But my eyes were drawn to anything that glittered. Like the pocket change a farmhand left sitting on a fencepost. Like the silver thimble Mrs. Swarm left on the front-porch railing.

  Or like Mr. Swarm’s gun, that day he left it outside the old barn. Farmhands complained a copperhead nest was inside. Mr. Swarm killed the snakes and proudly carried the bodies through the fields to show the farmhands. I stayed behind in my hiding spot in the bacca. My eyes feasted on the bit of sun that flashed off the metal. Off the handle, the color of maple leaves in the fall.

  I carried it home tucked in my waistband, my T-shirt pulled over it. Momma swore when I handed it to her. Then she giggled and kissed me.

  She wouldn’t let Daddy pawn it. Even when he lost a week’s wages in a round of farmhand poker. We lived on stale crackers and flat coke the whole week and he promised he could get a hundred dollars for it, but she wouldn’t let go of that gun. She kept it next to her ashtray, on an overturned bucket that she used as a nightstand.

  Just the sight of it made me close my eyes and hold my breath. It pulled me toward it, like metal to a magnet. It promised something strange. Something like peace.

  Sometimes I couldn’t fall asleep for thinking about it, there in the next room. Its outline a darker shade than the black of night. But behind the promise of peace, I sensed something else. I didn’t know what to call it, except fear. That the gun lied just like the rest of us did and there wasn’t any peace. Or maybe it was hope. That something even better waited. That couldn’t be stolen. Or pawned. Or lay by a dirty ashtray on an overturned bucket.

  Momma came to depend on my gifts. Just as Daddy handed her part of his wages every Sunday, I was expected to deliver a prize to her. That was what she called the change, the thimble, the broken radio I returned home with. They were her prizes, and I was her thief.

  I never left her empty-handed. Sometimes she’d forget the days and run out of whiskey. Then she’d demand her prize early. First she’d threaten me with a switch or a smack. Then she’d cry and beg. Ask why I wouldn’t help her like a good baby should. Janie would bring me something then. She was always trading kisses for cigarettes with the boys at school. And trading cigarettes for lipstick and perfume with the girls. She’d sneak up behind me and put a shiny tube of lip gloss in my hands.

  “Look here, Momma,” I’d whisper. “I was walkin’ in them fields today and look what I found out in that bacca. Who would’ve ever thought somethin’ so pretty would be stuck there in that dirt?” She’d step forward and smile, hold that tube of gloss up to the sun, and watch it shimmer.

  After Janie left me, I learned to set rules. Once a week. On paydays only. That was when I’d give Momma her prizes. Anything else, anything left over, went to a stockpile for the low weeks. A little brown bag tucked inside the front cinder block and filled with bits of stolen treasure.

  Even with my nice stockpile, I never stopped taking from the Swarms whenever I had a chance. Not even after I heard Mr. Swarm fire a farmhand over that missing gun. Or after I heard Mrs. Swarm sobbing about the silver picture frame she had carried out to the porch to polish. She turned her back for a quick phone chat, and it vanished. Not even after Mr. Swarm slumped by his tractor and died.

  Daddy ran home to Black Snake trailer after he found Mr. Swarm dead. It was the only time I ever saw him cry. I was seventeen years old, but I could still feel baby prayers sitting inside my mouth. Bless you, Daddy. He sat on the hood of his car and sobbed until his body shook. Mumbled how Mr. Swarm’s lips turned purple.

  Momma turned and looked at the trailer.

  “They gonna kick us out quick now,” she said. “His boys ain’t liked us being here anyways. And they ain’t plannin’ to farm.”

  “He was closest thing to a daddy. Taught me everything he could in these fields.”

  “He wouldn’t let you in his home for a drink of water on a hundred-degree day,” Momma snapped. “And now we’re gonna be kicked off this farm in a week, I guarantee. What about this week’s work? You been paid yet?”

  Daddy shook his head. “It’s
just Tuesday. Only worked two days since last pay.”

  “Well, he owes you then. You git back there ’fore they find him. Git his wallet. Take what’s there.”

  “I can’t,” Daddy sobbed.

  “We ain’t got enough for gas money. That’s assumin’ that car will even start. You gotta go back.”

  “Can’t see him like that. Woman, his lips are turned purple!”

  “Angel? Git over here.” Momma pointed to the rows of bacca. “Walk straight until you find ol’ Swarm. Git his wallet and take the money. An’ if you see anybody, don’t say nothin’ ’bout him being killed over. Let his own kin find him.”

  I took a step back toward the trailer. “But he’s dead, Momma. Can’t rob him now he’s dead.”

  “If we don’t got food to eat, the State’ll come for you. That’s why they took Janie. Now go git us some money.”

  “I already paid you for the week.”

  “But these are emergency times, Angel,” Momma begged. “I’ll give you back that charm bracelet you brought home last week. You gotta go right now, find that dead man, and bring me money. And any other prizes you find, too.”

  I found him slumped by his tractor. His hands loose around a wrench. His lips were purple, just as Daddy said. His eyes open but staring down, like he had watched himself fall. I felt inside his pockets and pulled out his wallet.

  Sixty dollars were inside, along with receipts from old auctions and calling cards for wholesale buyers. I tucked the bills inside my bra. Slipped off his wristwatch. And as I put his wallet back, I found something else. A silver pocket watch. Swarm engraved across it. Inside there was a picture of Mrs. Swarm when she was young. To my groom printed in tiny square letters across the bottom.

  It was one of the few things I wouldn’t let burn in the fire, but kept inside my right pocket. It was one of the things I hoped could make you see Janie. Could make you see how much she must have loved me to have given me the gift of thieving.