Baggage

by S. G. Redling

  A hacksaw clattered to the side where her mom dropped it. She heard her mom grunt with exertion as she pulled on something. Anna finished her slice of bread and reached for the milk. Her stomach felt a little better and the cold air helped clear her head. It also made her nose run and when she sniffed, her mother spun around, eyes wide.

  “I told you to go to the kitchen!”

  But Anna didn’t hear her. She could see what her mother had been cutting.

  Then she remembered.

  Dad had been gone for two weeks on one of his rages. She was glad he was gone. Mom had thrown him out and Anna had relaxed.

  But she missed him. And she worried about him.

  Anna was home alone that night. Mom had a gallery showing. It was no big deal; Anna was eleven. She wasn’t a little kid and this wasn’t the first time she’d been left alone. She was working on her hieroglyphic drawings when she heard her father come through the front door. She heard him talking to himself and moving stuff around in the living room. He wasn’t breaking anything or yelling and Anna hoped his rage was over.

  “Anna? Anna, sweetheart, are you here?”

  She dropped her pen and ran to him. He wrapped her up in his arms and squeezed her tight, kissing the top of her head.

  “I missed you,” she spoke into his shirt.

  “Did you? Oh you sweet, sweet girl.” He held her even closer and began rocking her back and forth. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?” She didn’t answer, just let herself be crushed against his scratchy sweater. “You’re the most beautiful piece of art I’ve ever made.”

  Anna giggled at that. He always called her his masterpiece. He kissed the top of her head again. “I brought you something. It’s in the kitchen.”

  She followed him into the kitchen and sat down at the table with him. He was crying and she put her hand over his. “Don’t cry, Dad. It’s okay. I’m glad you’re home.”

  He laughed through his tears. “Home. We have no home, Anna. There is no place for us, not here, not anywhere.” She didn’t know what he meant and she was afraid his rage wasn’t over. But he didn’t yell or knock over his chair, he just cried and looked at her hand over his. After a moment, he went to the refrigerator and pulled out the orange juice. He grabbed two glasses and set them on the counter. He had his back to her but Anna could see him pull something out of his pocket. He poured the juice, returned to the table, and handed her a glass.

  “Let’s make a toast.” He held up his glass and clinked it against hers. He smiled. “To art, the cruelest mistress.”

  “To art,” Anna said. They always toasted to art. She took a big drink of her juice but when she started to lower the glass, her father put his finger under it, tilting it back up. She had no choice to but to keep swallowing until she’d emptied the glass. He smiled at her.

  “Good girl.” He took both of her hands in his. “Do you know why we make art, Anna? Do you understand?”

  “To create beauty?”

  “No, sweetheart. No.”

  Crap, she’d never get that right. No matter how many times they asked her this, she never got it right. They kept changing it on her.

  He didn’t seem disappointed in her though. He just seemed sad. “We can’t create beauty. It exists in its own right, it exists at the heart of everything, burning like a coal, glowing within it, waiting until it can come into its perfect form. Beauty seethes, it smolders beneath the surface of everything. It can never be held, it can never be seen in its truest form because it would incinerate us. We would burn to ash if we knew beauty. You are beauty, Anna. I see that now. I see your eyes and I see the world through them and there is no beauty here, no beauty for you.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about. She tried to follow his words, to think of something intelligent to add to the conversation. She loved hearing him speak and she had missed him so much, but his words had begun to swim in her head. Her eyes felt so heavy and she tried to hide her yawn but he saw it. He saw it and he smiled.

  “Yes, relax. Let’s go to the living room and relax.”

  She could only nod as he led her to the couch. She was too big to sit in his lap but he let her cuddle up underneath his arm. His voice was soft as he kept talking his strange monologue and petting her hair. She didn’t move when she felt him get off the couch. He pulled her from a dream when he wrapped her wrists together with wire. She struggled to open her eyes when she felt wetness splash over her T-shirt.

  Her eyes burned and she spit when another splash hit her face.

  “Dad?” she sputtered and had to squint to see through the fumes. She wished he would stop whatever he was doing and let her sleep. She was sleepy but the smell assaulted her nose.

  He stood in front of her, sobbing. “Go to sleep. Go to sleep. And when you wake, my beautiful girl, the world will have burned and all will be beauty.”

  She didn’t want to talk about beauty anymore. Her wrists hurt and the smell was so bad. It took everything she had to force her eyes open and she saw him dump water over his head. Not water. He had the gas can for the lawn mower. In the living room.

  “Sleep, sleep, Anna. And beauty will burn through us all.”

  She couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore, even when she heard the front door open.

  Everything was jumbled up after that. She remembered screaming, her mother jerking her across the floor, cold water hitting her skin, her mother’s nails scraping the back of her throat until vomit roared out of her like lava. Through it all, all she wanted to do was sleep, to close her eyes and drift, but her mother kept slapping her and screaming at her. She scrubbed at her skin and raked rough hands through her hair. Anna tasted shampoo and soap and something that tasted so bad she threw up again.

  Finally it ended. Her mother lowered her into a warm tub and Anna relaxed. Her mother shoved towels all around her torso, under her arms, propping her up in the water so Anna could truly relax. Her head fell back against the tub and her eyes finally closed.

  “He said beauty would burn down the world.”

  Her mother’s hands hung down by her sides. “Anna, any idiot can burn down the world. Only art can rebuild it.” Then she crouched down in front of her. “Do you know why we make art?”

  Anna shook her head. She wasn’t going to fall for that trick anymore.

  “Because we’re fucking nuts. Now go to bed.”

  “No.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Her mother looked away first. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. We’re going to see to this and then we’re going to put it away.” She went back to her task. Anna took out another slice of bread.

  She watched the hacksaw cut. She watched the drain take away the wetness. She watched the wide plastic sheeting wrap around and around each piece. And when every piece was wrapped, she watched her mother carry them to the front hall and stack them there on the floor. She watched her open the closet and move the vacuum cleaner and pull out the coats and boots and umbrellas. She watched her take a sledgehammer and knock away the wall in the back of the closet.

  She ate her bread and watched her mother stack the pieces between the studs of the exposed wall. She drank her milk as her mother brought in white painted boards from the studio that had been shelves. Her mother lined up the boards and hammered them in place, her strong arms working steadily until a new wall appeared in the closet, a white wall that grew from floor to ceiling and put their secret away.

  Anna watched every nail go in that wall. She watched her mother return the coats and the boots and the vacuum cleaner. She watched her close the door.

  Eleven months later, Anna was home alone again when a fierce winter storm blew in on a Tuesday afternoon. High winds and hail buffeted the house and Anna curled up snug under her bedspread, reading about the evolution of textiles. The wind gained power and finally toppled the old pin oak that had been secr
etly rotting within for a decade. In the weeks that followed, the news outlets referred to it as The Judgment Tree, granting it some sort of supernatural sentience, claiming its trajectory was directed by destiny. Had it fallen twenty feet to the left, it would have hit their neighbor’s pickup truck. Had it fallen twenty feet to the right, it would have crushed Anna where she lay.

  Instead, it hit the corner of the rental house and demolished the front porch. It crushed the corner of the house and peeled the vinyl siding off like old skin. One thick branch snagged on the roof for a moment before finishing its journey to earth and clawing a jagged hole in the wall.

  Ken Bearson, the owner of the spared pickup truck, heard the impact of the massive oak and ran outside to survey the damage. When he saw the destruction next door, he grabbed his camera. He had always wanted to see one of his photos in the Bakerton Herald and thought the image of the little house crumpled beneath the huge tree would surely earn him a spot.

  When he finally got the strap around his neck and his lens cap off and found a site sheltered enough to get the picture without rain blowing straight into his face, he started snapping shots. He saw the girl who lived next door, the weird kid with the long hair and the big eyes who never spoke or went to school. She was weird but that weirdness would only enhance his image and he snapped her again and again as she clambered over the tree trunk, over the crumpled siding. He thought maybe he should warn her to be careful but these pictures were going to be amazing so he let her climb.

  She made it over the trunk. She made it through the branches. She made it to the hole in the side of her house and then Ken Bearson got the picture that made him famous.

  He caught twelve-year-old Anna Shuler holding a bundle of plastic, trying to shove it back into the wall. From that plastic, the camera picked up the clear image of a human hand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  She’s dragging Jeannie across the floor. I’m dreaming of enchiladas when my head snaps up and I see Meredith, my boss, with her arms hooked under Jeannie’s armpits, hauling my unconscious cousin across the carpet. Blood runs from the side of Jeannie’s face.

  “Meredith?” That’s what I try to say. It comes out as mostly an mmm sound.

  She hears it though. “You awake? Go back to sleep.”

  As much as I’d like to, there’s not a drug on earth strong enough to let me sleep through this. I haul myself up higher on the couch, or I try to, at least. My head weighs a lot right now and I succeed only in tilting myself to the side on the couch, compressing my left hip, my right foot sliding forward in a way that’s going to get uncomfortable very soon.

  Meredith drops Jeannie in front of the open closet and straightens herself up, hands on her hips, breathing hard. “Whew. She’s heavier than she looks.” She crosses the room again to her purse. I think she’s singing to herself until I realize she’s talking through her plans. She snaps on latex gloves and begins unpacking—a belt, a knife, a box cutter. She lays them out on my counter, her hands fluttering over them in that fussy way she has.

  She picks up the rope first, twisting it into some sort of slipknot, her voice cheerful. “Let’s get you up there first, Professor,” she says to Jeannie. “I may have to lift you in stages. I’m not as young as I used to be.” She laughs a girlish laugh and slips the noose over Jeannie’s head.

  “What the fuck?” I try to yell and succeed in shifting my body so that somehow my right hip slips over the edge of the couch and I feel myself sliding, collapsing ass-first onto the floor. Meredith drops the rope and comes to stand over me.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Why?” That word comes out just fine.

  “Justice.” She sighs and shakes her head, turning back toward the counter. “And because we all know nothing ever goes according to plan, I think I’d better take a few preventative steps and take care of you first.” She picks up the box cutter.

  It’s a little easier to move on the floor. I have more to push against. Of course, I landed on a wine bottle again—how many are there down here?—and I’m able to kick myself to the side until it rolls out from beneath me. Unfortunately, that kick is against the coffee table, which scoots farther from me. If I can get my hands on the table, I think I’ll be able to push myself up, but Meredith beats me to it.

  I think she’s going to slash me with the box cutter but she just pushes my left shoulder with her foot and I go down easily. She gives me that look that says I’m trying her patience.

  “I can’t hit you, Anna. I can’t leave any signs of a struggle. That’s not the narrative. The narrative is you got the drop on Jeannie. You got the rope around her neck and you hung her and then killed yourself. Your fingerprints are all over the bag with Ellis’s hand. Oh!” She snaps her fingers. “I’ve got to remember to put Bobby’s hand somewhere. Maybe the refrigerator. I’ll save Ellis’s other hand for something special. Maybe your suicide note. Or maybe I’ll leave it in your desk.”

  My hands burn against the carpet as they slide uselessly, trying to drag my heavy body along the couch away from my boss, away from that box cutter.

  “Meredith, don’t.”

  “You sound drunk.” She doesn’t look up, concentrating instead on getting the blade to push out. “How does this work? Oh, here we go.” The whole blade slides out and Meredith fiddles with it, adjusting it. “It has to be this way, Anna. It’s justice.”

  “For who?”

  “Whom,” she says with a prim pucker that I’d love to slap if I could get my dead limbs to function. “Guess you’re not as smart as you think you are, which is the whole point.” She leans in, her face very red and very close. She screams, “You are not special! None of you are special!” The heat and hatred in her eyes burns into me, giving me a jolt that helps me push away a few inches, but she grabs my left hand and jerks it toward her.

  “Karmen Bennett is an innocent child who will not go to prison to cover your crimes.” She’s jerking my arm in rhythm with her speech. “You killed Ellis Trachtenberg and you killed Karmen’s boyfriend and now you’re going to kill your cousin and yourself and prove that that child is innocent.”

  That’s what she thinks? I let her keep my hand and focus instead on getting these words out clearly: “I did not kill Ellis.” I forget the words when the box cutter slices into my wrist where it meets my palm. Meredith pushes the blade in deep and drags it toward my elbow.

  She squeezes my arm, watching the red flood rise. I’m panting, wanting to jerk my arm away, but not wanting to further the damage. “They call that a ‘mean it’ cut, when someone is serious about suicide.”

  “I didn’t kill Ellis!”

  “No, no, I know that.” Her tone is warm, motherly. “But you did kill your dad and everybody knows it. You let your mom take the blame for it and nobody can blame her for that. That’s what mothers do. We take on burdens for our children. That’s why this is so perfect.” She presses her thumb against the edge of my palm, staunching the bleeding long enough to see where the skin is untouched. Then she pushes the blade in again less than an inch from the first cut. I’m screaming and trying to pull away but she’s stronger than she looks.

  “It’s a perfect example of justice.” Her voice stays calm and warm, the helpful advocate calming a desperate student. “Ellis Trachtenberg destroyed my son. My beautiful Derek. You saw him. He’s such a beautiful boy, but no, the Professor failed him, humiliated him, crushed his lovely artistic soul when it should have been nurtured! It should have been nourished and cherished.” She’s crying hard now and the blade makes a jagged turn that is setting my arm on fire with pain. Blood is everywhere and I can see blue spots blossoming in front of my eyes. I’m going to pass out soon.

  Meredith is still talking. “ . . . Found out about your colorful past . . . background check doesn’t give the whole . . . newspaper . . . just so perfect. Perfect.”

  My neck is bent, my chin pressed aga
inst my chest as my body splays, trying to get away from the agony that is my left arm. My right hand claws at the carpet beside me, under the couch, around the debris, grabbing on to what it can.

  “You let them arrest Karmen Bennett. A child! Not that children don’t kill. Heaven knows you’re proof of that.” Oh my god, there’s so much blood. “So I had to kill Bobby, which is also your fault. If you had met your responsibilities as a student advocate and stayed with Karmen when they took her to the police station that first time, you could have called me and let me know she had been released. I wouldn’t have killed Bobby if I’d known she was out of jail. The whole point was that it should happen while she was in custody. It didn’t do her any good. You could have saved the boy’s life.”

  Meredith takes my face in her free hand, holding my chin. She wants me to hear this.

  “Think of it this way, Anna. Now you can finally have peace. I know why you drink so much. Now you can finally face your demons and know that justice was served. You didn’t pay for your father’s death, so you can pay for Derek’s. You can pay your debt and let Karmen Bennett be free. She is in custody, this time. They’re children, Anna. They deserve a chance to thrive.” Tears drip off her red cheeks. She’s leaning over me now, her tears hot where they fall on my face.

  “My Derek had a beautiful heart that the world will never get to know. What do you have, Anna?” She’s screaming again, twisting my damaged wrist. “What do you have to offer the world that’s better than my son’s heart?”

  I sigh. “Another hand?”

  The wine bottle connects with Meredith’s temple with a satisfying crack. It’s not enough to knock her unconscious but it gets my injured hand free and gives me room to kick off of her. I crab scramble backward on my elbows but she grabs my ankles, jerking me forward and slamming the back of my head against the floor. My legs are stronger though and one booted foot clips her under her jaw. Her teeth slam together and she falls to her back.