Where No Gods Came

by Sheila O'Connor

  “I used to work here,” Cammy says. “When I was living with Tony.” I pretend I'm hearing this for the first time, although it's a story she's told me before. “They taught me how to cut keys, mix paint. It was okay. But the money's better at the Starlight. If I were you, I'd go for waitressing right away. If you can drum up some charm, you'll make plenty in tips.”

  “I don't want to be a waitress.”

  “Why not? You can't beat the cash.”

  “I want to be a writer.”

  “Yeah,” Cammy say. “And I want to be Linda Lovelace.”

  “Who's that?”

  “Forget it,” Cammy says. “You're not as smart as you think.”

  In Teens, all of the dresses Cammy chooses are wrong for me. Polyester prints with deep scooped necks, psychedelic minis. When I try them on in the fitting room, they're huge, even the size threes. “Don't tell me you still shop in the kids' department,” Cammy says.

  “Nothing fits.” I hunch in front of the mirror, the low neck dipping down over my bare chest, the waist drooping over my hips. The purple ribbon around my neck looks ridiculous.

  “Come on, Buster Brown,” Cammy says, tugging the dress over my head. “Let's go find you a baby-doll outfit.”

  Down in Girls 7–14, she grabs a handful of size tens off the racks. “Why not?” she says. “Something's got to fit.”

  “I don't know.” I shake my head at the dresses she's chosen for me.

  “You have no taste. Leave the fashion decisions to me.”

  While I model her assortment, she scrunches up in the corner of my dressing room, lights a cigarette, ashes on the carpet. “That one,” she says, pointing her cigarette at me. “It doesn't make you look so flat.”

  I like the dress, the sheer lime-green fabric, the wide bell sleeves, the bow fastened to a thick sash. “I'll put a couple of thin braids down the side of your face. It'll look cool. Really hot.”

  “Okay,” I say. “But it looks a little wild for confirmation.”

  “You're not a nun,” Cammy says. “We'll get you some platforms to go with it.”

  “Not today,” I beg. “That fever is coming back.”

  Cammy counts out her quarters for the cashier. “These baby clothes are cheap. I guess the Starlight Lanes is good for something.” She hooks her arm around my neck, kisses me on the lips. “You can write about me.”

  On the first floor we stop by the food counter. “I got to get some chocolate-covered almonds for my mother. They're her favorite. Papa Roy always bought them for her whenever he came here shopping. You get whatever you want.” I choose a flat, rainbow-swirled sucker because it looks like candy from a fairy tale.

  “What about you?” I ask. “What are you getting?”

  “I'm not hungry,” Cammy says, rubbing her stomach. “I think your fever is wearing off on me. Come on, I want to show you my old department.” Cammy takes a pot of frosty gloss out of her purse. “How do I look?” she asks, painting it on her lips with her pinkie finger, then smacking.

  “You look great.” I try to picture Cammy working in this dreary department store, stamping price stickers on the cans of paint, stocking the shelves. I remember all those long months I waited for her, how I imagined her in some exotic place, a model in Spain. Not cutting keys at Sears.

  “Cammy.” I turn to look at the slow-motion voice calling her name. The man looks as slow as he sounds, bug eyes bulging behind thick black-rimmed glasses, a red Sears smock, pliers in one hand. “Cammy.”

  “Hey, Clayton,” she says, smiling.

  He plods toward her awkwardly, holding out his arms shyly, as if he's hoping to hug her. “Oops,” he grins, and drops the pliers into his pocket. “Can I have a hug?”

  “Sure,” Cammy says. But when he puts his arms around her, she's stiff as a tree.

  “I've missed you,” he shrugs, as she steps away. “I'm sorry my mom made you leave.”

  “It's okay, Clayton. I'm home with my old lady. It's not a bad way to pass the winter.”

  “But she was so mean to you.” Clayton stares at me while he speaks. “I wish my mom had let me keep you in my room. I've sure been lonely.”

  “Yeah, I've missed you, too. This is my baby sister.” She shoves me toward Clayton. Giggles. “Isn't she cute?”

  Clayton blushes. “Sure. But not like you, Cammy.”

  “Give her some time; she's a late bloomer.”

  “Cammy, can you come down and have lunch with me soon? My treat.”

  “Yeah. Hey, Clayton, Tony ever come around here asking for me?”

  “Nah. They got security guards now at Sears. They don't want him coming around. He steals.”

  “Shit,” Cammy sighs. “I was hoping he'd lend me some money.”

  “You shouldn't take money from him, Cammy.”

  “I know. It's just that we're a little desperate. We need to take a cab home, and I spent all my money on my baby sister's church clothes.” She takes the lime dress out of the bag and holds it up for Clayton. “She's making her confirmation. The dress cost a lot. But I want her to look pretty.”

  “It's nice,” Clayton says. He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a worn leather wallet. “I can pay for your cab. Look,” he says, carefully holding up a long strip of black-and-white snapshots of Cammy. “Remember when you took these in the photo booth for me?” In the pictures, Cammy's making clown faces, her tongue stuck out in one, her lips puckered in another. In one she's giving the camera the finger. “I wish my mom would've let you stay.”

  “Don't sweat it,” Cammy says, handing him back the snapshots. “Do you have the money?” Clayton lifts a crisp ten-dollar bill from his wallet. “Is that it?” Cammy puffs out her bottom lip. “I don't think that'll get us home. We live way out in the suburbs now. But we can go find Tony.”

  “No,” Clayton says, handing her another ten-dollar bill. “You know my mom keeps most of my money.” He drops his head, stuffs the wallet back into his pocket. “When will you come down and have lunch, Cammy? Can I call you?”

  “I'll come real soon,” Cammy says, taking me by the hand. “My mom doesn't like the phone to ring. But thanks, Clayton, you saved my life.” She blinks her crusty black lashes at him. “Again.”

  Out in the Sears parking lot, Cammy starts running. “Hurry,” she screams. “It's the 21A. It's too damn cold to miss our bus.”

  I stop, look over my shoulder toward the entrance to Sears. He's there, watching us run past the cab stand.

  “Cammy,” I pant. “Clayton knows.”

  “Twenty bucks,” Cammy smiles, when we've taken our seats on the bus. She kisses the money. “Maybe I should give up waitressing. But it's all the same game.” She reaches into the pocket of her fat fur jacket, pulls out the little white bag of chocolate-covered almonds. “Try one,” she says, sticking it into my mouth.

  “No thanks.” I pull it out. “I don't eat almonds. Cammy, he saw us get on the bus.” She props her wet moccasin feet on the seat in front of us. Gritty snow melts down the red vinyl cover. “He knows we didn't take a cab.”

  “So what?” she says, tossing her hair back. “That's love. That creep is crazy about me. How much money have you gotten from Jimmy?”

  Cammy - Luck

  I had to sober her up and bring her in. She had a hundred excuses. All of them connected with money. No health insurance, bankruptcy. “They'll take every cent Papa Roy left me. Then what? Lose the apartment? Live on the streets?” I was too young to believe her. I took it all for booze talk. Paranoia.

  “It's a county hospital. They have to treat everybody.”

  Besides, I knew she could afford a private doctor, but she'd inherited Papa Roy's crazy cheapness. And his fear of records. She refused to see the same doctor twice. “If you go too much they keep track of you.” Mostly, she was afraid of what was inside of her. The knife she swore was just below her right rib cage. She'd blown through an old bottle of Papa Roy's Valium, and still the pain wouldn't disappear.

  T
hat morning, I had my own fears. Social workers. Clipboards. A thousand questions. It was the same scene with every agency. Christ, you couldn't get treated for the clap without telling them your whole sordid history.

  And it hadn't even been a year since the last time I'd dragged her into emergency, hadn't been a year since they'd ordered her into treatment, then called the county to dump me in protective custody. Find a nice foster family for the truant and thief. Hadn't been a year since they'd forced me to run, to scrounge on the streets.

  “I can't go in with you.” I'd waited until we were outside the hospital to tell her the truth. “They can't know you've got kids at home. Don't mention Faina or me. You live alone. And don't let them admit you. Just tell them about the knife. Ask for the Valium.”

  In the last few months, she'd shrunk down to nothing. Barely the size of Faina. All skin and bones except for the puff of pouch that hung from her stomach. “You need to go in now. Don't let them see the bedsores.”

  She nodded slowly, blinked. Even healthy, she'd never been a match for me. Holding my hand on the sidewalk, dressed in that long wool coat with the velvet collar, she looked more like my daughter. A little kid wearing her mother's clothes. But her face was old, her skin the color of beer, her lips cracked and smeared with too much lipstick. She looked worse than I'd ever seen her, worse then the last time they'd thrown her in detox. I didn't know how she'd gotten so bad.

  “I'm too scared to go in without you, Cammy. I can't remember everything you told me to say.”

  “Pay attention. This isn't a game. If you screw this up today, they'll take Faina and me. Do you want to lose me again?” I pushed her silk scarf up off her forehead. “Remember, use your mother's name. Your mother's birthday. Your mother's social security number. You live alone. You have no money. The pain's on your right side, just below your ribs. Don't sign anything.”

  “Come in with me.” Her hands were shaking wildly.

  “You know I can't. Remember what happened last time? It'll be worse if they know you have a daughter.”

  “I need a drink.” She looped her arm through mine. “One drink. Let's stop in at that place across the street?” She pointed to the Whirlpool, a dumpy bum bar with a boarded front window, the sign hanging loose on one hinge.

  “You know what they'll do, they'll put you in detox again if they smell the booze. You need medicine. Ask for Papa Roy's Valium. Tell them about the knife in your stomach, the nights you can't sleep.”

  In the cloudy winter light, she looked half-dead, her teeth chattering, her yellow eyelids swollen and heavy. “Go now,” I ordered, shoving her through the sliding glass door. “Check in at the front desk. I'll meet you out on Sixth Street in two hours.”

  She twisted the gold watch on her wrist, another gift from Papa Roy. Her initials engraved on the back. “But it's not even ten o'clock yet.”

  “I'll be back here at noon. It's a county hospital. This is a slow operation. You're competing with bullet holes. Just sit down, read a magazine. Let them help you. There's no other way.”

  Walking away from her, I had a hole in my gut the size of a grapefruit. The wind tore between the tall buildings, but even as it hit my face, I felt hot and woozy. I needed sleep, a warm bed. I hated downtown on weekdays, businessmen with their briefcases rushing past me, women in dull pumps drumming down the sidewalk. I needed coffee. A place to pass the hours. I was tired of taking care of her. Tired of watching her die.

  “Where you been hiding?” Tony's voice seemed to rise out of thin air. But there he was, slumped in the orange booth in the basement of Wentworth's, sipping coffee and finishing a plate of runny eggs. When he looked up at me and smiled, his gray eyes foggy, his wild hair tangled in frizzy curls, my old rage faded.

  “Must be my lucky day,” I said. I crawled in next to him, let him nibble a little on the base of my neck. An old habit. His skin still smelled like sandalwood incense, cigarettes.

  “I came down to finagle food stamps. Lines get too long late in the day. Hungry?” He pushed his plate of leftover eggs and toast crust toward me. “You look like you need something.”

  I felt my luck turning. Something good had led me to Tony. I knew he'd rescue me, Faina too, like he did last summer. I thought about that first night I'd met him, stoned at a backyard barbecue. I'd followed the music, wandered into it looking for food. I'd already spent a few nights sleeping under a Lake Street bridge with some other kids. Hard living. I'd been Papa Roy's angel, and there I was begging for food.

  “Aren't you a barefoot beauty?” Tony said when he saw me. He fed me a burnt burger, then took me in without question. It wasn't his way to dig too deep. “The past is past,” he told me, like it was some great philosophy. “The now is all we've got.”

  Now, in Wentworth's restaurant, when he stuck his rough tongue between my teeth, I covered my mouth and gagged.

  “What's with you?” he asked, sliding away toward the corner of the booth.

  “I don't know. I think it's the flu.”

  “Well, you look like shit. You still running?” He grabbed my stomach, squeezed a handful of skin. “Let me buy you breakfast. You're too thin.”

  “You got money?”

  “For you, I do.”

  I ordered Rice Krispies, dry toast, warm 7-Up, but by the time they came I couldn't eat them. We talked about the good times: getting our clothes at the Free Store, the pink-feathered boa and rhinestone sandals he picked out for me, the great money we made last summer dealing, the steak dinners we split at the Tempo bar. He held my hands between his, kissed my fingertips every few minutes.

  “Cammy, come back to me,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

  I'd been waiting forever to hear those words. “Why didn't you say that sooner?” I rested my head on his arm; his skin was so hot it burned through his shirt. “Maybe we weren't good for each other.”

  “Not good,” he said, smiling. “You got a bad memory.” He kneaded the inside of my thigh. “You didn't even call me.”

  “You don't have a phone.”

  He reached in his coat pocket, ripped a check out of his wallet, scribbled a number across the front. “I do now. For business.”

  I read the name on the check: Steven Lang. It figured Tony didn't have the credit for his own account. “No wonder you offered to buy me breakfast.”

  “You know me, Cam. I'm a man of multiple talents.”

  I folded the check and tucked it into my back pocket. “Me, too. I'm waiting tables at a supper club in Richfield. My old lady bought a house there. I'm turning suburban.”

  Glad as I was to see him, I wasn't ready to scam his next scheme.

  Wentworth's was starting to buzz with the lunch rush; the line snaked back to the cosmetics counter. It'd been a good half hour since our waitress had splashed hot coffee into Tony's cup. I knew from experience she wanted to turn our table over for the next tip. “Well, that's it,” I said, helping myself to Tony's last cigarette. “They're spent.” According to the Pepsi clock, it was already 12:30. It was Tony's fault I'd lost track of time. I wanted to slide into bed with him, cuddle under his musty covers, forget about my mother, the last few months of hassles. But then I thought about her, that sad little girl standing outside in the cold, waiting. “I got to go. I'm meeting my old lady at Daley's to shop for spring clothes.”

  “You really have gone suburban.” He wrapped a strand of my hair around his finger. “Come back to me.”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. If my luck went sour, if they nabbed my mother, Faina and I might be there tonight.

  “Call first,” he winked. “Just to make sure I'm free.” Then he pressed a dime into my palm. “Do me a favor,” he whispered into my ear. “Keep this between your knees for me.”

  I found my mother curled up on a couch in the corner of the emergency-room lobby, her purse tucked under her cheek, a pool of drool next to her mouth, her coat draped over her back like a blanket. If it hadn't been for the other bums that cluttered the lobby—psychos mumbling to
themselves, old ladies with black trash bags—she might have attracted some official attention. I jiggled her arm; I wasn't hanging around long.

  “Where were you?” she asked, wiping her glove over her wet face.

  “You were supposed to wait outside,” I whispered. “Not sleep. I told you I don't want them to see me.”

  “I waited outside until my feet were so frozen I could hardly walk.” She coughed a low, rattling cough; I heard the gurgle inside her chest.

  “Come on, let's go. We need to get home.”

  She was easy to boost to her feet. But standing, she couldn't keep her balance. I wedged my hand under her armpit to stop the wobbling. “Mother. Pay attention.” Her breath reeked of Listerine. “You've been drinking.” She'd found booze somehow, though I'd searched her purse and pockets before we'd left this morning. “Did a doctor see you like this? Did you tell them anything?”

  “I'm scared, Cammy.”

  “Who isn't? If you screwed this up, Social Services will be at our door.”

  I hooked her purse over her arm, but she let it drop to the floor with a thud. A nurse glanced up from the main desk. “Is there a problem?” she asked, cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder. “If you wait a minute, I'll call security. Looks like she might need a wheelchair.”

  “No,” I said. “She's okay.”

  I hurried her through the glass doors into the harsh wind. “That ought to sober you up some,” I said.

  She pulled her velvet collar up close to her chin. “In like a lion, out like a lamb,” she muttered. “I can't go outside in winter; this climate is too hard on me.”

  “It's April,” I said, setting her down on the bench inside the bus shelter.

  “It stinks in here. Papa Roy would want me to take a cab.” She was coughing again, holding a handkerchief over her mouth to catch the spit. The hot air from the overhead fan mixed with the stench of garbage and piss. My stomach turned. Flu maybe, or too many cigarettes on an empty stomach.