Tina told her about the truck Pa-pa got her, the one that ran on a battery for like an hour. She could drive it anywhere in the cul-de-sac but not on the main road. But then Cheri broke it and now Pa-pa wouldn’t fix it.
“You coming for sodas?” the little girl asked.
“I got a better idea. What if we go to lunch?”
Cheri rattled the car keys. “Come on, Tina.”
“You got your permit?”
“Yeah.”
“And Pa-pa let you pierce your nose?” Tatia sniffed. “You weren’t supposed to do that till you were eighteen.”
“Tina, come on.”
“My car’s right around the corner,” Tatia said. “There’s a cooler in the back. I got Dr. Pepper and Frito chips and subs from Subway. Dr. Pepper’s your favorite, right little monkey?”
Tina jumped up and down, cheering.
“I got a whole jug for you.”
Tina squealed like deflating balloon, squeezed her mom’s cheeks, hands quivering. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
“What do you say, Cheri? We just go to the park, have some lunch. Text Pa-pa where we are, tell him I’ll bring you back later. He just goes fishing in the afternoon anyways, he won’t miss a thing.”
Tatia wiped her nose. Her hand quivered.
“Using again?” Cheri asked.
“Just allergies, I promise. Baby powder makes my nose itch, you know that. Come on now, it’d be fun if we can just eat and talk.”
Tina pulled Tatia’s arm.
“Ask your sissy to come,” Tatia whispered. “Get to her come so we can have fun, drink Dr. Pepper—”
“That’s enough.” The bully voice boomed behind her, froze her legs. Tatia about melted on the sidewalk.
She swept Tina up and stepped away before turning around. The pastor was reaching for Tina, but the little girl wrapped her arms and legs around Tatia like a frightened gibbon, buried her face in Tatia’s neck.
Tatia’s nose began to leak.
“Not supposed to be here, Tatty,” her father said.
“That right?” She tried to keep the quiver out of her words. “Ask Tina what she wants. Tina, honey-darling, you want to go have lunch with Momma or go with Pa-pa?”
“It don’t matter what she wants.”
“No, it only matters what Roy wants.”
She stopped calling him Dad when she turned fifteen. You have to earn that, she told him in a rare moment of clarity. It was the one time she hit him where it hurt. Even now, after all the shit, calling him Roy still hurt him just a little.
Roy looked past her. Tatia backed into the grass. Cheri was reaching for Tina now, had Tatia cornered between the sidewalk and the house behind her. People were slowing down in their cars, stopping on the sidewalks. Tina started to cry.
“Shhh-shhh,” Tatia said, rocking.
“This ain’t what you want, Tatty. Just put her down. I won’t call anyone if you do. Just put her down and be on your way.” Roy lifted his phone, his thumb a swipe away.
Tatia looked around, all eyes on her. Stop signs. All her fucking life, everywhere she turned, it was fucking stop signs and potholes. Jesus Christ, when was she going to get a goddamn green light? For once, just a green light to let her go where she wanted. She’d blown through enough red lights to know the dangers. Which was fine as long as no one was in the passenger seat with her.
She kissed her daughter, whispered, “It’s all right, darling. I’m just going to put you down, let you go back to Pa-pa.”
Tina clung like the first day of pre-school. Roy and Cheri waited like crisis negotiators.
“Honey.” Tatia stroked Tina’s hair. “I promise, next time I promise, we’ll have lunch and drink soda, all right?”
It was a struggle to unlatch the five year old, but Cheri was there to snatch her up. Tina sobbed and kicked, her cheeks pink and wet. “Go on back to church,” Roy said.
Some of the congregation were waiting behind Roy, wrapped their arms around Cheri and guided her across the street, shooshing Tina like a couple of professional mothers. Tatia could only watch as her father stood like a road block.
“You can’t do this,” she said.
“I didn’t do anything.”
The shakes hit her hard. She knew it looked like withdrawal, knew what everyone was thinking, but she couldn’t stop it. Jonesing can look the same as scared shitless. Roy nodded with his lower lip plumped out, that expression she’d seen a million times growing up when he got his way. It was the fucking final nail because that bastard was always plumping out that lip.
“What do you want?” Tatia shouted. “I’ve been clean a goddamn year, I done all the things I was told to do! What more do you want from me?”
The fat man turned around and started walking. He didn’t stand for the Lord’s name taken in vain. Tatia dug a bronze chip from her back pocket and threw it. The edge caught her father in the back of his balding head.
He whipped around, hand out. “That’s enough.”
The alpha male tone spiked her feet to the ground. She wiped her nose, shaking. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to take some responsibility.”
“I haven’t done all you asked?”
“It’s not enough.”
“What then? What else?”
He lowered his chin. It disappeared into a roll of flesh.
“You want me to accept Jesus, is that it? Come into the church and kneel down and let him wash away all my sins, so that everything just goes away like that, right? Is that it? Jesus will forgive me, then you will; Cheri too? Jesus will fly down on his magic camel and solve my problems, bring my kids back and we’ll all walk on water happily ever after.”
“You need to move along.” He moved closer, pudgy finger still pointed at her, sweat stains spreading in his armpits. “You breaking a restraining order right now, and you tempting my patience. I will call the police, if you make me.”
“Is that what Jesus did for you, Roy? All that shit you did to me and mom, he just made it all go away?”
His cheeks turned the color of a baboon’s ass, all three chins jiggling. That was defcon one—the final stage of Roy’s rage. It slapped her with memories of him reaching for his belt. Sometimes he hit her with it. Sometimes he just undid the buckle.
He stormed off. His people were watching, his flock listening.
“Did you confess your sins, Roy?” She followed him. “Did you confess them in private, so no one heard them but Jesus? Or did you tell everyone what you done to me and Momma? ‘Cause I’ve confessed. The whole goddamn world knows my sins. They know everything I’ve done, all out in the light for everyone to judge and shake their heads. I confessed them all!”
She stopped on the corner, let him cross the street. Her vision blurred.
“I crawled on the fucking cross and what do I get? I get punished over and over and over because Tatty’s a slut. Ain’t that right, Roy? Tatty’s the fucking slut!”
Steel returned to her voice, the words bouncing down the street.
“Remember back in the day, Roy?” He stopped. He recognized the change in her tone. “Back when you drank mad dog instead of Jesus juice, remember?”
The times he came home late smelling of smoke, booze and cheap perfume, the nights he got bedrooms confused and snuggled up to Tatia, his chest hairs against her back, heavy arm slung over her little body. He’d snore into her neck and she’d lay there and take it. Till his hips began to grind.
The weekends were worse.
“Don’t.” He crossed the street, nimble for a twice heart attack victim. “I done been forgiven. You are not my Lord and Savior.”
“There are other ways to be forgiven.”
“This ain’t one of them.” He held the phone in her face. “If you don’t leave, you will never see them again.”
“You already turned Cheri against me.”
“I told you, I ain’t done nothing.”
“She hates me.”
>
“You plant weeds, weeds are gonna grow.”
“Just…just don’t poison Tina, all right?”
Her father, the fat pastor, plumped out the lip and turned around. He was halfway to the church. Her father, the man that found Jesus after a lifetime of sinning, kept his back to her. His back to her, walking away. Suddenly, she felt like a little girl.
She fell into full-blown sobs, not another intelligible word.
Roy went up the steps, ushered his granddaughters back inside. Parishioners were there to console their grief. Someone came to Tatia’s side, an elderly couple offering a hand that she slapped at. She walked like a drunk, plodding steps side to side until she reached the black sedan where Cheri had been waiting with a key ring on her finger.
Tatia’s reflection looked back from the window—hollow eyes and leaky nose.
She punched the window. Her knuckles popped, the window unfazed. Life had always been that way—always unyielding, always the victor. Breaking her bones. Life plumped its lip at her while she cradled her fist.
She planted her foot into the driver’s door. It buckled with a satisfying flump.
She slammed her fist on the hood, dull pain lighting her hand. She screamed like a coked-up meth-head come off a five day bender.
She grabbed a brick off the street and with both hands began carving the trunk. She had etched four letters, made it to the second N before someone tackled her. Officer Brad pinned her on the ground, cuffed her hands while she screamed and kicked. She couldn’t confess Roy’s sins for him. Even if she could, who would believe her? She was a sinner.
There wasn’t enough Jesus juice in the universe to change that.
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Terrible Cherubs: Tales of Sinners, Mistakes, and Regrets Page 22