by Amanda Davis
When we were ready, I tugged my skirt into place, brushed my teeth with my finger, and put on shimmery lipstick the color of cotton candy.
It was warmer than Chattanooga had been the night before, but still chilly. More than anything, I wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep, but the fat girl wouldn’t let me. “Come on,” she said. “Suck it up.”
We walked along a stretch of empty road towards the lights we’d seen from the highway and came to a strip of small tired storefronts and a donut shop. Her eyes lit up. Frosting in the morning made her happy all day.
Inside we sat at a bright semicircular counter and I had a coffee and a cruller. It was delicious. It made me realize how hungry I was, wonder how long since I’d eaten, but I was too tired to worry about it. I slurped the coffee instead, and tried to concentrate on clearing the rumble from my skull.
And then, at the fat girl’s insistence, we checked the paper and there was a story. Not front page—not that it mattered—but there. It mentioned Tony Giobambera by name, said that he had been in critical condition but was expected to recover. And I learned that it wasn’t just his cheek I’d hacked out when I missed his fingers, but a good deal of his tongue.
I saw it fly through the air, landing in the dirt like a wet fish, like a piece of liver.
“Faith?” The fat girl snapped her fingers.
“They recovered the weapon,” I said.
“Of course they did,” she said. “You left it there.”
I looked back at the article. I was not mentioned by name of course, but described: a history of mental disorder and a suicide attempt less than a year ago. I shoved the paper back to the fat girl and folded the edge of my Styrofoam coffee cup back and forth until it broke off. I folded that piece and the pieces it made, until I’d made a mountain of little white shards.
“Let’s check out Hot-lanta,” she said. “It’s a real city. Lots of cool stuff to do.”
“Can’t we just find the tattoo shop and get on with it? They probably are looking for me.”
“Oh, so suddenly you’re not adventurous anymore?” She had that old familiar mean look in her eye and I shook my head, resisting the urge to bury it in my arms. The rhythmic pulse of traffic made my eyes heavy. I fought sleep, gritting my teeth against it.
She pinched me hard and hustled us out, yanking me along by the elbow until we were in the sharp air outside. She slapped me once on each cheek, and I batted her away.
“Walk!”
I stumbled forward and she prodded me in the back.
“March, Faith!”
I did what she said. And soon I was awake. Blurry, vacant, but awake.
By the time we figured out how to get to Little Five Points, the day had bloomed into a beautiful afternoon. The sky was clear and the streets were teaming with kids my age. The fat girl was oblivious. She had one goal in mind: the Lemon Drop. I didn’t see what the big deal was, but Ben Dixon had captured the fat girl’s attention and I wasn’t up to an argument.
We walked in. Off to the side was a small room full of Marilyn Monroe. The fat girl was transfixed. Any bit of Marilyn memorabilia you could imagine was set up behind glass like an enormous diorama. Letters. Photos. Shoes, dresses, records. A souvenir mirror.
The bartender waved a greeting from behind the scuffed wooden bar. He was a huge man in overalls and no shirt, wiping down glasses. He had a straw-colored mustache and vivid Dr. Seuss tattoos that splattered his freckly arms. Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish.
A bumper sticker: MY INNER CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT THE LEMON DROP.
“Order a drink,” the fat girl urged, but I didn’t want a drink. I asked for a glass of water and was obliged by the big bartender.
“I’m Tommy,” he told me. “What’s your name?”
“Annabelle,” I said, and then he asked about my cowboy boots, which he liked, he said; they were just like some his girlfriend had and did I know that there were more than sixty thousand kinds of cowboy boots and what the best ones were and when they were invented and why some cowboys preferred a rounded toe to a pointed one and…
We’d found ourselves another talker.
“You in school?” he said finally, and I shook my head. “Drop out?”
I nodded. “Me too. After freshman year. My folks never forgave me for not finishing college,” he said. “But I never regretted it. Just ’cause everyone else does it doesn’t mean you got to.”
I was amazed that he thought I was in college. I asked about his tattoos and heard a half-hour monologue on the brilliance of Dr. Seuss. By then the bar had begun to fill up with a mix of hippie and honky-tonk, yuppies and college kids.
“You gonna stay for the band?” he asked. “Sweatblossom. They’re real good.” I thought we should be going, but the fat girl kicked me in the shins and we stayed.
Tommy’s shift ended around ten and Sweatblossom was still going strong. By then he’d been slipping me free beers for a while. He introduced me to his girlfriend, Lucia, who had a fringe of inky hair around a pale, heart-shaped face and the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. Something about her made me think dumpling, though I didn’t know what. It wasn’t her shape—she was tall and slender. Certainly not her pierced nose, or the spiderweb tattooed around her left arm, or the elaborate sword drawn along her clavicle.
When Tommy and Lucia heard my mumbled (by now, slurry) and convoluted story of how my friend hadn’t shown up to fetch me at the bus stop, a look passed between them, something I couldn’t decipher. Then they offered their couch for the night and, with the fat girl’s nod of approval, I gratefully accepted.
We drove there in Tommy’s pickup. It didn’t take very long, so it must not have been far, but after a few rights and lefts I had no idea where we were. The landscape had quickly become more rural and wooded. We pulled into the long driveway of a peeling yellow house tucked deep into the forest.
“No neighbors behind us,” Tommy said proudly. “Across the street is it. The houses on either side are empty right now and we have all the land out there.” He pointed into the woods but I couldn’t see much, just night and the trees illuminated by his headlights, which he then shut off.
We climbed out of the truck and I felt woozy, beer sloshing in my stomach. Lucia put out a hand to steady me and I tried to smile my thanks.
Inside, their house was crumbling and filthy, a true punk-rock crash pad, but I was so tired and grateful, I didn’t care. Tommy made us all towering sandwiches and I gobbled mine so fast I could barely breathe. And then Lucia lent me a towel and in their grimy mildewed bathroom, I took the best shower of my life, standing under the hottest water I could bear, scrubbing away all the Nashville and Asheville and Gleryton I could find, to emerge clean and pink and new.
Where was the fat girl?
I pulled the towel tighter around my body and wished I had something other than my old nasty clothes to put back on.
Lucia was waiting for me on the couch. “Annabelle,” she said with a slow smile, “you like to party?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. My skin glowed where it poked out from the towel, still warm from the shower, and I wanted to curl up somewhere until the last of the beer left my body.
But Lucia was watching me, expectantly. “I guess…” I said.
“We do, me and Tommy.” She looked straight at me, through me. The light of a Christmas tree in the corner blinked on and off, red and blue against her pale skin. Something in her eyes made me freeze there in my towel in the middle of the room.
“We like you,” she said, and patted the place beside her on the couch. I told myself I was misunderstanding everything. I was just tired, I whispered to myself, my perceptions were unreliable.
But I felt very, very awake.
Lucia patted the couch again. She blew a few strands of black hair from her eyes and slowly I went and sat down. She began to rub my back in slow circles. “You like us?”
I nodded and swallowed, afraid of where this was going
. Then she slipped her hand around my back and stroked my breast lightly through the towel with her fingertips.
I stiffened, paralyzed by competing impulses, but I didn’t move. And then Lucia leaned forward, my whole breast cupped in her hand now, and kissed the back of my neck.
And the side of my neck.
And my ear, softly, her breath in it, my heart pounding, pounding, my own breath heavy and hard.
And then she pushed me back on the couch a little, and kissed me on the mouth, deep and warm and slow, and slipped her hand between my legs.
The whole world slid away, in a heap somewhere. There was only the weight of her on me, and the stroke of her hand between my legs.
I had stopped breathing, or moving, though everything seemed to shudder, and then she moved down, slowly, my towel loose now, piled around us on the couch, she moved down my body, licking me lightly, my breasts, my belly, all the time her hand moved in circles between my legs until her face was there too, and she pushed her way in.
My head was back, my body absorbed by Lucia. I closed my eyes and saw nothing, felt everything, a rainstorm, hard and bright, pounding away at me, coursing along my body.
And then I heard her gasp and I looked up to see Tommy standing over her, naked and enormous, touching her, and suddenly it all came crashing down and I pulled myself away, scrambling to the other side of the couch where I curled up as tight as I could and pulled the wayward towel around me.
“What’s wrong, baby?” It was Lucia’s voice, slow and syrupy, but I didn’t open my eyes, just willed them away, all of it, willed time to rewind by half an hour, an hour, to the point where I’d come from the bathroom feeling utterly renewed. I gulped air and realized I’d been holding my breath. I opened one eye and saw Lucia crawling towards me, her skirt hiked up, her mouth wet, and I buried my head beneath the towel and pulled myself even tighter into a knot.
I stayed like that while they had a whispered conversation, then they moved away, went into their bedroom, and closed the door. And I stayed like that longer, my heart thumping hard, through the creaking and thumping and moaning that came from their room, and later through the silence of the night, with my eyes wide open.
When the whole world was still, I dressed in my dirty clothes and collected my bag and whatever stray clothing I could find so I’d have something else to wear. I found a T-shirt that had been lying on a chair in the corner, a University of Georgia sweatshirt, and a wool hat near the Christmas tree. In the kitchen I took a jar of peanut butter, some bread, a knife, and an apple.
And I let myself out.
I walked for what seemed like hours, and it grew lighter and warmer. I hadn’t known which way to go once the driveway hit the road, so I just picked a direction and walked. The sun still wasn’t up but I could tell it would be soon and every bone in my body felt like it had been dipped in lead. I alternated between shame and wonder, shaking my head every once in a while to free it of the images of the previous night. I just wanted to rest. More than anything, more than anything, to sleep.
Eventually I came to a park. I climbed a hill and passed a jungle gym, picnic tables. Where to curl up out of sight? It was all in the open, in full view of the rest of the park and of the road. But eventually I had to give in to my body. I had to lie down. And there was this stone bench that looked incredibly soft and comfortable. And I stretched out on to it, pushing every thought from my head, and the world went dark.
EIGHT
I woke to the fat girl shaking me. Sun in my eyes. Where the hell was I? And then, past her wide hip, I saw Lucia climbing the hill, Tommy in his red truck on the road, and I was up and running before I even fully remembered why.
“Annabelle!”
I ran, knowing the fat girl couldn’t keep up. Knowing I had to get away. My backpack thumped against my back but I charged into the woods, oblivious, and crashed ahead.
I could hear Lucia crashing after me.
And then I tripped, and my ankle made a strange sound.
I tried to stand but pain shot through me and I fell back. I couldn’t get up.
Lucia was there almost immediately, her eyes wild, reflecting the green of the piney forest. “Annabelle,” she said softly. She didn’t even seem out of breath, though I was still panting.
“You didn’t have to leave us like that. That wasn’t polite. After we took you in. After we fed you and gave you a place to sleep.” Her hands were on her hips. She didn’t sound angry, just firm, but something in the way she spoke kept me from meeting her eyes. “We like you,” she said, her voice soft now, coaxing. “We want you to come back with us. To stay for a while.”
I shook my head. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t think of what. I willed my ankle to feel better.
“You need to come back with us.”
“I just have to go,” I said, finally. “Last night—”
She waved it away. “That doesn’t have to happen again,” she said, her words dripping with honey. “If that’s what upset you then forget it. We like to party.” She ran a hand through her short dark hair. “You said you did. If you don’t, that’s fine.”
I searched her face for some kind of guile, but she met my gaze. Still, I didn’t trust her or what she said, any of it. I didn’t want to go back. But I couldn’t walk. Where was I going to go when I couldn’t walk?
I nodded slowly. “Okay,” I said.
“I’m going back for Tommy,” Lucia said. “He can carry you out of here so you don’t have to put weight on that ankle. You stay here.”
I nodded again. As soon as she’d left I tried again to stand.
“You need to wrap it,” the fat girl said, appearing beside me with a bottle of aspirin.
“Where the hell were you?”
She ignored me and put the aspirin in my bag. She fished around in there and pulled out the T-shirt I’d stolen. “Nice,” she said, and ripped it into strips, then bound my ankle tightly.
“At least it wasn’t the one with the tattoo,” I said. She slung my arm around her shoulder and helped me hobble quickly, as fast as we could, farther into the woods.
We hid in the dark valley behind two trees that had fallen over each other. We could see Tommy and Lucia far off and could hear their argument. Not the words, just the raised voices, the angry arms pointing this way and that. The shaking of heads. The hands on hips.
They tromped around in circles for a while, darting off in this direction or that. Then Tommy’s footsteps approached. I heard them get louder and louder, slower and slower until he stood close enough that I could see his pant leg clearly from where I crouched, curled up into myself like a snail. It was dark and damp where I was, but it was better than being found. I held my breath and closed my eyes and willed myself to be utterly still. After a moment he walked off, kicking leaves and cracking twigs. He was so loud in that quiet place, so very loud. I breathed as silently as I could.
After a while I didn’t hear him. And I didn’t hear Lucia calling to him. I raised my head carefully and made eye contact with the fat girl, who sat like a sentry with her back against a tree. I raised my eyebrows and she nodded, so I uncurled my stiff body and crawled out from under my hiding place.
The forest was still and cold. My heartbeat slowed. I stood carefully and stretched but my ankle throbbed. The fat girl told me to sleep.
“They could be waiting for you,” she said. “Jesus Christ.”
And so I lay down and slept, dreaming only dark distant things that I couldn’t reach even when I woke. In the woods in the late afternoon the sun filtered through only a little. It took a minute but I knew where I was this time. I made two huge peanut butter sandwiches and ate them quickly, one after the other. The fat girl had a whole Boston Cream Pie.
“Very practical,” I said.
“You have to honor your cravings.” She winked at me. I thought maybe that would be all, but later she asked about it.
“Did you like it? What did it feel like?”
I d
idn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. Even though the whole evening had frightened me, there was something about it that was mine. Something scary and private and strange. I didn’t know if I liked it. I just knew that I didn’t have to share everything.
We stayed in the woods through the night and for the whole next day. I was afraid to come out, afraid they’d be waiting, and besides, my ankle ached and I thought it best not to put any weight on it. I crawled a couple of trees over to pee and then back, but that was about it. I was grateful for the sweatshirt and the hat, but even with the added layers and my leather jacket, it was cold. I rationed the jar of water I had, but it ran out the morning of the second day and the fat girl had to do a lot of convincing to get me to head to the water fountain in the park. As it was, I still waited until after dark. But after the second dark night in the woods I was ready to get the hell out of there and go find Lex and the circus and have the whole business be over with already.
Just after sunrise we walked slowly down the road away from Tommy and Lucia’s until we came to another road and took that, and so on. It was late afternoon before we found Wenger’s.
The shop looked somewhat like the shop in Nashville, with pictures on all the walls (in a quick sweep, I saw no band of Gypsies, no line of chickens, no falcon), a grubby carpet, and a counter. Lex happened to be behind that counter and he was short and thick and generous with his attention. When I told him why I was there, he looked me up and down, winked, and asked to see my tattoo. He seemed disappointed that it was so easy to reveal, but he admired Ben Dixon’s handiwork and told me he knew just the person who could help us, an ex-carny named Stretch who was an old man now and owned a junk shop in Athens.
So we took a bus to Athens and found Stretch, up the street from a tattoo shop called Pain and Wonder, just where Lex had said he’d be. And for fifteen dollars and a few hours of looking at old photos of Stretch’s career as a contortionist (AINSLEY PRESENTS! THE RUBBER ALPHABET BOY…BORN IN A THOUSAND SHAPES, HE CAN SPELL ANY WORD IN ANY LANGUAGE WITH HIS ELASTIC BODY!), and hearing his endless tales, I was given a worn brochure for the Fartlesworth Circus that listed its route and tour dates.