Where will I find Crystal? Couper says.
Oh, if she’s down there, you all won’t miss her, she says.
I stroll down the lawn then, back to the road, toward the next trailer and the next. Trying to slow my breathing. My heart, knocking against the top of my stomach, or maybe against the hard wall of my liver. It’s a long ugly walk up the little street. I hear Couper thank her, and then he catches up with me. When I look back, she’s still standing the same way, arms crossed, the kid wading in the pool now, the water to his knees.
You know, what they say ain’t even true, she calls out. It’s all a bunch of bullshit.
Couper stops dead and bounds back to her. What is? he says.
She ain’t that special, she says. She’s no goddamn savior.
Ashley? Couper asks, but I see her face, her eyes narrowed to a cold stare.
Ask Crystal, she says, and looks away, into the trailer, at the open door and another kid coming out, a little girl in a shiny metallic bikini and her mother’s sunglasses slipping down her nose. It’s all just smoke up your ass, if that’s how you like it, she says. That ain’t magic. That’s just two lezzies and a dildo, she says.
The road has gone to weeds and potholes. At the end of the loop, there’s a vacant trailer, dirty white and rusted in parts, that sits at an imprecise angle, like someone pushed it hard, shoving it back from the road. On the aluminum siding, a faded 17 written in marker. The windows are clouded over with filth or fog from the inside, steam from whatever is closed up and rotting in there.
The window of the laundry room at my mom’s does the same thing. Opaque with smoky moisture.
There can’t be anything living inside that’s not wild. The door doesn’t even quite close, and hangs off the top hinge enough to be diagonal, letting in light and flies and red dust. The wooden steps don’t look like they’ll hold any weight, much less Couper’s, and the very bottom step has BAD spray-painted in orange. Someone has also keyed the word SLUTS into the metal door, and what was raw exposed steel is now rusted letters coming through the faded gray.
Couper walks around the perimeter, but the grass is so long, he has to wade through knee-high weeds. He can’t get very close.
Because number seventeen sits at the very end of the loop, you can survey the rest of the trailers from there. People coming in and out. Which ones are empty, which ones are still occupied. A dust storm follows a little hatchback, and a woman gets out with plastic bags of groceries. An older couple stretches out their awning, the man up on a step stool, adjusting the corner. Theirs is nice, neat with plants and wind chimes. A younger guy with the side of his belly exposed from underneath a black T-shirt leans over the hood of a Monte Carlo. A woman with wide hips and big legs sits on the lowest step of a trailer and blows bubbles while her girls chase them over the lawn.
And one other girl, who pulls up in an old-style Ford pickup, and steps out in a pair of shorts that are cut so high you can see the rounds of her ass peeking out. She has long black hair and a yellow T-shirt with tiny sleeves that doesn’t quite hit the top of the shorts, revealing a line of taut belly and lower back. Her sandals have a four-inch wooden heel.
Oh, Couper says when he sees her. Crystal. He sounds delighted. I’d like to kick him.
I remember Khaki in a pair of high wooden Candies she would wear as Shawn, the club owner, her chest bare under her blazer, her feet high and arched in those shoes.
Ho-ly shit, Couper says when Crystal turns around and bends to take something out of the front seat of the truck. You think? he says to me, checking.
I repeat: You all won’t miss her.
Miss, he calls, and starts jogging. Miss!
She spins around, her feet planted in those shoes and her waist turning the way you can twist a Barbie doll’s.
Did you just come from over there? she says, to me, though, not to Couper.
I lag on up behind him then, my steno pad loose in my hand, my pen tucked behind my ear and tangled into my hair. The assistant. The babyless mother, following the detective and letting him fuck her in the back of his tin-can camper.
I did, Couper says, pointing at his chest.
Did you go inside? she says.
She’s a lot cuter from far away. Up close, her eyes crowd to the middle of her face, her shoulders and knees bony, her tits huge and fake, hard-looking with a deep wrinkly valley between them. Her hair is streaked white blond on the top, like a skunk.
That place is condemned, she says to me. You’re going to have to burn that dress to get off all the cunt dust.
Crystal? Couper says, holding his pad and writing. I wish he would drop it. I’m Couper—
No, she says. I don’t want your name, she says. And you don’t know mine.
Crystal? he says.
Nope, she says.
She reaches into the backseat and comes out with a black instrument case, the kind that might hold a trumpet, but bigger. It has a decal in the corner like you’d see on a truck mud flap, a sitting, bent metal girl with big tits and flying hair.
Can I help you with that? Couper says.
She laughs, low and punctuated. No, she says, and eyes him, up and down, his rumpled shirt, his mussed hair. I might be able to help you with it, she says.
She cocks her head to the side, her ear tipped nearly to her shoulder, and holds the case with both hands, hanging down in front of her thighs. What are you looking for? she says to me.
And when Couper tries to answer for me, she hushes him, just as quick as the little mommy. Ah! she says, Shhh.
It takes me a minute to find my voice. Ashley, I say, clearing it. Ashley Dunn.
It’s Ashland, she says, and she ain’t here no more, and she never had anything you needed to begin with, she says to me.
Can you tell us where she went? Couper says, but Crystal’s gaze is on me. It’s like Couper has disappeared.
You got a ride out of here? she asks me. Even with this? she points to Couper.
Yes, I say.
Then go. Let me tell you something about Ashland Dunn, she says, coming closer, her heels tapping on what’s left of the pavement. She looks nice, when she takes you in, when she washes your feet clean and holds your hand, and sings you to sleep. But she’s meaner than fuck and you’ll do better to stay away from her.
She looks down at the front of my dress.
You got a belly full of bones? she says.
What? No. And then I think about it, just as she said it, a belly, swelled up with a jangle of baby bones. No, I say again.
’Cause someone else can help you with that.
I don’t need that kind of help, I say. My voice is dry, gone in the red dust.
She swings her hair before she goes inside with the black case. You don’t need her kind of help at all, she says to me.
Any idea, Couper says, of where I might find Ashley Dunn?
That’s not her name, Crystal says. Even Ashland’s not her name, she says, and fake smiles at him. Then, Why don’t you start at the river? she says, pointing to the trees beyond the trailer. And follow the trail of blood?
I expect Crystal to slam the door, but she closes it snug, and I hear the dead bolt slide into place. The windows are covered tight with blinds, not a movement again from inside, even though the whole thing is only about twelve feet wide, maybe thirty feet long.
I follow Couper back to number seventeen. Well, he says, and picks his shirt up, covering his nose with it. Here goes, he says.
He pushes on the door of number seventeen, and it opens until it can’t. Until the angle makes the corner jut into the floor, dragging, ripping the carpet.
Inside, it’s littered deep with dirty dishes that have sat so long they’re fuzzed over with thick black, hardened to a shell. There’s the low hum of flies and slow bees pinging against the windowpane. You can see everything from the doorway, the way you always can in a single- wide: the table, with its dishes and yellowed newspapers, a long green striped couch that’s empty except
for misshapen cushions, placed haphazardly so they don’t fit together the way they should anymore. There’s a counter across from the table with some small appliances, a toaster with a drawing of wheat on the side, a white coffeemaker stained brown around the edges. The pot has an inch of hardened sludge in it.
But the carpet is the worst. It’s crusted flat with a dark rust-colored stain in the shape of a bean up the middle of the trailer.
I watch while Couper pushes aside a flowered curtain on a tension rod, revealing the back bedroom. He sticks his head in, but doesn’t enter. There probably isn’t room, just space for a bed, and some shelves, maybe, on the walls. It’s hard to tell if there’s anything worth the effort. There are no people here anymore, not even their important things. Just the shit left behind. It smells rotten. The kind of decay that grows.
I need to get out. I hop over the steps and stand in the tall grass to the side. There’s a field behind that goes for miles, no farmland or crops, not even trees except for way back. Just wild. The houses going up off to the right of here, where another line of trees makes a sorry attempt at masking the development, the constant sound of tamping. That side of the trailer, solid, with no windows. Dingy white, dented in some places, with holes in others, like a variety of rocks had been sprayed at it. I run my finger over it, reading the pattern.
The moldy, closed-up smell in the trailer made me woozy, and outside, the air isn’t much better. It’s hot and stagnant, heavy with roofing tar and exhaust.
Honey, Couper says. He leans out the door and lets his shirt down.
Honey yourself, I say.
Rayelle, he says.
I look up at him leaning, and think if he comes out any farther, he’s going to tip the whole garbage can on top of himself.
What? The sun burns the top of my head.
Can you come look at this? he says.
Is it a fucking body? I ask.
No, he says. He holds out his hand to me.
I try doing what he did, and pull the top of my dress up to cover my mouth and nose, but there’s too much boob and not enough fabric. Pulling on it hurts my neck. So I let it drop, and try to breathe slowly, through my mouth.
He leads me to the bedroom, which is, like I expected, all bed with about a foot’s width of floor to step around. There’s a smushed-flat king-size mattress on top of a platform with drawers underneath, and moth-eaten red-velvet curtains over the window. A wire hangs on the side wall, with a string of postcards clipped to it. The pictures face out, mountains, a river, the ocean, daisies, and Couper picks them off one by one, handing them to me.
Tennessee. South Dakota. Nevada. Georgia. Virginia. Carolina.
Each one with the address carefully razored off so that side of the card is blank and worn soft like fabric.
The messages largely the same. Miss you. Love you. Wish you were here with me.
xoxo Rainy.
I feel my knees give, like, actually give underneath me so that Couper grabs my elbow and holds me up, walks me back out of the trailer with the cards in my hand. My cards.
Rainy? he asks outside, looking over my shoulder at the signature on each card.
It was a phase, I say.
For?
For me, I shout at him. It comes out as a roar, my throat dry and rattling. These are mine, I say.
I think he hasn’t been listening to a damn thing I’ve said.
I hold them loose in my lap in the car. The names like a chant in my head. Montana, Nevada, Tennessee, Virginia. Caitlin, Jessa, Alyssa. Florida.
Think for a minute, he says to me, but I just look at my kid handwriting, curlicued and cute.
When did your cousin leave South Lake? he says.
June, I say. Right after her dad died.
How old was she?
Sixteen. Actually, not even, I say. She wasn’t sixteen till August. But she left in June.
Right after, Couper says.
I know, I say. Yes. I don’t know what he wants me to admit, what he’s pointing at, or if I’m afraid of what he’s suggesting. After Holly Jasper disappeared, I say. But Khaki didn’t disappear, I say. I watched her leave.
With who?
I get a chill in that hot car, just like I did when I saw the kiddie pool in the sun, my arms go goose-bumpy and my head sweats along the hairline.
With her boyfriend. My voice is small, dry. He waits, and I say the name. Jeff Henderson.
Are you sure? he says.
I think. We only ever called him Henderson, I say, but yeah, I’m sure that was his name. I watch Couper grip his hands on the wheel, open, closed, knuckles pink and then white, until he’s ready to turn the key and start the car.
I shuffle the cards in my hands. They’re dusty, and they smell weird, like mildew, damp and rotten. Why? I say to Couper. I’m too dry for any kind of crying, but wind and red dust are rumbling around inside me. I’m too stunned, too filled up tight with fear to do anything but turn to him and ask him why, why we would find these here. Now.
I don’t know, he says. He’s unwilling to tell me what he’s thinking. I hold the cards in my hands till the edges are soft from my sweat, deteriorating under my fingertips.
Sixteen
KHAKI
The secrets under my skin have changed the shape of my face, which shifted from town to town, from girl to girl. I took on the shape of each place, the sound of their voices, the length of their hair, the color of their eyes. In Georgia, light ash-brown. In South Carolina, deep brunette. By the time I got to Tennessee, I was back to blond, going lighter all the time.
I cut my own hair. I shaved my head. I bought wigs. When the hair grew in, it was the color of pure light.
My eyes, like a cat’s in the sun.
My mother told me about Rayelle after Aubrey. When she died, my mother went silent for a long time. She lay in bed alone, a habit I would know more and more as she got sick and died. But after Aubrey, I would sometimes creep up beside her, slip my hand in hers.
The bassinette in which Aubrey died, still there in the room, sour smelling, the blankets with their sweet, oily, baby-milk scent, tucked into the sides, but with no baby to swaddle.
I had wanted a sister bad.
I was six years old, alone in the house except for a brother who was much older, a brother with hard hands and sharp breath.
I held Aubrey’s soft squirmy body only once. Her face, smushed and red. Her eyes, squinted shut. Her nose like a candy button. And her lips, like a tiny flower, barely open.
They buried her in a casket the size of a shoe box.
Closed.
I was angry that the baby I had wanted so bad came and left so quickly.
I want a sister, I said to her. The sun came in the back bedroom windows, warm on the floor, lighting up the bedside table. It was midafternoon, the TV on the dresser on a soap opera I knew my mother didn’t watch. She lay on her side with her back to me, but when I came in and said that, she rolled over.
You have a sister.
Not anymore, I said. I was disgusted. With everyone. I thought a sister could at least keep me company. Could sleep in my room, in my bed even, our fat kid legs mixed up together. I thought if I had a sister in my bed, no one else would come in at night. If my sister was there, I wouldn’t wake up burning like I was being split in half, my legs wet and aching.
I watched my mother rub her eyebrows. When they weren’t drawn in, they were just ash brown, just a shadow above her green eyes. Her hair, with its color washed out, was returning to its medium brown. She’d kept it darker for years.
I thought she was the most beautiful woman ever.
Rayelle is your sister, she said.
I slapped her hand, the way my aunt Carleen had slapped my face when I told her the baby was dead. The sound sharp like paper snapping.
She snatched her hand back from me.
Don’t you say that, I said to her. It’s not the same. It’s not the same as having my own baby sister, I said. By then I was shouting.
Kathleen Suzanne, she said to me. Rayelle is your baby sister. She sat up before I could tell her to shut her damn mouth. Shhhhhht, she said, holding up her finger. Her face was thin, and sallow, yellow-looking to me. And don’t you tell a goddamn soul I told you, she said.
Who knows that? I said.
The people who need to know, she said. Me, and you.
Does Dad know? I asked. I thought of the way he called me his girl. The way his breath smelled.
It’s none of his goddamn business, she said to me, and then she dropped back. She told me to hand her a pill bottle that was on the dresser, and then get out of there. And shut the door, she said.
I thought she had every fucking thing in the world, an only child with her own room, with parents who were maybe better for her because none of them belonged to each other, not Carleen to Chuck, not Rayelle to Carleen. Three separate people. No one laid a hand on Rayelle except to smack her bottom when she needed it. Her trashy trailer that we could run through and kick our shoes against the wall without the booming voice of my dad. Her hand-me-down pink bike, rusted from her just leaving it on the lawn after riding. A stray cat bundled in her arms, and riddled with fleas. And summer after summer a road trip to some state I’d never even imagined, sitting up front in Chuck’s car while Carleen slept in the back. Mountains, the ocean, fields where there was nothing but sunflowers as far as you could see. The desert. Every time she left in that car for the sweetest weeks of summer I felt part of me go along, like a long string stretched between us. I imagined her sleeping in a motel bed by herself, with the AC icy cold and her non-parents in the bed next to hers, ordering her hamburgers and Cherry Cokes. Watching cable TV. With no one’s hands on her head, nothing in her mouth, or between her legs.
I hated her.
And loved her more than anything. Flesh of my flesh. My own girl.
Before my mother died she told me she didn’t want to go to hell.
I had never heard her say such a thing. Didn’t know either heaven or hell was any concern to her. I never imagined she would burn. For anything.
Mom, I said. I stroked her papery arm. Don’t worry about that. There’s nothing to worry about, I told her.
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