The Scamp

by Jennifer Pashley

  My mother pressed her face into her knees.

  There was music playing, low organ music like you’d have in church, except that we weren’t in church, we were in a generic-looking funeral home that used to be a restaurant and still kind of looked like one. It wasn’t the type of stately home you see in some small towns, a big old Victorian with a front porch. There was no organ, just a CD playing. If you took out the churchy stuff, the flowers and the fake stained glass, it was just a room, like you’d have any meeting in. Khaki stood there in the middle of the aisle, with no one to greet her even, no one got up and went to her, and she just stood still, staring at the closed silver casket, the spray of white flowers laid over the lid. Doe came up from the back of the room then, and grabbed her shoulder so hard he left a red-and-white handprint on her bare skin. He turned her face to his and said something low in her ear, and when she answered him, he slapped her. That sound, the loudest thing in the room. They left, each of them walking down different sides of the room. We were the only ones there. Everyone else was dead.

  twenty

  KHAKI

  Tennessee came to me with a monster in her belly. Her bare feet were bleeding, her little baby belly hard and beginning to show. She had run from an apartment in Venice Beach, after her mama had died from heroin, to her granddad’s in Kentucky, to her sister’s in Virginia, to me. She’d hitchhiked, she said, from California all the way to Kentucky, the last leg of it with a college boy who was driving to South Carolina.

  He coulda taken me all the way, she said, her voice sunny and drippy sweet. Her granddad had a new wife, in her twenties, but he was still sweet on Tennessee, and now she’d got a belly the same way her mama had gotten one, from the same man, and at pret’ near the same age, she said.

  She rattled on a litany of women. Lila and Stephanie and April. April was fat like dough, she told me, and couldn’t keep house or keep her kid from wetting the bed, and Stephanie, she said, tried to give me to Jesus.

  She thought her baby might be deformed. When she ran from her aunt Stephanie’s suburban home, from her well-groomed and well-fed cousins, she had walked and hitchhiked all the way, barefoot with nothing but the clothes on her body. She’d thrown up and walked off fifteen, even twenty pounds, so she was all arms and legs and little round bubble belly that you couldn’t quite see, but you could feel.

  They’d wanted her to have it. Her aunt and uncle.

  Uncle Jason told me, Tennessee said, birth is a woman at her finest.

  I smirked. He ain’t never seen me, I said.

  It was Dakota who found her, after I’d found Dakota. Dakota looked like a monster, with her blunt black hair and her eye sewn shut from where her own brother carved it from her head. She had a deep scar through both lips, making a C, forming an arrow with her mouth.

  She found Tennessee asleep in the old part of the cemetery, where the grass grew long and soft. Where the trees made a bit of shelter.

  You go ahead and kill me, Tennesee told her, but do it quick.

  But Dakota is the sweetest, softest, strongest soul I’ve met. She picked up Tennessee like she was made of glass and brought her home to me.

  It was Dakota who bathed her and put her in a white nightgown and laid her in my bed. When she woke, I was there with her, I held her hands, I asked her how old she was, if she knew she was pregnant.

  I’m fifteen, Tennessee said. The baby’s a monster.

  All babies are monsters.

  I told her I could relieve her of the monster. That I could give her a new name, a new life.

  My name is Haylee, she said.

  Not anymore it isn’t, I said. I kissed her forehead. I ought to call you sugar, I said, but I think your name is Tennessee.

  She said it back to me.

  That’s my girl, I said.

  It took her three days to tell me her whole story, where she’d been and with who, and how many men and women had come and gone, had touched her or hit her or called her names. About how her mama was found dead and naked on a rooftop in Los Feliz. About a dust storm in the desert, where it got dark as night in the middle of the day and the truck she rode in had to pull over and wait for the red to clear from the sky. That they were afraid of opening windows, afraid of breathing it in.

  She talked so much that at nighttime, I had to shush her, hold her by her little baby temples and tell her to please be quiet.

  It only made her laugh at me. She was high on talking. She was high on kissing me, on being cared for, on living like a girl instead of an animal.

  I blew my own breath into her to siphon out the baby. The pain after stopped her from talking for a bit.

  I couldn’t believe no one had killed her yet.

  I’d gone with my mother. I’d done my own. I knew the basics and got better with time.

  My own, in our yellow bathroom at home, the floor covered with yellow Valencia tiles shaped like the brackets Rayelle used to sign her postcards. {Rainy Day} Love you. Miss you.

  The room looked like a garden on acid. My mother had a flair for design, but her taste was odd, garish or gaudy, too much gold, too many flowers. The sink was yellow and shaped like a lettuce leaf. Doe had gotten it from a guy at work, which meant it was stolen either off the back of a truck or directly out of a warehouse somewhere, that it was probably custom-made for some other woman designing a bathroom. My mother made the whole room out of it.

  Above me, it rained, drumming on the skylight. After a long, soaking rain, the window would leak, a small drip finding its way to the middle of the floor.

  I was afraid of making a mess. I rolled up the soft green rug and stashed it by the tub. The bare tiles hurt my knees.

  I’d swiped an X-Acto knife from art class, covered it with a Bic pen cap, and carried it home. That alone was enough to get me suspended. I hunched over my knees in the bathroom, screwed it apart, and took the blade out of the handle and attached it to a crochet needle. I didn’t have to steal the needle. I found it among my grandmother’s things in the hall closet. A box that said Nana. There was a stiff black pocketbook inside that held a two-dollar bill and a tiny pillbox with a white cat on it and a mirror inside.

  I took the rubber tubing from the shed at Rayelle’s. There were all kinds of things in there, other than the usual motor oil, bicycle pump stuff. Air cans. Sticks of dynamite. Barbed wire.

  I’d been with my mother the last time. She found a private doctor in Harrisburg, a man she paid in cash. The cash, she got from my father. Probably the same way I got cash from him.

  The doctor smoked in his office, not in the exam room, but in a wood-paneled office where we sat at a desk and the walls were lined with books that all looked the same. On his desk, a picture of daughters.

  In the exam room in Harrisburg, I watched my mother hoist herself onto the papered table. I’d heard other doctors refer to her as Mrs. Reed. Her cancer doctor, my school nurse. This doctor called her Teddy. He had a low but singsongy voice, like he belonged in an old movie, or onstage.

  Now, Teddy, he said to her, and felt the glands in her neck. He took her blood pressure and palpated her stomach. I sat on a vinyl stool, swiveling, holding a Woman’s Day magazine. He lifted my mother’s feet into the stirrups. The metal was covered with knitted leg warmers. My mother’s feet were knobby and dry. Her toenails, coral.

  Teddy, he said.

  Go ahead, she answered him. Yank it.

  He glanced back at me on the butterscotch stool. Above the scale, a diagram of a pelvis, shaped like a butterfly of bone.

  She don’t know the difference, my mother said.

  I watched him draw out tubing and a speculum. A long needle like they used at the dentist to numb your gums. I whispered through the pages in the magazine, pretending I was reading about lemon pie, hospital corners, sheer drapes, what your husband really wanted.

  After, I let my mother lean on me all the way to the car. I lifted her legs into the passenger seat and she blew out a long, slow breath, tinged with pain. She
handed me the keys. I’d been driving since I was twelve.

  At thirteen, in the yellow bathroom, I siphoned. I let the shower run, the room hot and steamy. I heard footsteps in the hall, too heavy to be my mother’s. I felt the pinch, way inside, and the lance, and I blew into the tubing and sucked. My hands filled with blood. I didn’t see anything else, no tiny head, no feet. It was too early. The yellow room, with its jade-green counters, its hanging plants and the skylight where I imagined anyone could look in, looked like a murder scene. I bled for days, my belly cramped so hard I walked bent over. I wondered who would ever see me from above.

  twenty-one

  RAYELLE

  In the morning, I walk outside the room, down the sidewalk, into the parking lot, just to try to see what I can of the surrounding land, hills, or trees, or anything that seems natural, but it’s all covered in signs that are high off the ground, visible on the highway for miles. At night, they light up the sky so you can’t see the stars and it never gets dark. Instead of dark blue or black, the night sky, a neon pink glow.

  Couper comes out and stands beside me.

  Last night, we’d been in the pool, the lights in the sides on, the water heated and soft. Our bodies, quiet and moving so we became just that. Just arms and legs, scissoring.

  What do we do now? I ask him.

  Follow the trail of blood? he asks. He looks sidelong at me. His whiskers have come back, his face rough with silver points. I like him better this way.

  Really, I say.

  Wait, he says.

  For what? I say. My eyes follow a hawk that comes out from behind a high Arby’s sign, circles in front of the sun, and disappears.

  I have to get my notes together, he says. I need to write. Some of it is waiting, he says. Sometimes, it’s all you can do.

  Sometimes, it’s hard to take him seriously.

  We pack up the Scamp. Inside, I make sure things are stowed properly. It’s amazing how much they shift as we move. I lock all the cabinets, secure the table.

  Something else will come to me, Couper says from the hitch. I’m sure of it. It has all along.

  Do you actually believe that? I say. Isn’t that a waste of time?

  Do you have someplace to be? he asks. I can wait, he says. I have work to do. I just can’t afford to do it at La Quinta.

  He’ll find another campground, something on a lake or a river, with kids and fishermen, canoes even, far away from a commercial boulevard, and in the woods. I make one last check inside, refastening the hinge on an overhead cupboard, and that’s when something rushes past me like a swarm. It swoops above my head. I can’t tell what it is, just that the movement and the darkness in front of my face make my hair stand on end. I tumble out, down the step, the screen slamming behind me. My heart, racing.

  What’s the matter? Couper says from the hitch. He straightens up, his hand on his lower back. You have to take it easy on that door, he says. This thing’s an antique.

  Something’s in there, I say. You can see the shadows in the window. Dark movement.

  An animal? Couper asks. I had a raccoon once. It was a pain in the ass to get out. Sometimes I worry about bears, he says, low and mumbly, because he’s concentrating on getting the hitch right. You have to put everything away, he says. Bears will claw the door open if they have to.

  I shake my head. Flying, I say.

  He rubs his face, and lets out a long sigh that has voice. A moan. Are you sure? he says. Under his hands, his face is pale, his lips stretched white.

  What? How is that worse than a raccoon? I say. A raccoon can bite you and give you rabies. Or a bear? I say. A bear can kill you.

  He drops his hands and blurts out, I dreamed about teeth.

  He’d been up early, shuffling in the room, packing. I didn’t know why, just heard him, restless, before it was light even. When I asked him if something was bothering him, he only said he’d tell me later.

  So what? I say.

  Rayelle, he says, loud, but not at me. He sort of yells it at the Scamp. Look, I know, he says, you’re all hard-boiled and you don’t believe anything. But I’m superstitious, okay?

  Hard-boiled? I say. I step away from the door to let him get a look inside. You’re the detective, I say. But I know, I know exactly what he’s afraid of.

  When Teddy died my mother dreamed all her teeth came out, one by one, that she blew them out like you’d blow out birthday candles, but instead of just breath, teeth came out, spraying blood. Like spitting seeds from a watermelon. I thought it was just our family that believed that kind of stuff, bad dreams, broken mirrors, a hat on the bed. Khaki with her hands on someone, saying, Car crash. House fire. Fireworks.

  I thought I had lost as much as I could stand. Baby-less non-mother. No one’s wife. No one’s sister. But I look at Couper, laboring under his own breath, his lungs constricting with the asthma that he tries to hide, afraid to face not one, but two bad omens.

  He opens the door, pushes it with his arm and then stands back with it wide open, waiting. You can hear it batting around in there, against the metal walls, against the back window. Birds are stupid. They’ll beat themselves to death trying to get out. He goes in finally, holding the atlas he bought yesterday and using it as a fan, to guide the bird out. A gray catbird comes shooting out, straight up into the empty white sky. There are no trees around the parking lot.

  Couper stays in, still fanning the air. I inch closer, and another comes out, same thing, a round, gray bird. This one lights under a bush at the edge of the sidewalk, then disappears into the dark and mulch, making its weird call: Keer. Keer.

  Couper? I call.

  There’s one more, he says. Then, What the hell kind of a bird is that?

  It’s a catbird.

  Jesus Christ, he yells.

  What?

  What the hell is a catbird?

  I don’t know! I stand there while he fans the inside of the Scamp, moving things, pillows, opening and closing doors, trying to scare it out.

  You know the only thing worse than birds? Couper says. Omen-wise? Fucking cats, he says.

  It shoots out all at once, low and darting over the tops of the bushes around us.

  After, he leans his head into the steering wheel. We wait in a Hardee’s parking lot, pulled to the side next to a minivan with a thirtysomething mommy in a polo in the passenger seat, three kids in the back, and a bike rack in tow. They’re so backed up with orders, the girl from the drive-thru window has to bring out our breakfast sandwiches and coffee. Couper just leans there, forehead denting in.

  There are two spaces available at the campground when we finally stop, and we take the one farthest away from the facilities, farthest from a view, from a wide, meandering river with a waterfall, from the playground, the bathhouse, the cabins, and anything that might make it desirable. It’s just a plot of grass and some trees. But it’s nearing dusk already, so Couper takes it.

  We tuck the Scamp under a canopy of four pines. During the day it stays dark, cool, the earth blanketed gold with needles and cushioned under your feet. There’s no radio, no wireless, and you have to go stand in the middle of the parking lot to get any stitch of cell service. The portable TV picks up only snow with the sounds of local news all the time. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to gather information here, but after a day of setting up, Couper develops a routine. He sits outside and writes. In the afternoon, he naps. Sometimes he walks way off into the woods, or out toward the parking lot with his phone. Then, when he comes back, he reaches into the Scamp for a beer, sits in a sling-back chair, writes some more.

  The idleness of it makes me crazy. It’s not relaxing. It feels like waiting, possibly for something terrible. And after a week of nothing, I stand at the corner of the Scamp and watch the back of Couper’s head, watch him sitting out at the edge of the shade, writing away, completely happy with the little life he’s made. What am I supposed to do? Homestead? Make dolls out of sticks? Sew my own clothing?

  I decide to
drive to town. He gives me the keys to the Gran Torino and I take it out to the closest four corners with a Laundromat and a market. I do all our laundry in one afternoon. The door propped wide open and all the windows open without screens. Unattended dryers running, tumbling blankets and sheets. It’s humid. The air, thick with fabric softener and lint. There’s a copy of Parents magazine on the counter with summer headlines. Water safety. I turn it over, facedown. I never see anyone come in to get the sheets.

  After that, I make excuses to go into town every day. Beer, cigarettes, loaf of bread. Bag of charcoal for the cast-iron stationary grill at the campsite. Couper doesn’t ask. He just hands me money, the way Chuck used to. I don’t think he gets it. Doesn’t know that this is how I found him, by taking twenty-dollar bills from a man in his fifties. It’s a matter of time, I think, before I get in someone else’s car.

  I keep waiting for the moment. For Couper to get up out of his chair, put down his computer, and tell me he knows where we’re going. That he found Khaki and that she’s okay, that she’s alive, and not washed along a river somewhere, with nothing left of her but a femur, or a mandible.

  I had thought all along that if we found her, he could leave me there. Me and her, together again, wherever she is. That I could find work, that we’d make it, somehow, together.

  But at night, we sleep under the whisper shush of pines, cool in our bed. And when I hold on to his arm, or put my hand on his belly, or his thigh, or press my nose into the back of his neck, listening to the storm inside him, I think I can never let that go.