Undercurrents

by Mary Anna Evans

  Crouched behind a stand of cattails, uncomfortable and wet, Faye wondered why she hadn’t just called out, “Hey! Little girl! Can I talk to you? Do you mind telling me where you’re going?”

  Deep down, Faye knew that a direct question would have left her looking at the back of a child who was running away, fast. The child’s furtive glances and smooth, silent movements said that she was cautious and that she had good reason to be.

  As Faye watched, her quarry walked with purpose toward the culvert, which protruded from its bed at an alarming cant. Stooping her head as she approached it, she didn’t slow down.

  Dang. She was going in.

  Faye watched her wade into deepening water that was opaque with the goop washed off the streets of a major city, not to mention the excess fertilizer applied to the green lawns of Memphis. The water lapped at scrawny brown thighs and faded red shorts as the child strode into the culvert and disappeared.

  Cursing herself for her inability to leave a question unanswered, Faye stepped into the sunlight and waded toward the culvert. She could feel the current tugging at her calves, her knees, her thighs. She wished wholeheartedly that she hadn’t worn full-length pants with heavy cargo pockets that dragged her down even more than the sodden pants did, but she plunged on.

  At five feet nothing, Faye rarely had reason to think, “I’m too tall,” but the culvert succeeded in planting that thought in her head. Bending her knees and leaning forward, she was able to enter standing up, though she had to work hard to keep her breasts and belly dry. With both hands holding her phone out of the water, she plunged ahead.

  Putting her face so close to the scummy water forced her to acknowledge that it didn’t smell very good, but it was too late to turn back. She shuffled her feet through the silt on the concrete bottom of the pipe and made her way slowly, allowing plenty of time for the little girl to stay ahead of her.

  The rough concrete undersurface of the culvert dragged against her back, but it kept her oriented in the dark. She knew she wouldn’t have to go far in this condition, hunched over and mostly blind, probably just the width of a two-lane road. Still, the light on the other side looked very far away. She headed for it, single-minded in her desire to forget about the smell and the unidentified squishy things under her feet. Soon enough, she stepped into the light…

  …and fell into waist-deep water.

  She twisted as she fell, because it was imperative that she land butt-first, keeping her phone overhead in both outstretched hands. She’d opted for the waterproof case, but still.

  Had she tripped? No. Her foot and shin had definitely struck something solid, but then that something had moved, hooking itself around her leg and throwing her to the creek bottom. Faye shook the water out of her eyes and saw nothing but sunlight glinting off broken green glass.

  “Why’re you following me?” said the small human wielding a broken bottle. Her voice sounded thick, rough, choked, with none of the fluty sweetness of childhood.

  Faye’s foot hurt where the girl had used her own leg to sweep it out from under her. The water in her eyes burned but her phone was still overhead and dry. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  The girl snorted. “Stand up. But slow. James Roy Curtis tried to take my backpack one time.” She brandished the bottle and its fierce shards. “He still drools out the hole in his face.”

  “Is that true? Did you really cut a little boy’s face open?”

  Faye was still blinking hard to clear her eyes, so she didn’t move fast enough to suit this little person who had just thrown her off her feet.

  “It’s true enough. Get up! And hold your hands out. Away from your sides.”

  Faye rose until she was looking down at the white part running through the dark hair on top of her assailant’s small head. Dark eyes raked over her body, and a small dark hand reached out to smack the cargo pockets on either side of her pants legs. The girl’s wariness faded quickly when she saw that the wet clothes clinging to Faye’s slender form hid no weapons.

  Faye studied the unsmiling face. Could she really be as young as she looked? Maybe she was under ten and maybe she wasn’t, but Faye would have bet money that she was at least a year shy of puberty. Faye had been warned that she’d be working in a dangerous part of a dangerous city, but being face-to-face with a small child who knew how to frisk her for weapons broke her heart.

  “Lady, you should go back where you came from. Meth heads don’t sleep forever.”

  The what-are-you-saying? look on Faye’s face must have been hilarious, because the child laughed out loud. Jerking her head toward the creekbanks behind Faye, she said, “They hide up there. To sleep it off.”

  Faye had always prided herself on her powers of observation, but she’d walked at least a mile without realizing that there was anyone nearby. “What about you? How come it’s safe for you to walk through here but not me?”

  “I know where I’m going. I know where the bad people stay. I know when they sleep. But you?” She flicked her eyes up and down Faye’s body. “You don’t know nothing about this place. You should go home.”

  “How do you know I’m not already home? How do you know I’m not from around here?”

  The girl gave another quick, hoarse laugh, but said nothing.

  “It’s that obvious?” As a woman of color, Faye had thought she’d be able to blend into a city where only a third of the people considered themselves white.

  “You look like somebody on TV. Slick. Not even real. Talk like that, too.” She leaned her head back and gave Faye’s face a hard, cold look. “Rich. I think you’re rich, and so will those people sleeping up there. You don’t want to be around here when they wake up and try to take what you got.”

  What did the girl think she had that was worth stealing? She already knew Faye’s pockets were empty. Her purse was locked in the trunk of her car. Then she remembered her cell phone and the slim gold band on her left ring finger. People had been killed for less, just not in any neighborhood where Faye had ever lived.

  Joe had argued against her taking this job without him, but she’d brushed him off. Frankly, she’d been offended by his insinuation that she wasn’t streetwise.

  And now she was reacting just as strongly to the suggestion that she was a rich outsider. Faye remembered wearing secondhand school clothes bought with the money her mother made as a nurse’s aide, and she remembered the nasty things the other girls had said about those clothes, clean but long out of style. She remembered daily peanut butter sandwiches in her lunch box, because her mother couldn’t afford to pay what the cafeteria charged, and she was too proud to apply for free lunches.

  Most of all, she remembered the day her mother, giddy with accomplishment, had said, “I got my license! I’m a practical nurse now and I got a new job. I can do better for us now.”

  Not that this news had stopped the steady flow of peanut butter sandwiches. Oh, no. Faye’s mother had been cheap as dirt, and she’d stayed that way till the day she died. Her grandmother, too. Poverty leaves its marks. Faye had more security now, but she would always keep a close grip on her budget.

  “I’m not rich,” she snapped, then she felt stupid for letting a ten-year-old get under her skin.

  The girl’s grunt said, “If you say so.”

  She stood with her eyes on Faye, as if waiting for her to turn tail and run. Faye thought maybe she should do just that, but her stubborn streak was arguing with her, and it was winning. It was asking her what, exactly, she’d be running from. Sleeping drug addicts? Or a bottle-wielding ten-year-old?

  “I’m not going back until you tell me where you go every day. And until I know you have a safe place to sleep at night.”

  Instead of an answer, the girl gave her a small shake of the head, then another. She appeared be thinking hard, but she eventually reached a conclusion, because she tossed the bottle toward
the creekbank. It landed in shallow water and sent ripples that brushed Faye’s legs while she waited for the girl to speak.

  Finally, the child turned and started walking again. “Do what you wanna do. I’m sure the meth heads will be real glad to see you when they wake up.”

  Faye had seen the undersides of two low-slung bridges since her companion had chucked her beer-bottle weapon into the shallows but she had not, thankfully, had to get herself through another culvert. Slowly, the banks got lower. The creek spread out on both sides until it was hardly more than a linear wet spot.

  The girl took this opportunity to walk onto dry land and keep walking without looking back. Faye could see that they were in a wooded park with a playground surrounded by picnic tables.

  There were children everywhere. Faye trudged in the child’s wake until she was stopped in her tracks by an order to “Wait here.”

  The idea that the girl had slogged through a mile of water to find a place to play hit Faye in the gut. When she remembered that this happened every day of the week, she felt it in her gut again.

  She stopped where she stood, as ordered, and considered what to do. Should she turn around and walk back up the creek, returning to the work that she probably shouldn’t have left? Or should she linger while the girl played, so that she could walk her back home?

  While she dithered, the girl surprised her again by walking right past the swings, the slides, the jungle gyms, and the joyful, shouting children. Instead of stopping to play, she headed toward a picnic table loaded with coolers and plastic bags. Faye inched closer to see what was going to happen.

  Taking a bag from the table, she turned around without acknowledging the middle-aged man who handed her a juice box. He didn’t seem offended. In fact, he reached into the cooler for a second box. This time, the girl gave him a faint smile as she took the second juice box, but she didn’t linger. She never even stopped walking. She just got her bag and her juice box, then turned and walked back to the creek.

  Within a few steps, she had passed Faye and stepped back into the water. Faye followed her, although she could tell that the child didn’t care if she did or if she didn’t. She could also tell that the wary girl never stopped keeping track of where Faye was and what she was doing.

  Opening the lunch that she’d walked a mile to get, the girl fished out a granola bar and bit off a big hunk. Then she peered into the open bag and considered its contents before reaching in again. Pulling out a bright green apple, she tossed it to Faye.

  Truthfully, tossing was a kind word for what she did. She threw it overhand at Faye’s left arm, hard enough to leave a bruise. Faye felt a petty joy in plucking it out of the air with her right hand after it bounced off her arm. She was pretty sure that the girl had meant for her to fish it out of the disgusting water.

  “You sure you can spare this apple?” Faye asked.

  “I got plenty here for today. It’s the free lunch people. From the school, you know? In the summertime, they bring the food here every day.”

  “Weekends, too?”

  “Naw. Just during the week. But they bring us whole backpacks full of food on Fridays. It lasts long enough. And I can always go eat with Uncle Laneer, but I don’t like to do that. He gives me too much and don’t keep enough for himself. He ain’t got enough to eat as it is. Anyway, there’s always potato chips at home. And popcorn. That’s what my mama likes to eat, when she eats. And ice cream. She really likes ice cream.”

  So she had a home and a family. That was a relief.

  Faye bit into the apple, despite the fact that she’d never really liked apples all that well. It would have been rude to turn down a gift of food from someone who’d walked the whole morning to get it. Besides, she was hungry.

  It occurred to Faye that she might need to recalibrate her notion of “hungry.” She’d been short of money for her whole life, but she’d never lived in a house where her only options for food were to walk for miles or to subsist on potato chips and ice cream.

  Her teeth punched through the tough apple skin and released a burst of juice into her dry mouth. Its flesh was crisp and full of tartness, not at all mealy. Faye decided that she might not like most apples, but she liked this one.

  “Thank you,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  The girl said something indistinct and Faye said, “Come again?”

  Obviously irritated, the girl said, “Kali. K-A-L-I. Not like the dog.”

  “Oh, like the Hindu goddess? That’s a great name. It suits you.”

  Faye was being honest, because it was a great name and it did suit her. Kali was revered as the Mother of the Whole Universe. Often portrayed with black or blue skin, she was a powerful image for an African-American girl to look up to, even if she did hail from the wrong subcontinent. Faye remembered how hard she’d looked for role models when she’d been a dark-skinned girl on a light-skinned street. She would have been a huge Kali fan.

  There was no arguing, though, that Kali the goddess was flat-out fierce. She liked to wear skirts of human arms. Oh, and a garland of skulls, also human. Faye could absolutely see this scowling child growing up to be that awesome.

  “A Hindu goddess? Yeah? That’s better than a collie. The kids at school say collies ain’t nothing but big ugly dogs. Never seen one, myself.”

  “They’re wrong. Collies are beautiful dogs. Truly. Shiny, shaggy fur. Sweet faces. Let me show you a picture.” Faye pulled her miraculously undrenched phone from her only-slightly-damp shirt pocket and plucked a picture of Lassie off the Internet.

  The dog’s happy face made the tiny Mother of the Whole Universe crack a grin, revealing a row of teeth like pearls set in polished iron.

  “You went down like a rock when I tripped you. You know that? You sure you can walk and eat that apple at the same time? Not gonna fall again? ’Cause I ain’t waiting for you. We gotta get back before the crack heads wake up.”

  “I thought they were meth heads.”

  “Don’t matter. None of ’em wake up happy.”

  Faye chewed on a mouthwatering bite of apple. “I can keep up. Just watch.”

  Kali’s grunt sounded doubtful.

  “You couldn’t lose me if you tried. And Kali? My name is Faye.”

  Chapter Three

  He’d hidden his car at the bar down the street, where it blended in with dozens of cars. They were the cars of ordinary people. Unexceptional people. People who were not planning homicide.

  After locking his car door, he had slipped into the woods behind the parking lot and headed across the creek, eventually stopping at a sheltered spot where he had stood many times before.

  From this familiar vantage point, he had a clear view of Frida’s driveway. If she came or went, he would see. He knew this because he had stood here many times before, watching her live her life.

  Sometimes, it took her a long time to come home. This only gave him more time to think. He thought about the way she looked and sounded and smelled. He thought of the things he’d done to other women, carefully considering which of those things he’d like to do to Frida.

  Sometimes, like tonight, she was gone so long that she couldn’t possibly be visiting a friend or working late at the restaurant. On those nights, he knew she must be with another man, and the fury rose. Once, it had crossed his mind to take his fury out on the man instead of Frida, but then he’d come to his senses. And he had laughed.

  No lights had shone in any of Frida’s windows since he had been standing there, and it told him that Frida had planned for this late night. The girl was sleeping elsewhere, and this was good. Neither the child nor her keeper were nearby where they might see him.

  Just as the sun came down, he had seen Kali emerge from the woods, creeping quietly down the street and out of sight, presumably heading for the home of the friend or relative who was watching her now. It wasn’t the first time he
’d seen her do that, and it made him wonder whether Frida enforced a sundown curfew, even when she wasn’t home. The girl’s shadow was lithe. It vibrated with youth and energy.

  In this moment, Frida consumed him. One day, though, he knew he would come back for Kali.

  Chapter Four

  Kali liked ice cream almost as much as her mother did. She just didn’t want it all the time. But sometimes, she woke up early and wanted to start the day with a jolt of cold sweetness. And sometimes, when her mother stayed out late, she woke up wanting to be at home instead of at her Uncle Laneer’s. On days like this, she liked to slip out his back door at dawn and walk down the creekbank to the back door of her own house.

  She was closing the freezer door when she heard the sounds in her front yard. Ice cream sandwich in hand, she peered out the front window first, then out her bedroom window, and then out the window at the top of the back door. She saw nothing in the half-darkness but shapes and motion, but the sounds she heard were horrible.

  Her mother’s bedroom was empty. Kali tried to connect the dots between the empty bed and the sounds that were rapidly fading into the distance, but she couldn’t make her mind work. She couldn’t think at all, but she could run.

  Slipping out the back door and closing it quietly behind her, she listened for thudding footsteps and the sounds of a struggle, and she followed them.

  Chapter Five

  The ground was cold—so cold—and it was hard. Even in July, and even in Memphis, the ground is cold after a long night without the sun, and it is hard when it is rushing up to strike you.

  Frida struggled to her feet, knowing that it would get her nothing but another fist in her face. He’d knocked her down, striking her in the jaw with his closed fist. She’d struggled to her feet, only to have him do it again and again.

  She was young, only twenty-six, so none of her pliant bones broke when she hit the ground. Frida was no athlete, so she’d never learned to fall. Each time he hit her, she collapsed like a bundle of twigs suddenly untied. She was slender, so she heard the clatter as her uncushioned bones struck the hard ground. Each time, he yanked her back to her feet, holding her in his iron grip while he slapped her and shook her and slapped her some more. And then, again, he doubled up the fist and knocked her to the ground, waiting until she scrabbled to her knees to reach his big hand out to grab the fabric of her dress and yank her upright.