by Summer Wood
Suddenly, eerily, Lisa Fay felt eyes on her. She jerked her head toward the sink. It wasn’t the matron, back from the pantry; it was a large, fat, fearless rat sitting on the drainboard, pinning her in its beady gaze. Without thinking, Lisa Fay reached for the two-pronged butcher’s fork beside her, balanced it in her hand, and flung it at him.
The fork rattled against the stainless steel backsplash and Lisa Fay darted toward it. A trace of blood smeared the sink board—she must have nicked him, at least—but the rat was gone.
The matron thundered in—“The hell was that?”—and though Lisa Fay explained, described the rat’s size, his audacity, the challenge he flung at her, standing there amid the drying pots and pans, the matron would not hear it.
“If there’s trouble, you call me,” she threatened. Lisa Fay breathed out. That meant Delfine had slipped away unseen. But the injured rat was on the loose, too.
With any luck they’d be nuking him now, Lisa Fay thought. She paced the back wall of the yard, ran her tongue across her teeth, picked up grit. It was a professional wind, here. No puny breeze ruffled the air at the women’s penitentiary. This wind gathered speed and the odor of steer manure from the feed lots south of the prison and swept up every variety of dust on its way before ripping through the yard. Lisa Fay faced into it as she headed west, turned her back to it as she returned. She stifled a hankering for a whiff of sweet air. City air, even, with its pungent neighborhood mix of coffee and cabbage and hot asphalt, all of it freshened by bay salt and bus exhaust, its edges softened by the rolling Caribbean lilt of ladies who sent money to their own children back home while they pushed strollers full of rich babies through the eucalyptus groves of Golden Gate Park.
Lisa Fay wondered what it smelled like, up there where Wrecker lived. Meg had been the bit of brightness she could count on to turn to. Meg, her champion and protector, her model and cautionary figure, eleven years older and gone gone gone. Took up with that quiet man, the timber faller from Tennessee who moved her clear to the top of the state before she’d passed her twentieth birthday. They’d married in a fever, Meg and Len; cleared out before the father ever knew what hit him, gave him a full year to calm down before they came back down to visit. Lisa Fay couldn’t help but shiver, remembering. They’d sat around the dinner table in a tense silence, their father so angry he could barely open his thin lips and cram the pot roast into his cheeks; he’d chewed rapidly, spitefully, swallowed too early and got the meat wedged in his windpipe. Len had motioned them aside. He pushed up the sleeves of his good shirt and squatted behind her daddy, hoisted him up to sitting, wrapped his arms around his belly and gave one sharp squeeze to his midsection that propelled that piece of meat halfway across the room. Daddy didn’t even bother to thank Len. He lit into Momma, let loose a string of curses—trying to kill him, was she?—and Lisa Fay had huddled next to Meg and prayed she’d take her with them when she left. We’ll visit again, Meg had whispered, but they hadn’t. She’d sent a real letter once with photographs of a little house and big trees and a pet goose who stalked the yard. She sent Christmas cards for a few years. And then even those fell off.
Now her boy was there. The lawyer fellow had told her that, at least. Came to court smelling of whiskey, a rumpled shirt and a stain on the knee of his trousers, and bungled her case so badly the judge had wondered—aloud!—whether he had truly passed the bar or had just wandered in off the street. He had a ratlike face and a loose thread that dangled from the side seam of his suit jacket. Lisa Fay pinned her attention to the single charcoal thread that threatened to unravel the man, reduce him to a tangle of threads too haphazard to ever find their way back to whole cloth. And with them her chances.
And so they had. The judge was a short, dark-haired older lady who didn’t have much regard for a mother who would endanger her own child by exposing him not just to drugs but to guns and to a morally compromised—she caught Lisa Fay’s eye as if to say you know exactly what I mean—living situation. No, some cases had to be taken on their own merits. This defendant, found guilty of aiding and abetting the attempted murder of a police officer, guilty of possessing a concealed weapon, guilty of accessory to unlawful distribution of controlled substances, was likewise guilty of child neglect. She was unfit to mother her child, who would remain in the custody of the state until a suitable home could be found for him. And the defendant was hereby remanded to the care of the criminal justice system for a period of thirty years. Eligible for parole—she added this as an afterthought—eligible for parole in fifteen years. Young lady, she’d said sternly, we take none of this lightly.
In the prison yard, Lisa Fay’s pace slowed nearly to a crawl. She caught herself and forced herself forward, made her wooden legs march at a brisk, defiant rate. She’d served five years. Five years done. Ten to go—ten only, if she kept her head down, showed none of the pain, groveled at their feet—ten if they kept their word, that is. All of the power rested with them. Ten only. Ten still? Was it possible that she could last through that? Was there skin enough on her body to sustain?
The lawyer had visited her in jail when she’d been there a year. She almost refused to see him but held just a glimmer of hope, the faintest thought that maybe the judge had changed her mind, was ready to set her free.
He wore casual clothes this time, a pair of khaki pants and a buttoned shirt with no tie, and his hair flopped over his collar. He’d decided to leave the law, he told her. He’d never had a real calling. He’d entered to please his parents and now his parents had abandoned their faith in the status quo and bought a sailboat and were on their way to Polynesia, and he—well, he’d always harbored a wish to paint.
Lisa Fay stared at him, dumbfounded. Had he come this far to tell her this?
I thought you might want to know, he said. He looked around guiltily. He had the face of a rat, long and sharp, but none of a rat’s cunning or resourcefulness. Lisa Fay wondered how he could function in the world. I’m not supposed to tell you this, he warned. Once the courts terminate your parental rights you’re not entitled to any information about your child’s whereabouts. The lawyer shrugged. I’ve been disbarred, he said. So what can they do to me? He tipped forward, leaned close to her ear, put his ratlike lips to it. He’s been adopted up to Humboldt County, he whispered. Your sister and her husband. Then he sank back into his chair and watched her. Hey, you’re a nice kid, he said. Look me up when you get out of this joint. And he slunk his way out of the folding chair and shambled across the ugly tiles to the door.
And just last month that woman, Willow, there to tell her Meg’s mind was harmed, her parents dead, her son in someone else’s charge.
The question trembled on her lips but went unasked. Does he recall—
She had sent her boy the photograph. It was all she could think to do.
Lisa Fay pulled up short at the end of the yard. She lifted her hands to her hips and waited for her heart to still.
One hundred laps, forward and back. The wind had slowed to a dawdle and the other women clustered in casual groups, talking, laughing, complaining, harassing one another, braiding hair, dozing in the sun. She caught a glimpse of Delfine lurking behind a trashcan chained to its stand, trying to pass unnoticed. A group of women had clearly noticed her. Others parted to the side as they advanced.
The Mountain had been looking for Delfine. Now that she had her in her sights, she could afford to take her time. The Mountain—aptly named, Lisa Fay thought, with her small peaked head and that solid hunk of a body so broad it required custom clothes—turned her back to Delfine and said something to Pearlie and Little Red that made them laugh. Even if it weren’t funny, those two would laugh on cue. The Mountain could tell them to drop their drawers and piss in the middle of a crowd and they would do it. But when they sang, the three of them, it could quiet the whole yard. It brought tears to the warden’s eye, and the guards had been instructed to overlook The Mountain’s occasional, minor infractions of the rules. Delfine had not the slighte
st chance of escape.
Delfine caught her eye before Lisa Fay could look away, and the scrap of a woman scurried across the yard toward her.
Lisa Fay groaned. “What have you done, now.”
“What!” Delfine said, and gave a small, happy squeal.
Lisa Fay looked closer. There was gray in Delfine’s hair. She had never noticed that before. How old could she be, this woman who behaved like a backward child? “Delfine,” she warned. “Don’t mix me up in this.”
“In nothing,” Delfine scoffed. “Miss Mountain!” she chirped, as the group came close. She curtsied.
The Mountain surveyed her blandly, without prejudice, as though she were considering an unexceptional piece of furniture. But when she turned her gaze to Lisa Fay her eyes were backed by malice. “I believe,” she said slowly, “you have something of mine.”
Lisa Fay took an involuntary step back. She glanced warily at the three of them. Then her eyes glazed softly and she gazed past them toward a bird who sat perched on the ugly wire atop the yard wall. A mockingbird, was it? It opened its mouth and let a complicated stream of nonsense flow. There were mockingbirds in her father’s yard in Watsonville, good-sized birds who could snatch a song out of the air and run with it, riff on a melody like a man with a saxophone. Her boy had that in his blood, too. Not just the backyard in Watsonville but the music that motivated Arlyn to pick up his horn and flesh out a tender melody. He had it all, everything she could remember, everything that had happened to her up to his birth, everything Arlyn had given him, all of it running unheard beneath the steady pumping whoosh of his blood as he grew, unaware.
What she would give to see her child.
She turned back to The Mountain. Here’s what she would give: her preference. Until she was released to see him, she would not care what happened to her. She would not let it spawn a reaction, anything the parole board could latch on to as evidence of flawed remorse. She would offer no resistance to their program—their shitty, abominable program of systematic degradation—and they would have no choice but to set her free. That’s all she sought. Earlier, rather than later. Early enough to have some time with her son before he was grown. Lisa Fay sighed. She dropped her shoulders. She said, “No. I don’t believe I do.” And as she watched the dark pupils widen in The Mountain’s eyes, she thought, Go ahead and kill me. I’ll be out of here that much faster.
The Mountain slowly advanced upon her.
“Hey hey hey hey hey!” Delfine aspirated. “This one? She don’t give a flying fork what you believe!” And she insinuated her scrawny little edge-bitten body into the group until she stood just inches from The Mountain. She squared her flimsy shoulders and puffed her little chest.
“Uh,” The Mountain said, a volcanic rumble.
There was a long moment of held breath. No one stood up to The Mountain. She had the power to crush anything in her path. She was large and solid and fatally smart and relentless in her need to subordinate others. She leaned forward slowly, incrementally, toward Delfine. She leaned, Lisa Fay thought stupidly, like an ox that had been bludgeoned but whose bulk has not fully registered the blow. “A flying fork?”
“Yeah,” Delfine whispered. “That too.”
Lisa Fay shut her eyes. The rumble grew. Little Red and Pearlie chimed in with tentative laughter.
Lisa Fay forced herself to look. The Mountain had bent forward far enough to clap her mighty paws around Delfine. She was squeezing her. Delfine was almost absorbed into the bulk of The Mountain’s voluminous breast. And then The Mountain opened her arms and Delfine popped free. The Mountain held something in her hand. She opened her mouth and situated her custom bridgework snug against her gums.
“Me neither,” The Mountain rumbled. Laughter was a seismic event. “Do you, Little Red? Do you, Pearlie?”
No, they answered in tandem, they didn’t give a flying fork either.
Psycho. Freak show. Delfine, you crazy bitch, Lisa Fay thought. You stole her teeth?
She would smuggle Delfine more food tomorrow. She would let her use the toilet first.
But the foot? Not in a million years, Lisa Fay thought. Never again would she let Delfine touch any part of her body, attached or not.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Willow stood with one hand on the back door to the farmhouse and listened to the sounds coming out of the kitchen. It was a Saturday morning in January, the sky was a preposterous blue, and Ruth was singing like a cat in heat. She made up raunchy lyrics to accompany the popular tunes she remembered from her youth, and the boy kept time with kitchen utensils. Not quite music, Willow thought. The song ended and she pulled open the door and stepped inside. More like—cheerful noise.
“Hello, radio listeners.” Ruth grabbed a banana and purred into the makeshift microphone. She winked at Willow over the boy’s head. “That was Methyl Ethyl and the Ketones, doing ‘Get Your Hand Out of My Oven.’ ”
Willow snorted. She looked around at the cloud of dust that engulfed them. “What happened?”
It wasn’t dust, it was flour; and Wrecker was poised at the center of it. He knelt on the stool to be tall enough to lean his weight into the sourdough Ruth had flipped onto the counter. He dug his elbows in and pummeled it with his fists. His eyes flashed blue in a sea of white. Flour ghosted his hair, his exposed skin, the counter, and a good patch of the floor beneath him. He wore a long-sleeved pullover hanging out of a pair of Wrangler dungarees, and a leather belt with cowboy emblems burned into it. They were dusted white, too. “What’s it look like?” he crowed. He was raucous with happiness. “We’re making bread.”
“Mind your manners.” Ruth’s silvery scruff was flour-sprinkled, and a white blaze powdered her ruddy cheekbone.
“Bread,” Willow echoed. “Of course. Need a little more flour, maybe?”
Ruth ignored her sarcasm and shook the paper sack to release a new cloud of white by the boy. Wrecker slapped his hand into the pile and quickly planted a white handprint on the back of her jersey. “You’re it, now.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Keep kneading.” She wheezed her way into a chair and nodded for Willow to pull up another. “He’s a maniac baker, that boy. Better keep your distance.”
“I’ll do that.” Willow wore old work clothes and still managed to look elegant. “I hope you washed your hands,” she called, and his grin showed his front teeth, square and bright and still sharply serrated and enormous in his face. Willow had described them to Lisa Fay. It was a trademark of eight-year-olds, she explained. They looked comical, but they outgrew it. Same way the soft, rubbery flexibility of the boy had turned into compact muscle. Little-animal muscle. Not stretched long like an adolescent’s or bulked up like a man’s, but articulated and vigorous—he was strong, Willow told her. Always had been, Lisa Fay said, her eyes softening with her smile. And, right then, Willow had made up her mind, and handed her the photograph.
She hadn’t been certain she would. Watching the woman’s hungry eyes soak in the sight of her son, she was sure she’d done the right thing. Willow had had to turn away to allow Lisa Fay the privacy of her emotion. It was only later, describing the visit to Melody, that she found herself rethinking her decision. Melody had used words like betrayed. Words like endangered. She had made her sentiments clear.
“Knead that good,” Ruth threatened. Wrecker tore a small section off the dough, rolled it into a lump, and lobbed it at her. She caught it one-handed. “Oh!” She creaked out of her chair and advanced on him. “You are so going to regret that,” and she grabbed him before he could escape. “Bad, bad, bad! And love you for it,” she shouted over his giggles, as she tried to make him eat the dough. It was her steady refrain. The others had leaned on her to choose something more constructive, but Ruth would not be swayed.
Willow had long given up trying. Ruth was on the far side of sixty and was likely to break something if she didn’t quit roughhousing, but nothing would persuade her to change that, either. Her energy with the boy was boundless
and deviant and driven by a heart of gold. Not just the clichéd heart, Willow thought, although she was that, too—she was kind, and sympathetic, and a bit of a pushover. But Ruth’s heart was made of something rawer. Something molten and enflamed. The stunts it inspired were epic. The spud gun? An old can of hair spray, a length of vacuum cleaner pipe, a deafening explosion, and a splotch of smashed potato on the side of the tool shed you could still see, five years later, when the sun shone right. The Eliminizer … Jesus. That one nearly brought in the FBI. These were not escapades dreamed up by a person who ran on ordinary octane. Ruth ran hot where she, Willow, ran cool. Willow understood that. Crank the BTUs up to Ruth’s temperature in Willow’s body and you’d have a shimmering oil spot on the sidewalk where Willow had been standing. Willow reached for the bag at her feet. “By the way,” she said drily. “I forgot to give you this. It’s from my trip.”
The two stopped tussling and watched her draw a brand-new baseball cap from the bag. “Man,” Wrecker muttered, drawing out the syllable. A Giants cap. He reached for it, but Willow tugged it away before he could touch it.
“You’re covered in flour,” she said. “Let me do it.” Willow situated the cap on his head and compressed his hair—thick, unruly hanks of it, buzzed by Ruthie each spring and fall and left to tangle and fall in his eyes the rest of the time—into the woolen dome. She watched him closely for his reaction, but caught nothing more than simple pleasure at the gift. She brushed the white powder from his cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt and stood back to take a look. “Hey, batter, batter. Best-looking player in the lineup.”
“Go get your mitt, hot shot,” Ruthie said, and he slid from the stool and ran to find it. She glanced at Willow. “What’s up for today?”
“Len needs help with something. Wrecker can come with me.”
Ruthie nodded. Unless Johnny Appleseed was around, the boy spent his Saturdays with them. Melody couldn’t get out of her Saturday shift at the Mercantile, and Dreyfus had eighty-sixed Wrecker from the place on days when he didn’t go to school. Too much time on his hands led to trouble, and there’d been witnesses to his misadventures.