Follow Me

by Joanna Scott

  Fuckers, she mouthed, watching the Cadillac pull out into the street. She wished she could have been brave enough to say it aloud, but she couldn’t, even in the privacy of the empty store.

  She hated Benny Patterson with the certainty that he deserved to be hated, though she couldn’t really point to anything particular he’d done to her. But she was sure she had a right to hate him, if only because of his obvious potential for wrongdoing.

  “Dear God.” She let herself say this aloud as she watched the car roll along through the drizzle. Once they’d turned at the intersection and were out of sight, she realized how scared she was, her fingers numb as though from cold, her knees aching. “Turn around,” she sang almost as an instruction to herself as she went back behind the counter to retrieve the key. “Turn around, Lou, turn around.” She double-locked the bolt on the front door. Leaving the last column on the inventory list incomplete, she grabbed her hat and raincoat and headed back through the rear door, an exit she rarely used but chose now because she wanted to avoid the more public State Street, in case the men in the Cadillac circled back around the block.

  The narrow alley behind the store led from State Street and ran between high slat fences to the small parking lot where Sally had left her car. In her befuddlement following Benny’s visit, she’d forgotten that she’d given the car keys to Penny, and that she’d been planning to take the bus. Right then her thoughts were racing through the sequence of things she needed to do: make sure all the lights were out in the store and that there was food in the cat’s dish; lock both the knob and the bolt of the back door, one click signaling that the first lock was secure, the next click signaling that the bolt was in its slot and she could leave, and would, but couldn’t because he — who?— who else?— was dragging her backward through the air, spinning, arm in a vise around her neck, flesh at the wrist, her own hair in her face, and words she hadn’t heard in the longest time, words like slut and bitch and wasn’t she a goddamn cunt who thought… she thought… she thought she could just —

  It was happening too quickly, in jagged flashes, her awareness was blurred by the speed with which the assault took place, the sequence of blows delivered faster than light.

  Fist in the face, bouncing off the hard ridge of her cheekbone. Head propelled down with a yank of her hair. Her whole body twisting in a way she hadn’t known was possible.

  Realization seemed to take forever, but it must have come quickly, for she’d been struck only once before she understood what was happening to her and began stiffening in defense, her strength coming to her in little surges. She slapped away his arm when he tried to hit her again. Whose arm? His arm, of course — his name escaped her right then, or else the fact of it was so clearly useless that she didn’t bother to waste her time identifying him. She knew him without knowing him, this man who was hurting her, his violence fueled by accusatory rage, destruction the only possible way he could conceive to end the action he’d begun.

  He had never forgiven her and never would, the slut, the little whore who’d had the nerve to up and leave him sitting there at the lunch counter in the Fenton Woolworth’s, treating him like shit, taking off without a word when she belonged to him, she was his girl, she was supposed to do what he told her to do, and he hadn’t told her to go, but she’d gone anyway, she’d left him sitting there looking like a complete fool. And then she’d tried to hide from him. She really thought she could hide?

  With the word came another punch, splitting her lip. Hide — what did it mean? It meant pain and the sour, metallic taste of blood and a wrenching force too powerful for her to block. It meant he hated her and wanted to kill her. It meant she hated him and wanted to kill him. It meant she had to get back to her daughter and take her away — to hide her from him, her daughter’s father who was not her daughter’s father, at least not according to the lineage that Sally would have wished for her, for he was not Mole, and since Mole should have been her daughter’s father it meant that he was her father, Mole was, not this man, not the one attacking her, beating her, who, she’d known from the start, had always been capable of this, what he was doing to her now, and why she’d tried to…

  Hide: It meant she had to cover her face, so the next time he hit her his knuckles struck the back of her hand, bouncing her head away from him but not actually hurting her, which only enraged him more, and with a swift movement he yanked her arm away, and though she wanted to scream she didn’t have time, his fist caught her in the mouth, driving into her gullet, shattering bone, filling her vision with a blank darkness that matched the sky.

  There, he’d done it, she thought as she fell to her knees. He’d killed her. But she couldn’t be dead if she could think that she was dead — proof, wasn’t it, that she was still alive enough to be thinking, also to notice the shine of a puddle, though she couldn’t identify the source of the light it was reflecting?

  Where was the light?

  Who cared?

  Not Sally Mole — all she cared about was that she was still alive, and since she was alive then, watch out, she was furious! She had a right to be furious, didn’t she?

  And she had a right to fuel her fury with the indignant certainty that God was on her side. And if He was on her side, then she could appeal to Him, in silence.… Dear God, she was red-hot mad, so please give her strength! She wanted to surprise the man doing this to her with her own power, and she would have succeeded if he weren’t so much stronger, she would have returned the blows and magnified them tenfold if the nature of physical force didn’t rely on such fixed laws.

  Bam, bam, bam! That was the sound of violence in cartoons. But Sally was discovering that in real life the sound of flesh against flesh was far more muted, more of a thumping and shuffling, with the occasional crackling that seemed to come from far away, not from a measurable distance but from another dimension.

  She was on her knees, half on the wet pavement, half on the muddy ridge that ran between the alley and the side of the fence. Her hands were flat on the ground, with the first two fingers of her right hand touching the edge of a rough, rounded object, just a rock, a simple rock the size of a baseball, and in an instant she’d seized it in her hand and with a desperate contortion flung it toward him, heard his grunt that meant the rock had hit its target, though with the sting of drizzle and the blood in her eyes she couldn’t see where the rock hit him or even what he was doing, could feel only that the pinching force on the back of her neck slackened.

  She scrambled to her feet, swinging blindly, knocking his cap off but missing his face. He grabbed her elbow, but she shook free. She would escape him, she would leave him sitting at the counter in Fenton once and for all, that’s what she wanted to do, not to hurt him, only to desert him, and she would have succeeded if he hadn’t caught her from behind and pushed her up against the fence, binding her wrists together against her side with one of his bulky hands and with the other yanking at the collar of her raincoat, even as he promised her in a whisper, his mouth close to her ear, that she’d never get away from him again.

  That old song.

  You can run but you can’t hide.

  Had he said run? Why, she knew that word.

  Run. That was one of the words she’d never forget. Sometimes it was followed by the clattering of shoes on pavement. Sometimes it revealed its meaning with the shush of grass being pushed away from an overgrown path. And sometimes — listen! — it provoked frightful caterwauling.

  Cats, Sally knew, never said meow, nor did any two cats sound exactly alike, no more than two human voices ever matched exactly. The sound that Leo the cat made when he landed on Benny Patterson’s head could not really be conveyed with a decipherable arrangement of letters.

  But Sally could guess what the sound signified and looked up in time to catch a glimpse of Leo leaping from the peaked roof above the door. But she didn’t know he had landed on Benny Patterson until she felt her attacker veer backward. He would have pulled her with him if she hadn’t ripped
herself free of his grasp. He stumbled, tripped over the corner of the step, and as the cat leaped forward, Leo’s weight exacerbated Benny’s fall; he plunged backward, his feet came out from under him, and his head snapped hard against the brick wall of Potter’s Hardware.

  All this thanks to a cat that unbelievably had come to Sally’s rescue. Some crazy things happened in this world, things that sure would seem impossible in any account of them.

  As she watched Benny Patterson roll in agony onto his knees, she understood the danger he presented to her daughter, and her certainty came to her in a full sentence that she almost uttered aloud: he must never know of her existence. Right then it seemed that everything depended upon keeping the child a secret from her father. She must hide her daughter, and in order to do that, she had to… what?

  What does a woman do when the man who has beaten her has himself been injured and is moaning on his knees, cradling his aching head in his hands? Does she offer to help him? Or does she club him with a stick and deliver a fatal blow?

  Of course not. Not at that particular moment, at least. Not when another man was approaching from the parking lot, walking hesitantly at first, picking up his pace when he saw Benny on the ground.

  Then what else should she do?

  Remember that word, run?

  Run, Sally Mole!

  Where to?

  Follow the cat!

  The huge, loping cat, with his big belly jiggling, would have preferred to take his time, but he seemed to understand the urgency. And he knew the way, at least from one end of the alley to the other, to State Street, where Sally could take over the lead while fat Leo ran panting along behind her.

  Run.

  Turn right on Beverly Place, Hamlin Street to Lincoln to the labyrinthine streets between downtown and her apartment, left, no, right, stop, go back, go forward.

  Her lungs burned, and she was trying to blot the blood dribbling from her chin with her raincoat sleeve, but still she ran. She knew how to run. And if she kept running, she’d eventually reach where she wanted to go.

  It felt magical, this ability to fly through the air, her feet barely touching the ground. Forget the absurd fact that a huge cat had come to her rescue and felled the man who’d been pummeling her. That could be attributed to a combination of divine intervention and good luck. But this flight… why, the motion of her legs seemed to have an inexplicable separateness from the rest of her body. If there was anything in her life that could be called a miracle, it would have to begin here, with the simple, miraculous action of running.

  Run, Sally Mole.

  She’s running.

  Look at her go.

  Good-bye, Sally.

  She’ll be back.

  Gurgling sound coming from the downspout of the Tuskee Presbyterian Church. She would remember that sound. She would remember the place on Everett Street where the macadam crust had broken, revealing the checkerboard of old cobblestones underneath. She would remember the haze around the streetlamps on a misty night. She would remember the story Penny told about Father Macklehose and his six pairs of women’s pumps, size nine. She would remember thinking when Penny played the piano that she must have had eyes on her fingertips. She would remember Penny’s meat loaf, her freckles, her talking Appaloos’. She would remember the little boy who would have fallen into the river if she hadn’t saved him.

  She would remember the way a summer breeze would waft through her apartment when she left the front and back doors open, drying her daughter’s damp bangs after a bath. And for some reason, she would remember a magazine article she read about campers who survived a grizzly bear attack.

  And a line in a library book about singing: Pretend your mouth is a rubber band.

  She would remember the set of phrases the book’s author instructed her to repeat: Selfish shellfish, fresh flat fish, sharp shrews sweet shop, and letter.

  Over and over: Letter letter letter letter letter.

  Ma, me, mi, mo, mu.

  How much did you say? My damn hearing aid…

  Month after month…

  Or just gilding the lily…

  But still, you know, she won’t believe you.

  You don’t mind?

  See, it’s dreams that it’s about.

  Peekaboo.

  Now bow your head, like this.

  For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.

  Herein is love.

  Amen.

  The smell of applesauce in a bowl left overnight in the sink. Graham crackers soggy from spilled milk. Lifting fistfuls of cold spaghetti from the colander that night after she and Penny had the whole Campbell family over for dinner.

  And the day she followed the sound of buzzing and discovered a swarm of ground bees in the ivy.

  What about that hairy centipede the size of a small frog. Eek!

  Dreaming about a squirrel perched on the kitchen counter, gnawing on an apple core. Dreaming about missing the bus. Dreaming about Mole, tasting the salt on his skin. Only afterward would she consider how his hands had changed, the nails far too clean and oiled, as if he’d been for a manicure.

  “The test of our capacity for self-government,” intoned Adlai Stevenson from the steps of city hall, “is in our ability to deal with the unknown.”

  Now it’s time to push, Sally. Push!

  Push, pushing, pushing a baby girl, six pounds twelve ounces, into the world. Little Miss America.

  She would remember the variegated edges of a new hybrid lilac in the park, lavender rimmed with white. Her breasts leaking milk while she was ringing up a sale at the cash register. The sound of waves crashing on television. The list she made with her daughter of the places they would visit: Beverly Hills, Coney Island, the Empire State Building, the Grand Canyon, London Bridge, Miami Beach, the North Pole, the Sahara Desert, and Timbuktu.

  I’m yearning for you. I’m yearning for you.

  How she wanted to give the impression that she felt whatever she was singing about. Though no one had to tell her to be careful not to overdo it. Sometimes she wished Penny had been more critical in her coaching. But Penny wouldn’t ever complain. She loved spontaneity too much and was too amused by mistakes to offer advice to avert them.

  The mayor’s wife with her webbed feet. Buddy Potter with his coal black hair. The man who rode into town on a donkey.

  The creaking and rattling as the Ferry Street drawbridge was raised.

  Sliding with Penelope on a flattened cardboard box down a snowy slope after a freak snowstorm in October.

  Again!

  Soup simmering atop the stove. Dandelions yellow one day, gray puffs the next. A child’s growth measured by penciled lines on the wall.

  Listen…

  She listened.

  Running through Tuskee, New York, on the evening of October 23, 1957, with Leo the cat at her heels. She was conscious of the solidity of her body and yet how light she felt, almost weightless. She was running, running, running away, and nothing could hold her back.

  She used the knocker on the front door rather than letting herself into the apartment, and when Penny Campbell appeared she grabbed her, pulling her outside. Penny, roused abruptly into a wild state of disbelief by the sight of her bloodied friend, pushed her away in order to study her and understand what she was seeing. But the only way she could understand the image in front of her was to mistake it for a theatrical deception, as though Sally had put on a ghoul’s costume a week ahead of Halloween.

  “Good God, Sally Mole, what did you do to yourself?”

  Just as Penny was mistaken about Sally, Sally was mistaken about Penny, and the hint of accusation in her friend’s voice threw her into a state of such stunning isolation that she could only stand there blinking, baffled, without any means available to communicate what she was feeling.

  Communication, then, was Penny’s job; from the awful sight in front of her, she surmised that Sally Mole wasn’t pretending to be hurt. “You really are hurt,” she said with simple despe
ration, drawing Sally into her arms. She tried using the fleshy side of her fist to wipe the blood from her friend’s face and then thought better of it and pulled a tissue from the pocket of her shirt. “Poor Sally,” she said, “dear Sally.”

  Her sympathy helped orient Sally, reminding her that she was not alone and enabling her to think clearly enough to decide what she needed to say, first of all to insist that she stay out of sight, for she didn’t want to frighten Penelope, they must be quiet while Sally cleaned herself up. “Shh,” she kept saying, a command that Penny echoed back, “Shh,” in an attempt to reassure her, as though it were in her power to declare that the trouble was over and Sally would be all right. She just needed to let Penny take care of her.

  But the trouble wasn’t over, and there wasn’t time for care, only for a quick wash and a change of clothes, she needed clothes for Penelope, as well, she had to pack a suitcase, but she didn’t have a suitcase of her own, she recalled. Could she borrow Penny’s suitcase?

  Sure, she could borrow whatever she needed — not even borrow. She could have it for keeps, along with anything else, everything else, Penny pledged, only vaguely comprehending that she was saying good-bye to her friend even as she was trying to assist her.

  They had to make their way to the one bathroom at the far end of the apartment. Penelope was watching television, and her own laughter accompanying the loud canned laughter on the show helped to cover up the sound of their shuffling steps as Penny and Sally snuck past the open doorway down the hall.

  The bathroom light switched on by Penny was brutal, too bright and revealing for Sally to endure. She grabbed a towel from the rack and held it over her face, blotting the oozing cuts on her lip and brow. Perhaps sensing her embarrassment, Penny kept her gaze averted and instead of immediately setting out to help Sally wash, she fumbled around in the cabinet for supplies, muttering the list of things she was searching for, “Cotton balls and bandages and tape… the tape… and the peroxide, there should be some in the medicine cabinet, and don’t we have any Mercurochrome, my ma swears by Mercurochrome, I thought about picking up a bottle of it just the other day, and then wouldn’t you know, I forgot, I just forgot, and now all I can find is a box of Band-Aids. That’s a start, but still… did I ever tell you about the time I stitched up a cut on Nestor’s neck —”