by Ninie Hammon
Chapter 12
Joy had slipped Gary a note during third period sophomore English class, the one class they had together, that told him to meet her after school at her car, that it was important.
Now she sat waiting, wondering if he’d come, wondering what on earth she’d do if he didn’t. And what she’d say if he did. Then she saw him, walking casually out to the parking lot, laughing and talking with the other boys on the track team. He was tall, with sandy blonde hair in a crew-cut, a wide smile and white teeth.
At that moment, she hated him.
He opened the passenger side door and slid in.
“What’s up, Joy? Only got a few minutes, then I gotta split.”
“Not here. Close the door.”
She turned the key and the 1953 Buick rumbled to life. Daddy had gotten the car for her on her sixteenth birthday, an adorable dinosaur of a car she’d dubbed Mr. Wilson, after the grumpy old man on the Dennis the Menace television show. The car had a no suspension system whatsoever, and at any speed above fifty miles per hour the steering wheel vibrated so badly you could barely hold onto it. The radio was random. Hit a bump in the road and it would suddenly turn on with the volume pegged all the way up. Sometimes you could control it, turn it off or on, by banging your fist on the dashboard in just the right spot, but the station dial didn’t work at all. The car was basic transportation, nothing more, just so she didn’t have to ride a bus to school.
“Whoa, wait a minute. I got track practice—”
She turned on him. “Yeah, you’re just going on with life aren’t you, not a care in the world. Nothing’s changed for you, while my whole life’s ruined!” She glared at him. “I said, close the door. Now! We’ve got things to talk about and you probably don’t want the rest of the team to hear what I’m about to say to you.”
Gary reached over wordlessly and slammed the door shut. Joy pulled out of the school lot, headed toward the park and drove to the secluded, tree-lined lane in the back corner of it. It was a buzzing piece of teenage real estate on Friday and Saturday nights. Cars full of necking teenagers parked just far enough apart for privacy. That’s where it had happened. That’s where she’d given her virginity to a horny boy who used her grief to seduce her.
She pulled to a stop in the very spot, the best she could remember, where they’d been parked that night, turned off the key, and sat for a moment, collecting herself, facing forward, her eyes fixed on a distant nothing.
“Look, Joy, I—”
“I didn’t bring you out here for you to talk,” she said, still not looking at him. “Nothing you say means squat. I brought you out here to listen.” She turned and faced him. “I am pregnant. Pregnant! Do you have any idea what that means?”
Her voice broke then and she couldn’t continue. She hadn’t meant to cry, never dreamed she would. She fought it fiercely, but for a moment she was robbed of speech.
There was silence as she struggled for control. The hush that fell over the car felt like a giant had dropped a Mason jar down on top of it, sealing it off from every other thing, living or dead, in the universe.
“I’m sorry, Joy,” Gary said. “I really am. But it doesn’t do any good to go ape over it.” He suddenly looked horror-struck. “You don’t think I’m going to … that we’re going to get married, do you? ’Cause I’m telling you right now there is no way, you dig? No way! I’m looking at a basketball scholarship to OSU and I am not about to—”
She found her voice then, cut him off.
“Of course, I don’t want to get married, you idiot,” she growled. “Why would I want to marry you? You’re immature and totally self-centered—don’t care about anybody or anything but … oh never mind.” She suddenly felt tired. Exhausted. Totally wrung out.
“Then… what?”
“I’m getting an abortion.” Abortion. She hadn’t used the word before, not even in her head when she thought about it. It was a harsh, ugly word that lingered with the whiff of a dead animal in the air between them.
“You are?” There was something like awe in his voice.
“Yes, I am. But it costs $200 and I don’t have $200. You’re going to have to pay half.”
“Me?”
It was almost comical how pathetic he sounded.
“Yes, you! What? Do you think it’s just going to be my problem and I’m going to handle it all by myself and not trouble you with any of the ugly details? This is your problem, too. Gary. It’s just as much your problem as it is mine. And you’re going to help me fix it!
“But I don’t have $100. Where am I going to get—?”
“You think I’ve got $100? Don’t sit there like you’re broke, penniless. All I heard last winter was about that stuff—glass packs or whatever you call them—you were going to get for your car. You’ve been saving for months. You’ve got that money.”
“Well, yeah, but I’m not going to—”
“Oh, yes, you are!”
She thought about what Phoebe said: Don’t let him squirm out of it. Phoebe. The class slut. Fury welled up in her, a white lava anger that fired her face red and made her hands shake. And turned her heart to stone.
“Let me see if I can make this clear enough for a first-grader to understand.” She hissed the words at him. “You’re going to get $100 somewhere—I don’t care if you have to hold up a filling station—and you’re going to have it ready for me in cash by tomorrow after school.”
“I can’t—!”
“Because if you don’t …” She leaned toward him and whispered the words in a soft voice louder than a fire alarm. “I’m going to go to your house and tell your parents that you knocked me up! Do you dig?
“You wouldn’t!
“Try me!”
Gary stared at her, stupefied. Emotions skittered across his face like leaves hurried along by an autumn wind.
“I can’t believe you … a preacher’s daughter … would—”
“Would what? Put out for a loser like you? Know what, Gary? I’ve been asking myself that same question for weeks. Now, get out of my car.”
“What?”
“How many things can ‘get out of my car’ mean?”
“You gotta take me back to the school. I got track practice.”
“Then the run will do you good. Out, now! I’ll meet you at the gym door tomorrow at 3:30. And, pal, you better have that money. Or you’re going to find out for yourself what it feels like to have your whole life fall apart.”
His face curled in rage then. “Fine! Okay, fine. I’ll have your blood money.” He grabbed the door handle, jerked it open and leapt out. Then he leaned back in.
“We both know who’s the loser here and it sure ain’t me. You’re a whore! A whore who spreads ’em for anybody’s got a zipper to pull down. And trust me, sweetheart, it just became my civic responsibility to make sure there’s not a kid in Durango County High School who doesn’t know it!”
He slammed the door and disappeared.
She sat for a moment, stunned. Then she let herself be sick, opened the car door and threw up, splattering her lunch in chunks on the pavement. Her eyes watered, her skin went clammy, but she didn’t cry. Hers was a hurt too deep for something as simple and freeing as tears.
* * * * *
Princess stretched out on her back on the bunk in her cell and watched the light fade out of the little path of sky outlined in the high window.
She had lived the past fourteen years in a concrete box eight feet wide and fifteen feet long. It had a bed, like an army cot with a two-inch thick mattress, up against one of the long walls and a beat-up, two-by-three-foot wooden table against the other. The four legs of both were bolted to the floor. The bed had no sheets, just a scratchy wool blanket and no pillow. There was a small shelf above it for Princess’s belongings, if she’d had any. A little wooden, slat-backed chair sat at one end of the table. Even using it as a ladder, it was impossible to see out the little window just below the ten-foot ceiling. Princess had tried.
At the far end of the cell was a commode and sink. In the summertime, the smell of raw sewage often leaked out of the toilet so strong Princess sometimes had to put her mattress over the top of it to close it off. At the other end of the cell was a solid metal door with a slot near the bottom just big enough for a food tray.
Princess knew the cell as intimately as she knew her own body, had examined every inch of it time and time again in the more than a decade it had been her home. She knew the number of lumps on the walls and the size, shape, and location of every scrape in the concrete floor.
There was a large crack in the wall behind the commode, big enough for bugs. Roaches squeezed through it into her cell from time to time. Once, a large brown spider had come to call. She didn’t like the roaches, picked them up carefully and shoved them through the food slot in the door. The spider was another thing altogether. She hated spiders; they made her skin crawl. For the first few years she was in prison, she’d suffered terrible nightmares near every night and most of them had a hairy-legged spider in them somewhere. The problem was, she couldn’t kill it, couldn’t bring herself to smash it with one of the shoes she kept tucked under her bed and never wore. But at the same time, she couldn’t just let it live there, couldn’t go to sleep at night for fear she’d feel it crawling up her leg. Gratefully, the problem solved itself after three sleepless nights. The spider simply died. Natural causes.
Princess lay on the bunk grinning, her body all a-tingle, enjoying the prickly feeling on her skin, the images flitting around in her head like water bugs on a still pond. The Rev was ever’ bit as nice as she knew he would be. Ever’ bit! It was plain to see he was a good man, that he’d been a good husband, a good father. And he was going to bring pictures of his little girl tomorrow!
Princess thought her heart might just swell up and burst out of her chest for the joy in it. Pictures! She reached up to the shelf above her head and retrieved her pictures: a strip with four almost-blank frames that were as crisp and clear in her mind’s eye as the day they’d been taken. These were the only photographs she’d ever held in her hand, though she’d seen plenty on walls, like in the courthouse. The big stone building where she’d been tried for murder had a great hall you passed through on your way to the courtroom and every past governor of Oklahoma had his picture up on the wall there.
She lovingly stroked the empty frame where Angel’s face, all covered in chocolate ice cream, looked out at her with her wide, brown eyes. A slow smile spread over her face.
And as the light waned and night reached out dark arms to embrace the world outside, the inside of a cell on the Long Dark in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary for Women glowed golden. Princess had opened her little treasure box of memories and selected one so bright the light would quickly burn itself out. But that didn’t matter anymore.
She and Angel fly through the purple night while the world sleeps, the warm breeze in their faces dabbed with honeysuckle perfume. The trees, fences, fields, and houses they pass are shrouded in cloaks of full-moon silver, their eyes closed. Now and then, damp tendrils of cool creek mist caress Princess’s cheek with the scent of black mud and wet weeds and dead crawdads.
Angel uses both hands to push her long hair out of her face where the wind has set her curls dancing around her nose. She bats at her hair with her chubby hands and giggles.
“Tickles, Printhess!” she says and smiles. “Whee!”
“Whee!” Princess repeats with a joyous, bubbling laugh as the world flies by outside, silent, dark, and deep.
She drives for hours through the night, bouncing along the dirt roads, farm roads meandering through the Arkansas countryside. Angel laughs when the potholes spring her up above the leather seat. But as the child tires, she no longer notices the wind and the bouncing. She lies over on her side with her head snuggled up against Princess’s leg, yawns, closes her eyes, and falls asleep.
Princess slows down then, watches for the biggest ruts and bumps, tries to smooth out the ride for the angel asleep beside her. She’d been driving aimlessly, with no idea where she was going, just away from Oklahoma, back into Arkansas. But in the deepest ditch of the night, in the silence there, the sleeping child speaks to her softly. Not in her ear. In her head.
Turn here, the child says. And Princess turns there.
This road, take this road, the child directs. Princess follows, winding between fields, splashing through shallow creeks, bumping over cattle guards. She presses on at the direction of the small, warm presence asleep on the seat beside her, a cherubic face obscured by rusty curls.
The morning sun is just beginning to bleach the inky darkness from the sky when they finally come to the river. Princess doesn’t know its name, but she has seen it in her dreams. This is the place. Here she will have to do the unthinkable.
She pulls the car behind a thick hedge of bushes on the hillside above the riverbank across the road from a small building. She turns off the key and feels the sudden roar of silence in her ears. Then the loud silence is replaced by river sounds, water moving slowly, sluggishly.
It is damp here, with a chill in the air. She rolls up her window, eases Angel over in the seat, then clambers over it into the backseat. She moves her knapsack and sets it in the floorboard. Inside the knapsack is what she took with her when she ran off into the night with Angel by her side and all that she has gathered up along the way. It’s everything she will need to do what she has to do—Angel’s lacy, white, store-bought dress, a pair of scissors, and a shiny new ax, sharp as a razor.
Then she rolls up all the car windows except the back window on the driver’s side. She leaves it down so she can hear the river lumber past, smell the damp air.
She reaches over the back of the front seat then and lifts the sleeping child. Angel is as limp as a broken doll and Princess knows she sleeps sound. She could drop her out of her arms onto the seat and it wouldn’t rouse her.
But she is gentle, easy. She sits down in the backseat by the open window and cradles the little girl in her arms. She turns and stretches her legs out on the leather-covered bench and wiggles a little to get comfortable. Then she relaxes.
And with every breath, she concentrates on feeling Angel in her arms. The weight of her. Her warm, soft skin. The smell of her silky hair.
She pats her back softly and sings into her ear quiet, nonsense words borne on strange, haunting melodies. She kisses her forehead or her cheek or her nose between verses.
Angel stirs now and then, wiggles. Once she opens her hand and grasps Princess’s finger and holds on, like she used to do when she was a newborn. Then she sighs and settles, the sweet scent of her warm breath a bouquet in Princess’s face.
The sky grays, molts into pink and shades of pale yellow as it gives birth to the sun again and another day. The last day Princess will ever see or hold or touch or smell the precious child in her arms. She cries then, great heaving, silent sobs that shake her body like her strange fits. She cries until every muscle in her chest is a throbbing agony, until her face and Angel’s hair are soaked in her tears, cries until her throat is raw, her nose is running, and her breath hitches in and out. Cries non-stop, hard, for a solid hour—without so much as a squeak of sound to wake the child, sleeping so soundly that Princess’s shaking body doesn’t rouse her.
She finally cries herself out, weak and empty. Then takes deep, cleansing breaths. That part’s over. Done.
The birds in the nearby trees that started chirping long before the light warmed the sky sing out now in raucous abandon; the world begins to wake. Angel stirs. Her eyes flutter open. She closes them again and dozes off. Princess cradles her. Waiting. After a time, the child opens her eyes again and looks around. Her still groggy gaze finds Princess’s face and she focuses and smiles. She sits up in Princess’s lap and stretches.
“You need to go pee-pee?” Princess asks, and realizes she has cried herself hoarse. The still-sleepy child nods her head up and down, her curls bobbing on her shoulders.
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Princess turns and opens the car door, lifts the child to the ground, then gets out of the car.
“Right here’s fine, sugar.” She pulls the child’s pants down. “Squat, now.” The child obediently squats. Princess makes sure her pants are out of the way. Silence. Then the sound of the stream landing in the dirt. It splashes on Princess’s bare feet but she doesn’t care.
She lifts the child up onto the running board of the car and pulls her pants back up. Then sets her on the car seat.
“Printhess go pee-pee?” Angel asks.
“Uh-huh. You sit right there while I do my business,” she says, then steps away from the car and makes her own warm, yellow puddle.
She gets back into the car, in the backseat with Angel, carful not to cut her foot on the ax lying in the floorboard. And closes the door solidly behind her.
“I’m thirssy,” Angel says, her voice a sing-song whine.
“Don’t you worry ’bout that now. In just a little while, you won’t be thirsty no more, promise.”
Princess takes a deep breath. She knows the child will not understand what she’s about to say, but she says it anyway. Because she has to.
“Sweetie, I’m ’bout to do somethin’ I don’t want to do and you’re not gonna like. And I’m sorry, I am so very sorry.” She thought she was cried out, but her hoarse voice is suddenly tear-thickened again. “I love you more than … life. I love you too much to let …. Less’n I do somethin’, evil’s gonna happen, sure. That’s the way of life—ain’t no changing or fixin’ it. I know, ’cause I tried. So I got to be strong. I got to do what’s best even if it’s hard. Hard and cold and hurtful. The pain of it won’t last but a little while, though, sweetheart. I promise I’ll make it quick. Then it’ll be over and won’t nothing hurt you no more and you can rest easy. You understand?”
Angel shakes her head no and Princess smiles sadly.
“Well, I didn’t ’spect you to. Long’s I do, that’s all that matters.”
She takes a deep, shaky breath. Then another. She suddenly grasps the child and crushes her to her chest with a strangled sob and then releases her.