Hick

by Andrea Portes

  You just throw yourself up into the corner and watch the day burn itself down and watch that pink little hunk of flesh getting moved up down up down and used up, over and over with, and then left alone, all alone, until the next night or the next afternoon or the next set of darlins, when words come out of Eddie sweet, but you don’t have to care about that ever again, cause you can throw yourself across the room and never come back.

  You get all day and night to watch yourself from across the room and daydream and nightdream and daydream some more. Today I got a daydream about rafters and Halloween and candy leftovers.

  My mama, at first, took a shine to Halloween. She tried to participate. she’d buy something, some kind of Sweet-Tarts or Pixy-Stix or whatever was on sale last minute. she’d dress up like a witch with a black dress and pointy hat and paint dark-purple circles under her eyes. she’d sit around like that for hours, next to the candy bowl, ready and set. she’d practice her little witch routine, making up scary voices and different maniacal laughs. Ha ha ha! she’d sit and wait and practice. Hee hee hee! she’d click her nails and re-check her pretend wart.

  But they never came. Not ever. Not a knock or a doorbell or even a prank to acknowledge her effort or the occasion. Just silence, like some unknown, unjustifiable shunning. Nothing. Tammy did that for three years straight and then just stopped. We never said anything to her about it, Dad and me, never mentioned it. We just kept it under wraps that it ever happened at all, like some shamey secret we all felt best to just sweep under the rug.

  So then we stopped bothering to get Candy-Corn or Pixy-Stix or any other such disappointments. We just kind of chose to ignore that day until we just forgot about it altogether, which may account for why, the one time when someone actually did come round, we made such a fiasco of the thing.

  Tammy was out at some dress-up party and my dad was sitting across from me at the kitchen table, reading a shamey-girdle magazine while I played solitaire. The doorbell rang and we looked at each other in stunned silence. Then someone outside yelled, “Trick or treat” and it dawned on us that it was, yup, Halloween and that we were, actually, expected to answer the door. So we kind of shuffled over to the door, side by side, opened it and looked out to find the strangest looking costume you thought must be a joke.

  It was this green plastic deal, in the theme of an insect. It had the head of the insect inflated to about two feet diameter and rigged up above the actual head of the kid, making it look like he had two heads, one on top of the other. One human, one insect. This was made double-strange by the skinny, bug-eyed five-year-old enveloped within the costume, unaccompanied, out in the middle of nowhere in the brisk dark night. He might as well have alit from planet Zorg.

  The green bug said it again: “Trick or treat,” and that sent me searching through the cupboards for an appropriate offering. After what seemed like an eternity of clacking, open and shut possibilities, I finally came up with an artichoke. I hurried back, expectant, with my great solution, and found my dad was giving this kid his shamey-girdle magazine, October issue.

  We dropped these treats into the kid’s sack and smiled, waiting for him to go. But he didn’t. He just stood there staring at us, holding his sack outstretched, looking down into it, confused. Then he turned back slow and walked off into the night, carrying a sack with a shiny new shamey-girdle magazine and an artichoke.

  If you think about that, you can keep yourself busy. Just throw yourself across the room and tell yourself stories.

  That’s what you can do.

  I have a special perfect story, it keeps coming.

  I have a special favorite story where Glenda comes to me inside a bubble and grabs me and flies me down to Mexico inside her bubble-chariot. We pass over canyons, cliffs and coves with beaches slamming down waves into the rocks, with palm trees and white sand. We alight together and she smiles a big red smile with lipstick and flips her hair. She lets me down gently, squeezes my hand and floats away in her shiny plastic bubble, up into the blue sky, between the billowing clouds and up to heaven.

  I wake up to Eddie scurrying around the room. I keep my eyes closed and pretend-sleep, not wanting him to start spouting sweet words, talking gentle and acting rough. All the sudden he grabs the keys off the chair, turns out the light and hurries out. Outside, I hear the gravel crunch under his boots, further and further away. And then the sound of an engine. The truck sits idle for a second, gearing up, then the wheels crunch backwards, off into the night, leaving nothing but silence.

  I try sitting up but it’s no good. He’s got the ropes up, fastened this way and that, some kind of twiny web that seems too thrown together to work. But it works, all right.

  I know what you’re thinking. Where’s all the tears I’m supposed to be crying? Where’s all the feeling sorry for myself, wishing I was never born and wishing I’d just stayed put in the first place?

  I guess the answer is somewhere between Lusk and Jackpot.

  Somewhere between Wyoming and Nevada, by the side of the road next to some tumbleweeds, rocks and dried-up cattle bones, is the person I started out with. Somewhere between the green Million-Dollar Cowboy Bar bathroom and having my skirt hiked up in the brambles and a necklace saying “Hot Stuff,” there was a new replacement me put in and this replacement me can perform miracles.

  You probably get to look at the world in every direction around you, from a vantage point right behind your eyes. But miracle replacement me gets to look down at myself, over myself, under myself. Miracle me can turn into that trapped little fly in the rafters and just sit tight and watch myself, might as well be watching the rodeo, that’s how little replacement me has to do with it. Miracle replacement me could dissect my own insides like a frog in a science class, how bout that?

  And so now that I got miracle replacement me, all the things that might be burbling up and boiling over, all the wanting to melt my skin into a dew and dry my bones up into dust, all of the things that might make for choking up or gagging or crumbling to the ground, all of those things that would tear me from the inside out, just get left somewhere between Lusk and Jackpot, hidden in a jam jar, gathering dust by the side of the road.

  THIRTY–TWO

  My mama had a secret boyfriend. it’s true. Tammy had a secret that she and I kept for three weeks and then three years. This secret had parents from Denmark and sunken eyes and a sharp chin and he didn’t eat meat, not even chicken. He had a funny way of looking round like his skin got wrapped around wrong and he never could put it straight.

  He’d met Tammy years gone by at some dance they had in Lincoln where he’d picked her out of the crowd, just like every other guy in the room, cause she showed me a picture from that night and it was like God himself had dropped her out of his pocket on the way to bigger and better sock-hops in bigger and better climes. There she was in all her icy glory in a sky-blue dress and a tiara, can you believe it? I bet she’s the only girl this side of the Mississippi to have the gumption to put a crown on her own head and walk tall from the farmhouse.

  She had a light coming off her then, like three angel underlings had been hired to follow her around all night and make damn sure you noticed. And it worked cause that sharp-chinned boy from Lincoln picked her out of the crowd, even though he lived on Sheraton Boulevard two doors down from the mayor. Lookit, you wouldn’t drive down Sheraton Boulevard if you knew what was good for you, you’d be shivering in your boots you’d get pulled over just for being poor.

  And it was that night, the night with the light coming off her, that was the only time he saw her. Ever. He saw her just that one night and danced with her just that one dance and she got to leave with his soul stuck inside her purse. And he never forgot it.

  I know cause he told me like it was a Christmas story, in the lobby of the Cornhusker Hotel, when I was nine. He told me he came back that summer, after running off from Lincoln and turning his life into Falcon Crest, he came back that summer just to find her. He came back and tracked her down
through this guy and that friend and the Palmyra High School yearbook.

  He tracked her down and took her to lunch, me tagging along, sitting there looking at the black wood rail of the Cornhusker giant spiral staircase, like Scarlett O’Hara was just about to make an entrance and she’d be my mama and he’d be Ashley. Well, that sunk-eyed secret must’ve liked the way she looked cause he stayed in that Cornhusker for three more weeks and he was just supposed to be there three days.

  “Can you believe it, Luli? He was supposed to leave last Sunday!”

  And my mama didn’t have to walk no more cause now she could just fly everywhere, she could just float across the room and you’d never see her feet touch the ground. it’d be like in two seconds she was gonna grow wings and float up to heaven with those three angel underlings shining that light on her, back on duty.

  And then one day, she said it in a whisper. She said to pack up my little blue suitcase with just the bare essentials, just what I had-to-have-couldn’t-live-without, cause I didn’t have to worry. He’d buy the rest.

  “That’s right, Luli, he’s gonna buy the rest and you’ll see now, we’re gonna have all those things you been circling in the JC Penney catalog . . . you didn’t think I noticed, did ya? Well, I did and now I got em for you, fair and square. Store’s open. Listen, I know it’s scary but you’re gonna make new friends now, all new friends, city friends, and we’ll just write your dad a note, see. it’s okay. He’ll understand. it’s best, Luli. it’s best.”

  And I packed up my little blue suitcase and she packed up her big one and we took the 6:15 bus to Lincoln and stood proud as punch on that train platform cause he was picking us up at seven on the dot, don’t dawdle. She stands there, my mama, like a version of me projected, with her big blue suitcase and blond hair and big blue eyes made of ice. And we waited till seven, then seven-fifteen, then getting restless, but he’ll be here. Then seven-thirty . . . probably traffic . . . then seven forty-five, then eight. Eight? Then she starts to shuffle and she starts to pace and then eight-fifteen. Eight-thirty.

  “Eight-thirty? Well, he musta overslept.” Make a laugh. Make it nervous.

  Then, nine.

  “Is it nine o-’clock, really?” Take the laugh away. Take it back.

  Then ten.

  Ten o-’clock.

  And I just kept my mouth shut when she marched into the station, picked up the payphone and made a call, real quiet. And I just kept my mouth shut when she set down the receiver, still. And I kept my mouth shut all the way home and didn’t try to make a fuss or chitchat or make it better cause if you’d seen her face you’d know why. Maybe you’d think it’d be scrunched up or mad or mean, but it was none of those things . . . It was like she was gone.

  It was like somewhere between that platform and the front stoop steps she’d just flown out of her body and off with Mr. Sharp Chin to that imaginary world with those three angel underlings on the payroll and special knives and forks for supper. It was like she just imaginary ran off with him and left behind a carcass you had to call Tammy that ran on vodka and could only laugh on barstools.

  And she never came back.

  THIRTY–THREE

  When I wake again, Glenda is staring down at me from the green plaid chair, contemplating the ropes and what they mean. She squints out the window and starts talking in a new way. She starts talking in a way you’re supposed to say things in church or to yourself or only to God.

  “This is how he made me.”

  And now I notice her hands are shaking and she just fixes them tight on her lap and keeps still.

  “Right here. This is how I got made. I was your age still . . . spitting image.”

  Her hands clasp to her lap for dear life. Don’t shake. Stop shaking.

  “And he took me here and he kept me here until . . . I couldn’t live without him. it’s weird. The longer I was here I just, I just. I used to tell time by him. Used to tell time by when he was gone. It was like I couldn’t breathe without him. Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want nothing to do without him.”

  And now she’s got her hands on her eyes and she’s just telling it to her palms. Don’t count me anymore. she’s just telling it to her palms.

  “And then, well, he just started doing things you just don’t do. He just started taking it out. I mean, you can’t just sit there and . . . you can’t just sit there.”

  She remembers I’m there now and she comes back.

  “So I left. I left and I knew he’d come after me and I was right. Boy, was I right. He just follows me around now, tracks me down from Memphis to Jackson to Hope. How do you think he got that job there from Lloyd? I walked in and there he was. As fucking usual.”

  It clicks in my head now, that rubber-band moment, with the beer signs all around and explosives buried somewhere deep under the tree lawn frogs and fishponds back at that front lawn in Jackson.

  “And here’s the kicker . . .”

  She laughs now but this is not how you’re supposed to laugh. You’re supposed to laugh with your whole face spread out and all your teeth, not with your eyes filled wet and a forehead that says no hope, no hope ever.

  “There’s not a night I turn the light and don’t see him. Every day. Every night. And a thousand times in between. it’s like trying to get a hug from a scorpion.”

  She laughs real hard now, you could turn this laugh inside out and never find the light in it.

  “But that don’t mean I don’t got him in every cell of my body. That don’t mean I won’t till they put me in the dirt and even then.”

  Forget about the smile. Erase the laugh. that’s gone now.

  “I tell time by him.”

  Show’s over. she’s got her hands back and her body back and her eyes back together.

  “But as long as he’s alive, I ain’t safe . . . and neither are you, kid.”

  “Well, don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine—”

  “Goddamnit, Luli.”

  It comes out of her like a sob before I know that church voice is gone for good.

  “How long you been here?”

  “I dunno. Three days, maybe.”

  She bites her lip, stern.

  “I got some good news for ya, Luli,” she says then. “Believe it or not, I called Campbell and that old geezer made it, kid. He actually made it. Don’t that just beat all?”

  “I guess.”

  Above her, and I hadn’t noticed this before, on the paneled wall behind, is a tiny oil painting, the size of a piece of paper, turned on its side. it’s a picture of that big white arch you always see in Paris, with the road coming out towards you, and all the people walking on the sidewalk, either forwards or away, fuzzy, like it’s raining. I look down from the hurrying Paris folks and see Glenda, biting her nails, assessing my state of disgrace.

  “I’m gonna make it better, okay?”

  I make a nod, but to tell you the truth, there’s nothing to make better anymore. There’s nothing wrong here, even. Not now that I got replaced by the side of the road.

  But she starts rifling through her purse, peering and sorting and throwing back receipts and tissues and lipsticks that keep coming back up, again and again, like they’re on an invisible conveyor belt, turning up everything from last night to that last bar to the bar before that.

  She mumbles something about a knife or scissors or just something to cut with goddamnit. She breathes out hard and comes up with a set of keys, some hairpins, a needle and a safety pin. She gets up without a word, throws the sheets down and starts working on the ropes.

  I watch her in silence, ashamed, not knowing what to say. She doesn’t know I got replaced. She bends over me, squinting at the lock, working and reworking, jimmying this way and that, trying and retrying. She keeps tripping over herself, hurried, wanting to be done, wanting to get the hell out of Dodge and wouldn’t you?

  The lock unhitches and she breathes a sigh of relief, hurried, untangling the ropes around me. Through the flush of he
r cheeks and the rush of her movements, the looming threat of our current situation washes over me and I shudder to think what Eddie would do if he came back and saw this little set-up. He wouldn’t be using sweet words then.

  I start helping Glenda untie. The two of us, like spiders bending over the ropes, unweaving the strings of thresh web and then this one over here and then that one over there. This is the kind of thing you’d give up on if you had a choice.

  Gradual, the ropes cross less and less until they fall off altogether. I go to make a stand but realize something’s wrong with my legs. They’re cramped up, slow, brittle, like they belong to someone else and I am just middle management.

  Glenda starts tearing the room to pieces, some kind of hurricane whirlwind, throwing pillows and drawers to her feet, before she stops on a dime, the eye of the storm, turning back to me.

  “Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?

  “You know, the money, where is it?”

  “I thought you gave it to Eddie, to take me off your hands.”

  “What?”

  “Eddie said you gave it to him to get rid of me.”

  “That fucking snake. I thought you ran off. Motherfucker.”

  “Wull, I thought you didn’t like me no more.”

  “Aw, fuck, kid, I wouldn’t do that. You think I’d do that?”

  “I dunno.”

  “I just fucking knew it. I just fucking knew he’d be here. All over again. Well, fuck him.”