by Laura McHugh
I imagined Vice Principal Sorrel getting naked, squeezing his doughy body between the plates of the tanning bed like some messy grilled sandwich.
“I went back up front to the desk, and after a couple minutes I thought I heard something over the racket of the washing machine. I walked toward the tanning room, and the door was cracked open the tiniest bit, and Sorrel was calling my name. Said he was having trouble getting into the bed, could I help him. I was wishing I hadn’t agreed to do his shirts, because he was turning out to be a pain, and he was keeping me from watching my soaps, besides. But I figured for the money, I could help squish his fat ass into the tanning bed, it’d only take a minute. Well, I walked in and there he was, sitting naked on the bed with his dick all hard pointing right at me, and he had this sly look on his face, like he was gonna act either embarrassed or sexy, depending on my reaction.”
“Bess! What did you do?”
“What do you think I did, jump on for a ride? I said, ‘Looks like you’re doing just fine,’ and I went to close the door. I was thinking how I’d burn his shirts up with the iron, get ’em all brown and crispy and he’d never come back.”
“You didn’t, though, did you.”
She sighed. “No. He started bawling before I even got the door closed, started begging me not to tell anybody what he’d done, that he’d misread me and he did that sometimes and he couldn’t seem to help it. I didn’t believe him all the way, but he was pretty pathetic, so I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.” As much as Bess mocked Gabby and her softness for hopeless creatures, she was turning out to be just like her mother in that way, unable to cast aside whatever toothless dog or troubled man crossed her path. “I stood there and listened a minute,” she continued. “And when he saw I wasn’t too freaked out, he calmed down a little, and we kinda started talking.”
“What do you talk about after something like that? Was he sitting there naked the whole time?”
Bess laughed. “He laid his pants across his lap. We talked about his wife a little bit at first. He wasn’t mad at her for leaving, sounded like he was almost kinda relieved, like he didn’t have to keep pretending things were good. He said not to get married without taking a test run first, because he found out too late that her tits were nothing but push-up bras and padding. She was flat as a board and didn’t believe in having sex unless you were trying to make a baby. Then he got all dreamy-eyed and said he didn’t mean any disrespect, but my chest was just perfect, he could tell through my shirt, and he hoped he could find himself a girl like me.”
“I still can’t believe it,” I said. “Sorrel? Didn’t you feel gross with him talking about your boobs like that?”
“I dunno,” she said. “He was kinda growing on me. He’s funny, actually, and there was something about seeing the guy who keeps a big whipping paddle in his office at school all naked and backed in a corner. I liked it, I guess.” She chewed a hangnail. “He asked if I could deliver the shirts to his house when I got off work. He said he’d pay me in cash and maybe we could talk a bit more.”
I was thinking that I would never in a million years go to the vice principal’s house after he showed me his penis, but hadn’t I met Jamie Petree alone on the river and let him touch me to get what I wanted? Whatever Bess had done, she had her reasons.
“I hate to ask what happened at his house,” I said, “because I’m already going to be having nightmares about him naked in the tanning bed. Let me guess, does he have one of those paddles in his bedroom, too?”
Bess’s cheeks flushed.
“No!” I said. “I was kidding. Does he really? Did he try to … Did he want you to … ?”
Bess looked down. “He was playing around with it one time. He thought it’d be funny, and I thought he was just gonna give me a little swat, but it kinda hurt, and I wouldn’t let him do it again.”
Her tone had shifted, and I could tell she wasn’t as confident as she’d been acting. It worried me. “How many times have you been over there?”
She shrugged. “Most days, I guess, the last few weeks. He has cable and air-conditioning, and he always had cigarettes and things for me. It wasn’t all sexual.” The word sexual came out all sticky, like it was hard for her to say. “Sometimes we’d watch movies and stuff. Crank the air and wrap up in blankets and eat a pizza.” She was quiet for a moment. “It didn’t seem like he was into real sex … He had trouble, you know, getting it up for that. It was mostly other stuff, like he wanted to show me how a guy likes a hand job. He asked if I’d ever gotten off with any of the guys I’d been with, and I hadn’t, and he said he wasn’t surprised because most of those younger guys don’t have a clue what they’re doing, they’re sticking fingers in everywhere like they’re looking for crawdads in a mud hole. So he made a sort of game out of trying to make me come, said maybe I’d reward him when he got it right, maybe I’d let him try some other things.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“I dunno. You were busy with Daniel and the whole Cheri thing. I was just having fun, you know. Sometimes it’s fun to have a secret. And it was fun, Luce. I know it sounds weird, but he made me laugh and he listened to me, and the way he touched me—he knew what he was doing. I couldn’t help it, it felt good. I might’ve been picturing Gage when I shut my eyes, but God help me, Gage Petree flopping around on top of me like he was having a seizure didn’t make me feel anything like this.”
We sat there on the porch steps, me wondering what exactly Sorrel had done to make her feel so good but not sure I should ask. I was used to Bess moving into unknown territory ahead of me, but she usually made me feel like I was right there with her, sharing every detail.
“Forget about all that stuff,” Bess said, flipping her hair out of her face. “That’s not the important part. Something happened after I talked to you last. We’re not … seeing each other anymore. I was over at his place the other night. He was drinking tequila, but I didn’t have any because I got sick on it that time at the river, remember?” I nodded. “So he was getting all drunk, and he wanted to fool around, but he wanted to try something different this time. I wondered what it’d be—I was already closing my eyes and thinking about Gage. Well, he went in the bedroom and came out with this old crank telephone. Said he’d hook it up to a battery and put the wires on me, like on my nipples or something, and turn the crank, and it’d feel real good. There was something not quite right about the way he was acting, and the more I thought about it, it didn’t sound fun, it sounded like he wanted to fucking electrocute me. Nobody knew where I was. Nobody knew I’d been seeing him. And that’s about when I started thinking I needed to get the hell out of there. He was real sweet at first, tried to talk me into staying. Said some girls really liked it, he knew I would, too. When I tried to leave, he got in my way, and his face was all red and twisted to where I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought him anything other than ugly, and he said, ‘Do I have to tie you down like that retarded girl?’ I guess he knew by looking at me that he’d screwed up, because he backed off and sort of laughed and said the whole thing was a joke, he was just kidding. I said, ‘Oh yeah, you got me, but I really do need to get home, I told my mom I was dropping off your ironing.’ And I pushed out of there and haven’t been back. Obviously.”
“Cheri,” I said, stunned. “The ‘retarded girl.’ You think he meant Cheri.”
“Who else? I mean, he’s obviously into kinky shit, and he likes younger girls. Maybe he’s the one who had her in that trailer.”
My mind whirled through the possibilities. Did his wife find out? Was that why she left? “Thank God you got out of there,” I said. “Who knows what he would’ve done. Are you worried he’ll come after you?”
“I thought he would at first, yeah,” she said. “But I think he was waiting to see if I’d tell anybody. Probably figured nobody’d believe me.”
“We can’t let him go on
doing stuff like that,” I said. “He can’t be working at a school, around kids.”
“Then we need to find something to pin him to Cheri, because I can’t prove anything we did together. Nobody saw me over there. Probably nobody would believe me, my word against his.”
I knew she was right. And if he’d been worried that there was anything tying him to Cheri’s death, he wouldn’t have let Bess go.
“Well, I have plenty of free time to work on that. No distractions.”
“Hey,” she said, squeezing my knee. “It won’t take Daniel that long to finish school. He’ll come back. They all do.”
I got so tired of hearing that. Not everyone returned to Henbane. Not Janessa Walker. Not Birdie’s sons. And maybe I wouldn’t, either. Maybe I’d see Iowa and keep right on going.
Chapter 22
Gabby
Gabby had always loved new things, and it didn’t have to be anything big, like driving down to Mountain Home and buying a new pair of sneakers at Shoe Carnival. It could just be something different from the usual, the tiniest change in the everyday. Every single thing in Henbane was always the same, and as her brother Rich used to say, Ain’t nothin’ ever good here. You couldn’t see any neighbors from their place, and no neighbors could see them, which reinforced the terrible hopeless feeling that she was all alone, that she could scream her head off and nobody would hear it, nobody would come to see if she was okay. And she wasn’t okay, not that anybody asked. They were poor, that was one thing, but being poor wasn’t enough to make you miserable. It was who you were poor with. She spent the night with a friend in high school and couldn’t believe how good the girl’s folks got along in the rickety trailer they lived in. The dad told jokes over dinner—chipped beef on toast, end-of-the-month staple when you were waiting for new food stamps—and the mom asked all of the kids what the best part of their day was. It made Gabby’s stomach hurt. When the mom turned to her and asked the best part of her day, Gabby lost it. She started bawling, and instead of pretending not to notice, the mom came over and patted her on the arm till the tears let up.
Gabby and her brothers were at the mercy of Dad’s belt, and Mom sat there like a deaf mute, not saying or doing anything so long as she wasn’t the one getting whipped. Gabby was bitter about that but knew their mom had other burdens to bear—they all heard Dad grunting over her in the next room every night. Her oldest brother wanted something to grunt over, too, and Gabby slept in jeans and a buckled belt in hopes that somebody else in the room would wake up by the time he got where he was going. They chopped their own wood for heat and grew their own food, but they were still cold and hungry. She’d make a game of it where she’d relax all the little bits of her body, starting with her fingers and toes and working in toward the center. She had to make herself limp and draw the hurt and want into a tight core inside, each time adding another layer to that core, so that if somebody came along and cut her open, they’d find inside a shining, perfect pearl, hard as any Willy Wonka jawbreaker.
Whenever something new showed up in the holler, it gave her hope that there was a life other than this one, where other things happened, and she might one day be one of those other people doing those other things. Maybe not something better but at least different and new.
Gabby’s mom worked at the sewing factory back then, and the people who’d taken it over needed somebody to watch their cat while they went on Christmas vacation. They were paying twenty bucks for the week, but nobody wanted to do it on principle, because the new owners weren’t locals and had no business taking over the sewing factory. Mom ended up with the cat because she hadn’t said anything either way. So this fluffy white kitten showed up on their kitchen table Christmas Eve in a brand-new carrier that was cleaner than anything else in the house. The kitten’s name was Clancy, and he was their very first overnight guest, ever.
The entire Johnson family sat around the table and watched Clancy strut back and forth. It was obvious right away that this cat was popular and outgoing. If he’d been a person, he would’ve been the football captain who smiled at the outcasts like they were friends, even though they could never be friends. Gabby had the irrational desire to interview Clancy, to ask him what it was like to sleep in a clean new bed, and to find out whether he had carpeting in his house. His food came in cans and smelled better than some things the Johnsons ate. Gabby wanted desperately to please the cat, to be his favorite.
A couple days into his visit, Clancy had gotten all dusty playing in the ashes from the woodstove, and Gabby wanted to see his fur shining white again. She had never before seen a white cat in the holler, and she didn’t want Clancy to start looking like he belonged there, all dull and ragged like the rest of them. Keeping him clean kept him interesting. So she gave Clancy a bath in the kitchen sink using the special cat shampoo the owners had sent along, but as it turned out, Clancy didn’t like his bath like she’d thought he would. When Gabby was done, she wrapped him in a dish towel, planning to carry him to her room and let him dry on the bed. But Clancy sprang out of her arms and landed on the woodstove, yowling in pain before quickly bouncing to the floor. He darted behind the potato bin, and for the rest of his visit, Clancy wanted nothing to do with Gabby. He hid any time she came near.
Gabby never came across another cat like Clancy, but she took solace in the various crippled, tick-infested critters that made their way onto the property. A lame fawn. A coonhound with one eye. An entire litter of kittens dumped in the ditch by the mailbox. They weren’t pretty or clean like Clancy, but neither was she. They didn’t care how desperate she was for their affection because they were desperate, too.
When Lila appeared at Dane’s that first day, Gabby felt that same surge of joy she had felt when Clancy showed up in her kitchen. She’d moved into her own little camper, which at first had been new and exciting and was a definite improvement over living at home. She didn’t have to deal with anyone except herself, and she didn’t mind being cold or hungry in her own private space. But she had that ache again for something new in her life, and new boyfriends were not enough to soothe it.
Lila couldn’t have stood out more if she’d been stuck to a lighted billboard. To Gabby’s eye, she was exotic and sophisticated, a fancy magazine cover model who mistakenly ended up waiting tables in a dive, wearing dumpy clothes. Gabby was so glad to have her there, she’d have carried Lila’s load at work so long as the girl sat there looking mysterious. But Lila wasn’t like that. She was a hard worker, worried about doing a good job. And no matter how worldly—or otherworldly—she appeared, it quickly became clear that she was out of her comfort zone in Henbane.
Gabby felt protective of her, like a mother hen. When Carl Dane walked in, she saw the look in his eyes, like he’d pulled a mermaid up in his net and wasn’t sure he’d be allowed to keep it. He was probably the one guy in all of Henbane who Gabby could stand to have looking at Lila that way. She didn’t know then if Lila would feel the same way about him but wasn’t surprised when she did. Gabby wished somebody would show up to sweep her away, so she jumped into the arms of every guy who crossed her path in case he was the one. She didn’t get the fairy-tale prince Lila got, but she could never be jealous, with the way things turned out.
When Lila told Gabby she was pregnant, Gabby was happy for her. She knew Lila hadn’t meant to trap Carl—he would’ve walked into that trap and begged to stay—but she’d secured herself a good man with a house and a job, without even trying. Gabby couldn’t get why Lila wasn’t happy about it. She just seemed confused. The day after they figured out she was pregnant, Lila told Gabby about the bad feeling she was having. The dark thing in her belly. She wanted to get it out of her. Gabby figured it was some kind of superstition. So she took her friend out to Sarah Cole’s, because if anyone could clear up a superstition, it was Sarah. She was sensitive to things, and Gabby had never known her to be wrong.
Sarah wanted to talk to Lila alone, and when Lila w
alked back out onto the porch not fifteen minutes later, she had her hand low on her belly, and Gabby knew she’d decided to keep the baby.
Chapter 23
Lila
Sarah Cole folded up the hem of my shirt to expose my stomach, then sprinkled dried leaves into her palm and crushed them with her fingers. She added a few drops of amber liquid, like olive oil, and rubbed the concoction over my still-flat belly. Her eyes closed, and a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. We were sitting at her kitchen table, and I wondered momentarily if she was preparing to roast me in the oven like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”
She wiped her hands on her apron and lit a candle. Mumbling words I couldn’t untangle, she dripped wax on a piece of bark and studied it. “I see a scale. She’ll bring balance.” Sarah examined the bark a while longer. “She’s good,” she said finally. “You should keep her.”
“How can you know that?” I asked. “What does all this mean?” I gestured at the mess she’d made. Leaves and wax meant nothing to me.
“I can’t tell you how the truth comes,” she said. “It’s a gift, and I don’t question it.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her any more than I’d believe a palm reader at a carnival, but I wanted her to be right. “You said ‘she.’ You think it’s a girl?”
“I have a feeling. We can try something if you’d like.” She glanced at my hands. “You don’t wear a ring?”
I shook my head. She twisted a ring off her own finger and fetched a length of string from a kitchen drawer. Then she looped the string through the ring to make a pendulum that she dangled over my stomach. The ring swung back and forth. Sarah smiled. “I was right, see? Back and forth is a girl. All mine spun in a circle.”