by Sara Taylor
Ma was a letter writer, though, and she started that summer by asking for pregnancy news and trading memories about growing up Catholic, and Margaret-Mary was happy to share—even with the company of church women twice a week, they lived outside of town and she got lonely at home with no one but an infant for company. She shared a lot about her husband’s church and its philosophies on marriage and childrearing, and though a lot of what she said left a bad taste in Ma’s mouth she kept up the correspondence, trying to judge if Margaret-Mary was safe and happy across hundreds of miles. She hadn’t worried about the kids as much—they were being raised to it, they had never known any other life—in her view it was Margaret-Mary who was stuck, who might one day want to get out. Ma didn’t realize then what might happen when the kids got old enough to think for themselves, that they might decide they wanted out but wouldn’t know that there was an out to want, wanted help but didn’t have anyone to ask for it. Margaret-Mary knew how the world outside her community worked; she could leave if she had to. Her children did not.
When I woke up the next morning it was already closer to lunch than to sunrise, and I felt that sick, hungover way some people do when they eat too much cake too late at night. Ma was sat on the edge of her bed, wet hair straggling down her back and trying to put it up before it dried, on the phone to the mechanic’s but talking quietly to keep from waking me up. Our bankroll was counted out into stacks of twenties on the night table, and I knew she’d been trying to figure out how we were going to pay for the room, the car, the rest of the distance we had to travel and whatever else she had planned. She nodded at me but stayed on the phone while I washed my face and put on my shoes, and when I mouthed “food” at her she handed me a fiver and mouthed “vending machine” back.
Going off nothing but what I could see I could have been back in Florida—same rusted balcony railing, same sad cars, same sorry part of town, but when I closed my eyes I tasted the difference in the heat and the air.
I wandered down to the lobby, nicked an orange from the bowl at reception—it didn’t look like a free-breakfast type of place, but if it was I’d slept past it. I keyed in the code to get a muffin from the machine, but something went wacko and the whole column of snacks dropped, so I got a muffin and a Snickers and a honey bun, two packs of gum and a bag of Doritos. I should maybe have taken it all to the front desk, but the sign on the machine said it was an independent company, so they couldn’t have put it back in anyway. So I left one of the packs of gum—cinnamon, even the smell of it made me sick—in the payout drawer, crammed my largesse into my pockets along with the change, and wandered back out.
I tried to keep casual passing the sign-in desk, but I caught sight of the little spinning carousel of postcards next to the credit-card reader. Before I realized what I was doing I had the change back out and I was asking the bored dude behind the counter if they sold stamps as well.
Daddy—
Still on the move, though coming to an end soon, I think. Stuck in Tex-ass—as you can see from the front—for a few days because of car trouble. Promise that I’ll come find you just as soon as I can, no matter how long it takes. Miss you a lot and think about you all the time—Me.
PS. Promise promise promise I’ll come back—if you move make sure you leave a breadcrumb trail so I can find you.
The receptionist whacked the stamp on—I hate the peel-and-stick ones, licking it was always the best part—and I dropped it in the big mailbox in the parking lot on the way back to our room. Ma was still on the phone, but when she mouthed “change?” at me I tossed her the honey bun and the pack of gum; she looked annoyed, assuming that I’d spent the money, but she ate the bun.
I waited for her to get off the phone, impatient, but when she finally did I wished that she’d stayed on for the rest of the day.
“We’re going to go visit Margaret-Mary this afternoon. She’s sending one of the kids over to pick us up.”
“Can’t I just stay here?” I asked, not daring to kick up a fuss but not quite able to keep a hint of whine out of my voice.
“That would be rude. And she wants us to stay for dinner again.”
I groaned.
“It’s only a few days, Alex. The car should be ready by morning after tomorrow, and then we’ll be out of here. There isn’t anything else to do, and I don’t think she gets much adult company.”
“She made her bed,” I muttered and flung myself back onto my own bed.
“Life made her bed and she’s laying in it the best she knows how. We’ll be out of here before you know it and your bellyaching and dragging your feet isn’t going to make that happen any faster, or make the interim any less painful.” She stood up. “I’m going to go lay in some groceries for breakfasts and lunches—you should be thankful that we’re getting hot dinners ’cause God knows when we’ll be able to afford them on the regular again. Come along or stay here as you want to, but when that van drives up you are getting your ass into it and you will be in a good mood while you do it, is that clear?”
I nodded sullenly, then went and stood in the shower and let the hot water roll over me by the gallon while she shuffled around getting her shoes and keys and things. When the door slammed behind her I relaxed so much I almost fell over. I’d been feeling the grate of constant company like sand against my nerves, and the emptiness of the motel room hit me with force in that moment. And then all of the dirty thoughts that I had been ignoring since Florida out of paranoia that my mother could read my mind hit me as well.
I wanted to take my time with it and really luxuriate in the feeling, but I was so worked up I finished within a minute of beginning, and felt so disappointed that for a moment I almost apologized to myself. But the buzz came back quick, and the second time lasted longer, and by the end of the third round I’d more or less forgiven myself for my lackluster initial performance. Then came another obscenely long shower, then clean clothes and a book on the bed in the room that I had all to myself, but even after sleeping through most of the morning I only got a page or two in before the sound of the door opening woke me up, and I realized that I’d dropped the book off the bed and passed out mid-scene.
The nap hadn’t really improved my outlook on life—sleeping during the day usually leaves me disoriented, if not downright murderous—but Ma wasn’t putting up with anything at the moment, so I kept my mouth shut, ate the lunch she gave me, and got back to the book I’d dropped, trying to distract myself but really waiting for the van to come for us, preoccupied with my fate and unable to think beyond it. I wondered if it would be as bad as the previous evening.
The eldest daughter picked us up, and I got the idea that this was a rare treat for her, getting the privacy of an entire car for the whole drive out from the farm, and being away from work and siblings for so long. She was solid where her mother was slim, and even though she was seventeen the denim jumper she wore and her hair pulled back so cleanly and left so long made her look about twelve years old; she apologized for her mother not fetching us herself, which didn’t bother me a jot. This specimen of Margaret-Mary’s progeny was much more talkative than her older brother; she was still reluctant by normal standards, but compared to the other kids she was positively garrulous. I couldn’t hear much, being in the back seat with the windows open, and I only half paid attention half of the time, but I caught snatches of what she said. Her name was Anna-Maria; her father didn’t like that she was named after the Virgin, but her mother had been insistent. She was the one that was getting married in a few weeks.
I knew Ma was digging for information, but she was doing it carefully. She seemed to relax a bit with the description of the happy family life that Anna-Maria described, though I knew that the investigation was far from over. To keep it from seeming like an inquisition—which I pretty much knew it was, even if we were all pretending otherwise—she told a few stories about how she and Margaret-Mary knew each other, little vignettes from their college days, from which she adeptly edited out all of the l
esbianism, drinking, and drug use.
This visit was better and worse than I had expected. I spent the first hour on the couch next to Ma, trying to see faces in the patterns of the paper on the opposite wall. The second hour was spent following two of the younger boys around the property to look at their goats and chickens and the pig destined to become next year’s dinners, and the third hour crouched in the kitchen again, engaging the baby in deep philosophical conversation while Ma and Mrs. Rue drank herbal tea and Anna-Maria made dinner. I wasn’t sure if Mr. Rue was displeased to have us gracing his table again so soon, or if he was just always grim and standoffish, but this time I could see Ma biting her tongue as he talked about politics, and joked about Mrs. Rue’s housekeeping habits, and discussed plans for Anna’s upcoming wedding. Mr. Rue was very proud of having brokered that. He’d been born and raised in the religious community, had never lived outside the Great State of Texas, and having married someone with such a wild past—even someone that had fully repented, been baptized and turned from worldly ways—had set him back a bit in the eyes of the church members, so the wedding was a coup for him. As for Anna, she couldn’t have done better if Christ himself had come down and slipped a ring onto her finger.
I, of course, said nothing, and the kids said nothing to me. When it came time for us to be taken back to the motel Mr. Rue pumped Ma’s hand enthusiastically, and the silent boy from the night before took the wheel. I could tell that Anna-Maria wanted to be the one to drive us, but there were chores to be done, so her brother was selected to do the honors. Ma had given up on drawing him out of himself by then and the trip was made in a silence as complete as a body ever gets in an aging van on uneven roads.
The silence bled into the motel room; I had expected to debrief a bit before bed, at least hear an emphatic word or two from Ma on the subject of Mr. Rue, but she was quiet through teeth brushing and pajama changing.
“Has it panned out yet?” I asked her.
“Not yet,” she said. “Ask me again day after tomorrow.”
Again I woke at two a.m., and again I stood beside her in the pale moonlight, but this time we didn’t speak. She was capital-T Thinking. I watched her turn a cigarette to ash, and then a second one, then she went back to the room. Whatever it was that was keeping her up, I’d find out when she was ready, or when she couldn’t hold it in any longer. The thought that we only had one more day in that goddamned town comforted me to sleep.
Our last day in Gilead was much like the first, except with the added tension of imminent movement, the pull that migratory birds must feel in the hours before they fly. I was hanging with every nerve on the idea that tomorrow we would leave. In the moment before chance stranded us I had wanted nothing more than a shower and a bed and a little bit of a rest; now I wanted nothing more than to go, to move, to feel the ribbon of miles sliding below me as we closed the distance between ourselves and the mysterious something that my mother was so set upon and yet so casual about reaching.
It’s funny how want changes that way.
Again, at a bit past two in the afternoon, the eldest daughter came to pick us up. Her smile looked plastered on, like badly done fresco that was moments away from peeling off the surface on which it was painted. She made friendly conversation to Ma on the drive, but her tone was too bright, and Ma responded by loosening, softening, trying to put her at ease. Something had changed in the dynamic between them, though she had spent too little time with us for there to be a usual dynamic. I felt like we had sat with her, made this trip with her, over and over, that the brittleness of the conversation was the exception, rather than as equal a candidate for the rule as the ride the day before. Something was going on and I didn’t know what.
On this visit I utterly gave up. During the couch-sitting portion I catnapped against the deep cushions and over dinner I kept my head down, feeling something wound tight in my chest and ready to snap at any moment. Ma’s tactfulness continued throughout the evening, which surprised me a little: I had half expected her, the moment that she no longer had to be perfectly polite, to tell them all exactly what she thought of their way of life and the behavior and attitude of Mrs. Rue’s overbearing husband. If anything, she was even more agreeable, more polite, than she had been on the previous two nights. If I hadn’t known better I would have worried that some degree of brainwashing had gone on, behind my back or right in front of me, and I was about to see my mother convert, get married and settle down, pattern her future after Margaret-Mary. Maybe they’d put something in the water they were giving us. It was a ridiculous thought, but I was still very much relieved when we were dropped off at the motel for our last night in town.
I woke up several times before morning—once during Ma’s two a.m. smoke, and at least two more times in the small hours. The last time I heard birdsong, and saw a paling in the ink-dark sky, and gave up on sleep. When Ma came to I was sitting on the edge of my carefully made bed, my backpack neatly filled and zipped closed at my feet, hair damp from the shower, stomach thrilling with nerves. We were getting the hell out of here.
“Alex, the auto shop doesn’t open for another two hours,” she groaned, and jammed her face into the pillow.
“Breakfast first? There’s a diner across the highway that does all the greasies and coffee for three dollar sixty.”
“Right. Before you get in the car? In this heat?”
“They probably do fruit and pancakes and stuff, too . . .”
She had fallen back asleep.
I wanted to read but I didn’t resurrect my book, hoping that at any moment she would get up and we would be off. When she finally did rise she took her time, showered and braided her hair, easing into the morning like you’d ease into a new jacket with a languor that made me want to scream.
She indulged me with breakfast, but I quickly wished that she hadn’t: I wolfed mine down and then sat while she cut her banana pancakes into small squares, forked them up one at a time, chewed each one slowly with thousand-yard-stare pauses in between. When she put down her fork next to the empty plate and smiled at the waitress I tensed to go, but instead of asking for the check she got another cup of coffee, sugared and stirred it, then set it down. She dug in her pocket then and I hoped she was going for her wallet, but instead she pulled out the cellphone, snapped the back off, slid the flat oblong of battery out of it and dropped it in her shirt pocket, then snapped the back of the phone into place and put it back in her hip pocket, picked up the cup of coffee and blew gently across its surface.
“Whatcha do that for?” I asked.
“I don’t want us to be trackable,” she answered.
“Who would track us?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, sipped at the cup of coffee, stared into space with a placidity that gave no indication that she ever intended to move from that spot again. Annoyed, I remembered all the times that she’d been the one in a hurry and I wanted to slow down, to stay put, and it galled me that she always set the tempo, that what she thought was important took precedence just because she was the parent, the adult. So I was in quite a short temper when she finally got up and paid the bill, closer to lunch than to breakfast time.
I had thought that she’d arranged a ride, that the guy with the tow truck would come fetch us or, at worst, Margaret-Mary and her caravan of kids would give us one last lift and the two of them would have the opportunity to cry on each other’s necks saying goodbye outside the mechanic’s. Instead we walked north to the city limits, stopped by the Welcome! sign, and she stuck out her thumb.
“Is this really a great idea?” I asked.
“You thought it was when you were trying to get back from ’Bama before I knew you were gone,” she sniped. “Are you in some kind of hurry, chickadee?”
“I guess not really. I just don’t want to be here anymore.”
“If you can’t be in the here and now, then where can you be?”
I didn’t get to answer before a woman in a pickup pulled over and we had to hustle
to get in. I was annoyed enough to sit in the truck bed, and she was annoyed enough to let me, so they got to make friendly in private until we hit the mechanic’s.
I tagged along behind as she looked at the station wagon that had been fixed up for us, kicked the tires and listened to the engine, and while she hemmed and hawed I thought for a moment that it wasn’t happening, that we were stuck out there until she found a car she liked at which point the money would have run out and she’d have to take a job to get the cash to buy it—but then she had her backpack off, her plastic bag out, and was counting out a big mass of our bankroll. As relieved as I was to see the money change hands, I felt a flutter of worry at the size of the wad that she put back into her backpack.
The mechanic was kind enough to help us transfer our boxes and bags to the back of the new car, and as we stuffed them in I kept my eye open for the gun, the cigar box, anything I might want to get a closer look at, but Ma kept an eye on me, so I had no opportunity for snooping.
I put my feet up on the dash and we rolled out of there. The weight lifted from my chest, and as we rolled through town on our way out the other side I could concede that it wasn’t that bad of a place, for what it was.
Then, a few miles out of town we turned off the highway, and the weight dropped back into place.
“I thought we were getting on,” I said.
“We are, in a bit.”
“But this is—”
“I know it. We just have one more thing to do.”
I sat in stony silence, feeling my resentment build—until I saw Anna-Maria waiting for us at the end of her driveway. Ma barely slowed enough for her to get the door open and roll into the back seat, hitting the accelerator while the door was still yawning on its hinges.
“You changed your mind,” Anna-Maria said in quiet disbelief.
“That I did,” Ma answered.
CHAPTER XV
The first ten miles or so getting away from Gilead Anna-Maria lay across the floor in the back. I offered her water, apples, granola. She said, “I’m fine, thank you,” kept her eyes on the ceiling and her breath half held, arms crossed and body stiffish like she was laying on the examination table waiting for a doctor she didn’t really trust to come in and get on with things. I wasn’t sure what was happening until Ma pulled over in the middle of nowhere and pulled a set of her own clothes out of her backpack. Anna-Maria wiggled into them in the tight space of the back seat, sliding the jeans on under her skirt and maneuvering the shirt on carefully. She had to turn up the ankles and the sleeves, but once she’d changed she looked like a normal kid, albeit a normal kid from a family so broke they only shopped in the dollar-a-pound Goodwill. Her hands hesitated over her hair, and you could see it in her face how much she didn’t want to, but it was only a moment before she unpinned her cheesecloth cap and crushed it in her fist, like a handful of flower petals.