Armadillos

by P. K. Lynch

  ‘And you should definitely get some of this.’

  Freak breezed her way round the counters like a millionaire, picking stuff up, trying it, putting it back or keeping it, and the whole time just chatting away. I could practically see her halo.

  Sixty minutes later we were back on the street, our pockets and bags full as they could get without giving us away. Freak had shown me a neat trick. You go to the returns desk saying you’ve seen something in store that you want but the right size isn’t there – so would it be okay to look here? The stuff on the returns rail has already been taken home by somebody so the security tags are off. If you see something in your size you can just slip it in your bag. I took a pair of jeans and she got a dress, as well as some random stuff we were going to sell to her contact, Duke. We giggled on the bus ride home and I joked we were rich enough to have fried chicken every night, but she didn’t get it and I felt like a hick. Seeing my blush, she took my hand, which only made me blush more.

  ‘You know that pink dress?’ she said. ‘I was gonna keep it, but you can have it.’

  ‘How come?’ I asked.

  She shrugged and squeezed my hand. ‘Changed my mind about it, is all.’

  I figured it was because it didn’t have sleeves. She’d learned stuff about me from us sharing a room but she didn’t know yet it worked both ways. She carried a penknife with her which she said was for protection but I knew it was for something else. All those nights I didn’t sleep there was no one and nothing to be looking at but her, and it got me to thinking about Jojo, the way that knife twirled round her palm, the way she dug her nails into her skin, the way a trail of red half-moons sometimes travelled up her arm, the way her fingernails got dark with dried blood.

  One night when Freak was asleep, I took the knife and did myself. I wanted to know what it was like, wanted to feel the escape. The edge of the blade was sharper than any tool hanging on the barn wall back home. I liked the way my flesh bulged on each side of the blade when I laid it flat on me. I wasn’t sure I could do it. When it split my skin, it was almost an accident. And then I pressed just a little bit deeper and drew the blade toward me.

  My blood spilled out, warm and tickly as it circled beneath my arm and dripped onto the floorboards at my feet. For a split second I was back home on the farm, a small girl beneath the kitchen table, watching the bloody juices from meat above drip down to the floor just a few inches away. Then the place where I’d cut began to throb and I realized I had to find a tissue. I cleaned the blade off and tucked the knife back into Freak’s bag. I was done with it.

  The bus hit a pothole and we grabbed each other to keep from falling.

  ‘Remember that guy I told you about?’ Freak said, when we’d settled ourselves back down.

  ‘What guy?’

  ‘The one I run my shopping through. Duke. He’d be happy to meet you, I reckon. Could be good business for both of you.’

  ‘Last time I did business with a guy it didn’t go too well.’

  ‘Will you think about it? Please? For me?’

  That smile again.

  ‘Sure, Freak.’

  We jumped off the bus, my hand still in hers, laughing at some stupid thing or other until we rounded the corner and Freak stopped.

  ‘S’up?’ I said.

  ‘You go in first. Make sure the Beast’s not there.’

  The coast was clear and we raced up the stairs and locked the door behind us.

  ‘Okay, try the dress,’ she said, shoving it at me.

  ‘Now?’ There was nowhere to hide, no screen or even a wardrobe door I could stand behind.

  ‘Silly,’ she said. ‘I seen it all before. Just do it.’

  I turned away from her and pulled my top over my head. I could feel her eyes like hot lasers on my skin. By the time I slipped the dress over my jeans, and shimmied my jeans down my legs, my face was on fire.

  ‘What you so shy for, Aggie? You got a good body.’

  She walked around me, pulling the dress straight where it rode up on my hip.

  Not to sound ungrateful but I wouldn’t have chosen it. It was pink and strappy with a scoop neck and stopped half way down my thigh. Slutty.

  ‘When d’you do that?’ She lifted my arm and ran her finger over my cut. The perfume she’d sprayed on in the store floated beneath my nose. I could almost taste it.

  ‘It was an accident, is all.’

  The heat and her scent made me dizzy. She dropped my arm and pulled up her sleeve. It was worse in daylight. Random slashes going all the way up, bright red lines that could almost be pen marks, and others that were ugly and bumpy where the skin had burst and fixed itself unevenly.

  ‘Freak… ’ My hands flew to touch her but stopped just short.

  From her back pocket she took her knife and flicked it open.

  ‘Give me your arm.’ She said it soft but it was a command. Confused, I shook my head no. My arm raised itself anyway. Her fingers wrapped around me and when she cut, she did it quick. She squeezed the flesh and it came thick and fast and right. Then she did herself, finding a last tiny patch of perfect to destroy.

  She took my hand and led me, shaking, to the floor. We knelt facing each other, the knife forgotten now, and our blood pooling and mixing as it dripped to the wood.

  ‘Sisters now,’ she said.

  She stared so hard at me.

  ‘I never had a sister with blue eyes before.’

  ‘Well, sweet girl, you do now.’

  She wrapped her arm around me and we curled up together like spoons. Her hair slipped over my shoulder like it was my own. I slept the deepest sleep, but when I woke up in the morning, she’d gone.

  Her absence was a real thing I could feel and touch and look at. I lay with my cut arm reaching into her empty space until I was angry with her. Anger was an emotion I could deal with. I made my way to the kitchen, hoping to find her, but there was only Monty and Virginia, fresh from their weird dance ritual in the yard.

  ‘I’m making coffee. Want some?’ Virginia asked. I nodded and said thanks. Virginia gasped as I spooned eight sugars into my cup.

  ‘She’s young. She can take it,’ Monty said.

  ‘It’ll catch up with you,’ Virginia frowned at me. ‘You don’t think so now. What age are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?’

  ‘Ask no questions, she’ll tell you no lies,’ Monty butted in, and I was glad.

  Virginia moved her hand protectively over her flat belly. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘You’ll regret it when you’re forty.’

  ‘Ginny, are you so old you’ve forgotten you can’t talk to teenagers about forty?’ Monty teased. He picked up his guitar and began singing something folky about being ‘forever young’.

  Their voices were annoying, and sounded like they were coming through water. My arm hurt from Freak’s cut. I lay my hand across it and felt her heat still there.

  Virginia took my hand and started to sway with me, right there in the kitchen. I wriggled my way out of her reach.

  ‘I aint much of a dancer,’ I said, and backed off into the corner until the music came to an end and Virginia stopped moving.

  ‘Anyone seen Freak?’ I asked, in the awkward silence that followed their performance, though maybe it was only me feeling awkward. Monty and Virginia exchanged a look. I was liking them less with every passing second.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Always somebody looking for Freak, that’s all,’ said Monty.

  ‘Is everything okay, sweetie?’ Virginia wanted to know.

  ‘Yeah, it’s fine. I know she likes to take off. I was just asking, is all.’

  Virginia poured herself and Monty more coffee. I’d barely touched mine.

  ‘She does this, Aggie. You’ll get used to it.’

  Monty did a gruff little laugh. ‘Yeah, she always turns up again. Like a bad penny.’

  ‘Oh, hush now,’ she said. He shrugged and hid his face behind his coffee mug.

  Yeah. I was liking them less and les
s.

  She came back that night, as it happened.

  ‘I brought you a present,’ she said, looking so shining pleased with herself, it was impossible to stay angry. ‘Close your eyes and put your hands out.’

  Something cool and waxy rolled in the palm of my hand. I opened my eyes and looked down to find a pale blue candle. Its label said Tropical Seabreeze.

  ‘Smell it,’ Freak urged. ‘Is it the same?’

  I cradled the candle beneath my nose and sniffed. My heart sank – it was nothing familiar. For once it would have been nice to tell the truth.

  ‘Wow. It’s exactly the same.’

  She glowed with the compliment. Guilt niggled me.

  ‘It’s just about the nicest thing anyone’s ever got me,’ I told her, which was true. ‘But you don’t have to give me stuff.’ ‘I know that, dummy,’ she said. She smoothed a flyaway piece of hair from my face. Her fingers were light as she tucked it behind my ear. ‘But we’re sisters now. I can give you stuff and you have to take it. It didn’t cost me nothing, anyway.’

  ‘I worried about you when you weren’t there this morning,’ I confessed.

  ‘Why? You my keeper, all of a sudden?’

  The sudden harshness in her voice shocked me.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Of course not.’

  She softened and touched my hair again.

  ‘Shit, Aggie. Don’t be sad.’

  ‘Where you been?’ I asked, sounding pathetic.

  She sighed, like her patience was wearing thin, and when she spoke, her voice was tight.

  ‘Don’t matter where I go, what I do, does it? Long as I come back.’

  She had me pinned in her stare. If I turned my head, it was like her eyes controlled it.

  ‘I guess,’ I said.

  She reached into her bag and pulled out the tiny penknife.

  ‘I’m ready for this,’ said Freak. ‘Are you?’

  Jojo’s knife had a pink handle too. How about that?

  ‘I said are you ready?’

  Freak’s eyes flicked down to my arm and then up again to catch me in that stare of hers. I found myself nodding in agreement.

  12

  Christmas came and went. Ade got us all making paper chains. Some of us liked it better than others. I swear we could have swung to the moon and back on those chains. When it was time to take them down, Ade made us sit and cut the sticky ends off so all the paper could go to compost. There were plenty of grumbles about that and I figured that next year people wouldn’t be so keen to make miles and miles of paper chains.

  Freak kept on with her disappearing acts. I felt like a car without an engine whenever she was gone for more than a day. She’d come back, sometimes with stuff to sell, sometimes not. The presents stopped after that first time, but I was always so pleased to see her, I didn’t even notice.

  I could tell by looking whether or not she needed to cut. It got so that I hoped she would – not that I ever came to like it, but because it made her happy after. She was good at it. She always chose a place no one would see, like my inside thigh or high up my inside arm, and she never did them as big on me as they were on her. Sometimes she watched the blood come out and sometimes she watched my face.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she’d ask. She’d squeeze hard to make the blood come faster. I closed my eyes tight and felt her strong grip, her nails digging in.

  ‘Yes,’ I’d gasp, and she’d let go. She always said thank you after, that she felt better now. As the cuts started to wind their way down my arm, I took to wearing Freak’s long-sleeved tops.

  ‘You gonna get your own clothes any time soon?’ she said one day.

  I had one arm and my head halfway through a yellow sweater.

  ‘You want me to take this off?’

  ‘Not now. You’re practically wearing it already.’

  I put my other arm through and pulled it down.

  ‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘you’re welcome, and all. But they’ll wear out quicker if we’re both wearing them, know what I mean? You should go shopping this week.’

  ‘Sure. What day should we go?’

  ‘Jesus. I aint your babysitter, Aggie.’

  She was right, but her words still hurt me. Everything I’d done since meeting Freak, I’d done with her. It was part of the reason I was so lost without her when she vanished for days at a time. I tended to lay low until she got back. Having a roof over my head had made me soft.

  ‘Anyway, if we split up,’ she continued, ‘we’ll make a bigger haul. I’ll introduce you to Duke, and you can start making money.’

  Money. The word gave me a thrill. Maybe that was all the motivation I needed.

  ‘Go to his bar downtown,’ she continued. ‘You’ll be okay as long as you don’t try to screw him over. One time, this girl I know tried to pass off a silver chain as platinum. He cut her fingers off.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. No, he didn’t. Jesus, you’re so easy to kid.’

  ‘I’d never do that anyway,’ I said.

  ‘I know you wouldn’t. That’s why I’m letting you meet him. He can be a little… out there. Don’t let that put you off. He’s basically harmless.’

  Basically harmless. The words rolled round and around my head until Friday came and I was due to meet him. I’d shopped what I thought was a decent amount of stuff, and Freak had added a couple of her things to bulk it out.

  I was just about to leave when my bag burst open. I bent to repack my merchandise, and when I stood upright, my face just about banged into Marjorie’s boobs.

  ‘Jesus, Marjorie. I didn’t see you.’

  She smelled of cigarette smoke as usual but she seemed different. Kind of mussed up.

  ‘Where’s Freak?’ She put her arm across the door to block my way.

  ‘I don’t know. She don’t tell me where she goes.’

  ‘Tell her I want her gone for good, alright? Tell her that and maybe I’ll let you stay.’

  ‘It aint up to you, Marjorie. Why you want her gone anyway? You hardly see her. She’s never here.’

  Marjorie pushed her face right into mine. There was a faint smell from her mouth, a man smell, the like of which I was too young to know but wasn’t likely to ever forget. Feeling suddenly sick, I covered my nose with my hand as she growled, ‘Don’t matter the reason, freak-friend. Just do it.’

  The door to the kitchen swung open and Ade came out. He seemed kind of startled when he saw us but he gave me a nod as he passed. Marjorie followed him up the stairs and they both disappeared into his room. Marjorie and Ade. No way. Wait till I told Freak. I pushed the sickness back and ran to catch the bus, smug with new knowledge.

  The ride downtown was different to the uptown one. Quieter on the weekend. I clutched my little bundle of goods for sale and thought surely I’d be better off going uptown where all the money was, but Freak wasn’t likely to be wrong.

  The bar was exactly as she’d described it. It sat next to a supermart across the road from a row of empty garages. I pressed the yellow buzzer for the driver to let me off and walked the hundred yards back. Sadie’s Place had big green letters lit up on its roof. Some of them were broken so it looked like it was called Sad Place. If I were Sadie, whoever she was, I’d be pretty pissed with that. Couldn’t have been that the P and the L were broke. Sadie’s ace would have just been too happy for that part of town.

  I’d never been in a proper bar before. A bell above the door jangled my nerves as I entered but no one looked up. It was a dingy little place, pretty empty but it was early yet. A woman behind the counter rubbed glasses with a dish cloth, and a guy with razor cheekbones and a slick white ponytail was sitting at the end of the bar holding a book. His nails were long as claws and painted a pretty sapphire blue. It looked weird on a guy, but I didn’t think it could be classed as totally ‘out there’ like Freak said. Maybe he wasn’t my guy.

  I sat at the bar, ordered a coke and wondered how I was going to do this. In the end, I d
idn’t have to. Blue Claw Man looked over the top of his book and raised an eyebrow at me. I almost choked on my drink. His eyes were red, like the devil.

  Colored contacts, stupid, I told myself.

  Was I Freak’s friend, he asked.

  I managed to nod, and he put the book down – Meditative Weightlifting. He slid from his stool and came over. That’s when I noticed he was wearing a fucking dress. He took my bag, pulled it open and rifled through it. A silver charm bracelet swung on his wrist.

  ‘This it?’ he said.

  ‘There’s a dress in there retails for ninety dollars, mister. Brand new, never been worn. Some jeans too. Retail says they’re a hundred and fifty bucks. Got tags on and everything. There’s other bits too. Freak put some earrings in, mister. It’s a hundred dollars all in and that’s cheap.’

  He looked at me like I’d asked to shit in his bed.

  ‘A hundred dollars?’ he called to the woman behind the bar. She smirked and turned away. ‘A hundred dollars? What am I, a charity or something?’

  He went back to the bag and pulled out a long silk scarf. He held it to his face and closed his eyes while he stroked the tassels. ‘Mmm, soft,’ he said, in a creepy little girl voice. He shoved it back in the bag. ‘That’s the only decent thing in there,’ he told me. Then he opened a little purse hanging around his neck and counted out some bills. ‘A hundred dollars, she says. I tell you what, sweetheart, don’t piss in my ear and tell me it’s raining.’ He threw the cash onto the bar. I picked it up. Forty-five bucks. I didn’t know how to argue. He tossed the bag over his shoulder and made to walk off. His hips rolled like a lady’s and that gave me courage.

  ‘Bag aint included, mister,’ I said.

  He spun round on his heel, holding my mangy rucksack away from his body like it might give him cooties.

  ‘This?’ he sneered. ‘You want this?’

  It was old and dirty and coming apart at the seams. ‘Yeah, mister. It aint the nicest, but it’s mine.’

  He sashayed back, turned the bag upside down over the bar and pulled the stuff out. He held it between his forefinger and thumb and dangled it in front of me, tilting his head back, as though a bad smell floated beneath his nose. I made to take it but he didn’t let go.