Armadillos

by P. K. Lynch

  ‘Cy,’ said Jojo. ‘Boots.’

  He put the toes of one foot behind the heel of the other and, one by one, pushed off his boots. Jojo took them and placed them by the back door.

  ‘You want some iced tea?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied.

  I’d forgotten about the dimple in his chin.

  ‘So,’ he smiled. ‘We caught ourselves a little Aggie, huh?’

  His fingers slid down the side of his collar. He pulled it away from his neck, and I caught a glimpse of purple birthmark. I’d forgotten that, too.

  ‘I aint staying.’ I moved round the table as he approached. ‘You stay right where you are, do you hear me?’

  He held his hands up. ‘I’m just taking a seat, Aggie. Tell you what, why don’t you sit down and tell us where you been this past year? We were worried about you.’

  He nodded his thanks as Jojo put a glass of tea in front of him and sat down. His Adam’s apple moved up and down in his throat as he drank. I felt my blush coming on and I looked away.

  ‘You were worried, huh?’ I asked when he’d finished. ‘You ever call the cops? You ever ask in town if anyone had seen me? You ever advertise for me? Or did you just make out like I never existed, like you did with Momma and Ash?’ Jojo stared at her hands, while Cy looked at me blankly. ‘Yeah, I thought so,’ I said. ‘You were worried? Only worry you had was whether or not I’d blow the whistle on what was going on here.’

  Cy frowned. ‘Going on here? What do you mean, Aggie?’

  I looked to Jojo. Her head hung low so I couldn’t see her face. She used her hair like a pair of curtains to hide behind; it was an old trick. ‘You know what I mean, Cy. Don’t make like you don’t.’

  ‘I got no idea what you mean, little Aggie. You know what she means?’ he asked Jojo. She shook her head, and he looked back at me and shrugged. ‘We don’t know what you mean, Aggie.’

  Every Friday, week in, week out.

  ‘Can you be a little clearer?’ He clasped his hands together and leaned forward on the table.

  ‘Jojo, let’s go.’ I tugged on her shirt, but she sat there, weighed down by invisible stones.

  His spiteful eyes never left my face as he slid his arm across the table and took hold of Jojo’s hand.

  ‘Jojo aint going anywhere with you,’ he said.

  ‘Wanna bet?’ I took the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at him.

  He dropped her hand and sprang to his feet. It only made him an easier target. His chair tipped over and Jojo’s head snapped up.

  ‘Put the gun away, Aggie. Put it down,’ she said.

  ‘You touch her one more time, Cy, I swear to God I’ll scatter you around this farm in tiny fucking pieces.’

  Jojo stood up and moved in front of him, her arms spread wide to protect him.

  ‘Out of my way, Jojo. I’m ending this right now.’

  ‘No, Aggie. Please, you can’t. You can’t kill him.’

  Tucked safe behind her, he was all but laughing at me. That smile: the white, uneven teeth. He flicked his tongue out at me like a lizard. I pulled the safety off.

  ‘Jojo, move out the way or so help me I will shoot you down. I swear to God, I came here for this and I aint leaving until it’s done.’

  ‘You aint shooting nobody, Aggie,’ he sneered. ‘Not when you learn what I got to tell you.’

  Jojo turned and fell against him. ‘Cy, don’t. I’m begging you. Please.’

  His hands were on her shoulders, pushing her away. She pressed forward, punched his chest with feeble fists, begged him to keep quiet. He lifted his head higher, eyes wider than a mad bull, and jutted his chin forward. His lips moved slowly as his tongue gave shape to words that sounded like they were coming from inside my own head, an echo of something I’d heard before: You aint gonna shoot your own momma now, are you?

  Everything fell away. The wallpaper peeled itself. All the walls of that little house crumbled away to dust. Me and Jojo were standing in the desert with nothing but sky walls.

  You aint gonna shoot your own momma now, are you?

  Jojo whipped back round to me, her voice barely more than a breath. ‘He’s lying, Aggie. Don’t you believe him. He’s a liar.’

  My hands squeezed the grip of the gun, one tightly curled finger tempting the trigger.

  ‘Aggie, he’s lying.’

  ‘Shut up!’ I yelled.

  The way she doted on me when we were little, the way she got me reading when Pop and Cy laughed at us, how she never went anywhere, never left me alone when the men were around. Not until she absolutely had to. The way she tucked me into bed at night, the way she sang sweet songs and baked pies and made secret birthday cards only for me, even though we didn’t do that shit in our house. The way she taught me to climb, even though she said it scared her to see me do it. The way she was only twenty-eight but looked twenty years older. The way she was and the way she did, all of that told me what Cy said was true.

  The way she stood in front of him now. That didn’t make sense.

  The gun was shaking in my hand. I struggled to keep my voice steady. ‘Get out of my way, Jojo.’

  ‘You can’t kill him, Aggie. You can’t. Please don’t.’ And she broke down in tears, shielding him, protecting him with her body. ‘Don’t kill him, Aggie. Please, please, please.’

  Her face folded as she turned round so her body was once more against his, but there was no punching this time. With one hand she clung to his neck, the other she slipped into his. Their fingers entwined. Her head burrowed into his chest, and when he put his arm around her he held her so sweet, but when he lifted his eyes to mine all I saw was deep burning shame.

  No one spoke for a long time. I stood with my back to the fire place, gun in hand, seeing their sorry situation, and the door behind them which led back to the real world.

  ‘Momma? Huh.’ I hated the crack in my voice as I broke the silence. Breaking silence with brokenness.

  Jojo’s sobs came fresh again. She took a seat at the table, laid her head on her arms and let the grief take over. Her whole body rippled as the tears surged forward. The dam was busted. Cy rested his hand on Jojo’s back. He looked around him, as though an answer to the situation might present itself, ripe for plucking, straight from the very air. He puckered his lips in a tuneless whistle.

  ‘Who are you then?’ I asked him, hatred making me brave. ‘You my daddy?’

  Jojo lifted her head. ‘Hell, no, Aggie. Don’t be sick,’ she moaned. I laughed and they looked at me like I was crazy. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words couldn’t get out. I stayed on my feet and rocked myself back and forth.

  The door remained open and night came down. The only sounds were Jojo’s sobs and the occasional creak of her chair, played along to the backtrack of the crickets outside.

  I sat down in the armchair, sinking into it the way I always had, though now you could feel the springs beneath forcing their way up. I reached down and ripped the loose brocade. The fringe came loose in my hand. Maybe I’d have my crown after all. The question formed itself and was out before I recognized it.

  ‘Who was Marilyn if she aint my momma?’

  It took her a mighty effort to sit up straight and look at me. ‘She was my momma, baby. And Cy’s. And Ash’s,’ she said in a hoarse, strangled whisper.

  ‘Who was she to me?’ I dangled the gold fringe in front of my eyes and looked at the stain on the floor. My voice was coming from far off.

  ‘She was your grandmother, baby.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ Through the fringe the dark patch in the wood seemed to change shape.

  ‘She loved you so much, baby…’

  ‘I said, what happened to her?’ I dropped the fringe in my lap. I couldn’t take my eyes off the stain.

  Jojo reached for her pack of cigarettes. She shook her head and tapped one on the box, flipping it over and over, before leaning in to catch a light from Cy’s waiting Bic. He put his hand on her arm but she shrugg
ed him off. Satisfaction sparked and died in me. She glanced up through the thin cloud of smoke and said, ‘I always wondered what you could remember.’

  ‘Josephine…’ A heavy warning note in his tone.

  ‘What?’ she snapped back. ‘Don’t she deserve to know?’

  And then she smoked her cigarette and told me all about it, though in truth, some part of me had always known.

  It was a Friday winter’s night. The snow had come and everything was locked up and shut down on the farm. Pop had cleared the track and put the chains on the truck for Momma, who had a meeting at the church in town. Jojo stayed behind with me because I had a fever. Pop fabricated some slight Cy and Ash had caused him and they were sent to their room. I was asleep on the armchair so Pop and Jojo could keep an eye on me, dead to the world.

  Momma got to the church to find the meeting had been cancelled due to illness, and she turned right around and came home. New snow was falling. The night was pretty.

  She inched the truck back up the track, stopping a little further back than normal. Through the curtains in the upstairs window she saw the silhouettes of Cy and Ash brawling. She put the truck into park, switched off the lights and picked up her bag and the ring binder of paperwork that she’d brought for the meeting.

  Her footsteps fell soft in the fresh whiteness. She hurried to the house as best she could, keeping her eyes on her fighting boys upstairs, keen to separate them. As she opened the door, the ring binder slipped and paper flew across the floor. She bent down to pick it up and that’s when she heard it, the familiar grunt, the heavy breathing. And then something else, a lighter voice.

  Father, I am Your child. I am filled with Your Spirit. I believe that I am healed now, in the Name of Jesus. Father, I am Your child, I am filled with Your Spirit. I believe I am healed now.

  She crawled the two feet along the floor and pushed open the door to the kitchen. She saw her husband leaning over the kitchen table, his work pants hanging loose on his backside; she saw the urgent back and forth of his hips, and there, between the rumpled denim of his legs, she saw the thin white ankles of her only daughter. She didn’t see the sleeping toddler.

  The sound that came from her was like an animal in a trap. When he heard it, he jumped back like the trap’s spring. Jojo remained where she was: legs spread, belly down, hands wrapped around the Holy Bible he made us read from while he did his filth. She couldn’t even turn her face to look into her mother’s eyes, just in case her mother looked there and saw that Jojo had heard the truck, had heard her mother approach, had wanted her mother to find them.

  It was a skillet. It was a cast-iron skillet that had been passed down through the years. It was too heavy for her to use effectively. He disarmed her easily, and with one blow she was dead on the floor. Jojo’s screaming woke the baby.

  ‘It was an accident,’ said Cy.

  I remembered. The only time I saw Pop doing woman’s work. He was trying to scrub away the blood. I looked at the dark patch. The stain. All he’d done was push it in deeper. I tore my eyes from it to Jojo. For some weird reason she was smiling at me.

  ‘But the good thing,’ she said. ‘The one good thing that came out of it was I reclaimed you.’

  A moth landed on my cheek. I shook my head and it flew away. The ceiling was crawling with dozens of insects that had been drawn to the kitchen lights through the open door. I’d been here for hours, I realized. Marjorie was probably long gone.

  ‘You reclaimed me?’

  She got up and walked round to my side of the table, motivated, I suppose, by her new-found maternal role.

  ‘I told Momma your daddy was a boy passing through town and she took you for hers, Aggie. We told everybody you were hers. At first, she didn’t take to you. She was mad with me. If it ever got out it would have brought so much shame on the house. But you won her over, sweetheart.’

  Every time she called me sweetheart, or baby, I wanted to explode.

  ‘I used to get so jealous, Aggie. You were mine. You were the only thing I wanted. I earned you. I birthed you. And I couldn’t get near you. I couldn’t get near and now…’ Her voice trailed off and her eyes drifted to Cy, who was looking anywhere but us.

  ‘Is that why you didn’t stop it when you heard the truck coming back?’ I knew that wasn’t the reason but I wanted to stick the knife in. I wanted to twist it, too. Her pained face told me I’d struck home. Her eyes filled with fresh tears. Seemed they’d never stop coming.

  ‘I didn’t stop him when I heard the truck, Aggie,’ she said, her voice strangled, ‘because I thought she would.’

  None of us dared to close the open door. It remained wide all night long and the insects continued to pour in. Cy moved to the sofa. Next time I looked at him he was fast asleep. I wasn’t sorry to lose his contributions to the conversation.

  ‘And him,’ I said. ‘What about him?’

  She wouldn’t look me in the eye. I leveled the gun at him for a second and then dropped it. We were both exhausted. She didn’t even react.

  ‘What about him?’ I said again, drunk on tiredness. ‘You got a twisted little thing going on with him, haven’t you? A twisted little sub thing.’

  I tried to guess what she’d come out with. He’s the only one who understands, I was lonely without you, I didn’t mean for it to happen.

  At last, she raised her eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, simply.

  I saw it then, what I’d seen in him earlier. The shame, the loathing, the desire, the need. I understood, because I hated her as much as I loved her.

  ‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘Just you. Leave this. Leave it all behind. Just walk away. We can make it work. I want to make it work.’

  She smiled and I had her. She locked onto me and the future was real: building a home, knocking on doors to sell rubber armadillos, making money. Making a life. Becoming a person.

  We stared at each other for the longest time. And then she looked at him, asleep on the sofa, new growth all over his face. At last she turned back to me with drowned eyes and said, ‘It aint that easy, you know, Aggie.’

  The sun was rising when I fell out the front door and stumbled my way down the track. This time I didn’t stop to look back. When I reached the brow of the hill and saw Oprah still sitting there, tears poured out of me in gratitude.

  Marj was snoozing but she jumped awake when I pulled the door open. She took one look at me, turned the key and we were away. After about forty miles of crying, I said, ‘I should have killed them, Marj. I should have killed them both. Turn the car round. Turn it round.’

  ‘Hell, no, child. I aint taking you back there.’

  And the tears kept coming. Seemed I’d had the ocean in me that whole damn time.

  Marj put her foot down and we went fast and faster, trying to outrun the old world.

  28

  So now I’m thinking how I still got those two bullets. Sharp, golden, little straight-through-the-brain fuck-you-ups. I rattle them together in my palm sometimes. Click, click. The reality, of course, is I need three of them. Four, even, if I count my own sorry soul. I could get them. Maybe one day I will. Maybe one day I’ll go back there and shake them up. Blow the roof off their warped existence. Their twisted little sub world.

  Maybe.

  Ha.

  Let God be my guide.

  We’re breathing in the rust and the dust. We walk above the bones of the dead; they hold us up; they’re sharp enough to keep us moving. And this land; this land with all its unexploded secrets is such a beautiful place. The sun sinks lower, the leaves come down, the snow lays thick over everything. Way down deep, little buds fight to grow.

  Acknowledgements

  As I sit down to write the acknowledgements for Armadillos, it seems to me that this is the literary equivalent of an Oscar speech. So thank you, God. Thank you, parents.

  Other strong supporting characters are, in order of appearance:

  Mary Gladstone, for providing the writing exercise
that gave birth to Armadillos. The sentence I created in her class is no longer in the book, but its spirit survives.

  My MLitt classmates at the University of Glasgow, and Elizabeth Reeder, an amazing tutor whose encouragement and support was invaluable.

  Sceptre, for providing me with the opportunity to visit Texas, without which I would not have completed Armadillos.

  John Murphy, for being an excellent host in Texas, and teaching me that shooting ranges and hangovers don’t mix.

  Thank you to my early readers, Xenia Schiller and James Carson, and to my writing girlfriends: Tania Cheston, Fiona Gibson, Hilary Hiram, Vicki Fever, Amanda McLean and Samantha McShane. A more supportive writing group there never was.

  I owe a great deal to my talented agent, Donald Winchester. I’m very fortunate he found me. Thanks also to my eagle-eyed editor, Lauren Parsons, and all at Legend Press.

  Thanks also to Al at Canongate Studios, Edinburgh, and the fine voices of Robin Laing, Helen McAlpine, and James MacKenzie.

  And lastly, to my family. My eternal gratitude for your love, patience, and unwavering belief.

  How it all started...

  I don’t remember a time when I didn’t tell stories, even if they were only to myself. One of my earliest memories is walking into a room and seeing a giant hole in the floor into which I would disappear if someone didn’t rescue me straight away. My screams brought my parents running. They weren’t impressed. It must have been a happy day for everyone when I learned how to write.

  Unsurprisingly, I grew up to be an actor. And so began a long journey, telling many stories, living many lives, some of them lasting perhaps only a single day on a TV set, or months and months of finding a twist on the same yarn told on a nightly basis in a theatre somewhere. It’s a wonderful life, but not one that’s particularly conducive to having a family. After the birth of my first son, I picked up my pen and wrote again. For me, writing is acting, except in a chair.

  Prior to Armadillos, I focussed on writing drama, but after the birth of my second son I wanted to explore other genres and so I undertook a variety of classes. There came a point when the only one left to try was ‘Get Ready to Write Your First Novel’. The idea of writing a novel was so laughable, I almost didn’t sign up. And yet, much as I adored life at home with my new baby, I knew I had to keep being creative or I would return to my toddler habit of imagining huge black holes in my living room.