Burn Girl (3 page)

Mo reached across and opened my door. Cold air rushed into the car. “I can't stop you.”

“Don't be mad.”

“Here, take my coat,” she said. “You'll freeze in just your hoodie.”

Mo had been mad at me plenty of times. She just rarely allowed herself to express it for fear it might upset the balance in my precarious world. I shoved my arms into her down coat and kissed her quickly before running across the street toward the motel's entrance.

Dora wasn't in her room so I sat on the cement walkway, my back against her door, until she arrived from her shift at the Manna Soup Kitchen. By the time she found me, it was growing dark. I'd lost feeling in my hands and feet.

“Arlene! My sweet girl!” Dora helped me up and I leaned into her bear hug. She brought a hand up to my unscarred cheek. “Saints in heaven! You're ice cold. Come in right this minute.”

I made a beeline to the heating unit beneath the window. I turned it on high and sat on the vent, grateful for its instant warmth through my jeans.

“I'm sorry I haven't called,” I said. “Things got crazy after …”

“I know, girl. I know. I figured you needed time to adjust to your foster family.”

“Won't be with them much longer,” I said. “Turns out I have an uncle in Texas. He's coming to Durango.”

Dora retrieved a Tupperware container from her large tote bag and poured the contents into a small pot. She set the pot on a hot plate and turned back to me. “You're staying for supper. Tell me about this uncle.”

She sat on the edge of the bed closest to the heater. Her graying hair was wound in two braids twisted into a single bun at the nape of her neck. She'd look grandmotherly except that her skin was satiny with only a few lines around her eyes.

Although Dora must have been exhausted after her shift, she gave me her complete attention, as she always had when we talked. It didn't matter if I was eleven or sixteen. She made me feel that everything coming out of my mouth had to be important.

“Nothing to tell. Haven't met him yet,” I said. “I'm here because I wanted to tell you about Mom's funeral. It's Monday.”

“I figured she was buried by now.” Dora leaned toward me and pushed my hair behind my ears. “There, I can see your beautiful face.”

I blushed even though Dora had always encouraged me to wear my hair off my face. “Why hide your scar? It says you're a survivor,” she'd said. And in her presence, I could allow myself to feel that.

Her room always made me feel safe, like I didn't have to be on guard. Dora didn't use the motel for temporary housing as Mom and I had. She'd been in the same room for years. The manager allowed her to hang pictures and use her own bedding. Her sewing machine occupied the table.

At first, she'd chosen the motel because it made economic sense. There was no way she'd have enough money for first and last months' rent at an apartment, or for utility deposits. She ended up staying, solidifying her role as fairy godmother to the children whose parents were absent, either physically or emotionally.

When she heard the soup bubbling, Dora got up and spooned some into two paper cups. She handed me one and I slurped it dutifully even though I wasn't hungry. The liquid scalded the roof of my mouth.

“I always wondered why you called the police after you found your mom,” she said. “You had to have known things would change. We could have figured something out together.”

“I wasn't really thinking. I just wanted the world to stop.”

“And did it?”

I laughed weakly. “Just the opposite.”

“You could have taken the car and gone anywhere,” she said.

“Where would I have gone? At least here I have you and Mo. And you need the car more than I do.” I couldn't admit to her that a vehicle would make it easier for authorities to track me, should I decide to leave Durango one day. If I could make it to a large city, being on foot would allow me to slip into the shadows, untraceable.

While Dora ate, I showed her the dress and shoes that Mo and I had chosen for Mom. She approved. I laughed when she confirmed that Mom would have liked something shorter.

It was getting dark outside and the temperature would dip below freezing soon. Not wanting Tammy to worry, I called and said I'd stayed over at Mo's for dinner. I couldn't leave just yet. Dora and I snuggled beneath the bedspread and turned on the TV.

It took some time to work up the courage to ask what I'd come to ask. “Did you see anything unusual the night Mom died?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did anyone stop by? Someone you didn't recognize?” My heart pounded in anticipation of her answer.

“What's this about?” She cupped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me to her. I buried my face in her neck. I hadn't cried in front of Jane or Mo or Tammy since Mom's death, but Dora was part of a world they'd never understand. She'd lived with addiction—her own and that of her former partner. She'd been homeless for more years than I'd been alive. Even so, the tears wouldn't fall.

“What if Mom didn't kill herself?”

Dora kissed the top of my head. “Ah, sweet child. It was an accident. Don't read more into it. You'll make yourself sick.”

“But what if someone else was involved?”

Dora stiffened at my question. “You think someone killed your mother?”

I explained that when I found Mom, so much about the room looked wrong. Too much meth had been left behind, as well as paraphernalia I didn't recognize. She wouldn't have had the money to buy it.

And if she'd been with her junkie friends, they'd never have left behind such a stash. But everything I said made me sound more and more pathetic, as if I couldn't face the truth … that I wasn't a good enough reason to fight to stay alive.

I got up from the bed and swung my arms back and forth, trying to shake off the emotion overtaking me because I hadn't gotten the answers I wanted. Dora stood and grabbed both my hands.

“Listen to me. Bad things happen. There doesn't have to be a reason. She died, but you're alive. You have all the chances she never got. And more smarts to boot.”

I smiled when she grabbed my chin for emphasis.

A loud rap startled us both. Dora moved toward the door.

“Leave the chain on,” I said.

“Of course.” She shook her head at my obvious caution.

The door opened just three inches, but enough to see a sliver of Mo's face.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Thought you could use a ride to Tammy's,” she said. “It's getting colder.”

I kissed Dora good-bye and followed Mo back to her warm car. We'd met on a day much colder than this one, when I'd let my guard down and begun to think having a friend was possible. She'd become much more.

CHAPTER 3

FIVE YEARS AGO—MEETING MO

The November wind cut through my jeans. I was too cold to walk to the library so I dropped to the ground and leaned against the dumpster behind the Animas View Motel.

Mom shouldn't have invited those people into our room. She promised she wouldn't, but that was yesterday. She changed her mind a lot and yet I still wanted to believe her.

“Doesn't it stink down there?” The girl's voice carried above the wind. She sat on top of the cinder-block wall at the back edge of the motel parking lot. In hot-pink sweatpants and a purple down jacket, she looked like a Barbie doll on a ski trip.

“Nah,” I called out. I hadn't been able to smell anything since the accident, but I didn't need to tell a stranger that.

Although the wall was at least six feet high, the short girl jumped down like the distance meant nothing, her blond ponytails flying behind her. I stood and brushed the gravel off my jeans.

“You live in the motel?” she asked.

“What's it to you?”

She shrugged. On tiptoes, she peered into the open dumpster. “You lied. It does stink.”

“I'm not a liar.”

“Didn't mean it like that,” she said. “Don't be mad.”

I wondered what she wanted.

“We see you out here a lot,” she said. “But you don't go to school.”

“Who's ‘we'?” I stuck my hands in my jacket and stepped from side to side to stay warm. She must be freezing in those girlie sweatpants.

“Me and my neighbor, Brittany. She says you're white trash and I'm stupid for talking to you.”

“Then why are you?”

“She can't tell me who to be friends with.”

Friends? The girl acted like she already knew me.

“You always have a book, but not today,” she said. “I love reading too.”

“It's too cold to hold a book. You spy on everybody?”

I jumped back when she laughed. She sounded like a donkey, and I couldn't believe such a big noise came out of such a small girl.

“I haven't been spying. I live on the other side of the wall and a few blocks over. I just notice things.”

“Like?”

“Like your face.”

I pulled my hair down over the scar. For those few minutes I'd forgotten about it.

“You don't have to hide it. Were you in an accident?”

I nodded. “Three years ago. In Albuquerque.”

I wasn't supposed to tell anyone where we'd come from, and now I'd told this weird girl who'd been spying on us.

“That's too bad,” she said. “By the way, my name is Mo.”

I was shocked she didn't ask any more questions about the accident.

“Mo's a boy's name,” I said.

“Short for Maureen. It's an old lady name, but my mom said I should like it because it's my grandmother's name. What's yours?”

“Arlie,” I said, giving away a second secret I shouldn't have.

“That's a nickname. What's your real name?”

“Arlene.”

“That's an old lady name too. What are the chances?” She gave another donkey laugh.

“You know, I could bring you the homework assignments I get at school,” Mo said. “Then if you ever go back, you won't be behind. How old are you?”

“I'm eleven,” I said. “Today.”

I'd tried to wake up Mom this morning, to remind her she promised we'd go to the movies to celebrate. She rolled over and said I was wrong, that my birthday was next month.

“Oh, happy birthday!” Mo squealed this time instead of making the donkey noise. “Then we're both in the sixth grade.”

I took her word for it.

“What are you doing to celebrate?” she asked. “Did you open your present yet?”

“I'm saving my present to open tonight after we go out for pizza,” I lied. There'd be no movie or pizza or presents. I just wanted someone to know it really was my birthday.

She looked over my shoulder. “You can go back inside now. They're gone.”

I turned to look. Three men got into a dark blue van and left. If Mo had been watching us for a while, she knew more than Mom would like her to know.

When I turned back to her, she was already skipping toward the wall. The wind drowned out her words, but it sounded like she was singing “Happy Birthday.”

Later, I plopped onto the bed to read. Mom was lying on her side, talking to herself like she normally did when her visitors left. I couldn't make out her words, but I rarely could. Her legs and arms jerked, but I'd stopped worrying about that a long time ago. I folded the bedspread over her like a burrito, partly to keep her warm and partly because I didn't want to look at her.

It was after 8 p.m. when I heard a knock on the door. Even though Mom told me never to answer the door, I asked her if I could. She didn't respond so I took a chance.

I left the chain on and opened the door slowly. No one was there. My eyes moved to the doormat. On it sat a cardboard bakery box from the City Market grocery store directly across the street. I could see through the clear plastic lid to the pink rose decorations on a round cake. The writing on top said:
Happy Birthday, Arlene
.

I ate nearly half of the chocolate cake even though I couldn't enjoy it. A funny metal taste filled my mouth, and I only felt the cake crumbs and the greasy frosting. I couldn't remember what chocolate even tasted like.

Mo was right to call me a liar. Whenever Mom asked me if I could smell anything, I still said no when I really could. I smelled and tasted our old apartment. I smelled and tasted the explosion.

CHAPTER 4

For the last two weeks, I dreamed every night of a never-ending wall of stainless-steel doors, the top row accessible only with a rolling ladder like those found in libraries and bookstores. Behind each door, the dead waited their turn to be drained of blood, washed and clothed by a stranger, laid in a satin-lined casket, and grieved over by tearful loved ones.

In the dream, the room always glowed with a bluish light whose source wasn't apparent. My bare feet ached from the cold of the cement floor, and my white breath fogged my vision. I'd hear Mom screaming for me to let her out, but I didn't know which door to open. When I opened the wrong door, Lloyd's decaying corpse reached for me with bony arms draped in bits of muscle and skin. Sometimes his icy hand wrapped around my throat.

Those few times that I cried out in my sleep, my foster mom would wake and come into my room. She'd say, “Your mama isn't in the mortuary. She's in heaven with God and the angels.”

I didn't tell Tammy about Lloyd's recurring role in my nightmares. But I truly appreciated the comfort she tried to give me on those black nights. The despair I felt came from the fact that Tammy couldn't provide proof of her version of the afterlife. How could she be so certain Mom was in a better place? No matter what Tammy said, Mom was indeed at the mortuary. She'd been waiting behind her steel door for twenty-one days, locked in an ice-cold holding pattern until next of kin could be found. Next of kin with the means to pay for the burial, that is.