Wire Mesh Mothers (14 page)

“Got it!” She slid down the corkscrew slide in the center of the tower with the balloon in her lap and joined Buddy in the shadows. He was sitting on his butt in the grass, chewing on clover. There was green drool at the corners of his mouth.

“You look sick,” said Angela.

“Yeah. Let’s suck the helium.”

Angela bit at the knot on the string, pulling it loose and spitting it off onto her leg. She put the lip of the balloon in her mouth and inhaled deeply, just like she did with her mother’s cigarettes. The funny-tasting gas filled her lungs. She pulled the balloon way, pinching the lip shut, and said, “Hello. My name is Angela
Petinske
. What’s your name?” It was a foreign voice, pinched and cartoony.

Buddy howled. He grabbed for the balloon and Angela slapped him away. Then she handed it to him. He sucked helium.

“My name is Buddy Via and I hate school, don’t you? Ha
ha
ha
ha
!” he said.

They took turns sucking and speaking, each one trying to make their sentence a little longer than the last. Angela felt light-headed and good. Screw the Spring Fling and the pussies who got their faces painted. This was better.

Until a teacher outside the tower said, “Rob, is that the girl?”

Angela jumped a mile and let go of the balloon. It sputtered and wheezed, then dropped beside her lap like a dead, pink puppy. Outside in the sunlight stood the new fourth grade teacher Mrs. McDolen and a little boy with a ball cap and brand new Nikes. His eyebrows were drawn together and his index finger was shaking in Angela’s direction.

Angela didn’t wait. She jumped to her feet and stared through the wooden slats of the tower. “What you saying, boy? The girl who what? Huh?” Buddy sat, watching, in the grass.

“Come out here so we may speak,” said the teacher calmly.

May speak.
Only teachers talked like that. It drove a burr into Angela’s spine. She crawled out through the slats and stood, arms to her side and feet slightly apart. “Okay. Speak,” she said.

“Watch your tone,” said the teacher. “Rob said you stole his balloon.”

Angela’s mouth dropped open. “That’s total bull!” she said. “I found it!”

The teacher held out her hand while Rob twisted the toe of his Nike in the dirt. Angela was suddenly conscious of her flip-flops and wanted to stomp him in the head with them.

Buddy poked the deflated balloon out through the slats. Angela would not pick it up. The teacher did. “I see clearly now,” she said, turning it over, “Look. Rob’s got his name on it.”

“Huh!” said Angela.

“Ooh, Angela,
stealin
’ a little boy’s balloon,” taunted Buddy.

Angela looked at the balloon. In small, black marker was written “Rob Forrester.” She shrugged.

“So? He lost it,” said Angela. “
Finder’s
keepers.”

“I din’ lose it,” whined Rob. “You took it!”

The teacher pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear and put her hands on her hips. Angela put her hands on her hips. “Don’t mock me,” said the teacher.

“Don’t mock me,” said Angela. “’Cause I didn’t steal
nothin
’.”

“You did!” wailed Rob.

“Bullshit!” said Angela.

The teacher looked as shocked as if she’d stepped into a pile of that very stuff.

Five minutes later, Angela was sitting on the bench in the office. Ten minutes later, she was in the office with the principal, listening to him talk about respect for peer and adults and then to him tell her she would sit in detention all day Monday.

Angela gave the bitch Mrs. McDolen the hairy eyeball for the remainder of the school year, all six days of it. And then she went on to Gabriel Archer Middle School and never had to look at her again.

Until now.

She remembered.

This was the teacher. Sitting at the wheel of her rich-ass white car in her rich-ass shoes, looking surprised that there was a little girl hiding under a quilt in her back seat. This would be good.

“I see now,” Tony said.

The teacher’s mouth opened and closed. Her eyes were wide and twitching.
 

“What you into, teacher? Little girls? Got a little girl in the back of your car for when you get an urge?”

“How dare you!”

Tony slapped the teacher soundly across the mouth. The teacher sobbed, once, then bared her teeth like a dog. It was hysterical and Tony laughed aloud.

Then she studied the girl in the back seat. She was about seven or so, a mess, all snotty and sweaty and wearing some kind of trash. She was covered in brown goo, what Tony hoped was candy and not something else.

“What are you doing in here?” Tony asked.

The little girl rubbed her crotch.

“Oh, yeah, I see,” said Tony. She turned back around and put both feet on the dashboard. She tapped the teacher on the arm with the pistol. “You got a little secret there, huh, teacher-woman?”

The teacher was scrambling for something to say. It crawled all over her face, and then, “I was taking her home for the afternoon. Her mother gave me permission to….”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “Whatever. You can tell me later, we’ll save that up, how about that? Good bed time story.”

“No,” said the teacher. “No, listen to me now.”

“I don’t have to. You know how to get to Texas?”

“I. Well, of course, but….”

“Drive.”

The teacher backed the car around, and then maneuvered through the thick of pines back to Route 58. On the road, the teacher didn’t even have to ask which way to turn. She went right, and drove in silence to the turn off onto Route 35 a mile outside Courtland. She put on her blinker and turned south. Eight miles to North Carolina. A couple thousand at least to Texas.

Burton was in Texas. He had moved there long ago when
Lorilynn
Petinske
had sent him away without his pistol or his sofa.

Texas. Where the real Tony had stood tall and unmoving beneath the elms.

Tony leaned against the passenger’s door and studied her two traveling mates. Two fucked-up females.

And Tony in charge, completely, for the first time in her life.

This was going to be the most excitement she’d ever had. This was going to be a ride to remember.

R
eal life.

This is real life. It is happening.

Kate checked the rearview mirror, then glanced over at the teenager leaning on the passenger’s door. They had crossed into North Carolina several minutes ago. The girl had been silent all those many, few minutes. On both sides of the road, pines held sentinel, oblivious to the insanity passing them by. It was after five, and the gray sky was darkening with the nearing of dusk. Kate turned on the headlights, but the girl shook her head and Kate turned them back off. The sleet on the road was slush now.

If ever there was a time that things shouldn’t be real life, this would be it. If ever there was a time for a quick and amazing rescue out of the wild blue yonder, by Arnold or Bruce or even one of those motorcycle guys from
CHiPS
, it was now.

In the back seat, Mistie was playing with a wrapper from several Tootsie Rolls. The girl had tossed them to her, and had laughed when Mistie had unwrapped all three and put all three in her mouth at once. Mistie didn’t seem bothered by the laughter. She didn’t look startled anymore by the presence of the teenager. She only seemed intent on consuming the rolls of chocolate.

In the fields between the forests, little houses had prepared for evening. Porch lights dotted doorways; shades had been drawn. Many of the homes were outlined in Christmas lights. Some small bushes were likewise decorated, and there were the expected plastic Nativities, and shiny reindeer loping motionlessly across lawns. Smoke curled from chimneys and stacks, rising just above the roofs and holding there in swirls of tainted ribbon, awaiting the next sleet or snow. In side-yard pens and corrals, horses and cows, coats sugar-coated in sleet, nosed through the remnants of hay bales and melting salt blocks, snuffling up the last before morning. Inside the doorway of one well-lit garage, two young men in heavy coats tinkered on a truck while a toddler stared out at the cold and at the white Volvo hissing by.

It was all real life.

None less so than the rest.

None less so than the gun in the girl’s lap, the gun that was trained on Kate’s ribs, the gun that had made a torment of the side of her jaw. No less than the stinging cut between her legs or the dried blood or the panty hose that had been
slit
apart and now hung around her knees.

There was no rescue. There would be no rescue, though Kate deserved rescue. She had done the right thing. She had captured a butterfly and had meant to set it free. She had put herself on the line for the child in the back. Surely such things were meant to be rewarded. Kate was a good person. She wasn’t some stupid, dim-witted woman. She wasn’t some trashy trailer park bimbo.

Rescue in this case was well-deserved.

And yet any rescue would just be another pit.

Another few minutes, driven in silence, due south. Then the girl said, “How much money you got on you?”

How much do I have?
Kate wondered.
How much? Did I cash a check yesterday? I was going to, I don’t know
. “I’m not sure,” she said.

“You said enough for a bus ticket. Get out your wallet. Pass it over.”

Kate glanced about for her purse. Where was it? There, on the floor under the girl’s legs. She snatched it from the floor and put it beside her. The car wobbled a bit with the lack of attention, then straightened. She knew her purse by heart. Without looking she unzipped the outer zipper then the zipper of the center compartment. Inside was her kid-skin wallet. She pulled it out and flung it at the girl.

“Don’t ever throw anything at me. You aren’t my fucking mother. You want me to throw something at you? You wanna
know
what I might throw at you?”

“No,” said Kate.

Silence as the girl pawed through the contents of the wallet. From the corner of her eye, Kate could see the photos of Donald and Donald, Jr. scattering. Receipts from her credit card that she’d not yet filed, coupons she’d clipped for her grocery trip to Emporia -
Swiffers
, Bic disposable razors, 409 spray cleanser - loose stamps, MasterCard, Emporia library card, Food Lion MVP card, some dried four leaf clovers she’d found in her yard last summer. “Got a lot of shit,” said the girl. “Fucking pack rat.”

Kate said nothing.

“And only twenty two dollars and a couple nickels. You’re a McDolen, you have lots of money. Where’s your bank?”

“Emporia.”

“We can’t go back to Emporia. You got a ATM card here, you can get money anywhere, right? You can get it in Saudi Arabia, even, I’ve seen it on T.V.”

“ATM,” said Mistie in the back. Her voice rose like the little Arab child in the commercial who lead the stranded tourists across the desert to salvation. “ATM, ATM!” Then she went quiet again.

“What’s the next town?”

“I don’t know,” said Kate. “Roanoke Rapids, maybe.”

“How
far’s
that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You better know.”

“I’m not even sure it’s on this road. I’ve only driven there by way of Interstate 95. Maybe it’s not even on this road.”

“Teachers are supposed to know stuff,” said the girl. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Oh, yeah, I remember. You’re a cunt. A smelly old cunt. Turn on those headlights before we run into something.”

Kate turned on the lights.

They took a long curve, and then a slope downhill, and there was an outcropping of houses and a gas station and the spires of several churches poking up through the trees. Street lights sprinkled the air like fireflies. A green sign on the right side of the road read “
Gumberry
.”

“Bet they have a bank,” said the girl. “Find their bank.”

“They might not –” began Kate but then clamped her mouth closed. Maybe they would have a bank. Maybe the bank would even have an ATM machine. Kate could withdraw all the cash she had on hand and bribe the girl to let her go with Mistie. Hell, she could drive the girl to Raleigh, buy her a plane ticket to Texas and give her a thousand dollars spending cash on top of that. Then she and Mistie would turn again to the north, wounded and tired but back on track.

Kate’s heart clenched in hope.
Please, a bank in
Gumberry
.

They found no bank in
Gumberry
. They passed through the center of town in an eye’s blink, and then were back in the country with the pines and the gray sky and the darkness.

Just one little bank. I can get out of all this mess with one little bank.
Kate pressed on the gas; the car picked up speed. The girl didn’t seem to mind. Mistie, her mouth full of
Toosties
, said something that sounded like “Mama had a lady and it head hopped off.”