Wire Mesh Mothers (25 page)

On the end of the deck were two boys. One was tall, the other Tony’s height. Both were smiling, though their eyes were not visible beneath the brims of their ball caps.

“Got a cigarette?” asked the shorter boy.

Tony’s eyes narrowed. Fuck this shit. She said nothing.

“I asked you a question. Ain’t polite, not answering.”

Tony put her hands on her hips.

“We seen that little pussy of yours, hanging out over the water,” said the tall boy. “
Oooh
, baby, shake that little beaver.”

Tony’s heart picked up, and kicked the inside of her chest. She looked at the pistol on the deck.

“Thought you was a boy, with that short hair on your head,” said the shorter boy. “But then we seen that pussy.
Mmm
hmmm. Nice golden shower, shoulda saved it for us.”

“Get out of her, mother-fuckers,” said Tony.

“Ooh, baby, I love it when you talk dirty,” said the tall boy. He chuckled darkly.

“Me, too,” echoed the other.

Then the tall one was striding forward, a near jog, with long, quick steps, and Tony dropped to her knees to grab the pistol but her fingers missed and it spun away, across the deck, where it stopped at the edge. She reached for it again with a war-whoop of fury, but a foot came down on the back of her hand and another foot kicked the pistol into the dark water. It struck the surface with a
plop
and vanished.

“Fuckers!” screamed Tony. She dove forward, her free arm plunging into the water and snatching but finding nothing but cold wet. “Goddamn mother-fucking fuckers!” She rolled over and away from the foot, jerking out from under, then sprang to her feet. Her knife was in her sock. Get it, she’d slice the grins and then the balls off these Alabama bastards.

The shorter boy was beside the taller one now, just feet from where Tony stood. Tony felt the sweat that had erupted on her forehead and her back, tickling, teasing.
These’re
assholes
, she thought
, these are Buddies and
Leroys
and Little Joes and Whiteys.
These are
goddmaned
Dee
Wees
!
“Get out of my way,” she snarled.

“Ooh, a little fightin’ girl,” said the shorter boy.

“Ain’t from around here,” said the other. “Talks funny. Where you from, sugar britches?”

Tony backed to the dock’s end, one hand out in a fist, and lowered herself slowly to reach the knife.

“Wants to give us a blow job, Ricky,” said the tall boy. “Kneeling down, just look at that.”

“Yeah,” said Ricky.

Tony reached for the cuff of her jeans, slid her fingers underneath and up to the top of the hiking boot. The handles was there, snug, between the sock and the skin.

The tall boy leaped suddenly at Tony and caught a scruff of her short hair in his fingers. “Kiss me, little girl!” He tried to jerk her head back, but she twisted from beneath him and drew the blade out from her sock then drove it against the post to snap it open.

“Joe, she’s got a blade!” cried Ricky.

Joe grabbed at Tony’s hair again, but she leaned forward and slashed it across his knee. It cut through cloth, into flesh, back out again. Joe whelped, let go of Tony’s hair and snatched at her knife-bearing hand and came up short. “Ricky!”

Ricky, his teeth bared, snatched at Tony’s wrist and missed. Tony was on her feet then, leaning forward, carving the air and growling. “Get out of here! Get away from me!”

“She’s got the rabies way she’s
actin
’!” said Ricky. “Damn, she’s a mad dog!”

“Back away now!” said Tony. “I’ll cut you to bits, you know I will!”

Ricky picked up one of the oars. “Yeah?” he said. “
Your’s
may be sharper but mine’s longer.” He laughed at himself, pleased with his little joke. “Get it, Joe?
Your’s
may be sharper, but mine’s longer. Gotta remember that!”

Joe tossed up an oar with his foot as if he was flipping a skateboard, and caught it with both hands. He was breathing heavily. “Don’t no bitch hurt me. Don’t no bitch never do that to me. Never!”

“Don’t no stupid rednecks do nothing to me,” said Tony. “You get out of my way, you know what’s good for you.” She waved the knife, thinking,
My gun’s gone, what am I supposed to do without my gun?
“Back off!”

Ricky laughed; Joe didn’t. Then Ricky swung his oar at Tony and it caught her on the shoulder with a crack. Pain exploded, but Tony kept her balance and her knife. Joe swung his oar the other direction, and Tony jumped back from it, nearly tipping over the edge of the dock. She grasped a post and pushed herself upright. Then both Joe and Ricky swung their oars at the same time, and they collided with Tony on opposite sides, knocking the breath out of her and driving her forward onto her face. It felt as if her ribs were broken. She groaned and scrabbled at the splintery wood to push herself up enough to see. The knife was no longer in her hand.

“Fuck you!” she cried. She hunched herself onto her knees so she could stand. But a foot in her back knocked her down again.

Joe said, “Fuck us? How ‘bout fuck you?”

“Yeah! Good idea!” said Ricky.

Joe rolled Tony over onto her back. She kicked out with her feet and clawed at his face but Ricky kicked her in the head and her vision was shattered for a few moments. It flew away like pieces of a broken window blowing apart in a tornado. She blinked, squinted, tried to see, but all she could do was feel.

Feel one of the boys unzipping her jeans and tugging them down around her ankles. Feel the other snatching her hands and holding them up over her head, pressing them roughly to the pier and sitting on them with all his weight.

She bucked, but the boy on top of her jammed his knee into her gut and drove her breath out again. She tried to order him off but the words would not come.

“Show you who’s boss!” cried the boy over her, it sounded like Joe. “Cut my leg? I’ll show you. I got a big ole poker to stab you with! What’d you say, Ricky, yours may be sharper but mine’s longer! That was a good one.”

Tony bucked. Another blow to her stomach and vomit raced up into her mouth. She gagged and spit. Her legs were thrust apart then, and someone climbed between them. There was laughing and panting, and fingers strumming her cunt, her clitoris, and then jabbing up into her core.

She screamed and drew her legs together but another fist went into her gut yet again, and again remnants of her last meal rocketed into her mouth, vile and sour.

“Here you go!” Something hard, hard, and fleshy now, wider than fingers, poking at her opening, and then jabbing inside, tearing, hot and persistent. Again and again.

“Me, next!” came the voice from above.

“No!” she cried. “Fuckers!” A sob, a scream.

But it went on. And on.

S
ponge Bob was over.
Angry Beavers
was on, the critters chattering and arguing over what they would have for dinner, wood-chip beef on toast or cellulose casserole, whatever cellulose was. Mistie had turned onto her other side when the new show came on. At home in the trailer, Daddy would come and change the channel when Angry Beavers started, so this was the first time Mistie got to see the whole thing. If this was a Saturday, Princess
Silverlace
would have been on but it wasn’t a Saturday Mistie didn’t think.

The teacher had gone in the bathroom with the girl a long time ago. The girl had come out and had left but the teacher was still in the bathroom. There was water running in the bathroom. Mistie knew not to go into the bathroom with a grownup had the water running even if the door was open. One time Mistie had gone in the bathroom when the water was running and Daddy and Mama were in there and although Mistie didn’t know what they were doing, they were really mad and chased her out. She got a spanking later that night from Daddy. Her bottom had burned like fire until after Mama went out and then Daddy kissed it to make it better.

Mistie had to go to the bathroom, but not too bad, she could wait a little longer. Maybe the teacher was almost through with her shower.

A commercial came on the television. Pizza Hut, the Edge. Mistie remembered eating at Pizza Hut in Kentucky when Valerie was still alive. There wasn’t a Pizza Hut in Pippins, though. She liked Pizza Hut because the waitress was nice and the cups the root beer came in were plastic with children’s faces on it, and Valerie and Mistie had gotten to take them home. They cracked later and had to throw them away.

The commercial ended, and another came on about some car that could drive really fast in the desert. It ended, too, and the Beavers were back. Mistie scratched her nose with her bound hands, and then rubbed herself. Daddy rubbed her when Mama wasn’t home. It was the only time he didn’t yell at her, when he was rubbing her.

The water in the shower kept on running.

S
he remembered.

A cold Christmas. Their first Christmas in Pippins.

Kate, Donald, and Donnie had moved to the brick manor house in September, two weeks after Kate had finished her final master’s of education course at Georgetown University and had presented her thesis, “A Study on an Apparent Relationship Between Certain Religious Persuasions and Developmental Delay.” The title had scared the shit out of some of the university administration and had brought a chuckle from Donald. The paper explored a connection between off-shoot fundamentalist denominations and the higher rate of children in the public school programs who showed symptoms of developmental delay and the emotionally disturbance. Kate had been discrete and careful; her intent was to get her degree and be done with it, not stir up any major academic dust. She concluded that it was more the home life and the economic status of the children in these single-church denominations as opposed to the religious teachings. Kate didn’t believe that was the total truth but a politically correct paper was more in line with what she needed to have to get her degree, and she did win the degree. Signed, sealed, delivered. Put into a nice, oak frame. Now, Donald would look at her and see two degrees instead of one. Something she could look at and feel a little pride.

Christmas at the McDolen estate was celebrated with a holly wreath on the door, white candles in every window of the sixteen-room house, a small Douglas fir with white lights in the living room with a porcelain nativity scene beneath, and a large blue spruce in the family room. The holly wreath, white candles, Douglas fir and nativity were there because that was the way Donald’s mother had always done it. The citizens of Southampton County expected to see that wreath and those lights as they drove up and down Route 58 on their merry holiday ways. The spruce in the family room was multi-colored, more of jumble than show piece, covered in lights that twinkled and some that didn’t, expensive glass balls, plastic Disney figures, and strands of painted popcorn that Donnie had sewn together when he was four. That was the way Kate had always done it. She was determined to keep something of her own in that blasted house.

It was during this festive season that Kate was introduced to the wealthier citizens of Southampton County. Donald and Kate hosted a “Winter Banquet” to which a select many flocked – Donald’s new business friends, old money who had socialized with the
McDolens
since the 1920s, assorted local politicians and state legislators. It was pleasant enough, but Kate was tired with it after the first two hours. Cocktails and small talk were interesting for only so long, and soon she found herself wanting to retire to the family room to watch the blinking and unblinking rainbow of lights on the spruce tree and curl up under a blanket. Donnie had already disappeared from the scene in his sport coat and tie, up to his room to listen to his CDs.

Kate and Donald had had elegant parties back in Richmond and Alexandria, but nothing to the scale of this bash. At one given time Kate counted seventy-two guests. There were scads of new names for Kate to remember, family connections to digest, gossip to promise to keep secret, private little Southampton in-jokes she tucked away mentally to ask for an explanation of Donald later on.

As Kate tried to keep attention on a one woman’s rambling, White Shoulders-scented discourse on the history of her father’s tobacco growing endeavors in Southampton, she found her thoughts wandering to Alice and Bill, up in Canada with their pets and their children, in their hippie shirts and hippie beads and myriad causes. For the first time in years, she missed them greatly.

The Southampton School Board superintendent, Stuart Gordonson, arrived a bit late to the McDolen Christmas party; as soon as Donald introduced him to Kate and mentioned her new degree, the man pulled her aside and promised her a job if and when she might ever want one.

“We would be thrilled to have a McDolen on our team,” Mr. Gordonson had grinned beneath his well-trimmed mustache. “What a feather in our cap, eh?” Kate thanked him and said she’d let him know.

When everyone had at last left, somewhere around two-thirty in the morning, and Kate and Donald were stacking punch cups on the kitchen counter for the maid to take care of when she arrived in a few hours, Kate mentioned the job offer to Donald. He’d smiled his vague smile and said, “I only introduced you as a courtesy, don’t be silly. Stuart would have chastised me if I hadn’t. But you aren’t seriously considering teaching, are you? There are plenty of other people in this county for that.”