Crime Plus Music (24 page)

“The leader dragged that girl by the cord around her waist and pinned her to a tree. He twisted her skinny little arms behind her back, then hog-tied her wrists to her ankles. She couldn't move an inch. He took a thick buck knife out of his dirty boot and cut off her little white sundress, then her little white panties, until she was stark naked. She's crying and moaning, nearly screaming, until he puts his greasy bandana in her mouth to gag her.”

Jesse put his head down on his crossed arms resting on his seat back like he was staring at the floor.

I wondered how Sherry knew what the girl was wearing, and every other tiny detail. I shifted low in my seat and let my legs stretch out, thinking of my own white underwear with the thick pad stuck to them and the blood soaked in. I pressed my palms together and sandwiched them between my thighs. They were still ice cold.

“Then, the bikers just ignored her for a long while, like they had better things to do. They made up a fire and started drinking whiskey and smoking dope. They wanted her to watch and wait, her wrists and ankles bleeding from the bonds. She knows at any time they could turn their sights back to her little naked body tied to that tree like she was nothing but a dog, and waiting is hell.” Sherry Walker's eyes were wide and fixed in the mirror.

I wound the scratchy black strap of my backpack tightly around my wrist and pulled it hard. Something strange was happening while I listened to Miss Walker's hoarse voice; my vision was getting darker and tunneling, my heart was beating fast and making it hard to get a full breath. I was stuck in the dark where her story was and it was getting worse by the moment. I'd never heard anything so raw and crazy, from an adult or anybody, nothing even close. A sour smell like an old battery or cat pee in a closed room was coming from my underarms. I felt Miss Walker's eyes on me, and I looked up to meet them.

“She was just starting to develop,” she said, “Just like you.”

I imagined a Polaroid picture of my naked body developing, my chest coming into focus out of the shiny white chemicals like a lifting fog. Miss Walker was agitated, like she wasn't getting the response from us she was hoping for, but I couldn't imagine what that would be.

Kevin and Davy were on the edges of their seats with their mouths open wide enough to catch flies. Kevin looked excited, but Davy looked scared, even though they mostly looked the same. Jesse's head was still down, refusing to show anything he's feeling.

“First they raped her, one by one. Those guys are huge and hairy and rough. Then they put all kinds of things inside her: bottles, knife handles, the end of a bat, sticks, anything they wanted to. They tore her insides up. One even put out his cigarette on her little tit.”

The bus was silent and still, the only sound the murmur of the engine and the creaky whine of the springs that held up Miss Walker's seat. She reached into the breast pocket of her coveralls and pulled out a flattened pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a pink plastic lighter. I thought,
There's no way she will
, but she lit up a strictly forbidden cigarette and took a long drag. She released a stinking plume of smoke that blew right back to our seats.

A hot, sick liquid rose up my throat. I started to cough and Kevin smirked at me.

“Did she die?” Jesse asked.

It was the first thing he'd said the whole time, and his voice was barely a croak.

“No, and that's the saving grace,” Miss Walker said in a light way, like happily ever after. “She got herself free after they left her and walked all night to the road. A black gentleman who was taking his son to school in the morning stopped for her and took her to the emergency room.”

She heaved a deep sigh. “So, y'all got to be careful. Especially you girls,” she said right to me, the only girl on the bus.

“A black guy?” Davy sounded doubtful. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir. Don't be a bigot, it's ugly,” Miss Walker said.

I pictured an old black man in a bow tie and little round glasses, maybe because of the word “gentleman.” I imagined a long white car on the little two lane highway that cut through Palm Valley slowing down when he saw the girl. Her white skin would shine in the new morning light and after what they did to her, there would be blood. Too scared and in need of help to hide your own nakedness from strangers in a passing car? I could even imagine that feeling. My mind was bouncing all over, filling in the gaps of the story, and I knew I'd keep doing it for days and days. How old was the man's son? Was he her age? Did he stare, or did his father have a blanket in his trunk to cover her? Or did one of them give her his jacket? Did the girl have to call her father and explain the whole thing? Miss Walker was done with talking, but there was a tide of details and questions rising up out of her story and I was getting flooded.

I looked over at Jesse again, and he was squinting out the window into the bright sun. A muscle in his jaw moved back and forth like he was chewing on her words, like he hated Sherry Walker now.

Maybe she felt it too, because she suddenly asked us if we'd mind a quick detour to Lil' Champ, the convenience store on the corner before Jesse's stop. The other two boys cheered and started digging coins out of their backpacks in anticipation, and when she stopped the bus, they rushed down the steps and out the door, Jesse ambling behind them, shaking his head.

I was afraid to get off the bus, afraid Miss Walker would keep talking too, but moving seemed harder, so I stayed. I watched the boys through the big windows as they paced up and down the candy aisle, taking their time choosing what to buy.

Miss Walker sucked on her cigarette, leaning toward the small window with the pivoting glass beside her high seat. The heat of the sun was seeping through the still metal body of the bus and sharp light was glaring off the black tar parking lot into every small window. I watched three perfectly round smoke rings rise up over the back of Miss Walker's ball cap, one passing through the next like a magic trick. I couldn't see her face in the mirror anymore, she was leaning too far forward and I was glad.

The boys climbed back up the rubber-ribbed stairs, each mumbling thanks as they passed Miss Walker, clutching chocolate bars and cherry slushies. I didn't even care; I didn't want any of it.

She steered the huge bus smoothly in reverse with her right hand on the wide black steering wheel and flicked her burning cigarette butt out the window with her left hand. We were back on the road with the breeze and almost home.

T
HE
FOUR
-
BLOCK
WALK
FROM
MY
bus stop felt endless and full of menace. I saw three separate motorcycles and their sounds froze me in my tracks on the sidewalk. The clumps of trees that rimmed the empty lot beside Dolphin State Bank held dark places where bodies or bikers could hide. The sun was just beginning to weaken, the air gentle against my bare arms and legs, and it felt strange, like it should have set while Miss Walker was talking. I know I will never forget a word of her story. The white dress, the black fire pit, whiskey breath, and rough pine bark against her naked skin. I will know these details for rest of my life; they flowed through my body like sickness, heavier and more vivid every minute.

Walking up the concrete path to our apartment, I heard the Beatles through the screen door. My little sister Carrie was dancing in the living room with her neighbor friend from downstairs, two little girls in white cotton panties and multicolored Mardi Gras beads making up a dance to “Run for Your Life” from
Rubber Soul
. I stood in the doorway and watched. First they chased each other around the coffee table during the “run for your life if you can” lyric, then they stuck their heads under the toss pillows on the sofa for “hide your head in the sand” and finally they dragged their little fingers across their throats in a slitting motion and stick their tongues out for “catch you with another man that's the end-a, little girl.”

“
Where's Mom?” I yelled at Carrie, suddenly furious with her. “Put some damn clothes on!”

Carrie shouted “Jim is home!” and jumped up on the sofa bouncing with excitement like it's Christmas.

“Great,” I said flatly, heading into the kitchen.

Mom's boyfriend, Jim, was always gone on some job, I don't even know what kind, so when he returned it was treated like a special occasion, as if I cared. He paid no mind to me but he doted on Carrie, always swinging her around by her hands in the front yard and pulling her onto his lap when they watched cartoons. He knows I don't like him or trust him, even though I'm super careful to be polite. Mom changed when Jim came home, splashing handfuls of Jean Nate cologne onto her damp skin after her bath and wearing red lipstick and dresses instead of jeans. It was stupid.

Debbie, our seventeen-year-old neighbor, was straddling the step stool by the kitchen wall phone, the curly beige cord wrapped around her wrist and the receiver glued to her ear. Debbie was “watching us” while Mom and Jim were who knows where, which meant she would hog the phone all night talking to her boyfriend Ron. First her voice would be sweet and high for a while, but by Carrie's bedtime, she'd get annoyed and hang up on him at least two or three times. It was always the same. Debbie had huge boobs peeking out of a low-cut shirt made of terry cloth and a tiny butt smushed into tight bell bottoms with rainbow stitching down the legs. While I looked her over, she started rolling on pink lip gloss, looking into her compact, her mouth in a big O. She snapped her bumble gum, which wasn't ladylike, but she did have on great high-heeled boots. I suddenly wondered if the girl still had her shoes. Did she walk in the woods and down the gravel road all that time in her bare feet?

I heard Debbie say she wasn't ready into the phone, he'll have to wait just a little while longer, and then she caught my eye, and shouted, “Don't be a creeper!”

I slunk back into the living room and found Carrie on top of her friend, slapping their bellies together and saying the word “hump” over and over again, giggling.

“Jesus,” I said, and stalked to my bedroom, slamming the door. Seconds later, Carrie, now completely naked except for the bright green and blue beads around her neck, threw my door open and yelled, “Debbie says we get pizza!”

“Get out of here and put on some clothes or I will murder you!” I screamed.

Carrie puffed out her bottom lip and it started to wobble like it did when she pretended to cry, then she slammed the door so hard in bounced back open and I watched her tiny butt running into the kitchen.

I got up to close my door and lock it, even though I'm not supposed to. I laid back on my bed and realized I hadn't changed my maxi pad in hours, but I didn't feel like getting up. I turned on the reading lamp beside my bed and pulled my backpack over to me. As I unzipped it, the crumpled paper Kevin threw at me rolled into my lap. I unfurled the wad and smoothed it out on my thigh, the rough black ink scribbled over the pale blue loose-leaf lines was a drawing of a penis, with big cartoon drops squirting out of the top and a bubble over it like it's talking. It read, “Cum on yer face!” I took the words like punches in my stomach and I felt the blood breaking through onto my shorts. I tore the paper into pieces and threw them behind me while I ran to the bathroom.

Sitting on the cold toilet seat, bent over with cramps, tears came up the back of my throat. I kicked off my sneakers, pushed my bloody cutoffs and underwear down my legs and pulled my stinking T-shirt over my head. I peeled the blood-soaked pad off of my underwear and folded it tightly into thirds, then wrapped it in thick looping layers of toilet paper, making a clean white ball I could leave in the wastebasket. I used up all the paper left on the roll, but I didn't care. While I wrapped it up, I finally let the tears break through, so hot and strong it scared me. It wasn't just the gross thing Kevin wrote. I couldn't stand the thought that Jesse saw that note and didn't stop him from hurling it at me. I folded my chest over onto my lap and rocked myself until I was calm enough to flush and stand. I stepped over Carrie's mangled Barbie with her legs bent in the wrong direction and her hair cut off and landed directly on the bloated belly of her rubber baby doll, almost slipping. I turned on the shower as high as it goes and the heat and steam soon calmed me. I rolled the white bar of soap around in my hands and washed the blood off of my thighs, the water running red, then pink, then clear. As I washed my small, sore breasts, I had a weird thought.

If I did not have these little pink swells on my chest, I wouldn't have gotten that awful note. If I wasn't getting boobs or bleeding, Jesse wouldn't avoid me on the bus. It wasn't so long ago we took baths in this same tub all the time. When we were young like Carrie, we didn't even notice our bodies. Everyone can see me changing now and my tiny boobs are like a signal I can't control, sending out a message that filled me with fear.

I was too tired to eat pizza, too tired to brush my teeth or do my homework. I just wanted to sleep. I pulled on one of mom's T-shirts off the towel rack and went back to my room. Night was finally falling and the fading sun turned my room a hazy, glowing pink. I crawled into bed and watched the warm light disappear.

I woke up disoriented, unable to shake off a dream where I am naked and afraid, walking on sharp gravel in cold bare feet, my legs so heavy I can barely lift them. Without thinking, I pulled my sheet off my bed and wrapped it around me, dragging its length behind me down the hall to my mother's door. I stood with the glass knob in my hand and heard a sound like a howl, then a panting, straining cry. A baby animal was trapped somewhere, back inside my dream, but as I shook off my nightmare, standing in the empty hallway, I realized the sound was my mom and Jim.

I dragged my sheet down the hall to the kitchen, my mind filled with hate. There was no way to reach into her dark room and pull my mother out. There was no way to get comfort from her no matter how much I needed it. She belonged to her boyfriend.