Crusader (41 page)

"Oh, god, Mrs. Weiss. I'm so sorry."

"Don't you be sorry. This happens to girls. To every girl. This happened to me. Don't you worry about it. I'll tell you, Roberta, I'm glad it happened. Now you're like everybody else. You don't have that secret to carry around with you. You did something normal. You need normal."

I looked at the awful mess. "I don't need this. I hate this."

"Bah. You'll get used to it real fast. Believe me, it'll never be
like this again. You'll know what to do next time. It gets easier and easier."

"Oh, god."

"Tell me, darling. Are you having any cramps or pain?"

"No."

"So you're actually lucky. Maybe you'll be a lucky one."

"Lucky?"

"That's right. Maybe someday people will think you were lucky. Now come in and sleep in my room. I have to get my rest."

I couldn't sleep at all in Mrs. Weiss's room. I lay there for two hours, then I got up and sat by myself on the balcony. At 5
A.M.
, I went into the guest room and got my sneakers. Then I slipped out of the condo and walked quickly across the empty mall parking lot.

Route 27 was a strange sight at that hour. Only an occasional truck rumbled by to disturb the quiet.

Everglades Boulevard had a little more traffic. I worried that a strange man might stop his car next to me and try to pull me in, but none did. Still, I covered the last three blocks to my house on the run.

The house, of course, was empty. I went right into my bedroom closet and got out the videotape. I brought it into the living room, took it out of its sleeve, and placed it on top of the VCR. Then I went and sat on the couch.

I sat there for a good fifteen minutes staring at that tape. That evil tape. Finally the moment of truth came, as I had always known it would. I could no longer resist the dark pull. I clicked on the TV, got up, and slid the tape into the VCR. Then
I pressed the Play button and sat back down on the couch to watch. To watch my mother being murdered.

The video blipped to life right away. The surveillance camera must have been a cheap one, because the images moved slowly and the action had a jerky quality to it. But the extraordinary and miraculous thing about it was this—I saw my mom.

There she was, like I had never seen her before. I sat up, thrilled and delighted. Mom was not wearing her blue vinyl smock, just a white polo shirt, like she was ready to leave for the night. Her hair was pulled back in a tortoiseshell clip. The camera was above her, to her right, taking in the cash register and the counter area. She was staring out of the window, looking bored. It was storming hard. Lightning flashes illuminated the bare wall behind her.

The storm was keeping all the customers away from the arcade. I smiled to think of that. There was Mom, just like me, a clerk waiting for customers to come.

And then a customer came.

Mom turned her head toward the door and froze. The top part of a man entered the frame rapidly. He had on a Halloween mask—a rubber voodoo-head Halloween mask. Mom shrank back against the wall with fear in her eyes. The man's arm reached across the counter, curled around, and grabbed a deposit bag from below. He knew just where it was. His arm had a tattoo of a snake on it, a snake wrapped around a wooden pole.

I expected Mom to stay frozen there, like I was frozen in my seat, but she did not. She pushed away from that wall and took off around the counter. That was the last I saw of her.

I sat watching that surveillance tape for another forty-five minutes, watching the wall illuminated by countless lightning flashes, until I saw a sheriff's deputy come behind the counter. He looked at the camera and said something to somebody else. Right after that, the picture cut out.

The videotape, however, continued to run for a few more minutes. When it finally reached the end, it rewound itself with an awful whirring. It clacked to an abrupt stop, and an early-morning kids' show popped on. I stared at it with my mouth open, feeling like I wanted to throw up. I was sick to my soul. I felt poisoned inside. I felt a horror, black and bottomless, inside of me.

At some point—I don't know how long after—I stood up and walked to the kitchen door. I went out into the carport and continued down the road, walking in the relentless, glaring sun. I squinted at the objects to the left and right of me. I was surprised to see that everything was still there, just as it had been. That the world outside had not been changed in any way.

I passed like a ghost down 111th Street. I managed somehow to cross Everglades Boulevard. I stood at wobbly attention at the bus stop, barely a foot away from the dangerous traffic.

A bus pulled up. I climbed on and took a seat. I never paid. I never looked at the driver, either. It might have been the usual guy, but I don't know. Whoever it was didn't say anything to me, and the bus started to move. Just before my stop I stood up and moved to the front. The driver stopped and opened the door.

I walked down Seventy-second Street, past the chain-link fences and the palmettos, to the cemetery. I remember feeling the heat pressing down on me. I remember feeling the crack of the lightning close by. And I remember a sudden cold wind making the palm fronds blow upward in the trees.

I passed through the cemetery gates and followed a familiar path toward Slot #109E. The sky got darker. The wind got stronger. I made it as far as the lawn of the angel statue before the first drop hit me on the back of the neck. It hit with great force, like a stone thrown from a high building. A hailstone.

I lurched ahead. The stones were now striking at my head and my back. I staggered a few feet more and fell. I spread my arms and legs out on the grass and waited for death. I surrendered to the wind and the rain and the hail, letting them beat down on me, letting them stone me to death.

I lay there for several minutes, listening to the winds as if they were the last sounds I would ever hear. But then I heard something else. A sound out of the void. I raised up my head, turned my face into the rain, and stared.

A woman appeared before me. A ghost, wet and wavering. Mom? I couldn't recognize her. And then I could. It was Mrs. Weiss. She was still dressed in her white robe, which was now soaked through. She had on no makeup, and her hair was matted back against her head.

She opened her mouth and railed, but her words were carried off by the howling wind. Then the wind changed direction, and the words came to me: "I thought I had taught you one thing, Roberta! Maybe I was wrong. I thought maybe I would tell you one more time."

She clutched her robe and took a step away from the car and toward me. I saw the white Lincoln appearing and then disappearing in the rain. She balanced herself ten feet from me and screamed: "You have to survive! Do you hear me? Even though they line you up at a ditch, and make you dig your own grave, and strip off your clothes, and pull out your fillings, and point a machine gun at you. You cannot give up! You can never give up! You have to survive because you are too damn stubborn not to survive. Do you hear me? Do you understand, little girl?"

She turned and staggered back to the car, moving as if in slow motion. I strained to watch her through the sheeting of the rain. She pulled open the door and got inside. The reverse lights flashed on, and the big car shot backward. It flew off the roadway and crashed into the angel statue. The statue wobbled once, then tilted forward onto the Lincoln, its stone sword shattering the glass of the back windshield into a spiderweb of
jagged lines. Then the statue scraped down the trunk with a horrible noise and broke apart on the ground.

I pulled myself up and stumbled to the car. I yanked open the driver's side door, reached in, and pushed her small body gently but firmly to the right. Then I fell into the seat and slammed the door.

Mrs. Weiss seemed stunned, but she was able to sit upright. I leaned over and clicked the middle seat belt around her. Then I clicked on my own, put the car into Drive, and stepped on the gas. The back tires spun and squealed in the muddy grass, but they finally caught and propelled us onto the roadway. I found the wipers' knob and turned them on. Then I hunched up against the steering wheel and drove slowly along the cemetery road to the exit. I said, "I think I'd better drive it all the way, Mrs. Weiss."

She didn't answer, so I turned left on Seventy-second Street. Mercifully the rain started to let up. I concentrated totally on driving the big car to Everglades Boulevard.

When I turned right, I found myself caught up in the morning traffic.

Mrs. Weiss didn't speak for a long time. Then she whispered, in an exhausted voice, "You have to fight. You have to fight to save what's yours."

I said, "You rest, Mrs. Weiss. I'm going to get you home."

I guided the big car all the way back to Mrs. Weiss's space in the carport. I opened the passenger side door and helped slide her out. She walked unsteadily, but she refused to hold on to me through the elevator ride and the walk down the outside corridor. Once inside the condo, I said, "I'm going to call your doctor, Mrs. Weiss. Where is your doctor's number?"

She answered, much stronger, "I don't have a doctor. Who has a doctor anymore? I have an HMO."

"Where's the number?"

"You're not calling anybody about me. I'm all right. I'm not the one who's dying. I should call about you. You kids, you're the ones who are dying."

Mrs. Weiss pointed into the bathroom. "I have another robe in there for me." Then she pointed into the hall closet. "And I have a thick pool robe in the closet for you. Go put it on."

Mrs. Weiss went into the bathroom and closed the door. I walked to the closet and found a thick white terrycloth robe. I peeled off my wet clothes and covered myself. Mrs. Weiss came out of the bathroom in an old red robe. She told me in a strong voice, "Take those wet clothes and throw them in the tub for now."

I did as she said. When I got back she was in her room, already under the bedspread. She had a faraway look in her eyes. I said, "Mrs. Weiss, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I did this to you."

Mrs. Weiss opened her eyes and turned toward me. "You didn't do this to me. I did this to me. You did something much worse to yourself. You watched that tape. Try feeling sorry for that." I looked away in shame. "Promise me, Roberta. Promise me you will get rid of that evil thing."

"I promise."

"Do you mean it this time?"

"Yes, ma'am. I do."

Mrs. Weiss closed her eyes. I thought about tiptoeing away, but she suddenly opened them. "When you weren't here this morning, I knew. I knew right then where you had gone."

All I could do was nod.

"Did you go there to die?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

Mrs. Weiss rolled over and propped herself up on an elbow. "I don't want you to die, Roberta. I have made it my business to see to it that you are one of the survivors. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I wonder." She explained, like she was talking about one of her TV shows, "Too many children get born. Too many fish get hatched. Too many acorns fall to the ground. A hundred, a thousand times too many. Just to ensure that a few will survive. All of you children, you're all bunched together now, moving down the road in a big mob. None of you knows which way to go. But one day, Roberta, you'll look around, and that mob will be gone. You'll find yourself alone on the open road. You will be the survivor, because you will have learned what it takes to survive."

I felt very strange—cold and hot at the same time. I reached up and felt my face. I was crying again. I gathered tears on my fingertips and held them out for Mrs. Weiss to see. But, to my surprise, she had fallen asleep.

I changed again quickly and walked back down into the parking lot. All signs of the storm were now gone, but I knew it had been real. I knew by the shattered glass of the Lincoln's window and the long granite scar across its trunk.

I trudged through the punishing heat all the way back to my house. The door was still wide open. The TV was still on. I went right to the VCR and popped out the videotape. I never even looked at it, I just slid it into its case. Then I carried it into the bedroom and stashed it in the back corner of my closet. As I did, I said aloud, "I'm sorry again, Mrs. Weiss, but I might be needing this."

I walked back out, turned off the TV, and then called Arcane. Dad answered. "Dad? It's Roberta. I'm not coming in today."

"Oh. Okay, honey. Are you sick?"

"No. I'm just going to cut again."

"You are? Well, it is really dead here, so I guess that's okay. Hey, you're not going to make a habit out of this, are you?"

"I have to go." I hung up before he could say anything else.

During third period today, Betty told me, "They just had a big fight out on the PE field. We all had to come inside."

I said, "Who was fighting?"

"A black guy and a Hispanic guy. I didn't know either one."

"What was it about?"

"I have no idea."

So what happened right before fifth period wasn't surprising. Mr. Archer came on the P.A. system. He said, "I want all members of the student council to report to the guidance office immediately."

Everybody who had been at Memorial for more than a year knew what that meant. We were going on alert. By the time we got out to the bus stops, there were sheriff's deputies all over the place. They even brought the K9 corps. By the next day there would be metal detectors at the entrances. It was all standard operating procedure. Anybody who causes any trouble in the next few days goes straight to Juvie.

I don't think Mr. Herman knew any of that. I don't think he cared, either. He was standing at his podium as usual, getting ready. He waited for Mr. Archer's announcement to conclude, then he looked up to begin.

But today he did not begin.

Mr. Herman looked around the room, particularly at the kids lounging in the back seats. He picked up a handful of hall passes, walked to the back, and handed them out like tickets to a ride. "Here. Here you are, all of you. Take a hall pass and go. Go do whatever you want, with my blessing."