Marrow (8 page)

I stand at the bottom of the three stairs that lead to her front door. Judah is behind me, waiting at the border of the swampy grass that is the start of Mother Mary’s property.

She stands on the top step, her tiny frame looming over me. Is it my imagination, or are her eyes blue? Blue eyes amidst the dark, coppery skin. I’ve never been close enough to see her eyes. She extends a hand and beckons me up the stairs. I follow the tiny, purple buds of her fingernails to a rocking chair, where she has me sit. An invitation by Mother Mary can only mean one thing. Judah is spinning his chair in circles on the sidewalk. He wants to go to the movie store.

I laugh out loud as I watch him. Mother Mary lowers herself into the rocker next to me and watches my face.

“You look over there with such love?” she says. Her voice is strong and smooth, not at all what I expected.

“No,” I say. “It’s not like that … he’s my friend.” I’m alarmed that my feelings for Judah are so obvious.

Mother Mary rocks back and forth while eyeing Judah.

I wonder how she knows my name.

“He,” she says. “Gives you hope?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Then keep him,” she says with so much finality, I glance up at her face to see if she’s kidding. After that, the silence stretches so long I begin to squirm in my seat.

I open my mouth to offer an excuse to leave, when Mother Mary cuts me off.

“Your mother,” she says.

“Yes…” I urge her.

Judah does a wheelie and spins around on his back tires.

“She’s between worlds, can’t decide where she wants to be. You are much the same—you and her.”

I want to tell her that my mother decided long ago where she wanted to be—safely locked up in the eating house, locked up even tighter in herself. And then it occurs to me what she’s saying about my cold, hard-eyed mother. Could she be entertaining thoughts of her own death? To escape what? The box she put herself in?

I look over at the elderly woman, too frail to be frightening. Why have I always feared Mother Mary?

“Haven’t you heard?” I say softly. “Only the good die young.”

“You can change that,” she says.

I stand up then and begin to descend the stairs, my legs heavier than they were a few minutes ago, before she called to me.

“Margo…”

She’s standing, and both of her arms are extended toward me, as if she wants to enfold me into them.

I take the short, two steps back up the stairs, where Mother Mary wraps me in a hug. I am surprised by her strength, the fierceness with which she holds me. She smells of cinnamon and hair relaxer—a smell I grew accustomed to at Destiny’s house, where her mother did hair in their small, third bedroom.

“You must not let hatred destroy you. You will lose your soul,” she says.

I don’t look at her as I walk back to the boy who she says gives me hope. I want to tell her that she need not worry about my soul. This boy will save it.

SANDY COMES OUT OF THE OFFICE
and tells us that they found the little girl’s body—the one who went missing. It’s all over the news. They found her in a field near the old harbor, burned to blackness.

I think of Nevaeh, the bright, innocent beauty of her all burned to blackness, and I run to the bathroom to vomit. I ask Sandy for a break, and she says no; we’re too busy today. I have to go back to the register.

I ring people up in a trance and wonder if it was one of them who killed Nevaeh. My hands are shaking, and one of the customers leans in conspiratorially and asks if I need a fix. A fix? I want to laugh. How do you fix evil?

By the time my shift is done, I’m angry. I stand on the bus, bouncing on my heels until my stop. Then I jog to Judah’s house. When I knock on the door, Delaney answers holding Horace and reeking of weed. She looks surprised to see me. Judah is right behind her in the kitchen, and when he hears my voice, he calls out to her to let me in.

“Did you hear?” I ask. He nods. I’m breathless from my running. Delaney props Horace against the wall and has me sit down at the kitchen table. She brings me a glass of something sweet and red. I hold the glass between my hands, but I can’t drink it. I still feel like I’m going to be sick.

“I hate everything.”

Judah runs his finger along the outline of his lips. He looks like he’s thinking deeply about something.

“It’s all over the news,” Delaney says.

I look at Judah. “What are you thinking?”

“What if it was someone from here, in this neighborhood, that did that to her. One of us.”

“It could have been someone coming through the Bone. Doesn’t mean they’re from here.”

He nods, but he’s not committed to that nod. I stand up. “I have to go,” I say.

“Where?” Judah asks.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Delaney says.

“Dunno. I need to think.”

I walk the Bone in the drizzling rain. Up and down the streets, counting the scattered, balled up candy wrappers, until I am so cold my whole body is shaking. I walk past Nevaeh’s house. I want her to come running down the stairs like she always did when she saw me, her shoelaces flying around like a scraped knee waiting to happen. I want to steal her away before someone can steal her life away, and show her something other than the Bone. I want to show myself something other than the Bone. I don’t even know if that’s possible. Judah says that where we’re from is in us—in our marrow. You can put us anywhere else in the world, but we carry our origin with us everywhere we go. If he’s right, I’ll never fucking get away.

My new Converse are soaked through when I reach the end of the Bone. The highway that runs through our town is 83. It’s non-committal, winding this way then veering off like it can’t decide if it wants to be with us or not. If I keep walking, I’ll end up in the Cascades. I pass a hand over my face to wipe the rain out of my eyes. I should do it. Keep walking. Die trying. Anything to get out of here.

Ugh!
I kick at a puddle.
Kick, kick all you want. You’re too shit scared to leave.

I turn back, overcome. Shame drags my head down. I watch my cowardly feet plod through the puddles, water flowing down my neck, until I spot a blur of red in a pool of water. Bright red. I bend at the knees to retrieve it, my hand plunging into the little puddle without thought. I pull up a pair of sunglasses with red, plastic heart frames. Without hesitation I put them on.

Like the emotional defeatist I am, I stop at the Quickie Corner when I get back to town. I eye the rack of my usual choices: Honey Buns, Pecan Wheels, Oatmeal Crème Pies, Cosmic Brownies, Ding Dongs, Twinkies, and powdered doughnuts. They’re all on sale, but I can’t eat that shit today. Or maybe ever again. I don’t want to kill myself
that
way. I walk over to the refrigerators at the back of the store and choose an orange juice. I grab a super-sized box of raisins and a box of matches that has a teddy bear on them, which reminds me of Nevaeh. I feel around in my pockets for my money.

“What’s that for … you don’t smoke?”

Joe. We call him Knick Knack because he collects porcelain figurines of the Virgin Mary and hides them all over the store. Sometimes you’d pull a loaf of bread off a shelf, and the Holy Virgin would be right there, staring straight at you

“I’m going to commit arson,” I say, pushing it toward him. “I’ll need a gallon of gas, too.”

Knick Knack Joe reaches below the register and puts an empty gas can on the counter. It’s red with a spout, and someone’s written
I’m Gassy
on the side in sharpie. “You’ll need this, too,” he says, grinning. “Who you burning?”

I roll my eyes. “Everyone,” I say. I leave a crumpled ten on the counter and start to walk out. “You forgot your can!” he calls back.

“What?” I say, turning to look at him.

He pushes it toward me. “It’s a gift,” he says. “For your project.”

I don’t know why, but I take it.

I don’t take the normal way home, on the sidewalk, past the houses. I walk along the grass next to the highway, wearing my glasses, carrying my gas can.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner
, I think.

“Hey Gassy.” A rusted, brown pick up slows down next to me. Two men sit in shadow in the cab of the vehicle. An arm covered in red flannel hangs limply out the window, a single finger tapping the side of the door in time with the music on the radio. I can see the outline of a baseball cap on the driver. “Want a ride?”

I poke up my middle finger, letting them know how much I want a ride.

“Don’t be like that, baby. A girl like you has to take what she can get.”

Their laughter is like fingernails on a chalkboard, the keys of a piano being pounded on by a toddler. I am the joke. The hapless fat girl who needs two strangers to give her a ride and feel her up in the smelly cab of a truck. Fuck them. I throw my bottle of orange juice at their car. Fuck the whole world for making me feel like a loser when my life has barely begun. One of them throws a can out the window—beer. It hits the ground near my feet and sprays my legs. There is a kench of laughter as they speed off, kicking up gravel a few feet ahead of me, before swerving back onto the road. The back of the truck fishtails for several seconds, then the tires cling to the tar and propel them forward. I can see two heads through the back window. Two drunken idiots polluting the planet. I wish I had the power to flip their truck before they flipped someone else’s. Life is all about allowing people choices to be who they want. But the majority of people choose to be worthless. Not me, uh uh.

I’ve never been to the ocean, never heard the waves lick the sand in that quiet shushing you read about in books. I’ve never been to the zoo, smelled the elephant piss, and heard the cries of the monkeys. I’ve never had frozen yogurt from one of those places where you pull on the handle and fill your own cup with whatever you like. I’ve never eaten dinner at a restaurant with napkins that you set on your lap and silverware that isn’t plastic. I’ve never painted my nails like the other girls at school, in bright neons and decadent reds. I’ve never been more than ten miles from home. Ten miles. It’s like I live in the forever ago, not where buses rumble and trains have tracks. I’ve never had a birthday cake, though I’ve wanted one very much. I’ve never owned a bra that is new, and had to cut the tags off with the scissors from the kitchen drawer. I’ve never been loved in a way that makes me feel as if I was supposed to be born, if only to feel loved. I’ve never, I’ve never, I’ve never. And it’s my own fault. The things that we never do because someone makes us fearful of them, or makes us believe we don’t deserve them. I want to do all my nevers—alone or with someone who matters. I don’t care. I just want to live. Nevaeh never had any of those things either—and now she never will.

I can’t stay the way I am. I don’t remember what it’s like to be free. To be wide open without fear. I need something to break me. Just enough so that I have new pieces to work with—make them into something else. I don’t want to give anyone the right to treat me like a loser. I don’t want to be fat, I don’t want to live in the Bone, I don’t want to be without knowledge. I won’t be the girl who people laugh at. Not anymore. Good thing I memorized their license plate. Just in case.

A WEEK LATER
, a rusted brown pickup truck sits in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. I am supposed to be buying more granola, and shampoo for my mother, but all I can do is stand on the curb and stare. The license plate matches the one in my memory. I stare into the window; it’s filthy—trash and mud everywhere, a waterlogged copy of a nudey magazine lies on the floorboards, a piece of blue gum stuck over the model’s exposed breasts.

The door is unlocked. I climb into the driver’s seat and place my hands on the wheel. It stinks of manure and stale beer. I breathe through my mouth and try to picture what goes on in a jackass’s head. Probably everything that’s littering the floors of his truck: sex, food, and beer. I bend to retrieve the magazine, paging though the pictures, flinching past spread legs, and hard, round, baseball tits. Glossy lips, parted to remind men of all the places a woman’s body can accommodate them. I tear off one page, then another. I keep tearing until the magazine is a ripped pile of tits and ass and feathered hairdos, then I scatter them across the cab of the truck. There is a hammer in a toolbox on the seat next to me.
A fix it man!
I pick it up, weigh it in my hand, then I swing it at the windshield.