Playing With Matches (16 page)

On this night, however, Miss Shookie was the first to stand, one hand on her hat and the other on her daughter. As they stumbled by, Bitsy’s swollen eyes slid to mine, and a terrible heat rose in my neck. God help me, this had nothing to do with the fire set at Mama’s. This was new. I was guilty of tattling.

Miss Shookie led her daughter to the altar.

Millicent Poole popped out of her seat. The Reverend spoke softly to Bitsy—Miss Shookie not missing a word—and he flagged Miz Bishop to let up on the chorus the twelfth time around.

“Dear hearts,” the Best Reverend said to us all, “our own Bitsy Lovemore has come forward this evening to confess her sins. Lift your voices, and make a joyful noise.”

The congregation shook off their surprise, and a few hallelujahs wavered off the walls. Miss Shookie yanked at her girdle and straightened her dress.

Poor Bitsy. She was bland of face with a walrus body, and nobody liked her.

The night before, the heat had been sweltering. Under our willow, where Auntie was pouring cold pop for the grown-ups, Cousin Bitsy mumbled that she was going for a walk. A
stroll
, she called it. She did this often, and I thought it odd that a girl of her size, whose only exercise was to bend both elbows at the table, would choose to walk anywhere.

I followed her, for the purpose of spying. Maybe a hundred yards along the road, she stepped into the field and waited while a flashlight beam bobbled through the grass. In a clearing of old cornstalks, a prison-guard uniform was already being shed. Bitsy rucked up her dress, and shadow fell into shadow as she and the fellow went to rolling and grunting on the ground. When it was over, and they were both breathing hard, Bitsy got to her feet, caught me watching, and snarled, “Brush the goddamn grass offa me.”

I said, “I’m going to tell.”

“Christ! Just get the straw out of my hair.” She pulled down her dress and stepped into her drawers.

But I didn’t tell—not right away. All through last night, I savored the secret.

I wondered if any boy would ever want me the way the Farm guards apparently wanted Bitsy. Would any boy be interested at all? Would they call me on the phone or take me to the movies or hold my hand? Probably not.

Folks would remember my mama, and word would go around that I was free—or maybe they could pay me. They would chant their songs about me—the next Clarice—and write my name on bathroom walls.

Today, at our Sunday noon meal, I opened my mouth and
announced that this morning in church, all of First and Last Holy Word had been able to see through Bitsy’s dress. These astonishing words fell on the dishes, on the tablecloth, and in my lap. Thereafter, it was hard for us all to concentrate on our barbecued ribs with Uncle Cunny’s family-recipe sauce. All but Uncle eyed Bitsy’s chest.

“Law,” Miss Shookie said, rolling her eyes to heaven and looking shamed. “I do right by this girl eight days a week.”

Across the table, Auntie got over the shock and took to studying Bitsy with narrowed eyes. “Sister, your daughter is no more
girl
than I am.”

Indeed she was not. Guided by the devil, and making things worse, I proceeded to recount last night’s tale of the naked prison guard, how the grass had broken and lay flat beneath them. How Bitsy had come up with straw in her hair and her underpants in her hand.

Uncle Cunny pushed back his chair, saying he’d just finish his cake outside.

At first nobody said anything about Bitsy’s nakedness in the field. Then Auntie loudly announced that
Lord, Lord, it was time her niece wore foundation garments
, and she’d just loan her some till her mama could get her to the Big Woman’s Store over in Slidell.

Now Miss Shookie was double-offended. “I have you to know, my baby girl is wearin’ a slip!”

“A
half
-slip!” said Auntie.

Miss Shookie squeezed her eyes tight and moaned and wailed, “Oh, no,
Jesus
!” and keened and clutched her midsection. “
Lordy
, I can’t afford no brassieres for this big girl.”

Dinner was over. I followed them all into Auntie’s bedroom, which was right off the kitchen and boasting a polished bureau, a treadle sewing machine, shelves crammed with antiques, and a
high bed with a knobby chenille bedspread. Auntie rummaged in her drawer and came up with an undergarment the size of industrial machinery.

“Off with that dress, girl. Shookie, you should be ashamed, lettin’ your child’s titties hang loose. It’s no wonder the men’s been looking through and worse. Now, you put your arms in here, girl, that’s right, go on.” Auntie lifted and pushed and worked the straps, and pretty soon she had both Bitsy’s arms going in the right directions.

“Now,” she said, “bend over so’s we can get you tucked in. That’s how they do in fine department stores.”

“Sister!” said Miss Shookie. “What obscenities you doin’ to my baby girl?”

“What you already should have!” My aunt fumed and grunted. “I ain’t the first what’s had my hands on these things.”

And with more heaving and molding on Auntie’s part, and several snaps and protesting
womps
of elastic—along with whistling from between Bitsy’s big teeth—I witnessed the holstering of Bitsy into Auntie’s brassiere with the heavy-duty stitching. Auntie, inserting her knee in Bitsy’s back, proceeded to fasten the six hooks and eyes.

“Oh, Lord
Jesus
,” wailed Miss Shookie, hunched on the bed with her hands to her face. “My baby girl is gone and growed up!”

And here came the misery, and down fell the tears, Miss Shookie alternately flapping her hands and weeping into the hem of her own hiked-up skirt.

Auntie said, “
Baby
, my ass. Bitsy needs to confess her sins, that’s what.”

So now here we were—some fifty people at Sunday-night service, each holier than the next and waiting to hear what Bitsy Lovemore had done.

She put her hands together, one over the other, like she was fixing to sing. Then she got right to it. “I been loose,” she said.

Her mama gave her one of those
uh-huh
looks.

Bitsy took in air and let it out of her cheeks. “I been wrestlin’ the gents and gettin’ down on the ground. Ain’t had no bed.” Her voice carried, wistful. “We do it however we finds a way.”

Miss Shookie backed off by one sanctified step, pulled a fan from her purse, and cooled herself mightily. The congregation went into fits of shuffling while I wandered in a land between horror and wonder.

I, after all, was guilty of far more sin than Bitsy was.

And I wondered what it was like to be her, just now, if she cared what we thought, if wearing a bra hurt. Bitsy pinched her see-through skirt. Her face was bland and fat and shiny. “If y’all are wonderin’ who fornicated me—”

She turned to the choir. “That one and that.”

Two pimply-faced boys ducked into their collars.

“And him in the back—”

I swear she sent death rays over the congregation. “The Oaty brothers had their way with me, and the manager at the Ninety-Nine Cent Store. Miz Sherrard’s old pappy—oh, and two of those Maytubby boys.”

And still more—the high school gym teacher, three guards from the prison, the mailman in False River, on and on.

When Miss Shookie’s knees looked weak and bendy, and she was close to buckling under her daughter’s load of sin, Reverend Ollie guided them both to a seat, raced through the benediction, and sent the rest of us home. Auntie made me wait outside while she and Miss Shookie conversed with the Reverend.

On the way to her car, Miz Millicent Poole clasped my wrist in
her bird-bone fingers. “Just you wait, girlie,” she said. “Your turn is comin’.”

On the way home, there was a great sighing and a muffling of words. Miss Shookie drove. Then she paced the length of our parlor and kitchen, and wept and had to be comforted. Again I had made everything wrong, and nothing could be righted.

When they were taking their leave, and Miss Shookie was rummaging for her car keys, Bitsy came by me.

“You don’t know, girl,” she said. “You ain’t ever gonna know.”

“Know what?” I asked.

“What it’s like to be somethin’ nobody wants.”

22

Y
ears have passed.

Last night in the rearview mirror, Luz looked like a refugee—sharp cheekbones, round glasses with black frames, green eyes, and no fat to speak of on her bones. She wears her hair in pigtails.

She and I laid Harry on the backseat of my Honda in a nest of shirts and jeans, and tucked his blue woolly around him.

“You okay, honey?” I said.

My daughter nodded and said disjointedly, “Harry has trauma, Mom. Mental suffering. Pain.” At eleven, Luz is our dictionary.

I wheeled out of the hospital parking lot.

“Well, talk to him. Let him know we’re here.”

Luz asked, “Are we going to live in our car now, Mom? ’Cause I knew this kid, he and his dad slept in their Bronco.”

“We are not,” I said.

Because of yesterday’s tropical storm, most businesses were shuttered or vacated, a few doors standing open for coolness in its wake. Just west of the city, in a less wind-damaged neighborhood, we found the Starlight Motel. There were no lights on anywhere. A man lounged against the portico, a flashlight in his hand.

I paid thirty-seven dollars and fifty-seven cents for two candles and a lighter and two beds in a room, where I tucked Harry in with me. Luz and I ate stale Cheese Nips with peanut butter and drank Diet Pepsi from a vending machine that someone had pried open with jack handles and crowbars. Harry ate nothing. I left the bathroom light on.

When the kids were asleep, I dumped our possessions on the floor, emptied out the black plastic bag, and carried Thomas’s things down to the Dumpster. My heart was twisted sideways.

Screw this damn storm
.

Today, while I laid out lesson plans, my house was collapsing, my babies were in danger, and my husband was in his office at the college, humping a cute young thing.
Well, fuck Thomas Ryder
. He can deal with the mess that was our house on Lilac Lane and our homeowner’s insurance while he’s finding the next target for his heat-seeking dick.

But that mess, that beautiful ruin, was our home.

And last night, in the face of trauma, mental suffering, and pain, I passed up Call. Meditation. My center quaked.

All night my daughter wheezed lightly in her sleep. I walked the cheap carpet and lay stiff as a board on the motel room’s bed, my mind cluttered with junk.

Where will we go?
We can’t go back to Lilac Lane—the storm blew out the windows and brought the staircase down. The only other thing is to travel upriver. Terrible things wait for me there—the chicken circus and the curling black smoke. If we go there, I’ll be arrested. I’m old enough, now, to be convicted and sentenced, to serve my time. The big question is—while I’m locked in prison, will Aunt Jerusha care for Luz and Harry?

Now, at first light, I feel trapped in my fear. The three of us put on yesterday’s clothes and drive to McDonald’s, Harry silent and eating nothing. I slip a straw into his milk. “Drink for Mama,” I beg him. But he does not.

Luz and I pick at a foam tray of pancakes and scrambled egg and thin sausage.

“Mom. This food will keep us strong,” Luz says. “Durable, unyielding.”

In the orange plastic booth, I hold Harry close. He hugs his blue woolly, that has dried overnight. He looks so sad.

23

A
ll that we own is in the car, what I grabbed from the laundry room as the ceiling came down.

Luz says, “Mom. Where are we going?”

“False River,” I say. My voice is not helpful. The words come out stiff. “See if you can find it on the map.”

She pulls a map of Mississippi from the pocket behind my seat—finding anything is a no-brainer for Luz. Her interest is up.

“Is that a town?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“What’s there?”

How much should I tell her? “I lived there with my aunt.”

In the rearview mirror I see her mouth fall open. “You have an
aunt
? I have a great-aunt?”