Shine (12 page)

“Oh, who knows,” Destiny said, less a question than a worn out dismissal. “But it happens, sure. They wash the checks with bleach and then write in their own name on the PAY TO line. Voilà, instant money.”

It sounded like she knew a lot about it. As she checked her lipstick in the mirror, my eyes strayed back to the nesting dolls. I wondered who gave them to her. How long she’d had them.

I toyed with a question as she applied a new layer of gloss
over her already bright lips. Finally, I went ahead and asked.

“So . . . why did you and Tommy break up?”

She smacked her lips, checked her teeth, and drew back from the mirror. “I’m s’posed to be at Sheldon’s,” she said, exiting her room.

“Just tell me quick,” I said, trailing after her. She was a girl once, too. The dolls said as much. If Tommy had hit her or something, I’d have proof that he liked to hurt people in general, and not just me.

Then I realized where my mind had gone—that I was
hoping
Destiny had gotten beat on—and I’d have done about anything to take the question back.

Destiny didn’t seem traumatized, however. Just put-out. “You know Willow?”

“Yeah,” I said. Willow got pregnant and had a baby when she was sixteen, same age as I was now. She lived with her boyfriend, and they both liked chasing the dragon, meaning they liked to burn their meth and sniff the wispy white fumes. That’s what people said.

“Willow and me used to be friends,” Destiny said. She passed through the living room and swooped up her purse from the sofa. She continued on to the front door, but didn’t open it. “Then Willow got with Darren, and she had her baby, and you know how that goes.”

I didn’t, but I could imagine.

“I didn’t want to just abandon her, so I went to see her one day. To see the baby.”

“That’s good. I bet she was real glad.”

“No, she was real
high
,” Destiny said bitterly. “Dumb girl didn’t have no job, and neither did Darren. But I showed up at Darren’s apartment, and what do you know? They’ve got a wide-screen TV and a massage chair, not to mention all kinds of crap for the baby. I was, ‘
Dang
. Where’d y’all get this stuff?’”

“Were they the ones washing checks?”

“
God
, no,” she said, like I’d insulted her. “Washing checks takes a steady hand.”

“So where’d the stuff come from? Where’d they get money for it?”

“From Darren. Darren’s a runner, but he steps on it sometimes.”

“
Steps
on it?” I shook my head. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means he mixed the shit with talcum powder, but sold it as pure and kept the profits.”

“Oh.”

“So one day I went over to get a bump, right?”

“
I thought you went to see the baby.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She looked at me hard. “And just so you know, this was before I got my head straight. I don’t do that crap no more.”

“Um, okay.”

“Well, Tommy got there before I did,” she said with a sigh. “I was gonna meet him at Darren’s, and we were gonna see the baby, and maybe we’d stay for a while. But by the time I
arrived, they’d started without me, and every one of ‘em was higher than a Carolina pine. End of story.”

“What do you mean, ‘end of story’? How is that the end of the story?”

She twisted her mouth. She didn’t look happy, but her blond hair was shiny, and she didn’t have any burns on her face or picked-at scabs on the insides of her arms. She didn’t
look
like a user.

“They thought it’d be funny to pull a gun on me,” she said. “They were amped out of their frickin’ minds, and Darren, he pointed his pistol at me and said, ‘Hands up, bitch. We’re gonna have to do a strip search.’”

“What
jerks
,” I said.

“‘Jerks,’” she said. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Does Tommy use meth?” I asked. Tommy was a lot of things, most of them bad. But a tweaker?

Her eyebrows formed upside-down V’s. “Um . . .
yeah
.”

Incredibly, a wave of sadness washed over me. I felt like such an innocent.

“So that’s what split y’all apart,” I stated.

“
And
that’s why I won’t let him come over or nothing, even though he says he’s clean now.” She opened the front door. “Called me up and said he didn’t want to date me no more, but he did want to apologize for how bad he treated me. Said he’d gone clean for Jesus.”

“That doesn’t sound like Tommy.”

“Tell me about it. Plus I know how easy it is to fall back into
that crap.” Her features shifted. I couldn’t say how, exactly, but the overall effect was to make my heart hurt for her. “And the way he acted when he was high—he did some crazy stuff. Out-of-his-mind kind of crazy. Afterward he’d feel real bad, and he’d go on about how sorry he was, but . . .”

I waited.

She snapped out of it and stepped through the open door. “So, yeah. That’s why we broke up.”

I stayed where I was.

“Why’d Darren have a pistol?” I asked. Every boy I knew had a rifle or a shotgun, and usually both. Christian got his first rifle when he was six. He killed his first deer a month later and got his picture in the paper, squatting by the carcass and smiling wide.

But handguns were a different story. Handguns weren’t for shooting game; they were for shooting people. Plus, unless the rules had changed, you couldn’t own one if you were under twenty-one.

“Comes with the job,” Destiny said.

“Huh?”

She sighed. “Okay, I’m not trying to be mean, but how clueless
are
you?”

“Pretty clueless,” I admitted.

“Well, it’s not hard. You want a gun, you’re gonna get yourself a gun. Steal it, buy it from a friend, trade some crank for it. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, still trying to piece it together.

“You know Wally? Scumbag who cooks up the meth?”

I nodded, happy to supply the right answer for once.

“He gives all his boys handguns. That’s how Darren got his, and I’d guess the same’s true for Tommy and Beef and Dupree.”

I tried not to show my shock, but I couldn’t help it.
“Beef?”
I exclaimed. “And
Dupree
?”

“You didn’t know they’re Wally’s boys?” Destiny asked.

I gazed past her. Sunlight glinted on the hood of her pickup.

“You honestly didn’t know,” she repeated.

“Is Beef a user?” I said, unable to keep my voice from wavering. Tommy using meth was bad. Anybody using meth was bad, and that went for Destiny, too. But Beef? And if Beef was messed up with that stuff—hopefully he wasn’t, but just
if
—what if my brother was, too?

No. Never.

I’d heard a saying about meth, that it took you down one of three roads: jail, the psych ward, or death. No matter how smart or careful or under control you thought you were, if you used meth, you’d end up at one of those destinations.

I knew Beef was in a hard place, what with losing his wrestling scholarship and dropping out of school. But how could he possibly think to himself,
Well, I’ll just start slamming meth. That’ll put me back on the road to glory
.

“If it makes you feel better, Patrick wanted him out,” Destiny said. “I don’t know much, but I do know that.”

“Wanted him to stop using, or to stop working for Wally?”

“Both?” she said.

I pressed my hands over my face.

“Hey,” she said. “It
can
be done. Quitting, I mean. Look at me, I’m living proof.”

Yeah, only she was heading out the door in a miniskirt and heels. Her lips were bright red, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t heading to Sheldon’s to play Scrabble.

“But you still party,” I said.

“Of course, just no more hard stuff. I can’t luxuriate away my youth, see.” She hesitated. “Nobody knows this, but I’m gonna own my own beauty salon one day.”

I tried for a smile. “That’s cool. You’d be good at that.”

“I want to learn how to do them Brazilian perms,” she said. “You heard of them? They make your hair super straight without even drying it out.”

She took a strand of my hair and ran her thumb and forefinger down the length of it. Her touch was steady. “You wouldn’t need one, but for people with that super frizzy hair, it could be life changing.”

“Destiny . . .”

“Some people do change, Cat. Not many, but it can be done.” She prodded me out the door. “I gotta go. If you ever want your hair cut, let me know.”

THIS MORNING, I WENT WITH AUNT TILDY TO SEE Missus Marietta, one of the church shut-ins. She was too elderly to get around on her own, and she had hardly any visitors. It was as if the world had forgotten her. It was good of Aunt Tildy to check on her every month, but that was Aunt Tildy, who tried to live a godly life. She maybe didn’t get it right all the time, but who did?

A snapshot of Aunt Tildy:

Long brown hair streaked with gray, because she thought it was vain for a woman to color her hair. I remembered watching her peer at her reflection and tut, saying, “Lord, I’m not ready to look like my mama. I’m too young to look like my mama.” I suspected that if Aunt Tildy did get the gray covered, she’d be
as happy as a kid blowing out birthday candles. But she would never. She had rules, and she was big on following them.

The next thing that came to mind was chores, chores, and more chores. Aunt Tildy just loved work, and she loved putting me to work. Christian didn’t have to do as much, because he was a boy. She did insist he make up his bed every day, though, and she made him clean whatever deer, squirrel, and rabbit he shot and brought home. “You kill it; you clean it,” she told him.

Next on the list? Country music. Aunt Tildy had a radio in the kitchen that she listened to all day. She didn’t sing along, because that would be “letting loose,” and she didn’t do that. She didn’t hug me much, either. I figured being prim and proper made her feel safe.

No, that wasn’t quite it. It was more like . . . like life was messy, with snotty noses and first periods and girls crying over the things girls cry about. Aunt Tildy didn’t like messes, and she would
prefer
to be prim and proper always, but if she absolutely had to step in the muck—if there was no one else to do it, and it had to be done—then she would.

Thinking about that side of Aunt Tildy dredged up other memories. Memories of Tommy. My personal monster-under-the-bed, only it lurked in my heart instead, snapping its sharp teeth when I least expected it.

The few times I tried to talk about it with Aunt Tildy, she just frowned and scrubbed harder on the pot she was scouring. And yes, it hurt, having her pretend it never happened. Aunt
Tildy worked for Tommy’s daddy, and she wasn’t going to stir up trouble.

Anyway, nursing my wounded feelings was neither here nor there. What mattered were facts, not feelings, and the facts added up to a single, hard truth. Three years ago, Christian saw what Tommy was doing to me in our living room and did nothing. Aunt Tildy, on the other hand, made Tommy stop, and for that I would always be fiercely grateful.

That brought me to the last detail in my aunt Tildy collage. She was my strongest link to my mother. I was two when Mama died, so my memories of her were dandelion wisps fluttering out of reach. Warmth. Safety. A feeling of home.

Aunt Tildy was Mama’s older sister, and while she wasn’t my mother, she was better than nothing.

Anyway. Missus Marietta loved the rhubarb crumble we brought her. Aunt Tildy was sweet and told Missus Marietta I made it, when really I just did the crumble part. I like lots of brown sugar, so I added twice the normal amount. It looked so pretty when I pulled it out of the oven, the crumbly topping all golden and buttery and chunks of rhubarb popping out here and there, oozing their ruby red juice.

We visited with Missus Marietta for an hour, and I brushed her long silver hair the way she liked. She asked about Patrick, though she called him “that boy, you know the one,” and said it was a crying shame what happened to him.

“There’s folks in Black Creek who ain’t just mean, they were
born
mean,” she said in her quavery voice. Aunt Tildy started
to reproach her, but Missus Marietta would have none of it. “Now, Tilda, I been living in these parts for near on ninety years. I know what I know.”