Suspicious River (14 page)

It was the biggest bar in town, and that night the owner, Trini, had been there herself. She was an old woman by then, a grandmother who wore her long white hair in a braid pinned at the base of her neck in a tight circle, a blue feather stuck into it on special occasions. She only came into the bar on weekends. Then she’d take a seat, reprimand the bartender once, drink a White Russian, hobble out to her long, pearl-gray Lincoln Town Car, and drive back to the nice retirement village on the river where she rested, in peace.

Trini had even been there when the fight broke out, but when the police came around her retirement village asking questions the next morning, she wouldn’t give them a single name of a single man who’d been in the bar when the boy had been hauled out the door—grunting, vomiting blood before they’d even stumbled to the alley. All the men in Trim’s were locals that night, except the dead Mexican boy. Well known, regulars, and there was a relief that spread through the town like a minty sigh when their names weren’t printed in the paper, never mentioned, never even rumored about at the drug store. Everyone knew one of those old boys at least, or one of their wives, or their mothers—blue-haired and knitting on a porch next to yours. It was said that boxes of flowers and chocolates were sent to Trini for her loyalty, and she told the other old ladies at the retirement village that she’d defend any white man, no matter how bad he was, against any Mexican or Indian or colored with her life.

Time passed. The boy was taken away somewhere and buried, and no one was ever arrested, no trial ever took place, and Trini died, still peaceful, in her bed that winter of pneumonia—suffocating sweetly, bird soul stepping out into the moist fog of her own lungs, blurred, with Morpheus bearing a torch for her through town before they slipped away together, no expression on his face.

But there was a big smiling picture of Trini in the paper the next day above the obituary, the names of fourteen grandchildren were listed, and a large cement angel with concrete wings, too heavy to fly away, was erected above her grave.

When my father and I got to the Grand Rapids city limits, we had to pull over on Division and look at the map to see where we were and where the clinic was.

“Here,” my father said, pointing to a thin gray line. “Here we are. We’re almost there.”

The clinic waiting room was pink and empty, and the woman at the receptionist’s desk looked happy to see us. She Smiled a lot with long wet teeth and looked me straight in the eyes, called my father Sir, asked if we wanted any coffee, and we did.

My father fidgeted with his watch, winding. He was wearing a thin plaid cotton shirt with a white T-shirt underneath, and he looked old. Maybe even poor, with his short hair over his ears and his heavy black shoes—the one on his right foot scuffed with dust from dragging his dead leg. The chairs we sat in were overstuffed, and my father couldn’t seem to get comfortable in his, sitting so low. When the receptionist handed each of us a styrofoam cup of bitter, scalding coffee, she said the nurse would call for me in a minute, still smiling widely. I could smell peroxide. When I looked over at my father, he was wiping something invisible out of his eye with the tip of his finger. When he noticed me watching him, he opened his mouth. Then a woman spoke my name.

“I’m the counselor,” she said, and smiled, though the corners of her mouth turned down when she did.

I followed the counselor’s black braid into a small purple office without windows. It was cluttered with books and fancy stuffed animals, brand-new and immaculate. A walrus. An exotic-looking polar bear with a smaller bear in its arms. She collected endangered species, it seemed. There was a poster on the wall of an old woman in a long black dress, skipping rope, and I imagined it was supposed to make me feel good—this old woman so full of life, this hopeful future in a long black dress waiting for me with a rope. The office was warm and dark, and the counselor’s voice sounded distant, though she was only inches from my face as she spoke.

Leaning forward, the counselor whispered was I sure this was what I wanted, and I felt sleepy. Did I have any problems at home? Had I told my sexual partner? Was I scared? Did I feel sad about this? Did I want to talk about that? Did I have any questions?

I tried to think of a question to offer into the silence. I looked up and asked, “How big is it?”

The counselor raised her eyebrows. “What? How big is what?”

“The baby,” I said.

“Oh.” The counselor shrugged. She held a hand up and pointed to the tip of her pinkie.

I looked at my fingers, which were longer and thinner than the counselor’s, and cool.

The counselor sighed then and said, “Usually on Wednesday mornings the right-to-lifers camp outside. They know that’s the day we do the procedures. If they’re here—which we expect they will be—there will be some staff outside to walk with you and your father from your car to the back door of the clinic. If you don’t see us, just wait in the car, with the car doors locked. We’ll get there. We’ll be keeping an eye out for you.”

“How much will this cost?” I asked, whispering.

The counselor looked at me a little sad then and smiled. “You don’t need to worry about that. The secretary looked at the income statement your dad filled out, and you qualify for aid. You don’t have to pay.”

I didn’t want to cry, but I did. I looked at the counselor’s poster again, the one of the old woman skipping rope, and I imagined, by now, that old woman had to be dead. The purple walls throbbed around me like kindness, like kidneys, and I felt sick. She handed me a tissue, and it smelled like wet white roses, and it felt damp before I even wiped my eyes.

I
COME INTO THE KITCHEN
in my nightgown. The red rosebuds on it might look like petals of blood from a distance, and the lace around the wrists still itches. I never get used to that lace.

There’s sun coming up through the kitchen window, turning the cold February air to tin. These mornings are tinged with something steel-bright, and silver polish, and it hurts my head to smell it. Waking every February morning into that smell is like breathing frost from the glass coolers at the supermarket. A mouthful of frozen smoke.

My mother is there, sitting in my uncle’s lap with her arms around his neck at the kitchen table, and she doesn’t move, doesn’t even look, when I walk in.

“Morning, sunshine,” my uncle says, and I just stare at him.

My uncle’s face is my father’s face, prettied up. A little feminine, but his eyes are narrow. When he lifts his dark eyebrows, my uncle is an actor. When he bites his lower lip, he’s a young soldier in an old movie, a stubble of beard on his chin to let you know he’s not a boy—though he still looks sweet and fiendish as a boy.

“Can’t you be nice to Uncle Andy?” my mother asks and pulls his face a little closer to her own with her fingers clasped at his collar.

My mouth is empty when I open it. I just keep my gaze on him. My eyes blink like a plastic doll’s.

“Look at me, young lady,” my mother says, but I don’t.

She says, “You look at me. You be nice to your uncle Andy.”

My mother stands beside him then, sets the edges of her top teeth against the swordtips of her bottom teeth and smiles as if she could hiss. There’s ice melting outside, and it runs down the kitchen windows in sparking threads. My mother is wearing red high heels that match her extraordinary lips, a black skirt and white blouse, and it isn’t even nine o’clock on a Saturday morning yet.

“Don’t worry about it, Bonnie,” my uncle says.

“No.” She turns to look at him, her hands on her hips. “I will not forget about it. This little princess needs to learn some manners.”

She looks at me. Her voice is stretched tight as a telephone wire, and she says, “You apologize right now to your uncle Andy.”

“No.” I pout it. I look at him hard and blank, and my mother leans down then and grabs my nightgown, balls it into a fist, and drags me closer to her. Her eyes are wide and blue. She slaps me and slaps me again—a windmill twirling its stiff arms, a sailboat spinning in little manic circles on a small, calm lake. I’m caught in a funnel of feathers and violent air. She slaps me with her small white hands until he pulls her off of me.

“Now apologize,” my mother says to me, breathless, glaring over his shoulder.

“Bonnie.” He takes her arms in his hands, shakes her once, gently, tries to meet her eyes with his.

“I will not just let this go, Andy. She needs to learn. She’s got to have some respect for you if you’re going to be her father. She’s got to learn to be polite.” My mother’s voice trails higher and higher, a white kite slipping into a thin white sky.

My uncle drops her arms and his shoulders sag. “Bonnie.” He shakes his head, “Don’t say that again.”

“What?” she asks, her mouth open wide, then her teeth closed together, “What?”

“Don’t say I’m going to be her father.”

She inhales. “Why?”

My uncle sits back down at the kitchen table and puts his hands on the Formica, shakes his head, looks up at her staring down at him, “Because it’s not right.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She grips her own arms in a cage of fingernails, hard.

“Jesus, Bonnie, stop it,” he says.

“Stop what?”

“Stop talking about this.”

“Why?”

He looks down at his hands then, still shaking his head, biting his lower lip. “Because you’re my brother’s wife.”

My mother takes a step back, inhaling sharply, then breathing hard. She exhales through her nostrils, her eyes widening, and then she smiles with one side of her mouth and spits, “Did you just fucking figure that out?”

“Bonnie,” he says.

My mother walks past me fast, the sound of heels and breeze.

My uncle stands up, follows her into the bedroom. There’s screaming behind the closed door. Something thrown and broken, someone, muffled, struggling, and I hold my breath so I won’t cry until there’s silence. Then I climb onto the kitchen counter and take down a yellow plastic bowl, pour Cocoa Puffs and milk into the bowl, and spoon them into my mouth.

The cereal tastes good—something dark and sweet in sour milk.

When I got back to the office I dialed 42, and Gary Jensen answered before I even heard it ring.

“Leila,” he said, “Is that you?”

“Yes.” I hadn’t meant to cry. “I need some help down here.”

“What happened?” he asked, loud. “Jesus, Leila, did some creep do something to you?”

“Yeah.” The word was a sob. “Gary, my shirt’s all torn. Can you please bring me a sweater or something—to wear over my blouse?”

“Oh, baby, yes,” he said. “Yes. I’ll be right there.”

He was breathing fast when he got down to the office, but it took him a long time to get there. By the time he hurried in, I’d stopped crying, but I knew my face was a mess. I crossed my arms over my chest so he couldn’t see the ruined blouse, but he came behind the counter and pulled me into his arms, making small noises in his throat like awful grief while he did, petting my hair, making little circles with his fingers on my back.

I leaned forward, weakly, and put my face into the white cotton of his shirt and smelled smoky leaves and deodorant inside his clothes. I looked up and saw the scar just under his beard. The beard had grown even darker in the few days I’d known him. His lips were thin and dry, and when he kissed me I thought I tasted medicine in his mouth. His eyes were nearly closed, a fringe of lashes, a dark stitching of brows.

Then he helped me slip the brown wool sweater he’d brought with him up my arms, buttoning the buttons up the front for me as if I were a child headed out into the cold without a lunch, my arms useless at my sides. The sweater was his, and it nearly fit. Afterward, I clung to him. I couldn’t help it. And I began to cry again.

“Look,” he took my hand and led me to the vinyl couch, gently pulled me down to sit beside him on it, put both his arms around me and pulled my face toward his own narrow chest. He kissed my hair and cleared his throat. “Look,” he said into it, “Leila. It’s very important that you tell me who did this to you. I won’t do anything crazy, sweetheart. But I got to know.”

I was quiet a long time. When I closed my eyes, for an instant I saw an attic full of violent secrets with wet black wings. But I took a deep breath. “31,” I said, “Around back.” I pointed toward the river with a cold, trembling hand.

Gary Jensen kissed my hair again—a copper shower curtain of hair, tangled as a dragged doll’s.

Then he said, quiet, “You go clean yourself up a little, baby. I promise I’ll be right back.”

Gary kissed my lips. He even slipped his tongue between my teeth and moved his hand over the brown wool sweater, his, and felt my breast, rubbed his jaw against mine, and I felt his beard like dry mown summer grass on my neck.

The nurse eased a needleful of blood out of my arm, shook the vial, and then touched my hand and said, “How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” I said, “I’ll be seventeen next week.”

“Have you ever been pregnant before?”