The Bad Lady (Novel) (14 page)

“Maybe your neighbors need to be warned,” the bad lady says, now stepping onto the cracked, uneven sidewalk, forcing Nancy to back up even more.

“Look,” Nancy utters defensively. “I’m sorry that your little boy has you believing this wild tale, but I am not going to stand here and listen to you accuse me of being a child molester. That’s not who I am. Women don‘t take advantage of children. We‘re nurturers.”

“Some women are nurturers, not all.”

“Whatever.”

“Let me ask you something, Sutcliffe.”

“What?”

“Do you have children of your own?”

“No. Can’t say that I do. When I was married to my husband Arthur, we had thought about having kids. It just never happened. It turned out, Arthur and I weren’t right for each other. That‘s why we got divorced.”

Although it seemed, to me, that the bad lady, based on her decreased tone of voice, might have been calming down, I doubted it would last. At this point, I think she was merely toying with Nancy, intending to bait her into some kind trap, which might cause Nancy to slip up and reveal something that would give her dirty secret away.

“All right. Then hypothetically speaking,” the bad lady proposed, “what would you do if you did have a ten-year old son, and he came home and told you that he had been molested by the woman who drives the Good Humor truck, what would you do?” The bad lady placed her hands on her hips, impatiently awaiting the reaction.

“I don’t know what I would do,” Nancy retorted. “Now let me ask you something, Miss Hall.”

“Sure. I’m game.”

“If you’re supposedly so concerned about your son’s well-being, then why did you allow him to drive around with me in the first place? He’s been driving around with me, off and on, all summer long.”

“Well, let’s just say Sutcliffe, originally I thought I could trust you. When we met back at the end of May, I believe, you seemed like a nice enough individual. However, I don’t share that same opinion now. No ma’am, I don’t. In fact, now I am so disgusted having to look at you, face to face, that I don’t know whether I want to vomit, or shove that filthy broomstick up your sorry little ass!”

Briefly, Nancy glanced toward my mother’s blue Toyota Corolla, possibly waiting for me to jump out of the car.

“Don’t look toward my son,” the bad lady warned.

“Why not?” Nancy inquires.

“Because Billy doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore. That’s why.”

“If he really said all this stuff about me, how I had allegedly touched him in an inappropriate manner, then I think your son should come over here right now and tell me himself.”

That powerful remark, as I expected, did not sit well with the bad lady.

“You must be out of your mind,” she snaps furiously. “I’m not bringing my little boy over here so that you can try to manipulate him again.”

“Manipulate him, what a laugh.”

The bad lady glared at Nancy. “What did you just say?”

“I said what a laugh. Did you know, Miss Hall, that today, your son Billy told me that you whipped him with a belt?”

“Oh. He told you that, huh?”

“Yes he did.”

“What exactly did he tell you?”

Once again, Nancy gazed in my direction, at my worried face in the car window. Then she turned back toward the bad lady.

“He said that he had accidentally broken a lamp this morning, something about kicking a Nerf football around inside the house, when he wasn’t supposed to. And that you whipped him with either a cord or a belt. Then he said that you had ordered him to get the hell out of the house. That you didn’t want to see him come back until you had calmed down . . . Miss Hall, your son was scared to death. He was shaking like a leaf. To try to get him to stop crying, I gave him a hug and an innocent kiss on the cheek. That’s all I did. He must have misconstrued that, I‘m sorry.”

The bad lady did not believe that for a minute. I don’t blame her. I never said that my mother had whipped me with a belt or a cord. In fact, I don’t remember telling Nancy that she had whipped with the metal pancake spatula either, which was really the instrument my mom had used. All I remember saying is that she had hit me.

Nancy was turning the tables, attempting to take the focus off her, and putting it onto my mom, making my mother sound like the one who had been abusive.

I’ll admit that I had never liked to be spanked, what kid did? But to say that I had been scared to death that morning, crying, and shaking like a leaf, was utterly fictitious. A blatant exaggeration clearly meant to mislead. Just like it wasn’t true that Nancy had only given me a hug to try to comfort me, as well as a harmless peck on the cheek.

“You’re full of shit!” the bad lady says, spitting in revulsion.

“No I’m not,” Nancy insists emphatically. “Are you telling me that, this morning, you didn’t hit your kid?”

“This isn’t about me, Sutcliffe, this is about you.”

“So you did hit him?”

“Whether I spanked my son or not is my fucking business, not yours.”

“Hey, whatever. I’m just saying-” For a second, Nancy put the broom down. Then, probably feeling unsafe, she quickly raised the broomstick back up, positioned it in front of her swollen chest, in the same ninja warrior stance.

The bad lady spit again. This time she spit directly in Nancy’s face. “What kind of lewd creature are you anyway?” she says. “Having a little kid go down on you.”

“Go down on me?”

“Yeah. Go down on you.”

“That’s insane,” Nancy argued, now abruptly turning around and heading back to her driveway. “Now I’ve definitely heard enough.”

“What’s the matter, did I strike a nerve?”

“You certainly did.”

“Having a little kid give you a lick job,” the bad lady continued to hassle. “In exchange for ice cream. That’s about as desperate, low, and vile as putting peanut butter in your pussy and then having a dog lick it clean, wouldn’t you agree?”

Infuriated, Nancy kicked the plastic trashcan that contained the cut grass. “Miss Hall, you’re asking for trouble.”

“Yeah. I’m not the one walking away, am I?”

As I told you earlier, my mom, when the bad lady was in control, had an extremely bad temper. She had once been arrested for punching a woman outside the local Walmart. Apparently the woman had said some nasty stuff to my mom, and, in the parking lot, had slammed her shopping cart into my mother‘s cart. I don’t know exactly what the woman had said, or why she had slammed her shopping cart into my mom’s cart. I had been too young. This was five years ago. Anyway, my mom (or really the bad lady I‘m sure), did not like what she had heard, so she had turned around and had knocked the woman at Walmart’s teeth down her throat. Later the judge would slap my mother with a fine and give her thirty days of community service.

Therefore, although Nancy Sutcliffe stood several inches taller than the bad lady, and outweighed her by a good twenty pounds, I was confident that if they were to slug it out, it would be a close contest.

“Miss Hall, you’re delusional.” Evidently thinking that the bad lady would leave, Nancy had now begun to sweep the driveway. She had even started to whistle a tune.

“I‘m not delusional at all, Sutcliffe.”

“Yes you are.”

“Don’t . . . think . . . so.”

“Well, I don’t care what you think.”

“Tell me, how the hell do you live with yourself, knowing that you corrupted a child?” The bad lady still stood on the sidewalk, next to the chubby maple tree. “Or do you not view your sexual fetish for children as morally wrong and despicable, the way the rest of us in society do, us normal people?” She stepped closer to the yard. “Initiating an erotic outing with a little kid by urging him to feel your tits, and then to kiss them, after showing him a bunch of sleazy naked pictures of yourself from your trip to Hawaii. You‘re a filthy person, Nancy Sutcliffe. Do you fucking realize that? You’re vulgar. An abomination against God.”

“Oh,” said Nancy. “So now you’re going to preach the holy book to me, is that it?”

“Yes. God frowns at sinners.”

“Miss Hall, before you start shooting off your mouth, you ought to go back and read the Bible more closely, we’re all sinners. You, me, and everyone else in this world. Remember, that‘s why Jesus died. He died for our sins.”

The bad lady inched closer to Nancy’s yard. Now her feet were practically standing on the grass. “You don’t have to tell me about Jesus,” she shouts.

“No. That’s where you’re mistaken,” Nancy counters vehemently. “Its people like you, Miss, Hall, who cause most of the problems in this world, always preaching your religion.”

“So what. Someone has to preach the good book to sinners like you. If you don‘t like it, Nancy, then maybe you ought to pack up your shit and move out of the Midwest. Get your sorry ass out of the Bible belt. We don‘t need your kind here. We don‘t need a pervert driving up and down our streets, delivering ice cream to our children.”

Nancy scoffed. Used the broomstick to whack the garbage can, hard.

“That‘s utterly ridiculous,” she says. “For someone who likes to preach the word of God, you don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. For your information, Northern Ohio isn’t part of the Bible belt. The Bible belt is south of Ohio, in Arkansas, and Alabama. In conservative states down that way . . . And Texas, especially Texas.”

The bad lady did not say anything. I don’t think she was sure who was right and who was wrong.

As for me, I had no idea where the Bible belt was either. I had heard the term used before, yet had never known what it represented. I did know one thing, however, on television there in Hampton, Ohio, were dozens of preachers. Particularly on Sunday morning. There was always an animated holy man, like a Billy Graham or a Jerry Falwell, standing at a podium addressing a church congregation with, GOD THIS, GOD THAT. OR JESUS, HALLELUJAH! JESUS WILL SAVE YOU. HAVE FAITH IN THE LORD. Always seeming to emphasize every word convincingly, in a dramatic tone, while using fist-clenched hand gestures.

“Miss Hall, if you’re so into Christianity, then what’s with your bizarre new look?”

“What about my new look?”

Nancy laughed, mockingly. “Who on earth are you supposed to be, Ozzy Osbourne from the 80’s? I thought only misguided teenagers into Goth rock wore blue lipstick, a ton of mascara, and powdered their faces as white as snow. The only thing you need now is a nice nose ring, and some tattoos of dragons or something. Or who knows, maybe you already have tattoos of dragons.”

The bad lady seethed. “What does my new appearance have to do with the laws of God?”

Again, Nancy snickered, as she casually returned to sweeping the driveway “I’m saying, the way you made up your face today, you look pretty Satanic to me.” Now it seemed that Nancy wanted to tear the bad lady down.

“Why don’t you come over here and say that?”

“Get away from my yard.”

“What’s the matter, Sutcliffe, are you afraid?”

“No. I just don’t want to be bothered with you anymore. You’re either clearly nuts, or high on drugs.”

“You are afraid, aren’t you?”

“I’m a grown women,” Nancy says. “I’m not gonna fight you.”

“Chicken . . . Bawk, bawk, bawk!”

“As I said to you when you got here, Miss Hall, get back in your car and go. You’re not wanted here.”

“Bawk, bawk, bawk!” The bad lady started to dance around like a chicken.

“Oh. Aren’t we mature?”

“You say you don’t want to fight me, Nancy, because you’re a grown woman, yet you have no problem messing around sexually with a kid. Sounds to me like you’re the one who is either nuts or high on drugs.”

“Nah. I don’t think so.”

“Well, I do.”

“Listen Miss Hall,” Nancy shouts, suddenly marching toward the border of the lawn, where the bad lady remained defiantly, and only mere inches away from trespassing. “Do you want me to call the police? Because if you don’t get the hell away from my property right now, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”

“Go ahead, call the police. See what I care.”

“I’m not kidding, I will.”

“Then go right ahead. And when the cops get here, I’ll let them know all about how you molested my boy. How you had him stick his tongue in your greasy hole, and how you attempted to masturbate Billy. With the aid of baby powder of all things.”

“Oh. For crying out loud,” Nancy shouted. “They’ll never believe that.”

“Why wouldn‘t they?”

I could tell that Nancy did not intend to notify the authorities. The way I viewed the situation, if she really meant to call the police she would have done it by now.

It was strange, how my mother had driven down to the station, and then had decided to leave because she did not think the cops would accept the allegation that I had been sexually abused as true. Now Nancy also threatened to get the police involved, yet, in my opinion, was unmistakably bluffing.

Those two factors, for me, combined with how long this argument had progressed, made me realize how incredibly tricky this type of situation must have obviously been to resolve, whether through the legal system or without the law involved.

“They won’t believe that,” Nancy explains. “Because I’m friends with a few cops on the force. They go to my ex husband’s dentists’ office to have their teeth cleaned. And these cops that I’m friends with know that I’m a respectable citizen in the community and that I would never, and I repeat, I would never harm a child. Not your child or any child. I love kids. That’s why I work for Good Humor.”

The bad lady shook her head. “That’s why you work for Good Humor. I have to admit, Nancy, that didn’t come out right.”

“Oh. That’s real funny. Real, real funny.”

“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

Clearly, Nancy had now heard enough, as this time, when she reached the sidewalk; she stopped directly in front of the bad lady, so that they stood face to face. I swear they looked like two boxers at the start of a fight, when the referee gives instructions. I don’t know who appeared to be winning the wicked stare down. To me, it seemed to be a tie.

“Are you stepping on my feet?” the bad lady taunted, giving Nancy a casual, yet intimidating shove to the shoulders.