The Heart is Deceitful above All Things (10 page)

‘Then suffer,' she yells, and forces her foot down on my face.

I thrash and yell between laughs, ‘Mercy, mercy!' She rubs her foot around my squished cheek and then pulls it off and collapses back in her seat, wiping black mascara tears off her face. We sit in silence, catching our breath. After a few minutes she asks me if I'm hungry.

‘I got Dunkin' Donuts somewhere,' she says, and reaches into the back.

‘This your car?' I ask.

‘What?!' she says, bringing out the pink-and-white box. ‘How old do you think I am?' I shrug. ‘This is my momma's.' She flips open the box. ‘Help yourself.' I grab a chocolate sprinkle one. She takes a cream-coated one. ‘How old do you think I am? Guess.' She's taller than me, not much, even in the heels, but she's wearing makeup and dressed old. I shake my head and wipe crumbs off my mouth. ‘I'm twelve, almost
thirteen. I can't drive yet, stupid.' She talks with her mouth full.

‘I'm ten,' I lie.

‘You look younger.' She takes a big bite, and cream gets on her nose. I don't tell her.

‘Where's your momma?' I ask.

She snorts. ‘My momma's a toss-up, you know, hubba.'

‘What?'

‘Crack. Crackwhore. She goes on runs. She won't be back for days.' I nod, though I'm not sure I understand. But I'm glad her momma won't be back. She licks her fingers. ‘I take care of myself, plus all the lizards look out for me.'

‘Lizards? My momma was worried about Kenny doin' lizards.'

‘Well, she should be at this truck stop.' She swallows. ‘They don't stop for nobody, most ignore the signs, not me. They don't want me, I ain't a-knockin'.' She takes another bite. ‘Your daddy didn't have no signs on his truck.' She laughs, showing me her doughy mush.

‘What signs?'

‘Lizard signs, stupid.'

‘What are lizard signs.'

‘You don't know what a lizard is?' she asks, her mouth open and pieces of doughnut falling down her tank top. I shake my head. ‘OK'––she swallows––‘a lizard is a prostitute. Sex for money.' I nod. ‘If you're workin' a
truck stop, then you'––she points to herself––‘are a lot lizard. Got it?'

‘Uh-huh.' I reach into the box between us and take a cream doughnut like the one she has.

‘Now a sign is . . . OK . . . hole up.' She gets up and digs in the back. She turns around with a flashlight. ‘C'mere.' She shines the light out of the window and onto the door of the darkened truck next to us. I lean in close to her. She smells like perfume, but it's too heavy and I feel a little sick. The light dances over stickers on the truck door. ‘Lookit.' She shines it on one of a cartoon lizard garishly dressed, with a red slash through it. ‘See?' She turns to me. ‘That means he don't want any.' She switches it off. I slide back to my seat.

‘Kenny doesn't got one of those stickers.' I say got, not have, like Milkshake does, like Sarah says sometimes, like Aaron and the others would never say in front of my grandfather.

‘I tole ya,' she says, and nods.

‘Your mom's a lizard?'

She nods. ‘So am I,' she says, and turns away to look out the window. ‘Frosting up,' she says, tapping on the window. ‘You're lucky I found you.'

We fall asleep in the backseat. I wake up before her. Her head is cradled between my feet, and her bent legs are on the seat. I don't move, even though I feel stiff.

When she wakes up, she pulls herself quickly off my legs and sits up. I pretend to wake up slowly. ‘Gotta
piss,' she says as I sit up. ‘No condo in here.' She digs in the back and turns around with toilet paper, boots, and a jacket. She puts the boots and coat on. ‘Be right back.' She goes behind the car. The sky is lightening with blue slashes, and the mountains in the distance look like purple humps. ‘Your turn.' She jumps back in and hands me the toilet paper. ‘Wanna get breakfast?' she says, opening a small mirror. ‘Yuck, what a mess.' She spits on a finger and rubs at the black under her eyes.

‘I haven't got . . . I ain't got no money,' I tell her.

‘No kidding. Didn't think you hid it up your butthole, now, did I?' I feel my face redden, and I look away. ‘My treat, but we gotta put you in some clothes.' She climbs in the back and unzips bags. “Here . . .” She tosses a pair of jeans over, and a sweatshirt. ‘Put 'em over your PJs and they'll fit, OK?' She tosses more stuff around. ‘Here . . .' She hands me a pair of sneakers and two pairs of socks. ‘Put 'em both on and try 'em.' They're a little big but will stay on. I hold up my foot and show her. ‘Now you're set cowboy.'

We leave and head to the restaurant, the only one open twenty-four hours. A sign at the entrance says ‘Truckers,' and an arrow beneath it points one way, then ‘Everyone Else' points the other way. We head opposite ‘Truckers'.

We eat eggs, and steak, and French fries, and coffee and hot chocolate, and she points out men walking by. She tells me who have no teeth and who cry like a baby when they come. She explains it all to me, coming, white
goo, and how much it's all worth. ‘I make a lot,' she says. ‘A lot of 'em like little girls. And if I tell 'em I'm a cherry bomb . . . a virgin . . .'

‘Like Mary,' I say.

‘Yeah'––she laughs––‘like that. They'll pay big bucks.'

‘Then why don't you get a house or a truck?'

‘More coffee, baby?' The fat waitress smiles over us and fills Milkshake's cup.

‘Thanks, Cilla.' She opens and pours in ten half-and-half containers. ‘My momma smokes it all,' she says, looking into her white coffee. ‘It's my fault. I always believe her, then the money's gone.' She blows on the coffee. We watch it ripple. ‘But if I leave her, she'll die . . .'

‘I know,' I tell her.

We both look out the window and watch truckers pull out and disappear.

We stop at Kenny's truck after breakfast, but nobody answers my knock. So we go back to Milkshake's car.

She pulls out a tiny battery-run TV, and we watch her stories and game shows. I want to watch cartoons, but I'm embarrassed to ask. I really haven't seen any since before being at my grandparents'. We didn't watch TV there. Once when I was preaching near a TV shop, I gave in to temptation. I went in and watched
Rainbow Brite
and
The Smurfs
. I sat on the floor in the corner until it was done. I was afraid I was going to hell, and two days later I confessed to my grandfather. I didn't sit for a week, but I was relieved of my sin.

We eat more doughnuts, then go see if my mom's back yet. I'm afraid to go, scared that there'll just be an empty space instead of a truck. ‘My mom's probably very worried,' I tell Milkshake.

I hear yelling inside the cab. Milkshake stands off to the side. I hold my breath and knock. The yelling inside continues. I knock louder. Sarah opens the door, dressed the same as she was last night, similar to Milkshake.

‘What?!' she says.

‘I'm back,' I say.

‘Not now,' she says, and turns back inside, slamming the door. The shouting continues.

I don't want to look at Milkshake. I stand staring at the closed truck door. I feel her hand in mine. ‘C'mon,' she says, ‘
All My Children
's on.' I let her lead me back to the car.

I go back several times and check on the truck. There's always shouting inside, so I don't knock. When I go back after the sun goes down, the cab is dark and there is no answer when I knock.

‘Watch this,' Milkshake says, and climbs into the front seat. She's changed into a different short skirt, a metallic gold, and her face is painted in glitter again. ‘This is a CB,' she says, pointing to the radio box in the dash.

‘I know, Kenny's got one . . .'

‘Bet Kenny don't do this . . .' She switches the CB on. Static and men talking fill the car. She looks at me
and winks. She holds the mike and presses down on it. ‘Break 1–9,' she says.

‘Go ahead, breaker,' a man's voice responds.

‘Milkshake here for R ‘n' R, over.'

‘Calf Roper here, darlin', where ya wanna take it?' he says.

‘Twenty-eight for my 10–20,' she says.

‘Is the pussy free tonight?' a different man says.

‘Milkshake goin' to twenty-eight. Visit and ya'll find out.' She reaches out and changes her channel. ‘Break 2–8,' Milkshake says.

‘Hold a minute, Breaker,' a woman's voice says.

‘. . . suck the life outta ya, sugar,' a throaty-voiced woman cracks over the CB.

‘I'm a-waitin' over the chicken coop,' a man responds.

‘Be right there, Smokestacks,' she says.

‘Go ahead, Breaker,' the first woman says.

‘Milkshake here, for R ‘n' R.'

‘Calf Roper pullin' you in, baby,' the man from before says.

‘Can't get enough of me, can ya?'

‘No, ma'am, I can't.'

‘I'll be on over.'

‘Milkshake, you need help with that cradle robber?' a woman asks.

‘Naw, Sweet Lips, I'm gonna rob him all myself. That's a 10–7.' She reaches over and switches off the CB. ‘I just made us dinner and video game money.' She leans back and laughs.

‘But you gotta do stuff with him?' I ask, staring at the CB.

‘No big deal. I sit on his face, jerk him off, and I got me twenty-five dollars.' She puts her high heels on.

‘He said he wanted all that just now?'

‘No, I know him, he's a repeat, did him last night.' She looks at herself in her little pink compact mirror. I shake my head. ‘Beats knockin' on doors like your momma does.' She snaps her mirror shut.

‘What?'

She opens the car door. ‘You don't know . . . your momma's a lot lizard, too.' She shuts the door. She waves and walks off.

I say nothing to Milkshake when she comes back and fires up the CB again. I pretend to be asleep. She turns the CB louder. I want to cover my ears. I'm afraid I might hear Sarah. Milkshake leaves on another date, but she leaves the CB on. I raise the volume on the TV as high as it goes, but I can still hear the moans from the CB.

In the morning we eat ice-cream sundaes at the restaurant. ‘I wanna do one,' I tell, her.

‘Do one what?' she says, scooping out hot butter-scotch fudge.

‘One date, like you do.' I tap my spoon on the table.

‘You can't, you're too young, and you're a boy.'

‘Am not!'

‘Am not what?' She stares at me, her makeup colored splotches on her face. ‘Not a boy?'

‘Sometimes I'm not,' I tell her, looking down. She reaches under the table and gropes between my legs. I jump away, my spoon clattering to the floor. ‘Damn!' I shout, and then bite my lip hard for having sworn.

‘You are a boy, though I've had my doubts.' She laughs. I remind myself that my grandfather isn't here, and I let myself breathe again. ‘Damn!' I say once more, and smile.

We take free showers at the truck stop, wearing her sneakers because the showers are too slimy to do without them.

When Milkshake goes to her car to sleep, I walk back to the truck. I try the door, and it's open. I enter quietly. ‘Kenny?' Sarah calls out from behind the silver curtain.

‘No––no, ma'am,' I stutter. ‘It's me.'

‘C'mon back here.'

I walk cautiously to the silver drape and pull it aside slowly.

Sarah is in the bed and covers her eyes from the shafts of light. ‘C'mere,' she says, and motions to me.

I move to her heavily, like I'm walking through peanut butter. She'll want to know where I got the clothes and where I've been. She pats the bed for me to sit next to her. I do carefully. ‘Lie down,' she says. I blink at her. Her makeup's smeared like Milkshake's. ‘Lie down,' she repeats. I can't read her tone. It's not angry, not even
annoyed. I lie down stiffly next to her, my head half on her pillow. ‘You're all I got,' she says. She throws an arm around my waist. I stare wide-eyed around the cab, at the white toilet glowing like a fluorescent moon and the tiny humming fridge filled with iced coffees and Cokes. ‘No one can take you away from me,' she says. I stare at a used syringe on the floor and the cotton ball next to it, laying there like a fallen cloud. ‘You better not leave me,' she says, and her hands move sloppily to my crotch and rest there lazily. I notice a thin trickle of blood running from her arm like a sink leak. She breathes in heavy, a partial snore. I reach my hand to her arm and wipe up the blood with my fingers. She snorts, then moans. I put my fingers in my mouth and clean the blood off them like I've seen a cat licking her newborns do.

‘I'm yours,' I whisper, and lean into her dead weight and try to sleep.

I wake up feeling the truck rumbling beneath me. Sarah doesn't stir as I pull myself out from under her arm and go up front. ‘Where ya been?' Kenny says, sitting in the driver's seat and starting to pull out of the truck stop.

‘We going now, sir?' I ask, looking back at the lot, searching for Milkshake's station wagon.

‘Goin' now? Shoulda gone yesterday.' He reaches in his pocket for a Marlboro.

‘Please, can we not go yet, sir?' I grab on to the
back of his seat as we pick up speed, following the interstate signs.

‘Not go yet?! Hell, no! Boy, I just tole ya, we shoulda done been gone!' He lights up. ‘What were ya doin' back there that ya don't wanna go? Where d'ya get them clothes at?'

‘I met a family and they took care of me, lent me clothes and these shoes. And I really should give 'em back and say thank you or something, sir.'

‘Well . . .'––he laughs––‘you just got yourself some new clothes, you needed some anyways. We ain't goin' back.' He waves at me. ‘Lean over here and I'll let you pull my new train horn.' My mouth feels dry as I move to his side. ‘This here is a brass lever.' He takes my hand and puts it on a golden chain hanging from the cab roof. ‘When I tell you pull down on it . . . you pull down on it.' The truck enters the interstate ramp and heads into the stream of traffic. ‘Now, pull it now.' My arm jerks down, and Kenny smiles. ‘Isn't that the most beautiful sound?' he says as the wah-wah cry of the train horn echoes around us. ‘Seventeen hundred dollars that cost me!' We speed past the truck stop, and I yank the horn's lever once more and put my good-bye into it like a smoke signal floating in the air.