The Memory Thief (29 page)

I wanted to get away. But I couldn’t leave Janie. And of all the things I saw that day, the one thing I can’t forget is her
feet. I don’t remember the way her face looked after. The tooth that must have been laying somewhere in the dirt. I can’t
even remember what Underfoot really looked like, whether he was an old yellow dog or a red hound. But I’ll never forget her
feet. The way her shoes, old scuffed red pumps that she liked to wear with cutoffs, went sailing through the air as she kicked.
Her feet were working hard. Like she thought she was still standing. Like she thought she could actually get away. They were
kicking and shaking and rolling from side to side while Daddy stood over her. They were trying to do everything my baby mouth
was screaming,
The bacca, run!

But then they slowed down. Covered in the red mud of that dirt road. And then they were still. Only moving with the rest of
her body, by the force of Daddy’s blows. I’d been scared before, when I first saw Daddy stand back up and walk out of the
bacca. But that day Daddy taught me a new lesson. Even when I think things are as bad as they can be,
I’m wrong
. Things can always get worse. Especially if you need to run, like Janie did, but can’t.

“Daddy!” I screamed. “I’ll git you some food!”

He didn’t stop.

“How ’bout biscuits, Daddy? You want some chicken? Pie?”

I was crying so hard, screaming and slurring my words as my mind
worked to build a king’s menu.

He slowed down and I begged, “Please, Daddy. Anything you want I can steal for you. Swarm fridge is full to bustin’ with stuff
and I can git it if you’ll just stop killin’ Janie. I’m the best thief you’ll ever meet, I swear. I can git you anything you
want in the whole wide world, Daddy. Just stop killin’ Janie.”

When he disappeared into the bacca, me and Momma dragged Janie home and laid her in bed. I waited under the sycamore that
night. Yelled at the top of my lungs for Mrs. Swarm to come out. When she did I cried that Janie had fell into a pit of old
barbwire and was cut up real bad.

“Let’s get her to a doctor, sweetheart,” Mrs. Swarm said.

“No,” I whispered, remembering what Momma had promised would happen
if anybody ever found out. “We just need some medicine. For bad cuts. Some bandages and ointments. Any aspirin if you got
it.”

She nodded. “Wait here. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Three weeks later, Janie seemed almost better. But she never went back to school, even though I begged her. Even though I
knew she missed the hot lunch and the swapping kisses for cigarettes.

“I’m too scared to,” she finally admitted.

“There’s nothin’ to be scared of at school. Why, that’s where you’re safest,” I
insisted.

She shook her head and I saw her wince with the pain of moving her neck muscles. “I’m scared of what might be waitin’ for
me when I git off that bus. How I might be expectin’ love to come, like the way Underfoot used to, and git a monster instead.”

It was Janie’s words that returned to me, like a warning, when I tried to leave my room at Red Castle and couldn’t. Her voice
was there with me in the room. She reminded me it was dangerous to hope on love, to look for love, because you never know
when a monster’s waiting.

I pulled the knob again and again, and knew for certain that it was too tight to turn. I banged my fists on the door and screamed
for help, as I remembered Daddy’s good lesson. Even when my mother is dead, even when I know I’ll never find her, things can
always get worse. Especially if I need to run and can’t.

There is a fire that burns hotter than a steamy Tennessee sun. Angrier then a tin box trailer in the middle of a July drought.
And painful as one of Daddy’s whippings. Like something the old woman would warn me about, that fire’s name was
Want.
Its cure? Whiskey.

I was sick. Locked in that room for three days without a drop to soothe me. It had been years since I had gone so long. I
lay on my stomach across the floor and watched the crack under my door, waiting for shadows to pass by. They never did, except
in the morning, when a tray of food for the day slid through the slot in the door. I lost my voice screaming for whoever dropped
it off. “Let me out!”

But soon, I couldn’t hold still long enough to keep watch. And I was so tired that I only wanted to lay in bed. Wrapped in
layers of tea-stained covers, my eyes squinted shut as I tried to force sleep. But instead of sleeping, I shook. Kicked my
legs from one side of the bed to the other. I bolted up, paced the floor to try and work the trembling from my body.

“Room service,” someone called. The voice sounded happy and warm. I started to cry, covered my mouth with my hand. A tray
slid through the slot in the door.

I lifted the lid and saw perfect-circle pancakes. A little puddle of whipped butter that melted slowly across them. I took
a bite, but it sat heavy in my mouth and my tongue didn’t remember what to do. Neither did my jaws. I couldn’t chew or swallow,
so I gagged.

Heat swarmed me. It crawled over my skin and out of my pores until I peeled off all my clothes. Until I ran to a cold shower.
Until I knelt and vomited into the drain. I crawled back to bed, naked and shivering but still hot.

I cried
Whiskey
to an empty room. Hell answered. Hell whispered across my skin. Made me tremble and shake and moan, until I gagged and then
vomited in my bed. Until I rolled away from the mess onto the floor, hit my head on the corner of the nightstand, and blacked
out.

When I woke up, it was dark. I was weak, and my head throbbed. But the fire seemed cooler. I stayed put on the floor. That
hard pressure supporting my body felt good. Felt strong.

“Angel, are you awake?” the old woman called through the door.

I lifted my head as high as I could, but laid it down again with exhaustion.

“Help me,” I cried.

“I am.”

“I’m gonna die if you don’t let me out.”

“Did you think I didn’t know about the whiskey? That I didn’t see all the empty bottles that you hid in the trash cans outside?”

I sobbed, but covered my mouth so she wouldn’t hear me.

“You’re going to be so much stronger, so much clearer. You’re going to be who you were meant to be all along.”

“Let me go,” I begged.

“Never. I let you go once because of the trouble I thought you brought. God’s given me a second chance. Brought you back to
me. And this time, I will never let you go. Not like this.”

I spent the night on the floor. The throb in my head from falling turned out to be mercy. The pain of it distracted me just
enough from my craving to help me rest a bit. To help me stop gagging. To help me drag my body to the slot in the door and
wait and watch for shadows.

When morning came—my fourth day without whiskey—I saw black filling the space where there should have been light. I heard
the clatter of a plastic tray being slid through the door. I moved quicker than I had in days. Maybe ever. I grabbed the cold
hand on the other side, held on tight, and wouldn’t let go.

“Tabby,” I called, and knew how my voice sounded. Scary and sick.

“Angel, you’re gonna get me so fired.”

“Help me.”

“Can’t do it, honey. I got the good deal. Old woman’s closed the hotel for the season. Sent away the workers with nice bonus
checks. She only let me and Shari stay. Only I can come up here every day to bring you your tray.”

“She’s keepin’ me prisoner. Some kind of sick game… You gotta help me git out.”

“She’s payin’ me more money than a lot of college-schooled folks. I can’t ruin that.”

“Help me, Tabby—”

“This is the best deal I’ll ever git, Angel. And it ain’t like you have it so bad. She’s orderin’ Shari to cook the best food
she can dream up for you. In a few days I’ll be deliverin’ you some fresh clothes. An’ she told me I could pick out somethin’
nice and young. Modest, she said, but pretty, too. Not like these old black skirts.”

“She’s killin’ me… Walk away and my blood’s on your hands.”

“I gotta go,” she said, as she tried to pull her hand back.

“Wait, Tabby. I got somethin’ to trade…”

She paused, let her hand rest easy in mine. “I ain’t lettin’ you out, but I’m always open to a good bargain. I know you’ve
got the need for strong drink. I’ll help you if it’s worth it to me.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Tabby laughed. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“I’m her kin. She done give me a check for twenty-five thousand. And I’ll sign it over to you. But for as long as I’m in here,
you bring me whiskey. Start with three bottles.”

“You’ve really got twenty-five—”

“Yes. But I’d rather have whiskey.”

We shook hands between the slot in the door. And the next day I opened my tray to find the food was gone. Only a few crumbs
were left from where the tray had once been loaded down. Instead, beautiful like surprise flowers in the middle of the plate,
were three perfect bottles.

It had been days since I slept. And when I tried to stand up to drink, I couldn’t. I sank to my knees and used my teeth to
twist the cap off. Hot whiskey poured into my mouth. I turned the bottle up high until it ran out of the corners of my mouth
and down my neck. Already I felt stronger. I felt the peace of being still, as my muscles relaxed and the tremble disappeared.
I closed the bottle and set it on my nightstand.

But it wasn’t five minutes before I opened it again, even though I felt guilty. Even though I knew I was breaking the most
basic rule of Black Snake trailer:
Don’t take too much
. It was something I’d remind myself whenever I came across Momma passed out. Her mouth would be open. She’d be snoring. Sometimes
spit or vomit would be pooled beside her. I’d pull that bottle out of her hand and pour a bit into my empty coke bottle. But
always just a bit. Never enough for her to notice. It’s not that she would have cared that I was drinking. That I was an eleven-year-old
drunk. I was a careful whiskey thief simply because more than anything else, more than anything I could ever steal, whiskey
was Momma’s favorite prize.

I found an old tray of food from the day before. Ate the cold chicken and potatoes. Ate the little cup of banana pudding.
Never once did I gag. Never once did my mouth go dry and close up with a craving for something that burned. I fell asleep
in bed, clutching the bottle tightly to my chest like a best baby doll. Like a green baby blanket.

I woke up the next afternoon. Realized the vomit was still in my bed. I stripped the sheets off and went to inspect the tray
that had been pushed inside sometime that morning. I ate the eggs and biscuits. Poured a bit of whiskey into the coffee. And
spent the next few hours wishing the old woman would return. So I could lie and say, “You were right. I’m strong like never
before.”

I was happy when it turned dark outside and gave me an excuse to go to bed. I wrapped myself in that quilt and finished that
first bottle of whiskey. I let each sip sit on my tongue until my eyes watered with the burn. I adjusted my pillow but it
still didn’t feel right. It was too big. Too comforting for what I was used to. I pounded my fists to try and make it smaller.
I covered half of it and pretended the other half was being used by someone else. Janie. Sometimes, back at Black Snake trailer,
I’d wake up and her long dark hair would be all tangled up with mine. There’d be a soft little nest of white and black swirled
in between us as we slept.

When I was really young, and before the farmhands found her, she used to whisper stories in the dark when we couldn’t sleep.
She never made them up, they were always
almost
real. About our day, about our life. Only they sounded better, prettier somehow, with the words she chose.

“Once upon a time,” she whispered in the dark one night, “there was two sisters named Janie and Angel. They followed tractors
through the fields, watched magic seeds dropped down into rows. Them seeds started to grow. Taller and taller, till they made
a big green castle in the fields. It was a magic place. Only princesses were allowed.”

I’d giggle, and she’d hush me so I wouldn’t wake Momma and Daddy. And then she’d ask me to tell her a bedtime story, too.
I’d always repeat something that I’d heard at school, something read during storytime.

“Not
Snow White
,” she’d complain. “Make it ’bout us.”

But I couldn’t pretend the way she could. I couldn’t find the right words, the pretty ones, that bedtime stories deserved.

That all changed that night I was locked away in Red Castle. I rested on a half-hidden pillow and sipped whiskey. I turned
in the bed, until my body was the perfect angle to keep a mattress, one held up with cinder blocks, from sagging low.

“Once upon a time,” I whispered to the darkness, “I had a princess sister. She handed me a brown bottle. A magic one. It was
my first thick blanket. It was a full belly and peaceful sleep. It became the
Hush baby, things’ll be awright
that I needed to hear. It was my childhood lullaby. One I can’t outgrow. It sounds like bacca leaves wavin’ in the wind.
Like Tennessee stars, singin’.”

I walked over to the stage in front of the bed. I wore my black bra and panties. My long white hair was teased into a crown.
I twirled around to show myself off. Nearly spilled the bottle in my hand.

I looked down at my body. Ignored the ribs rising higher than my breasts. Ignored the hip bones that jutted out as I swayed
back and forth. I pinched my face until I was sure color returned. I smiled and hoped my cheekbones didn’t cut through any
happiness. Didn’t make me look hungry or sick.

I arched my back the way Momma always did. Men appeared all around me. They were eating biscuits, drinking beer, and aiming
their shotguns at my hips. I took a long sip of whiskey, took a deep breath, and danced.
Whoo-eee
, they yelled, as they clapped.

I twirled around the bed. Tossed my long white hair over my shoulders. “It’s why they call me Angel,” I lied. My brown bottle
was empty. I threw it across the room and laughed as it hit the wall and shattered.