The Scamp (11 page)

I called him on a prepaid cell phone that I smashed and threw out.

But first, from that same phone, I called home and told Chuck to wire me money.

Now why in the hell would I do that? he asked me. I could hear Rayelle chattering in the background. Rayelle, about to graduate from the high school we should have gone to together.

Why don't you put Rayelle on the phone and I'll tell her why, I said.

I could hear him move away from them, heard the click of a door, the hollow sound of his voice in a small, closed room.

I don't know why you are hell-bent on ruining things, he said. You could have stayed, he told me. We would have had you.

You can't rescue me, Chuck, I said. I ain't a kitten no more.

I asked him to wire a thousand dollars to a Western Union in Morristown.

I can't send you a thousand dollars, he said.

Yes you can, I assured him. You sure as hell can.

What kind of trouble are you in? he said. I imagined him sitting on the toilet, lid down, his head in his hands. His voice echoed like he was inside a cell.

You pay me, and you'll never find out, I said.

When I got to the counter inside a Kmart, it was there, all of it. I didn't ask him again for eight months.

At a Motel 6 in Kentucky, I shaved my head. I was in mourning. My head, cold and buzzed to just a shadow. The absence of hair, of the bangs I'd gotten used to, made my eyes look huge. My mouth, wide and soft. I flushed the light ash-brown locks down the toilet. In the
morning, I pulled out in the truck that was still registered to Henderson, still insured by him. I kept it running, kept a jug of water inside for when it overheated. It was a mistake, the truck, its connection. But I knew he wouldn't report it stolen. Not with what I knew.

nine

RAYELLE

Wherever I went, those summers with Chuck, I sent postcards. I carried a bunch of colored Flair markers in my little-girl purse and bought cards I thought Khaki would like. Pictures of mountains or a main street in town. A waterfall, a river, a sunflower. Dakota, Carolina, Tennessee. I signed them with hearts.
Miss you. Love you. xoxo Rainy
.

Rainy was a phase. I sometimes signed them
Rainy Day Blues
, dotting the
i
with a heart. I thought if I ever got famous—for what I don't know, I can't sing for shit—that maybe I could use that name. When I got back, I'd find that Khaki had kept them, tacked up in her room, or stuck into the mirror frame on her dresser. All the places I'd been, the places she never went.

The shower stalls at the truck stop are tiny cells with only a plastic chair, a toilet and a shower, towels rolled on a rack, soap and shampoo in a pump dispenser on the wall. There's a mirror, and bright fluorescent lighting. Couper pays for two rooms and takes me down the hall.

It shuts off, he says at my door, and nods his head at the stall behind me. It's an eight-minute shower.

I lean my back against the doorjamb. I don't know if I can get my hair rinsed in eight minutes.

I can't believe you're going in alone, I say, even though I'm dying to get in by myself, aching for a hot soapy shower, to wash my hair.

Couper shrugs. I'm over fifty, he says. Shower sex is overrated. Plus, he says and points, these stalls are small.

Over
fifty? I say, my mouth open. Over?

But he ignores it. Instead, he plants his hand on the open door beside me. You know what I like better than sex in a shower where truckers jerk off? he says.

Ugh, I say to an instant picture in my mind.

Don't think about it, he says. He raises his eyebrows. I like you, he says, in the Scamp. On our bed, he adds.

Over fifty.

He laughs. Is that going to be a sticking point for you? he says.

I guess not.

The shower is cleaner than I expected. In fact, it looks hosed down, everything white and gray and chrome. I wish I could wash my clothes, but I take them off and
shake them out and hang them over the chair to steam up with the room. The water is hard and hot, and I stand under it, trying not to think about the floor or the drain, trying not to waste time, even though what I really want is just to stand still.

The shower in the maternity ward was the opposite. They work real hard at keeping it nonclinical, having it look like it might be the bathroom in your home instead of in a hospital. It wasn't even called a maternity ward; it was a birthing place. You were supposed to bring your whole family, and people did. There were women with all their sisters, their mother, and their mother-in-law surrounding the bed, a whole world of women, birthing. Everything was pink and blue and beige, with baskets of silk flowers and teddy bears, and in the bathroom, a bunch of shower gels that smelled like peach and melon and something called sweet pea or freesia.

Summer came in the middle of the night and by the next afternoon they finally let me shower. I stayed in so long, my head against the tile, the water pounding on my back, that I bled even harder, the blood trailing down the drain and then after too, sitting in my bed, wearing a huge hospital-provided pad and giant mesh underpants that they gave you one pair of and you had to wash out every day. Someone else was walking Summer around, feeding her, putting her down in a glass bassinet. I didn't nurse her. I bound my breasts up with a sports bra and an Ace bandage; inside, half a cut pantiliner over each nipple, to catch the milk.

I spent most of the first days and weeks handing her off. First to the nurses, and then, after I left the hospital, to June Carol. I don't know if Eli's father ever held her. I'd hand her to June Carol, and his dad would take Eli away.

Let the women do what they're best at, he'd say.

June Carol would come in the morning and stay all day. It was her house. She had a key. I'd find her in the kitchen, jouncing Summer, with a full pot of coffee for Eli, and scrambled eggs on the stove. I'd stumble out in a nightshirt that barely covered my ass, wanting a cigarette.

She came from a huge family of girls in Miss'ippi, as she pronounced it. When there was a new baby, they rallied together, joyful and excited. She told me all about Elijah as a baby. He burped sitting up. He preferred to sleep on his belly.

Of course now, she said, they tell you they should sleep on their backs. They'll change it again, she said, not to me, but to Summer, who stared into June Carol's face with wide eyes and a half smile.

I was in constant hesitation. Second-guessing. If I paused, June Carol didn't even ask, she just picked Summer up, fed her, changed her, and managed to do so while making breakfast for Eli, and wearing a twin sweater set.

All I wanted was a dark room to myself.

And a cigarette.

And a drink.

When my mother finally came to see Summer, it was nearly February. The cold hadn't broken. There was a
thin layer of snow that was like hard, frozen dust. My mother parked her car out front. The driveway and sidewalk were clear, salted, swept. She came in smelling like her own house, like smoke and something fried, like maybe Chuck had made pork chops the night before. Her hair was up, in a ponytail she might have slept in.

Well, she said to me, let's see the little shit-ass.

June Carol's mouth made a small O. Why don't you wash your hands in the kitchen and then sit down, Carleen, she said, and I'll bring her out to you. Would you like some coffee? she asked.

Eli was gone. Working. It was me and June Carol, all day.

My mother declined the coffee. June Carol brought out a receiving blanket, fresh from the laundry she did separate in gentle detergent for the baby. She laid it over my mother's sweatshirt as a barrier.

For the smoke, June Carol said to me, looking back over her shoulder. She went into the little bedroom to get Summer, came back out carrying her upright, and said, The baby shouldn't be exposed to secondhand smoke.

I'm not smoking, my mother said.

But it's on your clothes, she said.

That's not secondhand, my mother said. It's secondhand if it's coming out of my mouth. If I'm blowing it in her face, she said, which I'm not.

Well, June Carol said. She stood while my mother sat on the couch with that receiving blanket over her chest. She didn't look like she was about to hand over the baby.

Let me see her, my mother said. She held her hands out and for a second I imagined them fighting over her, grabbing like two little girls with a doll.

I reached and took her from June Carol, my own baby, who'd been fed by her grandmother. She was awake, in that state of wonder babies that age have. Before they can hold their heads steady or focus on anything far away. I held her the way I knew how, in the crook of my arm so her face looked up at mine. I said, Hey, Summer girl, to her, and watched her eyes, wondered what was going on in her head.

I let my mother hold her, the way she did, out on her knees, with Summer's head in the palm of her hand. She inspected her, turned her head slightly, looked at her hands. I wanted her to say something, that she looked like me, that she remembered me that small, that she loved holding me or taking me for walks or anything that made a connection.

That's one tiny tyrant, my mother said.

June Carol stood at the kitchen sink, washing up the breakfast dishes.

After, my mother wouldn't come back to the house. She would see Summer only if I brought Summer over to her.

It's not your house, my mother said to me, but I think she meant
She's not even your baby
. I could have walked out then, run away, and Summer would have been fine. Someone would have watched over her the right way. She would have been clean and well fed, fat
even, dressed in white dresses with tiny bows in her hair. Learning to walk, to say her prayers at night. To say
yes ma'am
and
no sir
, and to paint her fingernails a delicate ladylike shell pink. How to match a pocketbook with her shoes, and not walk like a whore who's digging in her purse for a cigarette.

I come out of the shower clean and not wanting to put the same clothes back on. The jeans and the white tank top I've been wearing smell like sweat and musk and everything we've eaten, pancakes and burgers and fried potatoes. The jeans have worn themselves too big for me, baggy in the ass and loose around the waist. I hate putting them on. I hate putting the bra and tank top on more.

I decide, right before I slide the jeans on, that I can no longer wear the underwear. I pull up the jeans with nothing between me and the denim.

My hair is wet and unconditioned. There's none of the stuff I use to make the curls smooth, to tame them. I squeeze them with a towel, and then make a fat braid that curves over my shoulder, a few curls springing out above my ear.

Couper's not in the hallway. Not waiting outside my door. I walk back out into the vast complex of fast food and stores. It's like a shopping mall, except I'm the only woman, slick and clean smelling and not wearing underwear. I see guys everywhere, with beards and baseball caps, jeans and boots. Guys on cell phones, on
computers, getting coffee or chicken or magazines or cigarettes. But no Couper.

Anything I had, a little wallet on a wrist string with about forty dollars left, a cell phone without a charger, I left in the Scamp.

I think all I have to do is pick up the pay phone, dial zero, and say I need to call my mother collect. You can still do that, right?
I need to make a collect call.

She'll never accept the charges.

I look down a hallway next to a line of vending machines, Coke, candy bars, ice cream. There's a bank of metal booths, the plugs empty, the wall with just a shadow where the phones used to be.

I think,
I'm going to have to hitchhike.

I could get a ride with anyone here. What would happen? I might get home. I might end up in Florida. Or dead.

I walk slowly past the vending machines, out into the open court where the tables and computer counters are. I think,
The world is full of men over fifty.
Men who are losing their hair, and growing their bellies.

And then I see his square back, hunched slightly while he types on his laptop, which sits on a counter where you can plug in and charge, access the Internet.

Good God, I say, and lean my cheek on his shoulder.

There you are, he says, and turns, but he can't see me the way I stand behind him.

I didn't know where to find you, I say.

I look over his shoulder. He's got Facebook open.

What's your cousin's name? he says.

She's not on there, I say.

Are you? he says. I couldn't find you.

I'm not.

This amuses him. Why not? he says. You're young.

I squint at the profile picture of him, outside, leaning on the Gran Torino.

There's no Internet at my mom's, I say. And I'm not going to the library to get on just so I can find out that a girl I didn't even like in high school has put up seventeen new pictures of her cat.

Couper laughs. There are a lot of cats, he says, scrolling.

And I had been, but I don't tell him that. I had an account and took it down after Summer. Deactivated. There was nothing to say, no picture, nothing that I felt like sharing.

He has the cursor in the search bar. Humor me, he says. What's her real name?

Kathleen Reed, I say.

He returns over a hundred. South Central High School. St. Mary's School. Loyola University.

Ha, no, I say.

Not a college girl? he says.

She didn't finish tenth grade, I say.

They're all too old or too young. Too fat. Too brunette. Nothing clicks.

Tenth grade, he says. When did she leave?

He leaves the screen open on a list of Kathleen Reeds who aren't her.

That same summer, I say.

After Holly Jasper? he says.

Or right before? I say. When her dad died.

Is that weird? Couper says. I hadn't given the timing much thought.

She wasn't kidnapped, I say to him. I watched her leave. I wanted her to live with us, I say. She didn't have parents anymore. I wanted a sister.