Wonder When You’ll Miss Me (15 page)

I
woke to the fat girl shaking me. Sun in my eyes. Where the hell was I? And then, past her wide hip, I saw Lucia climbing the hill, Tommy in his red truck on the road, and I was up and running before I even fully remembered why.

“Annabelle!”

I ran, knowing the fat girl couldn't keep up. Knowing I had to get away. My backpack thumped against my back but I charged into the woods, oblivious, and crashed ahead.

I could hear Lucia crashing after me.

And then I tripped, and my ankle made a strange sound.

I tried to stand but pain shot through me and I fell back. I couldn't get up.

Lucia was there almost immediately, her eyes wild, reflecting the green of the piney forest. “Annabelle,” she said softly. She didn't even seem out of breath, though I was still panting.

“You didn't have to leave us like that. That wasn't polite. After we took you in. After we fed you and gave you a place to sleep.” Her hands were on her hips. She didn't sound angry, just firm, but something in the way she spoke kept me from meeting her eyes. “We like you,” she said, her voice soft now, coaxing. “We want you to come back with us. To stay for a while.”

I shook my head. I tried to say something, but I couldn't think of what. I willed my ankle to feel better.

“You need to come back with us.”

“I just have to go,” I said, finally. “Last night—”

She waved it away. “That doesn't have to happen again,” she said, her words dripping with honey. “If that's what upset you then forget it. We like to party.” She ran a hand through her short dark hair. “You said you did. If you don't, that's fine.”

I searched her face for some kind of guile, but she met my gaze. Still, I didn't trust her or what she said, any of it. I didn't want to go back. But I couldn't walk. Where was I going to go when I couldn't walk?

I nodded slowly. “Okay,” I said.

“I'm going back for Tommy,” Lucia said. “He can carry you out of here so you don't have to put weight on that ankle. You stay here.”

I nodded again. As soon as she'd left I tried again to stand.

“You need to wrap it,” the fat girl said, appearing beside me with a bottle of aspirin.

“Where the hell were you?”

She ignored me and put the aspirin in my bag. She fished around in there and pulled out the T-shirt I'd stolen. “Nice,” she said, and ripped it into strips, then bound my ankle tightly.

“At least it wasn't the one with the tattoo,” I said. She slung my arm around her shoulder and helped me hobble quickly, as fast as we could, farther into the woods.

 

We hid in the dark valley behind two trees that had fallen over each other. We could see Tommy and Lucia far off and could hear their argument. Not the words, just the raised voices, the angry arms pointing this way and that. The shaking of heads. The hands on hips.

They tromped around in circles for a while, darting off in this direction or that. Then Tommy's footsteps approached. I heard them get louder and louder, slower and slower until he stood close enough that I could see his pant leg clearly from where I crouched, curled up into myself like a snail. It was dark and damp where I was, but it was better than being found. I held my breath and closed my eyes and willed myself to be utterly still. After a moment he walked off, kicking leaves and cracking twigs. He was so loud in that quiet place, so very loud. I breathed as silently as I could.

After a while I didn't hear him. And I didn't hear Lucia calling to him. I raised my head carefully and made eye contact with the fat girl, who sat like a sentry with her back against a tree. I raised my eyebrows and she
nodded, so I uncurled my stiff body and crawled out from under my hiding place.

The forest was still and cold. My heartbeat slowed. I stood carefully and stretched but my ankle throbbed. The fat girl told me to sleep.

“They could be waiting for you,” she said. “Jesus Christ.”

And so I lay down and slept, dreaming only dark distant things that I couldn't reach even when I woke. In the woods in the late afternoon the sun filtered through only a little. It took a minute but I knew where I was this time. I made two huge peanut butter sandwiches and ate them quickly, one after the other. The fat girl had a whole Boston Cream Pie.

“Very practical,” I said.

“You have to honor your cravings.” She winked at me. I thought maybe that would be all, but later she asked about it.

“Did you
like
it? What did it feel like?”

I didn't answer. I didn't know what to say. Even though the whole evening had frightened me, there was something about it that was mine. Something scary and private and strange. I didn't know if I liked it. I just knew that I didn't have to share everything.

 

We stayed in the woods through the night and for the whole next day. I was afraid to come out, afraid they'd be waiting, and besides, my ankle ached and I thought it best not to put any weight on it. I crawled a couple of trees over to pee and then back, but that was about it. I was grateful for the sweatshirt and the hat, but even with the added layers and my leather jacket, it was cold. I rationed the jar of water I had, but it ran out the morning of the second day and the fat girl had to do a lot of convincing to get me to head to the water fountain in the park. As it was, I still waited until after dark. But after the second dark night in the woods I was ready to get the hell out of there and go find Lex and the circus and have the whole business be over with already.

Just after sunrise we walked slowly down the road away from Tommy and Lucia's until we came to another road and took that, and so on. It was late afternoon before we found Wenger's.

The shop looked somewhat like the shop in Nashville, with pictures on all the walls (in a quick sweep, I saw no band of Gypsies, no line of chickens, no falcon), a grubby carpet, and a counter. Lex happened to be behind that counter and he was short and thick and generous with his attention. When I told him why I was there, he looked me up and down, winked,
and asked to see my tattoo. He seemed disappointed that it was so easy to reveal, but he admired Ben Dixon's handiwork and told me he knew just the person who could help us, an ex-carny named Stretch who was an old man now and owned a junk shop in Athens.

So we took a bus to Athens and found Stretch, up the street from a tattoo shop called Pain and Wonder, just where Lex had said he'd be. And for fifteen dollars and a few hours of looking at old photos of Stretch's career as a contortionist (
AINSLEY PRESENTS
!
THE RUBBER ALPHABET BOY…BORN IN A THOUSAND SHAPES
,
HE CAN SPELL ANY WORD IN ANY LANGUAGE WITH HIS ELASTIC BODY
!), and hearing his endless tales, I was given a worn brochure for the Fartlesworth Circus that listed its route and tour dates.

“It's a few years old,” Stretch said. “But it'll probably get you to them. Shows tend to take the same route, keep the audience expecting, you know? You should find them just about where this says.”

 

Outside in the dusky evening, the fat girl waited on a wooden bench. She punched me in the arm when I told her about the schedule. “Excellent work, girl,” she said. I couldn't stop smiling.

We found a restaurant and I ordered rice and beans and corn bread and a huge iced tea, because somehow, as Annabelle, I'd become a girl with an appetite, and I sat in the window watching the lights of the city, certain that finally everything was going to work out. “You know,” I said when I'd had my fill, “I'm surprised you don't mind about Charlie anymore.”

She was quiet at that, and shook her head without looking at me.

“What?”

“Listen, Faith,” she said, her voice low. “Just because I think finding Fartlesworth is okay doesn't mean I trust Charlie. Don't make that mistake, okay?”

“Okay,” I mumbled back, sorry I'd brought it up. I didn't feel like fighting or getting a lecture, or having my bright mood tarnished. I wanted us to get along, to move quickly and have some fun for a change. Hadn't we earned some fun?

“What about we go see a movie?” I said. The fat girl shook her head. I sighed, but knew better than to argue. I took our trays and dumped our trash. Then I followed her out into the night.

 

We walked for a long while without the fat girl telling me where we were headed. My shoulders ached from the backpack and my ankle throbbed, and by the time she dragged us into an unnecessarily bright diner, I was in a lot of pain. We claimed a booth and the fat girl sat beside me and spread a map out in front of us. I traced our route backwards with my finger. The hours of Athens to Atlanta to Chattanooga to Nashville, the overnight drive to Nashville from Asheville. And then I traced backwards from Asheville to Gleryton.

I pictured my mom all alone in our house. How very empty it must seem now without my dad, without me. Just her glass of scotch and her clean clean rooms and her skinless chicken breasts. I saw her all by herself on the couch staring at the television, and just like that, it was as if a place under my ribs had been rubbed raw and salted. I missed my mother fiercely. I wanted to run to her and throw my arms around her and confess it all, wanted her to stroke my head and tell me everything was going to be okay, everything would be just fine, I should trust her, she would see to it.

The map blurred. I swallowed.

“Oh Christ,” the fat girl said. “Jesus, Faith!”

But I couldn't stop the tears from coming, the sobs from bubbling up. She rubbed my back and said things she thought were soothing, but I shook her off. How could she understand? She didn't understand. I wanted my mom.

“Faith,” the fat girl said, her voice heavy with reason. “She's not going to make everything better if you go back to her, she's just going to turn you over to the cops because she thinks you're nuts.”

This just made me cry harder and the fat girl looked around to see if anyone noticed.

“Listen,” she hissed. “Why don't you call her, okay? Quickly so it can't be traced if they try. From a pay phone somewhere safe, somewhere we can get away. Would that make you feel better?”

I nodded. She patted me on the back again and handed me a napkin. I blew my nose and she dug around in the backpack and left two wrinkled dollars on the table to pay for my coffee. We grabbed the bag and the map and left the bright diner for the comfort of darkness.

 

I got change at a Laundromat and we walked, searching for a pay phone that wasn't overly visible. I was all tangled up about making the call. I
didn't mind the walk—the nervous fist in my stomach took my mind off my pulsing ankle—and the farther I limped, the more I calmed down and was able to hear the truth in what the fat girl had said. Much as I wanted it, my mom wouldn't make everything better. She wouldn't sweep me into her protective embrace and fend off the nasty world. She would do exactly what she'd done before: turn me over to
people who know better
and hope that they would fix me, make me more like the child she'd always wanted, a person so different from who I'd always been.

And the more we walked, the harder I felt, like I was pulling the shell of Annabelle around me and tucking myself safely inside. By the time we found the phone booth, I wasn't even sure I had something to say anymore. But the fat girl gave me a little shove, so I stepped inside.

As soon as I closed the glass door my head began to throb. I dialed the number. The operator asked for money. I hung up and spun around. The fat girl crossed her arms and pointed a finger at me, so I turned back to the phone and dialed again. This time I dropped the coins in, slowly, one by one, but when it rang I hung up again. Change came whistling through the machine and clinked against the little metal door. I leaned forward and closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the shiny cool face of the phone.

I thought of the time Charlie had called to take me to the circus, how excited my mom had been to find a boy calling for me, something she could understand, and I'd done what I'd always done—I'd pushed her away.

My eyes welled up again. I wanted to rewind the last few weeks, the last few months, the last year. Oh, but it was dangerous to think like this. Dangerous and I couldn't afford it.

I still had almost five hundred dollars and a quarter jar of peanut butter. I still had my wits about me and a place I was headed. I was okay. Maybe that's all I needed to tell her: not to worry, everything would be okay.

I straightened up, threw my shoulders back, and dropped the coins in again. This time when the phone rang I didn't hang up.

But nobody answered.

 

The early bus to Macon was full of sleepy college students and no one tried to talk to me. I was wide awake and watched the highway carry us.
There was this world and it held me in its palm. I was skidding along, sliding up its hills and down into its valleys.

Everything had been so complicated and taken so long. And after all this time on the road with the fat girl, her suspicions about Charlie felt like jealousy, and I wanted none of that right now. I was ready to be somewhere already and not just heading somewhere.

The day was new and there were all sorts of ways that it might end. In that thin light, I dug deep inside and found the part of me that was glad my mom hadn't answered. I let it have its say all the way there.

W
E
finally found the Fartlesworth Circus set up in an old campgrounds outside of Mobile, Alabama.

I climbed down from the cab of a semi and thanked the driver for the blue cowboy hat he'd bought me for reminding him of his daughter. The fat girl had a hard time getting down but I didn't lend a hand. After all the days where it took everything in me to shut out the images of Gleryton and what I'd done, after every street corner that had held the possibility of getting caught and cuffed and dragged back, every donut shop that had hidden a cop who was waiting for me, I looked at that red-and-white tent flying its flags, at the spread of the midway, all the color and life of it separated from us by a chain-link fence, and couldn't help wishing I was alone.

I stopped to check my reflection in the dusty window of a blue sedan parked in the mud on the edge of the field. My short spiky hair stood up in uneven pale wisps all over my head, but dark roots were coming. I slapped the cowboy hat back on and groped around in my backpack for the blue eye shadow stick and touched up my eyes. I smoothed on some lipstick. I took off my jacket and tossed it on the ground with my backpack, then studied my reflection and untwisted my yellow sweater, yanked up the waist of my tights and down the hem of my jean skirt. I was ready to see Charlie.

 

We walked the circumference of the fence. The fat girl suggested climbing over, but I ignored her.

“Whatever,
Annabelle,
” the fat girl said, sending soda cans and paper bags flying with a swift kick here or there. I didn't care if I got on her very last nerve right now, I only wanted to find Charlie and be told that there was a place for me. I wanted it so badly, it pulsed in my chest, making me edgy. The fat girl's mean fit didn't help, but neither was it going to get in my way.

We came to the entrance and I paid my four-dollar admission with a smile to the old lady in the ticket wagon, who told us the show wouldn't start for at least a few hours, that they'd just opened the midway. We walked through the gate and stood by the edge of the big striped tent. To our right, down a rusty hill, the midway was screaming for attention.

The whole place was nearly deserted, just a few people milling around, some couples with kids, a few teenagers. I recognized carnival games and sideshow signs. There were:
AMOS RUBLE
,
TALLEST LIVING MAN IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE
!
TINA AND TIM
!
WORLD'S SMALLEST TAP DANCING BROTHER AND SISTER
!
PROFESSOR CHARLES C
.
CHARLEY'S REVOLUTIONARY TRAINED FLEA EXTRAVAGANZA
!
GODZUKIA
!
HALF MAN
/
HALF MONSTER
! and
LILY VONGERT
,
THE WORLD'S ONLY THREE-LEGGED BEARDED LADY
. We walked along the scrubby path and when we passed
THE AMAZING RUBBERBOY
! I couldn't help but think of Stretch, the contortionist who'd sold me the brochure. Had he had a trailer like this? A banner proclaiming his talents? There must have been a picture of him spelling his own name with his body and probably a talker to get the crowds in. Charlie had complained about Marco's talker, that he was some carny kid who didn't give a shit.

The fat girl stopped short. We had come to the end of the line.
GERMANIA LOUDON
,
THE FATTEST WOMAN ALIVE
!

But no Digestivore.

I stood for a moment, not believing, and then I spun around and marched back up the line, past the sideshow trailers, past the carny games, all the way back up to the main tent, where I waited for a second, closed my eyes, and made a desperate wish.

Please, please, let them be there, please, and we missed them somehow, please.

Please.

I turned around and walked back down, forced myself to move slowly, not to run, not to panic yet, forced myself to walk one foot in front of the other, eyes open as wide as they could,
please, please.

But I saw every inch of that strip, and Marco's trailer wasn't there.

At the end of the path, the fat girl waited where I'd left her.

“They're not here,” I said, the words like rocks in my mouth. “Marco's trailer isn't here…” I sank down in the scrubby dirt.

“Get up!” she hissed.

I ignored her. Who cared anymore? What did it matter, any of it? What the hell had I been thinking coming here, all the way here, knowing nothing, thinking Charlie was going to take care of me? I'd been so certain, but there was no reason. Charlie's father hadn't said he'd run off with Fartlesworth, I just thought I knew him well enough. I thought I knew him well enough to know.

But I didn't.

“Get the fuck UP!”

This was not what I wanted. This was not what I'd been looking for.

“Do you think I'm PLAYING with YOU?! GET UP NOW!”

And this I didn't want either, a fight with the fat girl, but what did it matter if I stayed on the ground? If I drew attention to myself. What on earth did it matter, any of it? I was tired of running, tired of caring, tired of being lost.

But she cared. She was absolutely furious. She took my elbow and yanked me hard, up and over so that I fell and scrambled to stand as I was dragged with tremendous force over to a patch of grass near a small cotton candy stand.

A girl behind the counter looked up from her magazine as we passed and gave me the once-over, then went back to it. I didn't care.

The fat girl slapped me hard across the face. I was silent, just reached up to touch my burning cheek.

“Hello!”
She hit me again, on the other side, and I raised my other hand. My face was hot. I looked down at my feet. Tears slid down my nose and fell in the dust, drop by drop.

The fat girl grabbed a handful of my hair and jerked my head back. She marched me backwards until we stood in the grass all the way to the side of the cotton candy stand, slightly out of view. She used her other palm to bat my hands away and grip my chin. Her soft moony face swam centimeters from mine. Her breath smelled like onions.

“You listen to me,” she said softly, “you are not going to pieces here. You cannot go to pieces now. Understand? I will not have it. You will suck it up or I will punch and kick the shit out of you until you do.” She jerked my head again and the roots of my hair stung. I closed my eyes.

“Faith,” she said, and her voice came from deep inside me. “Ask yourself what you want to do, what you came this far to do. Did you come this
far to lie down? Did you come this far to dissolve in a pile on the ground like a blubbering baby?”

I didn't answer and I didn't open my eyes. I felt her let go of my chin, of my hair. My head floated free. And then, with a dull thud, her fist connected to my jaw.

I opened my eyes. The sky swam above me. I was flat on my back, and then the fat girl blocked my view. “Is this what you want?” She kicked me in the ribs and I curled up. Again she kicked me and again. Until finally something in me snapped and I turned on her in a fury slapping and kicking and biting back.

There was a long low sound from all sides and it was me, howling, me.

A shadow fell over us.

“Ma'am,” a voice said. “Lady? Can you hear me? Are you on drugs?”

I froze. I was on all fours. I had been straddling the fat girl, but she was no longer beneath me. I turned slowly and saw a pant leg, a belt. My purple backpack held out like a dirty thing.

I tried to stand, stumbled, swayed, and then managed a footing. I straightened my sweater and skirt and then turned around fully. It took me a blinking moment to figure out that I was facing the bearded Lily VonGert.

She looked as unsure of me as I was of her. I was still shaking, but I reached out and took my backpack and mumbled some thanks, some apology, none of which was decipherable.

Lily VonGert sized me up and down.

She was quite a bit taller than me and broad shouldered, with a long, silky brown mustache and beard. It was thin and similar in texture to her hair, which hung in wavy locks all around her face, framing big brown eyes. She had on pants and a V-neck sweater. I was eye level with her cleavage and knew she must feel me staring.

“What's your name?” she said, not unkindly.

“Annabelle.” I hooked my backpack over one shoulder and tried to stand straighter, tried to summon the moxie of Annabelle, but I was still shaking.

“Annabelle, honey, are you an epileptic?”

I stared at her for a moment before I began to giggle, and once I'd started I couldn't stop. I shook my head, no, not epileptic, but even though I tried to squeeze the little giggles down they kept erupting. I was making awful noises.

“Are you high, honey?” She reached out and touched my arm, then my forehead. “Did you take something?”

I shook my head again, still spitting and giggling. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood, but the sounds didn't stop until Lily VonGert put her arm around me and began to steer us behind the midway. Then I stopped. Maybe it was her strong, sour smell, or the sobriety of my situation, but I stopped freaking out and got quiet.

“I'm just disappointed,” I said softly when we'd walked up a bit and were entering a cluster of trailers, but she appeared not to have heard me. She moved her arm down my back a little so that she could direct me with the pressure of her hand. I wondered where her third leg was.

When we came to a long silver trailer she stopped and so did I. There was a makeshift porch of sorts: plywood thrown down in front of the door, and a roof made of tarp hung from a nearby tree to a pole extending from the opposite corner of the trailer. On the plywood was a rocking chair and an upturned milk crate with an overflowing tin-can ashtray.

“Sit here for just a minute, Annabelle, okay?”

She didn't move until I'd nodded and settled myself in the chair. It was chilly there, in the shade, and the view wasn't spectacular: the backs of trailers, here and there small glimpses of the midway. Up the hill I could see the other side of the main tent. I thought I saw the makeshift door Charlie had used in Gleryton, but I couldn't be sure.

Soon, the fat girl appeared from the midway clutching an enormous pink fluff of cotton candy. She had to squeeze herself between two trailers with considerable effort, though they were a few feet apart. There were fingernail marks all down the right side of her face. She didn't look at me, but came and stood a little way off and stared at the tent, so the marks faced me. They were red and puffy and terrible, but I didn't apologize. I didn't say anything.

I just rocked back and forth, back and forth, cradling my backpack like a doll or a helpless child.

 

Lily VonGert was gone long enough that I drifted off to sleep. I woke, startled, to her fingers on my arm and her face near mine.

“Go in and talk to Mina,” she said.

Or I thought she said. I moved my mouth but words didn't come out. It took a second to stand and then I said it.

“Mina the Ballerina of the Air?”

Lily shook her head at me, as if she were still unsure of what she was dealing with, and pushed me towards the door of the trailer.

I found myself facing a squat older woman with tufts of salt-and-pepper hair framing a pruney face. A cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. She had a handful of cash and sat, her chair tipped back, behind a table covered in plump white envelopes, some open, some sealed.

“Sit down,” the woman said, gesturing with the money, and an ash the size of my pinkie trickled off the end of her cigarette, dusting her blue T-shirt. “Damn.” She swiped at her ample chest with an envelope.

I realized I was staring dumbly. I sat on a bench against the wall across from her and put my backpack on the floor beside me. I sat up straight and tried to look presentable, but I was still sore and disoriented. Out the window, I saw trucks in the distance, rumbling down a highway flanked by brownish hills. One of those roads led to Gleryton. And then for a split second I pictured a line of police cars, lights flashing, sirens screaming, headed here to claim me and take me back. I swallowed.

The lady was watching, waiting expectantly. I blushed and stammered, “I…I…”

This seemed to annoy her. “I am Elaine Hachette and I run things around here. Now who the hell are you?”

“Annabelle.”

“Annabelle what?”

I hesitated. No one had asked for Annabelle's last name before. I looked at the edge of the table, at the tiny cramped kitchen to my right. “Cabinet,” I said.

“Annabelle
Cabinet
.” She sighed and shook her head, causing more ash to crumble and fall. “Lord help us,” she mumbled. She took a rubber band from the table, swiftly bound the money, and plunked it down on a mountain of envelopes.

“Okay, Annabelle. Are you epileptic?”

I shook my head.

“Prone to seizures?”

“No.”

“Well,
Annabelle Cabinet
,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “What the hell were you doing rolling around on the ground slapping yourself silly by the midway out there? We have families coming to the show today and we don't need that, don't need any kind of disruption. We've had enough of that this season.”

I was sweating profusely by now, so hot I knew my face must be ten shades of red. She seemed to be waiting for an explanation, but I didn't have one. Nothing that would make any sense to anyone. By now I
could only tell part of anything, anyway. And which part was the part to tell?

“I was hoping to get a job—” I began, but she hooted and took another long thin cigarette from the pack by her elbow.

“Good,” she said, and tapped it against the table as if it offended her. “That's good. Great way to get a job. You come mess up sales by picking a fight with yourself, by pummeling yourself on the ground like you're having some kind of fit. That, my dear, is a
fantastic
way to impress a potential employer.”