Wire Mesh Mothers

21

She remembered.

Fifth grade, three years ago. The oldest in the class at twelve because she had failed third grade for not coming to school enough. The official record had said she’d missed sixty-seven days. Tony’s Mam had protested briefly that her daughter was sick and had good excuses for missing, but then let it go. To protest a retention with any conviction required coming in and talking to the teacher, the guidance counselor, and the principal. That was too much for Mam. That would take a good couple hours out of her day. That would cut into her beer and her Price is Right and her sofa time.

Retained, then, Tony — still Angela — was the tallest girl in the class. The others were a good four inches shorter, a year dumber, and, the only good thing for them, flatter. They didn’t like Angela and she didn’t like them. They called her lezbo behind her back because she cut her own hair short and never wore skirts. She called them hussies, cunts, pussies, whatever caught her fancy at the moment to their faces. She spent a lot of time on the bench in the office.

Angela made friends with a couple boys in the class, Buddy and Whitey. Buddy was a goof-ass who couldn’t read very well. Whitey was a black kid with a burned up face. They were almost her age but not quite. She told them what to do and they usually did.

It was during Spring Fling. Spring Fling was an annual PTA fund-raiser, a mini-carnival held the last Friday in May. Classes were let out after lunch, and the kids who had brought money were free to run around the school grounds, buying cupcakes at the kindergarten bake sale or tossing nickels to win stuffed animals at the third grade booth. There was face painting and a water balloon toss. There was a popcorn vendor set up by the cafeteria workers and PTA moms selling lopsided clumps of cotton candy on white paper cones. Kids who didn’t have money wandered around begging the other kids for a loan, manned the various grade-level booths, or plopped themselves down on the playground swings and slide and pretended they didn’t care.

The day was hot, hotter than a set of fried jumper cables, and Angela, who had brought three dollars she’d swiped from her mother’s wallet, was spent-out and was now perched atop the wooden climbing tower. She wore a pair of cut-offs, a baggy tee-shirt to hide her embarrassingly mature chest, and rubber flip flops. From her vantage point a good fifteen feet above the ground, she could watch the comings and goings of the kids who still had money. Over at the water balloon toss on the blacktop two boys had gotten into a scuffle and the teacher was breaking it up. There was a long line at the face painting booth, little guys bouncing in sneakers and waving the little American flags bought at the fifth grade flea market booth. A clump of fifth graders had won packs of baseball cards and they’d found shade by the special education trailer for a swap meet. Scents of cotton candy and butter and hot earth drifted across the playground.

“Somebody lost a balloon!” called Buddy. He was below Angela, sitting in the shadows under the tower. He didn’t have any money, either. He had tried to borrow some from Angela but she wouldn’t share.

The balloon was bright pink, and had lost just enough helium to keep it barely above kid’s-head level. A breeze spun it in lazy circles, it’s string trailing like a kite tail, across the blacktop and over the grassy playground to the wooden climbing tower.

“Look, balloon!” Buddy repeated.

“I see it,” said Angela.

The balloon whirled and dipped, raised up and drifted low. Written on one side was the name of the sponsor who’d donated the balloons to Pippins Elementary, “Southwestern Citizen’s Bank.” Angela leaned out from the tower, holding tight with one hand, and grabbed the string as it flitted by.

“Got it!” She slid down the corkscrew slide in the center of the tower with the balloon in her lap and joined Buddy in the shadows. He was sitting on his butt in the grass, chewing on clover. There was green drool at the corners of his mouth.

“You look sick,” said Angela.

“Yeah. Let’s suck the helium.”

Angela bit at the knot on the string, pulling it loose and spitting it off onto her leg. She put the lip of the balloon in her mouth and inhaled deeply, just like she did with her mother’s cigarettes. The funny-tasting gas filled her lungs. She pulled the balloon way, pinching the lip shut, and said, “Hello. My name is Angela Petinske. What’s your name?” It was a foreign voice, pinched and cartoony.

Buddy howled. He grabbed for the balloon and Angela slapped him away. Then she handed it to him. He sucked helium.

“My name is Buddy Via and I hate school, don’t you? Ha ha ha ha!” he said.

They took turns sucking and speaking, each one trying to make their sentence a little longer than the last. Angela felt light-headed and good. Screw the Spring Fling and the pussies who got their faces painted. This was better.

Until a teacher outside the tower said, “Rob, is that the girl?”

Angela jumped a mile and let go of the balloon. It sputtered and wheezed, then dropped beside her lap like a dead, pink puppy. Outside in the sunlight stood the new fourth grade teacher Mrs. McDolen and a little boy with a ball cap and brand new Nikes. His eyebrows were drawn together and his index finger was shaking in Angela’s direction.

Angela didn’t wait. She jumped to her feet and stared through the wooden slats of the tower. “What you saying, boy? The girl who what? Huh?” Buddy sat, watching, in the grass.

“Come out here so we may speak,” said the teacher calmly.

May speak. Only teachers talked like that. It drove a burr into Angela’s spine. She crawled out through the slats and stood, arms to her side and feet slightly apart. “Okay. Speak,” she said.

“Watch your tone,” said the teacher. “Rob said you stole his balloon.”

Angela’s mouth dropped open. “That’s total bull!” she said. “I found it!”

The teacher held out her hand while Rob twisted the toe of his Nike in the dirt. Angela was suddenly conscious of her flip-flops and wanted to stomp him in the head with them.

Buddy poked the deflated balloon out through the slats. Angela would not pick it up. The teacher did. “I see clearly now,” she said, turning it over, “Look. Rob’s got his name on it.”

“Huh!” said Angela.

“Ooh, Angela, stealin’ a little boy’s balloon,” taunted Buddy.

Angela looked at the balloon. In small, black marker was written “Rob Forrester.” She shrugged.

“So? He lost it,” said Angela. “Finder’s keepers.”

“I din’ lose it,” whined Rob. “You took it!”

The teacher pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear and put her hands on her hips. Angela put her hands on her hips. “Don’t mock me,” said the teacher.

“Don’t mock me,” said Angela. “’Cause I didn’t steal nothin’.”

“You did!” wailed Rob.

“Bullshit!” said Angela.

The teacher looked as shocked as if she’d stepped into a pile of that very stuff.

Five minutes later, Angela was sitting on the bench in the office. Ten minutes later, she was in the office with the principal, listening to him talk about respect for peer and adults and then to him tell her she would sit in detention all day Monday.

Angela gave the bitch Mrs. McDolen the hairy eyeball for the remainder of the school year, all six days of it. And then she went on to Gabriel Archer Middle School and never had to look at her again.

Until now.

She remembered.

This was the teacher. Sitting at the wheel of her rich-ass white car in her rich-ass shoes, looking surprised that there was a little girl hiding under a quilt in her back seat. This would be good.

“I see now,” Tony said.

The teacher’s mouth opened and closed. Her eyes were wide and twitching.

“What you into, teacher? Little girls? Got a little girl in the back of your car for when you get an urge?”

“How dare you!”

Tony slapped the teacher soundly across the mouth. The teacher sobbed, once, then bared her teeth like a dog. It was hysterical and Tony laughed aloud.

Then she studied the girl in the back seat. She was about seven or so, a mess, all snotty and sweaty and wearing some kind of trash. She was covered in brown goo, what Tony hoped was candy and not something else.

“What are you doing in here?” Tony asked.

The little girl rubbed her crotch.

“Oh, yeah, I see,” said Tony. She turned back around and put both feet on the dashboard. She tapped the teacher on the arm with the pistol. “You got a little secret there, huh, teacher-woman?”

The teacher was scrambling for something to say. It crawled all over her face, and then, “I was taking her home for the afternoon. Her mother gave me permission to….”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “Whatever. You can tell me later, we’ll save that up, how about that? Good bed time story.”

“No,” said the teacher. “No, listen to me now.”

“I don’t have to. You know how to get to Texas?”

“I. Well, of course, but….”

“Drive.”

The teacher backed the car around, and then maneuvered through the thick of pines back to Route 58. On the road, the teacher didn’t even have to ask which way to turn. She went right, and drove in silence to the turn off onto Route 35 a mile outside Courtland. She put on her blinker and turned south. Eight miles to North Carolina. A couple thousand at least to Texas.

Burton was in Texas. He had moved there long ago when Lorilynn Petinske had sent him away without his pistol or his sofa.

Texas. Where the real Tony had stood tall and unmoving beneath the elms.

Tony leaned against the passenger’s door and studied her two traveling mates. Two fucked-up females.

And Tony in charge, completely, for the first time in her life.

This was going to be the most excitement she’d ever had. This was going to be a ride to remember.