Wire Mesh Mothers

25

The girl sat on a pile of wooden pallets behind the abandoned Dairy Rite, holding the pistol at Kate’s head as Kate squatted by a denuded, twisted dogwood tree to pee. The sky had broken open; the moon was visible now, a white eye laced with tenuous threads of cloud and gray smoke from a nearby farmhouse. The car was cooling and ticking against the back of the old building. Mistie sat inside the opened back car door, crossing and uncrossing her feet and looking at her fingers.

“Watch for snakes in those weeds there,” laughed the girl. “One’ll probably jump up and bite you on your little new nigger ass!”

Kate said nothing. Snakes hibernated in December, thank God for the smallest of favors, but she wasn’t going to correct the girl.

“Know what a new nigger is?”

Kate shook her head. She was exhausted, her mind fogged. Her legs were bristled with the cold.

“It ain’t black folks. I got no problem with black folks, yellow folks, white folks, whatever. New niggers is women. Like you. Like my Mam. Lazy-ass, worthless, stinking wastes of air.”

Kate nodded.

“New niggers expect everybody to do for ‘em. They are shiftless, needy, whining all the time. Make me want to puke.”

Kate let go the stream of hot liquid; she felt spatters strike her calves and go cold immediately.

It was after midnight; once they had reached Fayetteville the girl had insisted they circle east and north and then south again, a good additional forty-some miles, to throw off anyone who might be on the trail of the gasoline man’s killer. They had stopped once to let Mistie go to the bathroom behind some cedars, and the girl had relieved herself right afterwards, after tying Kate and Mistie together with two of Kate’s winter scarf collection.

Now they were in the country, a mile and a half outside the town of Dillon, South Carolina behind the Dairy Rite with its soaped-over windows and its peeling paint. The girl had yammered on and on about what great fun it would be to spend the night in a motel and then the next day the motel owners see in the paper that they had housed a famous murderer from Virginia, but when it came down to it, the girl decided they would spend the night in the Volvo behind the Dairy Rite because, after all, they were fugitives and fugitives couldn’t afford to tempt fate.

There was nothing with which to wipe. Kate cringed for a moment, then used her hand. She didn’t dare ask the girl if she could go in her purse for a tissue. She pulled down her skirt and wrapped her coat about her waist.

I’ll never be warm again. Donald is warm tonight, back home. Donnie is warm at school. What did Donald think about the note? Did he believe me? He’s a lawyer, he’s supposed to question everything.

“Okay,” said the girl. “You and the kid are gonna sleep in the back.” She waved with the gun. Kate climbed into the back seat, nudging Mistie over with her hand. The back seat was damp and smelled of urine; Mistie had wet herself when she’d fallen asleep several hours back. Kate made sure her coat was securely underneath herself.

The girl took Kate’s scarves from the front. She ordered Mistie to tie Kate’s hands behind her back with one. Mistie whimpered but did as she was told. The job was loose, but it gave the girl the chance to tighten them herself without Kate being able to lash out. Then the girl tied Mistie’s in the same fashion, and bound their feet at the ankles. Kate couldn’t imagine sleeping like this.

Claustrophobia, she thought. I never knew what it was like. She tried to work her wrists, but there was no flex room at all.

The girl locked the back doors, then placed wooden pallets upright against each door. “I’m a light sleeper,” she said. “If for some reason you get out of those ties, which I don’t think you will, I’ll hear those pallets hit the ground and your brain’ll be in sights of my gun before you can count to one-half.”

Mistie drew up her knees, twisted and wiggled against her bound arms, and looked at Kate. She said, “Ow.”

“I know, Mistie,” said Kate. “I’m so sorry. This won’t go on forever.”

“I can make it go on long as I want to,” said the girl. She slipped into the driver’s seat and put one foot up on either side of the steering wheel. “Truth or dare.”

“I’m exhausted.” Kate stretched her legs out to the other side of the floor, underneath Mistie. “If you want me to drive tomorrow, I need sleep.”

“One more,” said the girl. “Then I’ll think about letting you alone. Truth or dare?”

Truth, she thought, you can’t handle the truth. A small portion of her brain thought that was funny, but the rest was too numbed to know why. “Truth.”

“Good!” The girl scratched her head. “Okay. When did you first get fucked?”

Kate felt the hairs on her neck bristle. “We’ve got a child in the car.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Please don’t say that, and don’t ask me that.”

The girl shook her head. “Women are such pussies, aren’t you? God! Truth, or I got a dare for you.”

“Please,” said Kate. Breath, another breath. “Okay, my husband. Our wedding night.”

The girl struck Kate across the forehead with the pistol, tearing a strip of skin away. “I think you’re lying to me! I think you was horny as a rabbit.”

“I was raised Catholic,” said Kate. Don’t cry, oh, please don’t cry. Her head blazed and she could feel the blood oozing into her eyelashes. “I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage.”

“Huh,” said the girl, but she considered this. “Maybe so. Maybe not. But you were itching for him to get in your pants, I bet. New niggers like dicks in their pants. Maybe ‘cause they wish they had one, themselves. You wish you had a dong?”

The car felt as if it were swaying, as if it were on a ferry, moving out to sea. Kate let her mind flow with it, and for a moment she saw the waves and could smell the brine, and see the stars sparkling on the water. She had a blanket around her shoulders to keep off the sea chill, and it was soft and white and drawing her to sleep.

“Hey!” The voice was right outside her mind. She opened her eyes to see the girl’s face in her own, inches away.

“You going to sleep?”

“I think so. I can’t help it.”

“Fucker,” said the girl. “Go to sleep, then. We’ll get started really early tomorrow.” The girl pulled away, back to the front, but made sure Kate could see the pistol in her hand.

And then Kate shut her eyes again and slumped against the seat and she was on the boat under the stars. The blanket was comforting and peaceful and she looked out at the water and thought, I will float on forever. Away, away, and forever.