Wire Mesh Mothers

48

Mistie threw up on Route 120, soon after passing over Interstate 49 and nestling back into the quiet back-land of Louisiana. There was no warning, unlike it was with Donnie who would clutch his gut for a long many minutes saying, “I’ve gotta puke, it’s coming. It’s coming!” It was more like Willie Harrold in Kate’s fourth grade class. He would say nothing and then erupt like a volcano, aimed, if he could possibly manage it, on his good buddy Christopher May and if not, on any other unsuspecting student. The reaction was always what Willie and Christopher wanted — bedlam.

It was a soft little “ploop,” some loud breathing, and then the whimper and the smell. Kate steered to the side of the road and the girl didn’t tell her to get back on the road. It was raining, a steady stream of mist-fine drops. The windshield wipers on the Nova worked, amazingly, but they squeaked like cats with their tails in a trap. She left the engine running.

“We have to do something,” Kate said. She reached back and touched Mistie’s cheeks. They were poker-hot. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with her.”

“You’re supposed to know,” said the girl.

“Why? Why am I supposed to know it all?”

“You’re a mom, you’re a teacher!”

“You believe women are worthless!”

The girl drove a fist against the dash in exasperation. Then she said, “Get her out.”

It didn’t take much to carry Mistie from the car. She weighed less than a sack of potatoes. Kate knelt in the wet roadside weeds and tried to shelter her body from the rain. Her own hair was immediately soaked, and the trickles on her bare arms chilling. The girl stood by in the skunk weed, arms crossed, the sleeves from her own WWJC sweatshirt ripped away.

Along the stretch of road were several houses — a white farmhouse on a hill back up the road a few tenths of a mile, and across the road two doublewides on a shared driveway. The rest was pastureland and cows.

“We need help,” said Kate. “We need to get Mistie to a doctor right away.”

“No way,” said the girl. “Absolutely not.”

Mistie opened her eyes, squinted, sighed, and closed them. The nightie was coated in remnants of breakfast biscuits and bile. Her skin was pale. Her breathing shallow.

“You little bitch,” Kate said, staring up in the rain, “we have to get help!”

The girl slammed her foot into the side of Kate’s head, driving Kate to her side, and brandished the knife. “We aren’t! We can take care of her, fuck, it she’s just sick for Christ’s sake!” She nodded at a barn across the cow field behind them. “There, we take her there!”

Kate was up immediately on her feet, staring in to the wild eyes and the flash of the blade. “No, we’re through with your pathetic, childish tantrum! Give it up, little girl!” The Nova’s engine coughed, and died. There was a hair’s-breadth of silence.

The girl stood still, whirling one hand in the air. “Come for me. Come on, try it.”

Kate hesitated. If she lunged for the girl, she would be stabbed surely, before she could get hold of the weapon. The girl was smart enough not to make the move herself, for in motion, she would be less in control.

“I’m taking Mistie to that house down there,” said Kate. “I’m not tied up now. You have no gun. You run after me to cut me with that knife and I’ll hear you coming in time to get an arm nick at the most, but then I’ll kill you. It’s that simple. I’ll get your fucking knife and slash your neck wide open. You’ll look like you heard the best joke in your life, as big as that grin is going to be.”

Heart thundering, her eyes locked on the girl in the rain, Kate squatted down and picked Mistie up under her arms. “Come, honey,” she said. Truth or dare? No, this will be lie or dare. Any lie I give the owners of that house will be believed. I’m a teacher, a teacher with a sick child, kidnapped and taken out of state by a maniac. They’ll see my wounds and believe anything I say.

Kate began backing away from the girl with Mistie’s feet dragging the wet weeds.

And then the girl darted forward, not for Kate, but for Mistie, and caught the girl in the shoulder with the knife. A puncture, a blossom of blood. She hopped back as fast as she’d come forward.

“What are you doing?” screamed Kate.

“Stopping you.” The girl wiped rain from her nose. “You hold her to move her, your hands are occupied. You let her down to protect her, and you aren’t moving her anymore. Cool, huh?”

“You hurt Mistie!”

“You’re fault, not mine.”

“She’s a child, for God’s sake!”

“You didn’t think I was able to hurt a child? I was ready to let her drown as easy as I would have let you. So just try me a bit more, teacher. You keep moving her that way and I’ll poke her so full of holes before you get her to the house she’ll be suckin’ up rain like a big, fat old sponge.”

Kate’s teeth, sanded down, stinging and wanting to tear the face off the girl. I will kill you. Give me time. She looked at the barn across the field.

Mistie was easy to carry through the cow piles and the tall grasses with the girl and her knife trailing behind.