“Stay on the story, Cricket. Focus.”
“Mom! You totally just ran that red light.”
“It was yellow. Go on.”
“Okay so then he talked into a microphone he really didn’t need because there weren’t many people there to not hear his voice it was just the ninth grade. He told them that because they had agreed to attended the assembly—”
“Attend the assembly, not attended. Go ahead.”
“Because they had agreed to attend the assembly, and only if they signed in and out, they could have a half day on Friday and they all clapped and one kid even whistled and Mr. Learson had to say people, people, come on now, people! Then they showed a movie and Mama you would not have believed it—it was so gross I thought I might throw up all over again! With pictures of babies in bellies, killed little bitty babies on bloody hospital floors and sad-looking pregnant girls who looked real young to be having babies and Mama I was so embarrassed because they looked like Cousin Janey’s age and that means they did the nasty and do you think Janey’s done it, Mama? I don’t but do you? Has Janey gone all the way?”
When I try to swallow, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and I realize my mouth’s been hanging open. If I let on how shocked I am, though, she might flitter on to another something and it will be like marching in quicksand getting her back to this. I know how it goes. There’s a time limit. So you’ve got to get the information you need real quick before it slips through your fingers forever.
“No, honey, Janey has not gone all the way I can tell you that. Shoot, the drive-thru’s closed. We’re going to have to go in. Keep talking. The movie had dead babies?”
“Yeah! It was so disgusting and awful. So then the lights came back on and this man this guest speaker everyone had to clap for he came out and with a lispy loud voice said don’t let this be you and made everyone turn to the person on their right, shake their hand and say I promise I will abstain from having sexual relations before marriage only it was so funny because the boys messed with the words saying I promise to have sexual relations before marriage and more stuff I shouldn’t repeat and Mr. Learson kept hollering settle down now and let’s give our visitor our undivided attention and we’re ambassadors of Hartsville today so let’s make Hartsville proud but by the end he was yelling that’s it I’m taking names and two kids I don’t know got sent out. Can you believe it, Mama? Dead babies all over the place. It was so gross.”
“I’m going to pause you there for just a second,” I say, once we’re inside. I take a place in line and read the menu board even though I get the same thing every time. “Do you know what you want? Cricket, look at the menu and tell me what you want. Hi, I’d like the salad bar and a large Diet Coke. And my daughter here will have … Cricket?”
“Um, chicken sandwich with nothing on it.”
“Please?”
“Please.”
She rolls her eyes at me, but honestly, how else is she going to learn? Her father turns to mush where she’s concerned—God forbid he insist on anything but a hug and kiss from her.
“Honey, go get us a table over by the salad bar, will you?”
While I wait on her chicken sandwich, I watch Cricket sitting by herself. Looking around hopefully to see if there’s anybody she can talk to. There’s the rub: this child is so friendly she could start up a conversation with a rock, but as endearing as that gregariousness is to adults, it’s kryptonite to kids her age. It’s uncool. So there she sits. The loneliest girl in the world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carrie
The first thing we get to on our walk into our new lives is the Loveless Hotel and Motor Lodge of Hartsville, North Carolina, and even though the name ain’t so great, Momma’s getting us a room. We never stayed in a hotel or motel or anything like it ever and if I weren’t so dang tired I’d be real excited but right now even toothpicks would have a hard time keeping my eyelids apart. The front office looked real warm and friendly when we were limping toward it from the blacktop. It had a yellow glow that for some reason made me think inside it would smell like biscuits just out of the oven. Instead it smells like cat pee and barbecue and Clorox bleach mixed together on purpose to dare my stomach to stay calm. Momma’s talking to a scary-looking old man behind the counter who’s so skinny he looks like a skeleton with a thin sheet of skin barely covering his bones. I’m leaning against the glass window when he looks over his half eyeglasses pinching the tip of his nose and says to me:
“You holding the window in place for me over there?”
He says it serious-like but when I say “Sir?” he breaks into a smile and says, “Just busting on you, girlie. The missus says I need to get some new material. Says I need to keep my day job because my humor ain’t the humorous kind and I guess she’s right. How old’re you?”
“Oh, don’t mind her—she won’t be any bother,” Momma says, waving her hand in my direction like she’s shooing a fly. “Hey! Stand up straight when someone’s talking to you.”
The way his right eyebrow shoots up I can tell he’s a man who’s been lied to all his life. Or had lots of crank phone calls.
“You gonna be a bother, girlie?” he asks me direct. He’s smiling, which doesn’t make much sense since he’s asking about me bothering him.
“No, sir.”
“I promise you won’t hear a peep from us,” Momma says.
The smile he’d given me fades when he turns back to Momma. He sizes us both up.
“Y’all look like you could use a decent night’s sleep. Let’s see now. Looks like the only rooms available now are the de-luxe,” he says, running his finger down a list in a big old Santa Claus ledger book. He looks at me and Momma like he’s judging a pageant, sighs, looks over his shoulder to make sure no one snuck up on him, and in a low voice he says, “Tell you what I can do. You put down the deposit on the key and the first week’s rent and I’ll put you in the de-luxe room at the regular room rate minus twenty percent. It’s late and anyway there ain’t much difference between regular and de-luxe ’cept the de-luxe has a mini fridge and a hot plate. And basic cable of course. The AC’s free. Local calls too, but you got to use a phone card for anything outside of Hartsville even if it’s the same area code.”
“Thank you so much, sir,” Momma says. “We sure can use a break.”
“You tell Mrs. Burdock I gave you a cut rate and I’ll deny it, y’all hear me?” he says. “And you’re to look after yourselves. This here’s a fine establishment. But every once in a while we get some rotten apples and I can’t be responsible for anything—anything squirrelly happening. The missus, now, she don’t want to take kids—we can’t make it a policy so to speak, course that’d be against the law for discrimination of some kind. We like to say we prefer adults only. We make some exceptions here and there. But in general, families bring heaps of trouble and I don’t want to send Mrs. Burdock tossing and turning all night, you read me? She got the anxiety gene in her so it don’t take much for her to go batshit—pardon my French—with worry. You understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Momma and me say at the same time.
“Y’all are on your own.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and write down your car’s tag number alongside your name so we don’t up and call the tow truck on you. The bus stop’s a stone’s throw away and we get commuters trying to park here for free all day,” he says, sliding a piece of paper to Momma.
“Oh, we don’t have a car,” Momma says. I want to correct her and say yes we do—it’s broke but it’s still ours, but I bite my tongue. Momma don’t like to be corrected. Mr. Burdock’s sizing her up over the rims of his eyeglasses, like us not having a car might change his mind.
“How’d y’all get here?” he asks.
“Our car broke down back on the interstate,” Momma says, “but it was a heap of junk no one could breathe life back into so we set off on foot and finally caught a ride that got us pretty close by.”
“Well, all right
then,” he says, straightening up, puffing out his skinny chest and flinging his arms wide like ta-da. “Welcome to the Loveless. Stairs are just across the driveway. Vending machines are on both the first and second floors. Ice machines too, though the one on the second floor’s been giving me problems. If it ain’t working let me know. Maid service is sporadic—our girl up and quit on us and Mrs. Burdock’s liking the money it saves us so don’t count on us hiring anyone new anytime soon. Rent’s due by end of business on Fridays.”
I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath but when he hands Momma the block of wood attached to the key I finally let the air whoosh out.
She takes it but when she sees the number 217 printed on it her face falls from fake-smiling and she loses all her coloring.
“Something wrong?” he asks.
Momma looks up at him then at the number then back at him.
“Oh, ah,” Momma says, “no, sir. This is just fine.”
I can tell it’s not fine but I cain’t imagine what Momma’s got against the wood or the number 217.
“Well, all right then. Name’s Hap Burdock,” he says, smiling and reaching over the counter to offer his hand to be shaken. “Pleased to meetcha.”
“My name’s Libby Parker and this is my daughter, Caroline,” Momma says in a fake-nice voice through her smile. “Honey, come on over and shake nice Mr. Burdock’s hand.”
He winks at me and says, “You mind telling me why you keep a penny behind your ear?”
“Sir?”
He reaches out—at first I think he’s going to hit me so I back up. He gets a sad look then says, “It’s all right, I ain’t gonna bite you. Just pulling that penny out from where it’s hiding,” and sure enough his fingers touch my hair at my right ear and he holds up a penny for me and Momma to see.
I feel behind both my ears but I think I’d remember putting money up there. Especially since I never do it.
“Hey. How’d you do that?” I ask him.
He winks at me again and hands me the coin for keeps.
“It’s magic,” he says, fanning his hands in front of his face.
I ain’t never seen a person like him back home, that’s for sure.
The Loveless is an almost-square with all the doors and windows on both floors facing all the parking spots in the open middle of the square. I figure ever-one can keep an eye on their cars better that way. The rooms on the second floor are along one long outside balcony with a black railing making sure you don’t trip and fall into the parking lot.
“You heard the man,” she says real low. Momma’s voice goes back to normal when we’re outside on the way up the stairs to the second-floor room. “You better keep quiet or I’ll do more than throw you out on your behind, you can count on that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, rubbing my arm where she pinched me.
“We’re lucky to get a place for the money we got,” she says, “no telling where we’d end up if we lose a room here. Things are always more expensive the closer you get to the center of a town.”
I don’t know how Momma knows all about prices and centers of towns considering we never been in a place with stoplights even but then there’s a whole lot I don’t know about Momma. She don’t talk much about her growing up.
“All right then,” she says.
It’s dark and the light over the parking lot isn’t real bright so Momma has to squint and get close to the doors to read the numbers. “Two eleven. Two thirteen. Two fifteen. Here it is.”
She turns the key, pushes the door open, and flicks a light switch just inside.
It’s the best room in the whole entire world. Two beds! A TV on a chest of drawers across from them! And it’s near twice the size of the old half-broke black-and-white one we once had.
“Whoa! Lookee, Momma! The TV’s huge!”
I rush in and rub the tired out of my eyes so I can get a better look at ever-thing.
“We each got our own bed, Momma, look! And there’s new soap in a wrapper, and two cups. This is great! There’s a shower over the tub so’s you can take one or both, Momma! Come see.”
Momma hasn’t set foot in the room yet.
“It’s real nice, right, Momma?” I ask her. I take the soap over to her. “Smell it—it’s piney, like home.”
“Just hush up, will you,” she says, stepping in dainty-like. As if the room might swallow her up whole.
Momma hates lots of things. Pickles. Blue jeans. Cats. Fast drivers. Hillbilly talk. Hendersonville. Kids. Emma. And from the way it’s looking, I guess you could add the Loveless Hotel and Motor Lodge of Hartsville, North Carolina, to the list.
I check all the drawers for anything left behind and sure enough in the table between the two beds I hit pay dirt.
“Hey, Momma, look! Someone left a book in here.”
She doesn’t look.
“Leave it be,” she says, taking full measure of the room. “That’s no book—that’s a Gideon Bible. Put it back. No soul’s ever been saved in this family as far as I can tell. Besides, if the devil wants to find you he will—no Bible’s going to keep him from doing his job.”
It’s brand spanking new with a man’s name in fancy gold lettering on front. Wouldn’t you think if Mr. Gideon went to all the trouble to get his name in gold letters on his own Bible he’d remember to take it with him when he left? That’s a mystery I’ll have to solve or it’ll drive me crazy. I get out my black-and-white notebook and write ask Mr. Burdock if there’s anyone come by asking for the Bible he left behind. If no one has I aim to ask if I can hold on to it. Finders keepers.
“This’ll be great, Momma,” I say as she sets herself down on the very edge of the end of the bed, hugging her purse up tight to her chest like a robber’s trying to pry it from her. I watch in the cracked mirror over the sink. She slumps a little then goes hunting through her pocketbook. She’s been real good about waiting till we got here to have her whiskey.
“Momma?”
“Hmmm?” She’s fingering the bedspread, tracing the stitching. She takes a second pull from the bottle.
“You want me to go fetch some ice from that machine we passed on the way up, Momma?”
I know it doesn’t suit her, drinking from the bottle like she is. The sound of clinking ice cubes might make us both feel more at home.
“That’d be fine,” she says, coming as close to yes please as she ever does.
I want so bad to run over and hug her. Not that I would. I want to, though.
“It’s really and truly gonna be great,” I say on my way out the door.
And for the first time, I believe my own self. This’ll be great. I got a feeling it really will be.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Carrie
Momma’s reaching over her shoulders holding the two sides of her dress together at the back.
“Get over here and pull up this zipper,” she says. “I can’t get it to save my life.”
Momma’s said more lately than she ever said to me. Ever.
I inch the zipper up slow because the middle part of her back’s got an angry scar from Richard’s beer bottle and even though it healed a while back I always think it must hurt her still. She’d never say, though, and I’d never ask.
“Momma, please can I come? I’ll stay real quiet,” I tell her. “You won’t even know I’m there, hand to God.”
“No you most certainly cannot. Last thing I need is them seeing a kid waiting on me,” she says under her breath while she’s fussing with her hair again in the cracked mirror.
I love watching her get ready for job interviews. Zipping up. Fixing her hair. Lipstick. Most of all her talking. I never heard her say so many sentences at one time in my life as when she gets ready to look for work. I know it’s on account of her being nervous but sometimes I pretend she and me are getting fixed up for a dance we’re gonna go to with Daddy.
“What’re they gonna think?” she’s saying. “They’ll think I’ll be wanting time off to care for my kid. T
hey don’t want to think their people have anything more important than work to worry about. And right about now there is nothing more important than work if we want to eat. Where’s my lipstick?”
She puts it on and starts talking again, to her own face in the mirror. I try to keep from smiling at her using the word we. She never says we.
“When I was your age my momma told me I’d never amount to anything more than a waste of oxygen.” She squinches her eyes while she sprays a halo of White Rain. The mist will turn the counter sticky and I know I’ll wipe it off after she leaves. I’m real good about keeping the room spick-and-span.
“Even though they called me Miss America back in school,” she says, eyeing herself from different angles. “Bet you didn’t know that. I was voted best-looking in the whole school. My momma never knew that and I didn’t tell her because she would have thought I was uppity. But I was pretty. I was pretty and I didn’t give it a second thought, that’s how stupid I was. I figured I’d always be pretty. Damnation will you look at that—I got makeup on my dress. Well, don’t just stand there—get over here and help for Christ’s sake!”
She wets one of the thin rough washcloths and I hold my hand under the fabric of her dress while she presses against it trying to dab the smudge away. Luckily it’s her flowered Sunday dress so you cain’t see the thumb-size smear of pink but it makes her mad all the same. Her neck bruise’s nearly faded away and what’s still there is covered by the makeup she got at the dollar store. But when she gets angry the mark does too. No makeup can hide that. We don’t talk about her bruises or marks, though. We never have. Not hers or mine. It’s probably better that way anyhow.
The smudge comes out pretty good and I can see that eases her mind so I figure I can ask her something that’s been weighing on me, since she’s so talkative and all. Momma’s usually not so good with thoughts and feelings and all that.